Amazon may be offering discounts now, but will they last? One of my reader blogs has already reported that Amazon is discontinuing the discount for books originally sold as mass market paperbacks (i.e. genre fiction like romance, mystery, etc.) These books make up a big part of the reading market, even though they're not as prestigious as other books. I expect that discounts will start to disappear on other types of books as well, except perhaps for a few bestsellers.

I like the idea of the Smart Car. I drive a Toyota Corolla, and I rarely use the back seat - a two seater with decent trunk space would be great for me. However, it can be difficult to drive a small car when you're surrounded by big ones.

Try backing out of a parking spot, when there's a massive minivan or SUV on both sides of you. You are completely blind and can't see if there's someone about to step in your way, or smash into your bumper. Every morning, I have to make a right turn onto a busy street, and every morning, a minivan or truck will pull next to me, trying to turn left. My view is completely blocked, and I won't be able to see oncoming traffic - I just have to wait until the road hog turns left and gets out of my line of vision.

I love my small car, but there are definite disadvantages when you're driving on streets dominated by massive minivans, tremendous trucks and stupendous SUV's.

What is the obsession with video on previously textual web sites? I didn't get to discover what the author has to say about Hillary Clinton, because I'm at work, and I don't want to turn on my speakers. I can't see it at work, because I have an old computer that won't play the videos. It would be one thing if the video was adding to the story in some way, but there's no reason to have video here - it's just a way to look "hip", and exclude large numbers of your readers.

Oh well, based on the comments it doesn't look like I'm missing much...

There's a bit of confused chemistry in this article - sodium hydroxide is neither "volatile" or "organic". (It may be the main ingredient in Drano - oooh, scary - but it's also used to make soap and lots of other products.) The rayonizing process is environmentally problematic, but not because of sodium hydroxide specifically.

Oprah may be the most recent, and most famous, amateur marathoner, but she's certainly not the first. After reading this article, I had a vague memory of a TV movie that I watched as a kid, about a housewife who finds empowerment by running a marathon. I looked it up - it was called See How She Runs and came out in 1978. I don't think you can blame Oprah for that. It may be more trendy now, but running the marathon "just to finish" has been around for a few decades.

I read the NY Times online, and the story was highlighted on the top section of the web site on Thursday morning. I only realized it was part of the "Style" section when it fell off the top section later in the day and ended up under "Fashion and Style". So online readers may have been more likely to read it.

However, it was striking that it appeared on the same day as the article on African-American CEO's. I read both stories, and I would have assumed they'd both be in the same section, since they had a lot of similarities. As an online reader, I don't pay a lot of attention to the "sections" of the newspaper, but I probably would have missed the article in the print section, since I have very little interest in "Fashion". That section always seems to be about overpriced, impractical stuff that I'd never want to buy, so I almost always skip it.

Karen

I lived in Atlanta until a few months ago, and I saw the good and bad sides to Atlanta's development issues. Although I left before the water shortage kicked in, I'm not that surprised.

However, there have been some attempts to reign in "sprawl", and in large part, they've been defeated due to NIMBY attitudes. I lived in an area where there was a proposal to build compact, affordable housing. It was near public transportation (as much as Atlanta has) and major highways, and because it was compact, it would have had much less impact than the same number of people living in typical suburbia. There were plenty of people willing to buy this kind of housing, but the locals wouldn't have it. They all screamed about how it would "bring down the value of their houses" and "bring in the wrong kind of people". I think the project was eventually dropped.

The result is, people end up moving outward in order to find affordable housing. (There are some fancy-shmancy condos downtown, but they're not anywhere near "affordable".) Which means more sprawl. I saw the same issues when I lived in the NY suburbs, and I'm seeing it here in PA where I live now. Current homeowners don't want anything built in "their neighborhood" other than McMansions, because they feel that anything else will "lower their property values". And because homeowners vote, and go to zoning meetings, and scream loudly, their views carry the day - and you end up with more sprawl.

Until someone solves the NIMBY problem, it's going to be difficult to combat sprawl.