I’ve been worried for a while what happens to identity data when firms downsize or go out of business. But it didn’t occur to me that Clear would actually be one of them—even though the identity provider’s business model was suspect from the beginning, Clear seemed to governmental to fail. But it did!
Would love to [...]

In an earlier post, I highly recommended Robert A. Burton’s book, On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not. But the book is important enough that I always meant to write a follow-on post. This is that post.
The book’s main assertion is that biology, not self-will, determines a person’s certainty and beliefs. [...]

The cover of this month’s issue of the Harvard Business Review (HBR) calls for sweeping changes in how to handle trust in business, government, and organizations. And to contribute to the discussion, HBR provides more than 20 pages of material covering important aspects of trust. I was so excited to see this, I actually paid [...]

Free markets and free political systems have grown intertwined, but they remain very distinct ideologies. To call what happens on the trading floor “free” in the same way we refer to human liberty is an egregious overloading of the word “free.” As we consider how to reinvent free-market systems, it’s critical to distinguish between free [...]

I was strolling through a bookstore recently and picked up two books that are quite different but equally significant.
The first is “F.I.A.S.C.O. Blood in the Water on Wall Street” by Frank Partnoy. For me, this book filled in all the gaps in coverage of the financial crisis. If you want to understand the financial crisis [...]

It turns out there’s something scarier to hear than “We’re from the government, and we’re here to help.” Obama announced yesterday a surgical bankruptcy for GM. I assume surgical bankruptcies will be completed will the precision of surgical air strikes? Heaven help the auto industry!

Watching this AIG bonus mess reminds me the movie “Groundhog Day”—partly because I keep reliving the same headlines over and over again—but mostly for that memorable line that Larry (the camera man) delivers to Rita (the producer) about Phil, the weatherman:
Did he actually refer to himself as “the talent”?
Admittedly, it takes a rare kind of [...]

I happened to be listening to a segment from On The Media yesterday titled “The Net’s Mid-Life Crisis.” Having been accused of having similar crises, I was intrigued. It was entertaining to hear Richard Clarke talk about the ways in which Russia and China had infiltrated US Government networks. For example, he said:
Well, that’s exactly [...]

I remember as a teenager picking up a rather challenging book I discovered in a box of my dad’s university materials: Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm. The book’s ambitious attempt to analyze the psychology of an entire nation (namely, wartime Germany) made me wonder whether every nation couldn’t use a little time on the [...]

I came across this article today, and it seems to fit the theme of this blog perfectly. Here’s a teaser from the last paragraph:
“Maybe storytelling - from TV to folk tales - actually serves some specific evolutionary function,” says Gottschall. “They’re not just by-products of evolutionary adaptation.”