Lessons learned: don’t ride next to me on a train unless you’re prepared to entertain continuous updates on what I’m reading. Magazines are usually my drug of choice when traveling, though now that I’m iPad’d, I’ve evolved to using Flipboard (which may be the best app ever created). I’ll still pick up a dead-tree edition [...]
Complexity, virtual worlds and one theory to rule them all.
Political happenings from Taegan Goddard- Is GOP Trying to Sabotage the Economy? May 19, 2012Associated Press: "Are Republican lawmakers deliberately stalling the economic recovery to hurt President Barack Obama's re-election chances? Some top Democrats say yes, pointing to GOP stances on the debt limit and other issues that they claim are causing unnecessary economic anxiety and retarding growth."Regardless of whether the suspicions […]
- Exchange of the Day May 19, 2012USA Today interviews Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:Q. "But how do you find the energy to travel 750,000 miles?"A. "777 -- but who's counting?" […]
- Senator Forced to Sell Home May 19, 2012Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) was "forced to sell his dream home" in Utah with "his mortgage bank taking a significant loss -- up to $400,000 -- in a 'short sale' as the housing bust in his neighborhood drained his house's value," the Salt Lake Tribune reports. "Lee purchased the home for around $1.1 million in January 2008, at […]
- Lawmakers Seek to Lift Propaganda Ban May 19, 2012An amendment that would legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences is being inserted into the latest defense authorization bill, BuzzFeed reports.The amendment to the defense authorization bill would "strike the current ban on domestic dissemination" of propaganda material produced by the State Department and the Pentagon.""The […]
- Government Bullies May 19, 2012Coming this fall: Government Bullies: Americans Arrested, Abused, and Terrorized by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). BuzzFeed notes that coming out with a book is "an act that's de facto required of ambitious politicians priming themselves for the national stage."Many expect Paul to launch a White House bid in 2016. […]
- Is GOP Trying to Sabotage the Economy? May 19, 2012
- What I’m Reading
- Why Foxes Are Better Forecasters Than Hedgehogs May 19, 2012Why Foxes Are Better Forecasters Than Hedgehogs from The Long Now Foundation on FORA.tv > From his perspective as a pyschology researcher, Philip Tetlock watched political advisors on the left and the right make bizarre rationalizations about their wrong predictions at the time of the rise of Gorbachev in the 1980s and the eventual collapse of the Soviet […]Barry Ritholtz
- "Originality Is Dangerous" May 19, 2012Salman Rushdie opines on censorship: Liberty is the air we breathe, and we live in a part of the world where, imperfect as the supply is, it is, nevertheless, freely available, at least to those of us who aren’t black youngsters wearing hoodies in Miami, and broadly breathable, unless, of course, we’re women in red states trying to make free choices about ou […]Andrew Sullivan
- Quote For The Day May 19, 2012"And make no mistake about it, you are dumb. You're a group of incredibly well-educated dumb people. I was there. We all were there. You're barely functional. There are some screw-ups headed your way. I wish I could tell you that there was a trick to avoiding the screw-ups, but the screw-ups, they're a-coming for ya. It's a co […]Andrew Sullivan
- The future of media is social May 18, 2012The Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at NYU hosted I Want Media’s fifth annual “Future of Media” forum on Friday afternoon. Speakers included Adweek executive editor James Cooper, BuzzFeed’s Jonah Peretti, Jezebel editor in chief Jessica Coen, Reuters social media guru Anthony De Rosa, Thrillist co-founder Ben Lerer, Activate’s Michael Wolf, and Greg Cl […](author unknown)
- What does your 404 page look like? May 18, 2012Absolutely LOVE this short TED talk about 404 pages. What does yours look like? ——- (photo credit) […]Maddie Grant
- Getting Around The Guys May 18, 2012How social media is making the careers of many female comedy writers: Consider Ilana Glazer, a New York comedy writer who, when she and writing partner Abbi Jacobson didn’t make it into the improv groups they wanted at Upright Citizens Brigade, decided to take their brand of girl-centric comedy to the web. "We said, ‘Eff this, we’re going to make mater […]Andrew Sullivan
- The Myths We Believe May 18, 2012Picking stocks is among them: Here’s the thing about picking stocks: You can’t. Hard evidence has demonstrated again and again that the human chances of outperforming the market by picking individual stocks is, if anything, lower than that of a random number generator or a chimpanzee, although conservatives argue that the chimp is merely concerned about the […]Andrew Sullivan
- Why Foxes Are Better Forecasters Than Hedgehogs May 19, 2012