Brian Emmett, a self-described space buff (who has even attended space camp) won a trip to space in an Oracle competition, but he won’t be able to take the ride. That’s because the government counts contest winnings as income, and the tax on the ride would be about $25,000 — a huge chuck of money [...]

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Every once in a while a newspaper headline wakes me up before my morning coffee. This was one of them. According to the Reuter’s report, Chinese president Hu Jintao recently said “We must promote civilized running and use of the Internet and purify the Internet environment.” Wonderful. [...]

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That’s the word from Dr. John Rutledge, one of the nation’s most accomplished economists who has advised several presidents (including the current administration). He’s been spending a lot of time in China recently and has first hand knowledge of how America is doing compared to the rest of the world. His recent blog [...]

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Late last year, a congressional committee began examining the idea of taxing property inside digital worlds such as Second Life. If that happens, a digital Boston Tea Party should break out, perhaps making it the only place in America where a real revolution could still happen.
Over the holidays, an article in Esquire magazine lamented that [...]

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Utility = E x V / (Gamma) x D.
E is a person’s expectancy for succeeding at a given task; V is the value of completing the task; Gamma is its immediacy or availability; and D is the person’s sensitivity to delay. Utility is the desirability of the task. Why anyone decided to do [...]

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Ok, so I had planned to let the Command College students write a post here explaining what Command College is, but we never got around to it. Instead, we spent our time talking about Net neutrality, Muni Wifi, digital economies like Second Life, genetic engineering and superlongevity. It was a fun group as [...]

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I’m leading a session at the Command College today in Oxnard, CA. If you don’t know what Command College is, visit back in a few hours for your answer.

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I have no idea how long this site has been around, but it is *awesome*. I was at a Renissance weekend over New Years and a bunch of folks were talking about it. It is the coolest tool I have used in a long time. Try it.

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There were at least five tech policy blunders that should not have happened in California in 2006. Here’s my column discussing them.

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