December, 2009

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

You Keep Using That Word Accountability

John Cole: "Napolitano may or may not have made a mistake, let’s fire her then find out."

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

The Fairness of Financial Rescue

Project Syndicate: "This crash in prices of risky financial assets would not overly concern the rest of us were it not for the havoc that it has wrought on the price system, which is sending a peculiar message to the real economy. The price system is saying: shut down risky production activities and don’t undertake any new activities that might be risky."

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Calorie restriction: Scientists take important step toward 'fountain of youth'

Science Daily: "They found that the normal cells lived longer, and many of the precancerous cells died, when given less glucose."

Separating Explosives from the Detonator

Bruce Schneier: "I wish that, just once, some terrorist would try something that you can only foil by upgrading the passengers to first glass and giving them free drinks."

The Not-Too-Distant Future of Air Travel: Drop That Sippy Cup!

Bob Geiger: "federal officials imposed new restrictions on travelers, including requiring them to remain in their seats"

Passengers’ Quick Action Halted Attack

NYTimes.com: "I just jumped over all the seats"

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Why I Still Believe In This Bill

Jacob S. Hacker: "a bill must pass. Yet it must be a better bill that passes. And it must be understood by the President, the Congress and every American as only a step"

Friday, December 18, 2009

Spain versus Florida

Paul Krugman: "As a result, a state hit by an adverse shock tends to return to the average national unemployment rate within about 6 years, even if it never regains the lost jobs."

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Private insurance in theory and in practice

Ezra Klein: "The people this bill will affect aren't facing divergent futures with public and private insurance. They're facing divergent futures with private insurance or no insurance."

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Some Further Comments on Nominal Wage Flexibility

Rajiv Sethi: "What I cannot understand is why people of considerable intelligence persist in conducting a partial equilibrium Walrasian analysis of the labor market, as if we were dealing with the market for oranges. Please stop it."

Is health care the stimulus redux?

Ezra Klein: "it all makes this look even more like the sort of program that will take root and be made better, as opposed to the sort of common opportunity people should feel comfortable rejecting"

If Health Reform Fails, America’s Innovation Gap Will Grow

NYTimes.com: "In the cradle of American innovation, workers are making career choices based on co-payments, pre-existing conditions and other minutiae of health insurance."

Health-care bill needs major improvement to be worth passing

Howard Dean: "...this bill would do more harm than good to the future of America."

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Nonsense and Sensibility

Paul Krugman, August, 2006: "The question now is how deep into the gutter Mr. Lieberman’s ego will drag him."

Oral Roberts Dead at 91

What we have here is a failure to communicate

Ezra Klein: "I wonder whether reform is even possible to achieve in an atmosphere where statements about consequences are ruled out of order."

What Kind of Day Has It Been

Ten years ago today, I posted this site's first blog post; or at least the first one that survived.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Turn by turn

The Economist: "Using variations of the LineDrive approach, the researchers found that drivers needed less time to understand navigational instructions presented semantically (in words and numbers) rather than symbolically (as street signs and corporate logos)."

Saturday, December 12, 2009

New platforms, new networks – The Internet of Things starts to become real

Coté: "Users no longer tolerate slow and dumb computers."

Thursday, December 10, 2009

The real inconvenient truth

Financial Post: "Humans are the only rational animals but have yet to prove it."

Matter of life, death

St. Petersburg Times: "I am scheduled to begin dying on Feb. 1, 2010."

What the "Black screen of death" story says about tech journalism

ZDNet.com: "Unfortunately, IDG publications aren’t alone in training their correspondents and writers that being first is more important than being right."

How Not to Succeed in Washington

NYTimes.com: "When the Salahis put their collection of digital snaps of the state dinner on Facebook, they flouted all the unwritten rules of power-wall etiquette. (Including a new one that nobody had thought to mention: Don’t put your power wall on Facebook.)"

Saturday, December 05, 2009

America’s Metastasizing Intelligence Apparatus

The Seminal: "Concerns about political mortality aside, there is an even better reason for Congress to begin confronting the president: a series of separate articles that highlight just how ignorant Congress has become on intelligence collection and surveillance."

Friday, December 04, 2009

Landrieu Invents The Unholy Grail Of Worthless Public Option Gimmicks

firedoglake: "Maybe they will demand that this non-public option be run by a board of directors comprised of cats?"

Thursday, December 03, 2009

The Anonymization of Losses: A Market Forces Failure

Securosis: "When a retailer loses inventory to shrinkage, the losses are directly attributable to that part of the supply chain, and someone's responsible. But our computer security losses aren't so clear, and in fact are typically completely hidden from the asset owner."