How did we get so mean?
This “disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition...
Category: people
Nerds rule the world: Iranian Revolution edition.
I found this to be refreshingly counterintuitive: Everyone knows I am a defender of theocratic government, although not in the current form. The difference lies...
You assigned what ringtone to me?
Seinfeld famously explored the social meaning of speed dial. Who has explored the mores of the ringtone? (The “secret lovers” ad for T-Mobile notwit...
Facebook, the world’s biggest MOO.
Games that spit out inane status updates will be the death of Facebook as a social messaging tool. It may very well thrive as a gaming platform — and, per...
Italy is dreaming of a white Christmas.
Italy, you never cease to dismay me: Operation White Christmas.
Telling time with corn.
My mother-in-law remembers as a child her mother setting aside a few kernels of corn in early November and placing them in water so that they would germinate by...
Do you respect wood?
Corruption in Russia – norms in China + clueless European and US consumers = massive illegal logging.
“President Roosevelt had no legs to stand on, but he sure had spine.”
An entertaining and spirited critique of President Obama by Drew Westen.
Tapping the unconscious for a few extra dollars a plate.
The NYT on the psychology of restaurant menus: Tabla is just one of the many restaurants around the country that are feverishly revising their menus. Pounded by...
Lost in Afghanistan.
We literally do not know where we are in Afghanistan. via Yves Smith
Like a great New Yorker cartoon, only, better.
The excellent every day is the same dream has been making the rounds online this week. It’s a very modest experiment but one yields has rich results; yet ...
How to end a game fairly that was played with unfair rules.
From a fascinating discussion of the moral dimension of our economic collapse, Steve Randy Waldman: One group of people who did not violate traditional norms du...
China flexes its muscles in Copenhagen.
Mark Lynas: Copenhagen was a disaster. That much is agreed. But the truth about what actually happened is in danger of being lost amid the spin and inevitable m...
“Doggone it, people like me.”
It’s no Prime Minister’s Questions but, edited, the following performance is pretty entertaining. Senator Al Franken arguing on behalf of the realit...
The problem with unicorns.
Hybrids are difficult. Perhaps, even impossible. Take, for instance, President Barack Obama. He is a white man and a black man. But to his detractors on the far...
Paul Volcker on recovery, government aid, energy taxes and financial engineers versus mechanical engineers..
From an excellent interview: SPIEGEL: The US has not yet instituted any kind of reform policy. What we see is the government and the Federal Reserve pouring mon...
Oh, right, there’s checks and balances.
Matthew Yglesias responds to (or dispenses with) Matt Taibbi’s latest essay on President Obama: Matt Taibbi has the latest in the endless series of articl...
A society that would survive a 1,000 year journey on a spaceship.
Writer Charlie Stross asks his readers to design a society that could survive a thousand year journey across space. Many of the responses are intriguing, especi...
Open licenses to DIY.
Lindsey Adelman makes beautiful lighting. She also teaches visitors how to reproduce her own works in a detailed PDF document supplemented by links to online re...
Paul Volcker speaking truth to power.
To have been in that room: The former US Federal Reserve chairman told an audience that included some of the world’s most senior financiers that their ind...