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…post-9/11 I advocated that our politicians find sufficient courage to hike gasoline taxes and seriously commit ourselves to developing alternatives to oil. Economists agree that this would ultimately bring down the global price, and slowly deprive these regimes of the sole funding source that allows them to maintain their authoritarian societies. People do not change when we tell them they should; they change when their context tells them they must.
Thomas Friedman - This I Believe - NYTimes.com
Here Here!
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Beyond that, we need to wake up and realize that one of the keys to our nation’s historic success is now a wasting asset. Education made America great; neglect of education can reverse the process.
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Historically, recessions have been a time when new companies, like Microsoft, get born, and good companies separate themselves from their competition. It makes sense. When times are tight, people look for new, less expensive ways to do old things. Necessity breeds invention.
Op-Ed Columnist - Invent, Invent, Invent - NYTimes.com
Damn Straight!
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Words are important. Mr. Obama was right when he urged leaders who privately speak of moderation and compromise to dare to say those words in public. But words are not enough. Mr. Obama, who, after all, has been in office for less than six months, has a lot to do to fulfill this vision. So do others.
Editorial - The Cairo Speech - NYTimes.com
Words are not enough indeed… but a wonderful start!
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The project, which has been financed with private donations and grants, is intended to be self-sustaining: food will be grown onboard, some of it in hydroponic gardens; drinking water derived from purified rainwater; electricity generated through a mix of solar, wind and bicycle power; and waste recycled into compost.
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Ads are an inefficient business model, making indirect revenue as a result of behavior and advertising to people who don’t want to see them or for whom they’re irrelevant,” said Jeff Bonforte, Xobni’s chief executive. “Premium is a very direct and efficient model.
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Pandora’s new model, which is often called “freemium” — a mix of free and premium — is becoming the most popular among Web start-ups.
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The first reaction many people have to Twitter is befuddlement. Why would they want to read short messages about what someone ate for breakfast?
It’s a reasonable question. Twitter unleashes the diarist in its 14 million users, who visited its site 99 million times last month to read posts tapped out with cellphones and computers. Individually, many of those 140-character “tweets” seem inane.
But taken collectively, the stream of messages can turn Twitter into a surprisingly useful tool for solving problems and providing insights into the digital mood. By tapping into the world’s collective brain, researchers of all kinds have found that if they make the effort to dig through the mundane comments, the live conversations offer an early glimpse into public sentiment — and even help them shape it.
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I tried an easy 4x4 puzzle and it was tricky!
Think sudo + arithmatic
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This is very unpleasent to hear about but it does not seem like it gets attention in “the press”.
This might seem funny because this article is in the NY Times via the AP, but its not being talked about, at least the news that I LISTEN to…
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Starbucks may be forced to reduce the number of its New York locations to 12,000. This doomsday scenario, should it come to pass, would mean that the average New Yorker would have to walk 2.4 blocks in order to purchase a $5 cup of coffee. Treasury Secretary Paulson and whatsisname, the Bernanke guy, are reportedly at work on the problem and may request a $200 billion “loan” to Starbucks.
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I thought this piece was very VERY interesting. While I usually do not care for ‘year in review’ articles, this piece really makes you think about what was going in in the world this past year. (also is layed out really well)
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So whether its cars, Kabul or banks, we have to stop wishing for the worlds we want and start dealing with the things themselves. If Obama does, his first year will be excruciatingly painful, but he could have three years after that to be creative. If he doesn’t, I fear that cars, Kabul and banks will dog his whole presidency.
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…our bailout of Detroit will be remembered as the equivalent of pouring billions of dollars of taxpayer money into the mail-order-catalogue business on the eve of the birth of eBay. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into the CD music business on the eve of the birth of the iPod and iTunes. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into a book-store chain on the eve of the birth of Amazon.com and the Kindle. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into improving typewriters on the eve of the birth of the PC and the Internet. What business model am I talking about? It is Shai Agassi’s electric car network company, called Better Place. Just last week, the company, based in Palo Alto, Calif., announced a partnership with the state of Hawaii to road test its business plan there after already inking similar deals with Israel, Australia, the San Francisco Bay area and, yes, Denmark.
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