William Gibson: The idea that all this stuff is potentially grist for your mill has been very liberating. This process of cultural mongrelization seems to be what postmodernism is all about. The result is a generation of people (some of whom are artists) whose tastes are wildly eclectic- people who
Ken Rogoff eviscerated Joseph Stiglitz in 2002, and it’s worth reading again, as Stiglitz hasn’t exactly gotten any better since: Let’s look at Stiglitzian prescriptions for helping a distressed emerging market debtor, the ideas you put forth as superior to existing practice. Governments typically come to the
Idaho will require all high school students to take some online courses to graduate, and are giving each student and teacher a computer or tablet. Instead of lecturing, Idaho intends for teachers to increasingly provide guidance for students as they move through lessons on computers or tablets. Unsurprisingly, many people
One Al Qaeda supporter says funding they enjoyed from Arab states is now going toward Arab Spring movements: New recruits have stopped coming, Hanif says. “When new people came they brought new blood, enthusiasm, and money. All that has been lost.” The money may be a bigger problem than the
Clayton Morris hears that Apple’s January event will be about iTunes U and the textbook project Steve Jobs was working on, as mentioned in his biography. Walter Isaacson wrote: In fact Jobs had his sights set on textbooks as the next business he wanted to transform. He believes it
Reihan Salam points out that until the 1980s, the growth in health care costs was in line with most of the developed world, and since the 1990s this held true, too. What this means is that while the U.S.’s health care costs are a larger percentage of our
Clive Crook: A new report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development shows that in the middle of the last decade — i.e., after the Bush tax cuts were introduced — the U.S. income tax was about as strongly redistributive as income taxes in Canada, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands
Walmart has made significant steps to make themselves, and their operations in China specifically, more environmentally-sustainable: Acknowledging that Walmart customers “need low prices,” he said he also believed that “more and more, they will be looking at the entire life cycle of a product: How is it made, how
Creating in OmniGraffle: a five-step introduction attempt in less than 140 words. Desired outcome: a new mockup of WebsiteThing. 1. Start it up. Download OmniGraffle here (http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnigraffle/download/?utm_campaign=syndog&utm_term=downloadmac). Choose “Blank” from the template window. 2. Frame it.
Ross Douthat (http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/22/the-republican-cul-de-sac/): Republicans should have just taken yes for answer, embraced a bipartisan tax cut, declared victory and gone home for Christmas. Instead, a Republican Party that blithely voted to extend the Bush tax cuts without any
In a rather dull report from the Wall Street Journal on Apple’s intentions for TV (http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970204791104577106531093742246-lMyQjAxMTAxMDEwODExNDgyWj.html), there was one line of interest: Apple’s uptick in talks with its media partners is part of the company’s strategy to change the
Horace Dediu: Likewise, the iPod came seemingly out of nowhere but by watching the original launch you see it as part of a “media hub” strategy that envisions the Mac as a personal server. The very products which ended up disrupting the Mac/PC began as extensions of their victims.