Quotations
Quotations are the TV dinners of thought. They require no effort; they are the lazy person’s way to avoid thinking and cooking up their own ideas. They’re fresh when created, but can go stale as the world changes. They get …
Author: Phil Mayes
Jon Stewart, the Media and the NYTimes
In today’s NYTimes, David Carr critiques Jon Stewart’s attack on the media as insignificant because “In even a good news night, about five million people take a seat on the cable wars, which is less than 2 percent of all …
Sources of Innovation
Interesting column in today’s NYT by Steven Johnson discussing his book “Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation“. He describes four quadrants: The class solo entrepreneur The amateur individual The private corporation Collaborative nonproprietary innovation He analysed …
Conservatives and Boundaries
I have pondered the psychology of politics for many years. I first concluded that fear was the defining difference: conservatives carry guns, live in gated communities, want controlled borders, support law and order and drive SUVs that feel safer. But …
Three Arguments against Copyrights
1 Let’s start with the delightful video Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us (10:48) that says that when performing mechanical tasks, an incentive such as money improves performance, but when the task is intellectual, it doesn’t! In fact, …
The Logic of Prop. 8 Supporters
From Tuesday’s NYT: The defense sought to show that claims of bias against gay men and lesbians were overblown. In particular, Dr. Miller testified, gay men and lesbians in California could count on a deep and varied contingent of allies, …
Supreme Court Goes Rogue Again
Emily Bazelon has an excellent post highlighting the contradictions in yesterday’s Supreme Court decision to block video streaming of the CA gay marriage trial, e.g. The problem, the majority says, is that in his haste, Judge Walker changed a federal …
The equivalence of patents and source code
The Software Freedom Law Center has filed a Supreme Court brief re Bilski, and I loved this idea within it: “The source code of a program which performs the steps described in a software patent is distinguishable from the literal …
You Think We Live in a Democracy?
Slate reports on the Senate Finance Committee’s vote against a public health option. “Even among Republicans, opposition to the public option (42 percent) is outweighed by support (47 percent).” In an Indirect Democracy, “The people elect government officials who then …
Health Care Premiums
I see nothing in the current health care proposals that limit the premiums insurance companies can charge. Yes, they may be subject to premium ratios, but their plaint will be that to cover the burden of insuring everyone, all premiums …