links for 2008-10-31

Should Brown and Obama find themselves with any spare time, Britain's U.S. ambassador alerted his PM that Obama "loves basketball and poker."

"Scientists call this phenomenon "cognitive capture" or "inattention blindness." The mind, captured by the world inside the phone, becomes blind to the world outside it. Millions of people move among us in this half-absent state. Mentally, they're living in another world. It's like the Rapture, except that they've left their bodies behind."

One doesn't necessarily involve the other.

"We've got Stone Age minds living in silicon-age bodies"

"A student of mine whose mother ran a fancy lingerie shop in Delhi once told me that her mother's customers were not prepared to buy silk camisoles with spaghetti straps because the maid who laundered them would consider them – and therefore their owner – scandalous. "