Wired weekend - the funcrunch files

I spent most of Friday evening through Sunday afternoon on the couch recuperating from a cold. With a dearth of good TV to keep me entertained (other than It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown ;-) ), I ended up reading this month's Wired Magazine from cover to cover. Wired is one of only two print magazines I subscribe to anymore; the other, Macworld, being mostly for boyziggy as I find the writing annoyingly cloying and the material hopelessly out of date. The Wired writers, however, never disappoint. A sampling of articles from this month's issue:

The New Atheism: cover story. As an atheist myself for a good 20 years (though I normally describe myself as a Buddhist with neo-pagan leanings), I could well relate to the struggle we have to gloss over our true nature, cloaking our disbelief in agnostic terms in order to "be polite".

The Perfect Thing: story of how the iPod was developed. I've had an iPod since the week the 3G models were announced (2003, was it?) and I listen to my current 5G model every single day. I love plugging it into the TV to watch video as well.

Face Blind: about people who lack or have lost the ability to recognize people by their faces. I first read this article when it turned up in my RSS reader, and was so fascinated by the subject that I read the entire online book by Bill Choisser on the subject.

Attack of the Bots (not online). Frightening look at how vulnerable our Internet is to determined hackers.

Plenty more good stuff in this issue so check it out...