Invaluable tool when writing business plans. Find it here.
Quote of the day
Zadie Smith, quoted by William Gibson…
“But the problem with readers, the idea we’re given of reading is that the model of a reader is the person watching a film, or watching television. So the greatest principle is, ‘I should sit here and I should be entertained.’ And the more classical model, which has been completely taken away, is the idea of a reader as an amateur musician. An amateur musician who sits at the piano, has a piece of music, which is the work, made by somebody they don’t know, who they probably couldn’t comprehend entirely, and they have to use their skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift that you give the artist and that the artist gives you. That’s the incredibly unfashionable idea of reading. And yet when you practice reading, and you work at a text, it can only give you what you put into it. It’s an old moral, but it’s completely true.”
The risks of biotechnology
Denise Caruso has published an interesting book on the subject.
Sticky ideas
Hmmm… Interesting idea. More info here. On the drive home yesterday I listened to a Harvard Business School podcast in which one of the authors was interviewed. The official blurb reads:
Mark Twain once observed, “ A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” His observation rings true: Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus public-health scares circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas—businessmen, educators, politicians, journalists, and others—struggle to make their ideas “stick.”
Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of worthy ideas? In Made to Stick, accomplished educators and idea collectors Chip and Dan Heath tackle head-on these vexing questions. Inside, the brothers Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that “stick” and explain sure-fire methods for making ideas stickier, such as violating schemas, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating “curiosity gaps.” Made to Stick describes the traits that link sticky ideas of all kinds, from urban legends to corporate mission statements to advertisements to proverbs.
At last! Someone who is as sceptical about Twitter as I am
Nice post — Is Twitter TOO good? — by Kathy Sierra. In her concluding para of a long and thoughtful post, she writes:
I am not in the target audience for Twitter–I am by nature a loner. I don’t want to be that connected. And I also have a huge appreciation for the art of keeping the mystery alive. I don’t want to know that much about so many people, and I sure don’t want people to know that much about me… mundane or otherwise. So, that puts me in the minority, and my Twitter fears are probably based solely on my own–quirky and less common–personality traits.
Lots more like you, Kathy.
Update… Disturbing news — Kathy has had death threats, and is understandably freaked by them. She pulled out of ETech (where she was due to give a presentation) as a result.
Edward Tufte’s new book…
… is Envisioning Information. Kevin Kelly, never given to understatement, says of it:
“Keep this book with the few others that you’ll pass on to the next generation. It is a passionate, elegant revelation of how to render the 3 dimensions of experience into the 2 dimensions of paper and screen. As in his other books, Tufte is promoting a new standard of visual literacy. Immaculately printed in 23 colors, this book is a lyrical primer of design strategies for reading and creating messages in ‘flatland.’ No other book has been so highly recommended to us by so many different varieties of professionals — architects, teachers, technicians, hackers, and artists.”
Telling it like it isn’t
No comment needed.
Image from the Huffington Post.
Blogging and journalism
Nice post by Dave Winer on the symbiotic relationship between blogging and mainstream journalism.
By now it should be obvious that bloggers are part of the landscape of investigative journalism. If you doubt this, do a little investigation yourself into how the story about Alberto Gonzalez and the US Attorneys is being managed. You’ll find that this time it’s a group of bloggers playing the role of Woodward and Bernstein — the Talking Point Memo people, doing really kickass work. I’ve been reading Josh Marshall every day as the scandal has been developing. And he’s getting credit from some of the professional reporters I respect. Paul Kiel from TPM was a guest on this week’s On The Media, and Josh was a guest on Countdown with Keith Olbermann.
I was proud of the Powerline guys when they brought down Dan Rather, not because I agree with their politics (I don’t!) or because I dislike Rather (ditto!) but because the pros had gotten sloppy and careless, and they need the help we bloggers get from the communities we’re part of, they need someone watching over their shoulders asking how they know this or that, or if maybe this reporter has a conflict of some sort. They often do.
Toffwatch
I enjoyed Toff At The Top — Peter Hitchens’s Dispatches documentary about Dave ‘Vote Blue to Get Green’ Cameron. I don’t much care for Hitchens, but this time I suspect he was on the money. His basic argument was that Cameron is a shameless opportunist who doesn’t believe in anything, and certainly doesn’t believe in the Conservative values that Hitchens worships.
One interesting snippet from the film came when Hitch was retracing Cameron’s days as an undergraduate at Oxford, where he was a member of the Bullingdon Club, a rowdy upper-class dining club famous for the sound of breaking glass and immortalised as the Bollinger Club in Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall. The Bullingdons dress up in Regency evening wear and Hitchens had the brilliant idea of going to Ede and Ravenscroft, the expensive Savile Row tailor which maintains an establishment in Oxford (and indeed in Cambridge also) to cater for the sartorial needs of wealthy toffs like Cameron. He inspected the Bullingdon uniform and inquired about its cost. About £3,000.
Another interesting snippet. There’s an Oxford photography firm which regularly takes photographs of the Young Bullingdons in their finery. They have a particularly fine picture of young Cameron togged out for a night’s drinking and trashing. But it turns out that the firm has withdrawn the publication rights to all its Bullingdon pics of Cameron’s era — so that they are no longer published anywhere. Can’t even find them on Google Images. I wonder how much the Tories paid for that particular favour.
Hitchens also maintained that Cameron has thirteen Old Etonians in his Shadow Cabinet. Wow! Can this be true? Talk about a vast system of out-relief for the upper classes. It’s almost enough to make one look fondly on Gordon Brown. I said almost.
Update… David Mackinder found the key photograph — it was published by the Daily Telegraph with a helpful index to the main poseurs. Nice caption too: “Cameron as leader of the Slightly Silly Party”.
The YouTube awards
Voting’s closed. Winners Kiwi!, OK Go and Ask a Ninja.
My preference? The first one in the list.
Beautifully done, but ran out of ideas at the end.