Author: tom

Scanning brains for evidence of politics

From the New York Times: He lay inside an M.R.I. machine, watching commercials playing on the inside of his goggles as neuroscientists from the University of California, Los Angeles, measured the blood flow in his brain. Instead of asking the…

Outsourcing and brain drain

It’s OK when we lure the best and the brightest away from their homelands, but it sucks when their homelands lure them back. The problem is not the inevitable transfer of certain business functions to where they can most efficiently…

Why we do this, part #134

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, who says there’s never been a famine in a country with a free press, describes the connections between a free press and a just society. The first – and perhaps the most elementary – connection concerns…

USA Today discovers Iraqi bloggers

Here’s the scoop. What’s interesting to me about the Iraqi bloggers is not their actions, but their audience — judging from the comments at the blogs I’ve seen, the readers are mostly Americans desperate to be told what they want…

Required reading for newsies

William Greider on our inability to remember. The war in Iraq is different from Vietnam in one fundamental respect: A substantial portion of Americans (and others around the world) were in the streets protesting this venture before the shooting started.…

When pictures become news

Newsdesigner shows the Seattle Times Sunday front page. I’m guessing it took the editors at the Times about three thousandths of a second to decide on their lead art. The objective description: some people in an airplane’s cargo hold tend…

Tim Porter posts, at long last

He’s been away for a few weeks … today he weighed in on why management is so crappy at so many newspapers. I have become increasingly convinced in the last few months, however – persuaded by interviews with dozens of…

Have a Danish on us

Turns out Denmark is the Web-savviest of all nations, and the U.S. of A. isn’t even in the top five. Must be their porn is better than ours. Link via editorsweblog.

Mark Cuban on the stock market

The owner of the Dallas Mavericks talks about how things are really done on Wall Street. Must reading for market dabblers. Link via Trader Mike, owner of one of the best stock market blogs going.

For all you dial-up users

The New York Times says you have lots of company. Up to now, the market for high-speed connections has been dominated by the young, educated, affluent and tech-savvy. In some circles, it is considered not just functional, but an essential…