Month: November 2008

Google’s Gatekeepers

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Today’s New York Times Magazine relates some of the complexities in Google’s control of the Internet search market. In order to deal with less tolerant legislation regarding the freedom of speech, Google sees itself forced in the positon of gatekeeper, deciding what to allow and to censor. See Google’s Gatekeepers.

Update: Hmm… I wonder what’s been banned from my Google searches. For some reason, even though I am located in Montclair, New Jersey and my IP clearly says that, Google thinks I am in Germany and I frequently see the Google.de page when I go there.

Braudel on the Event

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“Events are the ephemera of history; they pass across its stage like fireflies, hardly glimpsed before they settle back into darkness and as often as not into oblivion. Every event, however brief, has to be sure a contribution to make, lights up some dark corner or even some wide vista of history. Nor it it only political history which benefits most, for every historical landscape–political, economic, social, even geographical–is illumined by the intermittent flare of the event.”

– Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (New York: Harper Collins, 1973), volume 2, 901.

classic varnelis.net

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I’m aware that it’s a dead period for my American readership due to the holiday, but I thought I’d add something in the spirit of a more frequently updated site. I am posting more regularly. Seeing these three books off to print this year was a massive undertaking that took its tool on the blog. I am now under way with my next book project and I will be using the blog to relay some of my thoughts and early drafts of the book.

With that in mind, I have redone the classic blog view for varnelis.net to make it easier to read and to bring it in line with the general appearance of the site. Although most of you seem to be reading my posts via RSS and I prefer the Indexexhibit style for the default view, the classic view can be useful if you haven’t been to the site in a few days and want to catch up.