THE KINDLE FIRE gets a lengthy hands-on review from Tania Gail. She likes it.

I like mine, too. Over the weekend I finished Neal Stephenson’s Reamde — good, but a straight thriller, unlike his last several books — and read Frank J.’s new magnum opus in its entirety, both on the Fire. I like it, but I prefer the double-page view you can get on the iPad. Of course, that’s because the iPad’s screen is twice as big.

UPDATE: On the other hand, the browser keeps crashing on me tonight. First time it’s done that, but it keeps happening.

ANOTHER UPDATE: On Reamde, reader Geoff Well writes: “On first glance it’s a straight forward geeknothriller, and not a bad one. On further thought, it’s about ethics and family loyalty.” Yes, and that’s a recurring theme of his: the Forthrast clan reminded me of the Shaftoes.

MORE: Reader Thomas Prewitt writes:

I followed your lead and advance ordered the Fire. Overall, it meets my needs.

I look at the Fire as a “Kindle with benefits”. Good for reading, particularly in bed at night after my wife turns out the lights. And the Fire travels much easier than a laptop. I can keep up with Instapundit, news, etc. better than using my Android phone.

And here’s an interesting observation. We were in the Mississippi Delta at a wedding this weekend and stayed at a Hampton Inn. The hotel had free wifi but the signal was very weak. My wife couldn’t log on with her iPad, but I could log on with the Kindle Fire with no problems. A friend of mine even had to watch the Saturday debate in the hallway because his iPad could pick up a signal in his room.

Chalk one up to Kindle Fire!

Interesting. I haven’t tried mine where the wi-fi is weak — I have a good signal pretty much everywhere.

STILL MORE: Another reader writes:

Having read every word Stephenson’s written several times over, it strikes me that his underlying theme is “People who find themselves in
societies in transition, and the technology that drives the transitional events.”

The fact that his fiction has been converging on our reality is noteworthy.

Yes, and in such times, family and ethics are particularly important.

HMM: U.S. Sued for $25 Billion Over AIG Takeover. I wonder if we’ll see more such suits, given the many shady activities involved in a lot of the financial-crisis bailouts.

ANOTHER LAME “STIMULUS” EFFORT: $1B homeowner program mainly benefited 3 states.

CHANGE: Main Street making a comeback at the expense of the shopping mall. “Development of new malls has almost completely stopped, with only two being erected in the country since the beginning of 2009, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. Outdoor town center concepts, featuring brick sidewalks, streetlights and even public clocks evoking the Main Street of yore, are climbing to a degree that many owners of enclosed malls are considering dramatic makeovers, some including plans to tear off the roof of, or ‘de-mall’ enclosed shopping centers.”

That’s certainly true here. Knoxville’s giant enclosed malls are visibly suffering, while the revitalized downtown, and the faux-downtown at Turkey Creek, seem to be thriving. But I wonder if “de-malling” is really an answer. The biggest problem with our big malls is that the owners drove out all the lower-price tenants (like Walgreen’s or Morrison’s Cafeteria) and replaced them with more expensive stores that don’t generate as much traffic.

REVIEW: 2012 Jaguar XJ Portfolio.

#OCCUPYFAIL: Poll: ‘Occupy’ movement fails to capture Americans’ interest.

WELL, IF OBAMA’S GOING TO RUN AGAINST A “DO-NOTHING” CONGRESS, IT’S IMPORTANT FOR CONGRESS TO DO NOTHING: Left Blogs Cheer Supercommittee Collapse. Of course, failure was baked-in from the beginning.

JOSE GUARDIA: Spaniards Boot Out Socialists: Is It Too Late?

PROF. BAINBRIDGE: I have seen the STOCK Act to “ban” Congressional insider trading and I am unimpressed.

AT AMAZON, Top Deals In Electronics.

CALIFORNIA: Kids Play With Toy Gun, Parents Lectured by Local Cops. Vote against their pensions.

MICKEY KAUS TEST-DRIVES A NISSAN LEAF and finds an existential void. And who but Mickey, really, could manage that?

FASTER, PLEASE: Novel ALS drug slows symptom progression, reduces mortality in phase II trial.

XKCD on money.

GREECE, CAPITAL FLIGHT, and forced repatriation.

LOSING SENSE OF SMELL WITH AGE. This interests me, because my sense of smell has actually gotten noticeably better over the last few years. I don’t know if I can credit the resveratrol or not. It got much worse after I had the flu in 7th grade, but it seems like a lot of time has passed for that to suddenly be wearing off.

AT NISSAN, top priority is making the Leaf cheaper.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Occupy Management. “The public sector labor wars are heating up all over, and both parties are fighting the unions. In California Governor Jerry Brown is cutting union pensions; further wage cutbacks for state and local workers are clearly on the way. The events in Wisconsin and Ohio are well known, but in Detroit and Chicago Democratic mayors are also taking on the public unions. Republican Chris Christie in New Jersey and Democrat Andrew Cuomo in New York have each gone for cutbacks, and both parties in Rhode Island are rolling back union gains and slashing pensions.”

SUPERCOMMITTEE FAIL: The Consequences of Presidential Weakness.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Prescient thoughts from Peter Drucker in 1969.

PETER INGEMI: Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski, and the media in the plastic bubble. “How and why could this be? It’s pretty simple, the goal today is not to inform, it is to re-assure the niche audience. . . . You can only hide from reality for so long. I would think a journalist would be embarrassed by this. But perhaps we are dealing with journo-lists instead.”

SWARMBOTS poised to invade the marketplace. “The quarter-wide robots, called Kilobots, stand on three toothpick–like legs and are powered by a lithium-ion battery. Vibration motors on either side allow left, right, and forward mobility. Transceivers on their undersides allow them to communicate and coordinate movements.”

When do I get my fleet of destructo-swarmbots? Which is actually a cool name for a band. And, in fact, that band actually exists.

TODAY ONLY: Nikon Coolpix P7000 10.1 MP Digital Camera with 7.1x Optical Zoom, $249.