Today I ran into (over at PSFK) another extremely well-designedThe designer’s site is worth a peek as well. infographic that puts the current oil spill into context in a different way… Of course, this doesn’t really make me feel any better. Criminal charges might, though. Or I could find some way to help. Read more →
Tag: corporations
Visualizing The Problem
There is little I could say to add anything to the ongoing discussion around the horrible mess in the Gulf of Mexico–other than, perhaps, to point out that if BP had been required to have relief wells in place more-or-less immediately (as Canada requires) this problem would be resolved already. Those kinds of comments, though, don’t help resolve the current… Read more →
Bookish Links On A Friday Night
Well, the most interesting book world story right now is surely the whole hardball face-off between Amazon and Macmillan. I expect the most interesting discussion at Making Light. It’s been a pretty depressing week in the book world: too many stories of authors dying. I guess there will only be more and more stories about the passing of authors who… Read more →
A flurry of quick things
Am I the only one uncomfortable with “too difficult to prosecute but too dangerous to release” apparently being a legit category? Doesn’t that pretty much read as “we can’t prove you did shit, but we’re going to keep you in jail anyway”? I officially call bullshit on that. Of course it should come as no surprise given that the current… Read more →
Aside
If you are at all interested in how the business of publishing may change in response to some current disruptive technology shifts–and particularly if you’re interested in looking at the question from an author’s point of view–you should really pop over to Charlie Stross’ blog and read his post there outlining some thoughts on the question and asking for reader comments. This is one of those cases where the “don’t read the comments” rule does not apply: there are a couple of hundred comments there now with a pretty high signal-to-noise ratio, and lots of interesting (and some very scary) ideas are being kicked around.
Aside
I love how the article’s author is so sanguine about this aspect of his analysis, dropping it deadpan in a single sentence at the end of the piece: “The bad news for authors is that their royalties will decrease since they are based off of retail sales price.” Surely the simplification of the production and distribution system should result in less profit for publisher/distributor/vendor–i.e. the parts of the system simplified–and not in less profit for the bit that remains just as hard as ever?
Aside
I’m not going to get my hopes up too high yet, but if it turns out that putting Sotomayor on the court was the start of the end of corporate personhood… well, let’s just say I don’t see myself having a problem with that.
The Dismal Science vs The Invisible Hand: A Movie
One of the reasons I often find things I like in the Guardian is because where else would you find someone like Mark Weisbrot (the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and economics PhD) writing a review of something like Michael Moore’s new film, Capitalism: A Love Story. Regardless of what you think of Moore and his… Read more →
Your Interests Are Not Their Interests
I’ve been watching, but staying out of, the debate around the US health care system and how it will change. What I don’t understand are the people who resist full insurance because they have good benefits now through work, and don’t see the need to pay for other people’s benefits. I first don’t understand it because I just don’t get… Read more →
Aside
While I’m mildly interested in the medical issues surrounding tire dust and latex allergies that Peter Montague raises in his piece “Tire Dust“, I’m much more interested in the history of automotive cabals explicitly destroying electric public transit, as that’s something I was previously unfamiliar with (and frankly, from this one source I don’t have enough to know if it’s something that can be tarred with the “conspiracy theory” brush, despite having footnotes
The Cold Ruling Class
Some recent research (here’s the researcher, by the way) might shed some light on a lot of what happens both inside modern capitalist societies and between the West and the rest of the world–or at least on how some things are allowed to happen. Not coincidentally, the same light is shed on intra-organizational behaviours, which means this is probably something… Read more →
Aside
From Canada To Wal*Mart: You’ll Take Your Unions, and You’ll Like It.
Aside
Shannon worked for Bell Labs (now owned by Alcatel-Lucent).
Guess who just shut down “fundamental research” in physics?
Not quite sic transit gloria mundi, but definitely a chunk of the glory of American research.
Y.A.L.P.
I had a definite plan this morning to do a little geohashing and see who showed up at the local meeting. Too bad the algorithm would have put me in the Atlantic Ocean off the South Shore. Maybe tomorrow it’ll be on land–easy enough to calculate with the online reference implementation. Actually, if I had access to an ocean-worthy boat,… Read more →
