The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School is a leader in the study of the law and policy around the Internet and other emerging technologies.
By Colin Rule on July 28, 2008 at 10:33 pm
A trademark Brooks turnaround in today's column: "...big gaps in educational attainment are present at age 5. Some children are bathed in an atmosphere that promotes human capital development and, increasingly, more are not. By 5, it is possible to predict, with depressing accuracy, who will complete high school and college and who won’t.
By Colin Rule on July 27, 2008 at 3:36 pm
David Brooks in Friday's Times: "Obama’s tone was serious. But he pulled out his “this is our moment” rhetoric and offered visions of a world transformed. Obama speeches almost always have the same narrative arc. Some problem threatens. The odds are against the forces of righteousness. But then people of good faith unite and walls come tumbling down. Obama used the word “walls” 16 times in the Berlin speech, and in 11 of those cases, he was talking about walls coming down...
By Colin Rule on July 22, 2008 at 9:39 am
Jeff Goldfien in the ADRNC Newsletter: "I was struck by a statement by Senator Obama, reported in the press yesterday, responding to an accusation by conservative Christian leader James Dobson that Obama was distorting the message of the both the bible and the constitution in his discussions and entreaties to various religious groups and leaders... Read more about a universal language
By Colin Rule on July 21, 2008 at 4:18 pm
From Elizabeth Gudrais' cover story in Harvard Magazine (hat tip to Minh): "The United States is becoming even more unequal as income becomes more concentrated among the most affluent Americans. Income inequality has been rising since the late 1970s, and now rests at a level not seen since the Gilded Age—roughly 1870 to 1900, a period in U.S. history defined by the contrast between the excesses of the super-rich and the squalor of the poor.
By Colin Rule on July 17, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Roy Baumeister in Psychology Today: "Economists think that if people were true to financial logic, they would act more like monkeys..."
By Colin Rule on July 15, 2008 at 9:42 am
David Brooks in today's New York Times: "Studies designed to link specific genes to behavior have failed to find anything larger than very small associations. It’s now clear that one gene almost never leads to one trait. Instead, a specific trait may be the result of the interplay of hundreds of different genes interacting with an infinitude of environmental factors.
By Colin Rule on July 4, 2008 at 1:34 pm
David Frum in the NYT Book Review: "You do not need to be a partisan of a political movement to write its history. But you do need enough imaginative sympathy to comprehend how it won adherents and supporters. Yet increasingly it seems that the history of conservatism is attracting liberals who lack that sympathy — for whom the whole thing was a giant con, a tissue of rationalizations for ugly bigotries. Read more about Self-flattery
By Colin Rule on July 3, 2008 at 8:48 am
My friend Sanjana sent me an interesting blog post from the NYT today on privacy. Brad Stone: "We all cherish our privacy. Then we go and divulge everything about ourselves on Facebook, sprinkle our Social Security number like pixie dust across the Web and happily load up on tracking devices like GPS navigators and cellphones.
By Colin Rule on July 1, 2008 at 10:03 am
Peter Adler, head of the Keystone Center and a giant in the field of dispute resolution, recently published a great "credo for facilitators" that he first came up with some years ago. I really like his set of seven beliefs at the end of the credo:
"1. A GOOD FAITH CONTRACT.
By Colin Rule on July 1, 2008 at 9:55 am
Last week my friend Ken Banks (of kiwanja.net) launched the latest version of FrontlineSMS, a text messaging platform geared at servicing the needs of the grassroots NGO community.
There are a number of improvements on the first version, released way back in 2005:
By Colin Rule on June 9, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Paul Krugman in the June 6 NYT: "...The predictions of ’90s technology gurus are coming true more slowly than enthusiasts expected — but the future they envisioned is still on the march.
By Colin Rule on May 13, 2008 at 9:26 am
David Hoffman in the 5/12 Christian Science Monitor: "When Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer met with Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang earlier this month, what kept them from making a deal? With Microsoft offering $33 per share for Yahoo's stock, and Yahoo willing to take $37, was there truly an unbridgeable gulf? The $4 gap seems trivial in comparison to the potential value of the deal. So did Microsoft and Yahoo walk away from a deal that would have made both sides better off? Read more about Microsoft and Yahoo: Where Were the Mediators?
By Colin Rule on May 9, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Allrise.com: a community justice site... a couple people (Sanjana was first, John Muller was second) sent me this link after Michael Arrington profiled it on his website.
Very interesting, and not unlike People's Court Raw or the eBay Community Court we announced last fall. Seems like this model is getting a good bit of play these days.
By Colin Rule on May 9, 2008 at 2:55 pm
As the many thousands of loyal readers of this blog know, I eat far better than I deserve to, totally as a result of my betrothal to my beloved, the food writer Cheryl Sternman Rule.
By Colin Rule on April 29, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Jeff Bercovici on Conde Nast's Portfolio.com: "Over the weekend, I stumbled across what appears to be a stealth-marketing campaign for a new website, People's Court Raw. The YouTube-style site, which is registered to Warner Bros. Entertainment, allows users to post pairs of videos articulating both sides of an argument, and then invites others to vote on the verdict.
