Author Archive
By their fruit
Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are. — John Wooden legendary US basketball coach Even a scoundrel can take comfort in the wisdom of John Wooden’s words, and I’m sure some do. But the question […]
Fair use — ‘iconic’ is a rationale
We’ve discussed ‘fair dealing’ and ‘fair use’ of other people’s intellectual property previously. I stumbled across THIS useful explanation on wikipedia following a link from Jason Kottke on reproductions of classic photographs in lego and found it interesting enough — the copyright aspect — to quote in full here. Copyright is owned by Martin Elliott. […]
More on ad blockers …
Remember our earlier conversation about ad-supported sites suffering from increasing use of ad-blockers? Well, a new round of quelle horreur!! has been prompted by the very recent release of Safari 5.0 with a Reader mode (which, it turns out, uses the open source code of the arc90 Readability java bookmarklet I’ve been happily using to […]
iPad: ‘a revolution, guys’ — Seth Godin
Marketing and web guru Seth Godin recently gave his friends at the Kindle team an open briefing on their options in response to Apple’s iPad selling at a rate of one every three seconds. It’s an interesting read from a number of points of view, not least: what are your options when your business has […]
Helen Thomas interview
Helen Thomas is the 89 year old White House correspondent who ‘retired’ over her comments that ‘Jews should get the hell out of Palestine’, leave the ‘occupied’ land, and ‘go home’ to Poland, Germany and America. (Yikes! Jon Stewart had a take you can see here via Huffington Post.) But this interview in Vice magazine […]
Another good graphic
From my.barackobama.com Is it true? Dunno. I guess so. Like this morning’s example, the graphic tells a story all by itself.
What a good graphic!
I like this graphic from the NZ Herald just now — it puts today’s small Official Cash Rate interest rate rise in perspective nicely. Well done. Here’s the story (if you care) at the NZ Herald. My only point was: This is a good use of graphics to communicate. That graph does remind me of […]
Clarke and Dawe ask the million dollar questions
Hilarious and TRUE … John Clarke and Bryan Dawe calculate the cost of the European debt crisis. (In the same ilk as John Bird and John Fortune and apropos our discussion re Europe here following Tony Alexander’s enews.) Link: http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2010/05/20/2905304.htm Thanks to A for the tip.
On the courthouse steps
My own meagre experience is that a court date focusses the mind of the ‘offending’ party. ‘Out-of-court settlement reached on the courthouse steps’ has acquired cliché status. So it seems to have been with Cabinet Minister Nick Smith who (finally, after five years) issued an apology to a company suing him for defamation over ‘incorrect’ […]
Looking good … design is almost everything
Oh boy. They’ve made obsolete their own product … which was, if you ask me, the ‘secret’ of their success with the iPod: never resting on their own laurels, always pressing forward.
What a book!
Well. I’ve just spent much of the holiday weekend devouring this book: Race of a Lifetime: How Obama Won the White House (Mark Halperin and John Heilemann) The review extracts on the jacket promised me ‘Absolutely gripping’ and ‘Fantastically detailed …incendiary’ and ‘Sleazy, personal, intrusive, shocking — and compulsive.” All true. If you’re interested in […]
Worth reading …
We construct the history of our wisdom only by burying our foolishness in the endnotes. From a very good essay sparked by the Gaza aid boat raids… Chosen, but Not Special By MICHAEL CHABON NY Times | June 4, 2010 “GAZA Flotilla Drives Israel Into a Sea of Stupidity” declared the Israeli daily Haaretz on […]
Keeping things in perspective
A nice bit of (historical) perspective, and reminder just how truly corrupt the Nixon administration was … No, this isn’t “Watergate” (and never will be) Republicans have fantasized about a Democratic “Watergate” for decades. Can they still remember the real thing? by Joe Conason | Salon.com As Conason points out, shallow comparisons are often trotted […]
No hard feelings – present some facts
I know the spruikers I take aim at here now and then feel hard done by. So do some of their fans. I’m sorry for their hurt feelings. I really am. But the way I see it, they make their own bed and lie in it (— or lie from it, one could say). Actions […]
What ‘letting it slide’ can cost you
From a review of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ appearance at a recent tech Q&A: Jobs acknowledged that the next-generation iPhone photographed by Gizmodo was circulating as a part of the normal testing of wireless products. “To make a wireless product work well you need to test it. You have to carry them outside. One of […]
