Public Intelligence Blog – Page 1973 – The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.

2014/02/162014/02/17

Review: Absolute Value – What Really Influences Customers in the Age of (Nearly) Perfect Information

4 Star, Best Practices in Management, Information Society

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Itamar Simonson and Emanuel Rosen

Formula book, somewhat shallow, misses major opportunity, February 16, 2014

This book was a gift. The subtitle (What Really Influences Customers in the Age of (Nearly) Perfect Information) overcame my reluctance and I gave it it a quick read, which is all it deserves. This is a formula book, and as one reviewer notes, would have been just fine as an article. The “innovation” in the book is the discovery that brand and prior experience are less relevant today to purchasing decisions that are now heavily influenced by up to date social commentary and readily available peer reviews.

At one level I find the book interesting as a quick once over of the obvious. At another level I am quite disappointed. There is nothing in this book about true cost economics or open source. If you want to be pretentious and talk about Absolute Value, it would help if you actually had a clue that Absolute Value includes virtual water, virtual fuel, virtual child labor, and virtual tax avoidance, among other things.

I appreciate the discussion of how false reviews and paid reviewers are losing ground to better systems for policing such abuses, and I am interested when they discuss the failure of most market research, which focuses on past experience and conventional concepts.

The importance of corporate monitoring of social media for all mentions of all of their products is presented in a useful manner. I particularly like the examples in relation to rapid recognition of flaws from specific production lines — this is about feedback loops.

The book ends weakly with a few examples of sites such as Goodguide, Decide.com, and BrightScope.

Best wishes to all,
Robert David STEELE Vivas
INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability

2014/02/162014/02/17

Review: American Nations – A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Congress (Failure, Reform), Culture, Research, Democracy, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), History

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Colin Woodard

5.0 out of 5 stars Nine Nations Was a Snap-Shot — This Is Deep History & Ends Thoughtfully, February 16, 2014

I bought this book prepared to dislike it, having given a rave review to Joel Garreau's The Nine Nations of North America. Let me settle that one immediately. I loved this book. As the author himself points out early on, Garreau's book was a snap-shot, this book is a deep history. I was also quite taken, at the end of the book, with the author's acknowledgements that begin with Garreau and go on to others such as Wilbur Zelinsky's The Cultural Geography of The United States: A Revised Edition and Raymond Gastil's Cultural regions of the United States.

Although I would have liked some illustrations and maps in relation to each section of the book — there is only one map for the entire book — I found the book riveting, and would like to see it become a standard text for multi-disciplinary education across history, political science, sociology, and cultural studies.

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2014/02/16

Eagle: Citizen Summary of All the Ways US Government Tracks Citizens & Activists

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Law Enforcement, Military

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300 Million Talons... — 300 Million Talons…

How Do They Track Thee? Let Me Count the Ways…

Sat, 15 Feb 2014 10:00:00 PST

By Foster Gamble with Nick Alheit

As we said in the movie THRIVE, “Every phone call and email we send is collected and archived, and can be inspected at any time.”

Some viewers were skeptical… “they wouldn’t do that even if they could, which they can’t”. Fast forward to the days of Edward Snowden style wake-up calls, and it’s actually being admitted. Proven liar-to-Congress, James “No…Not wittingly” Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, has finally admitted that the NSA surveils this country’s entire domestic population.

So what’s it all about?

Read full article.

2014/02/162014/02/17

Review: Economics of the 1%

4 Star, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad)

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John Weeks

4.0 out of 5 stars While Relevant and Pointed, Suffers from Hyperbole and Lack of Clarity, February 16, 2014

On balance, Lionel Tiger's book The Manufacture Of Evil: Ethics, Evolution, and the Industrial System is the better book, along with those by William Greider, John Bogle, and Matt Taibbi:

The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy

The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism

Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History

I found this book unclear and guilty of at least as much hyperbole as those the author seeks to criticize. I would have been much more impressed has the author taken the top ten canards (unfounded rumor or story) of fake economics as he calls it (in virtually every paragraph, an annoying pretense) and very simply made the case pro and con. Instead — I am not a rocket scientist — I found 70% of his words, graphics, and claims to be on a par with those he seeks to ciritize….unclear and unsatisfying.

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2014/02/16

Berto Jongman: Nullify NSA Movement Grows – Utah Legislation Could Cut Off All Water to the NSA Data Center

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Military

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Utah — Achilles' Heel of the Surveillance State

Justin Raimondo

OpEdNews, 2/15/2014

The movement to end the Surveillance State is finally getting serious. With the failure by Congress to rein in the NSA — although the heroic Rep. Justin Amash nearly succeeded in doing so — activists on the state level are mounting a campaign that promises to hit Big Brother where it really hurts — by cutting off the NSA's water supply at its Bluffdale, Utah, Data Center.

A bill introduced in the Utah legislature by state representative Marc Roberts (R-Santaquin) would cut off the water supply to the NSA's massive facility which will gobble up 1.7 million gallons of water per day — in a state already hit hard by a region-wide drought.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Nullify NSA Movement Grows – Utah Legislation Could Cut Off All Water to the NSA Data Center”

2014/02/162014/02/16

Jean Lievens: Amsterdam enabled private rentals as non-businesses, encouraging the sharing economy

Civil Society, Commerce, Ethics, Government

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Amsterdam adopts new private rental policy that benefits Airbnb hosts and the sharing economy

By Josh Ong,

The Next Web, Thursday, 13 Feb '14

The city of Amsterdam has approved a new set of rules that allows residents to rent out their homes on Airbnb with less red tape. Previously, Amsterdam required renters to secure permits in order to list on Airbnb, a move that wasn’t exactly a ban, but did serve as an obstacle to would-be hosts.

Under the new policy, citizens can classify their houses as “Private Rentals.” They’ll still have to pay taxes on the income, and renters that cross the line into running a business may be subject to investigation.

Airbnb’s Head of Global Public Policy David Hantman celebrated the rules as “great news” for the startup’s customers.

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2014/02/16

Eagle: Consumer manipulation pace set by casinos with confusion by design; addictiveness by design; and use of play money

Commerce, Corruption

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Casinos’ worrying knack for consumer manipulation

The spread of machine gambling offers a portent of other economic developments

Tim Harford, Undercover Economist

What if the future of capitalism is not to be found in Shenzhen, Abu Dhabi or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab – but in the Nevada desert? Natasha Dow Schüll, an anthropologist, has spent 15 years conducting field research in Las Vegas, culminating in a disturbing book, Addiction by Design. We are used to thinking of Vegas as a city of gaudy spectacle and the green baize of poker, blackjack and roulette tables. It is now a city of slot machines, which have grown like weeds because they are fantastically profitable. And the spread of machine gambling offers a worrisome portent of developments elsewhere in the economy.

Three slot-machine innovations stand out: first, confusion by design; second, addictiveness by design; third, the use of play money. All have been made possible by the digital automation of the machine itself, which in Las Vegas as elsewhere eliminates the skilled service jobs of croupiers and replaces them with highly paid jobs in interface design and low-paid work as a security guard or waitress.

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