Ted Murphy, the C.E.O. of Izea, now a 30-person business backed by $10 million in venture capital, said the company initially "made a big mistake" by not setting disclosure standards for publishers and advertisers. Today, ad networks promote their standards; Izea's ads on Twitter are typically demarcated with signifiers like "#ad" or "#sponsor."
As Bill Simmons tells it now, all he really needed to know about Internet success he learned as a nearly anonymous blogger -- the term had not gained currency, but it still fits. "The question was, how do you keep people coming back?" he said. His insights were to update his posts frequently and to be provocative, to get a discussion going among and with his readers.
An eclectic essayist is necessarily a dilettante, which is not in itself a bad thing. But Gladwell frequently holds forth about statistics and psychology, and his lack of technical grounding in these subjects can be jarring. He provides misleading definitions of "homology," "saggital plane" and "power law" and quotes an expert speaking about an "igon value" (that's eigenvalue, a basic concept in linear algebra). In the spirit of Gladwell, who likes to give portentous names to his aperçus, I will call this the Igon Value Problem: when a writer's education on a topic consists in interviewing an expert, he is apt to offer generalizations that are banal, obtuse or flat wrong.
What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures by Malcolm Gladwell
Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
The problem with Gladwell's generalizations about prediction is that he never zeroes in on the essence of a statistical problem and instead overinterprets some of its trappings. For example, in many cases of uncertainty, a decision maker has to act on an observation that may be either a signal from a target or noise from a distractor (a blip on a screen may be a missile or static; a blob on an X-ray may be a tumor or a harmless thickening). Improving the ability of your detection technology to discriminate signals from noise is always a good thing, because it lowers the chance you'll mistake a target for a distractor or vice versa. But given the technology you have, there is an optimal threshold for a decision, which depends on the relative costs of missing a target and issuing a false alarm. By failing to identify this trade-off, Gladwell bamboozles his readers with pseudoparadoxes about the limitations of pictures and the downside of precise information.
The addition of Mr. Biden was interesting, for a number of reasons. Mr. Biden was able to draw on his credibility with blue-collar, labor union America and his roots in Scranton, Pa., to add balance to the photo op that the White House presented: two black guys, two white guys, sitting around a table.
The four drank out of beer mugs. Mr. Obama had a Bud Lite, Sergeant Crowley had Blue Moon, Professor Gates drank Sam Adams Light and Mr. Biden, who does not drink, had a Buckler nonalcoholic beer. (Mr. Biden put a lime slice in his beer. Sergeant Crowley, for his part, kept with Blue Moon tradition and had a slice of orange in his drink.)
Officer Crowley is said (Carney @Clusterstock) to be a fan of Blue Moon, the faux Belgian Wheat Ale that is actually made by Canada's Molson. According to the Boston Globe, Gates likes Red Stripe and Beck's.See also BagNews' take.
The middle class escape new healthcare taxes on individuals earning $280,000 and up and couples earning more than $350,000.
-- Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York, Chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.
But emerging from daylong committee negotiations Friday, Mr. Rangel said the income surtax would take effect in 2011 and begin at 1 percent of adjusted gross income -- earnings before deductions like those for mortgage interest and charitable contributions -- and would apply to individuals earning more than $280,000 and couples earning more than $350,000.
The surtax would be increased for individuals earning more than $400,000 and couples earning more than $500,000, and step up again for individuals earning over $800,000 and couples earning above $1 million. The precise extent of these increases has not been announced.
Mr. Rangel's committee is also planning to insert language that would raise the surtax in 2013 if expected cost savings in the health care system do not materialize.
Continue reading "Mddle class earning up to $280,000 ( $350,000 couples)" »
David Adamo, the chief executive of Luxury Mortgage in Stamford, Conn. likened the current mortgage market to a barbell, with pockets of availability for borrowers at both ends of the income spectrum but less for those in between. Those with annual incomes up to about $250,000 have access to mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration, while the very affluent can obtain loans from private banking institutions.
For middle class borrowers with household incomes between $250,000 and $500,000, however, mortgages are not as easy to get, Mr. Adamo said. "These people are living in places where starter homes might be $1 million," he said, "and it's really affecting them."
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will accept only loans below $729,500 in the highest-cost markets like New York City and northern New Jersey. For mortgages larger than that, mortgage brokers and bankers must find other investors who want to take the loans. (Mortgage brokers process the applications on a lender's behalf, while mortgage bankers will finance the loan and sell it shortly thereafter.)
Continue reading "Between $250,000 and $500,000 is middle income, mortgage-wise" »
Steele was right: his power is not based on politics, it's based on entertainment. Great entertainers like Winchell and Limbaugh manage to simplify politics, to find ways of making it "us against them," to find ways to dramatize, to demonize, to villainize, to narrativize.
"The headline that you will never hear is 'The market was down 110 points, a random fluctuation in a very complex system,' " said Eric Schurenberg, the former managing editor of Money magazine who is busy building -- get this -- a financial Web site for CBS. "No one has ever known what was going to happen, but there is this temptation to act like you did. But that fantasy has been exploded."
To engage their audience, business journalists need to act like things are changing all the time. As it turned out, what didn't change much was the fundamental lessons: have a diversified portfolio, don't buy more house than you can afford, don't take on more debt than you can support, or trade on the margin.
-- David Carr
Continue reading "In coverage of recession, few rays of hope" »
CNBC just did a BREAKING NEWS banner with Wagoner's quote:
"We wish economic conditions were better, but they're not".
-- Joe Weisenthal @ 9:32
...
Joe Weisenthal@9:54: Some guy on CNBC just said "The government will fold" and I thought he meant collapse. But he just meant fold, and give in to big auto.
An advantage in generating appealing factoids:
The Obama campaign spent more than $57,000 at the Four Seasons in Amman, Jordan, during the candidate's overseas trip in July, although a spokesman said that much of that was for rooms for the traveling press corps and that the campaign would be reimbursed by the news organizations. The campaign spent about $60,000 on the staging for Mr. Obama's speech in Berlin on that trip. Then there is the $140,000 that the campaign has spent at companies that make American flags, apparently mostly for campaign events, compared with just $7,000 spent by the McCain campaign.
The definition of middle class is in flux. Many try to quantify and specify it in income terms.
Here's Charles Gibson of ABC (Via Paul Krugman): suggested that $200,000 a year was a middle-class income.
Funnier than Michael Palin.
FinancialTimes' ftalphaville. Instant trends, market moves, as seen from the City outside the USA.
Aspen Idea Festival gathers the idea merchants: journalists, entrepreneurs,
and academics who talk about ideas more than about people, and about
people more than about things.
One of this country's greatest achievements is its separation
of legality from morality, so that individuals can hold themselves
to a higher standard, as they see it, without forcing it on
everyone else.
-- Slate's William Saletan sets the bar higher than the NYT's 'ethicist'.
"When you are crying foul in a presidential campaign, it usually
means you are losing."
-- Mr. Chris Lehane, the Democratic operative, pronounced himself
delighted that the McCain campaign was feeling victimized.
How to argue (without facts or logic), the series.
Matt Y plays prodigy and future arbitror of Washington.
The Politico tracks Washington-centric partisan politics,
by ex-Washington Post staffers at Capitol Leader.
Tech President covers the race for US President, 2008.
CBS in NYC: wcbs TV in New York City: news, topstories,
with non-hideous website design.
Not a fight between left and right, a fight about
how politics should be conducted. On the one
hand are the ...
Update: for the 'How to argue...' file
How to introduce evidence you don't have:
So these days, for example, one hears that Lieberman is a
| true believers | quasi-independents |
| fundamentalists | heterodox politicians |
| party discipline | distrust ideological purity |
| passion | rebel against movement groupthink |
| purity | bipartisanship |
| orthodoxy | John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Hillary Clinton |
| clear choices | Joe Lieberman |
Brussels Journal tracks crime in Europe and faults the Beeb.
What to think of loudobbs.com, home of financial reporter Lou Dobbs.
LoudObbs ? LouDobbs.
Why not Lou_dobbs.com or Lou-Dobbs.com ?
Like to watch the business commentators, especially during tax filing season.
For the moment, to put it nicely, the same thing has happened to the
Liberals in Canada, as has happened to other long-serving single-party
regimes elsewhere in the world. Technology has caught up with their
ability to manage information; and a sheltered population is losing
its fear. The more the ruling party tries to scare them, with
heavy-handed old-media campaigns, the worse things get --
for the ruling party.
Continue reading "Liberal one party Canada 0 vs Blogosphere 1" »
Until I draw my last breath, I will pour my heart and soul into the
cause of protecting our children from the dangers of smoking.
-- Al Gore, 1996.
Today we are fighting in Iraq for the right to smoke.
Continue reading "Al Gore's heart and soul, protecting our children from the dangers of smoking" »
New Yorker bio of person of the month Judith Miller, in the circle
of Patrick J. Fitzgerald, Valerie Palme, Joseph Wilson, Karl Rove
and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
"Unfortunately a lot of fine young people were gotten for perjury
during Watergate."
-Al Haig
Nouriel Roubini's first rate economics blog offers an
essay of macroeconomic commentary about weekly.
Quick off the mark with commentary on new Fed Chairman
nominee on Ben Bernanke.
Previously: Roubini Global Economics.
Formerly one of the MSM popular press's better technology writers,
bayosphere's Dan Gillmor didn't stay solo for long.
The Web is a festering cesspool of lunacy and emotion: Free Republic,
Daily Kos, Little Green Footballs, Atrios, Instapundit, on and on
and on. Facts only enter the picture when they're favorable.
Emotion rules. There is no common ground, nor a desire for any.
-- Greg Knauss
busybusybusy is a great leftish summary the
day's talking heads' punditry.
Word in the Washington bureau is that John Tierney, a veteran
journalist who worked for the Washington Star, is in position to write
a column from Washington. A reporter for most of his career, he has
written a regional column about New York. He is no doctrinaire
conservative, perhaps a libertarian, but he has taken muckraking
positions on many issues.
New York Times top 25 articles. 'Top' is measured by most mailed,
not most viewed.