On the side of the highway into Pittsburgh today I passed a billboard for Orr’s, a regional jewelry chain and it reminded me that we are about to be inundated with ads cajoling us to buy bits of rocks embedded in metal and other functionless baubles. The Orr’s billboard is mostly white with black lettering […]
There were not many races with national significance in the 2013 election, but there are several lessons we can learn from the three races that received the most news coverage—left-winger Bill DeBlasio’s historic landslide victory for Mayor of New York, moderate Republican Chris Christie’s mere landslide re-election as Governor of New Jersey and conservative Democrat […]
If 18 large organizations installed, customized and rolled out new complicated software systems, how many rollouts would be relatively glitch free? Ask any experienced information technology (IT) consultant and they’ll likely answer, “About 50%,” without blinking an eye. That’s based on facts. At least half of all software installations fail miserably—over budget, past the deadline […]
Read More… from 17 of 18 health insurance marketplaces had successful rollouts & are working fine
We got another reminder of the failure of much privatization of government functions in a Wall Street Journal article detailing the woes that the state of Idaho has had since it privatized its state prisons in 2000. The current vendor is walking away from a new contract, leaving Idaho with several lawsuits alleging understaffing leading […]
A rhetorical device is a technique that a writer or speaker uses to create a literary effect, often without regard for the literal significance of the words. For example, a simile is when the writer makes a comparison, “He dances like a bull on crutches.” It’s a clever way to say that that guy is […]
Page A9 of today’s New York Times is entirely blank. So is page A10, with the exception of a cryptic website address at the bottom of the page: wordsarelife.com. What could “words are life” mean? And where will the URL lead us? To religion? Politics? To some feel good pop psychology or philosophy? In fact […]
Read More… from Movie promoters resort to print ad consisting of two blank pages and a URL
The luxury apartment building at 740 Park Avenue in New York’s Upper East Side is so famous that it even has a book dedicated to its history. Now lots of churches and castles have volumes describing their history and residents, but not many apartment buildings achieve this mythic status. When the news media uses a […]
It doesn’t surprise me that somebody figured out how to prove that public schools outperform private schools. And it doesn’t surprise me that this seminal study is being ignored by the mainstream news media. As of one day after Atlantic released its article reviewing The Public School Advantage: Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools, a […]
Read More… from Study proving public schools outperform private schools is ignored by news media
Perhaps the best characterization of the U.S. political scene since the turn of the 21st century is to say that we have been ruled primarily by an incompetent minority. Let’s face it. The victory this week over the economic know-nothing Tea Party came with very few spoils for the American people: All the majority got […]
Your Big Mac and Baconator aren’t as cheap as you think they are. In fact, every time you bite into a burger or other fast food concoction, the federal government subsidizes your meal—and the profit made by the fast food company. That’s because more than one half of low-wage workers employed by the largest U.S. […]
Read More… from New study shows why we have to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour