Gail Tverberg touching on why the future is going to be so incredibly expensive and different.

Paul Krugman on the effects of the recession on social mobility via transfers from community colleges to state universities.

Josh Keller on the sudden closure of California’s social mobility route from two-year community colleges to baccalaureate programs at state universities.

Ed Felten says the main reason for the popularity of “cloud computing” is that it reduces technology management costs and that this squarely trumps resource efficiency—i.e. “the cloud” may be less efficient, and consume more resources. I think he’s exactly right. And I believe the economists call this phenomenon making some of the costs of running the business into “externalities.”

Jonathan Jarvis's video explaining the credit crisis. Pretty good, except for the cheap shot semiotics of an "irresponsible" home buyer.

Aaron Swartz on the remarkable fact that the "initial implementing guidance for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (2009)" requires agencies to provide their reporting information in the form of XML feeds, specifically "preferred: Atom 1.0, acceptable: RSS."

Bruce Schneier about the increasingly dangerous security problem posed by insiders.

Lewis Page on another future-thinking researcher from the north who's optimism that we will make it that far gives me a warm feeling.

Lewis Page on criticisms of CERN's LHC project.