2b or not 2b? Despite doom-laden prophecies, texting has not been the disaster for language many feared, argues linguistics professor David Crystal. On the contrary, it improves children’s writing and spelling. — The Guardian [via The Memes of Production]

No explanation needed. Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the earth yet? [via First Dog on the Moon]

The OmniGoogle – Google’s business model explained. Because the marginal cost of producing and distributing a new copy of a purely digital product is close to zero, Google not only has the desire to give away informational products; it has the economic leeway to actually do it. Those two facts–the vast breadth of Google’s complements, and the company’s ability to push the price of those complements toward zero–are what really set the company apart from other firms. — Rough Type [via Matt Asay, The Open Road]

Hot Vampires. Fans of Alan Ball – creator of the film American Beauty and the TV show Six Feet Under –  have been hanging out for True Blood, his new TV show. And, yes, it’s about vampires. Slate reviews the series, saying it is “just pretentious enough to avoid playing like grindhouse fare, letting its ideas (about race, gender, sexual orientation, what have you) simmer on the artsy-fartsy backburner while blood and lust boil away in the low-culture pot up front”. — Slate