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.

Eric Rodenbeck is Stamen's founder and creative director. He is a 14-year veteran of the interactive design field, and has spent this time working to extend the boundaries of online media and live information visualization.

Eric led the interactive storytelling and data-driven narrative effort at Quokka Sports, illustrated and designed at Wired and Wired Books, and was a co-founder of the design collective Umwow. He has lectured and spoken at Yale University, the University of Southern California, numerous O'Reilly technology conferences, Esther Dyson's PC Forum, and South by Southwest, among others. Eric studied architecture at Cooper Union in New York City and received a B.A. in the History and Philosophy of Technology from The New School for Social Research. He sits on the Board of Directors of the Kenneth Rainin Foundation.

Resources:

• Stamen Design

Act Two. My Way or the FBI Way.

Brandon Darby was a radical activist and one of the founders of the incredibly effective relief organization Common Ground. Michael May reports on how Darby changed from a revolutionary who wanted the overthrow of the U.S. government into an informant working with the FBI against his former radical allies. (17 minutes)

Reflections: NO NAME, NO NUMBER: The New Yorker "Tells about the torture he experienced and how he survived by behaving passively; tells about his thoughts, including consideration of suicide. He was held in three cladestine sites and two legal prisons. The Jewish question dominated every interrogation during his imprisonment. There was a desire on the part of his captors to eradicate Jews wholesale. Tells about groups other than Jews who were persecuted. Most of those killed were no Jews. There are 400,000 Jews in Argentina and writer deplores their inaction in the face of rising Nazism. Gives complex circumstances of his release: he lost his citizenship and property and was sent to Israel in 1979 after thirty months of imprisonment."

"Governor John Baldacci hopes, however, that under the incoming Obama administration, Maine could get federal Medicaid dollars to match Dirigo premiums paid by employers and individuals, which would help sustain and expand the program. This federal match was originally intended for the program but was rejected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service (CMS) and is now under appeal."

"Does Staying in School Make You Smarter?" with Sanders Korenman in Intelligence, Genes and Success: Scientists Respond to the Bell Curve, Devlin et al., eds., Springer-Verlag, 1997. "Policy Entrepreneurs and the Academic Establishment: The Bell Curve Controversy," with Martin Rein, in Intelligence, Political Inequality and Public Policy, Elliot White ed., Praeger, 1997.

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."

via http://blog.spn.org/id.3508/detail.asp via http://blog.spn.org/id.3505/detail.asp