February 2012
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January 2012
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Made Better in Japan →
Imagine going into an espresso bar, as I did in Tokyo, ordering a single shot, and being told that it’s not on offer. The counter at No. 8 Bear Pond may feature the shiniest, spiffiest, newest La Marzocco, as well as a Rube Goldberg–esque water-filtration system, but the menu, which lists lattes and Americanos, makes no mention of espresso or cappuccino.
“My boss won’t let me...
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Alain de Botton: a life in writing →
‘The nirvana would be if the questions raised by Oprah Winfrey would be answered by the faculty at Harvard’
“My dad was a slightly stricter version of Richard Dawkins,” says Alain de Botton. “The worldview was that there are idiots out there who believe in Santa Claus and fairies and magic and elves and we’re not joining that nonsense.” In his new...
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In China, Human Costs are Built into the iPad →
Two hours into Mr. Lai’s second shift, the building started to shake, as if an earthquake was under way. There was a series of blasts, plant workers said.
Then the screams began.
When Mr. Lai’s colleagues ran outside, dark smoke was mixing with a light rain, according to cellphone videos. The toll would eventually count four dead, 18 injured.
At the hospital, Mr. Lai’s girlfriend saw that his skin...
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“I make more mistakes than anyone else I know, and sooner or later, I patent most...”
– Thomas Edison
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David Ogilvy on Copywriting →
April 19, 1955 Dear Mr. Calt: On March 22nd you wrote to me asking for some notes on my work habits as a copywriter. They are appalling, as you are about to see: 1. I have never written an advertisement in the office. Too many interruptions. I do all my writing at home. 2. I spend a long time studying the precedents. I look at every advertisement which has appeared for competing products during...
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Swallowed by a whale — a true tale? →
If, I’ll pretend for a moment, you were swallowed, it would happen like this: You would first be chewed. Sperm whales’ teeth are 8 inches long – longer than most blades in your knife drawer. Then you would be gulped to the fauces, the back of the mouth, and forced down. Here is where Bartley apparently touched the quivering sides of the throat. You would also touch the throat, perhaps claw at the...
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Brad Noble on Why Google’s “Search Plus Your... →
With Search Plus Your World, Google is undermining itself as the most trusted source of all the world’s information. The artificial algorithm was objective, he explained, but SPYW is not only self-serving but will inevitably serve up biased results. So with SPYW, he suggests, Google goes from being the core of the Web 2.0 economy to just another social play in today’s Web 3.0 world of ubiquitous...
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Y Combinator wants to Kill Hollywood →
Hollywood appears to have peaked. If it were an ordinary industry (film cameras, say, or typewriters), it could look forward to a couple decades of peaceful decline. But this is not an ordinary industry. The people who run it are so mean and so politically connected that they could do a lot of damage to civil liberties and the world economy on the way down. It would therefore be a good thing if...
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