Should it reference our would-be shepherd’s apparent need for sheep? Or would it then lack the sophistication we expect in a New Yorker caption?

A new company, backed by some smart folks and their money, says it will “offer an Ivy-standard education at half price.” Online, of course, saving on facilities and other overhead, and thus able to charge less. And presumably also, by virtue of enrolling way more students than any of its nominal competitors, making plenty of money in volume sales, even if its margins are lower... (more)

Last night my wife and I had a very nice meal at Belli Osteria, a new Berkeley Italian place run by a former teacher at our kids’ school.  The arugula with roasted tongue was particularly good, the wild boar with pappardelle was also quite nice, and while the black ravioli dough had been rolled too thick, I enjoyed the subtle tastes of the spinach and shrimp filling, and of what seemed to be meyer lemon juice dripped on top... (more)

Just as print publishing’s decline has hit mid-list authors particularly hard, so too is Barnes and Noble suffering.  Why do I equate the two? I think the same factors are at work in both cases. Both provided an o.k. experience—reading, in the former case, browsing and buying, in the latter—when other options weren’t available. You’d buy and read any old novel you were on vacation in a seaside town with one tiny bookstore, and it was the only novel you could find that you hadn’t read. Now you can download a movie or play an online game, or download an e-book, from almost anywhere, so that book doesn’t compel you to buy it, unless you’re fairly sure that reading it will afford you a great experience. Going to a Barnes and Noble is o.k., but only if there’s no local bookstore with more character—and apparently those bookstores, against all expectations are doing just fine. And if it’s variety and price you’re after, everything’s online.  I’ll miss Barnes and Noble, if it disappears, if only because when I was in school in New York, I always loved browsing the stacks at its flagship 5th Avenue store, which wasn’t much on charm, but had a hell of a lot of books. That Union Store megastore is pretty cool too.  But I see that like the mid-list author, B+N, as a chain, doesn’t offer anything you can’t get elsewhere.

In which MFA faculty writers praise another MFA faculty writer, from whom, perhaps not coincidentally, they’ll hope to get the book blurbs, recommendations, and committee votes they’ll need, to get the publishing contracts, fellowships, awards, and teaching posts they most covet... (more)

A while back I suggested that national socialism might return to Europe.  Not the virulent nationalism socialism of the 30s and 40s, but a kinder, gentler version, without wars but plenty of statism, anti-capitalist and anti-foreigner rhetoric, and, perhaps, the end of the free movement of capital and people across European borders.  Plus an even deeper, more prolonged economic than the one Europe’s now going through.  How would this happen?  The key would be the rise to power, in any of a number of states, of populist socialist governments, blaming the internationalist elite, and the neo-liberal policies for which that elite seems to stand, for their countries’ problems... (more)

I’m still trying to process the news that the Romney get-out-the-vote machine was actually a machine… and one that didn’t work, in spectacular fashion.  I’m probably the one person who didn’t follow the campaign that closely, so I just learned about Orca, aka the ill-named and ill-starred web app for volunteers to record, over the course of election day, which likely Romney voters had voted and which hadn’t, so it could alert volunteers in areas where there were a lot of the latter, so they could in turn get those people to the polls. A simple-enough system, in its outlines, though one that, to deliver value, would have had to work perfectly.  Apparently also, according to one Romney volunteer, a web dev named John Ekdahl, this sort of thing has been done manually and effectively, with paper lists and pencils and phones, since time immemorial.  When I read this, I thought of any number of projects I’ve been in on or observed, in the course of many years working in tech, when some executive orders someone to, in effect, build the software equivalent of a bazooka to kill a fly.  Indeed the Sean Gallagher Ars Technica piece says Orca was indeed the product of executive whim – specifically, that of Romney’s Director of Voter Contact Dan Centinello and the campaign’s Political Director, Rich Beeson... (more)

On the occasion of receiving an email informing me that despite repeated attempts to do so, I somehow cannot close a money market account that I no longer need or want:.. (more)

Last week the NYT Sunday Magazine ran an interesting piece on Obama’s campaign, saying it had been less successful than it might have, because Obama and his advisors had failed to craft a compelling central narrative and identify him with it. Perhaps this is true in the sense of a narrative making his policy positions cohere, though I think his record has done that for him. Voters knew what he would do with four more years... (more)

The space shuttle just flew overhead, on its way to being mothballed. I stopped work for a minute and went outside to watch. Cool to see it, but in an age of incredibly rapid technological progress, how striking to see something that looks like the future of 40 years ago. A dingy, bulky, tile-covered would-be plane that can’t fly on its own? That costs an arm and leg both to build and maintain, and can’t take off in the rain? Isn’t technology getting cheaper, smaller, and more reliable? Isn’t it also more accessible to all? Why are we still looking up at the shuttle, rather than buying tickets on one, the same way we might buy a new iPhone?