Is Google making us intellectually lazy?

That was the gist of a question financial wildman Jim Cramer asked Google's CEO Eric Schmidt on a CNBC interview this week. Cramer pointed out that one of his daughter's fifth-grade teachers banned the use of Google for an assignment she received. Schmidt seemed genuinely surprised by the anecdote, comparing it to how math teachers often ban the use of calculators.

Thrilling swimming races and scary Cold War flashbacks have snatched our collective attention from the John Edwards affair bombshell, but before moving on completely, I just wanted to make a couple of quick comments.

First, Edwards is a sleazebag. But not so much cause he first lied about the affair and in the process slandered the writers who reported the news - his entire political career was on the line so it's easy to understand why he tried so hard to deny the story (and why he probably did much worse to keep the story hush-hush).

Holy shit. Football is back. Here I am, still consumed by Cardinals baseball, dressing in shorts and flip-flops, loving the A/C, eating outside at restaurants, sweating in the subways... and yet, ten NFL teams played in preseason games last night.

This happens every August; I get totally blindsided by football's return. But only for a moment - and then I get psyched.

Originally published on Aug. 2, 2008

Truman Burbank is agitated. The main character from the movie The Truman Show is increasingly suspicious that something's terribly amiss in his made-for-TV world, and his 'wife' tries to calm him down with a cup of 'mococa.'

"All natural," she tells him, holding the package of cocoa up to one of the millions of hidden cameras filming Truman's life without his knowledge. "Cocoa beans from the upper slopes of Mount Nicaragua ... I've tasted other cocoas. This is the best."