Salon: How The World Works
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Brave new grocery shopping
via Salon: How the World Works by Andrew Leonard on January 14, 2008
I have seen the future of grocery shopping, and its name is MediaCart. We so need this: A shopping cart that knows where everything is, courtesy of Microsoft. The AP's Jessica Mintz reports that Microsoft is "bringing digital advertising to the shopping cart." Customers wit
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Brazil's Orkut rule
via Salon: How the World Works by Andrew Leonard on January 13, 2008
"The Orkut Rule," writes Bryan McCann in a forthcoming history of modern Brazil, "holds that, wherever possible, Brazilians will avail themselves of the possibilities of digital media to create subcultural niches and cross cultural networks in ways that defy traditional social hierarchies and the existing national cultural canon."
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The omnivore's new dilemma
via Salon: How the World Works by Andrew Leonard on January 31, 2008
... of Cheetos without shuddering as you contemplate the completely bonkers industrial food system that produced such modern artifacts. But for a book published as recently as 2006, what might be most fascinating about "The Omnivore's Dilemma" is how quickly fundamental changes in the U.S. agricultural economy have turned some of Pollan's basic themes upside down. The first third of "...
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The economics of Barack Obama
via Salon: How the World Works by Andrew Leonard on February 03, 2008
Writing in the Guardian, Daniel Koffler offers a provocative analysis of the economics of Barack Obama, arguing that the senator and his chief economic advisor, Austan Goolsbee, have put together a platform that is "orthogonal to the traditional liberal-conservative axis." (Thanks to Trade Diversion for the link.) If this approach needs a name, call it left-libertarianism. Advancements in...
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Don't be happy. Worry
via Salon: How the World Works by Andrew Leonard on February 18, 2008
Is there a case to be made for more dourness on the part of corporate executives? In "The Dark Side of Optimism: Why looking on the bright side keeps us from thinking critically," management consultant Susan Webber argues yes. In her view, "the financial and business communities dismissed all the warnings" about the housing meltdown/credit crunch bearing down upon them because they wilfully...
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William Kristol's bad grade in economics
via Salon: How the World Works by Andrew Leonard on February 24, 2008
The moral of this story: Be careful who you give a C- to. The blogosphere remembers all! Dani Rodrik, the Harvard economist whose thoughts on industrial policy,trade, and libertarianism have been featured numerous times here on How the World Works, takes long-awaited revenge today on the New York Times' newest Op-Ed columnist, right-wing propagandist William Kristol. Rodrik had the pleasure...
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A primer in plug-in hybrid economics
via Salon: How the World Works by Andrew Leonard on March 03, 2008
Imagine a plug-in hybrid quietly recharging in every garage, vastly reducing society's dependence on oil. What's not to like? What are we waiting for?Advances in battery technology? New solar power plants to handle the additional electricity demand? Higher gas prices to encourage more consumers, and automakers, to make the plug-in hybrid plunge? The cost-benefit calculus that determines...
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Paul Krugman flies to outer space
via Salon: How the World Works by Andrew Leonard on March 10, 2008
... who created the Golden Fleece Awards, designed to highlight particularly egregious examples of government waste of taxpayer money. So right off, Krugman makes it clear that he is about to launch readers into a brave new world of nonsense. Or as he puts it later, "this paper, then, is a serious analysis of a ridiculous subject, which is of course the opposite of what is usual in economics." An...
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The Twittering of Ben Bernanke
via Salon: How the World Works by Andrew Leonard on March 12, 2008
You know a new communications medium has come of age when someone employs it in the service of satire or parody. That day has now arrived for Twitter, the Web-based service that allows users to keep anyone who cares informed in real time about anything that one might be doing or feeling or thinking, no matter how trivial. While its specific limitation of no more than 140 characters for any given...
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Your very own climate change Victory Garden
via Salon: How the World Works by Andrew Leonard on April 21, 2008
In "Why Bother?" Michael Pollan's newest Sunday New York Times Magazine essay, the Berkeley writer urges us all to start vegetable gardens in our backyards as a way not just to combat climate change, but to break the stranglehold of consumerist society and actually do something real. It's a good read, especially if you're a Berkeleyan with a backyard who is constantly worrying about...
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