He can write: The biggest task will be to reduce middle-class entitlement spending.

And then non-ironically conclude: Somehow government has to cut total spending while directing more money to address the trends that threaten to hollow out the middle class.

What?!?

And then there's the amazing research conclusion that he cites: Alberto Alesina ( Read more... )

How's this for a scenario of world econo-politics for the next few years ( Read more... )

Preface: I am a skilled worker bee. I don't know how to, nor do I have the confidence to run a business. I don't understand how product decisions get made because I am out of the loop. Consumers just don't communicate with each other, and it is our loss ( Read more... )

Tonight, while driving back from a dinner party with capital_l's co-workers (where we watch the Celts beat the Lakers in game 2), I decided it was time to take advantage of the slight hills in Newton and perform an experiment. Instead of simply dropping the Saturn into neutral at the top of Langley Rd and coast the half-mile home (which I occasionally do ( Read more... )

On my way to a birthday party tonight I got the idea to create a Twitter stream for your grumpy, but forward-thinking, conscience. That part of your brain that would turn you into a world leader if you only would have listened to it telling you to study computational finance in college (in 1994). This is not for everybody, maybe even for nobody, ( Read more... )

Well, I got my first vacation-like weekend since New Year's at Art Weekend 2010. I feel like every other weekend this year I'd spent working madly (working at work, art, or partying, so I can't totally complain), while concurrently worrying about all the things I needed to get done. This weekend I was actually able to forget all of those and just ( Read more... )

Today I think I squashed the last memory leak in my big multi-code fluid simulation projects.* It is running now, and I hope it will still be running when I wake up tomorrow.

With that (potential) success, I left at 7pm to go to a talk by Wolf Lieser, creator of the Digital Art Museum, a three-letter big-3 TLD on account of its being started over ( Read more... )

My birthday weekend started out great when I stopped working at 5pm on Friday (an uncommon thing recently) and headed downtown to meet capital_l, redmed2000, and fdmts at Masa in the South End for South American cuisine. I had Mezcal for the first time---it's like a very smoky white tequila. I might get some tonight at my local wine store's Saturday tasting. The food was ( Read more... )

There's too much stuff going on. The 6-month contract is overdue and lengthening to 7 months because I can't get the damn simulations to run for very long. The public art project(s) are progressing, but I am afraid of not getting everything done on time. I have gallery representation in the high-end hospitality market. Work owes me about 3 ( Read more... )

'Psychopaths have what it takes to defraud and bilk others: They are fast-talking, charming, self-assured, at ease in social situations, cool under pressure, unfazed by the possibility of being found out, and totally ruthless. ... Psychopaths are generally well satisfied with themselves and with their inner landscape, bleak as it may seem to ( Read more... )