louie (who really needs to update his Advogato page) read my half-formed book idea below, remembered what it was I must have been talking about, and pointed me to Coase's Penguin, an economist's take (OK, he's really a lawyer, it seems, but he's talking about fundamental economic theory) on free software and the broader new networked realm of what he calls "commons-based peer-production". The author is Yochai Benkler.snow
I first heard this from Stephen Pinker at a talk he gave years ago in Santa Fe, and it's nicely laid out by April Holladay in her latest column: The Eskimo language has essentially the same number of words for "snow" as English. I love it when myths are shattered.Roswell revisited
And revisited. And revisited. Last night's SCI FI Channel Roswell smoking gun episode was a classic of the genre, full of sound and fury signifying a coyote burrow.