What a first decade for a century! Even before Wall Street collapsed as the speculation bubble burst there was uncertainty everywhere: the United States was embroiled in the invasion of another state, suicide terrorists threatening (and succeeding) to assassinate heads of state, globalization extending into every market, untold millions of people seeking comfort in consumerism, [...]
February 2009
So there you have it: my first video. At the very least, I can say it’s out of the damn way. I’ve been meaning to start doing this for a week or two. I’m starting to move more of my writing energy into long-term professional projects rather than blogging — book-writing, I mean (more on [...]
Education and architecture may be my two favourite fields to trespass into (after philosophy, economics, journalism, management…) and right now there are a couple of interesting pieces from Metropolis Magazine that combine them. The short one is “IDEO’s Ten Tips for Creating a 21st Century Classroom Experience.” Anyone familiar with John Dewey’s progressive theories will recognize most of the [...]
As much as I’d personally love London to be like Vancouver or Chicago — with a dense, vibrant, creative urban core — it isn’t, and we need to get over that fact. As much as I wholeheartedly agree with the spirit of James Shelley’s From My Bottom Step post about car-less living (and I’ve got some very similar [...]
I’d recommend this article to just about anybody: “The No-Stats All-Star” from New York Times Magazine. [Update: I forgot to tip my hat to aldaily.com -- of all places -- where I found the link. Patrick Maloney at lfpress.com blogged it earlier too.] It’s by Michael Lewis, who walked away from Wall Street in the 1980′s and wrote [...]
I’ve been watching Macleans.ca gradually evolve for the past few months from a circa-2001 disgrace to something that (at least) signals their commitment to (at least) the idea of good design and social functionality. And it hasn’t escaped my notice that Macleans.ca is “Powered by WordPress” – just like the site you’re reading now. Their present iteration bears [...]
I highly recommend the current issue of The Atlantic. I went out and bought it yesterday morning. Yes: bought… It has me thinking about magazines, why I like them so much (especially ambitiously intellectual magazines like The Atlantic) and what role publications like this will have in the future — or more specifically, how they will manage to adapt [...]
Inside the Meltdown, Tuesday night at 9:00 on PBS Frontline. “Many Americans still don’t understand what has happened to the economy,” FRONTLINE producer/director Michael Kirk says. “How did it all go so bad so quickly? Who is responsible? How effective has the response from Washington and Wall Street been? Those are the questions at the heart [...]
And here we are. More than one hundred thousand Americans have just lost their jobs. According to psychologists who study happiness, that is the most miserable experience many people will ever endure. Getting back to work is the best medicine. For thousands of workers and their families, getting back to work means packing up and [...]
