“I don’t want to get too far ahead of the process,” he explained to the Wall Street Journal’s Laura Meckler, adding that Obama “will be contributing to that process, not driving it or directing it.”
“Why?” inquired Politico’s Glenn Thrush. “He’s the leader of the free world. Why isn’t he leading this process?”
Apple has accumulated a $76 billion cash hoard. Now, investors are starting to ask just what the consumer-electronics company intends to do with its money pile.
The summary paragraph for an article in the WSJ about Apple’s cash hoard.
I just find this interesting because of the reference to Apple as a “consumer-electronics company.” Most people, including those in the media, still think of them as a computer company, but the Wall Street Journal got it right.
President Obama, responsibly acceding to the reality of divided government, is now the leading champion of fiscal austerity, and his proposals contain very little in the way of job creation. More important, he no longer uses his office’s most powerful tool, rhetorical suasion, to keep the country focussed on the continued need for government activism. His opponents’ approach to job creation is that of a cargo cult—just keep repeating “tax cuts”—even though the economic evidence of the past three decades refutes such magical thinking. What does either side have to offer the tens of millions of Americans who have settled into a semi-permanent state of economic depression? Virtually nothing. But if responsibility were fused with conviction—if politics were a vocation in Washington today—the Hartzells would be represented at the negotiating table.
George Packer, writing for The New Yorker
Typography to me is about design. It’s about words and the conveyance of meaning. It’s about setting words that people read. A certain amount of it is creative, a certain amount is expression and aesthetics, but mostly, it’s about people reading stuff. Do them a favour and don’t make it difficult.
I’m learning about typography tonight.
I think one of the reasons “Pixel Perfection” is becoming a meme these days is that people want to emulate Apple, and attention to detail is one of the qualities people most associate with Apple. Having worked as part of the organization responsible for the massive undertaking of shipping OS X, however, I have a slightly different take on what makes Apple great. Certainly attention to detail is an important reason for Apple’s success. But I think another essential component of what makes Apple successful is that it is extremely disciplined and incredibly good at continuously identifying the appropriate level of imperfection in projects and products over time. That doesn’t sound terribly profound, but based on my experiences outside of Apple and my observations of the tech industry at large, perfection is a lot easier than you think. Imperfection is the hard part.
He who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes.
Good advice for President Obama.
I don’t know of a single other way to take a document I am working on with my iPad and jump to my Mac having the document up-to-date and the cursor in the same position without pressing an extra button — to me, that is magic. It’s magic because logically that is how everything should have always worked, but in reality it is how nothing works.
Did we torture our way into bin Laden’s lair? The answer seems to be no. It was the assiduous cultivation of a single source that did the job. The defence of illegal methods of interrogation falls apart as soon as it is offered. Dick Cheney wrote in so many words that 9/11 found the United States bereft of any real intelligence on the not-so-new foe. Thus, torture is a prima-facie admission of failure, coupled with an attempt to make up the deficit by strong-arm tactics. Other strong objections to one side, this approach would lead very fast – did lead very fast – to a banana-republic intelligence system. Diminishing returns kick in with terrible speed. Hard work and high morale put an end to the life of Pakistan’s most famous legal immigrant.
With the paranoid anti-war “left,” you never quite know where the emphasis is going to fall next. At the Telluride Film Festival in 2002, I found myself debating Michael Moore, who, a whole year after the attacks, maintained that Bin Laden was “innocent until proved guilty” (and hadn’t been proven guilty). Except that he had, at least according to Moore one day after the attacks, when he wrote that: “WE created the monster known as Osama bin Laden! Where did he go to terrorist school? At the CIA!”
To some, it has seemed that Obama’s determination to avoid the vulgar and the cheap is a form of superiority, a bearing designed to make everyone else seem vulgar and cheap. But his seriousness is a welcome antidote to a political culture infected with self-congratulation, delusion, and paranoia.