March 2009
55 posts
Culture Shock →
What happened when one conservative Web site ventured outside the movement bubble.
Why Facebook has never listened and why it... →
I’ve seen the advice the masses are giving and most of it isn’t very good for Facebook’s business interests.
Gotta hand it to Scoble — he’s on point here.
Food, Glorious Food Myths →
What are some common misconceptions about what and how we eat?
Hellhole →
The United States holds tens of thousands of inmates in long-term solitary confinement. Is this torture?
(thanks, Eush)
Madoff Employee Breaks Silence →
An employee of Bernard Madoff’s legitmate brokerage operations, which were described by the fraudster in his plea agreement as being “successful and profitable,” has told The Daily Beast that they were in fact money-losers that acted as a front for his Ponzi scheme.
Obsession Times Voice →
You can obsess over your work, build an audience based on deep mutual respect, and eventually opportunities to earn money from it will present themselves. I don’t know how it works, I only know that it does.
The Elegance of Imperfection →
Utility is not contingent on perfection of form. In fact, the lessons I’ve learned about crafting elegant experiences—from the creative brief to user interface design—involve abandoning the desire for perfection entirely.
The Makers of Things →
We need a new version of ourselves and that’s going to involve bright, unexpected ideas from those we least expect them from, and they’re going to strike you as impossible. All you need to do to understand these terrifyingly ambitious ideas is to look back at what we’ve already done to understand what we can do.
The Revenge of Karl Marx →
What the author of Das Kapital reveals about the current economic crisis.
The Magic Behind Amazon's 2.7 Billion Dollar... →
Because of a very subtle yet clever feature, Amazon makes the best of both the positive and negative reviews easy to find. And that feature, based on our calculations, is responsible for more than $2,700,000,000 of new revenue for Amazon every year. Not bad for what is essentially a simple question: “Was this review helpful to you?”
The Big Takeover →
The global economic crisis isn’t about money — it’s about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution.
Free Larry Summers →
Why the White House needs to unshackle its economic oracle.
Book End →
How the Kindle will change the world.
Lessons Learned: Don't launch →
Here’s a common question I get from startups, especially in the early stages: when should we launch? My answer is almost always the same: don’t.
Despair over financial policy →
The Obama administration is now completely wedded to the idea that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the financial system — that what we’re facing is the equivalent of a run on an essentially sound bank. As Tim Duy put it, there are no bad assets, only misunderstood assets. And if we get investors to understand that toxic waste is really, truly worth much more than anyone is willing to...
Ready, aim... fail →
Why setting goals can backfire.
The end of the free lunch—again →
The demise of a popular but unsustainable business model now seems inevitable.
No Return to Normal →
Why the economic crisis, and its solution, are bigger than you think.
The Peekaboo Paradox →
This unmarried, 35-year-old community college dropout makes more than $100,000 a year, with a two-day workweek. Not bad for a complete idiot.
The Replacement →
The rise of Roland Burris.
How Rich Countries Die →
A book report on The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities, by Mancur Olson.
By Philip Greenspun.
The Real AIG Scandal →
Everybody is rushing to condemn AIG’s bonuses, but this simple scandal is obscuring the real disgrace at the insurance giant: Why are AIG’s counterparties getting paid back in full, to the tune of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars?
By Eliot Spitzer. (thanks, The Telling Compulsion)
US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites →
Report on the Treatment of Fourteen “High Value Detainees” in CIA Custody by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
(thanks, Eric)
Citizenship first: the case for compulsory civic... →
Most people think that young people should be asked to give something back. Politicians agree. Yet a compulsory scheme has seemed too ambitious—until now. A civic service scheme could be the legacy of this recession.
(thanks, David)
Let It Die →
With any luck, the economy will never recover.
(thanks, The Telling Compulsion)
Old Growth Media And The Future Of News →
It’s essential to travel back because we’re in the middle of an epic conversation about the potentially devastating effect that the web is having on our news institutions. And so if we’re going to have a responsible conversation about the future of news, we need to start by talking about the past.
We need to be reminded of what life was like before the web.
The Kindle Revolution →
The Kindle may be little more than a novelty device today. With each passing day, though, it begins to have the potential to change the business model for writers of all types and stripes. As for Harper, the layoffs were the caboose in a long train of publishing industry firings that began last fall. Think of the causal chain here as the beginning of the beginning for digital delivery of...
Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable →
The unthinkable scenario unfolded something like this: The ability to share content wouldn’t shrink, it would grow. Walled gardens would prove unpopular. Digital advertising would reduce inefficiencies, and therefore profits. Dislike of micropayments would prevent widespread use. People would resist being educated to act against their own desires. Old habits of advertisers and readers would not...
Rethinking the American Dream →
Exploring the way our aspirations have changed—the rugged individualism of the Wild West, the social compact of F.D.R., the sitcom fantasy of 50s suburbia—the author shows how the American Dream came to mean fame and fortune, instead of the promise that shaped a nation.
The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Diamond... →
Notarbartolo intends to set the record straight. He puts his hands on the table. He has had six years to think about what he is about to say.
“I may be a thief and a liar,” he says in beguiling Italian-accented French. “But I am going to tell you a true story.”
(thanks, Jason Ryan)
Fatal Distraction →
Forgetting a child in the back seat of a hot, parked car is a horrifying, inexcusable mistake. But is it a crime?
(thanks, Whitney)
The internet's librarian →
Mr Kahle is an unostentatious millionaire who does not “wear his money on clothes”, as one acquaintance graciously puts it. But behind his dishevelled demeanour is a skilled technologist, an ardent activist and a successful serial entrepreneur. Having founded and sold technology companies to AOL and Amazon, he has now devoted himself to building a non-profit digital archive of free...
They Tried to Outsmart Wall Street →
They are known as “quants” because they do quantitative finance. Seduced by a vision of mathematical elegance underlying some of the messiest of human activities, they apply skills they once hoped to use to untangle string theory or the nervous system to making money.
(thanks, Adam Osman)
The travails of Detroit →
For decades, scribes from America’s coasts and beyond have been parachuting into Detroit to marvel at its horrors. The city never fails to deliver colourful copy: the urban decay, the $1 houses that still go unsold, the tragicomic city politics. Jerry Herron, a writer and scholar at Detroit’s Wayne State University, likens journalists’ morbid delight at Detroit to that of Victorian travellers...
Madoff's World →
Amid the sobs, screams, and curses in Aspen, Palm Beach, and New York, with victims sharing their stories, the author gets behind Madoff’s affable façade, to reveal his most intimate betrayals.
What Realignments Look Like →
That’s an argument that just might persuade the American people to go along for the ride, shifting the political spectrum to the left for a generation, while also managing at long last to bury Reaganite conservatism.
Over the Hedge →
The five hotshots who took Fortress Investment Group public were worth billions at first. Today they look like arrogant showboats, and their story helps explain why hedge funds are imploding by the thousands—and why there’s still a truckload of money to be made.
How to stop the drug wars →
Prohibition has failed; legalisation is the least bad solution.
Spoiled: Organic and Local Is So 2008 →
Because his herbicide dosages are small, and because he controls erosion, the total volume of “farm chemistry,” as he calls it, that leaches from his fields each year is far less than that from a conventional wheat operation. Nonetheless, even judicious chemical use means Fleming can’t charge the organic price premium or appeal to many of the conscientious shoppers who are...
Writing for a living: a joy or a chore? →
Nine authors give their views.
Wall Street on the Tundra →
What led a tiny fishing nation, population 300,000, to decide, around 2003, to re-invent itself as a global financial power? In Reykjavík, where men are men, and the women seem to have completely given up on them, the author follows the peculiarly Icelandic logic behind the meltdown.
How much is a trillion? →
A trillion dollars used to be a sum that never naturally came up in normal conversation. Now all of a sudden, it’s the standard unit we seem to be using to talk about our economic problems and what we’re trying to do about them. Fortunately, I think I finally got a handle on what $1 trillion really means.
(thanks, Matt Lehrer)
Last Rites →
The death of the newspaper is a depressing thing to absorb, but what’s much more disappointing to me is that I feel like news itself has been devalued. There’s an oversupply of news-”ish” information on the web, and people have decided — usually without realizing it — that free “news snacking” is a better value proposition than paying for in-depth reporting.
Towards Better Technology Journalism →
TechCrunch’s is one of the most widely-heard voices in technology reporting. This should be considered an embarrassment to our industry.
The Better, Cheaper Mortgage Fix →
How to renegotiate all those bad loans at no cost to the taxpayer.
(thanks, Adam Engelhart)
In Baltimore, No One Left to Press the Police →
To be a police reporter in such a climate was to be a prince of the city, and to be a citizen of such a city was to know that you were not residing in a police state. But no longer — not in Baltimore and, I am guessing, not in any city where print journalism spent the 1980s and ’90s taking profits and then, in the decade that followed, impaling itself on the Internet.
Propping Up a House of Cards →
Here’s what is most infuriating: Here we are now, fully aware of how these scams worked. Yet for all practical purposes, the government has to keep them going. Indeed, that may be the single most important reason it can’t let A.I.G. fail. If the company defaulted, hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of credit-default swaps would “blow up,” and all those European banks whose toxic assets are...
How Radio Wrecks the Right →
Limbaugh and company certainly entertain. But a steady diet of ideological comfort food is no substitute for hearty intellectual fare.
Philosophy’s great experiment →
Philosophers used to combine conceptual reflections with practical experiment. The trendiest new branch of the discipline, known as x-phi, wants to return to those days. Some philosophers don’t like it.
Translating "The Economist" Behind China's Great... →
It’s an impressive example of online collaboration with simple tools, a completely non-commercial effort by volunteers interested in spreading knowledge while improving their English skills. In the process, they’re taking a political risk in translating controversial articles about their homeland behind the Great Firewall.