Monthly Archives: May 2009
the value of executing ideas
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This addresses the other part of my ideas post, and does quite succinctly: Talking about your work does not directly improve the actual quality of your work. Ultimately design happens in the world and in your hands, and not in your mouth. That’s from an interview with designer Jack Schulze. The other quote that’s been […]
albatrosses v. salmon
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meandering through an idea or two…
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When Paul Krugman writes a blog post that is more academically oriented, he always labels it as ‘wonkish’ in an attempt to protect his general interest readers. So in that spirit, this post is ‘wonkish’. Very wonkish. Which is ironic given my exhortation for clarity yesterday, but that’s the way it goes… I quite like […]
getting ideas to spread
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I ran across an interview with David Foster Wallace on Salon from just after Infinite Jest came out. It included this quote about the state of Literature: If you, the writer, succumb to the idea that the audience is too stupid, then there are two pitfalls. Number one is the avant-garde pitfall, where you have […]
lotsalinks saturday!
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Here’s another twist on the business models for artists meme. A. Koford has been drawing a fantastic web cartoon featuring the Laugh Out Loud Cats, two cats that look like depression-era hobo comics characters, but who speak LOLcat. It sounds screwy, but works beautifully. Check out the site – All of the comics are freely […]
ideas are cheap
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newspaper innovation??
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When I was writing about Kristin Hersh the other day I asked why the record labels weren’t able to come up the new music business model that she’s using. I’m still a bit perplexed by this. Similarly, there’s been lots of talk recently about how newspapers find themselves in a pretty unfavourable position these days […]
persistent economic ties
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There’s been a bit of a slow roll through the (mostly) academic blogs discussing a recent paper by Bronnenberg, Dhar & Dube from The Journal of Political Economy called “Brand History, Geography, and the Persistence of Brand Shares”. Here’s the abstract: We document evidence of a persistent “early entry” advantage for brands in 34 consumer […]
fail now! fail fast!
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I grabbed a copy of an odd little book yesterday – it’s called Books vs Cigarettes by George Orwell. It’s a collection of six essays. They’re all pretty good (Orwell is always pretty readable), but I don’t see a lot of logic in assembling these particular essays into one book (the title essay is excellent […]
the cone of uncertainty
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kristin hersh is brilliant
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I subscribed to Kristin Hersh today. That probably sounds a bit weird, so let me explain. If you’re not familiar with her, Kristin is pretty much a genius. She started making music over 20 years ago with her first band, Throwing Muses. The Muses have made around 7 records in that time, plus she has […]
