1. How Google lobbies on the state level, where a lot of the action is.

"Google this year has retained a quartet of lobbyists in Maryland to remove any roadblocks facing its fleet of driver-free Priuses. It’s tapped consultants in California, Utah, Georgia and other states where the company has tried to deploy its ultrafast Fiber Internet. In Illinois and beyond, Google has worked to battle back legislation that might affect Glass, its high-tech spectacles. And the tech giant has cozied up to leaders in New York state and New York City, while camping out in Massachusetts to seek changes in state tax laws."

2. The many functions of email are being unbundled, especially for work.

"This trend of segmenting email into a dedicated, smart-inbox-with-workflow is broader than CRM. Customer support software like Zendesk is probably the oldest example of an app that segments a chunk of email and wraps it with prescriptive workflow. LinkedIn's InMail is a similar system for recruiting. Yammer has removed water-cooler emails from inboxes. Contactually segments email for network relationship management. Similarly, I believe every major category of large volume, workflow email will be segmented into a dedicated app in this way. Most users won't want more than a few separate inboxes, perhaps 1-3. But those 1-3 inboxes will be disproportionately valuable because users will live in those dedicated inboxes."

3. A step-by-step guide to building your own Twitter bot.

"Horse_ebooks is an old joke by now. But it’s not too late for you to get in on this bizarre genre of word art. A computer-generated account which serves as your own personal Twitter bot Frankenstein is always fresh and funny. Plus, for beginning coders like me, this project is a great way to dip your toe into Python and Ruby while sharpening your Git skills—and at the end, get a hilarious little bot for your troubles."

4. Autism's role in debates about human nature.

"As with a great deal of fiction (and, as I’ll argue below, within particular academic disciplines) what is missing in autism is taken to reveal something fundamental about what needs to be present in order to be human. How did this situation occur? How did autism which, until quite recently, was an unusual diagnosis of little broader concern, come to hold a central place in debates over human nature? That’s what I’d like to think about in this essay.  My argument, in short, is that the thing which is ‘missing’ in autism, crudely put, is assumed to be social functioning and this is crucial when it comes to understanding why autism is taken to be so important for the human."

5. A breathalyzer for marijuana.

"Kal Malhi told the Canadian news agency that people smoke marijuana and drive with little fear that they will be caught. "People are becoming very afraid to drink and drive nowadays because they feel that they will get caught and charged, but they're not afraid to drug and drive because they don't feel that law enforcement will do anything about it," he said. Malhi and Dr. Raj Attariwala, a Vancouver radiologist, said they invented the Cannabix Breathalyzer because current methods, such as swab tests, to catch drivers under the influence are not very effective."

Today's 1957 American English Usage Tip

businessman, businesslike, are usually so spelled in US dictionaries, but many writers & publishers use the older business man. The advantage is seen in a small businessman vs. a small or small- business man.

"I'm not a businessman; I'm a business, man."

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