February 2012
4 posts
Solitude to tend one's garden →
But if there is one theme that weaves through all the different causes, it is this: The maximization of talent. People want more space to develop their own individual talents. They want more flexibility to explore their own interests and develop their own identities, lifestyles and capacities. They are more impatient with situations that they find stifling.
Could AMLO do it? « The Mex Files →
One thing that didn’t cross my mind at the time was that AMLO was just a bit ahead of the curve… #OccupyReforma in 2006 had a more than single purpose political party agenda, questioning the entire premise of the nation’s control by the elites. That kind of street action may have been seen as an unconscionable imposition on suburban commuters back then, but like everywhere else on the planet...
Hard Truths About Disclosure - NYTimes.com →
When the Food and Drug Administration in the 1990s first mandated that drug makers list medicines’ side effects in order to advertise prescription drugs, there was a firestorm of protest from the industry. Now the litany of side effects that follows every promotion is so mind-numbing — drowsiness, insomnia, loss of appetite, weight gain — as to make the message meaningless.
January 2012
8 posts
The Future of History →
The main trends in left-wing thought in the last two generations have been, frankly, disastrous as either conceptual frameworks or tools for mobilization. Marxism died many years ago, and the few old believers still around are ready for nursing homes. The academic left replaced it with postmodernism, multiculturalism, feminism, critical theory, and a host of other fragmented intellectual trends...
The Future of History →
In earlier phases of industrialization — the ages of textiles, coal, steel, and the internal combustion engine — the benefits of technological changes almost always flowed down in significant ways to the rest of society in terms of employment. But this is not a law of nature. We are today living in what the scholar Shoshana Zuboff has labeled “the age of the smart machine,” in which technology...
The Future of History →
Economic class, moreover, turned out not to be a great banner under which to mobilize populations in advanced industrial countries for political action. The Second International got a rude wake-up call in 1914, when the working classes of Europe abandoned calls for class warfare and lined up behind conservative leaders preaching nationalist slogans, a pattern that persists to the present day.
Mexico’s do-nothing legislature: The siesta... →
Building coalitions is harder in Mexico, where congressmen are wedded to their parties and hard to buy off. No politician, from president to mayor, may stand for consecutive re-election. This quirk means that politicians depend on party bosses, not voters, for their next job, making it essential to toe the party line. (Mr Calderón’s political reform included re-election, but was crushed in...
The problem for the content industry →
“The problem for the content industry is they just don’t know how to mobilize people,” said John P. Feehery, a former House Republican leadership aide who previously worked at the motion picture association. “They have a small group of content makers, a few unions, whereas the Internet world, the social media world especially, can reach people in ways we never dreamed of before.”
"Is to close off substantial parts of the Internet... →
The obvious strategy in the fight for a piece of the advertising pie is to close off substantial parts of the Internet so Google doesn’t see it all anymore. That’s how Facebook hopes to make money, by sealing off a huge amount of user-generated information into a separate, non-Google world. Networks lock in their users, whether it is Facebook’s members or Google’s advertisers.
Crime in Mexico: The governor’s miraculous... →
One worrying thing to take from this episode is that although the numbers of the SNSP and INEGI show broadly similar trends, they are radically different in gross terms. In Mexico state, for instance, Inegi registered 2,096 murders last year, whereas the SNSP (which gets its figures from state prosecutors’ offices) registered only 1,153. Nationwide, INEGI registered 24,374 murders, whereas the...
UNAM Goes Online →
The online project is, in part, a response to that. “All of a sudden we said, ‘We should flood them with everything the UNAM does — put it all on the Internet,’” Ordorika said. “What better accountability could there be than all the books we do, all the articles we do, all the services the university provides, all the libraries, all the theses? Everything.”
December 2011
14 posts
Mexico City opens massive public-surveillance... →
The cameras, officials said, are designed to automatically spot anomalies on the streets of the D.F., as this city is called for short. Cameras would alert staff at the C4I4, for instance, if a car was going the wrong way down a major avenue, or if a group of people was detected suddenly moving or running at once.
6 Reasons We're In Another 'Book-Burning' Period... →
when Borders bookstores went belly-up earlier this year, they decided to destroy all the unsold books instead of donate them.
USENIX 2011 Keynote: Network Security in the... →
Which leads me to conclude that it’s nearly impossible to underestimate the political significance of information security on the internet of the future. Rather than our credentials and secrets being at risk – our credit card accounts and access to our email – our actual memories and sense of self may be vulnerable to tampering by a sufficiently deft attacker. From being an afterthought or a...
USENIX 2011 Keynote: Network Security in the... →
All this, of course, assumes we have jobs to go to. The whole question of whether a mature technosphere needs three or four billion full-time employees is an open one, as is the question of what we’re all going to do if it turns out that the future can’t deliver jobs. So I’m going to tip-toe away from that ticking bomb …
Science and Censorship - A Duel Lasting Centuries... →
“The notion that the boundaries of knowledge are defined by what is published by Science and Nature is quaint,” he said, referring to the journals. “For better or worse, the way that knowledge is disseminated today is ever less dependent on the flagship journals. It’s done by global scientific collaboration, draft papers, online publication, informal distribution of preprints, and on and on.”
Science and Censorship - A Duel Lasting Centuries... →
“The notion that the boundaries of knowledge are defined by what is published by Science and Nature is quaint,” he said, referring to the journals. “For better or worse, the way that knowledge is disseminated today is ever less dependent on the flagship journals. It’s done by global scientific collaboration, draft papers, online publication, informal distribution of preprints, and on and on.”
Latin America still growing, but fiesta is over -... →
What’s much more worrying, frustrating, and ominous, is that with a few exceptions — such as Chile, and to some extent Brazil — most South American countries have been wasting their commodity exports bonanza in a consumption fiesta. Instead, they should be using their extra income to improve their disastrous education standards and become more competitive in the global economy.
Sinaloa Cartel OK's Mexico's Newest Drug Ballads -... →
Movimiento Alterado’s boom began in 2009 when the Valenzuela brothers recorded songs by two bands and released them on the Internet because radio stations wouldn’t play them. In the states of Sinaloa and Baja California, it’s illegal to play songs that advocate drug trafficking on the radio. In May, Sinaloa state Gov. Mario Lopez Valdez went further and banned them at bars and public places. In...
The Protester -Person of the Year 2011- Printout -... →
rising expectations that go unfulfilled are sociology’s classic explanation for protest. For a critical mass of people from Cairo to Madrid to Oakland, prospects for personal success — for the good life at the End of History that they’d been promised — suddenly looked very grim. They were fed up, and the frustration and anger exploded after the regimes overreached.
End of the Burbs →
Some of the most expensive neighborhoods in their metropolitan areas are Capitol Hill in Seattle; Virginia Highland in Atlanta; German Village in Columbus, Ohio, and Logan Circle in Washington. Considered slums as recently as 30 years ago, they have been transformed by gentrification.
French Modesty and American Delusion →
Over in Europe, dreams are also unraveling. In France, according to a Pew Research Center survey, only 27 percent of the population now believes that “our people are not perfect, but our culture is superior.”
I haven’t read such depressing news in a long time. When humility overtakes French culture, it’s over, folks.
French culture is superior. Just consider the cut of a Chanel suit,...
Role Reversal: IMF Seeks Latin American Funds for... →
In the past, visits by IMF officials to Latin America inspired anger and resentment as the organization preached austerity measures to struggling economies. Now, with the region’s economic boom, Europe is looking to Latin America for help in an unprecedented role reversal. But in an ever-connected global economy, Latin American economies still remain vulnerable to the crisis.
Brazil’s government says annual Amazon rain forest... →
About 20 percent of the Brazilian rain forest has already been destroyed, and 75 percent of Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions are estimated to come from forest clearing as vegetation burns and felled trees rot.
Internet Access and the New Divide - NYTimes.com →
Only slightly more than half of all African-American and Hispanic households (55 percent and 57 percent, respectively) have wired Internet access at home, compared with 72 percent of whites.
November 2011
7 posts
3 Asset Managers Win $254 Million Powerball... →
“The financial executives are everyday people, at least by Greenwich standards, where the typical home is worth more than $1 million.”
Teaching Good Sex - NYTimes.com →
“We need to be there at the school boards and say: ‘Guess where kids are getting their messages about sex from? They’re getting it from porn,’ ” Joannides exhorted. “All we’re talking about is just being able to acknowledge that sex is a good thing in the right circumstances, that it’s a normal thing.”
Gender in Brazil →
Women represent 60 percent of Brazil’s college graduates, and 80 percent of them consider themselves “very ambitious,” compared with 36 percent in the United States, according to Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an economist and founding president of the Center for Work-Life Policy.
Spanish model of concentrated wealth →
“North America was better off than South America purely and simply because the British model of widely distributed private property rights and democracy worked better than the Spanish model of concentrated wealth and authoritarianism.”
Emoticons Move to the Business World - Cultural... →
“I sent a fairly new acquaintance a ‘big hug’ emoticon — which, for the record, was ironic. But anyway, on his iPhone it came up with the symbols, not the smiley face, which don’t look anything like a big hug. From his perspective they look like a view of, er, splayed lady parts: ({}).“He then ran around his lab showing colleagues excitedly what I had just sent him. Half (mostly men) concurred...
For Some of the World’s Poor, Hope Comes Via... →
Ms. Smith also includes in the exhibition the by-now textbook case of Medellín, Colombia, once the world capital of drug cartels, murder and despair. Progressive political leaders there, starting roughly a decade ago, decided somewhat counterintuitively to invest most heavily in the worst slums, building a cable car system to link the city’s center with the isolated, crime-ridden areas that...
Rage Against The Machine →
“In medicine, law, finance, retailing, manufacturing and even scientific discovery,” they write, “the key to winning the race is not to compete against machines but to compete with machines.”
October 2011
20 posts
In Praise of Borders - NYTimes.com →
How appropriate that, in the midst of this confusion of languages and borders, an experiment was born to overcome both. In 1908, the Esperantist movement appropriated Moresnet, a small neutral zone [6] set amid Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands that had existed since 1816, and renamed it Amikejo (“Place of Friendship” in Esperanto). The Esperantist movement now had a territory as well as a...
Netflix Lost 800,000 Members With Price Rise and... →
Like many other companies built in Silicon Valley, Netflix prides itself on its analytical, data-driven approach to making decisions. But it made a classic business misstep. In its reliance on data and long-term strategy, the company underestimated the unquantifiable emotions of subscribers who still want those little red envelopes, even if they forget to ever watch the DVDs inside.
“The cadence too,” he said. “If you’re with certain people, the cadence, it’s...”
– East L.A. speaks from its heart - latimes.com
Google takes street view to Amazon - The... →
TUMBIRA, Brazil – This community in the heart of the Amazon is so remote that villagers had until recently never heard of one of the world’s best-known companies, Google.
So when they were told that Google would be introducing an off-road version of the company’s Street View project into their hamlet, population 100, residents thought that a popular Brazilian variety show host known as...
Jeremy Harding · The Deaths Map: At the Mexican... →
Unlike Brewer, Border Patrol staff believe that fewer than 10 per cent of the people they catch coming across have criminal intentions. The figures contradict her too. If drugs are the reason migrants infiltrate the border, why are there so many apprehensions of ‘illegals’ (170,000 in the Tucson Sector from October 2009 to June 2010, for instance) and so few federal prosecutions in the state on...
Up From Ugliness - NYTimes.com →
The iPhone and the iPad may be aesthetically perfect, but in an otherwise stagnant society their charms can be an invitation to solipsism — holding up mirrors to our vanity, instead of opening windows to breakthroughs more impressive than the latest app.
Epic bank heist exposes Brazil's security flaws
|... →
All told, Brazilians spend about as much every year on private security — roughly $8 billion — as the U.S. government spent on security contractors such as Blackwater during the first four years of the Iraq war combined
The Billion Dollar Book — The Late Age of Print →
That makes me wonder: are the algorithms being used on Amazon and elsewhere an emergent form of “government,” broadly understood? And if so, what does a billion dollar book say about the prospects for good government in an algorithmic age?
Edge: CLOUD CULTURE: THE PROMISE AND THE THREAT by... →
In 2002 UNESCO estimated rich countries exported $45bn worth of cultural goods and services, compared with $329m from the poorest countries. Three quarters of the world music industry worth $31bn at the start of the decade was accounted for by the US and Europe. Just 1% of recorded music came from Africa.
Mexico City Wants You to Get to Know Your Local... →
Other problems persist: police officers’ general lack of education and abysmal salaries, among them, residents say. A Mexico City cop earns an average of 8,000 pesos monthly, or about $600.
Boston Review — Evgeny Morozov: Bugger Off →
The dangers of such an unholy alliance between the highly customized advertising excesses of modern capitalism and the data-gathering excesses of the modern surveillance state are obvious: Internet companies are licensed to collect and analyze as much information as possible precisely because the state may one day ask them for it.
The End of the Future - National Review Online →
This analysis suggests an explanation for the strange way the technology bubble of the 1990s gave rise to the real-estate bubble of the 2000s. After betting heavily on technology growth that did not materialize, investors tried to achieve the needed double-digit returns through massive leverage in seemingly safe real-estate investments. This did not work either, because a major reason for the...
The End of the Future - National Review Online →
Yet during the Great Recession, which began in 2008 and has no end in sight, these great expectations have been supplemented by a desperate necessity. We need high-paying jobs to avoid thinking about how to compete with China and India for low-paying jobs. We need rapid growth to meet the wishful expectations of our retirement plans and our runaway welfare states. We need science and technology...
The Better Angels of Our Nature — By Steven Pinker... →
The average I.Q. is, by definition, 100; but to achieve that result, raw test scores have to be standardized. If the average teenager today could go back in time and take an I.Q. test from 1910, he or she would have an I.Q. of 130, which would be better than 98 percent of those taking the test then. Nor is it easy to attribute this rise to improved education, because the aspects of the tests on...
Your Own Facebook Oasis →
But then I realized that what these major Facebook games are really selling is control. They are about giving you a little oasis, a patch of unreality that you can make just as perfect and ordered and neat as you like. When you are building your dream house or plantation or suburb, no one else can mess it up. No one is badgering you to change it or make it better. Not your parents, or your...
Perry’s Hunting Camp Puts Focus on U.S. Map’s... →
The United States Board on Geographic Names, the federal agency that maintains the official names of more than 2.5 million streams, mountains, cities and civic buildings, lists 757 names that use the word Negro or a variation, said Lou Yost, executive secretary of the board.
The University of Wherever - NYTimes.com →
The traditional university, in his view, serves a fortunate few, inefficiently, with a business model built on exclusivity. “I’m not at all against the on-campus experience,” he said. “I love it. It’s great. It has a lot of things which cannot be replaced by anything online. But it’s also insanely uneconomical.”