Apple's giant leap backward

I love InformationWeek blogger Michael Hickins' post about Apple's weird prudishness. I particularly like the passage Hickins quotes from U.S. District Judge John Woolsley's 1933 decision to allow Ulysses into the U.S.:

The words which are criticized as dirty are old Saxon words known to almost all men and, I venture, to many women, and are such words as would be naturally and habitually used, I believe, by the types of folk whose life, physical and mental, Joyce is seeking to describe... Whether or not one enjoys such a technique as Joyce uses is a matter of taste on which disagreement or argument is futile, but to subject that technique to the standards of some other technique seems to me to be little short of absurd.

"ER" series finale

Still have to see it. My computer is nearly four years old, so I'm not sure it can handle NBC's online playback, but I'll figure something out. I might end up borrowing Tamar's shiny new PC. During my first year of college, I loved gathering with friends in a dorm lounge every Thursday night to watch ER, and I have very fond memories of the Doug Ross era and the much later episode in which Dr. Greene finally succumbs to brain cancer. (Not that it was a happy episode, just a solid one.) I'll also have to see the recent installment that catches up with Dr. Ross and Nurse Hathaway, who apparently ended up working together at a Seattle hospital (though presumably not Seattle Grace). I love series finales, which tend to bring even ailing shows back up to par, and since ER has been on for literally half my life, it'll probably pack a little extra emotional wallop.