October 2008
87 posts
A brief content note
Please accept my apology for the recent overabundance of articles regarding the U.S. presidential election and economic problems.
I try to maintain a better balance whenever possible, but quality articles about other subjects have been few and far between recently. Hopefully this will change after the election next week.
—Editor
The Behavioral Revolution →
But during this financial crisis, that way of thinking has failed spectacularly. As Alan Greenspan noted in his Congressional testimony last week, he was “shocked” that markets did not work as anticipated.
Countdown to the Obama Rapture →
But if Obama wins, these scribes know that they’ll be facing the toughest assignment of their careers. They’ve all oversubscribed to the notion that Obama’s candidacy is momentous, without parallel, and earth-shattering, so they can’t file garden-variety pieces about the “winds of change” blowing through Washington. They’re convinced that not only the...
Like, Socialism →
Sometimes, when a political campaign has run out of ideas and senses that the prize is slipping through its fingers, it rolls up a sleeve and plunges an arm, shoulder deep, right down to the bottom of the barrel. The problem for John McCain, Sarah Palin, and the Republican Party is that the bottom was scraped clean long before it dropped out. Back when the polls were nip and tuck and the leaves...
How to pick a president →
Turning off all media for 48 hours does amazing things for clarity. When you return to the web and TV, the insane and unintentional comedy of the civilized world becomes clear.
Red Sex, Blue Sex →
Why do so many evangelical teen-agers become pregnant?
The Young Man's Business Model →
As we talked more it became clear that he and his company were following what I’d call the young-man’s business model.
He was basically building a (good) product, then laying it out on the web for all to see and hoping to get a million eyeballs. The viewpoint of the business is to get eyeballs, often from things like Digg or Techcrunch, and then figure out how to keep them. And...
10 Years Later, Misunderstood DMCA is the Law That... →
But history has shown that the far-more beneficial element in the law is a provision that provides ISPs, hosting companies and interactive services near blanket immunity for the intellectual property violations of their users — a provision responsible for opening vast speech and business opportunities — realized and unrealized.
In Defense of Raising Money: a Manifesto for... →
I’m sick of apologizing for being in charge of raising money.
The Widening Gyre →
Economic data rarely inspire poetic thoughts. But as I was contemplating the latest set of numbers, I realized that I had William Butler Yeats running through my head: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”
The Grammar of Fun →
CliffyB and the world of the video game.
If Larry and Sergey Asked for a Loan... →
What are you going to say to Larry and Sergey as the president of the bank? “Boys, this is very interesting. But I have the U.S. Treasury as my biggest shareholder today, and if you think I’m going to put money into something called ‘Google,’ with a key called ‘I’m Feeling Lucky,’ you’re fresh outta luck. Can you imagine me explaining that to a Congressional committee if you guys go bust?”
Save! (But Not Too Much.) →
Americans are getting thrifty just when we should be spending more.
The Next New Deal →
The huge opportunities—and huge risks—of a possible Obama administration.
Don’t Mistake Ambition for Entitlement →
Our generation sees work not as a goal unto itself, but as means to an end. We know that unless we’re careful, our hard work is going to be someone else’s reward. We’ve seen it happen too many times.
Be careful of who you work for →
Your boss and your job determine not only what you do all day, but what you learn and who you interact with.
Sorry, Senator. Let's Salvage What We Can. →
The very same campaign strategy that has belatedly mobilized the Republican core has alienated and offended the great national middle, which was the only place where the 2008 election could have been won.
Tricky on Englishness And The Country That Made Me →
He might have spent the past few years in Los Angeles, but Tricky is a proud Englishman. He tells The Quietus about his loves and fears for his homeland.
Understand Your User →
Everything I’ve done over the years that’s worked out well—software, standards, writing—everything, without exception, was something I did for myself. I’ve done the other thing too: built things based on guesses about what people out there might want or need. Never worked, not once.
It’s Not Easy Bein’ Blue →
America remains a center-right nation—a fact that a President Obama would forget at his peril.
Who says Americans won't ride mass transit? →
But the news isn’t all that sunny. In fact, the mini-exodus from driving has exposed significant cracks in the country’s mass transit systems, which are struggling to accommodate new riders. Having spent decades forsaking the bus and the train for the convenience and privacy of cars, Americans are now finding that the buses, streetcars, trolleys and trains that they left behind are...
Wikipedia and the Meaning of Truth →
Unlike the laws of mathematics or science, wikitruth isn’t based on principles such as consistency or observability. It’s not even based on common sense or firsthand experience. Wikipedia has evolved a radically different set of epistemological standards—standards that aren’t especially surprising given that the site is rooted in a Web-based community, but that should...
Scott Brown on Facebook Friendonomics →
Think of it as the Long Tail of Friendship—in the age of queue-able social priorities, Twitter-able status updates, and amaranthine cloud memory, keeping friends requires almost no effort at all. We have achieved Infinite Friendspace, which means we need never drift from old pals nor feel the poignant tug of passive friend-loss. It also means that even the flimsiest of attachments—the chance...
The Real Plumbers of Ohio →
Forty years ago, Richard Nixon made a remarkable marketing discovery. By exploiting America’s divisions — divisions over Vietnam, divisions over cultural change and, above all, racial divisions — he was able to reinvent the Republican brand. The party of plutocrats was repackaged as the party of the “silent majority,” the regular guys — white guys, it went without saying — who didn’t like the...
Judging Books by Their Covers: Corruption in... →
In 1964 the eminent physicist Richard Feynman served on the State of California’s Curriculum Commission and saw how the Commission chose math textbooks for use in California’s public schools. In his acerbic memoir of that experience, titled “Judging Books by Their Covers,” Feynman analyzed the Commission’s idiotic method of evaluating books, and he described some...
Survey Says... →
How many polls does it take to screw up an election?
Of Two Minds: An Interview with Charles Hugh Smith →
And here’s the genius of Charles Hugh Smith: He takes some of the most difficult to understand problems vexing the world today and make sense of these issues — heavy things like what are we going to do about universal health care, why Social Security will probably never get fixed (or be around much longer), ending oil dependency, what sorts of jobs will matter most during a...
Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy →
The economic situation is apparently so grim that some experts fear we may be in for a stretch as bad as the mid seventies.
When Microsoft and Apple were founded.
By Paul Graham.
The Insiders →
How John McCain came to pick Sarah Palin.
The Term Paper Artist →
One great way to briefly turn the conversation toward myself at a party is to answer the question, “So, what do you do?” with, “I’m a writer.” Not that most of the people I’ve met at parties have read my novels or short stories or feature articles; when they ask, “Have I seen any of your stuff?” I shrug and the conversation moves on. If I want...
How the financial collapse killed libertarianism →
The financial collapse proves that its ideology makes no sense.
Get Rid of the Performance Review →
It destroys morale, kills teamwork and hurts the bottom line. And that’s just for starters.
Ask the pilot →
Of airports, hedgehogs and poverty. Meditations from an African slum.
Let's talk crap →
Our frank interview about human waste may horrify you about how the world cleans itself down there.
Why I Blog →
For centuries, writers have experimented with forms that evoke the imperfection of thought, the inconstancy of human affairs, and the chastening passage of time. But as blogging evolves as a literary form, it is generating a new and quintessentially postmodern idiom that’s enabling writers to express themselves in ways that have never been seen or understood before. Its truths are provisional,...
Maybe you can't make money doing what you love →
Do your art. But don’t wreck your art if it doesn’t lend itself to paying the bills. That would be a tragedy.
By Seth Godin.
The Trust Crunch →
Systems of credit depend on trust. When trust is present, money flows smoothly from lenders to borrowers, allowing new enterprises to start, existing ones to expand, and daily business to move along without a hitch. When it’s absent, we find ourselves in a world where lenders hoard capital, borrowers are left empty-handed, and the economy’s gears grind to a halt—a world, in other words, like...
How Nate Silver Went From Forecasting Baseball... →
The story of FiveThirtyEight.
Top NSA Scribe Takes Us Inside The Shadow Factory →
Despite countless articles and three books on the U.S. government’s super-secret, signals-intelligence service — the latest of which, The Shadow Factory, is out today — Bamford tells Danger Room that he was caught off guard by revelations that the NSA was eavesdropping on Americans. He remains confused about how the country’s telecommunications firms were co-opted into the...
Paul Krugman: How I Work →
What I want to talk about in this essay is something more restricted: some thoughts about thinking, and particularly how to go about doing interesting economics. I think that among economists of my generation I can claim to have a fairly distinctive intellectual style — not necessarily a better style than my colleagues, for there are many ways to be a good economist, but one that has...
Sins of Commissions →
Employees will always game incentive plans — because the geniuses who design them don’t anticipate how employees will respond.
Low Fat Diet and Sunscreen: a Recipe for Disaster →
Just about everyone in America is convinced of two well-established tenets for how to live a long and healthy life:
Eat a low-fat diet,
Avoid the damaging rays of the sun
My goal in this essay is to convince you that these two tenets are the worst medical advice you are ever going to hear, and that the consequences of our government’s success in selling this well-intended but...
The Irrational Electorate →
Does it really matter whether voters can name the secretary of defense or know how long a senate term is? The political consequences of “public ignorance” must be demonstrated, not assumed. And that requires focusing not just on what voters don’t know, but on how what they don’t know actually affects how they vote. Do they manage to make sensible choices despite being hazy about the details of...
How McCain Will Steal the Election from Obama... →
Conservatives are scared of a progressive majority. And they’re going to lie, cheat and steal to prevent it from happening. But they can only be successful if we let them.
The best way to deflate the conservative fable is to win with an overwhelming landslide that guarantees there won’t be a dispute of the results.
The String Theory →
What happens when all of a man’s intelligence and athleticism is focused on placing a fuzzy yellow ball where his opponent is not? An obsessive inquiry (with footnotes), into the physics and metaphysics of tennis.
By David Foster Wallace, 1996.
John Hodgman on Perfecting the Illusion of... →
Hodgman talks to Wired about his latest book, More Information Than You Require (out in October), and his new area of bona fide expertise: being semi-famous.
The Trouble with Biodiversity →
Life is more varied near the equator. But making sense of that has confounded biologists for 200 years.
The Post-Binge World →
Over the long run, you cannot spin the market. You cannot sweet talk it into going up or beg it not to go down. It’s going to do whatever it’s going to do — whichever way greed and fear tug it. And the market always bats last and it always bats a thousand.
Rands In Repose: The Culture Chart →
Unlike the org chart, you’re not going to find the culture chart written down anywhere. It doesn’t exist. The culture chart is an unwritten representation of the culture of your company and understanding it answers big questions that you must know.
Lessons From the Science of Nothing At All →
Where I come from we make things from nothing — from dreams and fantasies.