I have a long Thanksgiving break this year (something I must admit I'm very thankful for). Here's a few links to celebrate my good fortune.

* Google is now hosting thousands of images from Life magazine dating back to the 1800s. At right: my guy Albert Einstein. More good off-the-top-of-your-head searches at the Valve.

* Boston College will stop offering incoming students email addresses; instead, they will redirect email to a private service of the students' choice. In other words, the moronic email addresses they made up as a joke in eighth grade will now follow BC students forever.

* The new MacBook Pros (like mine!) come saddled with major DRM problems. The good news is that your machine is only crippled for media you purchase legally; pirated media still works just fine.

* Pushing Daisies has been canceled. It's a shame.

* Two pop-criticism reviews of Quantum of Solace I liked: "Guilt-Flavored Ice Cream" and "Quantum of Anti-Imperialism."

* Nabokov, on YouTube.

"This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!

Einstein, anti-nationalist, via Cogitamus.

People sometimes try to muddy the issue, but let's be serious: Einstein didn't believe in God.

In the letter, he states: "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."

The New York Review of Books hits it out of the park this week with four articles to read this beautiful Friday evening:

* George Bush's America and the calamities of empire
* a review of Michael Chabon's latest
* all about Einstein
* and (coincident with the book I'm reading this week, Going Postal) the specter haunting your workplace.