For nearly a decade, one man has ruled Russia. Marked by scandal, enormous oil profits, and confrontation with the West, Vladimir Putin’s tenure has been nothing if not dramatic. A look back at some of the moments that defined his presidency.

Photo Essay: The Many Faces of Putin

A growing conventional wisdom holds that Vladimir Putin's attack on democracy has brought Russia stability and prosperity -- providing a new model of successful market authoritarianism. But the correlation between autocracy and economic growth is spurious. Autocracy's effects in Russia have in fact been negative. Whatever the gains under Putin, they would have been greater under a democratic regime.

The Myth of the Authoritarian Model

There are other people who should read this book. Your girlfriend will better understand why you turn into a jerk in your home office. Your mom will understand why you don’t call. Giving this book to your boss is a tricky proposition. Even if he needs it, you can’t tell him that, so surreptitiously leave it in his office… like a pen.

Managing Humans is 209 pages with 34 chapters. The 6 pages per chapter average is ideal for your attention deficient lifestyle. People dig it.

This book isn't just about management, it's about creating places where people can comfortably build stuff. It's about what to do during the first ninety days of your new gig, and explains why you should pick a fight, because bright people often yell at each other.

Managing Humans

Scene.

One day last month, I climbed onto a crowded rooftop in Quetta, near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, and wedged myself among men wearing thick turbans and rangy beards until I could find a seat. We converged on the rooftop that afternoon to attend the opening ceremony for Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam’s campaign office in this dusty city in the southwestern province of Baluchistan. ...

A cool breeze blew across the rooftop, and a green kite flew above in the crisp, periwinkle sky. The J.U.I. was gearing up again for national elections, then scheduled for the second week of January, but the message this time was remarkably different from what it was five years ago. One by one, hopefuls for the national and provincial assembly constituencies gave short speeches. Most of them spoke in Pashto, but, knowing Urdu, I could understand enough to realize that they weren’t rehashing the typical J.U.I. rhetoric. No one praised the Taliban. Shariah was mentioned only in passing. Just one person, a first-time candidate in a suede jacket who probably felt obliged to prove his credentials in a party of fundamentalist mullahs, attacked the United States. Afterward, party workers handed out free plates of cookies and cups of tea.

...

When I met Rehman in Peshawar in the fall we sat outside on plastic lawn furniture in the shade of a large oak tree. He rubbed a strand of chunky, orange prayer beads, and we discussed the changing leadership in the borderlands of Pakistan. In the past five years, more than 150 pro-government maliks, or tribal elders, had been killed by the Taliban. Oftentimes, the Taliban dumped the bodies by the side of the road for passers-by to see, with a note, written in Pashto, pinned to the corpse’s chest, damning the dead man as an American spy. “When the jihad in Afghanistan started,” Rehman told me, “the maliks and the old tribal system in Afghanistan ended; a new leadership arose, based on jihad. Similar is the case here in the Tribal Areas. The old, tribal system is being relegated to the background, and a new leadership, composed of these young militants, has emerged.” He added, “This is something natural.”

Though Rehman describes the emergence of the local Taliban in evolutionary terms, he explains it as a result of a leadership crisis in Pakistan. He respects the secular-minded people who created Pakistan but insists that social and religious changes over the past two decades have made such leaders much less relevant: “We have to adjust to reality, and that demands new leaders with new visions.”

I asked if he considered himself such a new leader with a new vision.

“I don’t consider myself as someone extraordinary,” Rehman said. “I have the same feelings as everyone else in the current age: if the weather is warm, everyone feels warm; if it is cold, everyone feels cold. The difference between me and other people is in our responsibilities.” He took a long breath of the fresh, fall air, continued rubbing his prayer beads and leaned over the chair to spit. “That’s why I am so careful, because my decisions can affect many, many people. I am trying to bring people back from the fire, not push them toward it.” Rehman once seemed ready to introduce Taliban-style rule in Pakistan. Now he is trying to preserve democracy from being destroyed by ruthless militants. If he can’t succeed, can anyone?

Next-Gen Taliban

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others, now available on DVD, is the best feature film debut by a director since Orson Welles's Citizen Kane.

I Spy

Analysis of the new Census Bureau annual estimates of state population changes for 2006-7 shows that the sinking housing market has yanked back high-flying states like Nevada and Arizona. An even bigger tug in growth occurred in Florida, another housing-boom driven state. With credit harder to get and the disappearance of housing deals, the allure of these states appears to have dimmed.

Meanwhile, the up-scale states—California, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts—are seeing fewer residents leave for a lower cost of living elsewhere. And those states benefiting from the previous flight to affordability—Nevada and Arizona in the west; Florida in the south; and Pennsylvania and New Hampshire in the east—have shown slower migration gains or greater declines.

Even the states surrounding Washington, D.C., another hot market, have attracted fewer migrants. Potential home buyers in the outer suburbs of Virginia and Maryland face trouble getting credit and recent buyers in the District and inner suburbs are stuck because they cannot sell.

The D.C. region has, in short, become a microcosm of the nation’s reaction to the housing bust. Like in Nevada and Arizona, the market for the region’s suburban buyers is drying up due to the credit crunch, and construction and in-migration is stalling. But the District and inner suburbs are more like coastal California, where housing-rich residents are waiting to sell in order to move to opportunities elsewhere.

In sum, there appears to be a migration correction going on. We’re at the beginning of a leveling off of migration between unaffordable and affordable America. As with the broader economy, we don’t know how much longer it will last.

Housing Bust Shatters State Migration Patterns

Shut up and drive.

This research examined the effect of naturalistic, hands-free, cell phone conversation on driver’s lane-changing behavior. Thirty-six undergraduate psychology students drove six 9.2-mile scenarios, in a simulated highway environment, with three levels of traffic density. Participants were instructed only to obey the speed limit and to signal when making a lane change. These simple driving instructions allowed participants to freely vary driving behaviors such as following distance, speed, and lane-changing maneuvers. Results indicated that, when drivers conversed on the cell phone, they made fewer lane changes, had a lower overall mean speed, and a significant increase in travel time in the medium and high density driving conditions. Drivers on the cell phone were also much more likely to remain behind a slower moving lead vehicle than drivers in single-task condition. No effect of cell phone conversation on following distance was observed. Possible implications on traffic flow characteristics are discussed.

Drivers’ Lane Changing Behavior While Conversing On a Cell Phone in a Variable Density Simulated Highway Environment

The last several slides are new to this briefing.

David M. Walker, comptroller general of the United States, at the 2008 Economic Forecast Forum:

The federal government is on a “burning platform,” and the status quo way of doing business is unacceptable.

Growth in Spending for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid Expected to Outpace Economic Growth; State and Local Governments Face Increasing Fiscal Challenges.

Current Fiscal Policy Is Unsustainable:
• The “Status Quo” Is Not an Option
• We face large and growing structural deficits largely due to known demographic trends and rising health care costs.
• GAO’s simulations show that balancing the budget in 2040 could require actions as large as

• Cutting total federal spending by 60 percent or
• Raising federal taxes to two times today's level

• Faster Economic Growth Can Help, but It Cannot Solve the Problem
• Closing the current long-term fiscal gap based on reasonable assumptions would require real average annual economic growth in the double-digit range every year for the next 75 years.
• During the 1990s, the economy grew at an average 3.2 percent per year.
• As a result, we cannot simply grow our way out of this problem. Tough choices will be required.

Are the candidates confronting this issue? Mostly they seem to ramble on about "coverage."

US Financial Condition and Fiscal Future Briefing

Sun recently released its "Social Software for GlassFish". It is now available @ GlassFish update center for both AppServer 9.1 & AppServer 9.1 UR1.

The download contains an integration of both roller (blogging) and slynkr (content rating) social applications, along with a common administrative interface, common user management, dynamic discovery along with single sign-on (including support for Sun's Access Manager).

Social Software for Glassfish available!

A tip for the fans of Oscar Peterson.

This isn’t Jazz at the Philharmonic, but the feeling is much the same. A loose jam session of familiar standards (plus two ringers, of which more later) played by some of the best. The veterans, having done this many times before, look at each other and then proceed to give the people what they came to see. You hear challenges, actions and reactions, beauty and energy, all in this reissue of the 2-LP set.

Live at the Northsea Jazz Festival, 1980