Listen to the scolding being delivered by Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri with regard to what appears to be a fraud committed by a major Department of Defense contractor and subsequent incompetence by the GAO. How many other millions and billions of tax dollars are being wasted by the pentagon and its contractors? Where are the tea-parties protesting pentagon fraud?
There has been a lot of talk lately about coming up withe new models of providing information, such that the consumers will "continue" to pay for content. Not so fast, says Paul Graham:
Publishers of all types, from news to music, are unhappy that consumers won't pay for content anymore. At least, that's how they see it. In fact consumers never really were paying for content, and publishers weren't really selling it either. If the content was what they were selling, why has the price of books or music or movies always depended mostly on the format? Why didn't better content cost more? . . . Economically, the print media are in the business of marking up paper.
But don't people pay for information? Only certain kinds of information:People will pay for information they think they can make money from. That's why they paid for those stock tip newsletters, and why companies pay now for Bloomberg terminals and Economist Intelligence Unit reports. But will people pay for information otherwise? History offers little encouragement.
[via Daily Dish]
I mean, truly, what's up? How about this incredible NASA photo of the Milky Way taken by the Spitzer infrared telescope. We live in quite an amazing neighborhood.
But there are other things that are up closer to home. I caught both of these images yesterday. First of all, a sky-full of clouds, as a storm was gathering . . .
. . . which ended up with this rainbow, right over my house. A sign of good luck, assume . . .
I don't think I'm good at spotting liars. I don't usually recognize the that I've been lied to until after "things just don't add up," and that might be a long time after the lie occurs. I'm almost always surprised when it turns out that my trust was betrayed. This two-minute How-Cast video gives a brisk summary of some some advice that resonates with me. Now I'll just have to see if I'll be able to employ this advice to good effect.
Those torture "not-torture" memos are a bit tedious to read. In this video an enterprising fellow put them to music. Equally catchy and tragic.
[via Colby K. Clark]