Taken me 2 days (on and off, of course) to go through the thousands of bits and pieces that piled up in my RSS while I was away.  Here are some of the things that caught my eye.

One thing that Apple’s iPad has already succeeded in doing is killing off the $9.99 eBook.  Three publishers have now successfully forced Amazon to raise their prices – a move that I suspect will only serve to prevent wider adoption of eBooks but will not protect the physical book market in return.  The question is, if Apple was so successful in forcing record companies to price their e-albums at $9.99, why not do the same on books?  The answer seems to be that Apple’s sole concern here is to fuck Amazon in the ass.

Color touch screens coming to the Kindle later this year?

There are links and YouTube videos all over the place for Jon Stewart’s massive appearance on Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor.  I guess it’s open to interpretation but my take on it is that Stewart beat O’Reilly into the ground and all but danced on his grave.  Some nifty quotes from Stewart

• On Fox News:  Fox News is the most passionate and sells the clearest narrative of any news organization, if that’s how you’re still referring to it… Here’s the brilliance of Fox News.  What you have been able to do, you and Dr. Ailes, have been able to mainstream conservative talk radio.  Here is what Fox has done, through their cyclonic perpetual emotion machine, that is a 24 hour a day, 7 day a week … they’ve taken reasonable concerns about this president and this economy and turned it into a full-fledged panic attack about the next coming of Chairman Mao.
• On Iran’s nuclear program:  Thank you guys for ratcheting up the fear on this. Here’s what we can’t do.  Our strategy for battling terrorism can’t be that you overthrow governments and then make the United States military commit 150,000 troops to those lands until they can somehow stabilize the governments long enough so that you can prevent ten people from plotting destruction in a basement.
• On holding terrorism trials in New York:  One of the valid concerns isn’t that it makes us a terrorist target and emboldens the enemy.  [BO - How do you know?] Because we’re already a terrorist target.  It’s better to have them go through a system where you can show the world that the American judicial system has the integrity to withstand even the most vile creatures.

Link 1, Link 2, Link 3 (which has the entire unedited interview), Link 4, Link 5, Link 6 (I may have been a bit sloppy and repeated a link or two)

From here, this one too funny not to share:

From the letters to the editor section in the SCMP, from Mark Peaker who lives, where else but on The Peak.  But which is funnier?  That a westerner doesn’t know proper English or that the paper couldn’t properly edit the letter before publication.  “I was not surprised to hear their collective tails of woe from their respective airlines.”  (Or perhaps all of his friends are marsupials.)

Comic books will look great on the iPad.  Agreed.  Magazines too – though I won’t be able to tear out the watch ads and bring them to Shenzhen to buy the knock-off version.  (Which reminds me, I was in this watch store in Mong Kok on Saturday – they had this limited edition Omega that I really love; I have the knock-off version.  The salesman comes over, starts telling me about the watch, I tell him, “Yeah I know” and show him my wrist.  “Ohhhh!”  “Nah, I bought it in Shenzhen!”  “Ahhhh!”   The watch sells for HK$39,600 and for a half a second I actually considered buying it.  Of course I didn’t.  I was looking for this new Casio watch from Japan, obviously much cheaper, no one had it yet.

Too hot not to share – Anne Hathaway in the new UK issue of GQ, from here.

Too tasty not to try?  Gonna try out this recipe for a Guinness-marinated steak sandwich soon.  And what looks like a dynamite fried chicken recipe here.  And a recipe for chili.

Speaking of food, UK newspaper the Telegraph reviews the cheapest Michelin-starred restaurant in the world, Tim Ho Wan in Mong Kok.  Just a three hour wait for a table.

The Ultimate Guide to science fiction for February – books, movies, etc.

Complete list of nominations for the 2010 Razzie Awards.

Very un-Razzie, many Criterion DVDs are about to go out of print and are on sale while the existing supply lasts.

Monster bought HotJobs from Yahoo.

That guy in Ho Chung building a house over the only access road in the village has agreed to hold off for an unspecified period of time.  “Attempts to break the impasse, including a meeting on Tuesday between the residents and officials from seven government departments, have so far failed.”  Maybe that’s the problem, seven government departments at once each more interested in jockeying for position rather than solving the problem.

A web site streaming current TV episodes with no geo-blocking.  Probably won’t last long!

Get Drew Friedman’s amazing Kippy Spagenbusch print here, only 40 bucks.  There’s also a Facebook fan page for Kippy.  Of course I’m a member.

Okay, that’s probably more than enough!