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From the belly of the beast, redstate.com, a realization that Mitt Romney’s electability argument is hogwash:
Seriously, putting it bluntly, conservatives may not like Barack Obama, but most other people do. And when faced with a guy you like and a guy you don’t like who says he can fix an economy that no longer needs fixing, you’re going to go with the guy you like.
Don’t usually link to conservative websites, but this is worth a read.
Personally, I’m pretty confident that unless Europe’s economy melts down or Israel unilaterally attacks Iran, Barak Obama will be re-elected handily.
This has been making the rounds (h/t @rnerd). What’s your reason?
Looks like John Gruber got around to finishing the Walter Isaacson Steve Jobs Biography. His conclusion is spot on:
It’s not just that Isaacson was wrong about something; it’s that he was wrong about the most important thing in Jobs’s career. There’s a decades-long story arc about the software system started at NeXT that Isaacson completely misses.
Sad that the one guy who gets to talk to Steve Jobs for history turns out to be so totally technologically ignorant that he misses the entire point of the man’s career.
I agree with Gruber that Isaacson gets the personal part of Steve Job’s life but he misses the opportunity to correctly question Steve Jobs about his work because he just doesn’t get it.
If Isaacson has any duty to history, he needs to make his notes and tapes available so that someone who actually knows something about technology can write the story of why Steve Jobs brought Apple back from the dead.
Great read and proof why longreads is awesome:
The search for an amateur philosopher who anonymously paid university professors thousands of dollars to review his work:
The institute’s letter claimed that a “very substantial sum” had been earmarked to help contribute to “the revival of traditional metaphysics.” Given the number of philosophers involved, that sum was at least in the neighborhood of $125,000. Who could afford to spend that much money on philosophy? And of those who could, who would want to? No one had a clue.
To judge from both the reviewer’s contract and “Coming to Understanding” itself, the institute meant business. For one thing, the manuscript, signed by one A.M. Monius, suggested the handiwork of a serious thinker—not a prankster. “It didn’t seem like a joke,” Zimmerman says. ‘“t wasn’t that funny. It was clearly the work of a fairly able writer—a smart person, one capable of making some gross philosophical errors while at the same time having some clever ideas.”
“The Mystery of the Millionaire Metaphysician.” — James Ryerson, Lingua Franca (2001)
See also: “Cass Sunstein Wants to Nudge Us.” — Benjamin Wallace-Wells, New York Times, May 13, 2010
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.
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.
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.
Speculators drive cotton price volatility, hurting farmers and consumers | McClatchy -
(via Instapaper)
The Left-Behinds - Michael Hirsh - NationalJournal.com -
(via Instapaper)
Can Jeremy Grantham Profit From Ecological Mayhem? - NYTimes.com -
(via Instapaper)
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)
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.