Gil Friend’s Blog

And speaking of privatizing social security

[Krugman/NY Times]: Buying Into Failure In Chile's system, management fees are around 20 times as high. And that's a typical number for privatized systems. Read your prospectus before voting, folks.

Sounds of slippage

Isen.blog reports the bad news: US falls from #3 to #7 in business info-tech US 15th in broadband per capita 'USA. Numbah one.' It makes a great chant, but the data bears it out less often than people think. Lost leverage for economic leadership, if you ask me....

Solstice greetings

I just posted these year end greetings to Natural Logic's mailing list: Natural Logic's "year end update" will be a new years update this year. Watch for it in January. But meanwhile, here on the shortest day -- the day the light returns -- we'd like to take the...

Today’s MacGyver Computing Award

The Unofficial Apple Weblog reports on a web server running on a Newton MessagePad 1200! Talk about 'reduce, reuse, recycle'! Something to consider before you think about 'recycling' that 'obsolete' computer -- you know, the one you would have drooled over just a few...

On the other hand, take a look at Brazil

But in the meantime, some (countries as well as companies) may not be depending on Kyoto to chart a strategic direction that makes intrinsic sense, across several value axes. For example, this excerpt from Worldchanging post on Brazil earlier this week: Lula: 'Brazil...

EU: Last Legs of the Kyoto Treaty?

Stratfor offers a fairly discouraging word. Here's the summary: The Italian environmental minister suggested Dec. 15 that the U.N.'s Kyoto Treaty on climate change should be allowed to die in 2012 if the world's largest countries do not sign on during a planned second...

‘I see it feelingly’

Pollard again, offering up Bill Moyers' frank and troubling speech on the state of things. Pollard: And he recently delivered, on receiving the Harvard Medical School Global Environmental Citizen award, what may be the most important speech of the 21st century so far....

Commitment and accountability

Dave Pollard never fails to surprise: About a year ago, I made my first public commitment to stop just talking about How to Save the World, and actually do something about it. Here's my progress report. He not only seems to have the time to think, he actually uses it...