politics

I once went to a wedding in which a British High Court judge was the bride's godfather.

Having made a deeply insincere speech, he then proceeded to get blind drunk and attempt, for no clear reason, to remove his trousers. He left the proceedings with his pants around his ankles, his wife around his torso, and a deep hush around the marquee in which the wedding was being held.

People stared, so frozen at the lips that the wine enjoyed no sips. And this, I imagine, is a posture many have experienced upon viewing a campaign video made on … Read more

When you become president of your country, you walk into crises from the very first day.

Threats to your country's security may abound. Some of your cabinet ministers may be enjoying risky extramarital relations. But perhaps no newly elected president has ever had to confront as difficult a situation as Ivo Josipovic, Croatia's new head of state.

For, according to Reuters, he is tearing his rather impressive hair out at the thought of having too many Facebook friends.

"I have 5,000 friends, which is the maximum allowed on Facebook. I also have another 7,000 waiting … Read more

This is the last in a series of profiles that look at how the tech industry is working with the federal government.

WASHINGTON, D.C.--In October 2006 Jim Cicconi, a senior executive vice president at AT&T who heads up legislative affairs, took his team of top regulatory lawyers to Gettysburg to teach them battlefield strategy.

For two days, 15 senior AT&T managers stood on the very spot where more than 50,000 men had died during one of the greatest battles in the Civil War, and they listened to a former West Point history professor … Read more

This is the fifth in a series of profiles that look at how the tech industry is working with the federal government.

"We joke about the Internet routing around bad government," venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson said when I asked him about launching and running companies that have to make nice with Uncle Sam.

Jurvetson, a managing director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, made his first big venture capital score by putting money into Hotmail. He also invested in Skype. Of these early investments, he said, "They fell outside the realm of regulatory friction."

But times have changed … Read more

The House has passed the first comprehensive reform package of the health insurance industry in decades, which is now up for debate in the Senate. This is a highly complex issue, but there are some quite basic reasons why it's so difficult to accomplish significant reform, and in part these have to do with psychological responses to change and uncertainty. 

A few years ago I was fortunate to work with a couple of organizational consultants, and they introduced me to the concept of NICs and PUFs. These funny sounding acronyms give insight into why health care reform is … Read more

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is a lightning rod for controversy, but a recent attempt to keep a low profile might just result in, well, more press. The onetime vice presidential hopeful Palin, who stepped down from the governorship this summer, will be speaking at a Right to Life event in Milwaukee, Wis., on Friday evening, and her team has mandated that there are no reporters allowed--or gadgets.

According to CNN, laptops, cell phones, cameras, and anything else that could potentially be used as a recording device will not be allowed into the auditorium. Tickets to the event were $30.… Read more

In the place where they struck oil, they might, on hearing this news, be struck dumb.

You see, as I wandered through the pages of eBay in search of some fine and modern cooking utensils, I came across something that forced my digestive system to ask questions of my cerebellum.

For there (here, indeed) was what seemed to be a brand new Xbox 360 for sale at the most reasonable sum of $1.1 million.

This, as your own cerebellum might be whispering to you, is no ordinary Xbox. For this pristine machine was signed by former governor of Alaska and current literary figure Sarah Palin.

The enervatingly enterprising vendor of this quite frankly priceless technological specimen is David Morrill (that's Morrill, not Imorrill) who claims he resides in Alberta, Canada.

He says he took a trip to Alaska and made sure it coincided with the then-governor's picnic on July 24.

He claims he pushed his way through the crowd to get within sniffing distance of the great Alaskan's hem, told her he had traveled three days just to see her, and asked her to sign his Xbox.… Read more

California's gubernatorial primary is still 10 months away, but the multimillion-dollar race for campaign cash has already picked up a quick pace, with former eBay CEO Meg Whitman at the front of the pack.

It's no surprise that the billionaire Internet exec, who has never held elected office, has lots of money in the bank to spend on her campaign. According to a tally Saturday, she has some $19 million in cash available--and that's after spending $6.1 million to get her campaign operations up and running. It's also after she contributed first $4 million, then $… Read more

One of the main themes at TEDGlobal this year was a lively debate between optimistic and pessimistic voices on the social potential (or doom) of the web. This outlook was somewhat more somber than I expected at a TED conference, perhaps – as some attendees suspected – due to the cultural differences between Long Beach and Oxford. There was definitely a palpable sense of enlightened skepticism at the conference, a distinctly European tone that serves as welcome counterweight to the Californian brand of optimism that TED is often associated with (just read this amusingly British commentary in the Times of London).

One … Read more