I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. There are fewer links this week. Enjoy!
1. The last typewriter rolls off the assembly line.
2. Abraham Lincoln's spirituality has been a constant topic of debate among historians. The new Lincoln movie has resurfaced the debate. Film revives questions about Abraham Lincoln's faith, but offers few answers.
3. What impact will computer/internet technology have on our daily lives? Glimpse of your life in 2020 thanks to the Internet of Things.
"What if all objects were interconnected and started to sense their surroundings and communicate with each other? The Internet of Things (IoT) will have that sort of ubiquitous machine-to-machine (M2M) connectivity. Since there are estimates that between 50 billion to 500 billion devices will have a mobile connection to the cloud by 2020, here's a glimpse of our possible future.
Your alarm clock signals the lights to come on in your bedroom; the lights tell the heated tiles in your bathroom to kick on so your feet are not cold when you go to shower. The shower tells your coffee pot to start brewing. Your smartphone checks the weather and tells you to wear your gray suit since RFID tags on your clothes confirm that your favorite black suit is not in your closet but at the dry cleaners. After you pour a cup of java, the mug alerts your medication that you have a drink in-hand and your pill bottle begins to glow and beep as a reminder. Your pill bottle confirms that you took your medicine and wirelessly adds this info to your medical file at the doctor's office; it will also text the pharmacy for a refill if you are running low.
Your smart TV automatically comes on with your favorite news channel while you eat breakfast and browse your tablet for online news. After you've eaten, while you are brushing your teeth, your dishwasher texts your smartphone to fire up your vehicle via the remote start. Because your "smart" car can talk to other cars and the road, it knows what streets to avoid due to early morning traffic jams. Your phone notifies you that your route to work has been changed to save you time. And you no longer need to look for a place to park, since your smartphone reserved one of the RFID parking spaces marked as "open" and available in the cloud. Don't worry about your smart house because as you exited it, the doors locked, the lights went off, and the temperature was adjusted to save energy and money.
Does it sound too farfetched for 2020? It shouldn't since a good part of that is in the works now. ..."
4. Regarding computers, technology lovers will appreciate that the World's Oldest Computer Gets a Reboot.
5. Should Students Use Wikipedia? Maybe it depends on how they use it and what the objective is.
6. Does the United States essentially have a flat tax? Economist Greg Mankiw thinks maybe do. The U.S. has a flat tax (in effect)
"The Congressional Budget Office has a new study of effective federal marginal tax rates for low and moderate income workers (those below 450 percent of the poverty line). The study looks at the effects of income taxes, payroll taxes, and SNAP (the program formerly known as Food Stamps). The bottom line is that the average household now faces an effective marginal tax rate of 30 percent. In 2014, after various temporary tax provisions have expired and the newly passed health insurance subsidies go into effect, the average effective marginal tax rate will rise to 35 percent.
What struck me is how close these marginal tax rates are to the marginal tax rates at the top of the income distribution. This means that we could repeal all these taxes and transfer programs, replace them with a flat tax along with a universal lump-sum grant, and achieve approximately the same overall degree of progressivity."
7. What conservative streams and thinkers are likely to influence the evolving future of conservatism in the United States? David Brooks has some interesting insights into The Conservative Future.
8. Did you know that You Are Most Likely to Die at 11 a.m.?
9. This would never appeal to me. I like to know exactly what I'm buying. Would you drop some coins in this thing?
The BIBLIO-MAT from Craig Small on Vimeo.
10. The High Calling reviews R. Paul Stevens's new book, Work Matters, Lessons from Scripture. I hope to read it next month.
11. Good news on the crime front in Washington, D. C.: D.C. on pace for fewer than 100 homicides in 2012
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