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Acta goes too far, says MEP

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Charles Arthur - Feb. 01 - Kader Arif, the lead Acta negotiator in the European Parliament, says Acta potentially cuts access to lifesaving generic drugs and restricts online freedom The French MEP who resigned his position in charge of negotiating the international Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (Acta) has said it "goes too far" by potentially cutting access to lifesaving generic drugs and restricting internet freedom. In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Kader Arif – a member of the European Parliament's international trade group, who was the lead negotiator over Acta – said that despite talks over the agreement having begun in 2007, "the European Parliament, which represents the rights of the people, had no access to this mandate, neither had it information of the position defended by the commission or the demands of the other parties to the agreement". Arif resigned in protest on 26 January as the EU signed the treaty, saying that he wished to "denounce in the strongest manner the process that led ...

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The Rise of the New Groupthink

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Susan Cain - Jan. 15 (Opinion) - Solitude is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place. Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in.

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Is capitalism broken... and what is the world going to do to fix it?

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Yvonne Roberts - Nov. 06 (Opinion) - Louise Cooper, Will Hutton, Mark Littlewood, Tanya Paton and William Taylor join a round table discussion on the issues raised by the global Occupy movement T here is no doubt that it has been an extraordinary three weeks. It began with Occupy LSX taking up residence around St Paul's, a protest that exposed the dithering of the Church of England. Occupy LSX has since sparked a remarkable national debate about the kind of society in which we want to live, its priorities and values. In that spirit, the Observer brought together several opposing voices to continue the great debate. Yvonne Roberts So, can capitalism be fixed, Louise? Louise Cooper It's all a question of balance and I think it's moving the pivotal point back a little. Capitalism is clearly the only way that economies work. Capitalism works in the biggest communist state, China. So, as with everything, there needs to be a balance between the returns to those that supply capital and those that supply human capital. Maybe ...

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What If Government Were More Like an iPod?

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Scott Adams - Nov. 05 (Opinion) - If Congress had a 9% approval rating while George Washington was still alive, he would have shoved his wooden dentures in his mouth, assembled a militia and marched on the Capitol. The nation's founders weren't big fans of dysfunctional governments. I'll bet we could solve our energy problem by connecting a generator to John Adams's corpse, which I assume is spinning in its grave.

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A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Mona Simpson - Oct. 31 (Opinion) - I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I’d met my father, I tried to believe he’d changed his number and left no forwarding address because he was an idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for the Arab people.

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Best Media Watchdog Experiment: NewsTrust

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

City Paper - Sep. 21 (Editorial) - We got used to NewsTrust Baltimore’s e-mails very quickly. More than a thoughtful amalgam of Baltimore stories from around the web, the alerts came with an invitation to think about the stories in a critical way and comment via a strict form included on the site. Inveterate web commenters might at first be offended by this kind of formalism, but it worked: The idea of rating which news sources are “trustworthy” is, of course, not new. But in using this form to guide self-selected readers, NewsTrust helped its readers (and itself) understand something about the news ecosystem from the point of view of both newsmakers and consumers. NewsTrust, launched via a now-concluded six-month pilot program but with its site still active, was filled with thoughtful, constructive criticism of stories and articles both local and global, and was blessedly devoid of moronic flame wars. In this age of partisan rancor, that is no small thing.

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First Details About Lift, the Next Social Network From the Founders of Twitter

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

ReadWriteWeb - By Marshall Kirkpatrick - Aug. 24 (News Report) - The recently-departed co-founders of Twitter who are now working together again under the old Obvious Corp. name (Ev Williams, Biz Stone and Jason Goldman) announced their first official partnership today, with a stealth alpha app called Lift. It's described as simple app for achieving goals through positive reinforcement. It sounds like Twitter and from what I've seen (which is more than I've seen reported about elsewhere yet) it looks a lot like Twitter too - but with more structure. What's called Lift today was apparently called Mibbles just weeks ago and was described then as "a very simple tracking and...

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Intellectual property and the economy: Patently absurd

Sun, 08 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - May. 08 (Opinion) - Innovation and jobs have become a modern version of motherhood and apple pie in Washington, DC. Everyone in America’s capital wants lots more of both, or so they say. So how come Congress and the White House have decided not merely to underfund a crucial cog in American’s innovation machine but actually to take away revenue it earns?

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What effect has the internet had on religion?

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Aleks Krotoski - Apr. 17 (Opinion) - Online, God has been released from traditional doctrine to become everything to everybody I remember several years ago, when the virtual world Second Life was the thing on the web, wandering in the embodiment of my avatar through a most extraordinary representation of a cathedral. The frescoes, stained glass and flying buttresses were replicated to a degree that would make even the most cynical architect weep. Also enjoying the experience were 30 other virtual people from around the world, dressed in all manner of outerwear, from 1950s party dresses to slinky black outfits with impossible heels to squirrel costumes. They, as it turned out, were gathered in this cyber-place to celebrate a religious service. I watched from the safe distance of a back-of-the-nave pew, listening to the officiant lead his digital flock through a very traditional Catholic ceremony. I left after transubstantiation, just as they were processing in a typically sombre way to receive the Eucharist. The concept of ...

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Google's Larry Page Does Exactly The Right Thing: Says "Whatever" To Wall Street

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Business Insider - By Henry Blodget - Apr. 17 (Opinion) - In some people's minds, Google's Larry Page just committed the cardinal sin: He offended Wall Street. Wall Street has reacted to the first quarter in the Page regime by tossing the stock overboard. Larry Page is spending way too much, Wall Street says. Larry Page isn't communicating well enough. Larry Page couldn't even be bothered to spend more than a couple of minutes on the earnings call with Wall Street last night. So to hell with him! Lost under the outrage, of course, is that Larry Page may be doing exactly the right thing: Focusing on Google and Google's products and users, instead of Wall Street.

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Larry Page is fostering Google's start-up spirit

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Jessica Guynn - Apr. 02 (News Report) - Larry Page wants to run Google Inc. like it's 1999. The co-founder of the Internet search giant has begun an unusual afternoon ritual of sitting and working with his top executives on small couches in an open area of the company's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters. Employees, who used to have to stalk Page around campus, can drop by and grab a few minutes of his time.

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Today's big management thinker

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Apr. 02 (Interview) - A year ago today we interviewed L. Vaughan Spencer, a notable British management thinker, on what businesses can do to be more "succeedy". So this would seem an appropriate time to hear about his latest big idea: "Why thinking is the enemy of innovation".

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New Meningitis Vaccine Could be Model for Future Drugs

Sat, 19 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

NewsHour - Mar. 19 (News) - The rollout of a new meningitis vaccine developed specifically with poor countries in mind began Monday in western Africa. Health officials hope to vaccinate more than 12 million people in Burkina Faso by the end of the year and millions more in Mali and Niger over the next few months.The three countries are part of the meningitis belt, a strip of sub-Saharan Africa often hit with outbreaks of the disease, which infects the thin lining surrounding the brain and spinal cord.Meningitis can cause loss of hearing, severe brain damage, or death--more than 5,000 people died of meningococcal meningitis in 14 African countries in 2009. The new vaccine is the first designed specifically for Africa--it costs less than 50 cents for a dose, and provides a decade of prevention. There are currently other meningitis vaccines used in African countries during meningitis outbreaks, but they cost up to $80 a vaccine and only provide two or three years of protection, according to the World Health Organization."We needed a vaccine that is affordable within the context of meningitis belt countries, which are some of the poorest countries in Africa," said Christopher Elias, president of the international nonprofit PATH, which partnered with WHO in 2001 to develop the vaccine.The new vaccine is also the first that can be used on infants. With financial support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation*, the groups worked independently from the large pharmaceutical companies in the United States and Europe, and ultimately manufactured the vaccine through a company in India, keeping costs lower."[Meningitis A], that's the epidemic that strikes Africa and there was no market for the pharma industry to want to introduce a vaccine," said Jean-Marie Okwo-Bele, director of the Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals Department at the World Health Organization.This new development model has "tremendous potential," said Elias, and could applied to other diseases in the future that greatly affect the developing world, but may not be attractive from a business perspective. The World Health Organization is currently looking to apply it to a new generation of the polio vaccine, while PATH is working towards new rotavirus and pneumonia vaccines. The process highlighted that having the buy-in from African countries from the beginning was a major advantage."These people here know better than anybody how dreadful this disease is," said Okwo-Bele. "It's a vaccine specifically designed for Africans, requested by Africans."*For the record, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation underwrites the NewsHour's global health coverage.

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The job ahead of us

Tue, 08 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Boston Globe - By Scott Brown - Mar. 08 (Opinion) - Massachusetts has the foundation for job creation in industries ranging from health care start-ups to manufacturing, technology, and finance, but our entrepreneurs need a better business environment to have confidence to expand, buy a new piece of equipment, or hire that extra worker. That is why we must reduce tax rates and give businesses more long-term certainty about the tax code.

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USA Inc.: Red, White, and Very Blue

Sat, 26 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Business Week - By Mary Meeker - Feb. 26 (Special Report) - The bottom line on USA Inc.? Cash flow and net worth are negative, profits are rare, and off-balance-sheet liabilities are enormous. The "company" has underinvested in productive capital, education, and technology—the very tools needed to compete in the global marketplace. Lenders have been patient so far, but the sky-high rates on the sovereign debt of Greece, Ireland, and Portugal suggest what might lie ahead for USA Inc. shareholders and our children. By our rough estimate, USA Inc. has a net worth of negative $44 trillion. That comes to $143,000 per capita. Negative. To be fair, the net worth calculation leaves out some assets, including, most importantly, the power to tax. Which simply means that the government can improve its own finances by worsening those of its citizen-shareholders. Medicare and Medicaid are the crushers for USA Inc. Excluding them and one-time charges, the "core business" shows a median net profit margin of 4 percent over the past 15 years. USA Inc.'s core operations were in surplus nine of those years. In the early years of the Republic, the only entitlements were military pensions. The big change came with the 1930s and World War II, when the federal government substantially expanded its role in the economy (in effect, its "business lines"). Entitlements experienced a surge in the Great Society of the 1960s. Since 1965, the nation's gross domestic product has increased about 2.7 times over, but entitlement expenses have increased 11.1 times over. What do Americans have to show for it? Evidence suggests that when the government provides, families do less for themselves: There is an 82 percent correlation between rising entitlement spending and falling personal savings rates. With the aging of my baby boom generation, things will get even worse.

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USA Inc.

Sat, 26 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Morgan Stanley - By Mary Meeker - Feb. 26 (Special Report) - Imagine for a moment that the United States government is a public corporation. Imagine that its management structure, fiscal performance, and budget are all up for review. Now imagine that you’re a shareholder in USA Inc. How do you feel about your investment? Because 45% of us own shares in publicly traded companies, nearly half the country expects quarterly updates on our investments. But although 100% of us are stakeholders in the United States, very few of us look closely at Washington’s financials. If we were long-term investors, how would we evaluate the federal government’s business model, strategic plans, and operating efficiency? How would we react to its earnings reports? Nearly two-thirds of all American households pay federal income taxes, but very few of us take the time to dig into the numbers of the entity that, on average, collects 13% of our annual gross income (not counting another 15- 30% for payroll and various state and local taxes).

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O'Malley seeks venture capital fund, wind farms in State of the State speech

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By John Wagner , Ann E. Marimow, Aaron C. Davis - Feb. 03 (News) - Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley asked lawmakers Thursday to create a $100 million venture capital fund, spur investment in offshore wind farms and ban the installation of septic systems in major new housing developments.

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FactChecking Obama’s Address

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

FactCheck - By Brooks Jackson, Viveca Novak, Eugene Kiely, Lori Robertson, D’Angelo Gore - Jan. 26 (News Analysis) - We found no outright false factual claims in Obama’s State of the Union address, but we did note some that were arguable, and some promises that may prove unrealistic. He called his Race to the Top initiative “the most meaningful reform of our public schools in a generation.” That’s debatable. Some independent experts say Bush’s No Child Left Behind program had a greater impact. The president set a goal of generating 80 percent of the nation’s electricity from “clean” sources by 2035. That’s ambitious. The first large-scale “clean coal” plant has yet to begin operation. And Obama counts nuclear energy as a “clean” source, despite the unresolved waste issue. He set a goal of giving 80 percent of the U.S. population access to high-speed rail in the next 25 years. But the U.S. only has one high-speed rail line in operation now. He said his new health care law will slow rising health care costs. But the office of Medicare’s chief actuary estimates the law won’t have much impact on costs, and there will be a slight rise in total spending as more people gain coverage under the law. He said “exports are up” since he set a goal of doubling them in five years, which is true. But the rise so far falls short of the pace required to meet his goal. On other factual matters we found the president’s statements to be accurate, or reasonably so. He said the U.S. subjects businesses to “one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world,” which is borne out by the Word Bank and other studies. He said U.S. engineers gave the nation’s infrastructure a grade of “D,” which is true. That rating was issued by the American Society of Civil Engineers. And he said U.S. workers are unexcelled in productivity, which is true according to one ranking and nearly true by other measures.

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Fact-checking Obama's State of the Union speech

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

PolitiFact - By Angie Drobnic Holan, Aaron Sharockman - Jan. 26 (News Analysis) - President Barack Obama struck a centrist tone in his second State of the Union speech, arguing for corporate tax cuts and fewer government regulations. PolitiFact watched the entire speech and checked several of Obama's claims. Later, we began taking on the GOP response from Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan. (We will supplement our coverage tonight with more fact-checks of the speeches by Obama, Ryan and Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., tomorrow.) We started our fact-checking by analyzing Obama's contention that the U.S. economy is beginning to recover.

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Intel and Stanford University to jointly develop 3-D graphics projects

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

San Jose Mercury News - By Lisa Krieger - Jan. 26 (News) - In an unusual collaboration, Intel and Stanford University announced Wednesday that their scientists will work together, on campus, to design new visual computing projects. Intel is giving Stanford $2.5 million a year, for five years, to support a new "Intel Science & Technology Center" that is focused on 3-D graphics research, according to a joint announcement Wednesday morning by Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner and Stanford computer graphics professor Pat Hanrahan.

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Obama says he's trying to put the economy into 'overdrive' as poll shows plenty of work to do

Sat, 22 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Associated Press - Jan. 22 (News Report) - More than half the nation disapproves of President Barack Obama's policies to reduce stubbornly high unemployment, a new Associated Press-GfK poll said Friday as Obama refocused his job-creation efforts on a business-friendly vision

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Investors Bet on Strangers' Lives

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - By Mark Maremont, Leslie Scism - Dec. 21 (News Report) - Life Partners, a company that lets investors buy parts of strangers' life-insurance policies, has made large fees while often underestimating the life expectancies of people whose policies its customers invest in.

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The Year in Ideas

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - Dec. 17 (Special Report) - Our digest of short entries refracts the light beam of human inspiration, breaking it up into its constituent colors — innovations and insights from a spectrum of fields, including economics, biology, engineering, medicine, literature, sports, music and, of course, raw-meat clothing. Happy thinking!

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Where is mathematics in Europe?

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

eurekalert.org - By Chloe Kembery - Dec. 02 (Opinion) - Europe needs an Institute of Industrial Mathematics to tighten the link between maths and industry as an enabler of innovation -- putting maths at the heart of Europe's innovation, according to the European Science Foundation, in a report launched today in Brussels at the "Maths and Industry" Conference.

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Text of President Obama's news conference Saturday

Sun, 21 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Associated Press - Nov. 21 -

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