Archive for The Wall Street Journal
what we’re reading
The Smithsonian explores the march towards absolute zero – while NOVA asks if an absolute maximum temperature exists. / The Wall Street Journal on expecting families who are giving their first baby (read: dog) sensitivity training. / Theyrule offers an interactive guide to the networks that connect the directors of the world’s largest corporations.
what we’re reading
The Wall Street Journal on how elementary school fundraisers have perverted our childhood. / With less than a third of teenagers with real jobs this summer, a profile of teenagers who are making as much as $2,000 per month as virtual contractors and designers on Second Life for their summer job. / GameDaily speculates that PS3 and Xbox 360 price cuts are near – with perhaps a Blu-ray enabled 360 even closer. / Inside Higher Ed on the future of foreign language education in the United States.
what we’re reading
In one of my favorite episodes of The Office (which returns April 10th), Michael, played by Steve Carell, blindly follows his GPS system into Lake Scranton. Jennifer Saranow reports in The Wall Street Journal that he is not alone: the dramatic fall in price of navigation systems (halved to $225 last Christmas) means that some 49 million devices – in cars or mobiles – are now in use. The “all-knowing boxes” have sent their users into oncoming traffic, and random houses mistaken as restaurants or government buildings. TeleAtlas has some 5.5 million streets in its U.S. database – to which it makes some 3 million changes per month; apparently, not enough to keep some drivers from naming their boxes after Stephen King’s “Christine.”
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Slate has an excellent Explainer column on “What are mortgage backed securities, anyway?” offers insight on the financial instruments at the heart of the financial maelstrom that is still, in David Leonhardt’s piece in The New York Times, beyond our grasp.
Shaj Mathew
kahutzler
