nothing but frosting and cheese
Barack Obama as Batman in response to Dick Cheney as The Penguin, on the rule of law versus the rule of men: Have you ever gone to the grocery store hungry and ...
Category: ideas
epistemology, philosophy, theology, religion
who do you know?
Jonathan Haidt: “Our minds were not designed by evolution to discover the truth; they were designed to play social games.” From the same op-ed, Nicholas D. Kris...
making things
Over the last year, I’ve stopped making music and begun making things like tables.
fancy meeting you here
The web isn’t made of tubes but it is made of people. It may sound corny but it’s worth repeating: the web is people.
making content for everyone is making content for no one
Nancy Franklin in The New Yorker: I was puzzled by how a show that’s such a nothing even got made. It turns out that “Mental” is Fox’s first co-production with ...
more of less
Twitter has succeeded in large part because it imposes limits on what can be said and what can be done with that utterance. At least one of these limits is base...
another reminder
The future is social engineering. (via Waxy) Previously.
data visualization and political imagination
“You can move much faster if you’re healthy first than if you’re wealthy first.” Hans Rosling will blow your mind and recalibrate your p...
social imagination
John Carpenter’s “They Live” is thrilling despite limited special effects because it exploits our social imagination. Its scariest scenes cons...
action at a distance
4chan vs. Time offers some insights into the emerging techniques of crowd-sourcing management.
modern art
Achron, the time travel game. “Paradoxes can exist, but since the window of time is limited all events eventually fall off.” More new math. “E...
swarmy
OG responds to my open email to NPR’s Morning Edition on their misuse of the Dow Jones Industrial Average: You suggest that the DJIA is not relevant to un...
history in the making
This dense but rewarding summary of the Federalist Papers ends by posing some vexing and important questions, especially whether “modern bureaucratic stru...
surviving the information age
Never mind the cracks forming on the ad-based revenue model, here’s the root problem: a press that doesn’t inform will not survive the information a...
literary fads
One hundred years ago, it may have been a certain kind of poetry – let’s say, allusions to trains. This year it appears to be writing in 140 characters or...
the contradictions
This makes my head hurt: First, how much do the bondholders and counter-parties of the bankrupt banks take a hit? This is one essential question since it’...
you say tomato, i say cloud
Yesterday I was thinking about the radical difference between how two languages, German and English, encourage a person to express appreciation for a thing. The...
fake blood
In film, the development of realistic fake blood may be as important a milestone as sound and color.