[there are three] atomic bombs that could blow up in Google’s face. They’re not as sensitive to those three atomic bombs as they should be.
—Ken Auletta, on how rumbling questions regarding privacy, size and copyright are the three issues facing Google. Copyright, for example, is characterized by an “instinctual attitude that Google brought to the question of copyright.” Auletta provides context for this instinct in recounting a moment when Sergey asked why he wouldn’t publish his Googled for free on the web, following which Sergey “quickly changed the subject.”
[the] withdrawal threat by Google offended the Chinese government and would cast a shadow on its future operations in the country….It’s a lesson for Google. It has to learn how to strengthen its cooperation with Chinese authorities, how to express itself while ensuring understanding….
–An anonymous “mid-level manager” at Oracle china, quoted in the Global Times, referring to the sequence of events following Google’s revelation that they had been hacked, and playing the role of the Fourth Estate.
Accusation that the Chinese government participated in cyber attack, either in an explicit or inexplicit way, is groundless and aims to denigrate China. We firmly opposed to that.
–Spokesman from the ministry of Industry and Information Technology, via Xinhua. And by the way, we’re under attack daily, suggested the article, as he continued, “China is the biggest victim country of hacking as its Internet has long been facing severe threats of hacker and online virus attacks.”
As the global landscape is undergoing profound irreversible shifts, the calculated free-Internet scheme is just one step of a U.S. tactic to preserve its hegemonic domination.
—Yan Xuetong, head of Institute of International Studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing, via Global Times.
Incidents happen…There are no incidents we can discuss in the press.
—Spokeswoman for Museum of Modern Art
We’re the freebie newsletter that comes with your HBO.
–A Newsday reporter, commenting on the current state of the paper, which has failed to exceed 35 paying subscribers to its recently released pay-wall, following a $4mm redesign and three months of marketing. Michael Amon would ask Publisher Terry Jimenez, “I heard you say 35 people. Is that number correct?”
The rule announced today — that Congress must treat corporations exactly like human speakers in the political realm — represents a radical change in the law. The court’s decision is at war with the views of generations of Americans….The majority blazes through our precedents, overruling or disavowing a body of case law…While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.
–Justice John Paul Stevens, dissenting on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which abruptly brought an end to McCain-Feingold and changed the scene of corporate involvement in the advancement of political candidates. The majority opinion hinged on the conceit that corporations are people too, and they deserve the full protection of the Constitution and First Amendment.
A corporation, after all, is not endowed by its creator with inalienable rights
–Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
In Ryan’s first season as coach, he changed the Jets’ second-class existence through the sheer force of his bold and brash personality. He spoke loudly and often about the talent that surrounded him, until the players believed every word he said…
Ryan turned one of the N.F.L.’s most clandestine operations in into an open book. The Jets collapsed at the end of 2008 in part because of the tense atmosphere. Ryan changed that, changed a culture, changed the way people felt about coming to work. He never called his predecessor…
Instead of operating from a tower like a dictator, Ryan walks the hallways, massaging egos, cooking up defensive plans.
–Greg Bishop, on Rex Ryan, the incoming coach of the Jets: NYT. Fred Wilson makes hay from the article, as he folds these features into a view on management and companies.
A library is an enormous repository of information, entertainment, the best that has been thought and said. It is also probably the densest concentration of potential boredom on earth.
—Jennifer Schuessler, setting the scene for her history of boredom, drawing from among other sources, “Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind”, by Patricia Meyer Spacks, and Humbodt’s Gift, quoting boredom as: “a kind of pain caused by unused powers, the pain of wasted possibilities or talents, … accompanied by expectations of the optimum utilization of capacities.” Nonetheless, she suggests that research would suggest otherwise, and the additional strains associated with boredom are those brought on by “greater activity in regions responsible for recalling autobiographical memory, imagining the thoughts and feelings of others, and conjuring hypothetical events: the literary areas of the brain.”
I conclude that the coming decade’s annual growth is likely to be about 1.9%, roughly the same as the average rate over the past ten years.
—Martin Feldstein, recapping a presentation that he made at AEA earlier this month.
The bears continue to preach. We lean to the bull case….We’ll have a good 2010. Caution, given where we’ve come from, makes some sense, but there’s an awful lot of stimulus in the system.
—Bob Doll, vice chairman and CIO for global equities at BlackRock, at a Jan. 6 presentation.
The market is taking a break from the huge run it has had. I don’t know if we have seen the end of this pull-back and I wouldn’t put all my dry powder in.
—Bob Doll, more recently, though misidentified by Bloomberg as overseeing $3.2 trillion dollars in equities
People at Davos and elsewhere want to believe things are good. They will be more optimistic than me.
There’s a famous saying at Davos that whoever are the heroes one year, you can guarantee something happens in between. Last year I would say the extreme pessimists were celebrated and we didn’t get the extreme outcomes.
Stilltitled 