His desire to hear out junior people is a warm personality trait as much as a cool tactic, of a piece with his desire to play golf with White House cooks rather than with C.E.O.’s and basketball with people who treat him as just another player on the court; to stay home and read a book rather than go to a Washington cocktail party; and to seek out, in any crowd, not the beautiful people but the old people. The... Read more

Om Malik argues that Bezos is the inheritor to Steve Jobs’s crown. I agree. Not because Bezos has copied anything Jobs did, but because he has not. What he’s done that is Jobs-like is doggedly pursue, year after year, iteration after iteration, a vision unlike that of any other company — all in the name of making customers happy. Daring Fireball: Amazon’s Play Read more

Though, I admit, perhaps a bit insensitive of me to post today. Nonetheless. me, just now, looking at google calendar: Patriot Day? What is… Oh my God, those bastards attacked us on PATRIOT DAY. — Alison Forns (@alisonforns) September 11, 2012 Read more

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXr1kmuqGcU parislemon: Apple has been known to poke fun at itself by showing a comical video before an event. Something tells me they won’t be showing this one though. Wow. Just. Wow. (via @StevieWLevin) (Source: http://www.youtube.com/) Read more

I’ll say that again: Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman in Congress, and George Wallace, the most notorious segregationist politician of the 20th century, worked together to raise wages for domestic servants, probably the most abused and unregulated sector of the workforce. (Chisholm’s immigrant mother, in fact, had been a domestic worker, while her father toiled in a factory that made burlap bags.) Was that an unrepeatable one-off event based on a bizarre personal connection, or an example of a... Read more

I am the organizer for the world’s largest annual convention of elevator manufacturers. Although our attendance rates have their regular ups and downs, Rebecca Watson has been the number one reason that our attendance rates have dropped significantly. She keeps putting down elevators and it’s starting to push all my buttons. What used to be one of the fastest rising attendance rates in the industry has slowed to a halt. It’s like we’re starting out at the ground level. Our... Read more

TO JUDGE solely by its high number of blasphemy cases, Pakistan seems to be a nation of wanton profanity where the Koran is routinely desecrated and the prophet Muhammad insulted. Yet given that the crime of blasphemy is punishable by death, that 97% of Pakistanis are Muslim, and that the remainder are an intimidated and largely impoverished sliver, then the country’s many blasphemy cases more obviously represent an abuse of both religion and the law. The blasphemy law in Pakistan:... Read more

Last year, there were more than two dozen Android tablets launched into the marketplace, and nobody bought ‘em. Why? Because they’re gadgets, and people don’t want gadgets anymore. They want services that improve over time. They want services that improve every day, every week, and every month. Jeff Bezos Like Jobs, he gets that it’s not just about the specs of a toy, it’s about an experience. Apple focuses on the hardware experience, Bezos/Amazon is claiming the service experience. But... Read more