bokonist

95 ms·

691.
by bokonist 18y ago
The actual reporting and investigation is, by and large, still done by journalists working for newspapers. Most reporting I see is just summarization of press releases or a collection of quotes from contacts of the journalist. The analys
692.
by bokonist 18y ago
People tend to overestimate the value of newspaper journalism. Paul Graham does a great job of exploding the myth of business journalism in his "submarine" essay. Financial journalism has obviously been just as bad. The worst, though, is
693.
by bokonist 18y ago
You would have to select a project that produces output the business user can judge. So if it's a UI, the business user can make sure all the parts are functional, the load times speedy, the edge cases handled, etc.
694.
by bokonist 18y ago
Well, you are unlikely to get a finished application in two man weeks. You have everyone implement the same thing so you can compare apples to apples. Then you hire the best for the long term.
695.
by bokonist 18y ago
Really? I see it all the time. In Tech, you have sites like Techcrunch, Engadget, and Mashable. For science you have sites like Climate Audit and Real Climate. For world affairs, Michael Totten, Michael Yon, Exile, and numerous blogs.
696.
by bokonist 18y ago
The obvious answer is to hold a bake off. Narrow down the programmers to a set you want to try out (for this you can use rough measures - SAT scores and experience listed on resume). Give them all a few days to implement a non-trivial par
697.
by bokonist 18y ago
In that case, we are serfs, not tenants. Sucks for us.
698.
by bokonist 18y ago
You can renounce your citizenship and leave the country, and you are no longer subject to the draft nor U.S. taxes.
699.
by bokonist 18y ago
You are confusing ownership with being a customer. Customers pay rent/taxes. Owners exercise control. The charter of modern democracies promise equal ownership based on birth or residency, not on whether or not you pay rent. Or rather,
700.
by bokonist 18y ago
I don't get what you are trying to say. Yes, it was a booming period, that is the point. The question is why it was a booming period. I don't think rule by corrupt political machines is ideal, I'd prefer if it if cities were run as joint
701.
by bokonist 18y ago
You pay rent to your landlord, should you have the right to tell the landlord how to spend it? What is a government but a very big landlord?
702.
by bokonist 18y ago
If you were running a company, would you give the same number of votes to newest hire in sales, as you would to the two founders? That would be insanity and would lead to a very dysfunctional company. No one would wish that management str
703.
by bokonist 18y ago
I doubt corruption is the cause. Most American cities were very corrupt during the late 1800's, yet had amazing economic growth. Detroit, Cleveland, Syracuse, etc were all startup hubs back then. All governments funnel money to their empl
704.
by bokonist 18y ago
I hope population does indeed plateau. But one twist is that the population subgroups that reproduce the most will over time become a larger portion of the population. As these subgroups grow, fertility trends may start to reverse.
705.
by bokonist 18y ago
Do you really think 80% of government health care money is wasted? [Citation Needed] The Singapore government spends 1.3% of GDP on health care and the private sector spends around 2% of GDP. Overall, their health indicators are slightly
706.
by bokonist 18y ago
Read up on the government of 1908, it was extremely corrupt. Indeed it was. But perhaps you have heard the name K Street before? The retail, envelopes-full-of-cash corruption is now mostly gone. Corruption today is organized, supersize
707.
by bokonist 18y ago
Nashville and Memphis both had their borders redrawn a few years back to encompass many of the surrounding towns. The inner city is no better than it was in the 1910's, the borders are just different and so the stats are different. Also no
708.
by bokonist 18y ago
1) Architecture is a matter of taste, so debate is usually not fruitful. But when I walk through an old city, I find all the old buildings much more pleasing to the eye than the new buildings. For an extreme example, compare Boston City H
709.
How tiny Portugal beat the Chinese Empire in the race to control the seas(unenumerated.blogspot.com)
5 points by bokonist 18y ago|1 comments
710.
by bokonist 18y ago
Here is a great article comparing the Chinese and the Portuguese approaches to exploration. The comparison between ship sizes is just stunning. It's the 15th century version of Lisp versus Blub :-) : http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/200
711.
by bokonist 18y ago
I can't think of a single area where things where better 100 years ago than they are today in the US. 1) architecture 2) divorce rates 3) illegitimacy rates 3) inner city crime rates 4) the strength of civic organizations 5) the entire ed
712.
by bokonist 18y ago
My favorite theory about why the West and China diverged starting in the 16th century is that entrepreneurial capitalism thrived in the West. The ambitious acheived success by finding a competent master, learning a trade, and then making s
713.
by bokonist 18y ago
The funds would have simply vaporized. The actual supply of green dollar bills in the world is about $800 billion. But money market funds are valued at $8 trillion. If everyone actually tries to redeem their shares for dollars, each shar
714.
Flynn Effect has reversed among British teens(isteve.blogspot.com)
1 points by bokonist 18y ago|0 comments
715.
by bokonist 18y ago
Actually, the two are much closer than you think. All major religions achieved their growth and status by becoming the ideological arm of state power. Both politics and religion are fundamentally about how people think about the rulers.
716.
by bokonist 18y ago
The thing that politics and religion have in common, is that they have large organizations that actively cultivate emotional responses and ideological conformity. Organized religions do this because that's how they attract and hold on to fo
717.
by bokonist 18y ago
The key to having a sane political discussion is to remember that the survival of your tribe does not actually depend on the outcome of the discussion. Discuss politics as an observer of a complex and fascinating system, not as a participa
718.
by bokonist 18y ago
Having that kind of selection process is recipe for politicalization and bureaucratization. This article is my favorite treatment of the subject: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/11/tryfon-...
719.
by bokonist 18y ago
Plenty of schools offer generous academic scholarships ( Rice, Carnegie Mellon, Vanderbilt). If you shoot for a school a half tier lower than where you'd otherwise go, you can probably get a good scholarship. That's probably your best opt
720.
by bokonist 18y ago
The point of monetary deployment should be balance sheet repair. Only when people's balance sheet's are repaired can normal spending resume and the layoffs stop. The point of an intervention now should not be to get the unemployment rate

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