One of the most dysfunctional aspects of the current GOP is its rigid PartyThink. Some credit Ronald Reagan for the 11th commandment - thou shalt not speak ill of a GOP candidate or policy. There is a mighty uniform GOP messaging operation on all policy matters . And it is remarkable how uniformly that PartyThink=PartySpeak messaging can be heard like Bower Bird calls in the…
Bob Herbert is leaving the NYTimes today – his last editorial post is quite good, Losing Our Way. Here is a sampling of what Bob has to say: So here we are pouring shiploads of cash into yet another war, this time in Libya, while simultaneously demolishing school budgets, closing libraries, laying off teachers and police officers, and generally letting the bottom fall out of…
Craig Stephens has been writing some rather salty stories for the Marketwatch in the past few months. Craig does more than watch the Chinese markets and economic machine but in fact keeps the whole SouthEast Asian world in view. The latest story about the salt frenzy in China is like a tiny Confucian parable. There has been a run on salt in China because of…
This blog cited the NYTimes as being the outstanding source of information on all aspects of the Japanese Earthquake, Tsunami and now Nuclear Disaster. But there was some concern that this was just a weekend affair and the NYTimes would be hard pressed to continue the excellence of its coverage. Let the following excerpts be witness to the continued high standard of coverage. Click on…
If there was any doubt before, Japan’s earthquake and tsunami removed any lingering ones and revealed the NYTimes as the world leading masters of Web interactive graphics and coverage.Our sister blog, Bookraft, has already pointed out some of the leading technologies used by the NYTimes for last year’s Winter Olympios. But covering the Japnese Earthquake and Tsunami over the past 4 days, the NYTimes has…
As the NYTimes prepares to take a third kick at charging for its web + online services, here is another example of why web beats paper from the editorial opportunity and customer satisfaction points of view. Here is a story about Justin Bieber that could be done in a magazine or newspaper but isn’t … or more pointedly not often enough. The slideshow on Justin Bieber in…
The NYTimes has done it again- produced the best online graphic of the US Budget available anywhere. And the Times did it one day after the release of the budget proposal by the White House. This graphic tells the story of the budget in 6 ways [click on screenshot to go directly to chart] : 1)The budget is displayed in blocks by department and category with…
Richard Holbrooke was a liberal, a diplomat, and a tough negotiator. He died this past Monday. Foreign Policy a day later produced these remembrances of the Man. Even more telling is the gap. Who will takeover another of the thankless Holbrooke diplomatic tasks – US attache on the Afghan/Pakistan/Taliban War.
In January of 2011, the NYTimes has announced that its online site will go on the dime. Users will have to pay again for reading pages on the website. This is not the first foray into charging – for a period in 2006-2008 NYTimes charged for reading its most popular editorial writers and some additional features but then removed all charges. It is free until…
One of the major security problems is that data on the web often runs naked. This is due to two reasons – 1)the HTTPS protocol can be more difficult and costly to implement and 2)there is a notable performance hit to be taken in most situations. Network World is reporting work done at Stanford University that would embed encryption at the lowest TCP layer a)without…
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Captain Jack Aubrey and Spymaster Stephen Maturin are the matching pieces in this historical novel. It is remarkable that English literature has two series, Horatio Hornblower and Aubrey + Maturin both set in the same era and of such great quality. Desolation Island tells you why the era of the dawning Enlightenment, European Wars and Industrial Revolution was so tempestuous... and on a prison ship voyage to Australia. Such drama!