Archive for Random
How rich are you?
At globalrichlist.com you can enter in your annual income and see how you rank in the world. It’s a wonderful and wonderfully designed site that aims to make you feel rich so you’ll donate to a good cause.
I’m always telling folks who fret about how little they make that we’re not just richer than most on earth, but most that ever lived. Someone making an entry level salary of $35k in DC is still in the top 5% of income earners in the world.
Washington Post Copies Politico?
In the fast-paced and ever-changing media landscape, the surest strategy for a struggling news oraganization is to… copy your competitors! After last week’s announcement that Newsweek magazine is for sale because it could no long earn a profit, this week the Washington Post Co. launches a new new media project called PostPolitics that looks awefuly similar to… Politico! From a marketing email, PostPolitics is the:
“the ultimate destination for breaking political news, in-depth original reporting and analysis, from the trusted leader in political coverage.”
Now, what’s the difference between this and WashingtonPost.com?
Why do we have panel discussions?
Why do we have panel discussions? The format is a peculiar mainstay of Washington policy circles that no longer seems to make any sense.
The first problem is that participants and the audience must congregate at the same time and place. Unlike lectures, which can sometimes be enlightening, you usually get four five minute talks that are too short to adequately treat any subject, but long enough, especially in the aggregate, to bore you to tears. Everyone knows where the panelists stand on the issue, and what everyone wants is for the panel to hurry up and get to the discussion.
Then there are the dumb questions and pontifications from the audience. As a frequent participant in panels (and increasingly less frequent attendee), I can tell you that most audience members who get up to the mic will ask rhetorical questions that are really meant to make a point on one side or the other, adding little to the positions that have already been staked out. Then there are those folks who dispense with the whole question thing and proceed to give their remarks as if they were some overlooked panel member. Why do we do this to ourselves?
As I’ve noted, the valuable part of any panel discussion is the discussion part. Listening to “experts” with differing views have a conversation about a particular topic can be a great way to learn something. And that’s why we have podcasts like Econtalk, BloggingHeads.tv, and maybe even your humble servant’s Surprisingly Free Conversations. Asynchronous and ageographic (is that a word?), you can partake of them any time and any place. Q&A and audience participation can take place in the comments section of a post. Yes, panel organizers will often make recordings available online, but that just highlights the fact that the conversation should have been produced digitally from the get-go.
The explanations I can come up with are that they are a vestige of a pre-internet time of couriers and fax machines in which congregating at the same time and at the same place was the only way to consume these discussions. No doubt these gatherings also served as a great way to meet or catch up with the inhabitants of a particular field or pursuit, and the post-event reception probably remains the only other redeeming quality of panel discussions. As an introvert, though, I see the forced socializing at these events as a bug, not a feature.
The best paragraph I’ve read today
On the front page of the New York Times today about formspring.me:
While Formspring is still under the radar of many parents and guidance counselors, over the last two months it has become an obsession for thousands of teenagers nationwide, a place to trade comments and questions like: Are you still friends with julia? Why wasn’t sam invited to lauren’s party? You’re not as hot as u think u are. Do you wear a d cup? You talk too much. You look stupid when you laugh.
Megan McArdle’s Amazon Meme
Megan McArdle posts an interesting idea:
A friend suggested this exercise: go to your Amazon orders page, and see what the very first thing you ordered from Amazon was. Memoirs of the turn of the previous century are filled with the family’s first automobile, its first water closet and electric lights. But I have no memory of my first interaction with an invention that is still reshaping how I live–more and more, Peter and I are now ordering groceries and toiletries from Amazon.
Turns out my first Amazon purchase, dated December 1998, was Plan 9 From Outer Space. On VHS. Looking at the invoice, I see I purchased it using my Yahoo! branded Mastercard.
Since memes are evolutionary, I’ll throw this in another direction, from purchasing to selling. Looking on eBay, it I sold my first item at auction in July 1998. Unfortunately, eBay doesn’t maintain the extensive back catalog of transactions that Amazon does, but if memory serves, I sold a Compaq 120 handheld computer.
Sometimes Right on Twitter
Just FYI: You can follow Sometimes Right on Twitter at twitter.com/SometimesRight. Also, you can follow our individual Twitter feeds here:
- David: twitter.com/davidrkirby
- Jerry: twitter.com/jerrybrito
- Dan: twitter.com/danrothschild
Two thoughts on Peterson Fiscal Summit
Today, I attended the Peterson Foundation’s star/wonk-studded Fiscal Summit. Speakers included Pres. Clinton, Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, Peter Orzag, Paul Ryan and more. Great coverage at the Fiscal Times. Two thoughts.
First, Paul Ryan continues to impress and he commanded an out-sized influence on the days events. Ryan’s observation that the fiscal crisis is the most “predictable economic crisis” in history, was the quote and idea that kicked off the proceedings. Though outnumbered, Ryan managed to draw the key ideological distinctions on his panel about the roll and purpose of government. And during the luncheon address, Peter Orzag continued to call attention to Ryan’s ideas. If Ryan can command this much attention–in a room full of politicos that includes President Clinton!–just imagine how much attention other Republicans could get if they too started talking as candidly and forthrightly about ideas.
Second, I was struck about how elliptical the whole panel on health care reform sounded. Dr. Elliot Fischer at Dartmouth described how various new business models have innovated to reduce costs and increase quality care. And all the other panelists agreed, saying yeah, we should reward that by giving a bonus payment, or tinkering with the Medicare reimbursement formula, or empowering the government “innovation center” to do more of this. But isn’t this missing the surprising thing about these examples? Because in every other sector, you don’t need a politician to pass a bill or tweak a payment formula to reward such innovation. If it’s good for consumers, you make a profit and grow on your own. Why isn’t this true for health care sector? No one seemed to see this as odd. But it’s more obvious why if you read David Goldhill’s piece in The Atlantic. And, the analysis points towards a much different path for reform.
Overall, an impressive day of speakers and I hope an encouraging sign of momentum for the Commission.
