Archives for July 2006

cmd-tab

Trivial Mac tip: I just figured out cmd-tab for application switching. It’s great. The default selection is the last app you used, so it’s easy to switch back and forth between two apps. You can arrow between any open apps, but the UI design to order them based on recency is brilliant.

Modern Business Realities

Lunchtime banter: You can buy better but you can’t pay more. This [$300] pen works as well as the cheap ones. We’re not happy until you’re not happy. The food was bad and the portions were much too small.

Hope and Joy

I’m in Boston again, ninth or tenth time this year. This morning’s check-in question was, “How are we experiencing hope and joy in our lives?” It took 14 people an hour and fifteen minutes to go around the circle. Two interesting thoughts came up: 1) Love is the only emotion that contributes to intelligence. (Fear, […]

Finding Music

Finding enjoyable new music is hard. [Is that “is” of predication or “is” of identity?] Radio gave up the ghost years ago due to industry consolidation. Now all we have on the dial are programmed playlists driven by payola. I can drive for hours and hear the same manufactured songs over and over regardless of […]

Three Hours Later

Three hours after posting the bit below on Korzybski and E-Prime, I suddenly found it amusing that given everything going on in my life I should now have an interest in General Semantics. As if I don’t have enough other intellectual hobbies…. I think this is one I can let go, but I’m still going […]

E-Prime

From The Sourcebook of Magic, pg 351ff: Alfred Korzybski (1933/1994) warned that the “is” of identity and the “is” of predication present two dangerous linguistic and semantic constructions that map false-to-fact conclusions. The first has to do with identity—how we identify a thing or what we identify with. The second has to do with attribution—how […]

The Adventures of Anybody

Lately I have a renewed interest in Neuro-Lingustic Programming (NLP), about which I’m sure there will be future blog posts. I read most of the core material available in the early ’80s, and paid a bit of attention in the ’90s but I didn’t pursue it much. As I looked through the books I own […]

More Philling Photos

Executive summary: Wednesday July 12 at the Champlain Valley Expo near Burlington, VT. Live music mid-week and the guilty irresponsible feeling that comes with. Pouring rain all day and night. Dancing in the mud. Crowded covered grandstand. Happy happy people. The Benevento/Russo Duo opened the show at 4:00. This was the scene during the middle […]

AI@50

Meg Houston Maker is doing some fantastic live blogging of the Dartmouth AI@50 conference. This gathering celebrates, explores, and, to an extent, reprises the original Dartmouth Summer Research Project in artificial intelligence of 1956, which proceeded “on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in […]

Strategy is a Commodity

Umair on strategy and creativity: In a world where strategy is a commodity, creativity becomes the vital factor from which value flows. When everyone can think strategically about everything, the locus of value creation shifts from out-thinking everyone to out-creating them. The prime mover of value creation becomes putting the ability to create (goods, services, […]

Nine Lives Is Nine Too Many

If the Internet turns into this, then I’m switching it off. Please, god, no.

That Sinking Feeling

The seashells are next to the soap. Yes, that’s true. Don’t you want the seashells on the other side of the sink? Or move the soap to the other side? No, not that I’m aware of. When you use the soap you have wet hands. So water splashes around the soap. The seashells might get […]

Examples of Categories

Art: Leonard Cohen and Sonny Rollins on live TV. (Thanks Jon.) Commerce: Do Patents Encourage or Stifle Innovation? Culture: On media elitism and the “derivative” myth Technology: On playing with my Holux GPS unit… Cool: Velcro Being Pulled Apart

Wishing for Skirts

After wearing shorts for nine full days, wearing slacks to work today feels so constraining. Oh, if only men could wear skirts in the summer.

Make Something People Want

I hesitate to point to every Paul Graham essay that comes along, but these links are useful for future research. Excerpts: The idea of building something popular then figuring out how to make money from it was born in the Bubble. It sounds irresponsible, but it works. Requiring founders to have a carefully worked out […]

Activity Recommendation: Vacation

A couple of weeks ago, when I was laid low with the flu, under deadline stress, and finally hitting my limit of multi-tasking, I decided I better take a week off before I burned out. I looked at my calendar for the week of the 3rd, already a short week with the holiday, and with […]

We Must Disenthrall Ourselves

There’s a good interview with Al Gore in the July 13 issue of Rolling Stone. Some quotes: I believe there is a hunger in the country to be part of a larger vision that changes the way we relate to the environment and the economy. Right now we are borrowing huge amounts of money from […]

Paul Simon’s Live Surprise

Vacation, Friday night. There must be some live music around here. Oh, Paul Simon in Burlington. That sounds good. Bought a single ticket the night before the show and got dead center last row before the soundboard. A perfect seat for this event. Although most of the audience was sitting down the whole night, I […]

Dishonest Could Still = Nice?

Heard last night: “Joe’s a nice guy, but he’s not honest.” Hearing this I noted my current understanding of nice already included honest. But apparently that’s not true for everyone….

Letting Go of Outcomes

Over the past ten years I’ve become much more “process-oriented.” Part of this learning comes from my work—as a consultant I’m often in situations where I don’t know very much about the specific content, but contribute to change based on looking at the larger system. I used to say that a focus on process leads […]