January 2009
29 posts
“… our desire to be original is actually a form of editing.”
– Tim Brown (via bloggedbybjorn)
The End of Solitude →
clivethompson:
A flawed but intriguing essay on the nature of solitude in the modern age. Intriguing, because he takes the typical complaint about modern social networking — i.e. that we’re all becoming narcissists, and competing to amass the hugest collection of faux-friends — and tips it on its side: The real problem, Deresiewicz argues, is that we’re becoming incapable of enjoying solitude....
The Plausible Me →
Laurent Haug writes about “publicy” or “the plausible me” which is the thing that we’re all enacting here on tumblr or twitter or any of the other umpteen social network services we use.
Now that you are back in the driver seat, you have your privacy back. Just of a different kind. You have built a space that could be called “publicy”, or “the plausible me”. It is...
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Something's broken
My new posts appear in the dashboard, and other people can see them because they’re being “liked” etc. But when I go to my actual URL I can only see posts from 22 Jan and earlier.
UPDATED AFTER 10 SECONDS: apparently posting this fixed my problem. Go figure.
“On top of that, letting a vehicle idle for more than 10 seconds wastes more fuel...”
– Anti-idling: Think of the children
I need some scientific proof of this so I can once and for all prove that I have been right in the argument about this that Ryan & I have been having for the entirety of our relationship. He is a big proponent of idling.
This is similar to the argument I had...
My tumblelog, 1 year ago today →
Seeing as Marco did it, I thought I would, too.
Exactly one year ago today, I:
Complained that the Tata Nano was suboptimally designed;
Noted that militants in Nigeria wanted George Clooney to be the mediator in their peace talks;
Said that Marco’s Instapaper was awesome; Nostrich’s Peacock Tail theme is also awesome;
Said that cell phone reception bars are essentially...
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Four Pimpin' Coupes
It’s 1989. You’re a big swinging dick, raking in the cash, selling short and learning to snort. Your girlfriends names are Krystelle and Mona and they both have big hair and even bigger shoulder pads. Your 911 is passe in the corporate car park since the mail boy picked one up cheap and the boys at the club are no longer impressed since the new Turbo came out. And last weekend Mona...
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Market meltdown kills three years of Super →
Tell me about it.
“Surgeons had assumed that doing well for patients was mostly about their skill....”
– Atul Gawande, Assocaite Professor at Harvard School of Health, on why the use of checklists in increasingly necessary in surgery. (via CounterNotions - Checklists: Why doesn’t everyone do it? which you should totally read.)
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Free the facts! - a set on Flickr by Dave Gray →
A lovely slideshow by Dave Gray about the remarkable situation that exists in academia where publicly funded research is locked away in journals that are only accessible if you, or your institution, pays the access fees. Free the facts! is a plea for more people to learn about open access journals and for them to agitate and promote the idea to whoever will listen.
“Jazz is about the moment you’re in. Being modern’s not about the future, it’s...”
– Frank Sinatra, talking to Bono about Miles Davis. (via Bono’s NYT Op-Ed Guest Column, Notes From the Chairman
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Next Actions: I finally get it
This year I’m re-doubling my efforts to really use GTD effectively. I’ve got tools I’m happy with and a workflow that seems like it will work, especially with practice. Now all I have to do is get my head around the actual doing.
(If you’re not down with the GTD, most of what follows will seems like glossolalia.)
Up until recently I thought that I had to next action...
Yep, I'm on Daytum →
“Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign...”
– Karl Popper. (via mills)
The four ways of creative cultivators →
Diego Rodriguez of IDEO writes about
four ways of leading [that] should help creativity and its children grow and flourish. Instead of trying to manage creativity, we must move to a model of leadership that’s all about cultivating it.
“The script is so poorly written that I feel sorry for the trees used to make the...”
– Review of Thomas and the Magic Railroad from Amazon. My 3.75 year old, on the other hand, likes it. If you have little kids who are Thomas fans, avoid making them aware of this movie, if only for your sanity.
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Woo! New theme! Griddle by the incomparable Heather Rivers.