Archive for the 'Links' Category

A quick note

Lately I’ve been posting semi-regular links and things over at a little side project called Flotsam & Jetsam. If (and it’s a big if, given that I haven’t produced such a thing in over two years) I have anything substantial to post, I’ll probably still do it here, but otherwise that’s probably the best place to look if you’re intent on reading something written by me.

links for 2008-07-07

links for 2008-06-12

Links for 2008-05-25

Since my auto-link-posting thingy seems to be broken, here’s a manual version:

  • Agenbites
    Nice column about words that “resound with their own verbal truthfulness”. Another great example: cherubic.

  • In the Basement of the Ivory Tower
    “America, ever-idealistic, seems wary of the vocational-education track. We are not comfortable limiting anyone’s options. Telling someone that college is not for him seems harsh and classist and British, as though we were sentencing him to a life in the coal mines. I sympathize with this stance; I subscribe to the American ideal. Unfortunately, it is with me and my red pen that that ideal crashes and burns.�

  • Lies We Tell Kids
    “One of the most remarkable things about the way we lie to kids is how broad the conspiracy is. All adults know what their culture lies to kids about: they’re the questions you answer ‘Ask your parents.’�

links for 2008-05-12

  • “If content is king, why is there so little of it on the web? And why are content providers like Salon always whining about their huge bandwidth costs, given that 99% of what they ship — and that is an exact measurement, not hyperbole — is spam?”

links for 2008-05-09

links for 2008-05-04

links for 2008-05-02

links for 2008-04-21

  • If the breathless advocates of “the free distribution of ideasâ€? are serious, they need either a) to come up with a realistic proposal as to how I am to keep feeding myself while giving the fruits of my labours away for free; or b) come out and say honestly that they don’t think any such thing as a “professional writerâ€? ought to exist, and that I should just get a job like anyone else. In a way, I’d respect people who came out and said the second thing. What I don’t respect is people who can’t see that those are the choices.
  • “Artist choice is the key for new technology having an opportunity to be open for business and we need to build artist choice here if these new technologies are to have that opportunity.”

links for 2008-04-20

  • I suggest that the design of information software should be approached initially and primarily as a graphic design project.

    …

    Twenty years later, despite thousand-fold improvements along every technological dimension, the concepts behind today’s interfaces are almost identical to those in the initial Mac.

    …

    The future will be context-sensitive. The future will not be interactive.

  • Fascinating story, from no less an authority than the NSA, of the cracking of the Enigma.
  • Much has been written about IKEA’s remarkably effective retail formula. The Economist has investigated the group’s no less astonishing finances.

    What emerges is an outfit that ingeniously exploits the quirks of different jurisdictions to create a charity, dedicated to a somewhat banal cause, that is not only the world’s richest foundation, but is at the moment also one of its least generous.

    Clearly, the Kamprad family pays the same meticulous attention to tax avoidance as IKEA does to low prices in its stores.