"It was the most mediocre of times, it was the worst of times"
Penny Herscher, CEO of FirstRain and formerly of Cadence Design Systems, has written “A Tale of Two Californias” for the Huffington Post. In California in April, she writes, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." Despite a state-wide jobless rate of 11%, she says, Silicon Valley chugged along at (only?!) 8.3%, which indeed does look good in contrast to the 26.9% rate she cites for Imperial County.
“It’s too easy to forget how close the poorest communities are to the hubbub of the tech world where Facebook raises $200M and NEA raises over $2B for it’s new fund,” she writes. “High-end wine stores still do well, and you still can’t get a table at the Woodside Village Pub without a reservation.”
That may be, although even in Silicon Valley it wouldn’t seem to be “the best of times,” despite the good news for Facebook and NEA. But Dickens didn’t write “It was the most mediocre of times, it was the worst of times.”
So what to do about those suffering the worst of times? Herscher’s recommendation: “Now, more than ever, is the time to pay attention to your charitable donations and to give to the communities that support the most vulnerable in our society…. When you are approached by a friend to give to the nonprofits trying to help, please give.”
Commenter “patmoore” objects: “It is time to stop with the privatization of the social safety net.” Herscher responds, “You are idealistic and right—and I believe not enough people get involved in demanding change in our laws from our political leaders—but in the meantime real people also need help to survive through the time that it will take to change our country.”
Whatever state or country you are living in now, it’s probaboy not “the best of times,” and Herscher is offering good advice.
Momoko commented:
The complaints about the batetry in the iPhone has not so much been about the actual talk time, but rather that since it's built-in there's no way to simply pop in a fresh batetry if you're a heavy talker in the same way you can with other phones.The fact that they omit several 3G smart phones from the chart (who just happen to have better batetry times) and also crop 50% off the charts to make a ~40% difference appear as a 200% difference is probably just because they discovered their incorrect claim that the MBP was the fastest at running Vista brought them a gazillion page hits and no PC World is hoping for the same once more.
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