The argument over pseudonyms–the “nym wars”–is at the heart of Salman Rushdie’s recent tussle with Facebook and how the Internet might be organized in the future.
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Seth Godin takes marketers to task over their failure to adjust to the internet revolution which has seen the cost of cost of a new customer plunge, in some cases to close to zero.
As NYC police attempt to clear Zuccotti Park of the Occupy Wall Street protesters, it seems appropriate to reconsider who OWS is and what they want. To me, their goals […]
Wondered why your favorite Web page gets hung up or downloading of a large file inexplicably stalls? It’s often due to telecom operator using a technique called throttling.
Move away from the idea of getting people to click on ads and learn from sites which have generated a huge amount of loyalty online—like Drudge, Reddit, Techmeme and Fark.
Another issue we’ll address at the big conference at Berry College this Thursday and Friday is the erosion or even implosion of our health care and entitlement systems. According to […]
To avoid the German air force bombing Paris, the French built a fake version of their capital
What’s the Big Idea? Can economics explain everything? Some people have attempted to make that claim, but not Paul Krugman, who labels such a view “academic imperialism.” Krugman, who won […]
The political courtship ritual some have called “speed-dating” has featured a revolving door of Republican alternatives to Mitt Romney: Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain. With a sexual harassment scandal […]
It’s dangerous business calling any tech innovation idiotic these days. The next thing you know, the company’s worth $50 billion. But it is hard to imagine many (hearing) people beyond […]
Retailers and their suppliers are about to see real and lasting change to the size of their businesses. Not necessarily in sales but in physical size. The future is small […]
It seems the prospect of a two-tier Europe is growing stronger. But there is already a three-tier one, in fact. The European Union is about as united as a conference of anarchists.
The “I’m stronger than you on national security” saber-rattling by Democrats and Republicans is cheap and dangerous, yet many Americans are sucked in by it.
In the middle-to-long term, the Iranian state can’t keep ignoring that democracy and human rights, not independence alone, are the measure of successful governance in the Arab world.
The Obama administration regards Asia as the defining competition of the next century. But instead of looking east, the U. S. really needs to look south–it needs Latin America.
Once upon a time it was Uncle Sam who came to the rescue of other nations but eyes are on Beijing to save Europe. America is not ‘over’ but let’s acknowledge its heyday has passed.
A former British Prime Minister, James Callaghan, once warned that sudden squalls could blow into major storms and often from unexpected places. Not very long afterwards, the Argentinians began to […]
Author Sara Zarr has big ideas. Her books tackle huge themes with beautiful, realistic prose that cuts to the heart of her characters. Last week on author Nova Ren Suma’s blog, Zarr posted about […]
I just got back from a glorious week in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. John Nash and I were consulting with two different local grassroots NGOs. Our role was to help build […]
In one of those strange collisions between leatherbound Literature and paperless modern news, Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener” was read aloud at Occupy Wall Street on Friday. Not only that, […]
Economists’ long-held concept of the rational consumer, whose always acts in his or her self interests and whose tastes never change, has been sufficiently disproven by psychologists.
Despite the media attention drawn by Rick Perry’s brain freeze in the last Republican debates, scientists say it is not evidence of an intellectual dificiency or mental problem.
I don’t usually watch the Black In America series, but I will tonight because one of the entrepreneurs in The New Promised Land- Silicon Valley episode is Angela Benton, a […]
The world population, by U.N. estimates, has just surpassed seven billion, and it’s growing even faster than demographers’ predictions. Nicholas Kristof has an insightful column (though I depart from him […]
Andrew Sullivan quotes this passage from Jennifer Fulwiler’s account of her conversion to Catholicism from atheism: If everything that we call heroism and glory, and all the significance of all […]
White America is divided between those who are comfortable with the influx of immigrants from other countries and those who feel they threaten the American way of life. Obama’s race […]
I gave the case for some kind of kidney markets in my last post. The limited commodification of that particular part of the body is the only way, for now, for […]
“Life,” my brother-in-law tells me, “is 90 percent maintenance.” I’ve no complaints about my husband’s chore contribution in our marriage. Our “dreariness index” as I call it seems fair enough. […]
Brain enhancement pills are widely available though they are meant to be a controlled substance. Researchers are increasingly interested in a pill that could benefit society.
If people don’t listen to you, it’s not that they don’t respect you—it could be how you’re phrasing your request, suggests a new study published in Psychological Science.