$2,400,000,000,000
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that “the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could total $2.4 trillion through the next decade,” USA Today reports in the newspaper plopped outside my Vegas hotel room. That amounts to roughly $8,000 for every — I love this expression — man, woman, and child in the U.S. […]
Manga Mania
You’ll be hearing a lot about manga in this space over the next six months. Today marks the start of the onslaught, er, conversation. To the right is the cover of the November issue of Wired, which is hitting newsstands and mailboxes as I type. There’s a great 10-page “Manga 101” piece by Jason Thompson. […]
More innovation at the airport
Here’s a photo from Pearson Airport in Toronto. Add this week’s :10 Minute Manicure to last week’s HairPod, and we’ve got ourselves a trend: interstitial grooming. But before you all ginned up about this, please re-read the Zolli-Brand quote in the entry below. Permalink
Quote of the day
“Fast trends get all the attention; slow trends have all the influence.” — Andrew Zolli (channeling Stewart Brand), yesterday, at the amazing Pop!Tech Conference
21st century jewelry
It sounds like something out of a William Gibson novel. A German designer has produced the VanityRing. It’s like a modern day mood ring. But doesn’t measure how you’re feeling. It measures — get this — how many times your name comes up in a Google search. As the creator explains, “Rings are well known […]
The well curve of talent?
In the Wall Street Journal, David Wessel writes about research showing “strong demand for high-end workers,” increasing demand “for some workers at the low-end of the pay scale,” and “a sagging middle.” What’s going on? In part, the answer is the core argument of AWNM. Routine white-collar work is being shipped overseas and reduced to […]
Airport innovation
Walking through Heathrow Airport not too long ago, I spotted an intriguing business idea: The HairPod. (See photo below.) It’s nifty-looking capsule in which people waiting for planes can get a quick haircut. The capsule is outfitted with all sorts of semi-hidden suctions and vacuums so customers don’t shed on the airport floor or on […]
Factoids of the week
Lots of travel this past week limited my blogging. But sitting on airplanes reading newspapers and magazines did yield these five fascinating factoids: — “Today there are some 3 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide, and that will grow to 5 billion by 2015, when two-thirds of the people on earth will have phones, predicts Finnish handset […]
Reading list
The only entries even half as popular as those featuring a photo of Saul (a.k.a. the male heir to the Pink fortune) are those that list what I’ve been reading. It’s not that my book tastes are exemplary. (Some readers hate my recommendations.) But with the gusher of books pumped out each week, I think […]