Politics
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We always need a Plan B
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1 min read
“‘The pessimists left Germany, the optimists ended up in Auschwitz.” The lesson from the Holocaust, he says, is to be on your guard. “We always need a Plan B, even today.’”
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Obama’s Design Thinking
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2 min read
(Editor’s Note: a meme like “design thinking” hasn’t really been beaten to death until it’s been associated with and used to explain popular culture :-) There were two lines in President Obama’s inaugural speech that caught my attention, signaling him as someone who can think beyond the prevailing frames and design new situations. In both…
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Google Earth Convinces Bush to Act on Darfur
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1 min read
On the bright side, this story of how President Bush acted after seeing a Google Earth depiction of the burned out homes in Darfur is a great story about the power of visualization. But really, was the administration waiting four years to act because the bullet points weren’t powerful enough? At least 400,000 people have…
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Shoot Your Polling Place (U.S. only)
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1 min read
The Polling Place Photo Project is a nationwide experiment in citizen journalism that seeks to empower citizens to capture, post and share photographs of democracy in action. By documenting their local voting experience on November 7, voters can contribute to an archive of photographs that captures the richness and complexity of voting in America.
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Prosperity vs. freedom in China
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1 min read
The recent Frontline documentary on China, The Tank Man, set a striking contrast of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests against the business and economic boom created since then. They describe this flow one to the other as an unspoken social contract between the government and the people: we’ll give you jobs and prosperity if you…
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Positive solutions that are neither left nor right
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2 min read
In this Bruce Mau talk on Global Creativity, he mostly discusses the Massive Change exhibit. But at the end he drops this, without making it clear how it’s tied in… (my paraphrasing) Why are we seeing things on the political right and left that are both interesting? They should be at odds. What we realized…
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Is Angie a design thinker?
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1 min read
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is making waves at Davos. I like her attitude: “She acknowledged the political necessity to move ‘in small steps.’ She added, ‘In Germany, sometimes things never get going because one doesn’t know how it will work out, and maybe it’s better to do nothing. That’s not my maxim.’“
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Balancing the heart and head is an old problem…
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1 min read
For the problem is simply how can warm passion and a cool sense of proportion be forged together in one and the same soul? Politics is made with the head, not with other parts of the body or soul. And yet devotion to politics, if it is not to be frivolous intellectual play but rather…
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There’s a juicy internationalization problem
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1 min read
Hindus in Europe want to take back the swastika because to them it’s a symbol of luck and peace which the Nazis stole. Meanwhile the European Parliment is considering banning the symbol throughout Europe after Prince Harry of Great Britain wore a mock Nazi uniforn to a costume party.
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Sorry, I’m not sorry
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1 min read
I’ll go on the record here and say that Sorry Everybody is contrary to the ideals that make America what it is. I voted against Bush, but that doesn’t make me want to apologize to the rest of the world that he won. He won because we are a Republic with a democratic voting process…
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Political framing: Taxes
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2 min read
After Christina shared George Lakoff’s ideas on framing, I’ve been thinking about developing new frames from a progressive political point of view. We can’t simply react to what the conservatives do, we must proactively create the future. Under the radar, President Bush is gradually moving towards a flat tax, and along the way the changes…
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As for that stupid, damn election…
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1 min read
…I’ve decided to become stinking rich and in my utter richness punish those amazingly annoying “millions of farmers, factory workers and waitresses who ended up voting – utterly against their own interests – for Republican candidates.” Arrrrrrrrrrrgh.
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My birthday is Tuesday…
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1 min read
…and I’d like everyone in America to chip in and get me a new president. Thanks! Oh, and some tickets to The Incredibles.
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Debate commentary
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1 min read
Katharine Q. Seelye’s live commentary of the presidential debate is better reading than the debate itself… 9:33 p.m. Bush should probably not laugh in response to a question about why health care costs so much. She must be there, or watching a non-delayed feed, as her comments come up before the candidate’s answer. It’s a…
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Hacking Congress
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1 min read
In this inaugural article of Paul Ford’s new column, Hacking Congress, he introduces his plan to create an RDF description of the U.S. federal government… If you’ve been following Paul’s ideas for the semantic web, you can imagine the potential of this one.