Clipmarks | pjr-s's clips

'Your company is bankrupt, you keep $480m. Is that fair?'

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 03:02:09 GMT

clipped by: pjr-s

'Your company is bankrupt, you keep $480m. Is that fair?'

Andrew Clark in New York and Elana Schor in Washington

Tuesday October 7 2008

Richard Fuld, chief executive of Lehman Brothers, testifies in Washington on Monday. Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP

It was a showdown to cherish for critics of Wall Street's culture of enrichment. The grim-faced boss of the bankrupt bank Lehman Brothers was left squirming yesterday as a veteran Democrat roasted him over his multimillion-dollar pay.

"You and your wife have an art collection filled with million dollar paintings," Waxman said. "Your former president, Joe Gregory, used to travel to work in a helicopter."

Frustrated by his demeanour, a Republican congressman, John Mica, tried humour: "If you haven't discovered your role, you're the villain today. You've got to act like a villain."

Fuld stared back wordlessly, without a shadow of a smile.

Ghost Bikes

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 01:55:50 GMT

clipped by: pjr-s

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

The spectral memorials that haunt our roads

They started in San Francisco, spread throughout the States and are now appearing in cities worldwide ghostly white bikes adorned with fresh flowers that mark the spot where a cyclist has been killed. As they begin to appear across Britain, Geraldine Bedell talks to the creators of these poetic shrines and the victims families.

The bike was hanging off the railings, a metre or so above the ground, gleaming spectrally in the dusk. It was painted white and its luminosity emphasised the simple sweep of the frame, the elegance of its engineering. Only up close could you see that it looked so stark and sculptural because all the extraneous bits - chain, brake cables, the rubber on the handlebars and pedals - had been stripped away. It was only the skeleton of a bike and there was a plaque hanging off the crossbar: 'In memory of Smudge, 1971-2008.'

TC50: Tonchidot - product or conceptual art?

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 09:06:52 GMT

clipped by: pjr-s

Clip Source: timesonline.typepad.com

TC50: Tonchidot - product or conceptual art?

The demo video showed people walking into a Tokyo street, seeing bubbles pop up on their iPhone screens to reveal the English translation of the name of each shop, details of what it sold and information about its opening times. Walk into a mobile phone shop, point the iPhone at a rack of handsets and see their specs and prices on the screen immediately. In the audience we lapped it up, but there was a big question looming: where do all the data come from?

The Tonchidot team, with their limited English and limitless enthusiasm, were unfazed. Exhorting the panellists to trust their imaginations, to "look up, not down", they parried practical questions with baffling non sequiturs and utter confidence. What happens when the store changes the layout of its mobile phone display?

"We have a patent!"

Huge cheers. The question is repeated: what happens when the world changes?

"Join us!"

More cheers. The TechCrunch audience had joined them already.

US economy in crisis

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 02:43:39 GMT

clipped by: pjr-s

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

US economy in crisis: How did it come to this?

America’s effort to see off a new depression unravelled last week. Washington correspondent Tim Shipman watched the bail-out talks descend into gridlock .

Last Updated: 9:48PM BST 27 Sep 2008

At issue was nothing less than the fate of the world economy, the future of free market capitalism and the credibility of the most powerful nation on earth – perhaps even its status as lone global superpower.

It was not just the public that did not understand the rescue plan, nor why it was necessary. When Mr Paulson met with congressmen and senators on Tuesday and Wednesday, he found that many lawmakers were similarly clueless.

In these impromptu lessons, Mr Paulson found Left-wingers scandalised by help for rapacious capitalists sitting side-by-side with Right-wingers who saw in his plan a socialist scheme to tamper with their precious markets.

Sats put primary pupils off science

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 01:53:22 GMT

clipped by: pjr-s

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Sats put primary pupils off science, says study

· Teachers 'should be free to cultivate natural curiosity'
· Children's understanding has declined since 1970s

Jessica Shepherd

The Guardian,

Tuesday September 23 2008

Children's interest in science and their understanding of it are being crushed by the compulsory tests they sit at primary school, leading professors argue today.

Pupils in England are being taught to perform well in the tests, rather than having their "natural curiosity of science cultivated and harnessed", researchers from Bristol and Durham Universities will say in a report.

Harlen argues that science Sats should be replaced by moderated teacher assessment. "Sats distort teaching and learning," she said. "Of course it is important to know what children have achieved ... but research shows unequivocally that testing in science has had a detrimental impact on learning and teaching. The results provide a poor picture of pupils' achievement."

After a week of turmoil, has the world changed?

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 01:56:18 GMT

clipped by: pjr-s

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

After a week of turmoil, has the world changed?

Naomi Klein

Nobody should believe the overblown claims that "free market" ideology is now dead. During boom times it is profitable to preach laissez-faire, because an absentee government allows speculative bubbles to inflate. When those bubbles burst, the ideology becomes a hindrance, and it goes dormant while government rides to the rescue. But rest assured: the ideology will come roaring back when the bailouts are done. The massive debt the public is accumulating to bail out the speculators will then become part of a global budget crisis that will be the rationalisation for deep cuts to social programmes, and for a renewed push to privatise what is left of the public sector. We will also be told that our hopes for a green future are too costly. If the state can intervene to save corporations that took reckless risks in the housing markets, why can't it intervene to prevent millions of Americans from imminent foreclosure?

A crisis that could make the US election a cleaner contest

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 05:45:01 GMT

clipped by: pjr-s

Clip Source: www.independent.co.uk

Johann Hari: A crisis that could make the US election a cleaner contest

Barack Obama offers a rare chance to dismantle the Wall Street cash dispenser in the Oval Office

Friday, 19 September 2008

McCain knows his stances on the economy and foreign policy are opposed by 80 per cent of the population as barely-trimmed Bush. So he needs to toss up a confetti of distraction-issues instead – and Palin was the biggest distraction of all. This attempt to run down the clock was working with slick efficiency until the stock exchange's opening bell started to sound like a death-knell. He is gathering fistfuls more of confetti as we speak.

Until now. Barack Obama is the first major presidential candidate since Teapot Dome to refuse to take money from Big Oil or lobbyists, with 93 percent of his funding coming from small donors giving $200 or less. Every other leading candidate (even Al Gore) took their cash and saw the world through the bottom of an oil-barrel. Not him.

Socialism for the rich

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:33:29 GMT

clipped by: pjr-s

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Socialism for the rich

The US government is splashing out billions of dollars in bailouts but is failing to treat the causes of this financial crisis

Richard Adams

Wednesday September 17 2008 20:00 BST

If you want to grasp the mixed-up, interwoven nature of the international financial markets, consider this: the US investment bank Lehman Brothers leased a million square feet of office space in London, for which it paid about £40m-£50m a year. Lehmans paid its rent to a property company, the Canary Wharf Group - which in turn is controlled by another company, Songbird Estates.

Here's a thought. Perhaps the Fed and Treasury should have let Bear Stearns go bust back in March. The immediate reaction would have been brutal. But would it have been worse than how things have turned out - six months of turmoil, $2,000bn in value wiped off global stock markets and more costly bailouts.

Rogge rips the wrong guy

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 09:59:34 GMT

clipped by: pjr-s

Clip Source: sports.yahoo.com

Rogge rips the wrong guy

By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports Aug 21, 10:40 am EDT

BEIJING — Jacques Rogge is so bought, so compromised, the president of the IOC doesn’t have the courage to criticize China for telling a decade of lies to land itself these Olympic Games.

“I don’t feel like he’s being disrespectful,” American Shawn Crawford told the Associated Press. “He deserves to dance.”

None of which denies the promises broken, the innocent jailed, the freedoms denied — the kind of issues someone with Jacques Rogge’s standing should be talking about.

He has no spine for that. Not for China. Not for any big country. He had to criticize someone, he had to make headlines, he had to show he was a tough guy. So who better than someone from somewhere that can’t ever touch him back?

Yes, Usain Bolt is the problem of the Olympics. He’s the embarrassment. He’s the one who needs to learn.

Sure, Jacques, sure.

Higher, faster, yes. More meritocratic? No

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 03:38:24 GMT

clipped by: pjr-s

Clip Source: www.timesonline.co.uk

Higher, faster, yes. More meritocratic? No

Talent doesn't always triumph at the Olympic Games. They are a bastion of elitism where money can buy medals

Matthew Syed

Look beyond the propaganda and you will find that 58 per cent of Great Britain's gold-medal winners at Athens in 2004 went to independent schools. You will also find that in the past three Olympics 45 per cent of medal winners went to the non-state sector. Given that only 7 per cent of children attend independent schools, and assuming that sporting talent is spread evenly, this is a striking demonstration of how Olympic success is driven by wealth as well as by ability. Either way, the 93 per cent who attend state schools are chronically under-represented.

The Olympics should be a global festival, not a rich man's playground.

Matthew Syed represented Great Britain at table tennis in two Olympics

11 reasons America's a new socialist economy

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:27:56 GMT

clipped by: pjr-s

Clip Source: www.marketwatch.com

11 reasons America's a new socialist economy

How free market ideology backfired, sabotaging capitalistic democracy

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Welcome to the conservative's worst nightmare: The law of unintended consequences. Why? Nobody wants to admit it, folks, but the conservatives' grand ideology is backfiring, actually turning the world's greatest capitalistic democracy into the world's newest socialist economy.

A little history: The core principles of conservative economic ideology are grounded in Nobel economist Milton Friedman's 1962 classic "Capitalism and Freedom." Too late to stop President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, those principles became the battle cries energizing conservatives since Reagan: Unrestricted free markets, free enterprise and free trade; deregulation, privatization and globalization; trickle-down economics and trickle-up wealth to an elite plutocracy destined to rule the new American capitalist utopia.

The picture that shames Italy

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 02:52:56 GMT

clipped by: pjr-s

Clip Source: www.independent.co.uk

The picture that shames Italy

By Peter Popham in Rome

It's another balmy weekend on the beach in Naples. By the rocks, a couple soak up the southern Italian sun. A few metres away, their feet poking from under beach towels that cover their faces and bodies, lie two drowned Roma children.

The girls, Cristina, aged 16, and Violetta, 14, were buried last night as the fallout from the circumstances of their death reverberated throughout Italy.

It is an image that has crystallised the mounting disquiet in the country over the treatment of Roma, coming after camps have been burnt and the government has embarked on a bid to fingerprint every member of the minority. Two young Roma sisters had drowned at Torregaveta beach after taking a dip in treacherous waters. Their corpses were recovered from the sea – then left on the beach for hours while holidaymakers continued to sunbathe and picnic around them.

Gypsy girls' corpses on beach fail to put off sunbathers

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:20:14 GMT

clipped by: pjr-s

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Gypsy girls' corpses on beach in Italy fail to put off sunbathers

John Hooper in Rome

Questions about the attitude of Italians to their Roma minority were again being asked yesterday after photographs were published of sunbathers continuing as normal with a day at the beach despite the bodies of two Gypsy girls who had drowned being laid out on the sand nearby.

"But the knot of curious onlookers that formed around the girls' bodies dissolved as [swiftly] as it had formed," the newspaper Corriere della Sera reported. "Few left the beach or abandoned their sunbathing. When the police from the mortuary arrived an hour later with coffins, the two girls were carried away on the shoulders [of the officers] between bathers stretched out in the sun."

The civil liberties group EveryOne said it was unconvinced by reports of the incident at Torregaveta and asked whether there might be something more sinister behind it.

We have everything to fear from McCain

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 03:24:04 GMT

clipped by: pjr-s

Clip Source: www.independent.co.uk

Johann Hari: We have everything to fear from McCain

So it's a little worrying that John McCain – who still has a reasonable chance of winning – says: "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should... To be honest, I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated."

But there's a way in which the next US president will affect you even more directly than foreign policy. By his economic decisions, the next president will help swing the price of the food you eat and the wages you earn – wherever you live on earth.

When he is forced to talk about the economy, McCain has always given the same answer: "I rely on the circle I have developed over many years – people like Phil Gramm." He has Herbert Hoovered-up his slivers of economic theory from this man – but who is Gramm? Until he briefly sputtered into the headlines a few days ago, nobody had cared to look.

'Rogue computer expert' shuts down San Francisco

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 03:11:11 GMT

clipped by: pjr-s

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

'Rogue computer expert' shuts down San Francisco city network

By Catherine Elsworth in Los Angeles

A "rogue" computer engineer employed by the City of San Francisco allegedly staged a "cyber coup" of the authority's entire computer network, changing a master password to lock out administrators and refusing to reveal the new code even when thrown in jail.

Terry Childs, 43, who had reportedly faced disciplinary problems at work, is accused of hijacking the city's new multimillion dollar FiberWan system, which stores 60 per cent of such sensitive local government data as legal records, emails and payroll documents.

Officials have called in experts from Silicon Valley to try to crack Childs's code that gives him sole access to the system but say it could take several weeks.

"There's nothing to be alarmed about, save the inability to get into the system and tweak the system. Nothing dramatic has changed in terms of our ability to govern the city."

Clipmarks | pjr-s's clips

'Your company is bankrupt, you keep $480m. Is that fair?'

'Your company is bankrupt, you keep $480m. Is that fair?'

Ghost Bikes

The spectral memorials that haunt our roads

TC50: Tonchidot - product or conceptual art?

TC50: Tonchidot - product or conceptual art?

US economy in crisis

US economy in crisis: How did it come to this?

America’s effort to see off a new depression unravelled last week. Washington correspondent Tim Shipman watched the bail-out talks descend into gridlock .

Sats put primary pupils off science

Sats put primary pupils off science, says study

· Teachers 'should be free to cultivate natural curiosity'· Children's understanding has declined since 1970s

After a week of turmoil, has the world changed?

After a week of turmoil, has the world changed?

Naomi Klein

A crisis that could make the US election a cleaner contest

Johann Hari: A crisis that could make the US election a cleaner contest

Socialism for the rich

Socialism for the rich

The US government is splashing out billions of dollars in bailouts but is failing to treat the causes of this financial crisis

Rogge rips the wrong guy

Rogge rips the wrong guy

Higher, faster, yes. More meritocratic? No

Higher, faster, yes. More meritocratic? No

Talent doesn't always triumph at the Olympic Games. They are a bastion of elitism where money can buy medals

11 reasons America's a new socialist economy

11 reasons America's a new socialist economy

How free market ideology backfired, sabotaging capitalistic democracy

The picture that shames Italy

The picture that shames Italy

Gypsy girls' corpses on beach fail to put off sunbathers

Gypsy girls' corpses on beach in Italy fail to put off sunbathers

We have everything to fear from McCain

Johann Hari: We have everything to fear from McCain

'Rogue computer expert' shuts down San Francisco

'Rogue computer expert' shuts down San Francisco city network

A "rogue" computer engineer employed by the City of San Francisco allegedly staged a "cyber coup" of the authority's entire computer network, changing a master password to lock out administrators and refusing to reveal the new code even when thrown in jail.

· Teachers 'should be free to cultivate natural curiosity'
· Children's understanding has declined since 1970s