Today is off to a
Today is off to a good start. I noticed that the lilac bushes in my backyard are starting to bloom.
Friends and finances in 21st century America: "
Friends and finances in 21st century America: "More friends and acquaintances are now finding themselves at different points on the financial spectrum, scholars and sociologists say, thanks to broad social changes like meritocracy-based higher education, diversity in the workplace and a disparity of incomes among professions."
On the teevee
I'm going to be on Attack of the Show on G4 TV this afternoon/evening. The show airs live at 7pm ET/4pm PT. So check your local listings and watch me be awkward and make mistakes in real-time (kinda like what I do on kottke.org already).
Update: Well, that wasn't so bad. The show's barely been over for 20 minutes and Matt already has a torrent of the segment up on his site. Meg and Lia took pictures. Thanks, guys.
Bhutan's measurement of Gross National Happiness and
Bhutan's measurement of Gross National Happiness and how that idea has spread to other countries.
A list of the top one articles
A list of the top one articles by Neal Pollack about how sportswriters should stop writing about the NBA MVP race and, oh yeah, lists of stuff are dumb:
Sportswriters and pundits, on the other hand, are treating the MVP race with the gravitas of a presidential election. That's because they make up the Electoral College. When they're debating who's going to win the award, they're not really talking about who they think the best player is; they're talking about whom they should pick as the best player. It's the ultimate circle-jerk of sports-guy self-regard.
Book design competition results
The AIGA has posted their 50 Books/50 Covers selections from 2007. It's worth fighting through the stupid Flash interface to check out these covers (click "View the 365:AIGA Year in..." and then on "Book design"). The covers are on display in NYC until 11/26/2008. (via book design review)
So far, the response to
So far, the response to the "redesign" has been about 50/50: some want the old design back while some like the new version. Pretty much what I expected.
Shatner and Ben Folds Five on Conan
I caught William Shatner singing with Ben Folds Five on Conan last night. Well, singing really isn't the right word. It was more like he was talking over music...on the bridge of the Enterprise.
Sadly, Conan did not ask him if he's serious about his singing. Darn darn.
Thoughts from my first day of work
1. I miss my iBook.
2. But I also missed Homesite. For my purposes, BBEdit is usable, but HomeSite kicks its ass all over the place.
3. Where to start with Outlook. I got so used to the many fantastic features of Entourage that Outlook (at least the version I'm using here) is almost unusable.
4. Why is the CTRL key all the way over there?
5. But damn, this Pentium 4 is fast. The iBook is downright pokey in comparison. Apple, your low-end notebooks should be 1GHz+...what's the hold-up?
5a. Ok, enough about the computer stuff.
5. My daily commute goes through Grand Central Station. I love Grand Central. Expect pictures at some point.
6. I am bad with names. I've forgotten all but three of the names of my new co-workers...I have only so many slots in my short term memory. Many weeks of "hey...you there..." to follow.
7. First day excitement and nervous energy dissipates by the afternoon, resulting in an afternoon crash into near-sleep. (Hearty lunch of soup may also have contributed to this.)
So, yeah, I got a new job. And this is probably the last you'll hear of it because work is one of the few things I don't talk about here. Postings may be light (and email replies will be really light) as I get adjusted to the new routine.
The joy of good bread
It's hard to believe, but I think we've discovered the best bakery in Paris right across the street from our apartment. I've inadvertantly become a connoisseur of pain au chocolats (chocolate croissants) and the Boulangerie Malineau sells the best I've ever had...and only 0,90 €. Their bagettes are top-notch as well, better than anything available in San Francisco at a third of the price.
Julie and Julia trailer
The trailer for Julie and Julia is out, based on the blog and book of the same name.
I can't figure out if Meryl Streep is almost nailing her Julia Child impression or completely blowing it. Also, Streep is ~5'7"....I don't know what they're doing in the movie to make her look so tall, but it doesn't work.
Update: Michael Ruhlman has seen the movie and has positive things to say about it.
Wow! The charges against Kobe Bryant were
Wow! The charges against Kobe Bryant were dropped because "the sole victim at this time is unable to go forward". Read Bryant's odd apology. I wonder what the real story is here...I hope she didn't bow out due to any pressure or because she was making it up. Either way, what a mess.
MetaFilter's doing a unique fundraiser for Creative
MetaFilter's doing a unique fundraiser for Creative Commons (with Dropcash!)...they've taken two annoying MeFi users and put their banishment up to a vote...first person to get $500 pledged against them gets banned for a week.
Tom Standage says bottled water is "bad
Tom Standage says bottled water is "bad to the last drop". It's more expensive than gasoline, doesn't taste any better, and isn't any safer.
The Internet Revolution has Little to do with Technology
The Internet Revolution has Little to do with Technology. A kid watching TV is "unlikely to ever be involved in the production of any television" but that's not so with the internet.
The walking wounded
During our almost-three weeks in Asia, I suffered some gastrointestinal discomfort from too much soda in a bag and then a weird neck injury where I twisted it the wrong way and it just hurt really bad (and now I can't really look at anything that's not directly in front of me), while Meg sliced her foot open on some glass and got sick (not the bird flu...probably). All this is in addition to our tired & sore feet from three weeks of hardcore walking.
Then this evening we're strolling to dinner and I smacked my head into a metal box hanging off of a pole I totally didn't see (the pole or the box...see my head motion problems above), which actually knocked me off my feet and flat onto my back on the pavement. Luckily, everyone within a 25-foot radius heard/saw this[1] and came right over to see that I was OK (I was), which kinda made it worse because of the embarrassment factor but was also very nice because everyone was so friendly/concerned. The gentleman whose slab of pavement I had horizonatally deposited myself onto produced a tissue and a green liquid of some sort, which I dabbed near-but-not-on the welt on my head just to be polite because of my concern re: the liquid's antiseptic qualities. After I collected my wits, Meg and the shopkeeper brushed me off, got me standing, and we continued onto dinner, a little slower and more in the middle of the sidewalk. I've gotta say, as much as I've enjoyed our trip, I'm happy to be heading home to some familiarity.
[1] The sound that a crowd makes when something strange/bad happens in its vicinity is univerally recognizable no matter the language or culture.
A New Sheriff in Town?
Attributor, a copyright monitoring service, launched today. It's currently available only to enterprise subscribers, but they'll be launching a service for small publishers and bloggers next year. Of special note is the (purported) use to which publishers want to put the service—link credits:
Attributor splits up the world between sites that exhibit extensive copying (more than half of an article, for instance, and just some copying. It shows which sites have linked back to the original source and which have not. "Often, that's all they want—a link," says Brock. Below is a typical dashboard view of what a customer would see. In this case, the content from People.com is being analyzed (based on its feed). Of the 265,000 matches, 103,000 don't link back to People.com.)
(via techcrunch)
Saw Magnolia again yesterday. It
Saw Magnolia again yesterday. It was just as good the second time...if not better.
Which of the following works would you
Which of the following works would you choose to be lost, if only three could be saved: Michelangelo's Pieta, Shakespeare's Hamlet, Mozart's Don Giovanni, or Einstein's 1905 paper on relativity? Not so sure I agree with the conclusion here...surely Einstein's paper stands as a work unto itself, apart from the discovery it contains. Plus, maybe someone else (or a group of someone elses) wouldn't have given us relativity as elegantly and usefully as Einstein did. (via 3qd)
PDF (2.3 Mb) of nifty infoviz graphs that
PDF (2.3 Mb) of nifty infoviz graphs that show different improvisation styles for jazz greats Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley, and John Coltrane. More here. Reminds me a little of Tufte's sparklines.
Pixar's John Carter of Mars
An upcoming film from Pixar: Andrew "Finding Nemo" Stanton's adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars. As Binary Bonsai notes, this is a bit of a departure for Pixar, what with all the sexuality and violence.
Favorite posts of 2008
As an appetizer before my annual best links of the year post (coming Monday, I hope), I put together a list of kottke.org posts from 2008 that I liked the most and that may be worth a look if you missed them the first time around.
In January, I liveblogged the Mythbusters episode about the airplane on the conveyor belt. I still get email telling me that the plane won't take off.
Time merge media is a collection of video and photographic works which display multiple time periods at once.
A collection of single serving sites, single-page sites like Barack Obama Is My New Bicycle, Khaaan!, and Is Lost A Repeat?
A liveblog of the Oscars written without actually watching them.
A post about the end of The Wire.
In March, kottke.org turned 10 years old and I collected a bunch of the previous designs together.
One of my all-time favorite threads on kottke.org: saying words wrong on purpose.
My favorite graph which doubles as a picture of my son.
Stanley Kubrick, Pablo Ferro, and Arthur Lipsett.
A photo of Ollie attempting to walk in Turbine Hall in the Tate Modern.
A collection of early movie reviews, including one by Maxim Gorky from 1896.
Survival tips for the Middle Ages, another great thread about how a contemporary person might fend for themselves in 1000 AD.
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is a book printed in 1499 but which looks quite contemporary.
The most beautiful suicide, a photo of Evelyn Hale taken by Robert Wiles a few minutes after she jumped from the Empire State Building
A pair of posts about the Metropolitan Life Tower: the tower's past and future and an unusual death that occurred in the building shortly after it opened.
A collection of election maps from the 2008 US Presidential election.
And finally, the opening space scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey with chickens from The Muppet Show clucking the Blue Danube waltz.
The preservation of jazz history and the iTunes Music Store
The preservation of jazz history and the iTunes Music Store. What we're losing in the mp3ing of all music.
On sickness
I've discovered that the only good thing about being sick is watching all 10 episodes of the excellent Band of Brothers series back-to-back for ~10 straight hours. I'm so ready to be better...before I try something stupid today like a trilogy marathon (Matrix, Star Wars IV-VI, or Lord of the Rings (extended version [yikes!])) or watching the entire 3rd season of Six Feet Under.
Smart blocks
From the recent TED conference, a demo of Siftables, blocks that are smart. What I find most interesting about Siftables is that the blocks form a computer that doesn't need instructions but it doesn't seem like a computer at all, i.e. the Holy Grail of computing. (via peterme)
Popular searches on kottke.org in
Popular searches on kottke.org in the past two months: dog, dogfood, test, sex, kottke, design, food, flash, fuck, silkscreen, magnolia, meg, and tivo.
Weird searches on kottke.org in the past two months: asstastic, i like cake, bratwurst, chutzpah, will to love, motley crue videos, booty shaking, me pants, butt cheese, cow booger, and sexier than a pork sausage.
Urban birdcalls
On my way back to the office after lunch, I heard a whistle from far down the street. A second later, I heard another. Whistle after whistle sounded, each closer than the next. It was only when I saw a man in uniform checking the parking meters down the block that I also noticed several whistling men heading for their not-so-legally parked delivery trucks.
Inventing the past
As stated previously, I love this kind of thing:
If you were to travel 2000 years into the past, how useful would you be in jumpstarting technological advancements? This 10 question quiz will help you figure out your technological usefulness.
I got a 6/10, which is probably more than I deserved...the invention of "new" technologies is not multiple choice. I wouldn't have the faintest clue where to begin in actually making concrete or steel from scratch. (via ettagirl)
Update: Phew, I'll just wear this shirt when I go back. (thx, runyon)
How to clean up maple syrup
Since my post about the maple syrup spill, my inbox has been buzzing with a number of different techniques that people have sent in for cleaning up maple syrup. As a service to future Google searchers or those of you that may have just spilled maple syrup all over the place, here are several of those techniques:
- if you spill syrup, or drop a raw egg, the trick is to pour a bunch of salt all over the spill (kosher or table, whatever you have), then leave it for a minute or so. the salt will soak up most of spill, keep it from spreading and make it much more manageable for cleanup.
- pour a bag of flour onto it and walk away for a while. come back with the dustpan and a spatula, scoop up the non-liquid mixture, and all you have left is a small sticky patch. buff to a shine
- Freeze it, and then you can break it off. Alternately (and easier, heh), you can take a wet dish cloth, put it on the syrup and use an iron on the dish towel (the maple effectively gets "sucked" right up).
- before you grab the broom (uh, you didn't really sweep syrup into a dustpan, did you?) find two hard, flat items (i.e. a dough scraper and a spatula) and put them at opposite 45 degree angles to your catastrophe, sweeping together until they are flush. voila, syrup squeegee. also works as a party trick with two cardboard coasters when someone spills honey mustard dressing on the table.
- Place a large piece of wax paper directly on top of the puddle of syrup so you get a good stick. With a spatula or paint scraper or whatever you've got handy, begin to flip the wax paper over by spooning the syrup onto it. Pretty soon you will have transfered all the syrup onto the wax paper and you can dispose of it quickly *and* easily. (You might even be able to use a paper grocery bag or newspaper for this.)
- Liquid nitrogen, and a chisel. Quickness depends on wether you keep liquid nitrogen around. Easy depends on how brittle the floor is. Fun however is pretty much assured. Or at least as much fun as cleaning ever gets.
- For future reference, pour some diet coke on it - the carbonation cuts right through and is a great cleaning aid (make sure you're getting the liquid carbed part and not the fizzy, useless head). In all seriousness, a pour from a can yields less fizz than from a bottle.
- the easiest way to clean up syrup (or anything sticky, for that matter) is to freeze it. take out some ice cube trays, or drop a bunch of cubes into a metal container along the lines of an 8x8 cake pan, then cover the pan with a dish towel to insulate. come back in an hour, and the syrup, while not frozen, should be much more manageable.
- Your mention of the sticky maple syrup kind of taking over reminded me of "Curious George gets a Medal" which I've been reading to kids here lately. Trying to pen a letter, George spills ink on the floor and in the process of trying to clean it up ends up with a room full of suds. Next time you find yourself in the situation be sure to borrow the pump from the farmer down the street (and of course you'll need a cow to help you pull it home).
Thanks to Sarah, Tim, Jeremy, Eric, Josh, Yi, Rachel, Samuel, and Jack for sending in their tips. Who knew that my readers knew so much about cleaning up spilled maple syrup?
Huge rooftop farm in Brooklyn
But for some New Yorkers, a vegetable-filled rooftop is far more conceivable and practical than moving to the country. Novak agrees. "When these farmers go in and lecture these inner city kids about dairy farming in upstate New York, it's in one ear and out the other. But I can tell them, I have two farms in the city," and they can take the subway and come help on the weekends.
Update: More on urban farming.
My roommate got his new
My roommate got his new Surround Sound system installed yesterday, so we had to try it out by watching Iron Giant. The new setup definitely kicks ass and Iron Giant was just as wonderful the second time around. Do yourself a big favor and rent this movie when you get a chance.
Top 50 photo series from the 2006 Critical Mass
Top 50 photo series from the 2006 Critical Mass competition. Some good stuff in there if you poke around a bit...2005 and 2004 too. (via ffffound!)
Tech details for Wall-E
Interesting article on the genesis, sound design, and cinematography of Wall-E.
"We wanted it to have the feeling that it had actually been filmed," says Morris. Using subtle details such as barrel distortion and lens flare, gave Wall.E the feel of the 70mm sci-fi films of the Seventies. For the first time Pixar also brought Academy Award-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins and special-effects don Dennis Muren onboard. "We wanted to get the nuance of a live action film, and actually put mistakes in with zooms and framing to give it a more immediate feel."
Deakins is well-known for working with the Coen Brothers on many of their films. (thx, brian)
A new interpretation of Stonehenge, from a British gynecologist
A new interpretation of Stonehenge, from a British gynecologist. If you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Interview with Errol Morris from the April 2004 Believer
Interview with Errol Morris from the April 2004 Believer. And since when does Morris have a weblog?
"If you see something suspicious, welcome to
"If you see something suspicious, welcome to how New York got started." (via gothamist)
Sine-wave speech
Sine-wave speech -- artificially degraded speech that sounds like old Doctor Who sound effects -- can be difficult to understand but becomes clear once the listener knows what to listen for.
Listening to the sine-wave speech sound again produces a very different percept of a fully intelligible spoken sentence. This dramatic change in perception is an example of "perceptual insight" or pop-out. We have argued that this form of pop-out is an example of a top-down perceptual process produced by higher-level knowledge and expectations concerning sounds that can potentially be heard as speech.
(thx, tom)
The Best American Essays 2007
I've had this damn thing up in a browser tab for literally months1 and finally got around to reading it, "this damn thing" being editor David Foster Wallace's introduction to The Best American Essays 2007. In it, Wallace describes his role in compiling the essays collection as that of The Decider. As in, he Deciders what goes into the book according to his subjective view and not necessarily because the essays are "Best", "American", or even "Essays".
Which, yes, all right, entitles you to ask what 'value' means here and whether it's any kind of improvement, in specificity and traction, over the cover's 'Best.' I'm not sure that it's finally better or less slippery than 'Best,' but I do know it's different. 'Value' sidesteps some of the metaphysics that makes pure aesthetics such a headache, for one thing. It's also more openly, candidly subjective: since things have value only to people, the idea of some limited, subjective human doing the valuing is sort of built right into the term. That all seems tidy and uncontroversial so far -- although there's still the question of just what this limited human actually means by 'value' as a criterion.
One thing I'm sure it means is that this year's BAE does not necessarily comprise the twenty-two very best-written or most beautiful essays published in 2006. Some of the book's essays are quite beautiful indeed, and most are extremely well written and/or show a masterly awareness of craft (whatever exactly that is). But others aren't, don't, especially - but they have other virtues that make them valuable. And I know that many of these virtues have to do with the ways in which the pieces handle and respond to the tsunami of available fact, context, and perspective that constitutes Total Noise. This claim might itself look slippery, because of course any published essay is a burst of information and context that is by definition part of 2007's overall roar of info and context. But it is possible for something to be both a quantum of information and a vector of meaning. Think, for instance, of the two distinct but related senses of 'informative.' Several of this year's most valuable essays are informative in both senses; they are at once informational and instructive. That is, they serve as models and guides for how large or complex sets of facts can be sifted, culled, and arranged in meaningful ways - ways that yield and illuminate truth instead of just adding more noise to the overall roar.
Although there are some differences between what Wallace and I consider valuable, the Decidering process detailed in his essay is a dead-on description of what I do on kottke.org every day. I guess you could say that it resonated with me as valuable, so much so that were I editing an end-of-the-year book comprised of the most interesting links from 2007, I would likely include it, right up front.
Oh, and I got a kick out of the third footnote, combined here with the associated main text sentences:
I am acting as an evaluative filter, winnowing a very large field of possibilities down to a manageable, absorbable Best for your delectation. Thinking about this kind of Decidering is interesting in all kinds of different ways. For example, from the perspective of Information Theory, the bulk of the Decider's labor actually consists of excluding nominees from the final prize collection, which puts the Decider in exactly the position of Maxwell's Demon or any other kind of entropy-reducing info processor, since the really expensive, energy-intensive part of such processing is always deleting/discarding/resetting.
My talk at Ars Electronica 2006 on the topic of simplicity touched on similar themes and the main point was that the more stuff I can sift through (and throw away), the better the end result can be.
From this it follows that the more effective the aggregator is at effectively determining what the group thinks, the better the end result will be. But somewhat paradoxically, the quality of the end result can also improve as the complexity of the group increases. In constructing kottke.org, something that I hope is a simple, coherent aggregation of the world rushing past me, this complexity is my closest ally. Keeping up with so many diverse, independent, decentralized sources makes my job as an aggregator difficult -- reading 300 sites a day (plus all the other stuff) is no picnic -- but it makes kottke.org much better than it would be if I only read Newsweek and watched Hitchcock movies. As artists, designers, and corporations race to embrace simplicity, they might do well to widen their purview and, in doing so, embrace the related complexity as well.
Welcome the chaos because there's lots of good stuff to be found therein. I also attempted to tie the abundance of information (what Wallace refers to as "Total Noise") and the simplification process of editing/aggregating/blogging into Claude Shannon's definition of information and information theory but failed due to time contraints and a lack of imagination. It sounded good in my head though.
Anyway, if you're wondering what I do all day, the answer is: throwing stuff out. kottke.org is not so much what's on the site as what is not chosen for inclusion.
[1] In actual fact, I closed that browser tab weeks ago and pasted the URL into a "must-read items" text file I maintain. But it's been open in a browser tab in my mind for months, literally. That and I couldn't resist putting a footnote in this entry, because, you know, DFW. ↩
New book by Gladwell: Outliers
The Amazon page for Malcolm Gladwell's new book is up. From here, we learn that the full title is "Outliers: Why Some People Succeed and Some Don't" and what the cover looks like. Here's the description:
In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers" -- the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.
And an excerpt from the Little, Brown catalog:
Outliers is a book about success. It starts with a very simple question: what is the difference between those who do something special with their lives and everyone else? In Outliers, we're going to visit a genius who lives on a horse farm in Northern Missouri. We're going to examine the bizarre histories of professional hockey and soccer players, and look into the peculiar childhood of Bill Gates, and spend time in a Chinese rice paddy, and investigate the world's greatest law firm, and wonder about what distinguishes pilots who crash planes from those who don't. And in examining the lives of the remarkable among us -- the brilliant, the exceptional and the unusual -- I want to convince you that the way we think about success is all wrong.
This doesn't sound exactly what I had heard his new book was going to be.
A few days ago, New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell noted that he's almost finished with his third book. I've learned that the subject of this book is the future of the workplace with subtopics of education and genius.
I guess if you flip those around, that describes Outliers marginally well. According to Amazon, the book is due on November 18, 2008. (thx, kyösti)
Wear Palettes takes the outfits showcased in
Wear Palettes takes the outfits showcased in street fashion photos snapped by The Sartorialist and makes color palettes. 1500 different palettes so far.
It will take you literally hours to
It will take you literally hours to get through this list of the 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time (video often included). (thx, miguel)
Mukesh Ambani's expensive house
Mukesh Ambani, the fifth richest man in the world, is building the most expensive single family residence ever, a $2 billion -- yes, BILLION -- 27-story skyscraper in downtown Mumbai.
Atop six stories of parking lots, Antilla's living quarters begin at a lobby with nine elevators, as well as several storage rooms and lounges. Down dual stairways with silver-covered railings is a large ballroom with 80% of its ceiling covered in crystal chandeliers. It features a retractable showcase for pieces of art, a mount of LCD monitors and embedded speakers, as well as stages for entertainment. The hall opens to an indoor/outdoor bar, green rooms, powder rooms and allows access to a nearby "entourage room" for security guards and assistants to relax.
Photos here. In fairness, the place sounds like a combination corporate HQ with an incorporated family living space, but still. Not noted in the article is the expensive laboratory-grade scanning electron microscope that Ambani uses to locate his teensy penis, for which the 27-story house is compensation.
Satugo is a fun little camera that
Satugo is a fun little camera that you can throw in the air or bounce to get some unusual photos. Love the pull-string for the quick but steady shots.
Moneyball movie back on again
Let's take a look at who's still alive here. Brad Pitt: yes. Aaron Sorkin: yes. Steven Soderbergh: no. Expected soon: Michael Bay, Alan Ball, Sam Mendes, McG, and M Night Shamalamadingdong. (thx, david)
Hobble skirt
The history of the hobble skirt.
The term 'hobble skirt' came into popular use in the early 1910s, when a European fashion trend started by French designer Paul Poiret introduced long skirts that were narrow at the hem, thus 'hobbling' the wearer. Some attribute one of Poiret's inspiration to Mrs. Hart Berg, the first American woman to join the Wright Brothers in air. To keep her skirts from flying out of control while airborne, she tied a rope around them below the knees (Katherine Wright, sister of the flight innovators the Wright brothers, also did the same shortly afterwards).
For a short while, the tighter the skirt, the more fashionable it was. This also brought about accessories such as the hobble garter (you can see one in tbe PBS series The Manor House) designed to limit the wearer's stride so that she would not cause the skirt to rip. This trend died shortly afterwards due to the impracticality of such a garment, particularly with the introduction of cars (the skirts making getting in and out of one a bit of an adventure).
Bill Cunningham casually mentioned the hobble skirt in a recent On the Street feature about pencil skirts.
Opening new windows?
New poll: Links to sites outside of kottke.org open in a new window. What are your thoughts on this? (view the results)
Boy, are those poll results ugly. I'm glad that ArsDigita finally let their results table expand and collapse with the width of the user's template, but the huge fonts are ridiculous. This could be done without tables and be a lot clearer, more readable, and make more efficient use of screen real estate. Shame, shame.
Sam Anderson articulates his hatred for Kobe
Sam Anderson articulates his hatred for Kobe Bryant. "Since he's a Jordan-like talent, Kobe clearly thinks that he's entitled to the Jordan mythology, but he doesn't have any of Jordan's charisma or imagination."
Disney's Eisner describes Pixar's computerized human characters as "pretty pathetic"
Disney's Eisner describes Pixar's computerized human characters as "pretty pathetic". Steve Jobs retorts sarcastically: "Our films don't stack up to 'Atlantis,' 'Emperor's New Groove' or 'Treasure Planet.'"
Documentary on hacking: The Secret History of
Documentary on hacking: The Secret History of Hacking. Features Woz, Capt. Crunch, and Kevin Mitnick.
Human slingshot video. I so want a
Human slingshot video. I so want a four-wheeler and a big backyard! (via cyn-c)
Advice for Yahoo!
Dave Pell's advice for Yahoo!: Do What You're Great At.
Yahoo is grown up. They know what they're great at. They are great at news. When it comes to news, they absolutely crush Google. So here's a whacky idea my Yahoo friends. Why not define yourself by your news services and the other stuff where you destroy the competition?
Apple announces the Harper's Special Edition iPod
Apple announces the Harper's Special Edition iPod. "Number of media legends who came together to create this exciting new Apple product: 2. Chance that literary-minded American consumers will find this new iPod impossible to resist: 1 in 1."