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SEGA looking to 'further reinforce PC game development' with Relic Entertainment
SEGA has officially announced the acquisition of all shares of THQ Canada Inc., popularly known as Relic Entertainment, and some IPs owned by THQ. Noting the goal to "further reinforce PC game development capabilities in the U.S. and European regions" SEGA CFO John Cheng said the company is "thrilled to have Relic Entertainment join the SEGA family." Well, when you pay $26 million for a company, you better be thrilled.
"The acquisition is a strategic fit and a critical step in growing our business," Cheng added. "They are a well-respected studio with a reputation for making creative and innovative games and we look forward to seeing what great things we can create together over the coming years."
Relic Entertainment was established in 1997 and acquired by THQ Canada in 2004, at which point THQ Canada became known familiarly as Relic Entertainment. Throughout the years, the studio provided a number of "high quality games" including the
Warhammer 40k Dawn of War
series. The series has sold more than 7 million copies worldwide, while the Company of Heroes series, a real time strategy game based o nthe modern history of warfare from WWII and beyond, has sold more than 4 million copies worldwide.
SEGA, who already owns three development companies in the U.S. and Europe, is looking to "further advance the provision of various appealing entertainment contents by utilizing THQ Canada's high-end content development capabilities and accumulated development know-how, and increase SEGA's presence in the PC online game market."
Are you happy with SEGA's acquisition of Relic Entertainment and said franchises?


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This publication has just been released following the workshop on "Local Employment Development" organised in Tokyo, Japan, on February 9-10, 2005. This was a joint event of the LEED Programme and the Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training (JILPT), member of the LEED Partners' Club.
Against the widening regional divergences in labor market conditions which have become apparent in the sluggish economy since 1990s, there are calls for promoting policy decentralization and moves to transfer authority on employment policy to regional governments. The JILPT, in its medium-term research, analyses factors that create regional divergences in the unemployment structure, and makes proposals on industrial policy and on measures for improving the labor market conditions. As part of this research, it invited researchers from the EU countries, the U.S., and the OECD to a research workshop with the principal objective of learning from international experience.
This book includes the papers presented at the workshop with report of some successful cases of regional employment development in each country, which was added to the papers based on the discussions at the workshop. You can obtain the publication from the JILPT's Website.
For more information, please contact Sylvain Giguere
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Axel Yberg and his firm—Akke—make what he calls functional art. That translates to fun creations like his Pingtuated Equilibripong table, which may or may not be the most beautiful ping pong table in existence.
Yberg said that the table required over 400 man-hours to construct. Comprising over seven different types of wood and reclaimed metal objects, the table has a hollowed-out center that reveals the warm glow of an Edison bulb. The top has been coated in a high-gloss lacquer, providing a slick contrast to the unfinished, industrial look of the rest of the table, and to top it all off, the net can be removed and what was once a game table becomes a dinner table.
On display at ICFF 2012, Yberg said that the table is a one of a kind piece selling for an eye-popping $56,000 (which kind of makes sense, given the time that went into the project). But he also plans to produce a simplified version for retail as well.
Video by Michael Hession


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Ambon Group Trip with Equator Diving - Perfect for Photographers! 10 nights at Maluku Divers Resort, 19-29 April 2014 Ambon has it all - Critters, Caves & Wrecks - and provides the perfect setting to bring together aspiring photographers from around the world! For April 2014 we have organised a group trip to Ambon - one of Indonesia's hottest destinations! The trip will be based at Maluku Divers Resort - a resort on the 'must do' list of the world's best underwater photographers. Maluku Divers offers endless diving opportunities, with multiple critter sites, the Ambon Shipwreck and the Hukurila Caves all just a stone's throw away from the resort. Travelling as a group will maximise benefits for everyone - including room shares for solo divers. We will also have a photo competition on the final night! For more details and to join visit: http://www.equatordiving.com/ambon_group_trip.html


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The HTML was cleaned up, and vetted by the weblint program. Navigation buttons were added at the top and bottom of every page. In all important respects, the style and framework established in version 1 was maintained.
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Friday, February 17, 2012
Stimulus and Austerity
Spending Too Much
First we need to differentiate between the government and the society. This is an extremely important difference. To say that country X spends too much can mean two completely different things.
(a) On the one hand, it can mean that its government spends more than it takes in in taxes.
(b) On the other hand, it can mean that the country, the entire society, imports more goods than it exports, which necessarily is either financed with debt, by printing money or by sending people in other countries to work there and send the money back home.
Having people work in other countries is sub-optimal for their families but it's sustainable. Printing money can be sustainable but leads to several problems which originally encouraged Southern-European countries to want to help create and then join the Euro. What is not sustainable is to finance the imports with external debt for forever.
However, this post is about point (a): Governments which spend more than they take in with taxes.
Government Revenue
A government spends money to meet its obligations. But to be able to spend the money it first has to get it. There are basically three ways to do this.
(a) Printing money
Printing used to be a very common source of government revenue in the past and it's still important nowadays. In the very long-term printing money causes inflation. Inflation means that all goods and services become more expensive. As people then can buy less with the money they have, inflation causes a subtle inflation tax.
But inflation is never a smooth process. The money first flows to e.g. a bank and then may even stick to specific markets and cause bubbles. But in the very, very long term, if there's suddenly twice the amount of money in the economy, but the same goods and services are traded with its help, all prices double.
Keep in mind that the very, very long-term is often irrelevant for reality. Prominently, J. M. Keynes said "In the long run we are all dead". This isn't so much a statement about your children as an attempt to make clear that the long-term is often rather unimportant when there are things happening in the short-term all the time. Or, in other words, if you printed money and then waited for 100 years without anything else of significance happening, the long run were important. But if important things happen all the time, the constant short-term consequences matter at least as much as the long-term consequences, if not more.
There isn't really a limit to printing money. And since politicians in democracies need to appeal to voters to be elected, printing money is considered a very bad practice. The ECB is as independent as possible from politicians for this reason. The FED is not that independent but it knows the consequences of unlimited printing to pay for government programs (I hope).
For these reasons, let's ignore printing money as a source of government revenue. More important for modern government financing are debt and taxes.
(b) Debt
We need to differentiate between internal and external debt. Japan would be an example for internal debt. This means that the Japanese citizen gave loans to their government. Argentina or Russia are examples for (mostly) external debt. The rest of the world gave loans to these governments. The distinction is very important.
You might have noticed that Japan has a much higher debt/gdp ratio than almost any country on earth. That's possible because nobody expects them to default on their debt. And the reason is that it wouldn't benefit Japan. In fact, since rich individuals, and organizations controlled by rich individuals, are the main owner of government debt papers, and exactly these individuals, in all societies, have a major impact on the decisions of the government, it's considered improbable that Japan defaults anytime soon.
This is quite the contrast to Argentina, Russia, and even Greece where the debt was and is to a large extend external. The government would gain a lot by defaulting - which is why investors stop lending money much sooner to Greece than to Japan. Of course, ever increasing internal debt is not sustainable for Japan, either. But the debt/gdp ratio, at which investors are unwilling to finance the government any more, is much, much higher than in Argentina, Russia, Greece .. and maybe the US.
Internal debt means that a government asks its own people to give them money now, in exchange for the promise to pay the money plus an interest back in the future. If a country defaults on its internal debt, it redistributes immense amounts of wealth from the creditor citizen to the government (which is "owned" by the entire society). For the rest of this post I mean internal debt when I say debt.
As long as a government does not default on its debt, debt causes a redistribution of wealth from the tax payers to the receivers of interest payments. It is for that reason that I will never understand why people who consider themselves 'left' like debt so much. Germany, since 1949, has payed a multitude of what it was loaned in interest rates. We constantly redistribute wealth from taxpayers to those who own our bonds!
(c) Taxes
Taxes, just as internal debt, is money which flows from the people to the government who usually promises to spend it in their interest. The difference to internal debt is that those who give the money get nothing in return (except for the promise that the money will be put to good use).
The Economy
For the purpose of discussing the effects of government spending on the internal economy, we need a very simply model. This model consists of two sectors: the public sector and the private sector. Both sectors consist of nested organizations which, at the lowest level, are individuals.
The public sector uses the government revenue (taxes+debt) to buy things from the private sector. It is controlled by the government to be efficient and not corrupt. The organizations in the private sector are controlled by the respective owners to be efficient and not corrupt. There's not much difference so far. The government officials have just the same incentive (from the electorate) to keep their organizations efficient and not corrupt, as have the private owners (from their desire to maximize profit). The difference is that the struggle for efficiency and against corruption is the more difficult, the larger the organization. And the organizations in the public sector, by necessity, are often very large.
The public and private organizations are nested into each other and they trade with each other. Trade means that they pay each other to do something for each other. The entire system is driven by consumer spending. Ultimately, everything which is produced (goods) and offered (services) needs to have a final benefit for some individual.
The system is also dynamic. At all times, new organizations are formed, old ones destroyed, their interactions change, the way they are nested change, etc. However, most relationships are pretty stable. Most organizations (including the ones on the lowest level, the individuals) don't change their suppliers and customers very often. There's inertia.
Some of the individuals in this system can become unemployed. This means that they don't supply any organization with their labor and thus (usually) can't demand any goods or services because they have no money to offer. When this happens these people are outside the system. They just don't do anything and eventually die due to starvation. The problem is that when you're outside the system you are irrelevant - unless you find a way to become able to supply some organization with your labor; and do this in a way which doesn't cost you money, because you don't have any.
Of course, the case can be made that *somebody* has always an interest in teaching you how to be able to supply him with your labor. In a knowledge-based economy this is, however, much harder than in earlier economies. Trying to turn a 50-year old blue-collar worker into a scientist is a pretty risky thing. That's why the rest of the economy usually gifts the unemployed money so that they don't die and maybe can even educate themselves so that, in the future, they may be able to supply labor and thus demand goods and services again.
The system includes an estimation of the future supply/demand by allowing loans and debt. This means that someone might give you money if you promise to give it, plus an interest, back in the future. And he might take your presumed future ability to repay the loan, considering your ability to now spend the money he just gave you, into account. It's a pretty ingenious system, really.
The system has a tendency to create very rich individuals. These individuals don't actually consume all the money they own, but rather invest most of it. Investing means to spend the money to buy something other people offer (e.g. their labor) and use this to create something which other people (hopefully) demand in the future. If more goods and services are to be created, investment is always necessary. At all times there are usually a few opportunities to invest money. These opportunities are seized in a specific order: the presumably most profitable first.
If you have no idea at all where to invest your money you leave it at the bank. This means that the bank has more money which it can loan, thus driving down the price (interest) the bank will ask for loans. And this will increase the likelihood that somebody, who does have an investment idea but no money, takes up this loan. So, unless you put the banknotes underneath your bed, the money always flows towards some kind of investment.
Stimulus and Austerity
A stimulus plan, as well as austerity, have in common that they create a sudden change in the economy.
With an austerity package, the public sector suddenly demands less and, correspondingly, the government takes up less debt. This means that money which would otherwise have ended up in the hands of the government now ends up at banks. These banks loan the money to some investor and thus the money creates private investment instead of public investment.
With a stimulus package it's really the same: the public sector suddenly demands more and, correspondingly, the government takes up more debt. This means that money which would otherwise have ended up in the hands of the private sector now ends up in the hands of the government. The bank loans less money to some investor but that's ok, because the money now creates public investment instead of private investment.
So the question boils down to who knows better what to do with the money and the answer is not clear. It simply depends on the parts of the public sector which grows (stimulus) or shrinks (austerity). If you have no army, it might be a good public investment to get one. If you have an army which is too large it is a good idea to shrink it.
Of course, the government can also redistribute the money. For example by lowering taxes or by increasing unemployment benefits. But fact is that money never sleeps and as long as there's somebody who has an idea about what to do with a loan and as long as the government doesn't waste the money, it doesn't really make much of a difference whether the public or the private sector spends the money.
You don't believe this? Good for you because its wrong. There are a few reasons.
Globalization means that the money doesn't stay at the local bank. It can go anywhere.
With austerity, the government cuts down on expenditures. Consequently, less loans got to the government and instead somewhere into the private sector. But the money doesn't necessarily go to the local bank where somebody gets a cheaper loan to realize a good investment idea. Instead it goes to Brazil where someone had a really good investment idea. The probability that the highest profit can be made in any specific country is, at all times, low in a globalized world.
That's why reducing taxes on the rich doesn't really do all that much for the local economy. The rich can invest the money in Chinese factories or to buy German cars. Or they can just buy a house in Spain. And they often do!
Public investment programs, however, are better: A new highway can be required to be built by a local company. A new school can be required to be built by a local company. And not only do these actions actually create work for local workers, they even add a school or a highway! And the money which was used to pay the local workers might have ended up somewhere in Russia for another oil pipeline if it hadn't been taxed away or raised with a new bond. That's why, in an open economy, public investment programs are better at fighting unemployment than lowering taxes.
In a way, an open economy is leaking. In a closed economy it doesn't really matter whether the public or the private sector spends the money. It is spent anyway and the only reason to spend it publicly is that something which has to be payed for publicly (like any army) has to be paid. But in an open economy giving somebody money doesn't make him invest it in the local economy. Instead, it can go anywhere; and it does. Investment programs are guaranteed to create local jobs. If they also create something the country needed anyway (like a better school or a new bridge) it's even better.
Creative Destruction
Another problem is that creation takes more time than destruction and that all parts of the economic system have some inertia.
If you close a government organization, the local workers will be unemployed. Maybe, after a while, they find another job which pays worse. But that's not good for them and neither is it good for society.
Sure, the money which was 'freed' from public use, went to a private bank and was loaned to some private investor. But this investor needs to consider the facts. And the facts are that the workers available were good at working in that now closed public factory; not at some other job. They first need to learn how to work on the new job and while they do, they are less productive. And that's bad for everybody; not only for the workers.
Even worse: good investment ideas take time. Those workers might not actually find a new job soon enough. And while they are unemployed they lose their qualifications. In fact, it's worse: after a year nobody wants to employ them anymore because they don't wash themselves, because they don't own a shower anymore. And they stink.
Of course, if the public factory was full of waste and didn't produce anything useful, not much is lost when it is closed. But modern societies are rather good at controlling waste in the public sector: look at China. There's no reason to assume that just because the government pays you, you work less hard. And there's no reason to assume that a politician whose job depends on the government programs not being wasteful has less incentive to fight waste than a shareholder. The manager who is employed by the government and payed depending on how many goals he reaches as a CEO, is just as effective as the manager who is employed by 30,000 anonymous shareholders. In fact, you could make the case that the publicly employed manager has better and stronger incentives!
But the basic problem is: creation doesn't happen as fast a destruction. And this effect has dire consequences when too much is destroyed too fast. Greece's economy shrank at 7% over the last year. That's a depression; a bad one. The unemployed lose their qualifications ...
The final problem I'd like to mention is inequality. It's not like there's not enough demand on the planet. It's just that most people can't buy all they desire and a few people could not spent all their money even if they tried. Even though money always finds a way into another investment, this investment necessarily is something which is going to produce goods or services which are demanded by someone who has the money to buy them!
That's why it's possible that millions of people want a car, while at the same time millions of people who can build a car are unemployed! If you don't consider this a flaw in the system I really don't know what to say.
The End
At the end of this long, not at all complete and terribly unfocused post, let me say that the current mix of our economic systems is the best this planet has ever seen. We need to remember this while we try to make the economic systems even better.
26 comments:
Anecdotal 'evidence' abounds, but when I hear (from credible sources) about Greece having jobs of literally nothing, well that's pure waste: things like committees to drain lakes, which had been dry for decades, that sort of thing. They might as well have just called it a welfare program and saved some administrative costs.ReplyDelete
On the other hand, Greece was just responding to incentives. When they were given a much stronger currency, of course they're going to buy more! The entire country won the lottery and we've seen how that tends to turn out. If banks had been responsible, they'd have recognized that regardless of the currency, Greece had real problems with productivity relative to consumption. They should have responded by charging higher interest rates in Greece years ago, not now when it's too late.
Printing money depends on the amount. Was long term to the Weimar Republic 100 years or more like 2-5 years? So if you expand your US M3 by double in a year you will see inflation in the short term. It happened to too many countries and this was just one mistake that Keynes made.ReplyDelete
It is controlled by the government to be efficient and not corrupt. And herin lies the fundamental error. Government has never been efficient and it has usually been corrupt. No one can name any government that has not wasted billions or that did not have billions stolen or given to the politically connected. If I'm wrong name one government that this was not the case for.
Also government hardly ever changes. In the US we still have government agencies that came about in the early part of the last century and have had their original mission completed decades ago. They just never die. More proof of inefficiency or flat corruption.
Now you will cite many corporations that also were inefficient or corrput. I agree, but here's the difference. A consumer has the option to NOT buy the product or service. The corporation is forced to change or not get any revenues. The government just raises taxes and the consumers (taxpayers) have no recourse. They are forced to pay.
Stimulus vs Austerity: You left out one major point. The government doesn't produce anything nor make a profit. So when stimulus goes up the people getting it either pay off debt, save it or spend it. If they spend it this creats more demand but only for as long as the stimulus lasts. In Austerity the bank loans people money and they create products. They can make a profit and the demand lasts as long as the product is viable. This is a HUGH difference. It's why Keynesian just doesn't work in the long term. Now IF the government made products and made a profit this could change the equation if the stimulus was used for that purpose.
And you left out that the local company with the good idea helps exports. That highway doesn't. And you conviently left out that the stimulus money given to the people can be used to by foreign goods (imports). So please try to be fair.
And at least in the US there is not a single study that shows public investment is better at fighting unemployment then private industry. Show me one please.
Finally, to make this short let's use your two factions (public and private) but look at the ratio of one to the other. If private is 90% and public 10% then it isn't ahrd to fund public. But as they approach 50% each that means 100% of the private money is needed to fund public. And what happens if public is over 50%?
Add on top of this the situation where public pays more to its employees than private. You soon get all workers leaving private to join public.
I can go on but space requires I stop here.Replies
Google up (I'd paste it except for the stupid tracking links)Delete
Macro-Economic Relativity: Government Spending, Private Investment and Unemployment in the USA
According to that research, government spending does appear to have some strong stabilizing effects. Furthermore, one of the time periods, between 1970 and 1988 showed that reductions in government spending were not, contrary to hopes, compensated by private investment.
Private investment is much more efficient in the long term, but it is also subject to more volatility, as suggested by Nil's remarks about globalization. People don't deal well with volatility, and ultimately, for better or for worse, the people are the voters.
Correction I said M3 I meant M2. M2 and inflation has shown a very close and timely (not 100 years) correlation going all the way back to 1876 in the US. See:ReplyDelete
I'm with you that one shouldn't print too much money, Goodmongo. That's why I ignore it right after I introduce it in the post and look at debt and taxes. Just one thing: Whether something grows at 6% pa over 10 years or at 2% pa makes a difference of about 50% after the ten years. So, even though the graph looks like inflation is predictable it's not THAT predictable :). But I give you that to mention 100 years in this context didn't make much sense.Delete
On replying to the rest of your and others' comments , I'll probably make another post in a few days.
@Klep: They might as well have just called it a welfare program and saved some administrative costs.ReplyDelete
I would disagree here. As much as I am liberal, I vastly prefer "dig a hole, fill in a hole" welfare as opposed to "check in at the welfare office" welfare. At least with the former, you are still capable of learning skills/knowledge and are in a habit of going to work everyday. When I think about all the wasted potential of workers with 99 weeks of unemployment, I shed a tear. We are already paying the unemployed, why not get even 1% usable work out of them?
@Goodmongo The government just raises taxes and the consumers (taxpayers) have no recourse. They are forced to pay.
Err... what? Taxpayers have the option to vote candidates into office, or the option to opt out of the government (self-deportation). If you are trying to make the cynical claim that things never change in the political realm, you're just claiming that not enough people agree with your philosophy.
The government doesn't produce anything nor make a profit.
I always raise an eyebrow at these kind of statements. Are you suggesting governments have no value?
If you agree they have value, how can you suggest they produce nothing or don't make a profit? It may be more difficult to calculate the appreciation (or depreciation, I suppose) in value from year to year, but if value exists only because government exists, then government in fact produces said value.
And at least in the US there is not a single study that shows public investment is better at fighting unemployment then private industry. Show me one please.
I'm confused as to what you're asking for here. Private companies have been sitting on record profits these last few years by not hiring anyone. Are you saying that giving these companies more money would cause them to hire more people? Why would it? They could simply pocket the money and/or give out huge bonuses to their CEOs and other executives and still not hire anyone.Replies
This time around, I don't think it's so much that people are just lounging at the welfare office, but more to do with actual labor demand destruction.Delete
As for the article on how private companies sitting on record profits, is the 12% increase between 2007 and 2011 adjusted for inflation? The fact that they mention the previous number is not adjusted, makes me think it isn't - in which case it closely matches average inflation.
The reports on business confidence I've been reading for the past several months do echo the statement that hiring is not going to come back until sales prove to be sustainable. Confidence took a horrible spill middle of last year, likely caused by the budget impasse. But at least it's positive again.
"I would disagree here. As much as I am liberal, I vastly prefer "dig a hole, fill in a hole" welfare as opposed to "check in at the welfare office" welfare. At least with the former, you are still capable of learning skills/knowledge and are in a habit of going to work everyday."
I agree with this. But I think if people are literally doing nothing, not even 1%, that is only teaching worse habits. To be clear, I agree with you, I just don't think that was the case in Greece.
"The government doesn't produce anything nor make a profit."
Does a budget surplus count? That has happened.
But even if we ignore that, so what? Profit is not the only indicator of productivity. Look at any non-profit firm. Profit is a way to redistribute productivity, it is a motivator, not a societal benefit.
- AnonymousFebruary 19, 2012 at 7:05 AM
@Azuriel: Your "jobless recovery" point deserved to be raised. It is probably the most visible manifestation of the way productivity gains are pocketed by corporations instead of benefitting the working class and exerting a deflationary effect, which they had up to around the 1970s.ReplyDelete
I am afraid that I'll have to swerve around you in the left lane on welfare vs workfare, though. Not because I disagree in principle, but because I feel very strongly that make-work spending (infrastructure, etc., which is a very effective way to channel stimulus money) ought to be kept separate from the safety net. There's nothing politicians love more than to treat the underemployed (in terms of skills, hours, etc.) as properly employed, problem solved.
One more thought on Greece: I know it's very fashionable to slag off the Greeks, and especially public sector Greeks, as the most idle and corrupt people ever to walk the earth, but it is important to remember the country's recent history. Greece, Spain and Portugal were dictatorships as late as thirty years ago. The sickly-sweet miasma of deficit spending and lax tax enforcement played a significant role in bolstering public satisfaction with democracy. It's not an investment with an easily calculated return, but surely not meaningless.
This is very-very tangential to the discussion (which I enjoy reading but it's kind of over my head to comment on reasonably), but Russia? Hadn't they paid off almost all of their external debt? Wikipedia seems to think so...ReplyDelete
> Public investment programs, however, are better: A newReplyDelete
> highway can be required to be built by a local company.
> A new school can be required to be built by a local
> company. And not only do these actions actually create
> work for local workers, they even add a school or a
> highway!
Unless the new highway in Switzerland is created by a German company with cheape Polish workers living in barracks for the duration of the construction.
Globalization also drains your public investments. :)
The government doesn't produce anything nor make a profitReplyDelete
Hmmm. Lets see. What would the profit level of american corporatations be if the government hadn't build our flood control system, our national highway system, subsidized the expansion of our telephone and power transmission systems into every corner of the country. The money they spent on spaceflight created TRILLIONS of dollars of technology that companies benefitted from. NASA tech is in everything you do today, the paint that stripes our roads, the newer cheaper roads that we build, computer technology, food technology, medicine, clothes, and hundreds of other things too numerous to list.
Our public vaccination program that took us from 100,000's of thousands of children's (adults make the numbers even worse) deaths per year from diseases like chicken pox, scarlet fever,dyptheria, tetnus and pnuemonia to a couple a year. Not including the even higer number of children that don't become mentally or physically debilitated because of the diseases and can grow up and be productive members of society.
Government does not make an immediate profit like MacDonalds true. But to say it doesn't do anything profitable is to be willfully ignorant of all that it has done.
@sam and others. That is such liberal BS its funny. Way before government the private companies were building dams, roads, railroads, canals etc. They built schools, hospitals and whole towns.ReplyDelete
The government takes money through taxes and builds a road. Big deal. I can name many roads and railroads taht companies built because they had a need. And study after study showsd government building programs are way more expensive than private. What you don't get are bridges to nowhere or 12 lane highways when 4 are more than enough.
And recently San Fancisco was collecting taxes to build a bridge. Only problem is the bridge was being built in CHINA! So much for you local profit theory.
Governments have been the cause of millions of deaths of people throughtout history. Governments have usually been a supression on freedoms. The more power or maney a government has the less freedom its citizens have. History shows this to be true a thousand times over.
A little over a month ago two projects started about the same time. One was on private property (a manufacturing plant) and the other public. They were related and almost identical. The one paid for by the private comany was done in less than a week. the public job took a month to finish.Replies
Lookup railway standardization at the federal level for the continental US. Similarly the Gauge Act in Britain.Delete
"Goverments have been the cause of millions of deaths throughout history". Great so have asteriods, cars,disease, natural disaster but what the hell does that have to do with government doing what it does?ReplyDelete
I could make the same argument in reverse that governments have saved millions of lives over the course of human history and it would be equally pointless in this conversation.
Government does things that are inherently "non-profitable" in the short term. Building roads, educating children, providing security etc. Businesses do what is profitable in the short term. Expecting Business to govern is as stupid as expecting Government to be a business. Niether is equipped to do the others job.
Business operating without government oversight brings things like our lovely stock market crash, and government without regulation gives us the lovely Transportation and Security Administration that can do whatever it wants whenever it wants just because it can.
Because people run them both and people need other people to keep them honest.
@Sam, may I suggest you go read Jefferson, Madison and some others about the dangers of government.ReplyDelete
An asteroid is not something we vote to happen. Governments are placedd there by simple minded people thinking they will be better off. Just ask germans how that feeling was.
And if you think building a road is non-profitable I suggest you read about the Roman Empire and their roads. Roads throughout history have been built FOR profit purposes.
And I never said government was useless or that there should be no government. There should only be a very limited government and government is not the best approach to solving problems.
Take hover Dam that libs love to mention as a shining example of how great government projects are. Only two problems. First off the greenies would never allow it to be built today. Second, it was built using private construction. Government hired private firms to build it.
Here is what government is good at. Defense, basic research and setting up limited laws to keep order and allow the easy exchange of capital and goods in an open and free society. Capitalism works simply because its individuals with the freedom to risk and earn rewards that make it work. Governments end up with things like bailouts.
- AnonymousFebruary 20, 2012 at 11:44 PM
@Goodmongo: You bringing up the example of the Roman Empire is amusing not just because it's hopelessly anachronistic but because Imperial Rome was a gigantic welfare state. The state was expected to take care of the citizen.ReplyDelete
The whole mantra of public sector inefficiency and public efficiency has been repeated by conservatives enough to have become axiomatic, but it really isn't necessarily so. Government agencies operate under constraints external to the raw profit motive. A private postal service would not guarantee deliveries to Middle Of Nowhere, Alaska at the same price and speed as to the town down the road. A private health care system would not even insure a lot of the seniors covered under Medicare, let alone do it as efficiently as that programme. And that's just American examples, without getting into things like the British NHS, Canadian national rail companies, various water utilities around the world. Moreover, as you yourself observe, it is not so easy anymore to dissect the sectors. Many government programmes would not succeed without relying on private companies, and many private firms live or die by government contracts.
Besides, as Sam points out, there is no profit motive in humanitarian aid, environmental conservation, libraries or welfare, nor should there be. Government programmes, though I dislike the very idea of putting a price on basic human dignity, maintain social order, safety and a civilised society which makes it possible for private enterprise to operate.
The romance of the ruggedly individualistic entrepreneur is in many ways a thing of the past. I would like to know what exactly is being risked by a finance executive sloshing money (wrapped up in arcane investment vehicles to the point of nonsense) from one virtual market to another. If he's inept at his computer games and runs his firm into the ground, he will receive a golden parachute anyway. Hell, I am sure there are a good number of people out there who got very wealthy off shorting Greek sovereign debt. And you wonder why the working class is mad.
@goodmongo. If you are going to quote Madison and Jefferson then I assume you have actually read them and understand they felt that no government was worse than big government, and that the best course was a balance between individual rights and government power. Or you can just go to the Source and read John Locke the man who influenced them the most, also known as the father of liberalism.ReplyDelete
That's part of the problem in the US with political discourse these days. I didn't disagree with you. In fact I agree the government has overspent and is on a very bad course. But because I pointed out the uncomfortable fact that many good things have been done by government that would never have happened if we left it up to business to get done, you felt the need to argue a point that wasn't made.
I said roads, vaccinations, and many other things aren't profitable in the "short term". Businesses operate in a short term cash flow environment. It's why we can't get pharmaceutical companies to invest in new antibiotics, they'd rather come up with the next Viagra, or a long term treatment for Diabetes instead of a cure. Places like that is where government is needed.
It's like arguing about whether or not we should pay for educations. That's a false choice. We pay to educate the children, or we pay the price for their welfare and incarceration. That's the real world choice.
Most in the US keep arguing the reality we would like to be in instead of the reality we are in.
@soresu & sam. Let me ask two very simple questions. If there were no private industry or private property where would the tax dollars come from?ReplyDelete
What percentage of private to public spending do you think is realistic and sustainable?
As a sort of bonus question isn't 100% government bascially the definition of communism? But the first two are more important.Replies
The third question is useless, Goodmongo. You can "argue" better than that.Delete
The second one: It depends. If the government taxed everybody 100% and then redistributed the money in a way that everybody gets as much back as the guy just below him payed, the government would tax 100% and redistribute 100% and still, nothing much would have changed compared to no government.
On the other hand, if the government taxed everybody 10% and then used the money to pay people to dig holes and then fill them up again, the taxes would be too high: 10% too high.
What tax rate is too high depends on what the government does with the money and how efficient/honest it is.
The first one: Tim Harford answered that in his funny way some time ago.
Funny you chastise me for my third question but the article you link states that 100% public sector is communism.Delete
What the article and others ignore is the assumption tha tpublic sector is as efficient as the private sector. That is like saying a complete monopoly is as efficient as an industry with lots of competition. Facts simple don't support it.
And if you pay public sector more money of benefits then where is the incentive for people to work harder, pay more taxes and get paid less in the private sector. Without a private sector to finance the public it won't work.
This is the exact same thing you see in companies between cost centers and revenue centers. Yes they need accounting (cost center) but they force it to be very productive and cut costs there first in times of need. Sales (revenues) are last to be cut because without sales/revenues there is no money to fund the cost centers. And this is how it should be applied to private/public.
I'm not saying that the public sector is as effective as the public one. It depends. The public sector is bad at business-like innovation, the private sector is bad at keeping the water clean.Delete
Unfortunately you are still arguing along the lines of the private sector paying for the public sector and this is a flawed way to look at it, as I tried to explain with my last post.
Besides, you underestimate the potential for the public sector to be efficient. For example, the public sector can order private consultants to make parts of the public sector more efficient. They can be payed based on the saving over the next five years.
And everything depends on what the government does with the money. That's why it's impossible to determine a perfect ratio. If the government uses the money to make people do useless stuff (waste) that's bad. If it give the money right back to the taxpayer nothing would change, even with 100% tax rate (the other extreme).
- AnonymousFebruary 21, 2012 at 9:32 PM
Strictly speaking, Marxism foresees the withering away of the state. No need for government once we have done away with the class system and the people own the means of production. :)Delete
I think you are trying to come up with a question that is vague and without background has no real answer.ReplyDelete
The simple answer is if the government is focused and effective I think the tax rate is irrelevant. During the 50's the tax rate for rich people was 91%. through the 70's it was 50% and our economy purred all the way to the 70's when the energy crisis derailed it. We had the highest corporate tax rates in US history throughout that time.
I have no desire to pay those taxes but it has been demonstrated that a well focused government can be successful with those rates. So the logical conclusion I draw from history is the US government was more effective and focused then than it is now. With more money bled from the citizenry and business the economy functioned better. And also in an environment where the government on multiple occasions voided companies copyrights and intellectual property and allowed other companies to use said intellectual property.
Currently our tax rate is the lowest it has been in the last 60 years. Once you take all the deductions and tax credits individuals and corporations get.
But our grandfathers had a more balanced commonsense approach to life. Baby Boomers have an all or nothing approach to everything.
The problem is not the tax rate. The problem is the unfocused back and forth stupidity that happens when all politics is win or lose.
For example the housing crisis. In the 60's LBJ (democrat)declared a war on poverty and the effect that had on loans was it became illegal to discriminate on the basis of color, or religion. In the 80's the Republicans decided that there was too much regulation and repealed some of the protections we put in place after the Great Depression, the democrats at the same time legislated that to prove they weren't discriminating banks had to prove they were giving a fair percentage of their loans to minorities, forcing some banks to make bad loans to meet those numbers. The banks that refused were prevented from doing things like merging with other banks. Then the Republicans repealed the legislation that prevented securities firms from offering bank mortgages. Then Democrats kept pushing Fannie and Freddie to give more loans. Then the republican all but repealed the protections from the Great Depression allowing business to make loans with virtually no oversight. Sub-prime mortgages became the norm. And for about 15 years everyone was happy. The Democrats were happy because more people had homes, the Republicans were happy because they had "proved" deregulation would grow the economy.then it all collapsed.
The Republican followed their strategy of Deregulation while ignoring the Democrats. The Democrats followed their strategy of pushing a Home Ownership society ignoring what the Republicans were doing. Both could possibly have worked as a national policy alone, but together they created a perfect storm that caused our Current Great Recession.
And virtually every major policy since the 1980's has been done the same way. It would be nice to blame, Taxes, or Democrats,or Republicans but the simple fact is the US government has been dysfunctional since the the 1970's and everyone knows that things are screwed up but they are too lazy to actually look back and study the history of how we got here. Thus we make no progress in fixing the root cause of our government. It is dysfunctional and tries to make laws that ignore reality and common sense.
Way before government the private companies were building dams, roads, railroads, canals etc. They built schools, hospitals and whole towns.ReplyDelete
I don't even know what this means. "Before government?" Before civilizations?
As I said before, either make the argument that governments provide zero value, or concede that they do (even if it's difficult to calculate).
Private companies do a lot of good things, but the primary reason I am so pro-government is because corporations are not your friend. They don't care about you, you have no voice, and government is the only plausible bulwark against egregious harm. If it were profitable, a corporation would have a fiduciary obligation to its shareholders to undermine the stability of the United States. And there is zero objective reason to believe that obscene executive salaries are more efficient or profitable.
Besides, would you really like to see everything privatized? Maybe Donald Trump will own all the paved streets in the North East? That would sure spur growth when suddenly you have to get permission from him to ship your goods on his roads. Or maybe he suddenly decides there's a $5 toll every 50 miles? His roads, his rules. Way better than government, amirite?Replies
And governments are your friend? Tell that to the citizens of Hitler's government. Or Stalins, Mao, Castro and hundreds more.Delete
Also why do you keep trying to get me to go 100% or 0%? I've said government is needed but should be very small and extremely limited in its scope.
If it were profitable, a corporation would have a fiduciary obligation to its shareholders to undermine the stability of the United States.
This is just silly and you can argue better than that.


text: This is my Classic Vintage Style Teddy Bear Family toy knitting pattern.This design allows you to make teddy bears just as they used to be. These lovely teddy bears are all fully jointed with moving heads, arms and legs so can stand or sit or be put into any other position.The pattern also provides instructions for non-jointed teddies ( as baby bear in pictures) if you prefer. Daddy Bear stands at 20 inches tall, Mummy Bear is 17 inches and Baby Bear is just 8 inches. You can buy this knitting pattern here as an immediate pdf download. The knitting pattern provides full written instructions as well as lots of step by step instructions to help you make these 3 wonderful teddy bears.


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Research In Motion (RIM) recently announced that it will finally release Macintosh-compatible desktop management software for BlackBerry handhelds this fall. I was lucky enough to get a quick hands-on demonstration this morning from RIM Product Manager Andrey Feldman at an event in New York City, and I dug up a few previously unannounced tidbits about RIM's upcoming software release for Apple computer users with BlackBerrys.
First of all, the Mac-version of BlackBerry Desktop Manager, or BlackBerry Desktop Software, its official name, will not ship along with the brand new BlackBerry Curve 8520, as previously reported by quite a few news outlets and blogs. Apparently there was some confusing language on RIM's website that suggested otherwise, but it has been modified to clarify that the software's expected some time in September.
Secondly, BlackBerry Desktop Software for Mac is mostly aimed at consumer users–and rightly so, as Macs still represent only a small percentage of enterprise PC deployments. That means the software won't have many of the corporate-mail/Outlook/Notes/etc. settings available within the PC-version of BlackBerry Desktop Manager. Specifically, there will be no Entourage/Outlook settings available to tweak or modify. (Think: e-mail signatures, reconciliation settings.)
"We've worked very hard to ensure that all the sync features are there," according to Feldman. The real focus in the first release of RIM's new Mac software is really on consumers and their syncing needs, he says.
BlackBerry Desktop Software for Mac will be compatible with Apple PCs running Mac OS Leopard 10.5.5 and higher. And users will need to be running BlackBerry device software version 4.2 or higher to employ it, Feldman says.
Last but not least, there's no easy way to load "leaked" software on your BlackBerry device via BlackBerry Desktop Software for Mac, according to Feldman. This is particularly interesting, because BlackBerry users with PCs can currently load just about any sort of compatible BlackBerry files via BlackBerry Desktop Manager's App Loader component. Feldman wouldn't get into details on how the "blocking" process might work, but he did say there's something in the Mac version meant to dissuade users from loading unofficial software.
I'm anxious to get my thumbs on BlackBerry Desktop Software for Mac, and though I wish it offered all the same capabilities of the PC version and more, I understand why RIM decided to leave some components out of the first build. On that note, this is only the first iteration of BlackBerry Desktop Software for Mac, and you can bet more full-featured versions will pop up in the months and years to come.


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Wells Fargo to lay off 1,800 more from mortgage unit
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — Wells Fargo & Co. says it plans to lay off an additional 1,800 employees from its mortgage department. The plans come after the bank cut about 2,300 jobs from the same unit in August.
Wells Fargo spokesman Alfredo Padillo said that the bank is cutting jobs in the mortgage department because fewer people than it expected are refinancing their mortgages. The jobs are in locations across the country.
The affected employees were given 60 days' notice. The bank says that is looking for other positions for those people within the company.
The San Francisco-based company is the nation's second-largest bank by deposits and is the largest originator of residential mortgages in the U.S.


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As part of UK Trade & Investment's international business legacy programme during the Olympic Games, film experts will be talking about the UK industry to global business leaders.
The core theme of the Creative Content day is looking at commercialising creativity in the international marketplace – the direct theme of a speech from Sony Corp Chairman Howard Stringer.
During the Creative Industries segment of the programme on July 31, speakers will include Josh Berger [pictured] from Warner Bros alongside actors Rupert Grint and producer David Heyman talking about the phenomenon of Harry Potter; Working Title's Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan will talk about challenges in global box office success; and Eon's Michael Wilson talking about the James Bond global franchise.
Also other speakers will include UK Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Pinewood Shepperton CEO Ivan Dunleavy, and experts from the TV (Julian Fellowes, Stephen Moffatt, Jane Tranter), games, theatre, fashion (Stella McCartney), publishing (Michael Morpurgo) and music industries.
In all there will be 17 business summits starting July 26, marking the largest set of trade and investment events ever held in the UK. The sessions will be held at the British Business Embassy in Lancaster House.
Senior UK and international industry can register interest in attending with gillian.baker [at] ukti.gsi.gov.uk


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Formative Sports is the leading manufacturers of sports uniforms which uses latest and modern technology for customised printing of uniforms and jerseys.


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Who Should Be College Basketball's Player of the Year?
Nominations from Kansas, Kentucky ... and Creighton
Reuters, AP Images
Every week, our panel of sports fans discusses a topic of the moment. For today's conversation, Hampton Stevens (writer, ESPN and The Atlantic), Jake Simpson (writer, The Atlantic), and Patrick Hruby (writer, ESPN and The Atlantic) talk about the highlights of the NCAA hoops season so far.
Hey, guys,
Football season is over. Spring training is yet to begin. The NHL playoffs are too far away to think about. What in the heck can a sports fan do? Wait weeks for the Daytona 500 on February 26? Watch the Premier League?
Child, please. It's hoops time. College hoops.
As we enter the conference season stretch run, making ready for the madness of March, it's time to start thinking about hardware for player of the year.
No shock, this Jayhawk fan likes Thomas Robinson. KU's massive post presence has a backstory as heartbreaking as his play is exciting. Averaging 18 points and 12 rebounds per game, Robinson looks like the obvious leader for the Naismith award.
Then again, I'm biased.
Okay. Fine. Make the case against him. Argue for Kentucky's young big man, Anthony Davis. He leads the top-ranked Wildcats in scoring, and plays ferocious defense. Or maybe you like super-soph Doug McDermott at Creighton, averaging 23.4 points per contest. Then again, maybe your theoretical POY vote goes to The Jared Sullinger, dropping 17.4 points and 9.1 rebounds per game for The Ohio State University. Who could blame you?
Me. Because it should be T-Rob. Jake, would you take a break from basking in your Giants' fabulous Super Bowl win for a second, and try to prove me wrong?
I can't argue with you, Hampton. I haven't watched a ton of college hoops this year because I've been sick with a GIANT FEVER, but I did see the Jayhawks paste a very good Baylor team, thanks in large part to a 27-14 from T-Rob. As much as I love Anthony Davis, his comically high 66 percent field goal percentage, and his unibrow (more on that from Patrick I hope), he has better teammates around him than Robinson does, which makes him the odd (big) man out.
But I propose we give the award to group of players this year (otherwise I have to rehash Hampton's fawning Jayhawk-love). Specifically, the Naismith should go to the sextet of Kentucky players averaging at least 9.7 points per game. That would be Davis, Michael-Kidd Gilchrist, Doron Lamb, Terrence Jones, Darius Miller, and Marquis Teague. On average, the group has played 168.4 out of a possible 200 minutes per game for the Wildcats this season, each averaging at least 25.5 minutes a contest. Though Davis has played the best of the group, Kidd-Gilchrist has shown an ability to completely take over a game for eight to 10 minutes at a time and dropped a season-high 24 points in UK's biggest win of the season, a 69-62 victory over then-No. 4 Louisville.
The other players have been nearly as impressive and the group has become almost unstoppable as a unit. That's all the more remarkable given that Davis, Kidd-Gilchrist and Teague are freshmen and Jones and Lamb are sophomores. Any UK doubters were silenced on Tuesday, when the 'Cats annihilated No. 7 Florida, 78-58, behind a 13-13 from Kidd-Gilchrist and a game-high 18 points from Lamb. Kentucky players other than the Super Six played a grand total of 15 minutes in the game.
Gonna take me to task for flagrantly overlooking the meaning of "Player of the Year", Patrick? Or do you think I'm on to something?
I'll get to your point about Kentucky. But first, a moment of silence.
Okay. Better now. That was for the Pac-12, home of my beloved Arizona Wildcats, a downtrodden, MINO (major-in-name-only) conference that definitely won't be discussed in any player of the year debates. Sadly for me—and fortunately for Duke—Derrick Williams isn't walking through that door.
That said, the relative ineptitude of the Pac-12 touches on the essential nature of college basketball in 2012, which in turn leads to my preferred Wooden Award candidate. (I'll leave the Naismith to the East Coast snobs that once selected Danny Ferry over Sean Elliott). Follow along: Unlike college football and the rest of American society, college hoops is moving away from stratification and toward greater equality. The gap between the blueblood and big-conference haves—such as, ahem, Kansas and Kentucky—and the traditional have-nots seemingly shrinks every year.
Remember how shocking it was when George Mason made the Final Four? Or how unusual it seemed when Gonzaga's Adam Morrison battled Duke's J.J. Redick for player of the year honors? To borrow a writerly tic from George Will: well. Last season, BYU's Jimmer Fredette became the campus answer to the Beatles. VCU recently made the Final Four. Steph Curry nearly carried Davidson there. Butler has played in back-to-back title games. Heck, Harvard is a top 25 team this year—and also the alma mater of New York Knicks guard Jeremy Lin, who only happens to be breakout Internet folk hero of the truncated NBA season.
(Fun fact: Butler had as many former players on 2011-2012 NBA opening day rosters as Illinois).
In college hoops, there never has been a better time to be a member of the 99 percent. Which is why I'm going with Doug McDermott, Creighton's sharp-shooting sophomore small forward.
Granted, Kansas' Robinson has a backstory that's even better than his all-around production; yes, Kentucky's Super Six are probably the most talented collective of surefire future pros since Rick Pitino's mid-1990s Wildcats squads. (That said, Jake, I don't think they qualify as a Serpentor-esque player of the year amalgam any more than Kemba Walker should be listed at the 2011 national champion in the NCAA record book). McDermott has the requisite numbers: 23.3 points per game, 8.4 rebounds and a 50 percent three-point percentage—which, by the way, is better than Dwight Howard's free throw percentage. More than that, McDermott epitomizes the game's zeitgeist. He played next to coveted recruit and current North Carolina star Harrison Barnes in high school, yet didn't receive a single major scholarship offer. His own father, then-Iowa State coach Greg McDermott, offered him a walk-on spot.
And now? McDermott is flourishing, playing for his dad—who took the Creighton job in 2010—and putting up better numbers than Barnes. McDermott in 2012! Power to the people! #OccupyMarch.


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Evergreen Featured in 2011 College Access & Opportunity Guide
College guidebook uniquely targets low-income, first-generation college-bound students
For Immediate Release
Young people in all socioeconomic groups have college aspirations. In fact, eight out of 10 expect to attain a bachelor's degree or higher, according to the U.S. Department of Education. But despite these aspirations, low-income students and those who are the first in their families to pursue higher education are severely underrepresented on college campuses.
According to the College Board, high-achieving students from low-income families have about the same chance of enrolling in college as low-achieving students from wealthier families. And even worse, those who do make it to college are not finding supportive college environments or graduating. A recent USA Today article notes that 89 percent of low-income, first-generation students leave college within six years without a degree.
The Evergreen State College is working to change this trend and has been recognized in Center for Student Opportunity's 2011 College Access & Opportunity Guide, a comprehensive college guidebook designed to help low-income, first-generation college-bound students make their college dreams a reality.
According to data provided by Evergreen's Institutional Research and Assessment Office , 27 percent of students were first generation in Fall 2009, with a rising proportion of students since 2007. Evergreen defines "first generation" as students for whom none of their parents earned a four-year college degree or higher. In Fall 2009, 36.7 percent of students were low income (defined as ≤150% federal poverty level).
Published by Sourcebooks, a leader in college guides and study aids, the 2011 College Access & Opportunity is significant breakthrough in providing students and their supporters with the necessary information to pursue and succeed in college.
The Guide features
- 284 colleges and universities highlighted for their outreach efforts, financial aid opportunities and student support services
- A 4 step plan to college developed by partners, KnowHow2GO
- Articles and advice from college students and other experts
- Valuable information for parents and mentors, including a new Spanish-language section
"We want to show students and their supporters that the opportunity for college is there," said Matt Rubinoff, Executive Director of Center for Student Opportunity. "The 2011 College Access & Opportunity Guide is a special resource that provides guidance through the college process and delivers important information on college programs aimed to serve low-income, first-generation college students."
About The Evergreen State College
The Evergreen State College is a nationally recognized public liberal arts college known for its distinctive interdisciplinary curriculum, high level of student/faculty engagement and emphasis on putting learning into action.
About Center for Student Opportunity
Center for Student Opportunity (CSO) is a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting higher education opportunities for first-generation and other historically underserved college-bound students. CSO programs serve colleges and universities, counselors, and community-based organizations in support of their college access goals. More information about CSO is available at www.CSOpportunity.org.
Contact for the Center for Student Opportunity:
Matt Rubinoff; (949) 481-0073; email@example.com
Contact for Sourcebooks, Inc. Publisher of College Access & Opportunity Guide:
Carrie Gellin, Sourcebooks, Inc., (630) 961-3900 ext 258; firstname.lastname@example.com
Contacts for The Evergreen State College:
Jason Wettstein (360) 867-5213; firstname.lastname@example.com;
or Todd Sprague (360) 867-6042; firstname.lastname@example.com


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It is no secret that Amazon is a data driven organization. The culture of testing is ingrained into pretty much everything Amazon does. However, a company like Amazon also makes mistake as I learned from my recent experience with Amazon Videos.
I have two Amazon Fire TV Sticks, one attached to each TV that I have. Both are tied to the same Amazon account. Using my Amazon Video account, I started watching a movie on one TV, turned it off halfway through and then a day later tried to watch it on the other TV. Guess what? I could not find that movie in any of the obvious menu options. I was expecting it to show up in my stream or at least in the same place where I found it last time. Nope. Amazon changed the order of movies on me. It's not like it added new movies to the lineup and this movie got pushed down. They just reordered the existing movie selection. It appeared to me that some kind of movie display sorting experiments was going on. However, that experiment, ruined the experience for me as I spent a lot of time looking for that particular movie.
In another instance on Amazon Video, I found the movie but as I soon as I clicked on it, it vanished and the movie list was reordered. Weird, right? Again, my suspicion is that some movie sorting/ordering algorithm experiment (A/B test) was going. So, what can you learn from this experience? There are two A/B testing (experimentation) lessons that you can learn from this mistake by Amazon:
- Keep version consistency across devices – Everybody uses multiple devices these days, multiple TVs, Tablets, Phones etc. Make sure you provide same version of your layout/algorithm to the same user across devices. Which means that you must do testing at the customer level instead of session or visitor level.
- Do not change customer experience midstream – Make sure all touch points are in sync and you're A/B test does not change customer experience as customer interacts with the interface. In this particular case, if the movie was right in front of me on the home screen then pressing the button on the movie should not have triggered a test that rearranged the order of the movies displayed on my screen. The ordering/sorting should have been done before it was presented to me.
Questions? Comments?
Need help with A/B testing and Personalization? Reach me at email@example.com.


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Events archive
Latin American Main Seminar
Chair: Rachel Meneguello, University of Campinas
23 February 2018 - 5:00pm to 6:30pm
Pavilion Room, Gateway Building, St Antony's College
Rachel Meneguello is Professor of Political Science at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and editor of the journal Opinião Pública . In 2014/17 she served as Vice president of Graduate Studies... Read more
Latin American Main Seminar
Joint seminar with the Spanish Real Instituto Elcano/ 2018: Electoral Year in Latin America – Round Table Discussion
Professor Carlos Malamud, Real Instituto Elcano, Spain, Maryhen Jimenez, LAC, Oswaldo Amaral, State University of Campinas (Unicamp), Carlos Pérez-Ricart, LAC
16 February 2018 - 4:30pm to 6:30pm
LAC Seminar Room, 1 Church Walk, Oxford
Carlos Malamud is Senior Analyst for Latin America at the Elcano Royal Institute, and Professor of Latin American History at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Madrid, Spain.... Read more
Latin American Main Seminar
Academic Entrepreneurs, Public Policy and the Growth of Latin American Studies in Britain During the Cold War
Rory Miller, University of Liverpool
9 February 2018 - 5:00pm to 6:30pm
LAC Seminar Room, 1 Church Walk, Oxford
Rory Miller is Honorary Fellow in International Business History at the University of Liverpool. He was Director of the Institute of Latin American Studies between 1999 and 2002 and subsequently... Read more
Latin American Main Seminar
Jessica Rich, Marquette University
2 February 2018 - 5:00pm to 6:30pm
LAC Seminar Room, 1 Church Walk, Oxford
Jessica Rich is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Marquette University, specializing in civil society, social movements, and state-building in Latin America. She received her doctorate from... Read more


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Different writing styles of Resume writing
Different writing styles of Resume writing
It can be difficult to search around in the enormous amount of ideas, opinions and guides that is available today. Here you can find descriptions on the different styles of Resume's that is recommended. There is not one optimal or correct version – the right style depends upon a lot of different factors and to find out what will work best for you, will be something you discover when you have tried different versions. The final result should hopefully be that you gain full control of your Resume and get the job of your dreams. There are three basic styles you could choose from:
Functional Resume Style
This Resume style is based mostly on your skills; it concentrates on the acquired skills you have gathered in the past, but also how you have used these skills in your previous positions. This style would be the best style to use if you have gaps in your employment history and/or want the recruiter to focus on your expertise/skills rather than discovering your visible gaps in your employment history. Not that you should withhold any important information, but you don't need to make it obvious for the recruiter to see these negative facts in your Resume. You could say for whatever reason – if your skills / expertise are more important for a recruiter / headhunter than your qualifications or employment history, then a functional Resume is the obvious choice.
Performance Resume Style
The performance Resume style mostly focuses on past performance. This is often the case if you're a major achiever or very often seen in "sales" or "economic" related positions. With this type of Resume you will focus the attention of the recruiter on your performance/achievement during each chronological job listed in your employment history. For example if you have been on the same step on the ladder for some years and achieved a lot at your work, but now you want to take the next step in your career. You can – by using this type of Performance Resume – , show that you are a high performer and have achieved goals; that you have done this for some years and now you're ready to take the next step. If the recruiter / headhunter recognize this, he knows you're committed and will do the little extra "something" to achieve your next goals.
Targeted Resume Style
A targeted type of Resume would focus on the requirement of the vacant position and exclude most other unnecessary information that could distract the recruiter / headhunter from judging you to be the perfect match for the vacant position. Sometimes this could be the case if you're from a completely different sector or your employment history is too diversified to be a perfect match. The skills and expertise you have acquired during your professional working experience has helped your professional capacity, but it is not directly applicable to the vacant position unless you illustrate why. That's why in this case the best idea would be to have a Resume targeted for that specific job.
Which Resume type is the best?
Standards, guides or rules are almost not best used as they are, and this is especially the case with regards to your Resume. The best thing that you can do is to take these good ideas and put them together to become what will be called a "Combination Resume". This style of a Resume is the most used format. You basically use a little of all the above styles when you are trying to make that perfect Resume. It is rare that a clean type would be used, as the job vacancies are fairly complex and your employment history would need to be targeted every time to answer the requirements of the recruiter / headhunter.


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Developing in WordPress is a lot of fun for me and there are great plugins that make developing and debugging WordPress code really simple. Debug-Bar, Debug-Bar-Extender and Debug-Console are my favorite WordPress plugins to do this.
But if you really live in WordPress code all day long you might sometimes wish that you can just log into it and do your thing without the need of leaving test scripts all over the place.
You can do this with wpshell, a tool written by my fellow Automattician Apokalyptik. Although this is a fairly unknown and well hidden piece of code it's worthy to install it on your local development environment in order to dive right into WordPress. After adjusting some basic configurations wpshell gives you a command shell that accepts native PHP code as well as all the functionality your regular WordPress install would give you. And there is even more, it also parses all the tokens and lets you grab information about function definitions, their parameters and the like.
If this got you excited go ahead and watch this video showing wpshell in action and how it is installed.
Before we get started, there are some requirements and warnings:
- This is intended for advanced developers. If you don't know what you're doing you can easily mess up your WordPress install
- Although possible, I would not run this on production, but only in a local development environment
- You need to have a working installation of WordPress that will be utilized by wpshell
Here's a quick walkthrough of the installation procedure:
svn co http://code.svn.wordpress.org/wpshell wpshell
(check out the wpshell repository)
cd wpshell
(get in the folder)
vi wpshell
(adjust shell variable and 2 occurences of the PHP path to your needs )
vi wpshell-config.php
(adjust HTTP_HOST, REQUEST_URI and other $_SERVER variables that might need adjustments to fit your WordPress install. You can easily check those values in your current WordPress installation. Adjust require statement to point to the wp-config.php of your WordPress install.)
If you did everything right you should now be able to use the shell. Here are some basics.
Invoking the shell:
will get you a command prompt. Here you can enter native PHP code or WordPress functions or functions defined elsewhere in your project
echo 'echo $blog_id' | wpshell
will take the command(s) you pipe to the shell and execute them
wpshell < /path/to/a/php/script
will use the php script as source for the commands
wpshell also comes with a bunch of built-in commands to make your life easier. Here are some of them
Database queries:
get_results $query
returns the result of $wpdb->get_results
get_var $query
returns the result of $wpdb->get_var
get_col $query
returns the result of $wpdb->get_col
get_row $query
returns the result of $wpdb->get_row
ls [path]
list the content of the current directory
cd [path]
change current working directory
quit the shell
d $function_name
displays the function definition
f $function_name
displays the function source
fsearch $search_string
search for a function matching the search string in the current working directory
c $class_name
returns the class source
csearch $search_string
search for a class matching the search string in the current working directory
That's all nice, but what can I do with it? – The sky is the limit.
I personally use it like this; I wrote a small Coda Plugin that takes selected content and executes it in wpshell and throws the result back to a new tab in my editor. In this way I can just mark code fragments or queries and run them against wpshell right away.
I also created a small PHP script together with an AppleScript that allows me to search for a function and open the file it's defined in directly in Coda and jump to the correct line or alternatively perform a php.net manual lookup and display the result in Coda.
If there is any interest I can make these scripts public as well. They are still very edgy though.
I also have a wpshell running inside a screen session and keep it always accessable via TotalTerminal.
I did not have much time to look into it, but the code is so awesome that I hope to integrate it better in my IDE. I'm planning to setup the parameters in wpshell-config.php automatically when I fire up a wpshell from within Coda. It would traverse upwards from the opened file until it finds a wp-config.php and setup HTTP_HOST and path accordingly. It could also work by simply entering a URL and Coda would fire up a preview window in Chrome along with the wpshell adjusted to exactly this url.


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Yayoi Kusama, Naoshima Pumpkin (Red), 2019LC-A2146a
Painted cast resin
Open Edition
8.3 x 12.7 x 12.7 cm (3.3 x 5 x 5 in)
Not signed or numbered
New, as issued. Sold in the original box
Contact Us
Shipping Times
Shipping Costs
Sales: +44 (0)74434 07531
Operations: + 44 (0)74434 07358
Office: +44 (0)1179 596411
Once you've bought an artwork, we aim to ship your order within 5 working days. Transit times differ depending on where you are based. If you are in the UK, once your artwork is dispatched it should be delivered the next working day. If you are outside the UK, you should receive your artwork within 5 days of it being shipped.
If there are any delays in shipping or if an artwork requires professional packing, including crating, or is sold from our consignor network, we will contact you after you have placed your order and let you know the estimated delivery time.
If you are a buying an artwork direct from our website you will receive free shipping to any address in the UK. If you live outside the UK, we offer a flat rate for shipping, as follows:
· Rest of the world: £150
If you order an artwork that is high value (£5,000 or more) or sold on consignment from one of our clients, shipping costs will vary and be confirmed at point of sale.


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'Springsteen & I' looks like a treat for true Bruce fans
It disappeared for a while yesterday, but the trailer for "Springsteen & I" — the documentary project from Ridley Scott Associates, Black Dog Films and Scott Free London — is back on YouTube, and for a certain brand of Springsteen fan (i.e. crazed), it's bound to ring a bell. Check it out:
While we can't advocate ever referring to Bruce Springsteen as "my macaroni & cheese," and have concerns about the woman referring to Bruce as "Daddy" to her baby son, the flick really looks like a must-see for true fans. Like Lawrence Kirsch's wonderful Springsteen collection "For You," featuring fans' stories of what the Boss has meant to them, "Springsteen & I" looks like proof positive to us diehards that we're not crazy — or if we are, we have a lot of company.
The only problem is the grammar — shouldn't it be "Springsteen & Me"? Or perhaps their construction is explained in the doc. ("Springsteen and I take long walks on the beach in my dreams every night," etc.)
We'll have to wait and see — Cineworld Cinemas is slated to debut the doc in the U.K. later this year, and hopefully we'll see a U.S. release soon after. Supposedly more news on the doc is coming via Twitter — follow at @springsteenandi.
UPDATE:Brucespringsteen.net reports that the film opens July 22 worldwide with tickets on sale July 4. Plus, you can get your picture on the movie poster.


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The New Year resolution on here was to refrain from taking the mickey out of Independent News and Media, the publishers of the Independent and the Sunday Independent. The group is in severe trouble with debt, and what might be euphemistically described as "challenging" market conditions. The group is not alone facing challenges – the Communicorp radio group, RTE, TV3, TCH which publishes the Sunday Business Post and Irish Examiner, and even the venerable Irish Times are all facing severe challenges. But IN&M is particularly suffering with €400m of bank loans imminently due, with a share price that is down 85% from when Gavin O'Reilly was deposed last year, revenues falling and the group is presently valued at a marginal €20m, down from over €1bn at the peak in 2007.
IN&M's woes threaten the plurality of media in Ireland, and it does have a stable that includes talented journalists. So at a certain point, poking fun at a group which has itself luxuriated in the misfortunes of others, just starts being cruel, however satisfying. Thus, the New Year resolution.
But three weeks into the New Year, the resolution is broken. Tom Lyons' piece this morning, which itself looks like a regurgitation of an analysis in The 2012 Phoenix Annual, and factually describes what is a parlous situation at TCH, was just too much to resist – somehow TCH's €25m of bank loans looks insignificant when set against the €400m at IN&M.
And then, we had the priceless spectacle of the Sunday Independent today publishing what looks like an ill-disguised copy of an error-ridden story in the British Telegraph newspaper yesterday, replete with the same mistakes! Britain hasn't bailed out Ireland with a GBP 7bn loan, it's only GBP 3.226bn and our bank bailout has officially cost €64bn, not €80bn as coincidentally cited in both articles. And you might have expected some balance in the Sunday Independent by pointing out that Ireland had bailed out Irish banks to cover losses, in part, incurred in the UK – remember Updown Court, "Britain's most expensive house" for which Irish Nationwide lent €75m on a non-recourse basis with the property eventually selling for €35m, that's just a small example of the losses that you and I are today shouldering in the UK. And of course we have given billions to the banks which have been used to repay unidentified bondholders, but bondholders understood to be mostly French, German and British.
But at least the Independent did report the third quarter results, published this past week, by this State's biggest agency, and the Agency upon which we're all still on the hook for €27bn. Because the Daily Business Post didn't report them. Nor did the Irish Examiner onlin. Nor RTE onlin. Nor The.Paper.Of.Record itself online, the "Irish Times".
The Irish Times itself is struggling to maintain its paper-of-record position.
Take a look at this article by its commercial property man, Jack Fagan – "Bank of Ireland shareholder Kennedy Wilson has bought State Street's Irish banking headquarters in the south Dublin docklands for about €108 million." Now take a look at Kennedy Wilson's own take on the transaction here – KW "today announced that the company and one of its investment partners acquired a loan with an unpaid principal balance of €120 million. The loan is secured by an office building and adjacent three-acre site in Dublin. "
Hands up anyone who thinks the Irish Times should know the difference between the sale of property and of a loan?
It was Irish Times columnist David Adams who this week informed us "weeks after the latest census figures confirmed, yet again, that only one-third of Northern Ireland's Catholics want a united Ireland." For those of us who watch censuses on both sides of the Border, that statement certainly jangled. Why? Because, the existing Northern Ireland census doesn't ask the question – "do you want a united Ireland" – if it did, why on earth would Sinn Fein be angling for a referendum? What the current census does capture – for the first time because the question wasn't asked in previous censuses – is how people in Northern Ireland consider themselves, and overall 25% or 457,482 regard themselves as Irish, 21% as Northern Irish and 40% as British and 14% as something else or nothing at all. How do Northern Irish Catholics see themselves? Well, the Census doesn't actually say. What the Census does say is that there are 738,033 Catholic-identified citizens in Northern Ireland out of overall total of 1.8m population. So why is The.Paper.Of.Record claiming it already knows how people feel about a united Ireland.
Now, it is all very well to take anonymous pot-shots at the media in Ireland, but in truth there appears to be a real risk that an already emaciated business and economics reporting capability is being whittled down further. In recent weeks, Simon Carswell who knows as much as anyone about the banking collapse has departed to work as the Washington Correspondent for the Irish Times, Laura Noonan has moved to Reuters, her former colleague Emmet Oliver has long since jumped ship to the PR department at the IDA, Niamh Hennessey at the Examiner is in PR at AIB. There is still talent there, and apologies to Tom Lyons at the Sunday Independent for poking fun at his TCH report, because he is one of an increasingly small band of talent reporting on business and economics.
But having said that, recent events show that standards are sliding, and if you are the commercial media, eventually, the poor quality that drives a slide in your audience, and thus circulation and advertising will be self-defeating.


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Did you know that how you write can indicate more than 5,000 personality traits? The size of your letters, spacing between words, shapes of letters and more can all signify different characteristics. Handwriting analysis (also known as graphology) can even be used for detecting lies and revealing possible health ailments.
Check out the infographic below from National Pen to learn what your handwriting says about you. It's also fun analyzing the handwriting of your friends and family members, so be sure to hand it off or pass it along.
[Click here for full size version]


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Coming up with new advertising and marketing ideas can be difficult. Creative professionals might go to many different sources of reference for inspiration. Inspiration for many campaigns is to be found in movement and my suggestion is to start your search by looking at promotional marketing products that provide movement.
Promotional marketing products and interactive pop up mailers can provide an innovative solution to many advertising problems and can prompt countless creative advertising ideas. When you are looking for promotional print with a difference, maybe a printed advertising product with that bit of something extra or maybe a promotional mailer that can give your direct marketing campaign a lift – then pop-ups and interactive mailers with interesting and clever movements are the products to prompt the sparks that develop into creative advertising ideas.
Pop-Up Products and Interactive Marketing Products Prompt Fresh Advertising Ideas
Vibrant pop-up and interactive products can set your mind buzzing with creative advertising ideas. The high impact characteristics and vitality of automatic rubber-band powered pop-up products alone present countless opportunities for the creative processes to get to work. For instance, all automatic pop-up marketing products are designed to jump to life as soon as your customer opens the pack. The very action throws lots of creative advertising ideas and suggestions into the air – growth, life, fun, surprise, bounce, vitality, energy, action – how many suggestions for fresh advertising ideas do you need?
Unique, Innovative Marketing Ideas
Translating unique and innovative marketing ideas into an actual marketing campaign is quite definitely an art! Promotional pop up products can help you transform innovative marketing ideas into reality. Imaginative use of paper and cardboard engineering techniques is the key to making a unique pop-up marketing product. Applying an innovative marketing idea to the movement in that pop up product can be the key to creating a highly individual piece of promotional marketing. From there onwards, the application of professional marketing skills can transform that initial marketing idea into a successful promotional marketing campaign.
These types of promotional products will help you to produce an extremely successful promotional mail shot or an array of promotional print options such as exhibition giveaways; magazine cover mounts and corporate event invitations.
Pop-Up Movement and New Creative Marketing Ideas
New creative marketing ideas start with a spark of imagination. That spark could be generated by virtually anything – music, colour or movement for example. But if movement is the key, then what pop up movements are available to set you on the way to having those all-important creative marketing ideas to translate into your unique promotional mailer? There are interactive marketing products that turn; pictures that disappear and change; pop-ups which jump; pocket media full of fun folds – and each one creating a very tactile and interactive promotional marketing product. All that you need is that initial spark, that innovative creative marketing idea to start the ball rolling.
There are several reasons why promotional marketing products prove to be so popular within the advertising and marketing community. From a creative point of view it is that the products are so versatile, lending themselves so readily to so many new creative marketing ideas, ideas that can jump, ideas that can grow, ideas that can turn and so on. However, the main reason for the popularity of the products is that the results are so very successful. Everyone who has ever been involved in a business-to-business direct mail campaign knows the result of pinning big hopes on a bog-standard leaflet or flyer. It might appear to be relatively inexpensive but in all likelihood a very high percentage will be bin-bound! That has proved not to be the case with promotional products that originate from a cardboard engineering background.