Joel E Lewis

Imagine a world where when you leave a job, instead of telling you to pack your desk, they tell you to:
… deposit your ideas at the door before passing through the brain scanner to make sure you aren’t taking any ideas with you. And don’t forget to leave any thoughts you brought with you from [...]

Good overview on what buzz is, what it isn’t, and what to watch about it.  Most perspective shifting part for me:
Q: Could Buzz become bigger than Twitter?
A: It already is:
While we can’t pinpoint an exact number, Twitter has probably around 18-25 million users worldwide. Heck, let’s say there are 30 million to be generous. Gmail [...]

Interesting talk about the technology revolution’s ability to remake government, from the leader of Britain’s Conservative Party.
What really strikes me looking around the world today is that information technology has remade retail and remade media consumption, but there are still huge industries it hasn’t begun to touch – Finance, Health Care, Energy, Education, and Government. [...]

Another sign of mainstream recognition of political polarization in the United States – From the Economist:
The supermajority rule [60 votes in the Senate] would be no bad thing if it forced the majority party to reach out to the other side. The Democrats themselves have often been glad of it, for example to block some [...]

The NYTimes has a must read article on the tea party movement.  For me there were three key takeaways:

The Tea Party movement is redefining and enlarging the radical right, which could have significant impact in the primaries.
People strongly believe ideas that to put it bluntly, I find completely nuts.
This movement is being led by the [...]

Paul Volcker and I are really disturbed by Congress’s inability to act:
VOLCKER: Capitol Hill and the Senate is dysfunctional. I mean, I’m very disturbed about the trend in the government generally and its inability to get together and do things.
And I had some hopes. This is a relatively neutral subject politically. The need is [...]

For those of you tempted to do some Atlas Shrugged inspired gift giving:
Detroit Free Press
…But there’s another gift-giving option that looks appealing this year, when everyone is trying to stretch their budgets: dining discount certificates.
The best-known ones come from a Chicago company called restaurant.com. Its offers sound terrific – $50 gift certificates for $20, for [...]

I just finished an excellent novel set in India, The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, and this NY Times Article about Indians from America returning the motherland.  Both provide a great counter point to the popular narrative of the opportunity in India.  While there is great potential for growth, inefficient government, crippling poverty, and rampant [...]

A great article about systemic instability, financial markets, and the the deficit.  Here is one taste:
The Obama administration tells us that the government deficit is going to be well over $1 trillion a year for at least ten years. And that does not take into account the outlier years in the 2020s when the really [...]