September 2012
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The Hustler's MBA →
I’ve been saying that college is obsolete for a very long time. I dropped out in 2000, because even back then I could see that it was a really poor value proposition. I didn’t predict this because I’m some crazy genius, but because I’m willing to discard emotional attachment and stare plainly at the facts.
School is oturageously expensive, leaving graduates with a debt (or...
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The Rashomon Project: “Multi-Perspective... →
Using social video improve our understanding of complex events. Rashomon would allow visitors to study an event from multiple perspectives, zooming in on particular moments to examine sequences in detail.
With the Rashomon tool, activists, journalists, investigators, and ordinary citizens will be able to assemble a more complete view of contested events than could be gained by single-source video...
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Meet the Man Who Built a 30-Story Building in 15... →
Zhang Yue, founder and chairman of Broad Sustainable Building, is not a particularly humble man. A humble man would not have erected, on his firm’s corporate campus in the Chinese province of Hunan, a classical palace and a 130-foot replica of an Egyptian pyramid. A humble man, for that matter, would not have redirected Broad from its core business—manufacturing industrial air-conditioning...
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The Weaker Sex →
In 2012 America, as she points out, women are better educated than men (women earn the majority of bachelor’s and graduate degrees); an escalating number of single women younger than 30 earn more than their male peers; and nine of the 10 U.S. job industries with the most projected growth are women-dominated. This last figure has resulted from various societal shifts, ranging from a...
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Why Men Fail →
By DAVID BROOKS NY Times Published: September 10, 2012
You’re probably aware of the basic trends. The financial rewards to education have increased over the past few decades, but men failed to get the memo.
In elementary and high school, male academic performance is lagging. Boys earn three-quarters of the D’s and F’s. By college, men are clearly behind. Only 40 percent of bachelor’s degrees go...
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Schizophrenia and social effects →
Epidemiologists have now homed in on a series of factors that increase the risk of developing schizophrenia, including being migrant, being male, living in an urban environment, and being born poor. One of the more disconcerting findings is that if you have dark skin, your risk of falling victim to schizophrenia increases as your neighborhood whitens. Your level of risk also rises if you were...
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‘Telegraph Avenue,’ by Michael Chabon →
“Telegraph Avenue,” Michael Chabon’s rich, comic new novel, is a homage to an actual place: the boulevard in Northern California where Oakland — historically an African-American city — aligns with Berkeley, whose bourgeois white inhabitants are, as one character puts it, “liable to invest all their hope of heaven in the taste of an egg laid in the backyard by a heritage-breed chicken.” The novel...
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Sometimes Formica Beats White Tablecloths →
By MARK BITTMAN NY Times Published: September 4, 2012
THE last time I ate in a four-star white-tablecloth restaurant, I was frustrated and unhappy. (Bear with me; I’m not asking for sympathy.)
This wasn’t an isolated incident: It simply isn’t what I want anymore. It’s become painful, not in the visiting-the-dentist sense, but in the “you have to go to synagogue; it’s Yom Kippur” sense, a long,...
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A CANDID PROPOSAL FROM AN ADVERTISING FIRM’S... →
By: Andrew Gall, McSweeney’s
Dear esteemed prospective client:
I can’t wait to get started on this exciting new advertising campaign for your product/service. It is truly a great opportunity.
By entering into this freelance contract with me, I agree to provide you with the following materials for your new advertising campaign:
A mood board session, in which my team will provide you with...
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Arthur Schopenhauer On Reading and Books →
When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. It is the same as the pupil, in learning to write, following with his pen the lines that have been pencilled by the teacher. Accordingly, in reading, the work of thinking is, for the greater part, done for us. This is why we are consciously relieved when we turn to reading after being occupied with our own thoughts....
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Watch
Usefulness in Small Things - Everyday, low-cost, and mass-produced items gathered from around the world showcasing innovative design. This book presents a delightful collection of mass-produced objects that provide insight into the things that surround us. Common items such as nails, plugs, toothbrushes, soap, gloves, and sweets have their own function and differ in design from country to...
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What Happens When Photography Becomes A Commodity? →
By: A Photo Editor
I believe much of photography is already a commodity and I plan to speak about it during the ASMP Symposium next Thursday the 27th in New York at the Times Center. The topic for the event (more details here) is “Sustainable Business Models: Issues and Trends Facing Visual Artists” which is a topic I’ve been thinking and writing about since I started this blog. the ASMP goes on...
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The Glory of Leaves →
By: Rob Dunn, National Geographic
We have all held leaves, driven miles to see their fall colors, eaten them, raked them, sought their shade. Since they are everywhere, it’s easy to take them for granted.
But even when we do, they continue in their one occupation: turning light into life. When rays of sunlight strike green leaves, wavelengths in the green spectrum bounce back toward our eyes....
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Complexity of Crisis Control →
Catching a frisbee is difficult. Doing so successfully requires the catcher to weigh a complex array of physical and atmospheric factors, among them wind speed and frisbee rotation. Were a physicist to write down frisbee-catching as an optimal control problem, they would need to understand and apply Newton’s Law of Gravity.
Yet despite this complexity, catching a frisbee is remarkably common....
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An Attempt At Exhausting A place in the Financial...
ymfy: A truck pulls up, obscuring my view of the street. It says “Dynamic Pacific Enterprise” on the side in large and small caps. A man and a woman sit next to me at the bar looking out into the street. She tells him about her dream, which is to become a surf instructor. She tells him first she needs to learn how to surf. An old woman seems to be studying my face. She is looking at a menu taped...
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“We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime....”
– Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story by Chuck Klosterman
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