Long Game

"The next generation of Office is here, and while it's not necessarily an essential upgrade for Office 2010 users, it's easily the best Office suite to date. Editing complicated financial spreadsheets has never been so semi-seamless! That said, with this particular $100-plus investment, you'll want to look before you leap. Whether you're opting for a straightforward Office 2013 installation or the multi-PC, cloud-connected ubiquity of an Office 365 subscription, there are four potentially crippling gotchas to consider before you plunk down your hard-earned cash. I've also identified a supposed gotcha that you can actually ignore entirely."

"Speed is one of those core competitive advantages that have long-term staying power. As Jeff Bezos would say, nobody is going to wake up 10 years from now and wish their application was slower. Investments in speed are going to pay dividends forever. Now for the secret sauce. Basecamp is so blazingly fast for two reasons:"

"In a paper published today by the prestigious journal, Nature Methods, biologists at the University of Luxembourg, Tampere University of Technology and the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, USA, have created the biggest family tree of human cell types."

"Across all media these days the information is far from accurate when it comes to the culture war waged against gun owners. The topic the other day on a Fox News program was Chicago's "gun problem." Of course everyone knows Chicago's problem is crime committed by thugs who disobey the law, but that didn't stop one woman from insisting "universal" background checks would cut down the number of guns on the city's streets."

"The identity of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing -- Chechen brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26 -- confirms several of our suspicions. From this profile, the simple nature of the attack, their efforts to rob a convenience store and their lack of an escape plan, we can conclude that they were what we refer to as grassroots militants. Despite being amateurs, such militants clearly still pose a significant threat."

"We are all Hayekians now. Specifically, the "we all" is not quite everyone. The "all" to which I'm referring is people of the internet-people who've grown up with the net and use it for a majority of their day-to-day activities. And, the "Hayekian" to which I'm referring is not his theories on capital, or the rule of law, but, specifically his vision of knowledge."

"A bipartisan group of eight leading U.S. senators on Wednesday officially filed the most comprehensive immigration reform bill since 1990, opening the door for the United States to address an issue that will help to shape the country's economic and demographic future. The bill links the issue of border security with that of immigration and will require the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to significantly ramp up its monitoring of the U.S. border over the next 10 years."

"Stratfor's methodology begins with a framework for understanding the world and applies methods of gathering and analyzing information. The combination allows us to produce dispassionate, accurate and actionable insight for our clients and subscribers."

"In Stratfor's weekly Naval Update Map, we track the approximate locations of U.S. fleet aircraft carriers and amphibious war ships. The map helps our analysts -- and customers -- decipher Washington's strategy and even predict looming conflicts."

"The "great stagnation" presents us with a great opportunity. It's easier than ever to opt-out of the income-maximizing rat-race and enjoy more leisure. If innovation has become increasingly marginal, then it's less costly to choose to be a "threshold earner," which Tyler Cowen defines as "someone who seeks to earn a certain amount of money and no more." If wages go up, Cowen says, a threshold earner will choose to work less or, I would add, choose work that's so personally fulfilling that it's indistinguishable from leisure."

"Everyone loves equality: equality of races, of ethnic groups, of sexual orientations, and so on. The problem is, however, that in geopolitics equality usually does not work very well. For centuries Europe had a rough equality between major states that is often referred to as the balance-of-power system. And that led to frequent wars. "

"Analysis: Law enforcement and government officials have already begun their investigation into the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings that killed three people and injured more than 170. The initial hours following any incident like the Boston attack are marked by a reaction to events: First responders treat the wounded and bring them to hospitals, explosive ordnance disposal teams hunt for additional devices -- several of which were reported in Boston soon after the attack -- and law enforcement begins to search the area for potential suspects."

"In 2010, economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff released a paper, "Growth in a Time of Debt." Their "main result is that...median growth rates for countries with public debt over 90 percent of GDP are roughly one percent lower than otherwise; average (mean) growth rates are several percent lower." Countries with debt-to-GDP ratios above 90 percent have a slightly negative average growth rate, in fact."

"If a monopolist did what the wireless carriers did as a group, neither the public nor government would stand for it. For our scrutiny and regulation of monopolists is well established-just ask Microsoft or the old AT&T. But when three or four firms pursue identical practices, we say that the market is "competitive" and everything is fine. To state the obvious, when companies act in parallel, the consumer is in the same position as if he were dealing with just one big firm. There is, in short, a major blind spot in our nation's oversight of private power, one that affects both consumers and competition."

"Analysis - Two years after taking power in Ivory Coast, Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara's efforts to pacify the country continue to be undermined by persistent unrest -- some of it perpetrated by elements of the president's own support base. Several recent attacks have also been attributed to supporters of former President Laurent Gbagbo, who was extradited to the International Criminal Court after contested elections in 2010. On April 12, protesters wearing army uniforms -- reportedly former members of the New Forces militia that fought to remove Gbagbo in 2011 -- disrupted traffic on the country's main north-south highway in the city of Bouake to demand payment for military service and integration into the government. Since taking office, Ouattara's regime has refashioned the New Forces as the Ivorian military -- now called the Republican Forces of Ivory Coast. Still, the government has faced frequent attacks, supposedly by Gbagbo loyalists, in Abidjan, other parts of southeastern Ivory Coast and west along the Liberian border. The attacks have targeted primarily government security patrols and outposts, such as an assault on a police station on the night of April 8 in Abidjan's Yopougon neighborhood. These incidents illustrate the breadth of discontent and the diversity of security risks in the fractured country. The president faces no immediate threat to his hold on power, but the lack of reconciliation in Ivory Coast -- especially its southern regions -- portends continued instability."

"Located on the North American continent, Canada is the world's second-largest country. Most of Canada is uninhabited wilderness, and Arctic temperatures make the northern territories inhospitable to large population centers."

Just play Hearts of Iron as Canada, and this issue will be un-overlookable.

"We write in response to Amrutha Sivakumar's March 19 article, "The Research Difference: How the University varies the value of faculty members." The report addresses the relative value of tenure-line and non-tenure-track faculty at the University, and Sivakumar presents several keen insights into the work of University lecturers."

"No matter how quietly you listen, nor how closely you stare you'll not hear them, nor see them with the naked eye. They're too small, too quiet. They are our microbiome, the trillions of microorganisms that make their homes inside and out of our bodies. They - we - are an ecosystem, with different bugs filling different niches, some helpful, some quietly parasitic, and others, well, others you do end up knowing about…"

"This post is by freelance science writer Gavin Hubbard. Gavin originally trained as a Medical Biochemist at the University of Surrey and spent over 10 years working in biotechnology, immunology and clincal trials. He writes both for industry and for a general audience, with a focus on health, immunology and pathology. He blogs at Sciencehubb.co.uk and can be found on twitter as @GavinHub"