I hate these flippant comparisons of unhealthy workplaces to slavery. People are paid and can go home to their families at night. Nobody is being whipped or sold or forced to have sex. Comparing a Google software developer to a slave is nonsense and undermines the horrors that real slaves went/go through.
First line of the article is "Move over, trap-jaw ants and mantis shrimp". From wikipedia[0], the mantis shrimp claws move at 51mph vs the ant mandibles of over 200mph.
I was very happy to see that the article addressed this immediately in the second paragraph:
The researchers cautioned, however, that they cannot draw a direct, causal connection between meditation and preserving gray matter in the brain. Too many other factors may come into play, including lifestyle choices, personality traits, and genetic brain differences.
Dennis Ritchie is certainly an important figure that every computer scientist should know about, but that post reads incredibly slowly and is filled with grammatical errors. Looking at the author's other posts, it appears that English is his/her second language, so I won't fault them for it.
Wired put out a nice, concise obituary soon after his death[1] and there are many other great sources online about his life and influence. I would definitely recommend reading up on him out if you don't already know much about his life.
