The End Game for Democracy

America's Gilded Capital

Mark Leibovich covers Washington, D.C., as chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine. In his new book, This Town, he writes about the city’s bipartisan lust for power, cash and notoriety. It’s the story of how Washington became an occupied city; its hold on reality distorted by greed and ambition. Leibovich pulls no punches, names names, and reveals the movers, the shakers and the lucrative deals they make — all in the name of crony capitalism.

http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-mark-leibovich-on-americas-gilded-capital/

Big Debt on Campus

This really upsets me. From Mother Jones, September 2013

To Think

“Thinking done for totally personal reasons-even when it concerns other people-usually has secure roots in our own intentions, values, considerations, and desires. We usually know where we are coming from and where we want to get to, and our thoughts can range without the inhibition of other people's possible reaction. The business of the brain is the construction of realities-the actual present reality of the world in which we live and the alternative realities of possible (and impossible) worlds that exist, at the moment, only in our own mind." Frank Smith, To Think

Read my book summary at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/163221519/To-Think

Useless Innovation

I'm getting irritated by useless innovation. I see it everywhere. My attempt to define it is innovation that adds function or changes form without an increase in utility in order to increase price or comparative differentiation. Seen any of that?