Don Marti

Sun 26 Aug 2012 06:30:48 AM PDT

Brains, shopping, fiction, torture: Sunday morning links

Aaron Swartz: Believe you can change. Do you believe that your abilities are fixed and that the world is just a series of tests that show you how good you are, or that everything comes through effort and that the world is full of interesting challenges that could help you learn and grow?

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones: Why You Should Be Wary of Price Discrimination in the Retail World My problem in general is that price discrimination in the retail world generally benefits the middle class, the non-elderly, and the highly educated. In fact, loyalty card data is often used specifically to attract that class of customers. The lower prices for these groups are subsidized by higher prices charged to the poor, senior citizens, and the not-so-bright.

Rudy Rucker: My Complete Stories Online. (I've read some of these, but this is great.)

Long, but a good use of Sunday reading time: John Cusack & Jonathan Turley on Obama’s Constitution. We have a treaty, actually a number of treaties, that obligate us to investigate and prosecute torture. We pushed through those treaties because we wanted to make clear that no matter what the expediency of the moment, no matter whether it was convenient or inconvenient, all nations had to agree to investigate and prosecute torture and other war crimes.

Jeff Jarvis asks, Reporters: Why are you in Tampa? (Good question.)