November 2011
43 posts
“This is why I was never fascinated by Google+ and its concept of Circles. You...”
– Don’t Give Your Users Shit Work
“The college-bubble argument makes the solution to rising costs seem simple: if...”
– College Tuition, Student Loans, and Unemployment
“Despite all the astonishing advances in neuroscience, however, we still know...”
– Does evil exist? Neuroscientists say no
That is the real “problem of evil” (or, to use the technical term philosophers employ for conscious, freely-willed, evil-doing: “wickedness”). We tend to believe it exists: Popular culture has no problem with it, giving us iterations...
“Conservatives have been driven to these fevered anxieties as much by their own...”
– When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality?
This essay, from David Frum, says everything I’ve felt and thought, in a much more eloquent manner than I could imagine. I hope that everyone who’s a closet conservative uses this to get their mild message out.
➚ Flaws Jeopardize New Attempt to Help Homeowners →
There is a strong need for legal assistance to people who have been taken advantage of by banks. I wonder how many churches will step up in this regard. My feeling is it will be very few, although it’d be a great opportunity to be a source of justice for those who have suffered injustice at the hands of greedy people.
➚ The Price of Intolerance →
It’s early yet for a full accounting of the economic damage Alabama has done to itself with its radical new immigration law.
Farmers can tally the cost of crops left to rot as workers flee. Governments can calculate the loss of revenues when taxpayers flee. It’s harder to measure the price of a ruined business reputation or the value of investments lost or productivity lost as Alabamians stand...
“I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs...”
– Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs Interview →
Computers are actually pretty simple. We’re sitting here on a bench in this cafe [for this part of the Interview]. Let’s assume that you understood only the most rudimentary of directions and you asked how to find the rest room. I would have to describe it to you in very specific and precise instructions. I might say, “Scoot sideways two meters off the bench. Stand erect. Lift left foot. Bend...
“There’s just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea...”
– Steve Jobs
“If you want to know what’s really going on in a society or ideology, follow the...”
– The Reign of the One Percenters
Yes, yes, and more yes. Let us put our money where our culture should be.
“Unlike homo economicus, that imaginary species featured in macroeconomics...”
– The Limits of Human Rationality
“Not long afterward, I watched Rafael Nadal play a tournament match on the Tennis...”
– Atul Gawande, a personal hero for his quest to understand the medical industry from both an expertise standpoint (as a surgeon) and from a top-down, big-picture view has another article in the New Yorker about a crazy idea he had: coaching surgeons.
But rather than this being a theoretical article...
A Couple Changes
tl:dr - I’m a freelance motion graphics designer available for hire who is pursuing a really cool opportunity with a great company here in town.
Last week I started something really cool, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to explain it. I guess I’ll just keep it short since most of you are only vaguely interested; all the people who really care are quite aware.
Since...
Why Users of Free Services Should Revolt Against...
I’ve seen quite a few people “observe” how much noise people on the internet will make when a service they use for free makes changes they dislike. I use scare-quotes on “observe” because what these people are actually saying is that the noise-makers shouldn’t make noise because they aren’t paying for the services.
This really bothers me.
This...
➚ An Interview with Lawrence Lessig →
Lessig is pretty insightful.
DJ: One slap we have had is the financial crash. And it seems that it has provoked a lot of anger.
Lessig: The financial collapse is the most astonishing of these examples, not so much because of what happened before 2008, but because of what happened after. Before 2008, the zeitgeist was deregulation, and Wall Street succeeded in getting deregulation. Frank Partnoy...
“Conspiracies are much more fun than the truth of the matter, which is that the...”
– Steve Jobs
Native Foster Care: Lost Children, Shattered... →
If this investigative report from NPR is to be believed, South Dakota Child Services is abusing their power by removing Native American children from their families for “negligence” and then skirting the federal law that requires Native American foster children to be placed with other Native American foster families except in rare cases.
This is not only an abuse of power by the...
How Doctors Could Rescue Health Care →
In short, physicians are increasingly looking for arrangements that allow them to focus more on the practice of medicine and less on managing a business. They also want at least a little more time for personal and family life. Practice in multispecialty groups is the obvious answer. Single-specialty groups offer some similar advantages, but are not as attractive. They are smaller, have fewer...
A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs →
This is exquisite.
“What very few have focused on is the sharecropper mentality with which...”
– One Google Books To Rule Them All?
Well-written and very informative essay.
“Apple designers say that now, each design they create has to be presented...”
– What Can Steve Jobs Still Teach Us?
What an wise design strategy. Version one is not enough, a designer must think through to possible future iterations.
“The church has bought into these identity categories for the last hundred years....”
– The Invention of Homosexuality … and Heterosexuality
How Medicare Fails the Elderly →
Here is the dirty little secret of health care in America for the elderly, the one group we all assume has universal coverage thanks to the 1965 Medicare law: what Medicare paid for then is no longer what recipients need or want today.
No one then envisioned the stunning advances in medicine that now keep people alive into advanced old age, often with unintended and unwelcome consequences....
“Courageous rejects nuance and the cross-bearing pilgrimage of the Christian life...”
– Courageous Christianity
I am glad that Christians are putting up real money to make real films. They are trying to play on the national level and slowly getting better. That’s good.
But, and perhaps this is the film snob in me, or perhaps it is my belief that the Gospel does not fit well...
“What GDP misses, however, is arguably more important than what it includes....”
– From Cash to Contentment
“A close examination of the Gonzales memoranda suggests that Governor Bush...”
– The Texas Clemency Memos
“True creativity is born of a struggle of some kind. Build a strong framework you...”
– The Jack White school of business
“Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has said that the “execution of...”
– Cameron Todd Willingham, Texas, and the death penalty : The New Yorker
This is a very lengthy, very difficult (in subject) article asking the question “Has America allowed an innocent man to be executed?.” While the author himself does not have the ability to answer yes or no, the...
“The American death penalty has been transformed from a penal instrument that...”
– On the Death Sentence
The New York Review of Books reviews Peculiar Institution, a history of the death penalty in America. Can’t say I agree with the entire article, but overall there are some great issues raised.
“Everyone in Iraq was there on a series of one-year tours, myself included,” he...”
– The Greedy Battle For Iraq’s ‘Hearts And Minds’
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“Apple is so focused on its vision that it does things in a very careful,...”
– Former Apple CEO John Sculley On The Future Of Medical Technology And Health Care’s Killer App
➚ It’s Good to Be Michael Lewis →
A profile of one of the best business/economic writers on the popular level today. The profile works backwards to Lewis by looking at the people who have become popular because of profiles he wrote on them.
“The story can only be told in a particular form. It can’t be told in a painting....”
– Charlie Kaufman: why I wrote Being John Malkovich
Climate Skeptics Take Another Hit →
The Koch-brothers-funded Physicist Richard Muller, who has long been a climate change skeptic, just publicized the results of the most scientifically rigorous study of all temperature data available for the past 100 years or so, and well, the skeptics have less reason to be skeptical now.
But Muller’s congressional testimony last March didn’t go according to plan. He told them a...
Shifting the Suburban Paradigm →
Is there anything made in America that’s less innovative than the single-family home? While we obsess over the new in terms of what we keep in our houses — the ever-increasing speed and functionality of our Smartphones, entertainment options built into refrigerators, sophisticated devices that monitor, analyze and report on our sleep cycles, even the superior technology of the running shoes we...
“the film, tentatively titled Dau, has been in production since 2006 and won’t...”
– On the Movie Set of Director Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s Dau
This story is ridiculous. Almost beyond belief.
“A commute of 45 minutes carries such a cost to well-being that economists have...”
– Your Commute is Killing You
What Makes a Great Teacher? →
Parents have always worried about where to send their children to school; but the school, statistically speaking, does not matter as much as which adult stands in front of their children. Teacher quality tends to vary more within schools—even supposedly good schools—than among schools.
But we have never identified excellent teachers in any reliable, objective way. Instead, we tend to...
Bicycling Across the Country →
I think riding my bike across the country is on my bucket list.
This was an American journey by a New Yorker who became more American as he went along. By virtue of absorbing almost 4,000 miles of thrilling landscape, inch by inch, I learned more about topography and how it figures in the identities of thousands of localities and millions of Americans than I had ever understood.
“As always there are those who reveal their asininity (as they did throughout his...”
– Steve Jobs
Daring Fireball linked to this last week ensuring everyone has seen it, but I needed to record this paragraph to find it later. So very good.
“Opportunity is a lost hope for many, as social mobility in America is now less...”
– The “Un-Economy”
Ohio's War on the Middle Class →
Harrowing article.
“In Las Vegas, the girls are treated as victims, not criminals, a relatively new...”
– Child Prostitution in Las Vegas
Good on Las Vegas for addressing what was identified as one of the problems mentioned in this article, namely the fact that most girls this young are victims but are arrested for a crime and treated as criminals, ensuring their return to the street. Hopefully the... 