McKinsey and Company is expanding into the social business and entrepreneurial sector. My personal favorite the Social Sector Office is the Economic Development practice. While you are there, check out the Jonathan Morduch et al. article about world's unbanked population.Seven months in the Middle East had taught me only one lesson: Even in the best of circumstances, business consulting can be a morally ambiguous and soul-crushing profession.You can read his series here, here, here, and here (in order).
Any guesses?I'm not an iPad naysayer. I forked over $700 on the first day of pre-ordering and my iPad hasn't left my side, day or night, since it arrived. I'm with those who see the device and its new approach to computing as an exciting step forward, especially for media delivery. The possibilities for reviving the magazine and newspaper industries are exciting and real.Read the rest of the FastCompany article here. Check out the ClearType For All blog here.
Yet it's exactly that part of media consumption, reading, that reveals what's missing on the iPad: good typography.
Signs that type took a backseat in the iPad's development were clear back in January when Steve Jobs demoed the device, revealing just four uninspired and uninformed font options in iBooks...
FastCompany presents the coolest font/typography flow-chart ever.
Hey gals, it's wedding season and women everywhere will be making one of the most important choices of their lives: not "I Do," that's easy. The difficult question is whether to change your name. Want to honor your new spouse's lineage? Studies suggest that perhaps you should reconsider. It seems that what name you use affects how others perceive you. Does our identity change along with our name? With the stroke of a pen, do we, along with the surname of our new husbands, suddenly take on a new persona? Some people think so.Read the rest of the article here.
Analyst: "I just spent all night working on the model you said you needed for today."Here is the video. Watch it! It's so worth it. (Thanks, Lucy)
Director/Associate: "Don't worry about that - I never needed that."
Analyst: "Thank you."
How do you train young people and children to be entrepreneurs? In Houston, they create a city-wide Lemonade Day. (And they are thinking about expanding to Durham!)
Is there anything creepier than a big, beer-breathed celebrity athlete exposing himself in a night club and hitting on underage girls, all the while protected by an entourage of off-duty cops? Well, yes. It’s the big, corporate sponsor — Nike, in this case — that continues trying to sell product with the creep as their role model.Read the rest of the NYT article here. (Thanks, Dad)
For decades, shoppers have taken advantage of coupons. Now, the coupons are taking advantage of the shoppers.Read the rest of the article here.
A new breed of coupon, printed from the Internet or sent to mobile phones, is packed with information about the customer who uses it. While the coupons look standard, their bar codes can be loaded with a startling amount of data, including identification about the customer, Internet address, Facebook page information and even the search terms the customer used to find the coupon in the first place...
Who are the new "Tea Party" supporters?Tea party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public, tend to be Republican, white, male, and married, and their strong opposition to the Obama administration is more rooted in political ideology than anxiety about their personal economic situation, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll...Read more in the NYT here.
By my count, about 14 percent of the people in Parade's sample earn more than $1 million a year. In the real world, the actual percentage is about 0.2 percent. So, in a truly representative sample of a hundred people, you would most likely have zero, or perhaps one, person with a million dollar income. Finding two would be highly unlikely. 14 would be nearly impossible.
Does this matter? I think it might. There is a common perception in some circles that we can solve all our fiscal problems if only we were willing to tax the rich some more. Yet, in reality, there are not enough rich for this to work. By presenting such a skewed cross-section of incomes, Parade inadvertently feeds an all-too-common misperception.
A study we conducted at the Tax Policy Center found that Washington would have to raise [income] taxes by almost 40 percent to reduce -- not eliminate, just reduce -- the deficit to 3 percent of our GDP, the 2015 goal the Obama administration set in its 2011 budget. That tax boost would mean the lowest income tax rate would jump from 10 to nearly 14 percent, and the top rate from 35 to 48 percent.
What if we raised taxes only on families with couples making more than $250,000 a year and on individuals making more than $200,000? The top two income tax rates would have to more than double, with the top rate hitting almost 77 percent, to get the deficit down to 3 percent of GDP.
"So, the question becomes whether the odds of winning are better if you intentionally miss the second free throw, but hit the rim, the opposition gets the rebound, gets off an uncontested shot from beyond half court and makes it… OR… you foul leading by three, the opposition hits their first free throw, intentionally misses the second, gets the rebound, and puts it back in and goes on to win in OT. Both are extremely unlikely. However…"Read two theories here and here. (Thanks, Nikhil)
LAST MOMENTS Robert Pardi Jr. in the apartment he shared with his wife,
Description of the Russian train bomber:Baby-faced, she looks barely a teenager. But the pistol she is holding in the photo suggests the violent destiny that she would choose: blowing herself up in a subway station in Moscow during the morning rush on Monday.Seventeen and married? Notice how differently the two are dressed. Read the rest of the NYT article here.
And posing with his arm around this 17-year-old girl is the man who would put her on this path, a 30-year-old militant leader who lured her from her single mother, drew her into fundamentalist Islam and married her. He was killed by federal forces in December, spurring her to seek revenge...
Hmmm:Vincent Connare designed the ubiquitous, bubbly Comic Sans typeface, but he sympathizes with the world-wide movement to ban it...For all of the typophiles out there, read the WSJ article here. (Thanks, Cassie)
"It’s not a pipeline problem. It’s about loneliness, competition and deeply rooted barriers." Read more in the NYT .
