RIM had a complete internal panic when Apple unveiled the iPhone in 2007, a former employee revealed this weekend. The BlackBerry maker is now known to have held multiple all-hands meetings on January 10 that year, a day after the iPhone was on stage, and to have made outlandish claims about its features. Apple was effectively accused of lying as it was supposedly impossible that a device could have such a large touchscreen but still get a usable lifespan away from a power outlet.
Give an unemployed person a dollar, and she tends to spend it, because she needs to. (By definition, she has no other source of income.) Give a rich person a dollar via a tax break, she tends to save it. (By definition, she has a lot of other assets.) Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s, has found that $1 in unemployment benefits generates $1.61 in economic activity. (That’s the second most-stimulative form of government spending, behind food stamps.) A dollar in tax cuts—not just to the rich, but to everyone—generates about 32 cents.
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It turns out that giving unemployed people a little money is the best way to help get the economy back on track. This is, of course, the exact opposite of what the Republican obstructionists are preaching — that rich people go out and hire when they get the tax cuts they paid for this past election. I’ve never understood that line of tortured logic. Companies hire when they have a job that needs filled, like when people are out spending on goods and services, not because the people on their corporate boards get a tax break. The fact that Republicans get away with this lie is absurd. (via jimray) |
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The Today Programme interview with WW1 veteran Harry Patch that inspired Radiohead’s song. Incredible.
My friend Sal showed me this video of Fort Worth City Councilman Joel Burns using his announcement time at a public meeting this week to unexpectedly tell his own “It Gets Better” story.
About four minutes in he begins to talk about being tormented as a kid for being gay. About six minutes in nearly kills me.
It’s long but that’s the point. It’s a recollection of all the good times - his marriage and career and reconciliation with family - that would not have happened if he hadn’t found a way to get through those early brutal years.
I would take the 13 year old Joel to election night in 2007 in a room filled with countless family and friends, erupting in cheers when it became clear I would win my first election. So that he could see the love and support for me that was in the room that night.
I would take the 13 year old me to just a few days ago to the hospital to see our dad, who is no longer the 40 year old tough cowboy that he was when I was 13, who I thought would never understand me. He is now a 67 year old dad, still a pretty tough cowboy. But the 13 year old me would see me today, holding my dad’s weathered hand. And he’d see my dad wake up from his operation and squeeze my hand and say, “Joel, I’m so glad you’re here today.” And hear me say back to my dad, “I am too.”
Things will get easier.
Please stick around.
Maybe most of all, I appreciate that he doesn’t let anyone off the hook with a simple punch in the arm and a “hang in their kid”. This isn’t just about sustaining or comforting gay teens - it’s about changing the standards we have for ourselves as a community and how far we’re willing to stick our neck out to say EVERY single kid on earth deserves to be treated with respect. Period, god dammit.
Joel includes a call for adults to stop tolerating this kind of abuse - the kind of harassment and ostracizing we sure as hell wouldn’t put up with if it was aimed at kids with disabilities or Somali kids.
In a series of great messages, this video is the most sincere, courageous, hopeful one I’ve heard. Out of Texas, of all places.
That took some kind of guts, sir. Kudos to you.
