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Say goodbye to more jobs? This is an interesting research report from the Gartner Group on the future of banking, money and economic transition. One of the participants at a conference that Gartner cites is Bernard Leitaer, who is interviewed here. Leitaer is the author of the book The Future of Money. He argues " the malaise Japan has suffered since the early 1990s reflects an economic challenge the whole developed world has begun to face. Today, European and U.S. factories, too, suffer from overcapacity. The vaunted productivity growth spurred by the digital revolution has raised the economy’s stall speed. If the natural growth rate of the U.S. economy has risen to 4% annually, anything less than that rate will cause firms to trim capacity. A firm’s revenue growth often must come at the expense of competitors as well as its own profits because companies have trouble raising prices. In response, companies cut costs any way they can, usually by laying off employees and squeezing suppliers, which causes further layoffs. For developed countries, the safety valves that limited damage during contractions in manufacturing may not work. In past recessions, laid-off factory workers in the Great Lakes states, for example, could migrate to the growing Sun Belt to find new jobs. In the present transition, areas with job growth may lie overseas." The long heralded rise of the information economy, the death of distance and the rise of the global knowledge workers is paradigm shift that our goverment leader's seem ill equiped to handle.
posted by thedailygrowl at 11:38 PM PST - 36 comments

Who will save rock'n'roll?
posted by Space Coyote at 10:51 PM PST - 90 comments

Tivo for Webcomics? Found by way of Comixpedia, this Sun-Times article finds shareware that rips comic files off the web to be something of a God-send. As a web-comic creator, I have no problem with my readers writing personal scripts that pull the .pngs from my front page. But when the rippers begin asking for money for their app that distributes someone else's content (without asking the creators' permission), it seems as though somewhere, there are some enormous balls just a'swingin' in the breeze.
posted by wigu at 7:50 PM PST - 33 comments

The Dude abides
posted by poopy at 7:35 PM PST - 39 comments

De Hermitage Amsterdam. In the early 1990s Professor Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of The State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg was considering the possibility of having satellites of the museum in the West. The Nieuwe Kerk and the Hermitage had already established a strong relationship through the organisation of major exhibitions, and Ernst Veen, director of the Nieuwe Kerk, suggested that Amsterdam would be the ideal location for a branch of the Russian museum, given the historical links between the two cities over the past 300 years.
posted by the fire you left me at 7:07 PM PST - 3 comments

Osama bin Laden: missed opportunities The question for the 9/11 commission: If the CIA was able to get that close to bin Laden before 9/11, why wasn’t he captured or killed? The videotape has remained secret until now.
posted by Postroad at 6:41 PM PST - 28 comments

Having difficulty with payroll? Even temp agencies can end up giving you too many or too few employees. Vend-A-Temp has the answer! Major credit cards accepted.
posted by pyramid termite at 5:26 PM PST - 3 comments

Mr-President bids for re-election: it's election season in Alphaville, too.
posted by moonbird at 4:39 PM PST - 1 comments

Roadside Memorials on the American Highway
posted by anastasiav at 3:40 PM PST - 8 comments

Bob Zangas killed in ambush in Iraq. Bob was a Public Affairs officer with the CPA in Iraq and a pretty good blogger. After spending 6 months in Iraq as a Marine he returned as a civilian to do what he could to help the Iraqi people rebuild their nation. His blog posts were sometimes funny, sometimes sad but always told from the point of view of someone who wanted nothing more than to help. Link goes to the last post before his death.
posted by billman at 2:55 PM PST - 30 comments

Rumsfeld waffles on Face the Nation when asked about the "immediate threat" argument in favor of war with Iraq. Link is Windows Media video.

This to me is a gregarious example of how semantics and linguistic framing has been used to manipulate the American public, and one clear moment of this questionable tactic breaking down.

Interesting how he tries to blame it on the media and "folklore", and then segues right into noncommittal doublespeak.

Via Joi Ito (text available), via Center for American Progress.

posted by loquacious at 1:52 PM PST - 71 comments

temporary temples
man made or not ... they are cool. via the new newstoday
posted by specialk420 at 1:50 PM PST - 5 comments

Finally, an Internet "really short quiz with astonishing results" that is 100% accurate.
posted by Shane at 1:38 PM PST - 32 comments

Iraq on the Record A full compilation of the Bush administration's misleading statements on Iraq was comissioned by rep. Henry Waxman. It is now available as a pdf report and as a database searchable by name of speaker or keyword. Did this sort of framework for accountability exist before the Web, and can it be effective now?
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 12:57 PM PST - 20 comments

Social theory trading cards, action figures and legos! [Via Boing Boing.]
posted by homunculus at 12:19 PM PST - 5 comments

This is a very depressing time to exist, it seems. Watching the country you love (or hate) slowly disintegrate makes me wonder about how it all felt before.
posted by psychotic_venom at 12:01 PM PST - 26 comments

Tales of academe Newly-minted Ph.D.s describe their varied experiences on the academic job market. Most use pseudonyms. Many writers are remarkably bitter; some are not. Notable essays: the adjunct professorship as a career; teaching at a county jail; racism on the tenure track; and a series of columns by "Thomas H. Benton," who desperately tries to talk students out of entering graduate school, and then gives helpful advice to those who want to go anyway.
posted by Prospero at 10:58 AM PST - 59 comments

Originally, Greenspan was in favor of cutting future Social Security benefits to help ease the current budget deficit. Now, he suggests: that household balance sheets are "in good shape," and perhaps stronger than ever, because the value of people's homes and stock portfolios have risen faster than their debts.
posted by BlueTrain at 10:09 AM PST - 14 comments

"Office workers are exposed to more germs from their phones and keyboards than toilet seats."
Do geeks deserve hazard pay?
posted by DBAPaul at 10:03 AM PST - 15 comments

What does a scale in dorian modesound like? How about a dominant one-tension chord? Find out. Or maybe you'd just like to hear some intervals.
posted by sodalinda at 9:52 AM PST - 19 comments

MenOpop Fun with menopause.
posted by konolia at 9:46 AM PST - 2 comments

Is this shite? Another [Estrogen] risk factor appears to be something that researchers call overthinking, a tendency to dwell on petty slights, to mentally replay testy encounters and to wallow in sad feelings. Studies show that this type of negative thinking is far more common in women than in men, and that it can be a harbinger of clinical depression. NYTimes article (registration req'd) about depression called "New Clues to Women Veiled in Black".
posted by mcgraw at 9:39 AM PST - 14 comments

Bitter Division for Sierra Club on Immigration [NY Times]. An anti-immigration slate battles the old guard in an attempt to take control of the Sierra Club's board. The battle is fierce, and accusations of racism, treason, moral corruption, and bigotry color their annual election.
posted by F Mackenzie at 9:31 AM PST - 9 comments

There's Gold in Them Thar PCs. If you're worried about the growing problem of e-waste, if you don't want to ship your toxins overseas, you now have another option. You can recover heavy metals (precious and otherwise) in the privacy and comfort of your own home. Just make sure you leave a window open so you have some fresh air.
posted by alms at 8:16 AM PST - 8 comments

Refusal of Caesarean=murder? Anyone seen/heard this? [Search didn't turn up anything, spare me if I overlooked.]
posted by yoga at 5:06 AM PST - 111 comments

Supreme Court to be overruled by Act of Congress? H.R.3920 Title: To allow Congress to reverse the judgments of the United States Supreme Court. There's a bad moon risin', folks. I want to move to Canada.
posted by Dome-O-Rama at 3:51 AM PST - 61 comments

The A-Train For Armchair Travellers The Man in Seat 61, a train-mad Brit called Mark Smith, provides a wonderful guide, with lots of useful information, to train travel in Europe - though obviously catering mostly to British passengers. Choo Choo!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:49 AM PST - 7 comments