The Libertarian Moment: Despite all leading indicators to the contrary, America is poised to enter a new age of freedom. - Reason Magazine (1)
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The ne plus ultra change agent as we lurch through the finish line of yet another electoral contest between our 19th century political parties is the revolutionary, break-it-down-and-build-it-back-up power of the Internet, and all the glorious creative destruction it enables at the expense of lumbering gatekeepers and to the benefit of empowered individuals. No single entity in the history of mankind has been so implicitly and explicitly libertarian: a tax-free distributed network and alternative universe ...
Frozen Scandal - The New York Review of Books (1)
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By Mark Danner 1.I thought, "My God, she's not going to get away with this." But you have got away with it....—Gethsemane[1]Scandal is our growth industry. Revelation of wrongdoing leads not to definitive investigation, punishment, and expiation but to more scandal. Permanent scandal. Frozen scandal. The weapons of mass destruction that turned out not to exist. The torture of detainees who remain forever detained. The firing of prosecutors which is forever investigated. These and other ...
The Killing Field - washingtonpost.com (1)
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Translated from the Spanish by Natasha WimmerFarrar Straus Giroux. 898 pp. $30The Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño died in 2003 at the relatively young age of 50, but since then a steady stream of English translations has introduced American readers to the Gabriel García Márquez of our time: politically engaged, formally daring and wildly imaginative. The Savage Detectives, a huge novel published last year to wide acclaim, looked like his masterpiece, but now comes a monstrous ...
College Transformation 101 (3)
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Technology is driving down the cost of teaching undergraduates. So why are tuition bills going up?
Alone Together (20)
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Hacker News (174)
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Hampton says he views the Internet as the ultimate city, the last stop on the continuum of human connectedness. I’d argue that New York and the Internet are about the same, in the way that a large bookstore feels like it offers just as many possibilities as Amazon.com—maybe slightly less inventory, but more opportunities to stumble on things you might not have otherwise. Whichever the case, what the Internet and New York have in common ...
Cabinet of Wonders: Blogs as Wunderkammern (1)
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Blogs as WunderkammernI'm writing an actual academic paper which I will be presenting in February to the College Art Association's national meeting, about Blogs as Wunderkammern. I will be discuss the ways in which blogs emulate the same kind of exploration/bringing back oddities/presentation as the old Wunderkammern. The similarities go right through, including the re-emergence of systems of personal taxonomies defining the order of the collection, and the blossoming culture of exploration and idea-making.With, of ...
Anecdotes (60)
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Joel on Software (8)
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Michiko Kakutani reviews Malcolm Gladwell's latest book in the New York Times: “Much of what Mr. Gladwell has to say about superstars is little more than common sense: that talent alone is not enough to ensure success, that opportunity, hard work, timing and luck play important roles as well. The problem is that he then tries to extrapolate these observations into broader hypotheses about success. These hypotheses not only rely heavily on suggestion and innuendo, ...
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szelee said:
Finally someone offered me explanation why I stopped reading books like The World is Flat, Freakonomics, The Undercover Economist, Blink, Tipping Point etc...
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Rick Klau said:
"Thomas Friedman, who, it seems, cannot go a whole week without inventing a new fruit-based metaphor explaining everything about the entire modern world, all based on some random jibberish he misunderstood from a taxi driver in Kuala Lumpur".Brilliant.
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Nivi said:
Joel Spolsky: "Now, I am not one to throw stones. Heck, I practically invented the formula of "tell a funny story and then get all serious and show how this is amusing anecdote just goes to show that (one thing|the other) is a universal truth." And everybody is like, oh yes! how true! and they link to it with approval, and it zooms to the top of Slashdot. And six years later, a new king arises who did not know Joel, and he writes up another amusing anecdote, really, it's the same anecdote, and he uses it to prove the exact opposite, and everyone is like, oh yes! how true! and it zooms to the top of Reddit.This is not the way to move science forward."
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Chris said:
I see his point, but as several communication gurus have anecdotally proved in their various books, anecdotes are one of the most effective ways to get your audience to remember a point. (The problem: the books are padded with too many of them). I recently read a book about entrepreneurship that was a academic study of what factors separate successful and failed startups, and with it's substitution of anecdotes for tables of data, it took significant motivation to finish.
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lak said:
Let's start a war against anecdotes. Gladwell is especially fond, as Joel says, of anecdote => theory => ridiculous misunderstanding of own theory.
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Tom said:
maybe you should have been nicer to your date, gladwell (you know what i'm talking about).
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mgrigni said:
This helped reduce my reading list.
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df said:
Word. Can we get more of people talking about things they know about?
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Lance said:
Absolutely spot on. I'm glad someone says the emperors have no clothes.
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Josh said:
+1,000,000
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Tim said:
Joel Spolsky > *;
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Sandra said:
I hate when anecdotes are used as evidence of some universal principle, also. Ancedotes only show that it is possible some situation can occur, and are best used as colorful examples to illustrate a point, not prove it.
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Derek Morrison said:
Hypotheticoncept - that's my word for today.
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Michael Neale said:
smartest thing I have heard all week. Journalists should not be authors, at least not expert authors.
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Eric Eisenhart said:
Friggin' anecdotes. :)As near as I can tell, every "Best Practice" (including ITIL) in IT that gets inflicted on us is based on an anecdote or two. If they even have that much integrity behind them.
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Siddhartha Reddy said:
This article reflects my feelings well, especially about Thomas Friedman. I have said this before: Friedman's "The World is Flat" makes a mountain out of a mole.
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Abi said:
Joel commenting on (and agreeing with) Kakutani's review of Gladwell's book: Outliers.
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Peter Kelley said:
Some really good sense from Joel Spolsky - In a perfect world people would listen.
Selected Poems of T. Roethke | The Waking (1)
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The WakingI wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.I learn by going where I have to go.We think by feeling. What is there to know?I hear my being dance from ear to ear.I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.Of those so close beside me, which are you?God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,And learn by going where I have to go.Light takes ...
TheStar.com | living | Why you won't eat at 7:30 (1)
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Corey Mintz Restaurant Critic If we're paying someone else to make us dinner, shouldn't we be able to eat any time we want? Not really. Restaurants are businesses: They are in the business of making money by serving food. When making reservations, everyone wants to eat at 7:30 on a Friday or Saturday night. But the average Toronto restaurant is open for dinner between 5:30 and 10 p.m. Torontonians will not, by nature, eat before ...
Life on a Shirt by Jana Eggers & The impact of timing: why this financial crisis is our biggest break (2)
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Yesterday the Guardian posted an excerpt from Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, Outliers: The Story Of Success. I enjoy reading Gladwell’s work, even though I find it a bit rambling and missing some structure that woud improve impact. Maybe he means it that way?The main part of the excerpt is about how “genius” can be tracked to practice/hard work, specifically narrowing to about 10,000 hours of practice being required. Good, interesting information with several fun studies ...
China Makes, The World Takes - The Atlantic (July/August 2007) (4)
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A look inside the world’s manufacturing center shows that America should welcome China’s rise—for now. by James Fallows
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Stormy Shippy said:
Slightly old piece, but can't see how it isn't still timely.
The New Trough : Rolling Stone / 'The Wall Street bailout looks a lot like Iraq — a "free-fraud zone" where private contractors cash in on the mess they helped create' (4)
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On October 13th, when the U.S. Treasury Department announced the team of "seasoned financial veterans" thatwill be handling the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, one namejumped out: Reuben Jeffery III, who was initially tapped to serveas chief investment officer for the massive new program.On the surface, Jeffery looks like a classic Bush appointment.Like Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, he's an alum of GoldmanSachs, having worked on Wall Street for 18 years. And as chairmanof the ...
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Kerray said:
It's almost funny...
Processing monsters (12)
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Processing Monsters David's monster By David Marec Cube monster by Eduardo Omine Angry Otto By Andrew Whitehurst Leaf MonsterBy Kelly Peterson David's monsterBy David Bollinger Moritz's monsterBy Moritz von Pein Emotional monsterBy Sebastian Zächerl Gibbering monsterby Frederik Vanhoutte OuroborosBy Rob Antonishen String MonsterBy James Kong Flatfish monsterby Alessandro Fiore Andreas MonsterBy Andreas Köberle The Blob by Daniel Piker Blink eye monsterBy mb09 Particle_monsterBy Simon Lourie Sliding monsterBy David Wicks Monster 6 By Lukas Vojir Monster ...
Vice Magazine - THE (EX) BIGGEST HEROIN DEALER IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD - (1)
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THE (EX) BIGGEST HEROIN DEALER IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD INTERVIEW BY GRAHAM JOHNSON, PHOTO BY STUART GRIFFITHS By the time Suleyman Ergun was 21 years old, he was the world’s most prolific and powerful seller of smack. Known throughout the junkie and police communities as the North London Turk, Ergun and his gang flooded Britain and Europe with heroin for five years. For his pains, the former factory worker got mansions filled with cash ...
Apple COO Tim Cook could be in line to replace Steve Jobs - Nov. 10, 2008 (18)
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Technology news - CNNMoney.com (0)
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Let's start with some uncomfortable truths. We wouldn't be publishing an article about the under-the-radar guy who's most likely to succeed Steve Jobs as chief executive of Apple if Jobs himself hadn't shown up at a company event in San Francisco in June looking frightfully skinny and pale.
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Zac Brown said:
Interesting article. Cook is one of few executives in the tech realm that impresses me.
Planning to Share versus Just Sharing at EdTechPost (16)
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(This is a long post, born out of years of frustration with ineffective institutional collaborations. If you only want the highlights, here they are: grow your network by sharing, not planning to share or deciding who to share with; the tech doesn’t determine the sharing - if you want to share, you will; weave your network by sharing what you can, and they will share what they can - people won’t share [without a lot ...
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baoilleach said:
I'm "just sharing" this. :-)
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Abi said:
Don't keep talking, just start sharing!
Slate Magazine (0) permalink
Good news from Pakistan: The drones are winning.[more ...]Shared by Aaron M. (0) gergi (3) Joe Conyers (1) Josh Mize (3) Leandro Demori (3) mainfram (4) Stormy Shippy (0)Contribute commentDelicious popular (28) permalink
To this day, the willingness of a Wall Street investment bank to pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars to dispense investment advice to grownups remains a mystery to me.Shared by ~C4Chaos (0) adrian cuthbert (0) AJ Slater (0) Alan Cordova (0) Alan Dean (7) Alex J. Mann (0) Amy (4) Anne Haynes (0) B Frank (0) Ballan (0) Barry Cott (0) Ben Casnocha (0) Ben Friedlander (0) Bertrand (0) Brent (0) C.M (0) Chintana Wilamuna (0) Christopher Gizzi (1) Chuck (1) css (0) dan (0) Daniel Lemire (0) David G Mihalcik (0) DermDoc (Jeff) (27) Ed Summers (0) Erin (2) Ethan Goodman (0) Eugene Chae (0) exists (1) Floyd (0) fnthawar (0) Geoffrey Wiseman (1) Ian Enos (12) jalam1001 (4) James Hernandez (0) James Sherrett (3) Jay Liew (5) Jeff (0) Jesse (0) Jim (0) Joe Haynes (0) John Mark Walker (1) John Mettraux (1) kamla bhatt (0) Kevin OMeara (0) Koranteng Ofosu-Amaah (1) Laura Smith (0) Lindsay (0) Maryanne Conlin (0) marywallace (0) Matt Cable (0) Michael Galpin (0) Michael Nielsen (1) Mike (0) Mike Jones (0) Morriss Partee (0) Naseer (0) niraj (0) nyenyec (0) Pankaj (3) Pau (0) Robert Lowe (0) Roberto Castro (0) Russ Thornton (0) rveguilla (0) schmiddi (0) Sergei Vavinov (0) Shawn Carpenter (0) Sjoerd Visscher (0) stefan (0) Stephanie (4) Stormy Shippy (0) Terry Jones (4) Todd Gruben (0) Tony (3) victorpanlilio (0) yanagi (2) yuan yong (0) Yule Heibel (4) Zach (5) Zbigniew Lukasiak (0)Explore read seven notes
