Centripetal Notion

Said on Dec 4 upon him leaving PBS NewsHour:

People often ask me if there are guidelines in our practice of what I like to call MacNeil/Lehrer journalism. Well, yes, there are. And here they are

• Do nothing I cannot defend.
• Cover, write and present every story with the care I would want if the story were about me.

• Assume there is at least one other side or version to every story.
• Assume the viewer is as smart and as caring and as good a person as I am.
• Assume the same about all people on whom I report.
• Assume personal lives are a private matter, until a legitimate turn in the story absolutely mandates otherwise.
• Carefully separate opinion and analysis from straight news stories, and clearly label everything.
• Do not use anonymous sources or blind quotes, except on rare and monumental occasions.
• No one should ever be allowed to attack another anonymously.
• And, finally, I am not in the entertainment business.

Read more at PBS Ombudsman.

Tuesday 26 Jan, 2010 at 12:00 am
Journalism + Media
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Really crystal clear metaphor and insight on real-time vs. more thoughtful media, and how each depend on each other.

“There are two kinds of quantities in the world. Stock is a static value: money in the bank, or trees in the forest. Flow is a rate of change: fifteen dollars an hour, or three-thousand tooth­picks a day. Easy. Too easy.

But I actually think stock and flow is the master metaphor for media today. Here’s what I mean:

Flow is the feed. It’s the posts and the tweets. It’s the stream of daily and sub-daily updates that remind people that you exist.
Stock is the durable stuff. It’s the con tent you produce that’s as interesting in two months (or two years) as it is today. It’s what people discover via search. It’s what spreads slowly but surely, building fans over time.

I feel like flow is ascen dant these days, for obvi ous reasons—but we neglect stock at our own peril. I mean that both in terms of the health of an audience and, like, the health of a soul.

(…) I feel like we all got really good at flow, really fast. But flow is ephemeral. Stock sticks around. Stock is capital. Stock is protein.

And the real magic trick in 2010 is to put them both together. To keep the ball bounc ing with your flow—to main tain that open chan nel of communication—while you work on some kick-ass stock in the back ground. Sacrifice neither. It’s the hybrid strategy.”

Read more at Snarkmarket, one of my new favs.

Monday 25 Jan, 2010 at 11:48 pm
Information + Internet + Media
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I can relate, especially this weekend.

Via Chris.

Monday 25 Jan, 2010 at 2:52 am
Comics + Humor + Internet + Life
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Hofstadter’s Law

It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.

Parkinson’s Law

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

Pretty sure this could turn into some kind of recursive loop if you’re not careful.

Sunday 24 Jan, 2010 at 10:46 pm
Life + Philosophy + Productivity
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Pretty much the coolest thing ever today.

Every once and a while, you see something that so exactly represents the current state of artistic expression in its given genre, it almost renders itself obsolete. That’s kinda how I feel about this.

A bubbly, glitchy state of the motion/infographics union by Japanese group Bonsajo.

Vanishing Point on Vimeo

Sunday 24 Jan, 2010 at 2:42 pm
Motion Design + Music + Video
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Somehow I got sucked into watching this. Kevin Rose of Digg & Tim Ferriss of The Four Hour Work Week have started recording videos together, talking about everything from startups to nutrition, travel, technology, culture, etc.

They’ve started calling the series “Random” which is just about the same as not having a name at all. But who needs a name when the conversation is as good as this. Two insanely smart, motivated guys sharing their insights about nothing and everything in particular.

I’ve embedded all, or at least most, of the videos below. From what I can tell there’s not currently any streamlined way of following or subscribing to the series, so I swiped these embeds from Kevin’s blog.

Watch the most recent episode at least, to see if it’s a good fit for your brain. I hope they keep at it.

Episode 8

Continued →

Wednesday 20 Jan, 2010 at 8:26 pm
Culture + Food + Health + Internet + Life + Literature + Stories + Talk + Technology + Travel + Video + World
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Here is my stance on the debate, if “debate” is the proper term. I’ve only included the pivotal years: the ones where some type of grammatical shift occurs.

I think perhaps saying the years of 2001-2009 as “Two Thousand One” and so on will break down somewhat the further we get from them, but ultimately will be much more common than saying “Nineteen Hundred One” as it’s simply easier to say, and there is so much cultural significance in the turn of the millennium to weigh down this usage.

My logic for saying “twenty-thirty”, “twenty-twenty”, and so on, instead of just “thirty” or “twenty” is a little fuzzy, and mostly based on my own usage. I don’t notice a clear pattern in other people’s usage, or at least haven’t bothered to notice. I think generally I say “nineteen-ninety” instead of “ninety”, as the latter is a little ambiguous. The same applies to “ten”, “eleven” and “twelve”: all grammatical orphans. “Fifteen” can stand alone as “-teen” provides some kind of context that seems sufficient, as does “thirty-” for “thirty-one”, or “ninety-” for “ninety-six”. Am I alone in thinking it feels better to say “back in ninety-six” than “back in ninety”?

As for decades, I’ll wager the following: “Two-thousands” (2000’s), “Tens” (10s), “Twenties” (20s), etc. We won’t use “Two-Thousands” to refer to the entire century until we’re safely in the 22nd century, much like we don’t say “The Nineteen-Hundreds” but rather “The Twentieth Century” for 1900-1999, but we do say “The Eighteen-Hundreds” for 1800-1899. This is largely because referral to specific decades becomes less common the further you’re removed from them, and we more often refer to the whole of the 1800’s than we do the years 1800-1809 specifically. This is not currently true for the 1900’s, and won’t be until some ambiguous region of time well into this century.

For more, see Wikipedia’s article on english numerals and their usage.

Thoughts?

Friday 1 Jan, 2010 at 8:25 pm
Culture + Math + World
3 comments

A new technique for unpeeling the Earth’s skin and displaying it on a flat surface provides a fresh perspective on geography, making it possible to create maps that string out the continents for easy comparison, or lump together the world’s oceans into one huge mass of water surrounded by coastlines.

“Myriahedral projection” was developed by Jack van Wijk, a computer scientist at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands.

“The basic idea is surprisingly simple,” says van Wijk. His algorithms divide the globe’s surface into small polygons that are unfolded into a flat map, just as a cube can be unfolded into six squares.

Cartographers have tried this trick before; van Wijk’s innovation is to up the number of polygons from just a few to thousands. He has coined the word “myriahedral” to describe it, a combination of “myriad” with “polyhedron”, the name for polygonal 3D shapes.

PS, apparently some people thought the site was done for based on my last post. Definitely not.

Thursday 10 Dec, 2009 at 10:21 am
Geometry + Information Design + World
3 comments

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. When I let go of what I have, I receive what I need. When I give myself, I become more. When I feel most destroyed, I am about to grow. When I desire nothing, a great deal comes to me.”

John Heider via Chris

Wednesday 16 Sep, 2009 at 7:31 am
Life
5 comments

Let’s say you’re single and removed from the dating scene. It’s been a while. You get out from time to time in your own circles, and occasionally meet a prospective special someone for drinks, but on the whole maybe you just don’t care, maybe you don’t think you need to. You’re getting along just fine.

But now it’s catching up to you, you’re feeling lonely. Everyone’s talking about all the fun they’re having, all the crazy parties and quiet romantic evenings. It’s everywhere, on the TV, in the news, and especially online. You feel your livelihood slipping away. And here’s the worst of it: you’re just plain horny. I mean really horny. Jesus. You’ve got to get out there before you go crazy.

So you start hitting up the clubs. This is not your scene but you know, in time, you’ll catch on. All this new lingo to learn, people talk so fast. And they call this music?

But you’re getting it, step by step. That’s the easy part. Now you’re making dates, catching some good shows, picking up checks (or working wiles for free meals, as the case may be).

But on the whole you’re just not getting any tail. What’s going on!?

Here’s the problem: getting tail is all you’re thinking about. You’re dancing/eating/talking with a girl (or guy) and everything you do is a means to an end that gets them in your bed. Skin-deep, everyone can see right through you. Our Lady Transparency only offers her blessings when there’s actually something to show, something to be transparent about.

Sure, we all want to get laid. Our primal drive is ultimately a primary component of our motivation. But there’s more to life than this. You’re only a layer or two of social construct away from straight-up announcing to your date upon first meeting that you want to do them. Right now. “I want to be on you,” as Ron Burgandy would say. So what separates us from the animals?

Now let’s say you’re a business. You want to get into social media, everyone’s talking about it. It makes you money! Money buys you things! And stuff!

(Oh yeah, and it increases the scope and depth of what you can accomplish as a business by helping you refine and grow your service, do more good while doing less harm, make more people happy, make less people disappointed, and through the power of rapid communication and collaboration, make the world a better place.)

So you auto-follow hundreds of thousands of “people” on Twitter, and reel in your fishing net, smiling at your harvest. You’ve built connections! Your auto-response to new followers tells them you’re so glad they of all people have found you. That you want to “get to know them” better. Read my blog! Subscribe to my mailing list! Let me know if there’s anything I can do to … I mean, for you.

But you’re skin-deep. You look desperate. Sure, you’ll see some short-term success, which might lead you to think you’ve got this whole thing figured out. But you’re going to hit a roof unless you’ve got something more to offer than just a desire to make money and the ability to regurgitate what everyone else is doing.

For many business moves, your ROI is the first concern. Should you choose this vendor/material/market over the other, if at all?

But social media, nay, the internet (remember that word?) is a technological extension of people. Plain and simple.

If you’re scrutinizing the ROI on people, you’re going to fail. Nature has ways of self-correcting selfishness.

ROI is a means to an end, not vice-versa.

Monday 20 Jul, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Business + Internet + Psychology + Sex
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