Coursera provides online classes taught by professors from the country’s best schools—Stanford and Princeton among them, in a wide-range of subjects. Co-founder Daphne Koller explains:

“The universities produce and own the content, and we are the platform that hosts and streams it,” explained Daphne Koller, a Stanford computer science professor who founded Coursera with Ng after seeing tens of thousands of students following their free Stanford lectures online.

This has incredible potential. Imagine community colleges and universities where students receive lectures from the top people in the field, and the classes held are discussion or work-based. This could allow far-flung schools to be much, much more effective.

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Work isn’t a place – it’s what you do.

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Arnold Kling:

Mauldin’s claim is that we are in what he calls the “endgame,” meaning that the Keynesian option of increasing government borrowing is no longer available to European countries. The only willing lenders are banks, which in turn need to be propped up, and ultimately they can only be propped up by printing money.

My take-away from Mauldin is that, contra the mainstream media narrative, the real dilemma in Europe is not fiscal–deciding whether to maintain government spending or not. The real dilemma is financial–whether to recognize losses and absorb defaults (by both governments and banks) or turn loose the monetary printing presses.

(Via Tyler Cowen.)

People suffering from hand or foot issues, or who had limbs amputated in the past, are choosing more extensive amputations so they can receive more capable prosthetics:

“The last couple of years, boy, my life started closing in on me because I couldn’t run anymore,” said Dr. White, 51, a family physician in Buena Vista, Colo. “It got so that doing something like taking a hike wasn’t fun anymore because it hurt too much.”

Dr. White had his left leg amputated just below the knee to get a sleek carbon-fiber foot. Three years later, he has started training for races again. “I made the decision to have an elective amputation so that I could have a chance to get back to my life,” he said. “It just dawned on me — the technology is amazing, and I would be better off.”

I don’t think the interesting part of this story is so much that people are choosing to have amputations or more extensive ones. What’s interesting about it—and heartening—is that more advanced prosthetics are providing people who, until very recently, would have been severely restricted in what they could physically do due to injury with a life comparable to what they had before.

Of course, these prosthetics are still very expensive, and as far as I can tell, many aren’t covered by health insurance. But hopefully that will improve with time, too.

Tyler Cowen asks what the definition of “austerity” is, and sort of answers it:

I wonder if some Keynesians have in mind the baseline of “the expansionary policies which I think would be appropriate,” in which case doing less than the Keynesian optimum is always a form of austerity.

I have a more simple definition: it’s a word used to cast moral and emotional judgment on a set of policies without having to actually discuss what those policies are and whether they may be justified or have some basis.

Orangutans at the Miami Zoo are using the iPad:

“We’ll ask them to identify ‘Where’s the coconut?’, and they’ll point it out,” Linda Jacobs, who oversees the Jungle Island program, told Wired. “We want to build from that and give them a choice in what they have for dinner — show them pictures of every vegetable we have available that day, and let them pick, giving them the opportunity to have choices.”

When you’ve built a device that can be used by humans for a nearly unlimited number of tasks, and even primates, you’ve built something incredible.

Before hiring someone, Zuckerberg used to take them on a hike:

Several people who were hired this way say the strolls usually meandered along the trail — with Mr. Zuckerberg asking questions of the new recruit along the way — and ended atop a lookout. There, Mr. Zuckerberg would explain the terrain in front of them and his vision for the future.

“He pointed out Apple’s headquarters, then Hewlett-Packard and a number of other big tech companies,” one person who was recruited by Mr. Zuckerberg told The New York Times last year. “Then he pointed to Facebook and said that it would eventually be bigger than all of the companies he had just mentioned, and that if I joined the company, I could be a part of it all.”

Not only is that a fantastic way to hire someone, but it shows Zuckerberg’s ambitions for Facebook, too. That isn’t a sales speech—I’ve no doubt it’s his intent to grow Facebook into the most important and influential technology company we’ve seen.

Matt Gemmell announced MGTileMenu today. He describes it as a “pop-up tile-based contextual menu.”

Is anyone else doing such consistently high-quality, ambitious open source work for iOS as Matt Gemmell?

Time Warner’s CEO hasn’t heard of AirPlay:

Glenn A. Britt, the company’s chief executive, said in a group interview on Friday that the challenge for digital video was that there was no simple way to get Internet-based video onto the television screen. He wasn’t familiar with AirPlay.

“I’m not sure I know what AirPlay is,” he said, though he noted that he was an enthusiastic Apple customer.

Don’t assume a conspiracy as the cause for something when simple incompetence fits just as well.

9to5Mac reports that Apple will drop Google Maps in iOS 6.

It was only a question of when. This won’t be easy, though—Apple’s maps and directions must be really, really good, or this is going to create a lot of issues for users. Imagine using the Maps application when its maps and directions are worse than Google Maps.

But it makes sense. Apple doesn’t want to be beholden to another company—especially a direct competitor—for something so integral to their devices.

Barack Obama explicitly supported gay marriage in 1996:

In a 1996 questionnaire filled out for a Chicago gay and lesbian newspaper, then called Outlines, Obama came out clearly in favor of gay marriage, which he has opposed on the public record throughout his short career in national politics.

“I favor legalizing gay marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages,” Obama wrote in the typed, signed, statement.

Here’s the narrative the administration has created: President Obama used to believe that, in line with his religious beliefs, that marriage is between a man and woman, homosexuals should be able to have civil unions, but his views “evolved” until he decided that no, “marriage” should not be restricted to heterosexuals.

Unless the president’s views changed after 1996, when he said he’d “fight” efforts to prohibit gay marriages, and then changed again suddenly, that’s simply a fiction created by the administration. The reality is 16 years ago, when it was far from popular, the president believed gay marriages should be legal, but changed his public position to be a politically-viable candidate. And now that changing his public position again is in the interest of his campaign, and especially since Biden forced the campaign’s hand, the president decided to affirm his support for gay marriage.¹

Of course, biting your tongue and keeping quiet on your true beliefs is a staple for politicians. But Obama was supposed to bring change to Washington, a new kind of candidate who didn’t deal with such cynicism and calculation. And, worse, the administration’s narrative has been that this was a change-of-heart for the president, something he came to believe after considering it heavily, and the views of his wife and daughters. Which makes this all the more cynical: they’re covering the president’s all-too-political opposition to gay marriage in the past, and sudden conversion now, with a story about how he just couldn’t keep that belief any more because he realized it’s wrong.

No. He believed it was wrong, and kept it anyway.

1. But not his support, it’s worth noting, for doing anything about it on the federal level. He believes marriage is a state issue, despite the Defense of Marriage Act, while he also apparently believes marijuana is a federal issue that must be enforced by the federal government. Being coherent isn’t worth much in Washington, I guess. [↩]

Creative director Kash Sree:

I haven’t done anything I like yet. I say this with students. Look at your work, and imagine your enemy is showing you this ad. “Oh, you think that’s good? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it.” I tend to treat my work like it was my enemy, so I can be hard on it, and sometimes I’m too hard on it, but it helps me keep some perspective.

James Montgomerie:

I think this highlights two things that many other organisations would do well to learn. First, what you have is what it is, it’s not the effort that was put into it. If it’s not worth keeping, it’s not worth keeping. Second, if you want the best results, you need to give good people the room to start over without feeling like they are failing.

Building lasting organizations that can repeatedly build great products—and the right products—is difficult for reasons like this. You have to learn how to build this into your organization.

(Via Buzz Andersen.)

President Obama now supports same-sex marriage.

Why do we need government to define marriage for us to begin with?

Steve Yelvington on how newspaper should be thinking about their future:

You want profit margins? Look for scarcity.

“News” is everywhere, and it’s free. Entertainment is plentiful and cheap. Context, meaning, convenience, and good stories aren’t.