April 2013
1 post
Byrne on bypassing waffling →
David Byrne on his remote collaborations with Brian Eno:
The unwritten game rules in these remote collaborations seem to be to leave the other person’s stuff alone as much as you can. Work with what you’re given; don’t try to imagine it as something other than what it is. … The fact that half the musical decision-making has already been done bypasses a lot of waffling and worrying. I didn’t...
March 2013
1 post
Inexactitude
The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies...
February 2013
4 posts
Big
In the future, you have access to all your data. Memory, or the lack thereof, is no longer discussed. It is only assumed, a feature of modern life, since you can now relive all your past data as experiences. But because of “technical constraints,” all of your experiences are taxonomized and merged for ease of efficiency/retrieval. To access your past, then, is to relive each experience — in real...
On the origin of manners →
Simon Heffer reviews, or rather is offended by, a new book on the origin of manners:
As I wandered through this increasingly unfathomable book — if it has a thesis, I for one missed it — two elements of the bleeding obvious appeared to be missing. The first was the idea that most manners have evolved because most of us, whichever class we spring from, behave towards others as we would like them...
The grand time hack →
The times displayed on Grand Central’s departure boards are wrong — by a full minute:
This is permanent. It is also purposeful.
The idea is that passengers rushing to catch trains they’re about to miss can actually be dangerous — to themselves, and to each other. So conductors will pull out of the station exactly one minute after their trains’ posted departure times.
You...
Urban unattentional →
British psychologists report that those who live in cities have a certain diminished power of attention compared with those who don’t:
[T]he brains of people in remote places seem ready to focus on the task at hand, while the brains of their urban counterparts seem prepared to explore the ever-changing conditions of city life. Certainly explains why some country folk find the city...
January 2013
8 posts
Life, underlined →
In college, I used to underline sentences that struck me, that made me look up from the page. They were not necessarily the same sentences the professors pointed out, which would turn up for further explication on an exam. I noted them for their clarity, their rhythm, their beauty and their enchantment. For surely it is a magical thing for a handful of words, artfully arranged, to stop time.
...
Sight unsealed →
Howard Blackson on the unsealing of America:
For many, perhaps the majority, of us, our suburban lives were spent sealed in air-conditioning, interspersed with moments of purported discomfort as we transitioned between the homes, cars, McMansions, big boxes, gyms, schools, Olive Gardens, and Arby’s drive-thrus that characterized our daily lives.
But then:
The wish for sustainability and energy...
“The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable...”
– Gilbert Keith Chesterton by way of Farnam Street. He continues, “Everywhere in things there is this element of the quiet and incalculable. It escapes the rationalists, but it never escapes till the last moment.”
Big wheels turning →
Why are these “observation wheels” reaching landmark status in some places when other, more vernacular gestures might better fit the context of a place?
That’s Chuck Wolfe with a fair question as he catalogs five principles for people and place in preparation for a forthcoming book. I’ve puzzled, too, about the observation wheel plans here in NYC.
Yet he defends them...
Consider the shortcut →
Wayne Curtis on the lost art of the long walk:
[W]hen we move by foot today … it always seem to involve brief, intense tromps motivated by a single purpose. We walk to the garage to get to the car. We walk from the mall parking lot to Best Buy. We walk from Gate 4 to Gate 22 in Terminal B.
Also:
We also seem to be losing our capacity for in-depth walking. Walking is now short-term...
On dog hair
There it was — as persistent as it had always been. A stubborn, short, quiet hair on the arm of my jacket this afternoon. My hand went up to brush it away, and then it stopped. Routine interrupted.
There it was. Although several weeks before, my beloved red dog had peacefully passed away. My closest companion of 12 years had once shed — generously and unadulteratedly — across the things of my...
October 2012
1 post
The math of lists
Peer over someone’s shoulder — on subways, at desks, at kitchen tables — and chances are good you’ll quickly find a list maker. Inventories, enumerations, lists are sensemaking for nonsensical things.
Lists guide and advise. Not only do they provide temporal structures for moving through a day space, they demand coherence, story, and priority. “What’s your number one...
September 2012
1 post
Cowboys versus farmers →
Obama, recently, revealed part of his framework for simplifying his decision making process,” namely: same suit, different day. Brian Eno nicely outlines the same as cowboys versus farmers:Describing his philosophy of studio work, Mr. Eno tries out another big metaphor: cowboys versus farmers. Most of what happens in a recording studio is repetitive monotony, tilling the same soil over and...
July 2012
1 post
New York truths according to Gopnik →
Adam Gopnik’s truths about New York:
We can’t make any life in New York without composing a private map of it in our minds.
An actual map of New York recalls our inner map of the city. Simultaneously [New York is] a map to be learned and a place to aspire to.
A city of things and a city of signs, the place I actually am and the place I would like to be even when I am here. Even...
May 2012
4 posts
“We experiment; we assume; we fail; we experiment some more. Finally,...”
– Megan Garber on the City of Tomorrow and the dead dream of the dirigible. She continues, “[They are] a timely reminder not just of the short, happy life of airship hegemony, but also of the crazy contingency of history. …. Like the hot-air balloons that preceded it and the wing-thrusted...
The something else approach →
[Y]ou don’t begin with a grand conception, either of the great American novel or a masterpiece that will hang in the Louvre. You begin with a feel for the nitty-gritty material of the medium, paint in one case, sentences in the other.
That’s Annie Dillard in her 1989 book, The Writing Life. In it, she tells the story of a fellow writer who was asked by a student:
“Do you think...
A shape of design
Frank Chimero and I came together over a shared commitment to jazz. But not only exchanges of music. We emulated the form. He would write a blog post. I would respond. I would improvise one of his hunches. He would iterate one of my posts. A call-and-response approach to a developing friendship.
We wrote like this alongside one another without ever meeting or speaking directly – much like many...
April 2012
9 posts
Time after time →
Ephemeral New York chronicles the worthiness of timepieces on New York’s Fifth Avenue:
A grand avenue like Fifth should be adorned with lovely, stately street clocks, right?New York business owners whose shops were located on this pricey stretch of real estate seemed to think so. These towering timepieces (which also functioned as advertising vehicles) sprouted up in the late 19th century...
Everything you know lost in translation →
The forest of symbols,
The eye beguiled:
Tree of smoke
Through the language glass,
Everything you know
Lost in translation.
That’s Stan Carey with a #bookmash, visual poetry via book spines. Adjacencies change the reality of how people see in the world. A more tangible example from Deutscher’s Through the Language Glass:
Japanese used to have a color word, ao, that spanned...
So. →
During a fairly riveting analysis of the discourse marker “so,” the Lexicon Valley podcast gives an unexpected definition of discourse analysis:
Discourse analysts view language as a kind of infrastructure. Just as a city needs roads and telephone wires and computer connections, and its that infrastructure that provides for the possibility of social living, our relationships and...
“No one is a foreigner in New York. And in New York, you walk. Your rapport with...”
– Emmanuel Schalit cf. “By its nature, the metropolis provides what otherwise could be given only traveling; namely, the strange.” —Jane Jacobs, via Jonah Lehrer
The gift of intersections
“It doesn’t matter the work — it matters that you work with care and hard and long and farther and keep learning. Always learn.” That’s my taxi driver speeding toward JFK today as I’m en route to Seattle. He’s telling me his story, as typical for these drives. I look forward to them. Saudi Arabia, hard years in Pakistan (but “most beautiful views”),...
Entrepreneur designers in final form →
It’s spring. And in schools across neighborhoods everywhere, students are wrapping up projects. This semester @svaixd, Gary Chou and Christina Cacioppo are teaching first-year students Entrepreneurial Design (they’ve even made the syllabus open to all). The final class project: students must raise $1,000.
Projects have taken different forms:
Projects that introduce a new service,...
The age of noise →
Marc Weidenbaum on forms of noise:
I am very much the sort of person who is aggravated by sounds as seemingly tiny as the hard drive chatter on the Tivo in my living room, and by the throb of one particular fluorescent bulb that’s recessed into cabinets in my kitchen. When I bought my first iPod, I was stunned by how “loud” the hard drive was when I first turned it on (I was also a little...
March 2012
2 posts
On the Salvador Dali of magic →
Career advice from one half of magician duo, Penn & Teller:
Have heroes outside of magic. Mine are Hitchcock, Poe, Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Bach. You’re welcome to borrow them, but you must learn to love them yourself for your own reasons. Then they’ll push you in the right direction…
Love something besides magic, in the arts. Get inspired by a particular poet, film-maker, sculptor,...
Happiness is not a destination →
Tony Chu, MFA candidate, turns around a Quora answer for first-time entrepreneurs that answers “what part of the process are people often completely blind to?”
An idea is not a design, but it is an invitation to a journey.
A design is not a prototype, but it is a plan for moving forward.
A prototype is not a program, but it is a test for your assumptions.
A program is not a...
February 2012
15 posts
Risk as feelings thesis →
Stanford economist George Loewenstein on how the brain makes decisions and something called the Risk as Feelings thesis:
He argued we overreact emotionally to new risks (which are often low-probability events), and underreact to those risks that are familiar (although these events are more likely to occur). So, as Loewenstein explains, “this is why people seemed to initially overreact to the risk...
For spontaneity's space →
Jonah Lehrer on the value of hurling people together told through a story of MIT’s Building 20 [referred to by MIT people as “the magic incubator”]:
The lesson of Building 20 is that when the composition of the group is right — enough people with different perspectives running into one another in unpredictable ways — the group dynamic will take care of itself. All these errant discussions...
“To be a writer I think you’re kind of constitutionally disposed toward optimism.”
– Malcolm Gladwell cf. The Optimism Bias, or Always Look on the Bright Side of Life
The discipline of making →
The difference between making and meeting:
If you’re rushing to make a train, you have to be there before the last moment. Five seconds too late is too late. The cost of error is absolute.
If you’re hurrying to meet a train, though, there’s a soft deadline. Five seconds is no big deal. Thirty seconds might be annoying, particularly for someone returning from a long journey....
The love list
We are our own best advisors. Often, the best discovery of myself, then, comes from a serendipitous archeology of my own writing.
Today, as I consider love, I did some excavation on my writing to discover what I’ve loved.
The list:
Pronouns. Editing. Being edited. Pencils. Experiments. Superlatives. Gravitation. Almost happiness. Not being sure. Saying no. Illogical resolutions. Boobs....
The genesis of browser names →
Martin Beeby on the origin of popular browser names. On my browser of choice:
While there was a codename vote early in Chrome’s development, none were finally chosen (I’d love to know what they were). Instead, it’s said by Glen Murphy that they chose Chrome because one of the design leads liked fast cars. They then ended up sticking with the codename for the final project launch because 1. they’d...
Linguistic relativity →
How language affects economic behavior has been hotly discussed of late, primarily due to an unpublished paper from Yale economist Keith Chen on the same:
Chen […] thinks that if your language has clear grammatical future tense marking […], then you and your fellow native speakers have a dramatically increased likelihood of exhibiting high rates of obesity, smoking, drinking, debt, and poor...
Odes to iPads →
iPad poetic practicum:
I prefer to fall asleep while reading, an excellent way to avoid those nocturnal thoughts that can suddenly jerk you into wretched wakefulness. On chilly nights, I love to pull the covers over everything but my head and read a book propped up against a pillow until I drift off.
You can only do that with the light on, of course, which means that I’d either wake up at 4 am...
Teammates →
Somewhere among E.B. White and Adam Gopnik there is Cord Jefferson:
I’ve never felt more important than when I lived in New York. I was poor and my work was neither very good nor very well-read, and yet every day I’d wake up in my 10 by 10 room, its window looking out over my building’s rusted trashcans, and somehow think I’d achieved another great victory. …. Eventually my fellow New...
In commons →
Chris Mizes on the seemingly quiet dredge as co-creation between the natural and its urban counterpart:
[T]his massive assemblage of global weather patterns, regional tourism, lunar gravitational forces, transportation infrastructures, urban escapism, geologic displacement, and ocean-floor ecosystems, the dredge becomes only a single point, a transient infrastructure of human desire. The dredge...
Weathering weather derivatives →
Reportedly, “weather derivatives” are not only a thing, but a growing market:
Financial contracts based on the weather have been around since at least the late 1990s. The contracts, many of which trade like stocks, are typically pegged to such things as rainfall and temperatures. But in the past few years, contracts specifically tied to snowfall have started to take off in popularity....
10 ways to be invisible, or rules for making →
Elmore Leonard with rules to remain invisible when writing a book that help show rather than tell. Number 10 and the unofficial number 11:
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
A rule that came to mind in 1983. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he’s writing, perpetrating...
“Happiness is the most important metric in personal tech. If it improves lives,...”
– Brian Lam, The Wirecutter. cf. Informationally, we are becoming lard-asses. In the pageview and ratings driven media economy, too much of the content these days is designed to be just like junk food to quickly boost quantifiable viewership. If you make content that is the intellectual equivalent of...
The hill approach →
Seth Godin on the hill approach to career development:
Repeating easy tasks again and again gets you not very far. Attacking only steep cliffs where no progress is made isn’t particularly effective either. No, the best path is an endless series of difficult (but achievable) hills.
The craft of your career comes in picking the right hills. Hills just challenging enough that you can barely make it...
Itself the revelation →
I’ve become very interested in making a whole object. And providing a window into a memory and a time or a place where I like to be.
That’s Eric Cahan, photographer of “equal parts flat color and limitless space.” Or, skies:
The photos were taken at either sunrise or sunset at bodies of water in California, Florida, and New York. The process of finding the right shades to...
January 2012
10 posts
[A]t 150 years old, this particular rendition of...
I love the wild not less than the good →
Jeremy Denk writing an account of editing during the making of a recording of the playing of the “Concord:”
[W]e find ourselves trying to cobble together a note-perfect devil. Part of me wants to keep the wildest one, with all its imperfections; as Thoreau said, “I love the wild not less than the good.” But Adam [the recording editor] is convinced that we can have the...
