Leituras Recomendadas

Joshua Keating, "Blaming Google Earth for Mumbai":

This isn't a new issue. The al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade also apparently used Google Earth to plan rocket attacks on Israel. But holding Google responsible for terrorists using its product makes about as much sense as blaming the Wright brothers for 9/11.

Just as the fact that terrorists take advantage of the laxer security regimes in democratic societies isn't a reason to unduly curb civil liberties, it would be a mistake to curtail the development of useful technologies because the bad guys have figured out how to use them too.

Miguel Botelho Moniz, Diferenças Salariais:

Numa análise que ignore aspectos eventualmente menos transparentes na atribuição destes vencimentos, a conclusão provável é que existirá maior competição entre pessoas qualificadas pelo cargo de chairman da Reserva Federal do que pelo cargo de governador do Banco de Portugal. A questão que se levanta é outra: Face ao desempenho algo insatisfatório (to say the least) do actual governador, especialmente em função das suas reduzidas responsabilidades, será aceitável tal diferença?

Adam, "Two buck Barack":

So the New York Times is breathless that "Obama Hauls in Record $750 Million for Campaign." A lot of people are astounded at the scale of the money, and I am too. In a long, hard campaign, he raised roughly $2.50 per American, and spent slightly less than that.

Unusually, he ended his campaign not in debt, but with a small surplus. Everyone and their brother is now grubbing after that, according to the Times article. If we had a campaign finance system with transparency and accountability for donations, we would likely see spending levels like this more often, and we might well see a broader range of interesting candidate emerge and get voters engaged again.

The reality is while $750 million is a lot of money, it's also a surprisingly small amount of money. For comparison, the 2008 Federal budget was 2.9 trillion dollars, or roughly 3900 times larger than the budget Obama just oversaw. It's also only 1/20th of the amount we're spending to keep Rick Wagoner in a job.