re: Egypt. Enough with the prattle about new media. It’s the economy, stupid. (And satellite TV.)
Here’s a headline you don’t want to miss, from January 18, 2007: MIDDLE EAST: Population growth poses huge challenge for Middle East and North Afric...
Category: business
Three obvious things I learned on the job.
If your product is becoming a commodity, don’t try to inflate its value by restricting supply. Create a better product and set new terms. If you want to a...
“becomes more informed and demanding (thanks to the internet forums)”
While reading up on a ridiculously high-performance kitchen appliance, I found this quote from a manufacturer: Between the year 2000 – 2001 the market con...
Diagram as commentary: how Goldman Sachs circumvents SEC with Facebook offering.
Reggie Middleton’s diagram for his post, Goldman Creates a Facebook Hedge Fund for HNW Clients Historically Ripped Off By Such Vehicles, Spits In Face Of ...
Facebook + smart grids + cash prizes = It’s on! (and off!)
I know my fellow consumers. We are a conspicuous competitive lot. Look at what I got. Also, free shit. Everyone loves free shit. I was just trying to remember w...
David Rothkopf on the “rich dark chocolaty center” of U.S. politics
David Rothkopf, astute and witty as ever, discussing the various political centers, from the expedient to the principled center, from the independent center to ...
The Chamber of Commerce versus the Business Roundtable
The Financial Times: Amex chief calls for jobs taskforce By Francesco Guerrera and Suzanne Kapner in New York Published: December 5 2010 22:00 Ken Chenault, the...
Why did Congress create a postal service and how did talk radio come about?
Fascinating, brief and polemical history of public media – now mass media – in the U.S., from the postal service to radio then television, etc.
The female executive who gave Walt Disney his big break.
Meet Margaret Winkler, aka MJ Winkler. Since this was [a] male-dominated industry, Peggy reasoned that she should avoid any indication of a female connection to...
Insourcing term papers. (Yeah, another story on paper mills. It’s a trend.)
Yet again, a fascinating story on essay mills. This one challenges – albeit by anecdata – an assumption I’d made earlier about who is paying for the...
Schneier on paper mills, testing: the value of a diploma vs. the knowledge it assures.
Bruce Schneier: Fundamentally, [essay plagiarism] is a problem of misplaced economic incentives. As long as the academic credential is worth more to a student t...
Still true: Migration eases global poverty.
Matthew Yglesias: Many people purport to be saddened by the fact that so many people live in countries that are poor, tyrannical, or otherwise malgoverned. And ...
Comparative advantage made tangible: 100 million hand-painted ceramic sunflower seeds.
The artist Ai Weiwei at Tate Modern: It turns out that each seed is in fact a unique porcelain replica, hand-painted in Jingdezhen and fired at 1,300 degrees. S...
Never mind the jet packs, here’s the diapers.com
You know you’re in the future when you read this in Businessweek: “They have sensors and they’re supposed to stop if they see you,” says...
Among the groups that regularly use science over faith: business. That’s worth celebrating.
As much smack as I talk about the business community, I prefer to side with organizations that invest in science rather than faith. Here are the headlines from ...
Kafka’s The Trial is an orderly proceeding compared to the tribulations of the American poor. That’s bad news for the national economy.
When you’re poor and you owe money, you might find yourself in this situation: On another call, Jimmy spoke with a man whose original debt was two hundred...
Taco trucks, Twitter and the next Apple tablet.
Yesterday I saw a group of working class Jose’s standing around a taco truck at midday eating lunch. There were four or five pickup trucks parked near the...
Essay mills, outsourcing and black markets.
You know your higher education system is fucked when kids are spending $200 per plagiarized essay. Clearly, any kid spending that kind of money on an essay shou...
Are there two types of feedback for ads, click-through and click-off?
I’ve seen two electronic ads today I was happy to “reject”: one for a conspiracy video and the other for Meg Whitman. In the case of the forme...
The promise of networked suburbs and shuttering college dropout factories.
Urban Legends: The hipper the city, the mantra goes, the richer and more successful it will be — and a number of declining American industrial hubs have t...