These are my links for March 13th through March 19th:

• debt collection, bankruptcy, personal finance & consumer rights | Caveat Emptor –
• consumerlawyer.mn — aggressive consumer advocacy –
• Y Combinator –
• How to Incorporate a Business –
• Beautiful by Nature – Turks and Caicos Islands – Turks and Caicos Tourist Board –
• FIAT of Austin –
• The Secret World –
• Langley Ranch –
• Japanese Earthquake Implications Quick Q&A –
• Someone is doing something nasty –
• Micromegas –

One of the fathers of science fiction has passed away. He was one of the very few science fiction authors to have actually written about things that eventually came into existence, surprisingly within his lifetime. After all, he was also a scientist, himself. The most notable of these is probably geostationary orbiting satellites. Perhaps more Clarke futurisms will come true in the years to come.

2001 is a film remembered by all, whether you are a science fiction fan or not. Clarke somehow outlived Kubrick, but the masterpiece of those two minds collaborating is one of the greatest movies ever made. But, everyone should definitely read the book, as there is so much more crammed in those pages… stuff that makes one gasp at the possibilities of our own creativity as men. Like the movie, Clarke’s stories, while possessing fantastic creations of science and physics, were more about how man evolves alongside technology and scientific discovery, and how society and morality adapts to the future.

If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run — and often in the short one — the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.

One of the best science fiction authors has passed. Yes, some do not consider him with the dreaded moniker “science fiction author”, but that is why he was so good. His imagined worlds and futures as breathing realities that he used to paint the actual novel. The novels weren’t really about the technology or shooting-spaceships-pew-pew.

They weren’t so much about “What if?”, but more of: “This is how it will be, how do we thrive in it?” Always with a dark whimsical slant.

– Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be.

– Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.

and the last thing I read on him, about dependence on oil and global warming and the end of the world.

“No. No. Because I’m eighty-three years old. The lying bastards! On the package Brown & Williamson promised to kill me. Instead, their cigarettes didn’t work. Now I’m forced to suffer leaders with names like Bush and Dick and, up until recently, ‘Colon.’”….

You join the long list of those people that will be missed. Goodbye Kurt.

I have to admit, when I first heard about electronic paper, I was kinda “blah, who cares” about it. All I wanted was a bigger faster sharper LCD on my laptop. But now that I see these devices that are about to come out, along with the neat features of constant display and low power consumption, I think I’m sold. We all know the reason reading books on our computers never took off is because it really isn’t as pleasant an experience as curling up with a book or newspaper. Now I think we are coming close enough to that comfort to make the jump. And we get a few unexpected products in the mix as well.