A craigslist for op-ed. Talk about a flow machine.
Archives for June 2006
June 30, 2006
Where’s the….
Went to iron a shirt for tonight’s event. It turns out I don’t own an iron and ironing board anymore. Put it on the list. I bet there’s a bunch of stuff like that. Update: Drove over there and the parking lot was surprisingly empty. Hadn’t really considered the situation where I’d be one of […]
June 29, 2006
Narrative Selection Bias™
Doug and I had an interesting exchange in the comments that’s worth bringing to the front page. I pulled a quote from a blog post and out of context the quote had a different meaning. A reader could get the wrong idea. So this is a formal disclosure statement that Notio is extremely biased. I […]
June 28, 2006
An Absolutely Honorable Choice
The Happy Feminist: But I will say it here, loud and proud. I work full-time for a living and I will continue working full-time for a living. I will work full-time for a living if I have children. I will work full-time for a living if my husband gets a $500,000 a year job. I […]
June 28, 2006
Internet Economics 2006
Would you like to tune into a wavelength describing state-of-the-art Internet business models? If so, Jason Calacanis has what you want. You see, Battelle’s model is predicated on Rafat and Om deciding to stay in phase two or keep their relationship with Federated in phase three–which they are obviously not willing to do. That’s why […]
June 27, 2006
The World Now Has a Lot More State
Another good Paul Graham essay, recently delivered at RailsConf. Almost everyone makes the mistake of treating ideas as if they were indications of character rather than talent– as if having a stupid idea made you stupid. There’s a huge weight of tradition advising us to play it safe. “Even a fool is thought wise if […]
June 25, 2006
Truly Making a Difference
Dave Pollard often gives detailed and passionate voice for my intuitive and information-overloaded thoughts. Today is no different. So progressives need to acknowledge that, unless they devote most of their time and energy to activities other than electing and lobbying politicians, they will continue to accomplish nothing. Indeed, they will accomplish less than nothing, since […]
June 24, 2006
Will Desktop Affordances be Useful?
Computer technology demos are always interesting, but sometimes you wonder if it would actually be useful in real life. And the opposite is true: Blogging doesn’t demo well, people have a hard time understanding why, but it turns out to be valuable. This week’s impressive demo is BumpTop, showing “physically-based casual interfaces and pen-centric interactions.” […]
June 23, 2006
Notable Quotes
From this week’s New Yorker: Fine Tuning: Reassessing Radiohead Radiohead has much in common with the Grateful Dead, including passionate fans who follow the band from city to city, trade bootleg recordings of shows, puzzle out the meanings of the band’s cryptic lyrics, and (in Boston, at least) dance badly while smoking expensive-smelling weed. But […]
June 22, 2006
Finally, an Innovation in Newspapers
Great idea from Guardian called G24: …which allows readers to download and print out a rolling version of the newspaper that is updated every 15 minutes. G24 is an eight- to 12-page PDF covering either general news, international news, economics, sport or media stories. The new product is aimed at the lunchtime and evening commuter […]
June 21, 2006
Choices Have Consequences
The title says it all. Was just thinking that every choice we make means some things are more likely to happen, and some things are less likely to happen. Yes, I have embedded a probabilistic worldview into that statement, but the important point is that we have choices to make and those choices have consequences […]
June 16, 2006
Squeezing the Middle Class
An as-usual well-researched article from the Economist: The rich, the poor and the growing gap between them. The one truly continuous trend over the past 25 years has been towards greater concentration of income at the very top. The scale of this shift is not visible from most popular measures of income or wages, as […]
June 16, 2006
[Local] Dairy Day
Saturday is Dairy Day at the Co-op. Free food samples, hayrides, music, and big news this year: sunshine! I’ll be there around lunch for an hour or two with my board member badge on. It’s a great community event.
June 16, 2006
From the Mouths of Babes
What do 1st and 2nd grade students wish for? Mostly the same things you and I do. Excerpt: * I wish thar was mor peas in the world * I wish pepol wloud be treted farly * I wish evey body could go to scool * I wish to have more fun * I wish […]
June 12, 2006
Making Money on the Internet (cont.)
Video blogging is hot. Robert Scoble is leaving Microsoft for PodTech.net (whose servers are so overloaded they can’t even load a homepage). And then, he mentions this: Yesterday I was talking with Amanda Congdon, one of the co-founders of Rocketboom. Her videoblog is now seeing about 300,000 viewers a day. That’s, what, a year or […]
June 12, 2006
Lunchtime Reading
As a service to my loyal readers, here is a fun instructional for your work-dodging moments this Monday. HOWTO make the perfect fruit salad and get laid, by Mark Pilgrim, as the Sarcastic Gourmet.
June 11, 2006
Love, Taste, and Sublime Dignity
Grateful Dead keyboard player Vince Welnick died June 2. John Perry Barlow: When Jerry Garcia died, Vince was alone among us in his wretched sense of utter loss. He attempted suicide about six months later, thereby 86ing himself from any further creative interaction with what was left of the Grateful Dead. As a culture, we […]
June 11, 2006
Fire Dance With Me
The CCMA party was held at The Compound in Atlanta. Weird place. Had fun. The tent had fans, but acted like a greenhouse, so it was pretty hot in there. The indoor area had A/C, but they left the doors open so it wasn’t that cool. Really loud; hard to talk. Kind of a weird […]
June 9, 2006
The Difference Between Heaven and Hell
I’m at the Consumer Cooperative Management Association conference in Atlanta. This morning Peter Couchman from the Midcounties Co-operative in England (near Oxford) presented a (probably well-known) parable during his keynote address. I paraphrase: There once was a highly developed Buddhist guru who had the ability to transport himself to any place in the universe. He […]