January 2012
“What if…” Movies reimagined for another time & place via Behance.
Changing the past
I love e-books, especially on my Kindle, but Nicholas Carr or the Wall Street Journal has some interesting ideas on the danger of e-books.
[A]s is often the case with digitization, the boon carries a bane. The ability to alter the contents of a book will be easy to abuse. School boards may come to exert even greater influence over what students read. They’ll be able to edit textbooks that don’t fit with local biases. Authoritarian governments will be able to tweak books to suit their political interests. And the edits can ripple backward. Because e-readers connect to the Internet, the works they contain can be revised remotely, just as software programs are updated today. Movable text makes a lousy preservative.
Magnus Carlsen, chess master (via Chess News)
I don’t have any clear preferences in chess. I do what I think circumstances require of me – I attack, defend or go into the endgame. Having preferences means having weaknesses.
Thomas Sowell
The real egalitarians are not the people who want to redistribute wealth to the poor, but those who want to extend to the poor the ability to create their own wealth, to lift themselves up, instead of trying to tear others down. Earning respect, including self-respect, is better than being a parasite.
Super high-def image of earth from space
“A ‘Blue Marble’ image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA’s most recently launched Earth-observing satellite – Suomi NPP. This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth’s surface taken on January 4, 2012. “
The greatest invention
Tom Standage argues that writing is the greatest invention.
The greatest invention of all must surely be writing. It is not just one of the foundations of civilisation: it underpins the steady accumulation of intellectual achievement. By capturing ideas in physical form, it allows them to travel across space and time without distortion, and thus slip the bonds of human memory and oral transmission, not to mention the whims of tyrants and the vicissitudes of history.
Photographers with their best work
Wired has a collection of portraits by Tim Mantoani of photographers holding prints of their most famous works.
Photographer Jeff Widener with his iconic photo of the man in Tienanmen Square from 1989. Photo by: Tim Mantoani
The public domain needs Mickey Mouse
Kevin Kelley points out the value of the public domain.
It is in the interest of culture to have a large and dynamic public domain. The greatest classics of Disney were all based on stories in the public domain, and Walt Disney showed how public domain ideas and characters could be leveraged by others to bring enjoyment and money. But ironically, after Walt died, the Disney corporation became the major backer of the extended copyright laws, in order to keep the very few original ideas they had — like Mickey Mouse — from going into the public domain. Also ironically, just as Disney was smothering the public domain, their own great fortunes waned because they were strangling the main source of their own creativity, which was public domain material. They were unable to generate their own new material, so they had to buy Pixar.
This is my life.
What's different about this tech bubble?
Bussinessweek’s Ashlee Vance explores some of the unique aspects of the current tech bubble in her article, This Tech Bubble Is Different. The biggest problem is the vast amount of wasted talent.
[Jeff] Hammerbacher looked around Silicon Valley at companies like his own, Google (GOOG), and Twitter, and saw his peers wasting their talents. “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads,” he says. “That sucks.”
A degree alone is not enough
Degrees are losing their clout according to the New York Times.
The U.S. produces a large number of workers whose skills aren’t needed.
A degree by itself is not worth what it once was. This means high schoolers planning to go to college need to start thinking more about what they intend to do after graduation so they can put their college years to good use.
16th Century social media
Social media brought attention to and was even the force behind several social revolutions in the past 12 months. However, The Economist show that the use of social networks for societal change is nothing new, citing how Luther went viral in the 16th Century.
The rate of technological progress creates a strong urge to believe the world we live in today is unique and different from everything that’s come before, but looking at other periods of technological change in history reveal the similar routes revolutions take when new technological tools become available.
Five musicians sharing a guitar: Somebody That I Used to Know - Walk off the…
Five musicians sharing a guitar: Somebody That I Used to Know - Walk off the Earth (Gotye - Cover) (by walkofftheearth)
Oh, the Places You’ll Go, recited by Burning Man goers (by Tedshots )
Oh, the Places You’ll Go, recited by Burning Man goers (by Tedshots)
These books are alive
After organizing our bookshelf almost a year ago, my wife and I (Sean Ohlenkamp) decided to take it to the next level. We spent many sleepless nights moving, stacking, and animating books at Type bookstore in Toronto.
Quiz yourself. (via 2000s Film Alphabet, Poster That Quizzes Your 2000′s…
Quiz yourself. (via 2000s Film Alphabet, Poster That Quizzes Your 2000′s Movie Knowledge)
Fotoshop by Adobé
Get the beauty product used by celebrities everywhere. Look like your favorite magazine starlet!
Fotoshop by Adobé from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.
This is not my presentation..I hope
I’m giving a few presentations for work at the end of this month. I’m nervous but hopeful that they’ll turn out better than this:
As much as I enjoyed this video, it was probably because it was a complete (yet well done) rip off of this video by Britanick.
via Mitch Joel
The Planetary Chocolates of the Solar System
How to nap - Boston.com
git - the simple guide
Primary Elections Explained by CGPGrey . This video explains many of the…
Primary Elections Explained by CGPGrey. This video explains many of the complications and nuances of the U.S. presidential primary process.
The day the music died
This clever Tumblr features album cover art with the dead band members digitally removed.
via Laughing Squid
Jeff Bezos - from Wired Magazine
If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you’re competing against a lot of people. But if you’re willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you’re now competing against a fraction of those people, because very few companies are willing to do that. Just by lengthening the time horizon, you can engage in endeavors that you could never otherwise pursue.
foxontherun : (via graphics / your dreams )
Shake On It – It’s Not Crazy, It’s Sports – ESPN Commercial (by ESPN )
Shake On It – It’s Not Crazy, It’s Sports – ESPN Commercial (by ESPN)
milkchugger : By recovering lazyholic
ollymoss : Star Wars My take on the original Star Wars Trilogy.…
Batman, Meet Dr. Seuss via The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century
Is Life Good?
Last post from a writer's writer
One of my favorite writer’s writers has given a final sign off from his weekly blog. William Zinsser, author of On Writing Well , signed of after several years of writing for The American Scholar, which will not be the same without him.
In his final post he shared a final great piece of advice to aspiring writers:
Give yourself permission to believe in the validity of your own narrative.
Has Hollywood Lost it’s Way? via Short of the Week
Has Hollywood Lost it’s Way? via Short of the Week
Drip Coffee
The Telegraph has this amazing picture of coffee splashing out of its cup.
Jack Long uses high-speed photography to capture the moment a splash is made in a cup of coffee. The Milwaukee-based photographer has taken a year to perfect his secret technique, but claims the effect is not created by dropping liquid as seen in other splash photography…
The Title Design of Saul Bass
via Art of the Title
History of the Modern Calendar
Jeremiah Warren made this quick history of the modern calendar.
via Laughing Squid
Facebook: a wasted platform
Facebook’s Memology takes a look at the top 10 global topics of 2011.
Memology takes the pulse of this global community by comparing this year’s status updates to last year’s, unearthing the most popular topics and cultural trends - or memes - emerging on Facebook. Whether it’s hmu, lms or tbh, each year brings a new set of three letter acronyms that go viral.
United State of Pop
Once a year, my dislike of pop music comes into conflict with my love for well done mashup/remixes thanks to the amazing work of DJ Earworm.
This year’s mix, as always, features the 25 biggest hits of 2011.
This year’s was okay, but doesn’t compare to his best work in 2009:
William Dersiewicz: The Entrepreneurial Generation - NYTimes.com
Today’s ideal social form is not the commune or the movement or even the individual creator as such; it’s the small business. Every artistic or moral aspiration — music, food, good works, what have you — is expressed in those terms. Call it Generation Sell.
— William Dersiewicz: The Entrepreneurial Generation - NYTimes.com
Notes from "The Way to Wealth"
Below are some highlights from my recent reading of Benjamin Franklin’s “The Way to Wealth”, a collection of some of the better known of Poor Richard’s sayings.
[D]ost thou love life, then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of[.]
…
Fyodor Dostoyevsky – The Idiot
We degrade God when we attribute our own ideas to Him, out of annoyance that we cannot fathom His ways.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky – The Idiot
