http://foratv.vo.llnwd.net/o33/rss/Long_Now_Podcasts/podcast-2009-05-18-romer.mp3

Romer notes that business keeps evolving as new companies introduce new rule sets. The good ideas are copied, and workers migrate from failing companies to the new and old ones where the new rules are working well. The same goes for countries. Starting about 1970, China took some of the effective rules of Hong Kong (which was managed from afar by England) and set up four special economic zones along the coast operating as imitation Hong Kongs. They worked so well that China rolled out the scheme for the whole country, and its Gross Domestic Product took off. “Hong Kong was the most successful economic development program in history.

1. created mathematical models of data coming from mobile devices and an algorithm that analyzed this data from his sample of 100 students and could predict what each would do next. ..he has been working with much larger mobile data sets from up to 250 million people in Europe, Asia, and Africa to help telecom companies ..understand their customers and .. create a model of contagion dissemination. 2. past two years in Kenya. The majority of the mobile phone user market lives in developing countries and is under-served, a condition which motivated MIT to start EPROM, Entrepreneurial Programming and Research on Mobiles, to make sure computer science students in Africa learn how to program mobile phones. ..describes 2 .. projects... – one in which mobile text messaging has been used for hospital blood supply management across the country and a second in which an SMS bulletin board was created allowing low-end mobile handsets to access web content similar to craigslist."

What are George W. Bush's supporters are most passionate about? - a 1 minute mp3 from his 1st inauguration http://tinyurl.com/gwb1st "We must show courage in a time of blessing by confronting problems instead of passing them on to future generations. Together, we will reclaim America's schools, before ignorance and apathy claim more young lives. We will reform Social Security and Medicare, sparing our children from struggles we have the power to prevent. And we'll reduce taxes, to recover the momentum of our economy and reward the effort and enterprise of working Americans. We will build our defenses beyond challenge, lest weakness invite challenge. We will confront weapons of mass destruction, so that a new century is spared new horrors."

"One characteristic of the language is that "Communication inputs and outputs are in an I-O language whose sentences are meaningful speech acts identified in the language as questions, answers, offers, acceptances, declinations, requests, permissions and promises." The language also keeps track of what has happened previously, like in the saying that "an elephant never forgets." This means that the question "Does this person have an airline reservation?" can be answered based on if the person a) made a reservation and b) has not cancelled it."

Jon Udell's questions are (so far, I haven't finished) more interesting than Mark Baker's musings/answer. "Mark Baker has always worked with distributed systems, starting with DCE and CORBA. When he learned about the Web's REST architectural style, he embraced it as a better way. When the Web Services movement veered away from key RESTful principles -- a uniform interface, hyperlinked representations -- he campaigned vigorously for them. Now, he tells host Jon Udell, REST has won the web, although not yet the enterprise. "

"the key to the predominance of the United States and England has been the individualistic ideology of the prevailing Anglo-American religion. Mead explains how this helped create a culture uniquely adapted to capitalism, a system that brought both English-speaking powers to a pinnacle of global power and prestige. Where some see an end to history and others a clash of civilizations, Mead sees the current conflicts in the Middle East as the latest challenge to the liberal, capitalist, and democratic world system that the Anglo-Americans are trying to build. What we need now, he says, is a diplomacy of civilizations based on a deeper understanding of the recurring conflicts between the liberal world system and its foes."

"24 hours non-stop through the Internet the music formerly known as: Hippie music, Underground, 60's punk, Flower Power, Mod, Free-Form-Freak-out, Garage music, Psychedelia or Teen Beat, the weirdest, the worst, the most powerful and nastiest ever recorded."