Google won’t autocomplete “bittorrent” but will autocomplete “how to kidnap a child” (via Boing Boing)

 

 

Does this matter to you?  Is Google your (only) search tool of choice?

Google won’t autocomplete searches for “bittorrent,” but if you are interesting in learning how to kidnap someone, make meth, build a bomb, cheat on your taxes, or shoplift, they will happily autocomplete your search for you.

Google won’t autocomplete “bittorrent” but will autocomplete “how to kidnap a child” – Boing Boing.

DSM wars: the battle to define mental illness

 

 

“Editors of previous volumes have joined with skeptics from within the profession to protest the very idea of the DSM, saying that its “diseases” bear no relation to any particular neuropathology, and instead represent (at best), handy categories to put on insurance forms, and (at worst), a bonanza for the pharma industry, who get to produce pills that “cure” any disease that’s defined in the DSM. Greenberg captures the mental health field at the cusp of an enormous transformation driven by better genomics, better imaging, and hence a better understanding of what connections various symptoms have to one another, to physical problems, to genetics, and to health. The DSM has always been controversial — it’s the document that turned homosexuality into a mental illness for years — but never moreso than now.”

 

DSM wars: the battle to define mental illness – Boing Boing.

Writers and their Libraries

 

 

There’s a long tradition of writers writing about their libraries. Some of the first modern essays—by Michel de Montaigne and Sir Francis Bacon—are on that very subject. Among more recent publications, you might enjoy Anne Fadiman’s collection Ex Libris or Larry McMurtry’s Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen. The trouble with people writing about their libraries is, well, every writer has one. It’s like writing about your left hand. Or your M.F.A. program. But McMurtry is a special case. If he had never written Lonesome Dove or The Last Picture Show, he would be famous—at least among collectors—as one of the country’s most respected dealers in used and rare books. When he writes about his library, he always has something interesting to say.

Read More

via Paris Review Daily

2010 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalists Announced

Fiction

Nonfiction

via The Millions