Kind of on an economics kick today
Been reading a lot of articles today on economics and/or the state of politics and the economy.
Many are quite long, but thanks to Instapaper and flipboard I’ve posted links to them thought the day. See if you can see the common thread running through these articles.
Why Apple's products are 'Designed in California' but 'Assembled in China'
Chris Rawson, tuaw.com
Look at the back of your iPhone, or your iPad, or on the bottom of your Mac. You’ll see the following words embossed somewhere: “Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China.” Many Americans, all the way up to the President…
How U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work
Apple once bragged that its products were made in America. But it has since shifted its immense manufacturing work overseas, posing questions about what corporate America owes Americans.
Source: The New York Times
Chefs, Butlers, Marble Baths: Hospitals Vie for the Affluent
Private chefs prepared to cook anything, elegant surroundings and even butlers are among the amenities in lavish suites of some hospitals.
Source: The New York Times
In a Romney Believer, Private Equity’s Risks and Rewards
The merits of private equity firms, like Marc J. Leder’s Sun Capital, have come into question again because of Mitt Romney’s time at the firm Bain Capital.
Source: The New York Times
We are a liberal society. We are composed of liberal beliefs. Democracy is liberal. Education is liberal. Freedoms are liberal. The First Amendment is liberal. Separation of Church and State is liberal. Innocent until proven guilty is liberal. Our socialist society of civil servants is liberal. Social Security and Medicare are liberal. Free markets correcting themselves is liberal. Freedom of religion is liberal.
Conservatives get to live in this liberal socialist society with all its great and not so great standards. Instead of building on this society as whole, their politicians, pundits, and talking heads find ways to exploit cultural ‘tribal thinking’ and insecurities in certain pockets of the country and develop wedge issues and identity politics to gain supporters.
Their collective goal is to eliminate the very principles and ‘social justices’ that have been in place for centuries. They get to run against liberal ideals they can never eliminate, and for that, the idea that “liberalism” having to be stopped, becomes a meaningless, mindless dogma of the politically confused. You can’t stop it. It is an intrinsic part of the entire country.
Yet, with this canard of “if only we could get rid of liberals”, they yearn to “restore” the country to a time that never really existed. That only they can accomplish. Beware of such ideologies. Conservative Kool-Aid is not the answer. The nature of our country is to include everyone. To take care of those who need help. In this tough economy, now is not the time to forget.
Douglas/liberalsarecool
(via inothernews)
Source: liberalsarecool.com
One of these guys is wrong
One of my “must see” daily websites is macsurfer.com. Today I came across 2 headlines listed right on top of each other:
From bgr.com: web traffic patterns suggest iPad was a dud this holiday season
And…
From macdailynews.com: ad network numbers suggest apples iPad had a massive Christmas
Clearly, one of these is wrong. Both linked articles cite the same data from Chitika Insights. However, bgr.com simply regurgitates the Chitika data and conclusion (that iPads did not sell well for Christmas) while macdailynews.com, actually tries to interpret the data and comes to the (correct) conclusion:
If 1 million Kindle Fires were being seen by Chitika and they increase by 122% after Christmas, then that’s a total of 1.22 million new Kindle Fires that were unwrapped, turned on, and measured > by Chitika…. if 40 million iPads were being seen by Chitika before Christmas and iPad shows a 28% increase (or whatever percentage that graphic is trying to show) after Christmas, then 11.2 million new iPads were unwrapped
Which leads me to two points:
First, lies damn lies and statistics. Chitikas data on first glance looks like it actually supports the fact that more kindles were opened on Christmas than iPads. But, when you actually apply some critical reasoning to the data, you realize it’s just not true.
Second, kudos to mac daily news for being smart. Shame on bgr.com for being dumb.
My thoughts exactly
Thanks GRR Martin for turning me into a terrible person.
ugh srsly
Source: gingerhaze
Poor Cousin: thought on 90WPM: Seeing It
Really good post on the whole android vs. iOS debate, the flames of which have been fanned by the war between MG Siegler and Josh Topolsky. Recommend you go check it out, but I wanted to add a bit to this:This point about android reviewers comparing android to iOS and dismiss Android as iOS’s poor cousin: what I really think pisses the android camp off is because they know: Apple got there first and does it better for the average user.Topolsky is clearly pissed off. It’s easy to dismiss his post as yet another Android reviewer ranting about Apple-centric bloggers, but if you listen to the core of his argument, he’s voicing a common objection from the Android camp: that reviewers who regularly praise Apple products are generally dismissive of Android devices, cherry-picking the worst failures as evidence that Android Just Isn’t There Yet.
Android is simply a copy (good or bad, you decide) of iOS. Like it or not, no matter what the outcome of the iOS v Android platform wars, history will record that Android, like windows before it, is simply a copy of Apple innovation. In fact, even more so (Bill Gates had a small point when he noted that Apple simply took Mac OS from Xerox).
I think this is what really drives the hatred. The need to believe that Android innovation is superior to Apple.
Personally, I have had iPhones since they were introduced, upgrading them as time went along to iPhone 4s. A few months back, I got 3 Nexus S phones to replace the iPhones. Nearly a day does not go by where my wife and kids do not beg me to go back to the iPhone. Android is just alien to them - they have trouble using it for anything more than making phone calls (and sometimes they have trouble doing that).
I freely admit that I am an Apple fanboy, but my family is not (I’ve heard pleas for windows from them for years) but after 5 months with the Android phones, they know that for them, iPhones are better. If you were to ask them why, they probably couldn’t say anything more detailed than the iPhone just works better. And that reason is why (despite marketshare, tech specs, number of apps) Android is considered iOS’s poor cousin.
Source: 90wpm
Young Adult
Browsing through goodreads.com and come across their year in review and discover that young adult (YA) titles where some of the most read books of the year.
I dont get it. Unless english teachers and librarians across the world are forcing kids to buy these books and sign up for goodreads.com why are actual adults so smitten with these types of books? Am I missing something about the category?
Now, I understand the occasional YA title becoming popular (e.g. Harry Potter) , but is the world of fiction so barren or adults of the world so emotionally and intellectually stunted that theyd rather read books written for kids?
I read somewhere that statistically men dont read and that the majority of books published these days are bought and read by women. So, I guess what I am asking is why so many women want to read books for kids.
Clueless I guess.
