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Somalia: Militants Glad to Be on U.S. List - New York Times
www.nytimes.com/2008/03/20/world/africa/20briefs-s... Islamic militants in Somalia welcomed being added to the United States’ list of terrorist organizations, saying they wished only that the designation had come sooner. The State Department announced Tuesday that it added to its list the military wing of the Council of Islamic Courts, called Al Shabab, or the Youth, because it is affiliated with Al Qaeda, according to American officials. “We are happy that the U.S. put us on its list of terrorists, a name given to pure Muslims who are strong and clear in their religious position,” Sheik Muqtar Robow, Al Shabab’s spokesman, said. “We would have been happy to be the first, but now we are unhappy that we are the last,” he said. Mogadishu, the Somali capital, has been engulfed in violence involving movement fighters, who controlled much of southern Somalia for six months before being driven out in December 2006 by the country’s Western-backed government and its Ethiopian allies. On Wednesday, heavy fighting in Mogadishu killed at least eight people, including three Ethiopian soldiers, witnesses said.
 Think Progress » Blog Archive » Bush: I’m ‘envious’ of troops on ‘romantic’ front lines.
thinkprogress.org/2008/03/14/bush-im-envious-of-tr... During a videoconference with U.S. military and civilian personnel yesterday, President Bush praised the troops fighting in Afghanistan, claiming he was “a little envious” of their “romantic” fight:
and scatterplot:
And also, following Seth's suggestion, the scatterplot on the log scale:
And, following Kaiser's suggestion, a reparameterization showing people per store (rather than stores per million people):
Who leaked the details of a CIA-Mossad plot against Iran? - Haaretz - Israel News
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/961337.html Operation Merlin
The CIA counter proliferation department hired a Soviet nuclear engineer who had previously, in the 1990s, defected to the United States and revealed secrets from the Soviet Union's nuclear program. His speciality was in the field of what is called weaponization, the final stage of assembling a nuclear bomb. The scientist was equipped with blueprints for assembling a nuclear bomb in which, without his knowledge, false drawings and information blueprints were planted about a nuclear warhead that was supposedly manufactured in the Soviet Union. The plan's details had been fabricated by CIA experts, and so while they appeared authentic, they had no engineering or technological value. The intention was to fool the scientist and send him to make contact with the Iranians to whom he would offer his services and blueprints. The American plot was aimed at getting the Iranians to invest a great deal of effort in studying the plans and to attempt to assemble a faulty warhead. But when the time came, they would not have a nuclear bomb but rather a dud. However, Operation Merlin, which was so creative and original, failed because of CIA bungled planning. The false information inserted into the blueprints were too obvious and too easily detected and the Russian engineer discovered them. As planned, he made contact with the Iranian delegation to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna and handed over to them, also as planned, the blueprints. But contrary to the CIA's intention, he added a letter to the blueprints in which he pointed out the mistakes. He did not do this with ill intent or out of a desire to disrupt the operation and harm his operators. On the contrary, he did so out of a deep sense of mission and in order to satisfy his American operators. He hoped that in this way he would simply increase the Iranians' trust in him and encourage them to make contact with him for the good, of course, of his American operators. The result was disastrous. Not only did the CIA fail to prevent the Iranians in their efforts to enhance their nuclear program, this operation may also have made it possible for them to get their hands on a plan for assembling a nuclear warhead. The Advantages of Closing a Few Doors - New York Times
www.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/science/26tier.html?_r=... “Closing a door on an option is experienced as a loss, and people are willing to pay a price to avoid the emotion of loss,” Dr. Ariely says. In the experiment, the price was easy to measure in lost cash. In life, the costs are less obvious — wasted time, missed opportunities. If you are afraid to drop any project at the office, you pay for it at home. “We may work more hours at our jobs,” Dr. Ariely writes in his book, “without realizing that the childhood of our sons and daughters is slipping away. Sometimes these doors close too slowly for us to see them vanishing.” Dr. Ariely, one of the most prolific authors in his field, does not pretend that he is above this problem himself. When he was trying to decide between job offers from M.I.T. and Stanford, he recalls, within a week or two it was clear that he and his family would be more or less equally happy in either place. But he dragged out the process for months because he became so obsessed with weighing the options. “I’m just as workaholic and prone to errors as anyone else,” he says.. “I have way too many projects, and it would probably be better for me and the academic community if I focused my efforts. But every time I have an idea or someone offers me a chance to collaborate, I hate to give it up.” So what can be done? One answer, Dr. Ariely said, is to develop more social checks on overbooking. He points to marriage as an example: “In marriage, we create a situation where we promise ourselves not to keep options open. We close doors and announce to others we’ve closed doors.” The Advantages of Closing a Few Doors - New York Times
www.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/science/26tier.html?_r=... Why were they so attached to those doors? The players, like the parents of that overscheduled piano student, would probably say they were just trying to keep future options open. But that’s not the real reason, according to Dr. Ariely and his collaborator in the experiments, Jiwoong Shin, an economist who is now at Yale. They plumbed the players’ motivations by introducing yet another twist. This time, even if a door vanished from the screen, players could make it reappear whenever they wanted. But even when they knew it would not cost anything to make the door reappear, they still kept frantically trying to prevent doors from vanishing. Apparently they did not care so much about maintaining flexibility in the future. What really motivated them was the desire to avoid the immediate pain of watching a door close. Is the Tipping Point Toast? -- Duncan Watts -- Trendsetting | Fast Company
www.fastcompany.com/magazine/122/is-the-tipping-po... Watts wanted to find out whether the success of a hot trend was reproducible. For example, we know that Madonna became a breakout star in 1983. But if you rewound the world back to 1982, would Madonna break out again? To find out, Watts built a world populated with real live music fans picking real music, then hit rewind, over and over again. Working with two colleagues, Watts designed an online music-downloading service. They filled it with 48 songs by new, unknown, and unsigned bands. Then they recruited roughly 14,000 people to log in. Some were asked to rank the songs based on their own personal preference, without regard to what other people thought. They were picking songs purely on each song's merit. But the other participants were put into eight groups that had "social influence": Each could see how other members of the group were ranking the songs. Watts predicted that word of mouth would take over. And sure enough, that's what happened. In the merit group, the songs were ranked mostly equitably, with a small handful of songs drifting slightly lower or higher in popularity. But in the social worlds, as participants reacted to one another's opinions, huge waves took shape. A small, elite bunch of songs became enormously popular, rising above the pack, while another cluster fell into relative obscurity. But here's the thing: In each of the eight social worlds, the top songs--and the bottom ones--were completely different. For example, the song "Lockdown," by 52metro, was the No. 1 song in one world, yet finished 40 out of 48 in another. Nor did there seem to be any compelling correlation between merit and success. In fact, Watts explains, only about half of a song's success seemed to be due to merit. "In general, the 'best' songs never do very badly, and the 'worst' songs never do extremely well, but almost any other result is possible," he says. Why? Because the first band to snag a few thumbs-ups in the social world tended overwhelmingly to get many more. Yet who received those crucial first votes seemed to be mostly a matter of luck. Is the Tipping Point Toast? -- Duncan Watts -- Trendsetting | Fast Company
www.fastcompany.com/magazine/122/is-the-tipping-po... "If society is ready to embrace a trend, almost anyone can start one--and if it isn't, then almost no one can," Watts concludes. To succeed with a new product, it's less a matter of finding the perfect hipster to infect and more a matter of gauging the public's mood. Sure, there'll always be a first mover in a trend. But since she generally stumbles into that role by chance, she is, in Watts's terminology, an "accidental Influential."
Senator Calls FCC Auction a Disaster
By Teresa von Fuchs WirelessWeek - February 27, 2008 Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor reportedly called the 700 MHz spectrum auction a disaster yesterday at the National Association of Broadcasters' State Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C. Pryor, a member of the influential Senate Commerce Committee, was critical of FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s leadership of the auction, saying that the FCC allowed telecom powerhouses such as Verizon and AT&T to “control” the auction. “History will show (the FCC) helped two big wireless companies to the detriment of competition. They allowed the biggest two to outbid smaller companies and control the auction,” Pryor reportedly told the broadcasters. Bidding was held anonymously; no winners have yet been announced for any portion of the spectrum, though many speculate that Verizon Wireless won a majority of the largest, coveted C Block of spectrum. Despite criticism for its methods, the auction has raised nearly double its projected take, reaching nearly $20 billion as bids have slowed to a trickle. Social Business Entrepreneurs Are the Solution
www.grameen-info.org/bank/socialbusinessentreprene... Second, we must make the SBEs and social business investors visible in the market place. As long as SBEs operate within the cultural environment of present stock markets they'll remain restricted by the existing norms and lingo of trading. SBEs must develop their own norms, standards, measurements, evaluation criteria, and terminology. This can be achieved only if we create a separate stockmarket for social business enterprises and investors. We can call it Social Stock Market. Investors will come here to invest their money for the cause they believe in, and in the company they think is doing the best in achieving a particular mission. There may be some companies listed in this social stock market who are excellent in achieving their mission at the same time making very attractive profit on the side. Obviously these companies will attract both kinds of investors, social-goal oriented as well as personal-gain oriented.
Obama Hits Back"I've been paying attention, John McCain," he said. "That's the news. So John McCain may like to say he wants to follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell, but so far all he's done is follow George Bush into a misguided war in Iraq that's cost us thousands of lives and billions of dollars. A Lesson On Leaking From Daniel Ellsberg, The Man Who Leaked The Pentagon Papers Takes Issue With A
www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/05/politics/main23... "Taking an oath as a public servant does not mean keeping secrets or obeying the president, it's respecting the Constitution," Ellsberg said. "All of the lawyers at the NSA who kept the secret [of the wiretapping program] were violating the oath of office."
Le Monde.fr : Réseaux sociaux : des audiences différentes selon les continents
www.lemonde.fr/web/infog/0,47-0@2-651865,54-999097...  Third, the changes that are currently underway are not only complex and systemic—they are also paradoxical and contradictory, which makes them much harder to perceive and interpret. This is greatly compounded by the fact that individuals and organizations have strong cognitive biases (including a tendency to oversimplify) that seriously impede our ability to observe and make sense of change.
Third, the changes that are currently underway are not only complex and systemic—they are also paradoxical and contradictory, which makes them much harder to perceive and interpret. This is greatly compounded by the fact that individuals and organizations have strong cognitive biases (including a tendency to oversimplify) that seriously impede our ability to observe and make sense of change.
Yet we are also capable of spectacular misinterpretation of what is happening around us. We are often victims of severe cognitive challenges that inhibit the power of our perceptions. One of the greatest of these has to do with focus: we miss important changes simply by focusing our attention too narrowly. An example from my own experience illustrates this nicely. For several years, I have commenced many speeches and workshops by showing a 30-second video in which six people are playing with two basketballs. Three are wearing white t-shirts; the other three are wearing black. Each “team” has its own basketball, which it passes only among its members.
FCC Auctions 101: Spectrum Auction Appears Near End - 2/22/2008 1:08:00 PM - Broadcasting & Cable
www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6534670.html?i... Only a total of $44,200 was bid in round 101 of the Federal Communications Commission's auction of spectrum in the 700-meghertz band being reclaimed in the switch to digital TV. 
Broadcasters will take up less of the spectrum with the more efficient digital broadcasts, so the FCC is auctioning some 623 MHz of former broadcaster real estate for advanced wireless services. The auction generated $19,517,614,900 in bids, including $4.838 billion for licenses with open-access conditions that could be used for a national network, although the high bidders are currently for individual regions rather than the national package. The FCC had to reach minimum bids for five separate chunks of the spectrum to return at least $10 billion to the treasury. It met the minimums in four of the five. The only block not to reach its minimum bid -- and that one didn't even get close -- was the D block, which is also enough spectrum for a national network but must be shared with first-responders. The FCC will have to reaction that block with the help of nervous legislators who want to make sure that a national first-responder network gets built. The auction is not over until there are no bids, and there were still 42 bids in round 101, but they raised the ante only a little over $1,000 apiece. In previous rounds, the increases had been in the millions of dollars. Saving the world with a cup of yogurt (cont.) - February 5, 2007
money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/20... Yunus says business schools should start turning out social-business MBAs trained in creating social returns: "People say, 'Don't be stupid.' I say there are a lot of stupid people like me. I don't want to make money. Lots of young people don't want to make money, because their mother, their father made so much money. They don't know what to do with their lives. There are many such kids in the U.S. They don't have any challenge left. Give them the challenge: Fix the world. Create a social business enterprise."
This super-distribution system has become the foundation of our economy and wealth. The instant reduplication of data, ideas, and media underpins all the major economic sectors in our economy, particularly those involved with exports -- that is, those industries where the US has a competitive advantage. Our wealth sits upon a very large device that copies promiscuously and constantly. Yet the previous round of wealth in this economy was built on selling precious copies, so the free flow of free copies tends to undermine the established order. If reproductions of our best efforts are free, how can we keep going? To put it simply, how does one make money selling free copies? I have an answer. The simplest way I can put it is thus:
When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.
When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied. Well, what can't be copied? There are a number of qualities that can't be copied. Consider "trust." Trust cannot be copied. You can't purchase it. Trust must be earned, over time. It cannot be downloaded. Or faked. Or counterfeited (at least for long). If everything else is equal, you'll always prefer to deal with someone you can trust. So trust is an intangible that has increasing value in a copy saturated world. There are a number of other qualities similar to trust that are difficult to copy, and thus become valuable in this network economy. I think the best way to examine them is not from the eye of the producer, manufacturer, or creator, but from the eye of the user. We can start with a simple user question: why would we ever pay for anything that we could get for free? When anyone buys a version of something they could get for free, what are they purchasing? From my study of the network economy I see roughly eight categories of intangible value that we buy when we pay for something that could be free. In a real sense, these are eight things that are better than free. Eight uncopyable values. I call them "generatives." A generative value is a quality or attribute that must be generated, grown, cultivated, nurtured. A generative thing can not be copied, cloned, faked, replicated, counterfeited, or reproduced. It is generated uniquely, in place, over time. In the digital arena, generative qualities add value to free copies, and therefore are something that can be sold. The Big Picture | Performance Review: Google vs. Micro-hoo
bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2008/02/performanc...
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US blacks see 'financial apartheid' in subprime crisis
www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080127181914.e1z8... "People in Washington -- George Bush, the US Senate, the US Congress -- witnessed it, they stood by and they didn't do nothing to stop it," said Cleveland resident John Brett. "It was almost like they were on the Titanic, and they could see the iceberg coming and they did nothing about it," he said sitting at the counter of the Velvet Dog Bar. "They wrecked our American dreams, the willingness to own a home," he said. "Even during the Great Depression we did not see the number of homes and properties abandoned like we are seeing now." William Gibson: The Rolling Stone 40th Anniversary Interview : Rolling Stone
www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/17227831/willi... People worry about the loss of individual privacy, but that comes with a new kind of unavoidable transparency. Eventually we're going to know everything that every twenty-first-century politician has ever done. It will be very hard for politicians and governments to keep secrets. The whole thing is porous. We just haven't really figured out quite how porous it is.
Existing Single-Family Home Sales Drop: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance
biz.yahoo.com/ap/080124/economy.html For the year, sales of single-family homes were down by 13 percent, the biggest drop since a 17.7 percent plunge in 1982. The median price for a single-family home dropped 1.8 percent to $217,000. That was the first annual price decline on records going back to 1968. Lawrence Yun, the Realtors' chief economist, said it was likely that the country has not experienced a decline in housing prices for an entire year since the Great Depression of the 1930s. free SWOT analysis template and method, free swot analysis examples
www.businessballs.com/swotanalysisfreetemplate.htm the seven key research findingsThe key findings were never published because it was felt they were too controversial. This is what was found: 1) A business was divided into two parts. The base business plus the development business. This was re-discovered by Dr Peter Senge at MIT in 1998 and published in his book the 5th Dimension. The amount of development business which become operational is equal to or greater than that business on the books within a period of 5 to 7 years. This was a major surprise and urged the need for discovering a better method for planning and managing change. 2) Dr Hal Eyring published his findings on 'Distributive Justice' and pointed out that all people measure what they get from their work and divide it by what they give to the work and this ratio is compared to others. If it is not equal then the person first re-perceives and secondly slows down if added demands are not met. (See for interest Adams Equity Theory and the Equity Theory Diagram pdf) 3) The introduction of a corporate planner upset the sense of fair play at senior level, making the job of the corporate planner impossible. 4) The gap between what could be done by the organisation and what was actually done was about 35%. 5) The senior man will over-supervise the area he comes from. Finance- Finance, Engineering-Engineering etc. 6) There are 3 factors which separate excellence from mediocrity: a. Overt attention to purchasing b. Short-term written down departmental plans for improvement c. Continued education of the Senior Executive 7) Some form of formal documentation is required to obtain approval for development work. In short we could not solve the problem by stopping planning. Remember this is capital we are discussing, not spending stimulus. Because of fractional reserve lending, most banks are leveraged 10 to 1. A destruction of $100 billion in bank capital will result in reduced lending power of $1 trillion.
Bush's trip, without principle or plan, had one big winner | Columnists | Guardian Unlimited
www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2241391,00... The tactics are exactly those that Petraeus's predecessors rejected in the past four years of mayhem. He has encouraged and armed local militias, good and bad, to defend their communities. In Anbar province, this has meant backing Sunni sheikhs and former Ba'athist gangsters, styled "the awakening", to face down the al-Qaida mafia. This was suggested by British MI6 agents in 2003 and rejected by the Pentagon. In Baghdad, the tactic has meant building fortified and ethnically cleansed ghettos, mostly in Sunni areas, and arming them against the former campaign of slaughter by the Shia militia/police, many of whom work for the interior ministry.
Housing starts plunge 14% to 16-year low - MarketWatch
www.marketwatch.com/news/story/housing-starts-plun...
Building permits, a better gauge of future activity than the volatile monthly figures on starts, fell 8% in December to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.07 million, the lowest since May 1993. Single-family permits fell 10% in December to 692,000.
For all of 2007, housing starts fell 25% to 1.35 million, the lowest total since 1993. Building permits fell 25% in 2007 to 1.38 million, the lowest since 1995.
Single-family permits fell 29% in 2007 to 1.05 million, the lowest since 1992.
Housing completions dropped 8% in December to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.30 million. Completions fell 24% in 2007. Merrill Lynch & Co., the biggest U.S. brokerage, reported a record loss after $16.7 billion of writedowns on assets infected by subprime mortgages. The fourth-quarter net loss of $9.83 billion, or $12.01 a share, compared with earnings of $2.35 billion, or $2.41, a year earlier, the New York-based firm said today in a statement. Merrill fell 8 percent in New York trading, the biggest decline since the 2001 terrorist attacks, as the loss was almost three times bigger than analysts estimated and resulted in the first full-year loss since 1989. Economics focus | Intelligent design | Economist.com
www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_i... His big idea was “incentive compatibility”. The way to get as close as possible to the most efficient economic outcome is to design mechanisms in which everybody does best for themselves by sharing truthfully whatever private information they have that is asked for. Even this cannot guarantee an optimal outcome, Mr Hurwicz showed, because the existence of any private information precludes the economist's holy grail, known as Pareto efficiency, even if everyone's incentives are compatible. But it will get closer to it than if incentives are incompatible (ie, when some people can do better by not sharing information or lying). Pareto efficiency means that no one can be made better off without someone becoming worse off. Mechanism design has “incentive efficiency”: given compatible incentives, no one can do better without someone doing worse.
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance--
If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence--wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream 150
We stood together;
MrTinDC jokes about green roofs: My worry is that in the case of the DC government installing a green roof, they will neglect to maintain it, mow or prune it, and it will grow into an untamed mass of weed trees with windblown CVS bags stuck in them. I'm picturing feral cat colonies and huge flocks of birds living up there, with guano encrusting the surrounding neighborhood. Or, maybe they won't water it during a drought, all the plants will die, and they'll end up with a brown roof. Let's hope DC Greenworks is in charge of upkeep, and not the District. Annals of Communications: The Search Party: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/01/14/080114fa_fa... “Larry and Sergey believe that if you try to get everybody on board it will prevent things from happening,” he told me. “If you just do it, others will come around to realize they were attached to old ways that were not as good. . . . No one has proven them wrong—yet.”
Citigroup Inc. lost almost $10 billion in last year's final three months, the largest quarterly deficit in its 196-year history, and slashed its dividend and 4,200 jobs as it recorded a mammoth write- down for bad bets on the mortgage industry.
The nation's largest bank wrote down the value of its portfolio by $18.1 billion and said it was setting aside $4 billion to cover U.S. consumer credit defaults. It signaled further problems in its consumer businesses as deflated home prices, high energy and food costs, and rising unemployment weigh on people's ability to keep up with their payments. The Big Picture | Merrill: Recession is already here
bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2008/01/merrill-re...  Economics Blog : A Look at Google's Prediction Market
blogs.wsj.com/economics/2008/01/07/a-look-at-googl... Looking at how prediction markets for sports events is helping some economists answer question about market efficiency, but the real frontier for the use of markets may be in the corporate setting. Over the past few years, several companies have been experimenting with internal prediction markets, where employees buy and sell contracts based on the odds they think that, say, how well a certain product will sell. Google, which has been running the largest by far, opened up its data to Wharton economist Justin Wolfers and Dartmouth economist Eric Zitzewitz, who presented a paper co-written with Google’s Bo Cowgill at last weekend’s American Economic Association. One of their findings was that, while the markets were reasonably good at predicting how many gmail users there would be at the end of the quarter, and the like, there was a tendency toward optimism among Google employees. What’s more, on days that Google’s stock did well, employees were more optimistic. Google’s policy of moving employee desks every quarter also allowed Messrs. Cowgill, Wolfers and Zitzewitz to judge how people’s affinity groups influenced their perceptions. They found that proximity mattered the most — when people began sitting nearby one another, they would trade similarly. Work and social connections mattered, but not as much. Demographics didn’t matter, with the exception of people who shared a common, non-English native language. It’s not in the paper, but another feature of Google’s markets is that when markets include trades on cultural events of the who-will-the-World-Series variety, additional people also traded the more serious, work-related contracts. Maybe people who bemoan Americans’ participation in the democratic process should start lobbying for an American Idol tie-in for the elections this fall … – Justin Lahart Counterterrorism Blog: Southern Discomfort: Thailand's Insurgency Enters Year Five
counterterrorismblog.org/2008/01/southern_discomfo... Narathiwat, Thailand. Friday, 4 January, marks the 4th anniversary of the start of the insurgency in Southern Thailand. To date, more than 2,700 people have been killed, 8,000 wounded. There have been more than 850 bombings, and many more failed or aborted bombings, including six bombs on New Year’s Eve in the border town of Sungai Golok, that wounded 32. There have been more than 600 arson attacks, including well over 250 schools. Militants have assassinated nearly 1,400 people. The death toll includes 133 soldiers, more than 150 police, nearly 1,300 civilians, roughly 70 teacher, five monks, 210 headmen/local officials, and more than 40 government officials and civil servants. Militants have beheaded more than 35 people, and there have been almost twice the number of attempted or botched attempted decapitations. The arson attacks on schools and murder of teachers has led to the shutdown of the education system in the deep south for months at a time. Buddhist communities have been cleansed from the countryside.
Amount of unpaid credit card bills is rising - Stocks & economy- msnbc.com
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22379989 The value of credit card accounts at least 30 days late jumped 26 percent to $17.3 billion in October from a year earlier at 17 large credit card trusts examined by the AP. That represented more than 4 percent of the total outstanding principal balances owed to the trusts on credit cards that were issued by banks such as Bank of America and Capital One and for retailers like Home Depot and Wal-Mart. At the same time, defaults — when lenders essentially give up hope of ever being repaid and write off the debt — rose 18 percent to almost $961 million in October, according to filings made by the trusts with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Serious delinquencies also are up sharply: Some of the nation’s biggest lenders — including Advanta, GE Money Bank and HSBC — reported increases of 50 percent or more in the value of accounts that were at least 90 days delinquent when compared with the same period a year ago. Google is one of the few large companies that gets one fundamental rule of the Internet: Trying stuff is cheaper than deciding whether to try it. (Compare the cost of paying and feeding someone to do a few weeks of P* hacking to the full cost of the meetings that went into a big company decision.) Don't overplan something. Just do it half-assed to start with, then throw more people at it to fix it if it works. Worked for every successful Google project from AdWords to Google Maps. How America Lost the War on Drugs : Rolling Stone
www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/17438347/how_a... Police in Boston, concerned about violence between youth drug gangs, turned for assistance to a group of academics. Among them was a Harvard criminologist named David Kennedy. Working together, the academics and members of the department's anti-gang unit came up with what Kennedy calls a "quirky" strategy and convinced senior police commanders to give it a try. The result, which began in 1995, was the Boston Gun Project, a collaborative effort among ministers and community leaders and the police to try to break the link between the drug trade and violent crime. First, the project tracked a particular drug-dealing gang, mapping out its membership and operations in detail. Then, in an effort called Operation Ceasefire, the dealers were called into a meeting with preachers and parents and social-service providers, and offered a deal: Stop the violence, or the police will crack down with a vengeance. "We know the seventeen guys you run with," the gangbangers were told. "If anyone in your group shoots somebody, we'll arrest every last one of you." The project also extended drug treatment and other assistance to anyone who wanted it. The effort worked: The rates of homicide and violence among young men in Boston dropped by two-thirds. Drug dealing didn't stop - "people continued what they were doing," Kennedy concedes, "but they put their guns down." As Kennedy reflected on the success of the Boston project, which ran for five years, he wondered if he had discovered a deeper truth about drug-related violence. If the murders weren't a necessary component of the drug trade - if it was possible to separate the two - perhaps cities could find a way to reduce the violence, even if they could do nothing about the drugs. Bear Stearns Troubles - National Business News - Portfolio.com
www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portf... t’s become a cliché in recent years to label Goldman Sachs a hedge fund. But that doesn’t mean the cliché is wrong. The percentage of Goldman’s revenue that came from trading for its own accounts and investing its own money rose to 63 percent in 2006, according to Portales. From 1999 to 2003, that percentage never broke 50 percent. The portion of Lehman’s revenue that came from its own investments was 55 percent last year, up from an average of 44 percent between 1999 and 2004.
Washington named 8th gayest city in U.S. - Washington Blade
washblade.com/2007/11-9/news/localnews/11527.cfm
The NYC logo on a grid, for added flexibility The NYC logo was designed for NYC & Company, the result of a blending of three organizations (NYC & Company, NYC Big Events and NYC Marketing) under the tutelage of our Mayor, Michael Bloomberg. As has been discussed here, every city needs a logo, so how in the world would you brand New York City? An eclectic, loud, diverse, affluent, changing city where every five blocks are different from the next five ad infinitum. Would a sans serif do the trick? A custom script? A (gasp!) icon? Probably any of these solutions could work, but none would be as memorable or as inclusive of the flavor, smell and texture of New York as this logo promises to be.
An endless range of variations for the NYC letters And as an endorser of our city, I can't think of a bolder statement that could have been made. These are posters and ads for an ad campaign devoted to driving tourism to the city — 50 million visitors annually by 2015, (good thing I'm in Brooklyn). And if you needed further convincing, you can see a nice promotional video here.
NYC "This is New York City" campaign by BBH. Blackwater's Owner Has Spies for Hire - washingtonpost.com
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007... To Black and Richer, one of the most surprising things about being in the private sector is finding that much of the information they once considered top secret is publicly available. The trick, Richer said, is knowing where to look.
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Intelligence, Contractors, Government, Military, War You Can't Predict Who Will Change The World - Forbes.com
www.forbes.com/2007/10/13/nicholas-taleb-predictio... Let us go one step further. It is high time to recognize that we humans are far better at doing than understanding, and better at tinkering than inventing. But we don't know it. We truly live under the illusion of order, believing that planning and forecasting are possible. We are scared of the random, yet we live from its fruits. We are so scared of the random that we create disciplines that try to make sense of the past--but we ultimately fail to understand it, just as we fail to see the future.
You Can't Predict Who Will Change The World - Forbes.com
www.forbes.com/2007/10/13/nicholas-taleb-predictio... America's primary export, it appears, is trial and error, and the innovative knowledge attained in such a way. Trial and error has error in it; and most top-down traditional rational and academic environments do not like the fallibility of "error" and the embarrassment of not quite knowing where they're going. The U.S. fosters entrepreneurs and creators, not exam-takers, bureaucrats or, worse, deluded economists. So the perceived weakness of the American pupil in conventional studies is where his or her very strength may lie.
The Colbert Nation Quickly Colonizes Facebook - New York Times
www.nytimes.com/2007/10/29/business/media/29colber... “What amazed me the most was how [Barack] Obama’s 1 Million Strong Group took more than 8 months to get about 380,000 members, but Colbert’s 1 Million Strong Group took less than a week to get 750,000 members,” he wrote in an e-mail message Wednesday.
One trader I spoke with at a $10 billion hedge fund based in New York said that his computer executed 1,000 to 1,500 trades daily (although he noted that they were not what he called "intra-day" trades). His inch-thick employment contract precluded my using his name, but he did talk a little bit about his approach. "Our system has a touch of genetic theory and a touch of physics," he said. By genetic theory, he meant that his computer generates algorithms randomly, in the same way that genes randomly mutate. He then tests the algorithms against historical data to see if they work. He loves the challenge of cracking the behavior of something as complex as a market; as he put it, "It's like I'm trying to compute the universe." Like most quants, the trader professed disdain for the "sixth sense" of the traditional trader, as well as for old-fashioned analysts who spent time interviewing executives and evaluating a company's "story."
One common method that quants use to identify market opportunities is pairs trading. Pairs trading involves trying to find securities that rise in tandem, or that tend to go in opposite directions. If that relationship falters--if, say, the values of two stocks that travel together suddenly diverge--it's likely to indicate that one stock is undervalued or overvalued. Which stock is which is irrelevant: a trader who simultaneously bets that one will go up and the other one down will probably make money. It's a strategy that lends itself to the use of computers, which can sort through huge numbers of price correlations over many years of stored data--although the final decision to speculate on the relative pricing of paired stocks generally rests with a fund's managers. Quants have also been pursuing a strategy known as "capital structure arbitrage," which seeks to exploit inefficient pricing of a company's bonds versus its stocks. Again, computers do the searching, looking for instances where, for one reason or another, the securities are slightly misaligned. In a similar technique, Max Kogler, a principal at the newly launched MM Capital in New York, uses computers to look for inconsistencies in value between the option on an index fund and the options on the stocks that compose that index. Kogler has a master's from the University of Cambridge in pure mathematics with a focus on statistics. He says his algorithms look for "baskets of options that are not doing what they're supposed to be doing." When his computers find such a basket, he and his partners discuss whether or not to buy. Reporter: Mr. President, following up on Vladimir Putin for a moment, he said recently that next year, when he has to step down according to the constitution, as the president, he may become prime minister; in effect keeping power and dashing any hopes for a genuine democratic transition there ...
Bush: I've been planning that myself. "All of the institutions we thought would protect us -- particularly the press, but also the military, the bureaucracy, the Congress -- they have failedÖ So all the things that we expect would normally carry us through didn't. The biggest failure, I would argue, is the press, because that's the most glaringÖ. What can be done to fix the situation? [long pause] You'd have to fire or execute ninety percent of the editors and executives."
The Arithmetic of America's Military Bases Abroad: What Does It All Add Up to?
hnn.us/articles/3097.html One reason why the Pentagon is considering moving out of rich democracies like Germany and South Korea and looks covetously at military dictatorships and poverty-stricken dependencies is to take advantage of what the Pentagon calls their "more permissive environmental regulations."
The Arithmetic of America's Military Bases Abroad: What Does It All Add Up to?
hnn.us/articles/3097.html It's not easy to assess the size or exact value of our empire of bases. Official records on these subjects are misleading, although instructive. According to the Defense Department's annual "Base Structure Report" for fiscal year 2003, which itemizes foreign and domestic U.S. military real estate, the Pentagon currently owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries and has another 6,000 bases in the United States and its territories. Pentagon bureaucrats calculate that it would require at least $113.2 billion to replace just the foreign bases -- surely far too low a figure but still larger than the gross domestic product of most countries -- and an estimated $591,519.8 million to replace all of them. The military high command deploys to our overseas bases some 253,288 uniformed personnel, plus an equal number of dependents and Department of Defense civilian officials, and employs an additional 44,446 locally hired foreigners. The Pentagon claims that these bases contain 44,870 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and that it leases 4,844 more. These numbers, although staggeringly large, do not begin to cover all the actual bases we occupy globally. The 2003 Base Status Report fails to mention, for instance, any garrisons in Kosovo -- even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel, built in 1999 and maintained ever since by Kellogg, Brown & Root. The Report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, although the U.S. military has established colossal base structures throughout the so-called arc of instability in the two-and-a-half years since 9/11. For Okinawa, the southernmost island of Japan, which has been an American military colony for the past fifty-eight years, the report deceptively lists only one Marine base, Camp Butler, when in fact Okinawa "hosts" ten Marine Corps bases, including Marine Corps Air Station Futenma occupying 1,186 acres in the center of that modest-sized island's second largest city. (Manhattan's Central Park, by contrast, is only 843 acres.) The Pentagon similarly fails to note all of the $5-billion-worth of military and espionage installations in Britain, which have long been conveniently disguised as Royal Air Force bases. If there were an honest count, the actual size of our military empire would probably top 1,000 different bases in other people's countries, but no one -- possibly not even the Pentagon -- knows the exact number for sure, although it has been distinctly on the rise in recent years. Tomgram: Michael Schwartz, Iraq Policy Floating on a Sea of Oil
tomdispatch.com/post/174856/michael_schwartz_iraq_... PNAC-nurtured eyes were already turning to Iran by then as indicated by the classic prewar neocon quip, "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran."
An airstrike a day won't keep insurgents at bay. - By Fred Kaplan - Slate Magazine
www.slate.com/id/2176464/ From January to September of this year, according to unclassified data, U.S. Air Force pilots in Iraq have flown 996 sorties that involved dropping munitions. By comparison, in all of 2006, they flew just 229 such sorties—one-quarter as many. In 2005, they flew 404; in 2004, they flew 285. In other words, in the first nine months of 2007, Air Force planes dropped munitions on targets in Iraq more often than in the previous three years combined. Diplomats upset over forced postings to Iraq (10/31/07) -- www.GovernmentExecutive.com
govexec.com/dailyfed/1007/103107ap5.htm "It's one thing if someone believes in what's going on over there and volunteers, but it's another thing to send someone over there on a forced assignment," Crotty said. "I'm sorry, but basically that's a potential death sentence and you know it. Who will raise our children if we are dead or seriously wounded?" "You know that at any other (country) in the world, the embassy would be closed at this point," Crotty said to loud and sustained applause from the about 300 diplomats who attended the meeting in a large State Department auditorium. Thomas responded by saying the comments were "filled with inaccuracies" but did not elaborate until challenged by the head of the diplomats' union, the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), who like Crotty and others, demanded to know why many learned of the decision from news reports. Thomas took full responsibility for the late notification but objected when AFSA President John Naland said that a recent survey found that only 12 percent of the union's membership believed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was "fighting for them." "That's their right but they're wrong," Thomas said, prompting a testy exchange. "Sometimes if it's 88 to 12, maybe the 88 percent are correct," Naland said. "88 percent of the country believed in slavery at one time, was that correct?" shot back Thomas, who is black, in a remark that drew boos from the crowd. "Don't you or anybody else stand there and tell me I don't care about my colleagues. I am insulted," he added. From Bagels to Coal Fires: An Unorthodox Economist Keeps Pushing for Change - Freakonomics - Opinion
freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/from-bag... Underground coal fires in China alone produce as much carbon dioxide annually as all the cars and light trucks in the United States. Fires in other countries, including the United States, are smaller but still add significantly to the total burden.
Nintendo’s results keep getting better - A+E Interactive: Your Bay Area hangout for gaming, music,
blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2007/10/nintendos_result... Nintendo Co., Ltd. today reported sharply higher sales and profits for the half year ending Sept. 30, 2007, in comparison with the corresponding six-month term a year ago (see attached), and increased global hardware and software shipments projections for Wii and for Nintendo DS for the full fiscal year ending March 31, 2008. Correspondingly, the company again boosted full-year financial estimates, including another rise of 10% in projected global sales and 12% in estimated net profit beyond previous revisions announced on July 25. The following numbers represent changes in results from the corresponding April - September For the six-month period ending Sept. 30, 2007, the company shipped 7.33 million units of Wii hardware to its distributors or retail customers worldwide, increasing total life-to-date shipments to 13.17 million. For the second time in six months, Nintendo increased projected worldwide unit shipments of its Wii home video game system, to a fiscal year total of 17.5 million systems by March 31, 2008. Original fiscal year estimates of 14 million systems were previously increased to 16.5 million on July 25, 2007. Projected shipments of Wii software were also raised from the July 25 estimate of 72 million units to 97 million units. The company also boosted fiscal year unit forecasts for the portable Nintendo DS. Estimated global Nintendo DS hardware units rose from the July 25th 26 million-unit forecast to 28 million units, with software units increasing from 140 million to 165 million. Lifetime worldwide shipments of Nintendo DS hardware have now reached 53.6 million. Also, based on previous revisions announced July 25, 2007, Nintendo again Sales: +10% Finally, the expected annual dividend was raised from the previous Iraq - Kanan Makiya - Saddam Hussein - New York Times
www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/magazine/07MAKIYA-t.htm... I sat with Allawi for two hours, sharing coffee and chocolate pastries. It was a deeply depressing experience. Allawi tried as hard as any Iraqi to make a go of the new Iraq, and he is thoroughly disillusioned. He says he is resigned to the likelihood that Iraq will end up a sort of protectorate of the United States for the next several decades, not unlike the Philippines was for much of the 20th century — dependent, violent, crippled. “The history of the Philippines,” he noted, “is not a happy one.”
The wealthiest 1% of Americans earned 21.2% of all income in 2005, according to new data from the Internal Revenue Service. That is up sharply from 19% in 2004, and surpasses the previous high of 20.8% set in 2000, at the peak of the previous bull market in stocks.
Annals of National Security: Shifting Targets: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/10/08/071008fa_fa... In the Shiite view, the White House “only looks at Iran’s ties to Iraq in terms of security,” Nasr said. “Last year, over one million Iranians travelled to Iraq on pilgrimages, and there is more than a billion dollars a year in trading between the two countries. But the Americans act as if every Iranian inside Iraq were there to import weapons.”
Think Progress » The ‘Restore Patriotism to University Campuses Act’:
thinkprogress.org/2007/09/30/the-restore-patriotis... The ‘Restore Patriotism to University Campuses Act’:The name of Rep. Duncan Hunter’s (R-CA) bill to cut off all federal funds to Columbia University because of the Ahmadinejad speech. In the past few months, Google.org's family has grown exponentially, and we're pleased to welcome a group of "Nooglers" along with a few "Not-so-New-glers": Joining our Global Development team are Aleem Walji, John Lyman, Salimah Samji, and Swati Mylavarapu. An anthropologist and urban planner by training, Aleem comes to Google.org having served most recently as CEO of the Aga Khan Foundation in Syria. His specific interests lie in rural economic development, employment creation through financial services and entrepreneurship, and forming partnerships with private sector and civil society institutions. John is a graduate of UC Berkeley's Masters in Public Policy program. He previously worked on economic and development issues as the Center for American Progress and the Clinton Global Initiative. Born in Kenya, Salimah joins our team from the World Bank, where she served as specialist in social/rural development and monitoring and evaluation in India. She holds a Masters in Public Administration in International Development (MPAID) from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Swati is one of two Rhodes scholars to join our team. While at Oxford, Swati studied ethnic conflict and political competition in East Africa. She completed her undergraduate work at Harvard in International Development. Lant Pritchett continues to serve as an advisor to the Global Development team from his post teaching economic development at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
Michael Terrell and Adam Borelli are the newest members of our Energy and Climate Change team. Michael has served in a variety of positions within the Federal government and was a member of the White House environmental team during the Clinton Administration. Most recently, he served as the deputy chair of the Clinton Global Initiative's energy and climate change working group. Michael holds a J.D. from the University if Michigan, a Masters in Environmental Management from Yale's Environment School, and a B.S. in Natural Resources from the University of the South. Adam is a recent graduate of UC Berkeley, where he studied political economy, conducted research on working conditions in Mexico, and worked for the Alliance to Save Energy's Green Campus Program. In his free time, Adam runs a local nonprofit called the New Leaders Council. The Global Public Health team welcomes our other Rhodes scholar, Joanne Stevens, who completed her medical degree at the University of Cape Town and did her clinical rotations at Victoria Hospital in Cape Town. Her research includes two projects focused on South Africa: evaluating the health implications of pesticide use by emerging farmers, and understanding the political response to the country's physician brain drain. Working across our content teams are Frank Rijsberman, Shannon Oliver, and Julie Chin. Frank comes to Google.org after 7 years of living in Sri Lanka as the Director General/CEO of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). He led the transformation of IWMI from a small irrigation research organization to a world-class knowledge center on water, food and environment, with offices throughout Africa and Asia. His professional pride is in having set up some major global programs that will help poor people to grow more food with less water. Shannon obtained his B.S. in Political Science from Tuskegee University and his M.A. in Sustainable International Development from Brandeis University. Prior to joining Google, Shannon has traveled the world serving in various positions such as a Field Coordinator for the Carter Center in Lokichokio, Kenya, a Logistician for Doctors Without Borders in Sierra Leone, and as part of Catholic Relief Services served as an International Development Fellow in Serbia and Montenegro and a Program Manager in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Julie has a double bachelors in Computer Graphics and Art History from Stanford. During her time there, she studied abroad in Florence at the Accademia delle belle Arti. Julie joined Google in February 2002, the day before AdWords Select (now known as "AdWords Online") launched. Over time, she has transitioned to many groups mainly in on the product side of the business where she held positions as a Business Project Manager and Product Manager. Julie will focus her time on Google.org's early detection/early warning work. Rounding out the roster are Mayumi Matsuno, Christiaan Adams and Katy Bacon. Mayumi transitions from her role as a long-time Google Product Marketing Manager to Google.org, where she is figuring out how best to engage Google Inc. employees in our quest to address some of the world's biggest problems. KML expert Christiaan will be working with Google.org and Google Earth. Christiaan comes to us from MIT Sea Grant, where he worked on databases and online mapping for coastal resource management, as well as ocean engineering and education programs. He has a background in Environmental Engineering, Policy and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). He also brings with him Peace Corps experience from Cote d'Ivoire and a passion for environmental causes. Katy will be helping to manage our communication outreach efforts. A recent graduate of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, she has conducted research on women's health issues and the interaction between migration and trade policy. In college, she worked for politicians at several levels of government and served as a campus campaign manager for Teach for America. Canada should put its loonie pride on hold - Times Online
business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/columnists... The weak dollar is now clearly reversing the unsustainable patterns of the
recent past. The US current account deficit, which was above 7 per cent of
GDP last year, is now veritably tumbling – 5.8 per cent in the last quarter.
The fact that US growth is slower than Europe and Japan’s rate combined is
helping in this rebalancing, but so, too, is the 20 per cent depreciation of
the dollar since 2002.
Economics Blog : World-Wide Financial Risk in a Single Picture
blogs.wsj.com/economics/2007/09/25/world-wide-fina...  Presumed idiot criminal uploads pix of self from stolen iMac - Boing Boing
www.boingboing.net/2007/09/24/idiot-criminal-uploa... Update: A gem in the comments thread: "There should be a word for this, thinking you're getting away with something on the sly while the world laughs at you, anticipating your inevitable demise -- schadendouche?" [beatnik]
Is This the Wile E. Coyote Moment? - Paul Krugman - Op-Ed Columnist - New York Times Blog
krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/is-this-the-w... Krugman provides a linked article referring to Stein’s Law. Ironically, that article includes a quote from Dante which describes Krugman’s long-running prediction that the dollar would fall: “In life he wished to see too far before him, and now he must crab backwards round this track.” Accurately predicting the dollar’s value is something that cannot be done consistently, even by smarty-pants economists. Krugman’s experience suggests that if one predicts often enough, some day he’ll probably be right. Incidentally, in real life the dollar’s value rises or falls until the US’s trade deficit exactly offsets its capital accounts surplus. The reason the dollar’s value is falling now is NOT that the trade deficit has grown too large; in fact, the trade deficit’s been shrinking in recent months. Instead, the US’s capital accounts surplus has been declining due to: a) lackluster investment returns in the US since 2000 and b) the rise of new opportunities to invest abroad (China, S. America, E. Europe, etc.). The dollar fell in recent days after the Fed pushed US interest rates down relative to foreign rates. It’s possible that due to the Fed’s policy shift, the US economy begins to boom next winter and the following spring. If so, US stock prices are likely to appreciate . . . which would attract foreign investments to the US and drive up the dollar’s value. Since US stocks never go in one direction, it’s senseless to gloat at the “discovery” that the dollar’s value can decline, too. The question is whether Americans are better or worse off when the dollar’s value rises due to the spread of market economies (and alternative investment vehicles) in other, formerly communist/un-free nations. I think they are. Think Progress » Bush Administration Flooding Iraqi Black Market With Billions Of Dollars In Weapons
thinkprogress.org/2007/09/18/iraq-weapons/ Iraq is becoming one of the United States’ larger foreign military sales customers, committing some 1.6 billion (dollars) to FMS already, with the possibility of up to 1.8 billion (dollars) more being committed before the end of this year.
One Man's Unintended Detour Into the Cult of Bespoke - Fall Fashion 2007 -- New York Magazine
nymag.com/fashion/07/fall/36077/ This year, for instance, saw the opening of a Tribeca restaurant called Rosanjin, the first local ambassador of kaiseki—a Japanese dining concept where menus don’t exist and every course is saved in your private file, lest it be accidentally repeated on your next visit. In the perfume world, Mathilde Laurent, a famous nose who designed fragrances for Cartier, now does “custom scents” for no more than twelve clients a year, at $81,500 a pop; the process starts with a psychotherapy-style couch session wherein the client is invited to relax and recall the smells of her childhood. There’s a waiting list.
Fair Use Worth More to Economy Than Copyright, CCIA Says -- Copyright -- InformationWeek
informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?article... The $4.5 trillion in annual revenue attributable to fair use represents a 31% increase since 2002, according to the report, which claims that fair use industries are responsible for 18% of U.S. economic growth and almost 11 million American jobs.
A Data-Storage Titan Confronts Bias Claims - WSJ.com
online.wsj.com/article/SB118955478194424452.html?m... "Tech sales is predominantly a male environment," says Kelly Harman, managing director of Zephyr Strategy, a Manassas, Va., sales-consulting firm, and former chairwoman of the sales group of Women in Technology, a professional association. "It used to be a very testosterone-laden environment, like playing for a football team. You've had a bunch of white guys running around selling technology. They'll say, 'We won't change just to make you comfortable.' " Ms. Harman says she sees more technology companies working to have "a more balanced sales force."
Poll: Bin Laden tops Musharraf in Pakistan - CNN.com
www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/09/11/poll.pakistanis/in... According to poll results, bin Laden has a 46 percent approval rating. Musharraf's support is 38 percent. U.S. President George W. Bush's approval: 9 percent. Asked their opinion on the real purpose of the U.S.-led war on terror, 66 percent of poll respondents said they believe the United States is acting against Islam or has anti-Muslim motivation. Others refused to answer the question or said they did not know. Poll: Bin Laden tops Musharraf in Pakistan - CNN.com
www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/09/11/poll.pakistanis/in... After American relief efforts following the October 2005 earthquake in Pakistan's Kashmir region, 46 percent of Pakistanis had a positive opinion of the United States, according to the poll. But as of last month, only 19 percent reported a favorable opinion. Meanwhile, al Qaeda has a 43 percent approval rate; the Taliban has a 38 percent approval rate; and local radical extremist groups had an approval rating between 37 percent to 49 percent. Political Radar: High School Student to McCain: You're No Leader
blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/09/high-scho... Sleaster pressed on. “Do you support civil unions or gay marriage?” “I do not,” McCain answered. “I think that they impinge on the status and the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman.” “So you believe in taking away someone’s rights because you believe it’s wrong?” “I wouldn’t put that interpretation on my position, but I understand yours,” McCain said diplomatically. Sleaster went on to ask another question about how to help the working class in America, which McCain fielded by talking about the country’s need to figure out education and health care, and to secure the environment. Sleaster indicated that he wanted to follow up again. “You have one more? Go ahead you’re doing good,” McCain encouraged. “I came here looking to see a leader,” Sleaster said. “I don’t.” Informed Comment: Sistani Aides Held by JAM <br> Muqtada freezes Paramilitary for 6 months<p>
www.juancole.com/2007/08/sistani-aides-held-by-jam... My guess is that Muqtada realizes that his men went too far, in trying to take the shrine of Imam Husayn by main force, and in disrupting a major Shiite festival. These actions would be highly unpopular in the Shiite street, and could cost Muqtada some of his otherwise impressive popularity in the South. Aljazeera showed him speaking in Najaf, by the way, putting the lie to Bush administration allegations that he had gone into hiding in Iran (that was just a smear, since he prides himself on his Iraq nationalism).
Dangers of a Turbocharged Economy - New York Times
www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/business/02shelf.html?e... In passing, Mr. Reich comes out in favor of decoupling health insurance from employers and raising the minimum wage to about half the average worker’s wage. He mentions runaway C.E.O. pay but offers no prescriptions.
Dangers of a Turbocharged Economy - New York Times
www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/business/02shelf.html?e... Public-relations skirmishes are no substitute for democracy. The ritual scolding of corporations in front of Congressional committees, Mr. Reich says, goes hand in hand with Congress’s failure to pass follow-up laws that reward businesses for safeguarding the environment or walking away from deals with serial human rights abusers. Washington is all about the money, he writes. In 2005, the Census Bureau listed seven suburban counties around the capital as among the 20 richest in the country. And it’s not just Republicans cashing in on their service. “Upon leaving office,” he notes, “more than half of the senior officials in the Clinton administration became corporate lobbyists.” Economics Blog : Americans Top Productivity Charts
blogs.wsj.com/economics/2007/09/02/americans-top-p... About 1.5 billion people, or half of those in the labor market, are considered “vulnerable to poverty,” largely working without key protections such as social security or bargaining power, the U.N. report said. Almost 1.3 billion working-age people were labeled “working poor,” living with their families on less than $2 per day per family member. Americans continued to work longer than people in most developed nations, putting in more than 1,800 hours of work on average last year. Numerous Asian economies — South Korea, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, China, Malaysia and Thailand — had workers each putting in more than 2,200 hours a year on average. Workers in most European countries came in at the other end: those in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden each put in less than 1,600 hours per year.
15 companies that will change the world - Expensr (3) - Business 2.0
money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/biz2/0708/gallery.nex... Combine the utility of software like Quicken with the social power of Web 2.0, and you have Expensr - a free online service that tracks your budget and spending habits, then shows you how you're doing compared to your peers. "That's the idea behind the social network," says co-founder Shawn Gupta, "to help you do better by making you aware of what other people like you are doing."
Grameen Foundation focuses on innovative solutions to help microfinance scale up and reach the more than one billion people still forced to subsist on less than $1 a day. Our Grameen Technology Center is a recognized global leader in information and communications technology initiatives dedicated exclusively to advancing microfinance. Founded in 2001, it is as an outgrowth of Professor Yunus' successful technology initiatives in Bangladesh. To help microfinance reach its full potential, we are driving industry-changing innovations that increase the efficiency of microfinance institutions' operations, create new microbusiness opportunities for the poor, and provide telecommunications access for the world's rural poor.
In fact, the problem starts in 2018, when the revenues from the payroll tax will be below the expenditures in the form of benefits sent to retirees. At that point the system begins to draw down the "trust fund." That "trust fund" is a complete fraud. By law, the surplus of revenues over expenditure for the Social Security system must be "invested" in government bonds, which are nothing more than promises to pay out of future tax revenues. That means that in 2018, when the revenue stream goes negative, the bonds in the trust fund will have to be cashed in and that means that they have to be financed from general revenues, which means through a tax increase, cuts in government spending, or some combination of the two -- precisely as if no "trust fund" existed at all. The trust fund is a trick, a shell game to cover up what Paul Krugman rightly called (before Bush became president) a "Ponzi game." It's a fraud on top of a fraud.
Let's look at the issue of debt and accounting. Social Security has both an income stream and an outlay stream. The two are supposed to be related. The difference between the two, in present value terms, is $11.9 trillion. Although that represents obligations of the federal government, it is not currently included in the national debt. It's an "unfunded liability," i.e., an obligation to pay, which we normally call "a debt," but it is not counted as such under the federal government's current accounting rules. If a private firm were to do that, the officers would likely find themselves facing criminal charges. If we openly treat the obligation as what it is, it does not mean that we have just increased the national debt by $11.9 trillion. We've just recognized what it is. Recognizing the debt while creating a means to cut it roughly in half is not an increase in net indebtedness, but a decrease.
Calls Grow for Foreigners to Have a Say on U.S. Market Rules - New York Times
www.nytimes.com/2007/08/29/business/worldbusiness/... President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, who has vowed to “moralize financial capitalism,” has asked his finance minister, Christine Lagarde, to prepare a proposal for stricter disclosure rules on market participants before an October meeting of finance ministers from the Group of 7. On Monday, in a foreign policy speech, Mr. Sarkozy called again for stronger global regulations to avoid financial crises.
Economics Blog : Fed Paper Looks at Yield Curve-Recession Connection
blogs.wsj.com/economics/2007/08/29/fed-paper-looks... Wouldn’t the owners of long-term capital investing in short term securities lower the price of the long term securities (raising their yield) and then raise the price of short term securities (lowering their yield)? The reason why the inverted yield curve is a good predictor of recessions is because it indicates that the market is being manipulated. If the interest rates in our country were not controlled by a central bank then an inverted yield curve would probably never happen. The federal reserve artificially inflates the money supply, this makes it easier for institutions to make long term loans to, for example, home buyers. Eventually their standards for lending become very low and vehicles such as interest only mortgatges become popular because the bankers are trying to lock in long term returns and they need to compete with each other. Long term rates eventually go down a lot because of this competition. Asset prices rise, risk tolerance goes up, prices keep rising, Fed realizes they put to much money into the system (INFLATION) and they raise the interest rates. Money becomes more scarce, asset prices fall and hence a “recession” happens. The people being hurt by what is happening now took credit they could not afford unless asset prices rose. The government should let nature take its course and let the bankers who were irresponsible pay for their hubris Economics Blog : Fed Paper Looks at Yield Curve-Recession Connection
blogs.wsj.com/economics/2007/08/29/fed-paper-looks... This is why the yield curve accurately forecasts future economic activity: Short-term rates (I prefer to use the fed funds rate) are set by a group of appointed officials (the FOMC) and reflect the immediate demand for and supply of liquidity. Long-term rates are set by the owners of long-term capital in a market too large to be controlled. When the yield curve inverts it is because rational players in the long-term capital markets know that short-term rates are higher than the sustainable (and acceptable) returns available in the economy.
Why would anyone place more confidence in an econometric forecast than the dollar-weighted votes of those who actually control the world’s capital? Economics Blog : Fed Paper Looks at Yield Curve-Recession Connection
blogs.wsj.com/economics/2007/08/29/fed-paper-looks... The conclusions are at odds with the views of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, who believes the yield curve isn’t as good a recession predictor as it once was. “I would not interpret the currently very flat yield curve as indicating a significant economic slowdown to come,” he said early last year. In the past, when the yield curve was inverted, short-term rates were “quite high,” but now, they aren’t. Second, the flattening could result from a structural fall in the “term premium,” that is the additional return investors require for holding long as opposed to short-term debt securities.
Physical Laws: Mathemeticians Figure Out What Makes Women Beautiful - Gizmodo
gizmodo.com/gadgets/physical-laws/mathemeticians-f... A WHR of 0.7 for women and 0.9 for men have been shown to correlate strongly with general health and fertility. Scientists have discovered that the waist-hip ratio (WHR) is a significant factor in judging female attractiveness. Women with a 0.7 WHR are usually rated as more attractive by men from European cultures.
China Pays Steep Price As Textile Exports Boom - WSJ.com
online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118580938555882301... The Fuan campus resembles a bustling minicity where bicycles share the streets with forklifts and pallet trucks, and laundry hangs out the windows of worker dormitories. Inside the factory buildings, rows of workers in matching yellow jackets spin cotton thread into billowing sheets of fabric on clacking mechanized knitting machines. On a steamy upper floor, workers in rubber boots dunk the fabric into giant stainless-steel vats of pink and turquoise dye. In gleaming tiled laboratories nearby, workers in white coats run quality checks on finished fabric. One worker tests fabric for colorfastness by dabbing artificial saliva from a beaker onto fabric that will be used in baby clothes.
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