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Mr. Mosley argued that French law makes it illegal to take and distribute images of an individual in a private space without that person’s permission. But Google said that would limit freedom of speech, forcing the company to block search results without any person or court overseeing the context in which the images appeared.

Analysts said the ruling against Google could lead to greater restrictions on what was accessible through search results and could prompt more people to demand that the United States technology company remove references to their private activities.

“At this point in time, the pendulum is swinging toward individuals’ privacy and away from freedom of speech,” said Carsten Casper, a privacy and security analyst at the consulting firm Gartner in Berlin.

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– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/07/business/international/google-is-ordered-to-block-images-in-privacy-case.html?ref=todayspaper

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“A spokesman for the National Corn Growers Association told me that they conservatively estimate that two of the largest seed producers, Monsanto and DuPont Pioneer, together spend $2 billion a year on research and development for corn. This is the lab and genetics work that has driven yields upward by 1 percent each year. (Monsanto does spend some money on vegetable research — $181 million for 22 separate crops.) Government spending mirrors the private sector. Greens and leafy vegetables, for example, together get only $13 million from the government in research funding; corn receives $121 million.”

– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/magazine/broccolis-extreme-makeover.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

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Of course, certain tasting-menu restaurants such as Blanca, at $195 per person, or Brooklyn Fare, at $255, prohibit cellphone use and photography altogether. It’s a policy that makes enough sense if you believe that food is a fully encompassing performance art at the same level as theater or cinema. After all, you wouldn’t take out your Samsung (005930:KS) Galaxy and start texting in the middle of Captain Phillips, would you? You surely wouldn’t take photos or video of the film and post it all on YouTube.

Then again, you’ll be able to buy a copy of the Tom Hanks flick on iTunes in a few months, whereas reliving a Blanca experience can require $700 or more for two.

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– http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-04/idining-the-highs-and-lows-of-tablets-on-the-table

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“In a paper in the winter issue of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, two researchers — D. Mark Anderson of Montana State University and Daniel Rees of the University of Colorado at Denver — report that legalization of marijuana for medical purposes has been associated with reductions in heavy drinking, especially among 18- to 29-year-olds, and with an almost 5 percent decrease in beer sales. In addition, the increase in the legal drinking age from 18 to 21 seems to encourage greater marijuana use among people under 21, usage that drops sharply when they reach the legal drinking age.”

– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/04/opinion/marijuana-and-alcohol.html?ref=todayspaper

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As expected, the runners, training as they were for a marathon or half-marathon, reported spending considerable time sweating. On average, they exercised vigorously for nearly seven hours per week, “which far exceeds the standard exercise recommendation,” said Dr. Whitfield, who is now an Epidemiological Intelligence Service Officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

But those hours of exercise do not seem to have reduced sedentary time. On an average workday, the runners reported sitting for more than 10 hours at the office and at home, easily topping the national average. (Almost all of the participants were employed; a few were students.) On non-workdays, the runners spent about eight hours inactive.

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– http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/30/the-marathon-runner-as-couch-potato/?ref=todayspaper

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“In the early ’70s, myself and a few friends were exchanging cassettes with each other. We’d all started to realize that what we liked best was long cassettes without much variety in them. You used to have allegro followed by andante and then largo and blah blah blah. None of us really wanted that. We weren’t after drama and surprise. We wanted a single continuous atmosphere. Then, when my friend Judy Nylon left my flat that day and left the record at too low a volume, and it was raining outside, I could only hear the music as part of the landscape. I wasn’t sure what was music and what was just the sound of rain on the window. That’s when I thought, “O.K., this is where I want to be” — sort of on the edge of music, not firmly in the center of it.”

– http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/01/q-a-brian-eno-on-the-best-use-of-a-television-why-art-students-make-good-pop-stars-and-the-meaning-of-visual-music/?ref=todayspaper

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“But Twitter and books share something perhaps more profound: a love of words. “Twitter has probably caused more people to spend more time choosing their words carefully than any other force in the last five years,” said Sloan, who, before the publication of his acclaimed 2012 novel, “Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore,” worked at Twitter. “You’d think it would be a natural fit for people who care about language.””

– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/books/review/how-has-twitter-changed-the-role-of-the-literary-critic.html?pagewanted=2&ref=todayspaper

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“Bad uses of Twitter, as Margaret Atwood says, have been the fault of the user, not the technology. Comparing tweets with the telegram and African tribal drums, she argues in a 2010 Big Think interview that the form is “not different in nature from what we have always done, which is communicate with one another, send messages to one another and perform our lives.” Williams and Stone always conceived of Twitter as “a mouthpiece for everyday people,” and that’s what it’s been. Yet the uncertainty surrounding its purposes starts to seem more alarming as ownership, control and privacy become increasingly murky. The danger of the technology is not that it will make us more facile or less intelligent but that we can’t predict who, ultimately, will be running it – or to what ends.”

– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/books/review/hatching-twitter-by-nick-bilton.html?pagewanted=2&ref=todayspaper

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“During the 1999 holiday season, the managers of Amazon’s fledgling toy division were worried they wouldn’t be able to meet surging demand for Pokémon toys. So they bought out the entire Pokémon inventory of the Toys “R” Us Web site, which shipped it to Amazon free. Amazon surely sold the toys at a loss. But guess who had happier customers that year?”

– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/books/review/brad-stones-everything-store.html?ref=todayspaper

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