What do I hope to accomplish within my lifetime?
Keeping the American Dream in Perspective
The American Dream is an incredibly alluring concept. It resonates with me because my parents came from England to work and start a family back in the 60’s, and have done well for themselves. They were not leaving a horrible situation in [...]
One of the topics I want to study more about is what we’re all going to do in the future for work and jobs. Part of the sharp upheaval of the 20th century of rapid economic development was that a stable career was not sustainable except for certain professions. It is true in the US [...]
I’m moving out of my Georgetown rowhouse and just started my job, so I’ve been a little busy and haven’t been able to write much. That’s one reason Twitter is so great — I’ve been able to just send some quick tweets (the other reason it’s so great is its generativity (see Jonathan Zittrain) — [...]
Few people have seen all four of the Fast and the Furious movies. Yes, there are four of them. The titles are strange and confusing, so here they are, in order:
The Fast and the Furious
2 Fast 2 Furious
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
Fast & Furious
The first movie seemed to get the most attention, mainly [...]
I was having lunch with a couple buddies of mine, one of whom took Michael Scheuer’s “Al-Qaeda and the Global Jihad” class with me. He reminded me of one of Professor Scheuer’s best points made during the semester.
I might have forgotten some of the details, so I apologize, but I hope to capture the main [...]
A friend of mine linked to a blog post from Ivan Krstić about a massive short squeeze on Volkswagen stock back in October of 2008. Ivan does a great job of explaining what happened (so read that first), but I wanted to build upon the story.
Porsche vs. Traders
Basically, a bunch of hedge funds were [...]
There’s some really fascinating reading out there about what’s going to happen next.
The financial crisis and American imperial overreach has prompted some interesting discussion of the Zakarian post-American world, and whether the US will continue to be the clear hegemon in a multipolar world or just a bruised hegemon that needs to collect itself for [...]
A buddy of mine on IRC posted a YouTube video that mashes up (a phrase meaning to mix up different sources of music and video and other media into one product) drum n’ bass (dnb) music with footage from church sermons with people dancing and being overcome by religious experience and priests giving emotional sermons. [...]
One more thing for tonight.
I’m studying international development, and for my class, this concentration has been dominated by females. There are maybe four other guys studying it.
I’ve had a lot of female bosses in various disciplines (web design, the Army, USAID), so I’m used to it. It has benefits and drawbacks. Usually [...]
A few weeks ago, there was an excellent article in the NYTimes about online ambient awareness. This article was immediately influential — it was quoted and passed around by a lot of blogs and readers, and I got personal e-mails saying that it reminded them of my Galapag.us project.
An excerpt:
But as the days went by, [...]
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