A lagniappe

My link list seems to be building up quicker than usual. I'll start with culture, or what passes for it this year.

• The William Gibson publicity machine warms up for Zero History
• Hank Williams
• In the Whitewater investigation, the biggest loser was the legal profession.
• Video of Japanese television performer doing magic tricks for a monkey. Monkey prefers treats.
• One of the keynotes of technological advance is its tendency, as it refines a tool, to remove real human agency from the workings of that tool.

Here's a more in depth treatment of last week's coronal mass ejection.

• Our planet is normally protected from CMEs by the terrestrial magnetic field, but the twisted magnetic fields carried by CMEs can break through this protective shield, causing particles to stream down over Earth's polar regions.

And some politics that doesn't involve professional circus performers.

• The argument, from that point on, was and has been a continuing legal, political, and economic tug-of-war, with one side–the side taken by both advocates of a secularist state and supporters of an untrammeled capitalist market–seeing politically organized charitable and church groups as their common enemy.
• "It is in the decision-making process, the evaluation and selection of the many attack responses available, wherein the problem becomes complex."
• More than a decade of rapid economic growth has given India the capacity to act on issues of primary strategic and economic concern to the United States.