MetaFilter

Say goodbye to more jobs? This is an interesting research report from the Gartner Group on the future of banking, money and economic transition. One of the participants at a conference that Gartner cites is Bernard Leitaer, who is interviewed here. Leitaer is the author of the book The Future of Money. He argues " the malaise Japan has suffered since the early 1990s reflects an economic challenge the whole developed world has begun to face. Today, European and U.S. factories, too, suffer from overcapacity. The vaunted productivity growth spurred by the digital revolution has raised the economy’s stall speed. If the natural growth rate of the U.S. economy has risen to 4% annually, anything less than that rate will cause firms to trim capacity. A firm’s revenue growth often must come at the expense of competitors as well as its own profits because companies have trouble raising prices. In response, companies cut costs any way they can, usually by laying off employees and squeezing suppliers, which causes further layoffs. For developed countries, the safety valves that limited damage during contractions in manufacturing may not work. In past recessions, laid-off factory workers in the Great Lakes states, for example, could migrate to the growing Sun Belt to find new jobs. In the present transition, areas with job growth may lie overseas." The long heralded rise of the information economy, the death of distance and the rise of the global knowledge workers is paradigm shift that our goverment leader's seem ill equiped to handle.
comment posted at 8:08 AM on Mar-17-04

Osama bin Laden: missed opportunities The question for the 9/11 commission: If the CIA was able to get that close to bin Laden before 9/11, why wasn’t he captured or killed? The videotape has remained secret until now.
comment posted at 10:49 PM on Mar-16-04

Hey, remember, back in January, when Metafilter got nominated for best community weblog? Well, we won.
comment posted at 10:25 PM on Mar-15-04
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Someone finally has the guts to save the environment. The dangers of using harmful chemicals can easily outweight the benefits. Use your head!
comment posted at 11:51 PM on Mar-14-04

opposition party wins spanish elections. democracy can be somewhat irritating when decisions made against the will of the majority come back to haunt you. especially when trying to fool your people with baseless arguments, such as moral convictions that eta were behind the attacks. ever more curious about those wmd, or imminent threats, or, er, the intent of developing nuclear capabilities, in november.
comment posted at 1:44 PM on Mar-14-04
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spokesman of spanish police announces muslim men of moroccan, indian and spanish nationality were arrested this evening. goodbye and thank you, jose maria aznar.
comment posted at 9:01 PM on Mar-13-04

A Korn video that definately gets the message across about the music industry. (direct link to windows media, nsfw i believe)
comment posted at 12:29 AM on Mar-13-04

Extremely funny Quicktime interview with the designer who invented the Homeland Security Advisory System, "to let the general public know how close they were to dying".
comment posted at 10:25 AM on Mar-11-04

John McCain is open to running with Kerry. Is a Kerry and McCain a ticket combination that keeps President Bush up at night? McCain could help Kerry and the Democrats bring in a sizeable chunk of the important "Nascar Dad" vote that is key to this election. Expect big overtures from the Bush team towards McCain including the possibility of a Bush and McCain ticket. McCain's decision may rest on any lingering resentment over the 2000 Republican presidentialcampaign, particularly the dirty tricks the Bush campaign pulled in South Carolina. Stay tuned.
comment posted at 6:03 PM on Mar-10-04

American Taliban plans theocracy - soon Theocracy Watch reports on the religious right's takeover of the Republican Party. The Bush Administration's proposed Federal Marriage Amendment is but one ploy of the new American Taliban : "with one amendment the religious right could wipe out access to birth control, abortion, and even non-procreative sex" ["...behind this amendment: Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Gary Bauer, Robert Bork, Rick Santorum" - via Andrew Sullivan]. Maureen Farrell chronicles the power centers of the newly powerful religious right. Tim LaHaye, author of the Left Behind series, has the President's ear and this concerns more than jamming Creationism into your school's curriculum.

On the agenda - "The civil government of our nation, its laws, institutions, and practices must therefore be conformed to the principles of Biblical law as revealed in the Old and New Testaments." Writes Farrell - "How did this happen? - Voter apathy is the key to the phenomenal ascent of the Religious Right in the U.S. government." Pat Robertson, 1990 : "With the apathy that exists today, a small, well-organized minority can influence the selection of candidates to an astonishing degree."
comment posted at 11:01 AM on Mar-10-04

METABLAST: Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries vs. MetaFilter.
comment posted at 3:32 PM on Mar-9-04

Dish Network drops Viacom. Dish Network dropped Viacom-distributed channels last night, and CBS channels in 16 metropolitan areas. I can't see how alienating 1.6 million subscribers is going to be good for business, no matter what it does to their bottom line.
comment posted at 10:54 AM on Mar-9-04

The Republican National Committee is warning television stations across the country not to run ads from the MoveOn.org Voter Fund that criticize President Bush, charging that the left-leaning political group is paying for them with money raised in violation of the new campaign-finance law.
comment posted at 11:21 PM on Mar-8-04

Paul Krugman spells out the insanity of the Bush Administration simply, sweetly, inarguably. Blah blah blah liberal, Bush hating Mefi, blah blah blah, I don't care. This administration is so utterly dishonest, and our current press corps so disgustingly subserviant that I really don't care how bad an FPP this is. Krugman doesn't lie no matter what that idiot Donald Luskin says. Someone point me to a real, honest, defensible source that says Krugman's utter destruction of just about everything Bush is wrong. In my opinion, he along with Bob Somerby are lonely voices in a vast wilderness. Blah blah blah, liberal mefi crap blah blah blah
comment posted at 10:25 PM on Mar-8-04
comment posted at 10:36 PM on Mar-8-04

"These people always complain," said Graham Thorn, a psychiatrist, in a Chicago Tribune article about racial tensions in Australia. "They want it both ways--their way and our way. They want to live in our society and be respected, yet they won't work. They steal, they rob and they get drunk. And they don't respect the laws." The problem isn't that Graham Thorn didn't say that; as blogger Tim Blair uncovered, the problem is that Graham Thorn never existed. [more inside]
comment posted at 11:29 AM on Mar-8-04

Bush's flip flops Bad mouth Kerry? Look who truly speaks out of both sides of his smirking head. Compare and contrast in 500 words. Spelling counts.
comment posted at 7:37 AM on Mar-8-04
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Pornography. [SFW]
comment posted at 1:04 PM on Mar-7-04

Europe Is Deeply In Love With John Kerry. How Will America React? He's liberal but not an outright socialist; he has Polish origins and an Irish surname; he's better connected to the British Royal Family than that embarrassing proto-prole Bush; he was educated in Switzerland; he speaks French beautifully and, above all, he's married to a spirited Portuguese woman who watches his every step... [More inside.]
comment posted at 12:43 PM on Mar-7-04

Taste ... priceless Is everything fair game to eventually become a commodity in America?
comment posted at 3:40 PM on Mar-6-04

The Girl Watcher Whether your scene is the kitten type, stalking the girl, or just straight-up girl collecting - this is the publication for you. Bail not included. (via filepile)
comment posted at 8:22 PM on Mar-6-04

He couldn't stand the complexity of the facts or the ambiguity of intelligence. William Saletan of Slate suggests an interesting strategy to oust Bush. Will it work? Should John Kerry take Saletan's advice? Republicans, what say you?
comment posted at 3:47 PM on Mar-6-04

Bush's campaign commercials feature footage from 9/11, but anger firefighters and families of victims. Is it disingenuous to defend the ads when you claimed just nineteen weeks after the tragedy that you would not use the disaster for politcal gain? If anyone should be able to use the event for political purposes, it would be Giuliani, who defends Bush's actions.
comment posted at 6:51 AM on Mar-5-04
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Buyer's Remorse? Mickey Kaus of Slate raises questions about Kerry as president, though as it looks like the Mass. senator has the nomination locked up. CNN reports that Edwards is dropping out tomorrow. And the polls aren't even closed yet in most states. CNN says the two men had a good talk by phone. Is this the Dems dream ticket? Meanwhile, Vermont screams for Dean.
comment posted at 5:49 PM on Mar-2-04

Mining the Deep Web. Google indexes 4 billion pages, but there are hundreds of billions of documents out there in the Deep Web that are effectively unreachable by search engines because they are locked in databases or are unsearchable media. It looks like Yahoo is going to start giving us a peek by providing unified access to a wide variety of sites that are ordinarily only searchable by their own custom search engines.
comment posted at 7:22 PM on Mar-2-04

god hates shrimp
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Culture War a-brewin' ...git yer ammo here. As territory is staked out in this nascent national struggle, the Independent Gay Forum has a number of articles that provide a more-than-cursory glimpse of the manner in which one side hopes to frame the debate, and a likely response to the frames already in place. Especially notable is John Corvin's Homosexuality and Morality. It appears as if the newest round of the culture wars may be unique in that two sides will be fighting them.
comment posted at 1:15 PM on Mar-2-04
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The Kamagasaki Gallery. Background to and photographs of a Japanese slum.
comment posted at 9:30 PM on Mar-2-04
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Aristide Says He Was Kidnapped From Democracy Now: Aristide says he was "kidnapped" and taken by force to the Central African Republic. Congressmember Maxine Waters said she received a call from Aristide at 9am EST. "He's surrounded by military. It's like he is in jail, he said. He says he was kidnapped," said Waters. "He did not resign.... He was abducted by the United States in the commission of a coup." Robinson says he spoke to Aristide on a cell phone that was smuggled to the Haitian president. Will this revolution be televised? (Accounts in ogg and mp3)
comment posted at 3:28 PM on Mar-1-04

The Deal. Why is Washington going easy on Pakistan's nuclear black marketers and supporting the pardon of Abdul Qadeer Khan? According to Seymour Hersh, it's in exchange for Pervez Musharraf allowing U.S. troops into Pakistan to hunt for Osama bin Laden. [Via The Argus.]
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comment posted at 12:08 AM on Mar-2-04

avatar creator [note: flash, alternate link]
comment posted at 9:25 PM on Feb-29-04
comment posted at 9:46 PM on Feb-29-04