Dear Commons Community,

The NY Times has an article on the latest development of the use of nanotechnology to store digital data. Researchers at I.B.M. have stored and retrieved digital 1s and 0s from an array of just 12 atoms, pushing the boundaries of the magnetic storage of information to the edge of what is possible.  The findings  were reported Thursday in the journal Science (need a subscription), could lead to a new class of nanomaterials as the basis for a  generation of memory chips and disk drives that will not only have far greater capabilities than the current silicon-based computers but will consume significantly less power.    Until now, the most advanced magnetic storage systems have needed about one million atoms to store a digital 1 or 0.  The experiment is pushing digital technology to the realm of Q-Bits – the basic unit of an experimental approach to computing that might one day exceed the capabilities of today’s most powerful supercomputers.

This is heady stuff and portends a digital future that is far different than what we have today!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave his state of the city address yesterday.  He covered a lot of ground but much of it was devoted to the New York City public schools.  He tries to establish that the public schools are better since he took office (highly  debatable) and calls for several major new policies.  The most significant is to establish a merit pay system for teachers.  Specifically:

“We’ll also work to retain the best teachers – by offering them a big raise. Today, we’re making an offer to all New York City teachers: If you are rated highly effective for two consecutive years we will hike your salary by $20,000 per year.

“Historically, teachers unions around the country have opposed rewarding great teaching through merit pay, but more and more teachers are asking why, and we’ve seen how well this can work in other cities.

“With an evaluation system now required by law, rewarding great teaching is an idea whose time has come. We hope the UFT will join us in this effort, because it’s the right thing to do for our schools and our teachers. Their excellence deserves to be rewarded and compensated.”

Mayor Bloomberg joins other New York officials namely Governor Andrew Cuomo who see merit pay and teacher evaluations based on test scores as a major reform needed to turn failing schools around.  Michael Mulgrew and the UFT surely disagree and it seems all of the above need to go through a collective bargaining process.  Unfortunately the relationship between the UFT and the New York City Department of Education has not been very good for years thanks largely to the confrontational positions of former schools chancellor Joel Klein.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Paul Krugman in his NY Times column today, explores the question whether America needs to be run like a corporation.  It is directed specifically at Mitt Romney who uses his experience in private industry as the basis for his credentials to be president.  Krugman states:

“there’s a deeper problem in the whole notion that what this nation needs is a successful businessman as president: America is not, in fact, a corporation. Making good economic policy isn’t at all like maximizing corporate profits. And businessmen — even great businessmen — do not, in general, have any special insights into what it takes to achieve economic recovery.

Why isn’t a national economy like a corporation? For one thing, there’s no simple bottom line. For another, the economy is vastly more complex than even the largest private company.

Most relevant for our current situation, however, is the point that even giant corporations sell the great bulk of what they produce to other people, not to their own employees — whereas even small countries sell most of what they produce to themselves, and big countries like America are overwhelmingly their own main customer…

But the story is very different when a government slashes spending in the face of a depressed economy. Look at Greece, Spain, and Ireland, all of which have adopted harsh austerity policies. In each case, unemployment soared, because cuts in government spending mainly hit domestic producers. And, in each case, the reduction in budget deficits was much less than expected, because tax receipts fell as output and employment collapsed. “

Krugman adds  that being a career politician isn’t necessarily a better preparation for managing economic policy than being a businessman.  He closes by taking a shot at Romney’s previous time at Bain Capital:

“America certainly needs better economic policies than it has right now — and while most of the blame for poor policies belongs to Republicans and their scorched-earth opposition to anything constructive, the president has made some important mistakes. But we’re not going to get better policies if the man sitting in the Oval Office next year sees his job as being that of engineering a leveraged buyout of America Inc.”

Tony