Orion Jones

One of my parents works in a cardiologist practice, one of my siblings is a nurse and I myself am covered by the Spanish public healthcare system. While ours views […]

After President Obama addressed Congress about healthcare reform (that would be the You Lie! speech), a live Q & A was hosted by White House Communications Director, Anita Dunn. Demonstrating […]

The G20 is in Pittsburg, but the world economy seems to have skipped town.  Nobody can find it anywhere—just some old clothes and pieces of straw. The U.S. Dollar is […]

One idea proposed to help keep news organizations afloat amidst the stormy seas of free online content has been micropayments. Imagine an iTunes for the news world: you pay between […]

The e-reader business is burgeoning. The New York Times reports that sales of e-readers are predicted to increase by 500 percent this year, from one million to over five million. […]

The U.S. Department of Justice has filed its opinion on Google Book’s proposed settlement with the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers concerning its massive digitization project which aspires […]

Eyewitness news is an old phenomenon for local television stations: a citizen’s video recording of a gas station robbery, or some such sensational event, becomes free “news” for the station, […]

Some career journalists must feel like disenfranchised aristocracy. The high overhead of printing and distribution used to make quality content as rare, and therefore as valuable, as gold. But today, […]

A year and a day after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, everybody—really, every single person I’ve heard comment from—is lamenting the lack of financial reform on Wall Street. Healthcare reform […]

If knowledge is power, then Google is the New York Yankees, CIA and Vitali Klitschko rolled into one. As the internet juggernaut maintains its dominance online, its influence on the […]

History is a car that doesn’t go in reverse. While my liberal-minded friends celebrated Obama as the end of expanding executive privilege, I knew we could never go back. Likewise, […]

Yesterday, while Americans were enjoying Labor Day on their myriad lawns and porches, we Europeans were (relatively) hard at work. The European Commission sat down yesterday to review Google Book’s […]

Each day the Internet feels like a newly published set of encyclopedias. So much new content, only about 16 waking hours to take it in, and really it’s only a […]

Next Tuesday, September 8th, to mark the start of the school year, President Obama will make a speech about the importance of taking responsibility for one’s education and setting goals […]

The Columbia Journalism Review recently noted that while the number of newspaper jobs is decreasing steadily, enrollment in graduate schools of journalism is climbing. It seems more people want to […]

Recap: The Internet made previously paid-for content suddenly free and vendors who relied on the profitability of the written, spoken and video recorded word are struggling to stay afloat. Journalism […]

If you didn’t know about the magnitude of the Google Library Project, you’re not alone. In 1994, Google began approaching major libraries offering to digitize their stacks with an eye […]

The story of the U.S. Patent Office official who resigned his post in the 19th century because he believed there was nothing left to invent makes a point about human […]

The honeymoon of new American liberalism begun by Obama’s presidential election seems to have died with Ted Kennedy. Reflections on the Lion of the Senate seem to come in three […]

When someone talks about the effects of climate change, they usually begin with annual rainfall amounts, crop yield, shifting temperature zones (obviously) and other direct effects on humanity’s well-being. But […]

An article from the New Scientist claims that people’s barriers to thinking more greenly are mostly psychological. People are more likely to adopt green attitudes if (1) they think their […]

New developments concerning two of my previous posts demonstrate how financial strategies (the same kinds we lament Wall Street has been using) are being implemented in the art world. The […]

The New Times’ Art Beat blog has been covering J.D. Salinger’s attempt to prevent an alleged sequel to his famous “Catcher in the Rye” from being sold in the U.S. […]

If you think American insurance companies have a morbid business plan, consider Hollywood estate managers. While legal maneuvering continues over the rights to Michael Jackson’s estate, the King of Pop […]

The National Endowment for the Arts has a new director and a new slogan—forget “A Great Nation Deserves Great Art”. Late last week Broadway producer Rocco Landesman was confirmed by […]

When you want to see art, that contemporary expression of the human essence, do you find some stand-up comedy in an events bulletin or do you head for a gallery? […]

Just when you thought the contemporary art world couldn’t get any more contrarian, it has begun disrespecting the economic facts of our time. Amidst the biggest financial crisis since the […]

No, I’m not promoting a fight between two futuristic boxers. I’m talking about the publishing industry and how Sunday afternoons of the future will be spent. Will Gutenberg’s printing press […]

Considering how much attention the media pays to celebrities when they’re alive, it seems inevitable that the death of Michael Jackson will set a new precedent in wrangling over a […]

Iranian expats living in Spain have recently illuminated the backdrop of the YouTube and Twitter main stage by which the Iranian elections are currently understood. Speaking with several of them […]