Marty Manley on economics, politics, technology, and culture

Archive for September, 2007

Obama: It's Hillary's to Lose, Not Yours to Win

What an amazing week in the Presidential primaries — probably a turning point. Hillary Clinton continues to evidence a mastery of the sport that eludes Barack Obama. It pains me to say it, but the nomination and the Presidency are now hers to lose. It is no secret that I am not a huge fan [...]

"Brick Walls Let us Prove How Badly We Want Things"

Some universities have been asking faculty to give the last lecture of their life. It’s a wonderful forcing device: take an hour and tell us everything important that you have learned. For Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon University computer-science professor, it was more than a forcing device. The 46 year old father of three small [...]

Your Father's Oldsmobile

Did you notice that our biggest industrial union went on strike this morning against our biggest car maker? You didn’t? Funny, investors didn’t notice either — GM stock hardly moved today — it was actually up for awhile. Unless you are walking a picket line or working in a Mexican parts plant, the GM strike [...]

UC Berkeley and The Meaning of Diversity

Columbia University announced this week that they were opening up the campus to for visiting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. There was no reason to invite this guy — who is, after all, one of the most dangerous people on the planet. He is a deeply anti-Semitic holocaust-denier who funds terrorism throughout the Middle East. He [...]

Why Resources Don’t "Run Out"

In April of 2006, oil crossed $70/barrel for the first time. I attended a talk at my kid’s school given by Dan Kammen, a first-rate environmentalist who teaches at UC Berkeley. Noting that oil prices had just hit a new high, Kammen asked the crowd of well-fed East Bay liberals how many of us thought [...]

Killer Drones Join the Battle

The Air Force Times reports that on September 1, US Army scouts in Iraq spotted two men planting a roadside bomb. They called in a nearby Hunter unmanned aircraft, which dropped a laser-guided bomb and killed the two men. This is the first confirmed use of a weaponized UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle), according to the [...]

Obama Misses His Sister Souljah Moment…

In May, 1992 a former governor ran as a moderate for the Democratic nomination for President. He aspired to challenge a moderate Republican with 80% approval ratings — a President that more experienced candidates considered untouchable because he had won a quick and popular war in Iraq. At age 45, Bill Clinton was not especially [...]

Did we create a half million or 7.7 million jobs last quarter?

The undisputed gem of the United States Department of Labor is the Bureau of Labor Statistics. You can debate whether the rest of the place accomplishes much, but the BLS is pure gold — home to some of America’s smartest and most important data gatherers, knowledge makers, and statisticians. They work about a block from [...]

Poverty in the US is increasingly associated with immigration

Robert Samuelson confirms what a number of people have quietly started to suspect: poverty in the US has been dropping steadily, except for impoverished folks who move here. Writing in today’s Washington Post, he notes that The government last week released its annual statistical report on poverty and household income. As usual, we — meaning [...]

The Washington Post: "We Don't Joke about Islam"

Berkeley Breathed writes the often funny and sometimes touching "Opus" comic strip featuring a bewildered penguin, an all-American chauvinist named Steve Dallas, and Lola Granola, whose search for enlightenment has led her recently to embrace the Prophet and don the Burqua. Click below to see Sunday’s strip. Like most comics, Opus pokes fun at the [...]