Ramblings & ephemera
From Robert Sherrill’s “100 (Plus) Years of Regime Change” (The Texas Observer: 14 July 2006):
Kissinger, then secretary of state, was certain he detected the odor of communism in the election of Salvador Allende Gossens to the presidency of Chile. …
Chile was one of the most stable countries in South America, with a high literacy rate, [...]
Posted on July 31st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, politics | Comments Off
From Robert Sherrill’s “100 (Plus) Years of Regime Change” (The Texas Observer: 14 July 2006):
At roughly the same time Secretary of State Dulles was destroying democracy in Iran, he was also busy destroying democracy in Central America, and once again it was on behalf of a renegade industry: United Fruit Co. …
“Few private companies have [...]
Posted on July 31st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, politics | Comments Off
From Robert Sherrill’s “100 (Plus) Years of Regime Change” (The Texas Observer: 14 July 2006):
In 1953 the brutal, venal shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was pushed into exile by Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected prime minister. …
Iranians loved Mossadegh. He made clear that his two ambitions were to set up a lasting democracy and [...]
Posted on July 31st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, history, politics | Comments Off
From Robert Sherrill’s “100 (Plus) Years of Regime Change” (The Texas Observer: 14 July 2006):
[Stephen Kinzer's] Overthrow is an infuriating recitation of our government’s military bullying over the past 110 years - a century of interventions around the world that resulted in the overthrow of 14 governments - in Hawaii, Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, [...]
Posted on July 31st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, politics | Comments Off
From Clifton Leaf’s “The Law of Unintended Consequences” (Fortune: 19 September 2005):
The Supreme Court’s decision in 1980 to allow for the patenting of living organisms opened the spigots to individual claims of ownership over everything from genes and protein receptors to biochemical pathways and processes. Soon, research scientists were swooping into patent offices around the [...]
Posted on July 30th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, business, history, law | Comments Off
From Tom Stites’s “Guest Posting: Is Media Performance Democracy’s Critical Issue?” (Center for Citizen Media: Blog: 3 July 2006):
Serious reporting is based in verified fact passed through mature professional judgment. It has integrity. It engages readers – there’s that word again, readers – with compelling stories and it appeals to their human capacity for reason. [...]
Posted on July 30th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, business, politics | Comments Off
From Barry C. Lynn’s “The Case for Breaking Up Wal-Mart” (Harper’s: 24 July 2006):
Popular notions of oligopoly and monopoly tend to focus on the danger that firms, having gained control over a marketplace, will then be able to dictate an unfairly high price, extracting a sort of tax from society as a whole. But what [...]
Posted on July 30th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, law | Comments Off
From Barry C. Lynn’s “The Case for Breaking Up Wal-Mart” (Harper’s: 24 July 2006):
It is now twenty-five years since the Reagan Administration eviscerated America’s century-long tradition of antitrust enforcement. For a generation, big firms have enjoyed almost complete license to use brute economic force to grow only bigger. And so today we find ourselves in [...]
Posted on July 30th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, law, politics | Comments Off
From John Taylor Gatto’s “Against School” (Harper’s Magazine: September 2003):
Mass schooling of a compulsory nature really got its teeth into the United States between 1905 and 1915, though it was conceived of much earlier and pushed for throughout most of the nineteenth century. The reason given for this enormous upheaval of family life and cultural [...]
Posted on July 28th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, education, history, politics | Comments Off
From Paul Graham’s “The Submarine” (April 2005):
Why do the media keep running stories saying suits are back? Because PR firms tell them to. One of the most surprising things I discovered during my brief business career was the existence of the PR industry, lurking like a huge, quiet submarine beneath the news. Of the stories [...]
Posted on July 13th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, business, politics | Comments Off
From John Twelve Hawks’s “ How We Live Now” (2005):
“And so what if they know all about me?” asks the honest citizen. “I’m good person. I’ve got nothing to hide.” This view assumes that the intimate personal information easily found in our computerized system is accurate, secure, and will only be used for your benefit. [...]
Posted on July 6th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, Webster U: InfoSec Management, law, politics, security | Comments Off
From Brendan I. Koerner’s “Your Cellphone is a Homing Device” (Legal Affairs: July/August 2003):
What your salesman probably failed to tell you - and may not even realize - is that an E911-capable phone can give your wireless carrier continual updates on your location. The phone is embedded with a Global Positioning System chip, which can [...]
Posted on June 4th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, Webster U: InfoSec Management, business, law, security | Comments Off
From Ross Guberman’s “Home Is Where the Heart Is” (Legal Affairs: November/December 2004):
ABOUT 50 MILLION AMERICANS BELONG TO HOMEOWNER ASSOCIATIONS, also known as HOAs or common-interest developments, which are composed of single-family homes, condominiums, or co-ops. Four out of five new homes, ranging from starter homes to high-rise apartments to gated mansions, are in one [...]
Posted on May 30th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, law, politics | Comments Off
From Rebecca Ulam Weiner’s “Sheep in Wolves’ Clothing” (Legal Affairs: January/February 2006):
YOU WON’T FIND THE WORD “MERCENARY” on the homepage of the International Peace Operations Association, the trade group for the private military industry. While many of the IPOA’s member companies are staffed by elite former soldiers of the United States military who now make [...]
Posted on May 21st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, history, law, politics, security | Comments Off
From Scott Kleper’s “An Introduction to Copyfighting“:
I think a lot of people incorrectly assume that Copyfighters are people who believe that copyright should be abolished and that everything should be free. Copyfighters aren’t saying that all media should be freely distributed. We are saying that as consumers of media (film, television, software, literature, etc.) we [...]
Posted on May 9th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, business, law | Comments Off
From “Statement by India at the Inter-Sessional Intergovernmental Meeting on a Development Agenda For WIPO, April 11-13, 2005” (emphasis added):
“Development”, in WIPO’s terminology means increasing a developing country’s capacity to provide protection to the owners of intellectual property rights. This is quite a the opposite of what developing countries understand when they refer to the [...]
Posted on May 9th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, law, politics | Comments Off
From Paul Graham’s “Are Software Patents Evil?“:
Fortunately for startups, big companies are extremely good at denial. If you take the trouble to attack them from an oblique angle, they’ll meet you half-way and maneuver to keep you in their blind spot. To sue a startup would mean admitting it was dangerous, and that often means [...]
Posted on April 21st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, business, history | Comments Off
From Paul Graham’s “Are Software Patents Evil?“:
The situation with patents is similar. Business is a kind of ritualized warfare. Indeed, it evolved from actual warfare: most early traders switched on the fly from merchants to pirates depending on how strong you seemed. In business there are certain rules describing how companies may and may not [...]
Posted on April 21st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, business | Comments Off
From John Markoff’s “U.S. Office Joins an Effort to Improve Software Patents“:
the patent office plans to announce today that I.B.M. once again topped the list of private-sector patent recipients in 2005. The company received 2,941 patents last year, compared with 3,248 patents in 2004.
Related posts
What patents on life has wrought
The tyranny of HOAs
Paul Graham on [...]
Posted on January 29th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, business | Comments Off
From Edward R. Murrow’s 15 October 1958 speech to the Radio-Television News Directors Association:
One of the basic troubles with radio and television news is that both instruments have grown up as an incompatible combination of show business, advertising and news. Each of the three is a rather bizarre and demanding profession. And when you get [...]
Posted on January 23rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, business, politics | Comments Off
Bookmarked 2 links
Added 2 products to their wishlist:
Bookmarked 2 links
Added a product to their wishlist:
Shared an image: like a record...
Bookmarked a link: 10 useful jQuery plugins :: ENHANCE
I now have one week to finish my book on Google. Freak out mode has officially begun. (I'll finish it ... I'm just gonna freak out during)
Bookmarked a link: FILExt - The File Extension Source
Just had two Wash U students & a HS student stop by asking me to help the Obama campaign. I said yes. Good to see kids involved in politics!