A good breakdown of Book Publishing costs, comparing the Printed Book to EBook. As ebooks reach a tipping point where they can actually offset the calculations that a big publisher must make in sizing a 6-to-7-figure print run for a prospective bestseller, they can provide a powerful hedge for the publisher against the kind of huge losses, from unamortized front-end production outlays, that are symbolized so vividly on hundreds of bookstore remainder tables all over the country each year. Regardless of whether it’s price at $12.99 or $9.99, you’ll never see an ebook on a remainder table.

business hoping to keep Cheap Oil, but instead reaching Peak Oil

When the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform set off the worst Oil Spill at sea in American history, it was flying the flag of the Marshall Islands. Registering there allowed the rig’s owner to significantly reduce its American taxes... an examination of the American tax code indicates that oil production (Oil Industry) is among the most heavily subsidized (Subsidy) businesses, with tax breaks available at virtually every stage of the exploration and extraction process... An economist for the Treasury Department said in 2009 that a study had found that oil prices and potential profits were so high that eliminating the subsidies would decrease American output by less than half of one percent... Some of the tax breaks date back nearly a century, when they were intended to encourage exploration in an era of rudimentary technology, when costly investments frequently produced only dry holes.

anticipating the outcome/end/End Game of a Pro Ject. Even if you haven't been thinking of it as a project. (more)

Edutopia is running a Project Based Learning camp. (more)

John Battelle on his DatabaseOfIntentions Meta Model. (more)

Harriet Hall reviews David Stripp's Youth Pill book on research on Life Extension. (more)

Timothy Carney on Barack Obama's export plans. *President Obama is not "anti-business," as many conservative critics charge. He's just anti-FreeMarket... Obama's National Export Initiative, embraced by the big business lobby, is a raft of subsidies, handouts and "public-private partnerships." Obama uses the phrase "free trade" to describe this push, but there's nothing free about Corporate Welfare. (more)

see DigiCash

Kids today -- no previous generation has experienced anything like the current pace of transformational societal change. Yet, in light of extraordinary advancements in how we interact with each other and the world, our system of education has been frustratingly slow to adapt. (more)

Venkatesh Rao on the Gervais Principle of Organization-s (with credit to Hugh MacLeod's company hierarchy image (losers/clueless/sociopaths)).

The new Classmate Pc can convert into a Tablet, just like the OLPC.

John Robb notes a number of international ECash systems.

Mark Fletcher is launching his SnapGroups service next week, that will be focused on Real Time group communication. Fletcher said he used outsourced development and design services extensively in creating SnapGroups. He built the site for a mere $6k (Lean Startup, a tiny fraction of what it took to build his previous products. (more)

Venkatesh Rao on the (?) 8 Metaphor-s of Organization, summarizing Gareth Morgan's Images Of Organization.

Gary Panter wrote the Rozz Tox Manifesto in 1980. (more)

Adina Levin examines the Design Trade-Off-s in various Rat Ing systems (include the FaceBook "LikeButton").

The HealthCare GPO (Group Purchasing) industry was created for good reasons, but the Incentive-s were badly designed. Now it serves largely to reduce competition (esp Innovative new entrants), because the GPO organizations (Middle Man) are serving their own finances rather than their purchasing customers. (more)

page was renamed from z2010-07-14-TweetScream (more)

Aggregate scores on the Torrance Creativity Test have been declining since 1990.