In light of the GOP debates this past week someone linked to this excerpt of the fourth book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy but I have forgotten who it was. It’s the sort of thing you need to read in its entirety so I am not going to quote it. Just go read.
Yo, Young Adults, do you SEE WHY those of us who lived in the 80's laugh when we see you guys in your 80's garb?
It was a very confusing time.
Damn good music though.
I think I just found my new favorite cabinet member.
Was anyone in your family impressed when you won the Nobel Prize in Physics? Probably, but who knows? I called my mother up when they announced the Nobel Prize, waiting until 7 in the morning. She said, “That’s nice — and when are you going to see me next?”
Is it true you don’t drive a car? My wife does, but I no longer own a car. Let me just say that in most of my jobs, I mostly rode my bicycle.
While I think this animation is good, and it helps illustrate the flow of money and greediness of everyone involved, I think the This American Life episode "Giant Pool of Money" did a better job in pointing out not every risky buyer was trying to get away with something. Here they are drawn as overweight, tattooed, smoking, and having too many kids to suggest them as "risky"… Whereas the TAL episode detailed the predatory nature of the lenders actively searching for people who shouldn't have been looking to buy a house.
Still, I think the video is worth watching.
The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.
The TAL episode can be purchased here. It's worth it.
I happened to read two articles on sub-cultures on the same day. A piece on Internet Trolls from the NY Times and Adbusters' article on Hipsters. Both affected me enough to roll around in my head all day while I worked.
It's possible that with our little girl on the way my attention to "the future world" is a bit more focused. We're no longer planning a couple years in advance but decades, and of course, everything matters a little bit more.
So Alex wrote a very thoughtful reaction to the hipsters article (I initially found it by way of his twitter post) and it was met with thoughtful responses. It's a nice post and conversation, and somehow ties in the with the NY times troll article and even Derek's post on comments that has also been on my mind lately (gee, I think a lot).
Patrick Smith writes an excellent piece in the NY Times about the state of airport security. You might remember Patrick has a column in Salon called "Ask The Pilot" and a book by the same name.
If you're a nervous flier I can't recommend his book enough. Ever since I read it flights have been much more enjoyable and easy to get through.
Security not so much.
I'm not much of a conference goer. I find web conferences terribly frustrating as I sit in my seat and think "I should be programming" or "In the time we all talked about this we could have pair programmed something interesting." Conferences in general just make me anxious.
But this conference titled The Traveling Box: Containers as a Global Icon of our Era fascinates me to no end. I would so go to that conference. It even includes a tour of San Pedro!
found on delicious/straup
I saw this story about a photo used in a Virgin Mobile ad that acquired a photo from a Flickr user. The photo in question has now been switched to a strict copyright, but it previously existed with a Creative Commons license that permitted commercial use.
Outside of a model release, I think it's interesting to see a mostly clueful company "linking back" to the Flickr source in their ad per the CC license, and lawyers and Flickr license grantors mostly clueless about what that license means.