- “How not to fix America’s ‘Broken Jobs Machine‘” — Me versus Richard Florida, who seems to think that retail jobs at companies such as Zappos and Starbucks can take the place of manufacturing jobs.
- “Hedging against market risk by buying puts on ETFs that track indexes” — Don’t blame me for the clunky headline, [...]

A few articles of mine published on Seeking Alpha recently:
Why U.S. Unemployment Remains so High (the graphic in the previous post is related to this article)
The Battle for Dominance among Mobile Operating Systems
Hedging the NASDAQ 100 and its most widely-traded components

A few highlights:
– Charlie Rose’s interview with Singapore’s Lee Kwan Yew. Charlie let Yew talk, which was good. Yew offered his insights into the current situation in North Africa & the Middle East as well as China & East Asia, India, and of course Singapore.
– Lunch with the FT: Roger Waters. The [...]

Before reading yesterday’s Lunch with the FT interview with Kevin Rudd, I had no idea the parents of the former Aussie prime minister (and current foreign minister) were sharecroppers. The interview also covered the story of Rudd’s ancestor, who first arrived in Australia in 1789:
“My forbear was unremarkable,” [Kevin Rudd] says, a strange opening to [...]

Finally watched the 1936 H.G. Wells  classic Things to Come last night, via Netflix. Here’s a quick plot summary, via IMDB, then a couple of thoughts :
A global war begins in 1940. This war drags out over many decades until most of the people still alive (mostly those born after the war started) [...]

Late to this, but Sunday’s New York Times featured an op/ed by the novelist Richard Powers about the IBM computer that’s going to compete in Jeopardy, “What Is Artificial Intelligence?”. In it, Powers adds, parenthetically,
(Recall Socrates’ warnings about the perils of that most destabilizing technology of all — writing.)
If I had read that a [...]

This Salon essay by Michael Lind is interesting, not as much for what it says, but for who is saying it: “Innovation and education won’t save our economy”. A couple of excerpts first, then an elaboration. Lind writes,
We’ve heard it a thousand times, from American CEOs, pundits and politicians. And we’ll probably hear it again [...]