Jake Laperruque Growing up in the dawn of the Internet Age, as children we were often told, “don’t trust strangers online,” and frightened with stories of abductors posing as digital friends. But, while we have always been vigilant of an individual with a misleading online identity, right now we face a new threat with strong ramifications for democracy and discourse – the manipulation of not one online persona, but of the digital populace as a whole. Last week, I described how Web 2.0 …
Food Prices, a Speculator Sport?
Anthony Kammer Frederick Kaufmann spoke last week at Harvard about his Harper’s Magazine article, The Food Bubble: How Wall Street starved millions and got away with it (pdf here), for an event sponsored by the HLS Food Society. Kaufmann has described, in scrupulous detail, how the creation of the Commodity Index Fundsin 1991 opened the door to speculation in commodity food markets and how this speculation is wreaking havoc around the world. Despite record yields in recent years, the …
Moore’s Law and The Future of Renewable Energy: Part 4
Jason Harrow This is the fourth post in a multi-part series. In Part 1, I described Moore’s Law, which states that computer technology gets twice as good, for the same price, every two years. In Part 2, I argued that President Obama’s clean energy goals are overly optimistic because energy technologies do not obey Moore’s Law. In Part 3, I gave two other reasons why energy technology cannot be adopted as quickly as computer technology. In this Part, I discuss policy implications. Feedback is …
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Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Is the US Done with Financial Regulation until the Next Crisis?
Anthony Kammer It’s been months now since the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was signed into law. Although the Dow and Wall Street bonuses have returned to 2007 levels, unemployment is still hovering around 9% and housing prices continue to decline. While these numbers tell us something about the health of the economy, it would be an enormous mistake to evaluate the Dodd-Frank Act based on these indicators alone. The single most important question raised by …
A Response to Harvard’s Career Advice on Wikileaks
HLPR Online editorial staff This post was written by Danny Rosenthal and Rachel Lauter and signed by nine members of the HLPR masthead, incoming masthead, and blog staff. Their names are listed at the end of the post. The full response of Alexa Shabecoff, head of the Harvard Law School Office of Public Interest Advising, is reprinted following the post. Three weeks ago, Harvard Law School advised students to reconsider posting commentary about Wikileaks on “your blog, Facebook page, …
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Wisconsin can afford tax cuts, not teachers?
Yevgeny Shrago Ohio and Indiana have followed Wisconsin into the Randian dream of breaking public sector unions by stripping them of dearly bought collective bargaining rights. Although most Americans (when polled by someone other than a Republican quasi-operative like Scott Rasmussen) oppose Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s plan, don’t expect this to be the sort of issue that drives votes outside of these states in 2012. Lowunionization rates, compounded by the last Congress’s failure to pass …
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