I'm not so sure about this. I agree that what you're saying about compression is objectively true, but I don't imagine I'd stop finding popular music trite and boring if it were mixed better. For what it's worth, I also sometimes find the converse true: Articles about compression always mention the mix of Red Hot Chili Pepper's Californication as an example of how this ruins music, but I actually like that mix. It makes the album sound like it's always coming from a blown out PA system at a party, which I think suits it pretty well.

The above research is interesting, but doesn't mean that pop music is getting worse as the author indicates. The change in tempo, lyric repetitiveness and focus, and simpler chord structures may just reflect changing tastes. I think any argument that complicated song structures are objectively better than simpler ones is going to sound pretty silly, especially for popular music. No one wants to shake their ass to odd time signatures.

The point that people across generational lines say that pop music from the 2010s is the worst is somewhat compelling, but I'd bet that people would say pop music from the current decade is the worst no matter what decade it was. What would be more interesting is to look at only the votes for worst decade other than the current one, as those people probably gave it some real thought instead of just remembering whatever atrocity was playing on the radio on their way to work that morning.

On one hand it's a somewhat reasonable choice. Once you're four node hops from someone in a social network the coverage explodes to include a significant percentage of the population. It's very unlikely that the connections at that depth are meaningful. On the other hand, this is still probably tens of thousands of people for each investigated person. If this is done for everyone on a terrorism watch list, it basically covers everyone. Keep in mind that by social network I don't necessarily mean something like facebook, but someone's actual social graph: who are they calling, emailing, etc.

That's all right. We just live fast and die young baby. The streets are littered with our overweight corpses.

You can live and work where you want, but it might not make much economic sense. Suburban areas require more energy expenditure for transportation: they offer few employment possibilities and are too spread out to efficiently import and distribute products made elsewhere. The suburban lifestyle demands cheap energy. The question then becomes, "do you believe that cheap energy is our future or was it more of a historical aberration?" To me, it looks more like the latter.

I have to admit that I was sort of impressed with myself when I wrote that. Feel free to use it if you like! I've always just wanted people to understand that the economy isn't the sort of system that can be manipulated in a predictable fashion. We're not particularly rational actors.

I'm basically just trying to move the browser window with a lot of tabs open so that I can see a bit of some other window (a terminal or checkbook, usually). What ends up happening is one of the following:

1. I forget to click on the active tab as I drag and it selects a new tab. Sometimes.
2. Once, and I'm not sure how I did this, but the tab detached from the window and became a new window.
3. Sometimes I click on a tab to activate it, but because my finger wobbles a bit on the track pad it thinks I want to drag the window and so nothing happens.
4. Other times it does what I want, but even then it doesn't feel right. I drag windows around the desktop by using the title bar drag space. When I click a control, I expect it to have some sort of effect on something. When the two are combined, I have no intuition about what it will do. Will it behave like a control, or a drag space?

I don't feel that the UI confusion is a good trade off for saving a couple pixels, and it adds no new capability that I care about. I hope title bar tabs go the way of the pull out drawer and the awkward gestures associated with it. Or at least that I can turn it off.

Agree. There's an ambiguity between "I'm clicking this to drag the window" vs. "I'm clicking this to change the active tab" that's really irritating. Even though it was the only change I didn't like, it was enough to get me to stop using it. Or it would've been if they hadn't preserved a way to get the old tab behavior back via the command line (someone mentions it in another response).

Absolutely. This is why economists get spooked when they hear the word deflation. Even now they can't bear to say it, and resort to euphemisms.

We understand the economy in almost exactly the same sense as we understand the weather.

That's probably the only thing anyone can do. Good luck, this year is going to be a brutal adjustment for a lot of people.

Not at all. In fact, to further refine it, I'd say "That's like saying your car broke down because the truck hauling it from the manufacturer to the dealership was actually a rocket propelling it into orbit which failed to separate properly from your car which is actually a satellite and then they crashed into the ocean near Antarctica."

Yes, if after playing the demo I realize the game sucks. Case closed?

I see your point, but consider that investors are almost the same people as savers. They've decided to put money aside for the future instead of spending it right now on whatever frivolous fad is presently sweeping the nation. The difference is a matter of risk tolerance. Even then, most people thought these types of investments were almost as safe as a savings account. So even if they didn't necessarily need a lot of people with savings accounts, the banks still need people who are of the mind to stick money aside for the future instead of spending it right away.

The term most frequently used for this situation is inelastic demand. Gasoline is the poster child for inelastic demand. Consumption only dropped from 9.29 million barrels a day in 2007 to an average of 8.99 million barrels a day in 2008. Perhaps data of finer resolution might show a more interesting drop off, but the high prices of earlier this year appear to have made little difference in the yearly data.

Honestly, I would have been in favor of letting the banks fail and then (at least temporarily) doing lending from the government so long as the lending requirements were stringent enough. I don't think that the financial industry is that important to the economy. The limited role they have, deciding which investments are worthy of funding, turns out to be something that they aren't particularly good at.

That wouldn't happen, though. It would have lost a lot of rich people too much money. They're already trying to justify a bailout of the Madoff investors. Rich people can't be allowed to lose money on investments the way us regular people do. Who would there be to trickle down on us?