TechDirt:

We’ve written a few times now about Rep. Darrell Issa, and the Madison platform his office has set up to allow for crowdsourcing opinion on legislation and other government documents. He originally used it for his OPEN Act, but then later posted the text of ACTA as well. His latest move is to post the leaked text of the US’s negotiating position on TPP. This is the same text that leaked out last year. It would be nice if the USTR did something like this itself with the latest text, but that’s not how USTR Ron Kirk works. To him “transparency” is only sharing the text with big industry special interests, and declaring it a matter of “national security” if anyone else wants to see it.

Andrew Hill:

Clayton Christensen achieves the difficult feat for a tall, broad man of being at once imposing and humble. When I visited him last autumn at Harvard Business School, he laid out with quiet authority his latest thoughts on disruptive technology, the concept that justly made him famous in the mid-1990s. But he also took time to chat about his son’s college basketball team, a poster of which hangs on one wall of an office full of family photos and memorabilia.


While he places great value on his family and faith – he is a devout Mormon – his research and teaching have dominated his public story. Until now, outside the Acknowledgements section, he has never tried to put his personal and professional lives in the same book.

Roger Ebert:

I am faced once again with the task of voting in Sight & Sound magazine’s famous poll to determine the greatest films of all time. Apart from my annual year’s best lists, this is the only list I vote in. It is a challenge. After voting in 1972, 1982 and 1992, I came up with these ten titles in 2002:

Aguirre, Wrath of God (Herzog) Apocalypse Now (Coppola) Citizen Kane (Welles) Dekalog (Kieslowski) La Dolce Vita (Fellini) The General (Keaton) Raging Bull (Scorsese) 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick) Tokyo Story (Ozu) Vertigo (Hitchcock)

To add a title, I must remove one. Which film can I do without? Not a single one. One of my shifts last time was to replace Hitchcock’s “Notorious” with “Vertigo,” because after going through both a shot at a time during various campus sessions, I decided that “Vertigo” was, after all, the better of two nearly perfect films.

The Economist:

THE idea that an infusion of hope can make a big difference to the lives of wretchedly poor people sounds like something dreamed up by a well-meaning activist or a tub-thumping politician. Yet this was the central thrust of a lecture at Harvard University on May 3rd by Esther Duflo, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology known for her data-driven analysis of poverty. Ms Duflo argued that the effects of some anti-poverty programmes go beyond the direct impact of the resources they provide. These programmes also make it possible for the very poor to hope for more than mere survival.

Jonathan Moreno:

Much controversy has surrounded the use of remote-controlled drone aircraft or “unmanned aerial vehicles” in the war on terror. But another, still more awe-inducing possibility has emerged: taking human beings out of the decision loop altogether. Emerging brain science could take us there.

Today drone pilots operate thousands of miles away from the battlefield. They must manage vast amounts of data and video images during exceptionally intense workdays. They are scrutinized by superiors for signs of stress, and to reduce such stress the Air Force is attempting shift changes, less physical isolation on the job, and more opportunities for rest.

Milton Glaser:

YOU Can OnLY WOrK FOr PeOPLe ThaT YOU LiKe. This is a curious rule and it took me a long time to learn because in fact at the beginning of my practice i felt the opposite. Professionalism required that you didn’t particularly like the people that you worked for or at least maintained an arms length relationship to them, which meant that i never had lunch with a client or saw them socially. Then some years ago i realized that the opposite was true. i discovered that all the work I had done that was meaningful and significant came out of an affectionate relationship with a client. and i am not talking about professionalism; i am talking about affection. i am talking about a client and you sharing some common ground. That in fact your view of life is someway congruent with the client, otherwise it is a bitter and hopeless struggle.

Robert Channick:

A Chicago “L” station is about the last place you would think of to pick up a carton of milk.



But online grocer Peapod has turned a busy CTA station at State and Lake streets into a virtual supermarket aisle, enabling commuters to use their smartphones to scan and buy any of 70 items.



Appearing overnight on once-barren walls, 7-foot-tall virtual shelves line both sides of a 60-foot tunnel, filled with everything from paper towels and diapers to fresh produce. Android and iPhone users can download a free Peapod mobile app to load up their electronic grocery carts for delivery the next day.



Chicago, Peapod’s largest market, is the second U.S. city to roll out the interactive supermarket shelves, which first appeared last month at Philadelphia train stations. Other Chicago locations might be added, as well as locations in other cities, depending on what happens during a 12-week run at the station, which averages 17,640 commuters each weekday.