Re-Blogging Friday: Bits about the economy, education and design

• Alright, I don't quite remember how I got to this post but judging from the favicon and URL it seems to be from a guy called "Rick" wanting to get elected for the federal Conservative party: http://voterick.com/wordpress/?p=161. I checked this out because I had the post where I was talking about the way the politicians affect the economy and the discussion in the comments went to how much knowledge of economics our politicians have. Rick's blog post is about the other side of this, the voters' ability to understand economic policies. I must say that I do not think that the voters are that clueless about their economy (really, most people know what a deficit is!) but I do agree that with better knowledge we can make better decisions.
  
• Education Futures and Education 2.0 are blogs that really fascinate me. Education Futures has this tremendous article on what they call "Education 3.0". It is actually part of a series of posts so I suggest you also check out their homepage.
  
• Education 2.0 (@fmeichel's blog) has a post about the value of design and beauty within the economy. I had the idea that, from an architectural perspective, beauty could be seen as an intrinsic value to a project but they make the point that it also has monetary value as well, which makes sense.
  
• From another singularity website, KurzweilAI.net, we have the prediction that universities will become irrelevant in the next 20 years. Their point comes from the fact that the information will be readily available online. I think that they are missing the fact that going to college is as much a social endeavor (networking, bonding activities) as it is an academic one.
  
• Not a blog, but here is a link to the twitter search page for "Stephen Hawking". If you didn't know, he was rushed to a hospital earlier this week due to a chest infection but is expected to make a full recovery. I wish him well.