Category — General

Job-Creation Arithmetic. Paul Krugman writes, The average American worker earns only about $40,000 per year; why does the administration, even on its… [EconLog: Library of Economics and Liberty]

Statistics are why economics is called the dismal science. You can find some sort of number to justify totally opposite actions. ALthough the inaccuracy detailed here is pretty obvious, the difficulty for most of us is that the numbers usually are not so. Discussing averages when medians should be used. Saying things like “The top 1% will receive 90% of the money”, etc. just serve to obfuscate the issue. I feel like I am listening to a phone ad where they make everything so confusing that you just give up and do not try to change anything. If there was ever a place for Emergent Democracy, dealing with the spin of economics is it. [A Man with a Ph.D. - Richard Gayle's Weblog]

interesting post about how this set of tax cuts could work… rich get richer, poor well, due to inflation and everythign else get poorer.

The Ohio legislature is considering a bill that wo …. The Ohio legislature is considering a bill that would prohibit state agencies from publishing any electronic information that is provided by two or more commercial publishers, even if the information was generated with taxpayer support and even if (or perhaps I should say, especially if) the commercial publishers charge fees for accessing the information and the state agencies provide it free of charge. The bill has nine co-sponsors, all Republicans. According to Mary Alice Baish of the American Association of Law Libraries, the bill was drafted by the Americal Legislative Exchange Council, a national organization of conservative state legislators. Similar bills have been introduced in a handful of other states but so far defeated in each one. I quote, and second, these words of Baish: “This bill threatens the right of residents in Ohio from accessing state government information, created with their tax dollars, at no cost through the Internet. It is an abhorrent model that must be stopped short. Please get involved, especially if you have members in Ohio who can respond immediately to this serious threat.” (Thanks to Scholcomm and C-FIT.) [FOS News]

neo-liberalism gone mad.

Ridiculously Easy Thought Sharing.

Alf Eaton: “Thinkbot is an easy way to find other people who are thinking about the same things as you. I call it Ridiculously Easy Thought Sharing. I hope it works.”

If I'm not mistaken, this is “The modified Reed's Law meets Jabber“. Here are precursor and follow-up posts on this new ridiculously easy service.

[Seb's Open Research]

this is a good idea, but now if we could tie in other tools into jabber bots….

Scholar vs Blogger. Matt Yglesias worries that my blog might prevent me from getting tenure by making it look as though I’m not… [Kieran Healy's Weblog]

looking at this vita, i doubt it will even be a question.

Helping Graduates Outwit Hard Times. Trudy Steinfeld tells thousands of N.Y.U. graduates each year that it is not hard to land a job so long as they take a shrewd approach to their search. By Steven Greenhouse. [New York Times: Education]

second paragraph from the bottom, it's all about money.

TURN OFF YOUR TV week

The KeyPaso – a computer in a keyboard.

New computer called the KeyPaso that's contained entirely within a keyboard, so all that's needed is a monitor.
Read [Translated from Japanese using Babelfish]

[Gizmodo]

It's a commodore 64, i've seen it before…. honest.

Sub-$1000 universal disc player.

From Denon, the first so-called single disc universal player to drop below a thousand bucks. These universal players can handle just about anything that's shiny and five inches in diameter, including Super Audio CDs, DVD-Audio discs, CDs, CD-Rs, CD-RWs, DVD-R, DVD-RW, and DVD-video discs.
Read

[Gizmodo]

nifty, now if we could just store about 50 of these away for 40 years or so….

Not Exactly Darwin's Radio: Philosophy Radio and Philosophy Lectures. Philosophy Radio and Philosophy Lectures

Among many selections are Relativism and Scepticism, Ethics and Morality ,The Origins of Value, Heidegger's Being and Time, Memes, Zombies and Human Consciousness, The Soul In Our Time and a football match between Grecian and German philosophers. We call it soccer. There's more comedy featuring a pseudointellectual cult leader beloved by privileged prep school students and college freshmen everywhere and stavrosthewonderchicken has recommended The Philosophers Drinking Song. Miguel has his picks, too. I found this while researching my I Feel Therefore I Am post yesterday and mentioned it in a comment but, heck, it deserves its own post, no?

[MetaFilter]

mmm philosophy humor

one humanism or another is fine by me.