This week's Economist cover focuses on the growing importance of latin america.

The clever illustration shows latin america on the northern hemisphere and the USA on the southern hemisphere.

It reminds me of this vintage scene in "The West Wing", where a group of cartographers explain how a map details much more than geographical location. It also illustrates geopolitical importance.

http://lisnews.org/how_open_new_book

Here's a lovely illustration of how to open a new book.

In the days of nook and kindle and ipad, such illustrations may soon become archaic. Already, I look at them the way I regard cave paintings (how to light a flintstone; how to capture a wooly mammoth).

Companies all over are battling with huge book inventories that don't have a hope of selling.

Meanwhile, new  companies  such as Espresso are ushering in print-on-demand technologies.


Soon, any book we read is probably going to be mint-fresh literally.

And such illustrations may yet have a hope of being useful.

There are those that think automating humor is nothing more than a big joke.
And then there are those that think its an incredulous waste of money.

NU prof: Computer research no joke :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Technology

And then there those that believe its a way of modelling the way the brain works.

And then there are those that like me, who feel a little disconcerted thinking of a day when we're going to be so dependent on computers for even a quick joke.

Humour is possibly a recently evolved trait and therefore more susceptible to erosion.

What if all that's left of humans is the ability to understand jokes but not be able to actually make a joke. It can happen!

What if computers ( cloud, cluster) take over the world by telling us really good jokes ? (Gasp!)