pricing

The Undercover Economist explains how pricing is also a form of signaling – it’s a back-and-forth dialogue between the consumer and the vendor. The schedu...

thumbs

watching movies about nature, i’m reminded that opposable thumbs are very cool. once upon a time they helped us grasp fruit. then tools. today, they help ...

come to Troy moment

Not 12 hours after having this positive experience, I get an email from same mass blogging service telling me that a user is now “following me” alon...

social smarts

apple has introduced a feature called the genius sidebar for your music listening pleasure. it may be very smart at finding related music but it has a funny bug...

scifi

let’s say you needed to create intermediaries between us and the other mammals. if a machine can learn sign language by watching TV, couldn’t one le...

movies

there’s a good documentary somewhere inside Dolphins: IMAX, you just have to peel off the music layer. and the voice over. the facts and footage are remar...

fulfillment

last night i bought a pair of flip flops online. at around 8 pm PST. they arrived this morning. that’s very fast. that’s, like, as long as it used t...

contracts

Ana says responsible breeders are essentially lending dogs to owners. Like life banks, if you will. Where you pay full price up front. They’ll totally, wi...

crowds

Jon Van Oast on a society transformed by new communication tools: “The future will be an experiment in fluid dynamics.”

design thoughts

As an immigrant and a typical American, I’ve moved around for most of my life. Last year, however, I decided to stay. With my parents’ help, we boug...

insights

A paraphrase of Chris Rock in 2008: George W. Bush fucked it up so bad that a white man can’t run for president. Rock on when white people can say… ...

intelligence

via MeFi, Watching Whales Watching Us: Whales, we now know, teach and learn. They scheme. They cooperate, and they grieve. They recognize themselves and their f...

climate change

most of the enduring species have a great defense mechanism. or, in the words of the poets Poison: every rose has its thorn. so, it stands to reason that the pl...

spaces

On the one hand, it’s surprising to see so much previously private communication become public (e.g., MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Google caches). On the o...

economy

Robert Reich is right on the money: All we know is the current economy can’t “recover” because it can’t go back to where it was before t...