u.s. overtakes singapore

Kudos to the U.S. Who would have thought they could beat us. Who could have known we were top in the first place.

U.S. Overtakes Singapore in Technology Rankings
Agence France-Presse
Tuesday, March 28, 2006

GENEVA. The United States has taken over from Singapore as the top country for the development of information and communications technology, according to rankings issued Tuesday by the World Economic Forum... Singapore secured second place, thanks to its regulatory environment and "world-class" levels of education and training.

Interestingly,

Taiwan held the highest Asian spot, at seventh, with the report calling it an information technology "powerhouse" over the past three decades. It rose eight places on the basis of "intelligent" public policies and public-private partnerships in the sector.

So it looks like we are still part of China. Wait, China is in Asia. Maybe we are part of Africa now. Full article from the IHT.

And in totally unrelated news, it looks like someone is taking The Wisdom of Crowds very seriously. And someone else is trying to explain again why Blacks just can't seem to escape the poverty trap.

a work philosophy

The last thing I need is a reputation for being hardworking. Heaven forbid that should ever happen.

"He's really lazy and he has such a bad attitude towards work. But when he puts his mind to it the results are just incredible. I'd better not bother him unless the work is really important. And I'd better give him an even bigger bonus this year in case he leaves."

Yup, that sounds about right. My resolution for the fiscal year.

crowds, memory, screwtape, poverty

Just for the record I was writing the reviews of the 4 books I just read: The Wisdom of Crowds by James Suroweicki, The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, Mega Memory by Kevin Trudeau and The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs. I was writing the fourth one when the damn machine rebooted itself with no warning whatsoever. I was praying that Google had implemented an autosave function for Blogger like it has for Gmail ... no such luck. I don't know what the "Recover post" button does, but it didn't bring it back.

One hour ... that should be about 2000 words. Probably my longest post ever.

So anyway, here's the super-brief synopsis because I could never bring myself to type all that again.

The Wisdom of Crowds - this is a decent read and doesn't get boring, even though the thematic linkages are a bit weak. If you like this type of journalist-written surveys of academic literature, my favourite book is still The Tipping Point.

The Screwtape Letters - a very short and thought-provoking book, I'd definitely highly recommend this to anyone, especially Christians. Each short chapter explores a different aspect of life and temptation. My favorites were gluttony, peer influence and humour.

Mega Memory - This was the only memory book I could find in Kinokuniya that actually proposes a system to improving your natural memory (as opposed to advising "carry a notebook around). I guess time will tell if it works.

The End of Poverty - This is about how everyone should help to eradicate extreme poverty (people so poor they are barely surviving and cannot start climbing the ladder of development). It is interesting and inspiring, it is also a good introduction to economics principles for people who have no formal training.