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Daily Bafflements
June 10, 2015
• This week’s DARPA Robotics Challenge had us wondering: Why, when have we set the bar so low for them, are robots still so astoundingly inadequate? Case in point, provided by the BBC: One robot, “nicknamed Running Man, was so confident on its second day finish that when ...

Shutting Up
June 09, 2015
This weekend, I used up one of my ten free monthly views of The New York Times to find film critic A.O. Scott declaring a national “humor crisis.” No, he wasn’t referring to any of his colleague Maureen Dowd’s perennial struggles with political humor; rather, he ...

Daily Bafflements
June 09, 2015
• Yesterday, Kansas City Business Journal released its Venture Capital issue, replete with a self-flagellating roundtable about why VCs aren’t investing there. One possibility they didn’t consider: Have the VCs been away betting on Innovation Economy winning the Belmont ...

Daily Bafflements
June 08, 2015
• A new currency minted by Russian farmer Mikhail Shlyapnikov has been declared “a threat” to the rouble by the Russian Central Bank. Five “kolion” will buy you a bucket of potatoes in Shlyapnikov’s village of Kolionovo. Shlyapnikov pointed out that his notes ...

Not Quite the People’s Court
June 05, 2015
With apologies to Marx, it seems that America has reversed one of his better-known aphorisms. Instead of history repeating itself, first as tragedy and then as farce, our spectacle-addled postmodern republic experiences it first as reality television, and then as politics. That, ...

Daily Bafflements
June 05, 2015
• The American Press Institute has recently released two reports on innovation in media and news organizations. PBS MediaShift takes a look at the measures being taken to get sometimes “fearful” newsroom staff on board for the all-important quest toward innovation. ...

The Kurds Are Alright
June 04, 2015
The Islamic State is a movement; therefore, it proselytizes. Plenty has been written about IS recruiting young people from the West. Much of the coverage has the timbre of “the kids aren’t alright” exposés on the secret sex lives of teens. There’s an almost ...

Daily Bafflements
June 04, 2015
• Pittsburgh has been ranked lowest in startup activity among the country’s major metro areas, frightening the city’s entrepreneurial set. Denizens of the startup ecosystem can’t be stopped from wringing their hands—despite the fact that the city’s ...

The Internet Doesn’t Exist
June 03, 2015
The Internet has been very busy. In just the last week, Caitlyn Jenner broke the Internet, but she also united it. The FCC made war on the Internet. The Internet shamed a couple. The Internet had a dark side, Nikki Finke was barred from the Internet, the Supreme Court made the ...

Daily Bafflements
June 03, 2015
• Today in Billionaire Branding: the one-of-a-kind “Billionaire watch” that makes a luxury lifestyle “tangible.” Mind you, the B-watch is only about feeling like a billionaire—you don’t have to be reining in the runaway 0s like a husky sled musher to get a taste of ...

Daily Bafflements
June 02, 2015
• Over at The New Republic, Esther Breger chronicles “Television’s Long History of Humiliating Poor People.” She traces this illustrious tradition back from today’s “The Briefcase” and “Britain’s Hardest Grafter,” to 1945’s “Queen for a Day,” in ...

Homo Economicus Slouches Toward Retirement
June 01, 2015
In Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner?  Swedish writer Katrine Marçal casts a suspicious eye on the “story about the meaning of human existence” told by free-market economists and on that story’s hero, the self-interested rational actor: Economic ...