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Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor (slightly modified)

 

Like investment bankers on Wall Street, senators these days direct much of their creative energy toward the manipulation of arcane rules and loopholes, scoring short-term successes while magnifying their institution’s broader dysfunction.

George Packer, The Empty Chamber: Just how broken is the Senate

We’ve created a multitrillion-dollar edifice for dispensing the medical equivalent of lottery tickets—and have only the rudiments of a system to prepare patients for the near-certainty that those tickets will not win.

Atul Gawande, Letting Go: What should medicine do when it can’t save your life?

News about, by, and for a tiny kingdom of political obsessives dominates the attention of senators and staff, while stories that might affect their constituents go unreported because their home-state papers can no longer afford to have bureaus in Washington.

George Packer, Filibusters and arcane obstructions in the Senate [via Kevin Drum]

Fred Brooks on Design

Kevin Kelly: In your experience, what’s the best process for design?

Brooks: Great design does not come from great processes; it comes from great designers.

…if you show someone a piece of work, don’t ask them what they think of it as they will probably not want to offend you. Instead, ask them what’s wrong with it. Give them permission to give you truthful criticism

Peter Cooper’s Notes on ‘Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite’ by Paul Arden [via JJ over IM]

You can learn more from failure than success. In failure you’re forced to find out what part did not work. But in success you can believe everything you did was great, when in fact some parts may not have worked at all. Failure forces you to face reality.

Fred Brooks, Master Planner: Fred Brooks Shows How to Design Anything

[Intolerance and xenophobia is] a short-term strategy that eats itself, because sooner or later, everyone is a stranger, and fear is no foundation for work that matters.

Seth Godin, Intolerance and xenophobia as a (short-term) marketing strategy

With density comes prosperity, and prosperity should yield political power. Yet consistently we in New York City give billions of tax dollars to Albany and to Washington that never return, billions we could use to fund our much-needed infrastructure.

Vishaan Chakrabarti, This Land is Our Land [via Dennis Crowley]

When so many people are technically breaking the law, it is up to prosecutors to decide whom to pursue. No doubt most prosecutors choose wisely. But members of unpopular groups may not find that reassuring.

Rough justice in America: Too many laws, too many prisoners, The Economist

Every miraculous new toy that is produced by the marketplace (along with all the ordinary toys) arrives on the shelves with millions of dollars worth of advertising explaining how great it is, and how it will improve our lives. But the innovations that come from the public sector rarely have those promotional budgets. Every election year, we get ads telling us how great the politicians are, but we never get ads telling us how great Brooklyn Bridge Park is. That imbalance ends up cementing our existing assumption that markets are better than governments at improving our quality of life. But that isn’t always so. I’ll take one Brooklyn Bridge Park over a thousand new brands of detergent, thank you very much.

Steven Johnson, The Shanghai Surprise: Urban Planning Is Sexy!

In a sense, the MTA is outsourcing its software development to people with more skills than the authority possesses.

Benjamin Kabak, on open data at the MTA, Weekend reading and service advisories

Are you ever surprised by how certain you can be about your position on a topic that you only heard about 30 seconds before?

David Pell, The Web’s Five Most Endangered Words [via ★]