joshuago’s Bookmarks

Given the realities of America's debt situation and the trajectory of spending, a value-added tax (VAT) seems more and more likely as the only solution. Income taxes won't cover the shortfall.

This large collection of recently released icon sets is supposed to help designers improve their designs on their web-sites and in web-applications. All icon sets are free. 

Paradoxically, the situation may be better at second-tier schools and, in particular, again, at liberal arts colleges than at the most prestigious universities. Some students end up at second-tier schools because they’re exactly like students at Harvard or Yale, only less gifted or driven.

Justice Louis D. Brandeis’s metaphor of the states as "laboratories" for policy experiments is perhaps the most familiar and clichéd image of federalism. Contrary to common belief, however, Brandeis’s famous dictum had almost nothing to do with federalism and everything to do with his commitment to scientific socialism. That substantive view proved even more influential, in political thought and constitutional jurisprudence, than the metaphor that flowed from it. To this day, it continues to inhibit a truly experimental, federalist politics.

The three sexy skills of data geeks are statistics (which requires study), data munging (which demands suffering), and visualization (which favors those with a knack for storytelling).

Marc Andreessen argues that market is the most important factor to a startup's success.

In 1946 Observer editor David Astor lent George Orwell a remote Scottish farmhouse in which to write his new book, Nineteen Eighty-Four. It became one of the most significant novels of the 20th century. The compelling story of Orwell's torturous stay on the island where the author, close to death and beset by creative demons, was engaged in a feverish race to finish the book.

Twitter, texting, Facebook, Crackberrys, and 24/7 instant news. All these technologies enhance an already bad inclination humans (and especially Americans) have: an overweening desire to be distracted from being alone in silence, or having to come to terms with whatever we might find there, if we slowed down enough to let it catch us.