Hot air balloons fly over the temple-studded plains of Bagan, Burma on January 14, 2010.

– A timely book, Trials of the Diaspora, examines the startling presence of antisemitism “in a supposedly enlightened, humane, liberal society.” Namely, England. Harold Bloom offers an excellent review.

– McSweeney’s forecasts the ‘corporation-as-person’ legal meme out to its logical conclusion.

– Man: officially gods since 2010. But as a wise man once said, with great power comes great responsibility…

– Daemon had the first murder through the internet. But now we have the first human infected with a computer virus? I think we all need to take a deep breath and rethink our whole human code of ethics.

– Has RadioShack accomplished its mission? Via Isegoria:

In retrospect, the launch of the TRS-80 was probably the most promising moment in RadioShack’s history — and the start of its decline.

“Let’s put it this way,” Mims says. “Hobby electronics peaked with the advent of the ready-made PC. There was no longer a need for anyone to build digital displays and TTL processors in their garage or spend time messing with circuitry. Now you could spend time at a keyboard, working on an actual computer.” It was a fulfillment of a dream. But it also served as a portent that the hands-on way of life RadioShack embodied would become irrelevant.

– “An incidental apocalypse?” Lawyers, Guns, and Money looks at the rather unremarkable instance of a volcano spewing ash 35,000 feet into the air. But couple that with what will be the worst oil spill/environmental catastrophe in human history…

And this past week on Automatic Ballpoint:

I get back from America, and end up in the middle of a Libyan anti-Gaddafi protest. News coverage is slim.

But n0t all news from Britain is bad – the LibCon coalition government has announced its plans to roll back Labour’s surveillance state, and restore the primacy of some civil liberties. I finally get around to reviewing Daemon.