People often falsely assume I advocate and use Apple products because I think they’re trendy or because I’m some kind of gadget freak.
The truth is our world is awash with badly designed, badly crafted things. Apple is one of the few havens in a sea of people and organisations that don’t give a fuck about the details. Attention to detail is why I use Apple products:
In July 2002, Apple filed a patent for a “Breathing Status LED Indicator” …They described it as a “blinking effect of the sleep-mode indicator in accordance with the present invention mimics the rhythm of breathing which is psychologically appealing.”
The other day, I noticed that my friend’s Dell laptop had a similar feature but with a shorter fade-in-fade-out period. Its rate was around 40 blinks per second, or the average respiratory rate for adults during strenuous exercise — not very indicative of something in sleep-mode.
It’s interesting how a lot of companies try to copy Apple but never seem to get it right. This is yet another example of Apple’s obsessive attention to detail.
Income Inequality and Financial Crises:
David A. Moss, an economic and policy historian at the Harvard Business School, has spent years studying income inequality. While he has long believed that the growing disparity between the rich and poor was harmful to the people on the bottom, he says he hadn’t seen the risks to the world of finance, where many of the richest earn their great fortunes.
Now, as he studies the financial crisis of 2008, Mr. Moss says that even Wall Street may have something serious to fear from inequality — namely, another crisis.
Did weak copyright laws help Germany outpace the British Empire?:
Höffner contends … that the near absence of copyright law in eighteenth and nineteenth century Germany laid the groundwork for the “Gründerzeit” — the enormous wave of economic growth that Deutschland experienced in the middle and later nineteenth century.
Interview from Race Talk | Listen (MP3)
Noam Chomsky on Israel
By Kathleen Wells
Internationally recognized as one of America’s most critically-engaged public intellectuals today, Noam Chomsky spoke with me about Israel and its interplay with the United States.
The arms trade, and you, dear UK taxpayer, are paying to set up the deals:
British taxpayers are paying a secretive lobbying firm $10,000 (£6,354) a month to push American politicians to award contracts to British defence companies.
Understated, via Mission Mission.
The science of morality forges ahead:
Something radically new is in the air: new ways of understanding physical systems, new ways of thinking about thinking that call into question many of our basic assumptions. A realistic biology of the mind, advances in evolutionary biology, physics, information technology, genetics, neurobiology, psychology, engineering, the chemistry of materials: all are questions of critical importance with respect to what it means to be human. For the first time, we have the tools and the will to undertake the scientific study of human nature.