We are often afraid of silence, because its emptiness feels idle, boring, unproductive, and scary. And so we fill our lives with chaos, noise, clutter.
But silence can be lovely, and therapeutic, and powerful.
It can be the remedy for our stress and the habits that crush us.
If we want quiet in our lives, how do we create it?
I’ve been exploring this myself. As a father of six kids, I have to admit that I don’t always have silence in my life. That’s not a complaint — I love the messy noise that my family brings — but silence can be a welcome refuge from that noise at times.
I create silence by subtracting, and not filling the resulting emptiness withe noise or clutter.
And so my life is a constant experimentation with subtracting. When I’ve subtracted, and learn to love the empty silence, I subtract some more. Subtraction is a beautiful process.
Prefer subtraction over addition.
Learn to be content with little, or nothing.
Realize that silence is beautiful.
Find yourself in the empty space that results.
Empty a room, and put almost nothing back except that which produces quiet.
Speak less, listen more, contemplate even more.
Walk in silence. Watch the leaves quiver, fall in silence, whisper in the wind.
Sit and do nothing. Listen to your mind make noise in the silence, allow it to subside.
Eschew video, iPods, books, the Internet, mobile devices, social networks, and other purveyors of noise.
Be quiet, so that life may speak.
—
I will be leading an online mini-course in February on creating the habit of meditation. It will be very simple, but in those few minutes of meditation every morning, you will find lovely silence.
The mini-course will be available only to Premium Members of Zen Habits, which is a paid membership I haven’t announced yet. What will the membership consist of? Exclusive bonus articles, videos, interviews, live webinars each month on simplicity, habits, clutter, fitness, finances, creating a business around your passion, families and more. Mini-courses every 2-4 months on topics you choose. Guest experts on all these topics. The ability to ask me questions about anything.
More next week. Thanks, my friends.
by Leo at January 27, 2012 10:20 PM
Has a dog Buddha-nature?
This is the most serious question of all.
If you say yes or no,
You lose your own Buddha-nature.
by dooce in Daily Chuck
© Armstrong Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Originally published by Heather B. Armstrong for dooce.com as Joshu's Dog. This post cannot be republished without express written permission.
by dooce at January 27, 2012 06:45 PM
Yesterday while I was out I ran across a stuffed puppy and could not resist bringing it home to Marlo. Okay. Lie. I ran across two stuffed puppies.
When I got home I held them behind my back, but she could see the foot of one of the puppies peeking out and OH MY GOD the squeal.
"HOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEEE!"
It shot me straight in the gut and almost knocked me over. I folded up that moment and put it in my pocket.
by dooce in Daily Photo
© Armstrong Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Originally published by Heather B. Armstrong for dooce.com as Stash. This post cannot be republished without express written permission.
by dooce at January 27, 2012 06:19 PM
Street Scene will appear each week showcasing the illustrations of local artist
Jerry Waese.
by Jerry Waese at January 27, 2012 05:00 PM
Urban Planet is a daily roundup of blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We’ll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
Highways can carve up and scar urban neighbourhoods, which is why many North American cities are looking for ways to cover this infrastructure and restore community. The Chicago Tribune explores the experience of Columbus, Ohio which saw increased pedestrian traffic and business for local stores following the installation of the "Cap at Union Station". But with a $10 million+ price tag, is the cap a viable option for other centres?
Image from PlasticsSafety
For more stories from around the planet, check out Spacing on Facebook and Twitter. Do you have an Urban Planet worthy article you'd like to share? Send the link to urbanplanet@spacing.ca
by Hilary Best at January 27, 2012 05:00 PM
In this transcript of a talk given to the attendees of the Joint Summits on Translational Science, Carl Zimmer highlights an important aspect of understanding the human body and how to treat its many maladies: the ecosystem of microbes.
Tags: biology Carl Zimmer scienceThe microbes in your body at this moment outnumber your cells by ten to one. And they come in a huge diversity of species -- somewhere in the thousands, although no one has a precise count yet. By some estimates there are twenty million microbial genes in your body: about a thousand times more than the 20,000 protein-coding genes in the human genome. So the Human Genome Project was, at best, a nice start. If we really want to understand all the genes in the human body, we have a long way to go.
Now you could say "Who cares? They're just wee animalcules." Those wee animacules are worth caring about for many reasons. One of the most practical of those reasons is that they have a huge impact on our "own" health. Our collection of microbes-the microbiome-is like an extra organ of the human body. And while an organ like the heart has only one function, the microbiome has many.
When food comes into the gut, for example, microbes break some of them down using enzymes we lack. Sometimes the microbes and our own cells have an intimate volley, in which bacteria break down a molecule part way, our cells break it down some more, the bacteria break it down even more, and then finally we get something to eat.
Another thing that the microbiome does is manage the immune system. Certain species of resident bacteria, like Bacteroides fragilis, produce proteins that tamp down inflammation. When scientists rear mice that don't have any germs at all, they have a very difficult time developing a normal immune system. The microbiome has to tutor the immune system in how to do its job properly. It also acts like an immune system of its own, fighting off invading microbes, and helping to heal wounds.
While the microbiome may be an important organ, it's a peculiar one. It's not one solid hunk of flesh. It's an ecosystem, made up of thousands of interacting species.
by Jason Kottke at January 27, 2012 04:18 PM
Monty Python member Terry Jones is set to direct a sci-fi comedy that will feature other Python members "voicing key roles". Gilliam, Cleese, and Palin have all signed on and they're working on getting Eric Idle.
Members of Monty Python's Flying Circus are reteaming for "Absolutely Anything," a sci-fi farce combining CGI and live action, with Terry Jones to direct and Mike Medavoy to produce.
Plans are for filming to begin in the U.K. this spring, with the Pythons voicing key roles as a a group of aliens who endow an earthling with the power to do "absolutely anything" to see what a mess he'll make of things -- which is precisely what happens. There's also a talking dog named Dennis who seems to understand more about the mayhem that ensues than anyone else does. Robin Williams will voice the character.
"It's not a Monty Python picture, but it certainly has that sensibility," Jones told Variety.
(via ★vuokko)
Tags: Absolutely Anything Monty Python moviesby Jason Kottke at January 26, 2012 11:33 PM
Typographica shares their favorite typefaces of 2011.
(via ★essl) Tags: best of best of 2011 lists typographyThe idea is simple: I invite a group of writers, educators, type makers and type users to look back at 2011 and pick the release that excited them most.
by Jason Kottke at January 26, 2012 10:17 PM
Dare I tackle affect versus effect? No, authors usually get that right. They always spell adrenaline wrong, though. And they always say foreboding when they mean forbidding, though this is tricky because sometimes they really do mean foreboding.
In a couple of hours my new workshop is going to discuss the three Zeppo and Friends stories I gave them, aaa aaaaaaa
Maybe I'm just way over-cautious but this guy does almost kill himself while bungee jumping off a bridge using a jury-rigged climbing rope and harness, right? This is just totally batshit crazy:
Skip ahead to about 1:30...everything before that is just filler. (via ★bryce)
Tags: videoby Jason Kottke at January 26, 2012 08:52 PM
Aaron Cohen calls this "the best story you'll read about a burglary you'll read this week" and I think he's right.
Tags: crime John DavidsonWhen John Davidson's apartment gets robbed, he learns that the easiest way to get his stuff back is to have one drug dealer lie to another drug dealer while he lies to the police.
by Jason Kottke at January 26, 2012 07:22 PM
Posters for Oscar nominated movies that maybe tell the truth of each movie a bit more than the conventional posters. For instance, Iron Lady becomes Total Bitch, Tree of Life becomes Wuh?, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo becomes All the Rape, No Subtitles.
(via ★vuokko)
Tags: design movies remixby Jason Kottke at January 26, 2012 04:12 PM
That's right, two exclamation points because this blows my mind. John Tyler was the 10th President of the United States. He was born in 1790 and took office in 1841. His son, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, was born in 1853, when Tyler was 63 years old1. Lyon had six children with two different wives2, two of whom were Lyon Gardiner Tyler, Jr. (born 1924 when Lyon Sr. was 71) and Harrison Ruffin Tyler (born 1928 when Lyon Sr. was 75). They are reportedly both still living in their 80s.
Someone needs to come up with a term for this sort of thing (history bridges? no.). There's also this 1956 game show appearance of a Lincoln assassination eyewitness and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935) shaking hands during his lifetime with both John Quincy Adams (b 1767) and John F Kennedy (d 1963), one man spanning 200 years of American history. (via ★mattbucher)
[1] Tyler actually had two children after Lyon...Robert was born when he was 65 and Pearl followed at 70. ↩
[2] Lyon's second wife was 36 years his junior and actually younger than each of his three previous children. ↩
Tags: history John Tylerby Jason Kottke at January 26, 2012 03:02 AM
Adrian Chen has an interview with a renegade IT guy named Martin who does social media, hacking, and other tech stuff for "High Net-worth Individuals" and criminals. One of things he does is set up drug rings with prepaid cell phones and a rotating collection of SIM cards a la the Barksdale/Bell drug crew in The Wire.
With Martin's system, each crewmember gets a cell phone that operates using a prepaid SIM card; they also get a two-week plastic pill organizer filled with 14 SIM cards where the pills should be. Each SIM card, loaded with $50 worth of airtime, is attached to a different phone number and stores all contacts, text messages and call histories associated with that number, like a removable hard drive. This makes a new SIM card effectively a new phone. Every morning, each crewmember swaps out his phone's card for the card in next day's compartment in the pill organizers. After all 14 cards are used, they start over at the first one.
Of course, it would be hugely annoying for a crewmember to have to remember the others' constantly changing numbers. But he doesn't have to, thanks to the pill organizers. Martin preprograms each day's SIM card with the phone numbers the other members have that day. As long they all swap out their cards every day, the contacts in the phones stay in sync. (They never call anyone but each other on the phones.) Crewmembers will remind each other to "take their medicine," Martin said.
That's clever. The "take their medicine" detail reads like it's straight out of the movies.
Tags: Adrian Chen crime The Wireby Jason Kottke at January 25, 2012 10:10 PM
If there's one thing cartoons have taught me it's that Germans tend to be lovably addled scientists, when they aren't Nazis. But if there's another thing cartoons have taught me it's that Scottish waterfowl are skinflints. Why not commemorate Burns Night with an animated collision of stereotypes, as lovably addled scientist and vampire hunter Dr. Von Goosewing (accompanied by his imaginary assistant Heinrich) meets a Scottish vampire skinflint duck in this episode of Count Duckula?
Rory McDuckula: Can I be of any assistance?
Von Goosewing: A first-class room I had booked. Und anuzzer fift-class for Heinrich here.
Rory McDuckula: I see. So you need one room for you, and one for Mr. Here.
Von Goosewing: And vun for Heinrich.
Rory McDuckula: Three rooms?
Von Goosewing: Nein!
Rory McDuckula: Nine rooms?
Von Goosewing: Two rooms!
Economist Jason Barr and his colleagues measured the bedrock depth in Manhattan and correlated it with building height. In doing so, they busted the long-held belief that there were no skyscrapers between Midtown and the Financial District because of insufficient bedrock.
What the economists found was that some of the tallest buildings of their day were built around City Hall, where the bedrock reaches its deepest point in the city, about 45 meters down, between there and Canal Street, at which point the bedrock begins to rise again toward the middle of the island. Indeed, Joseph Pullitzer built his record-setting New York World Building, a 349-foot colossus, at 99 Park Row, near the nadir, as did Frank Woolworth a decade later.
(via @bobulate)
Tags: architecture cities economics NYCby Jason Kottke at January 25, 2012 08:52 PM
Somebody somewhere is really unhappy with itSMF International. They have a childish way of dealing with it.
by skeptic at January 25, 2012 08:43 PM
From the 1890s until the 1960s, the location and orientation of stamps on postcards were used for the transmission of secret messages.
For all those who are in the situation of Hero and Leander, and similarly to them can only exchange secret signs about the feelings of their hearts, here we publish the secrets of the language of stamps. If the stamp stands upright in the upper right corner of the card or envelope, it means: I wish your friendship. Top right, across: Do you love me? Top right, upside down: Don't write me any more. Top right, thwart: Write me immediately. Top right, upright [once more again???]: Your love makes me happy. Top left, across: My heart belongs to someone else. Top left, upright: I love you. Bottom left, across: Leave me alone in my grief. In line with the name: Accept my love. Same place, across: I wish to see you. Same place, upside down: I love someone else.
by Jason Kottke at January 25, 2012 07:20 PM
Clip after clip of formerly intact objects (boats, planes, buildings) being destroyed in a matter of seconds.
(via @unlikelywords)
Tags: videoby Jason Kottke at January 25, 2012 06:07 PM
Crowbar is an interesting project that I've covered before. Born out of Dell's cloud group, much of the initial buzz described it as an installer for the cloud era... "kickstart on steroids", if you will.
Crowbar's close association with the OpenStack project has further cemented its reputation as an installer to watch. But's it's Crowbar's quiet potential as a stack management tool that is the most interesting. Through the use of barclamps (Crowbar's modules) you can tell Crowbar to build a full stack from the BIOS config all the way up to your middleware and applications. John Willis on an episode of DevOps Cafe called it "Data Center as Code".
Crowbar barclamps are also an interesting way for independent projects or vendors to ensure that their projects/products can be easily integrated into a custom platform (today this type of focus is usually in the context of making things work on OpenStack). Want to add a new component to your platform? Grab the barclamp and Crowbar will know how to do the rest. Or at least that is the promise. The project is still young and the community is still forming.
Leading open source software projects is new territory for Dell, as a company, but the Crowbar team does seem committed and community focused. I've heard some grumbles from developers that barclamp development and testing cycles can be a bit tedious due to the nature of what you are building. But no reason to believe that those types of issues won't get sorted out over time.
A couple of Crowbar related videos are below:
The first video was made by my DTO Solutions colleague, Keith Hudgins, after he wrote a barclamp for Zenoss. It's a short demo and tour that can give you a feel for Crowbar and Barclamps.
The next video is Barton George (Dell) interviewing Rob Hirshfeld (Dell). They start off talking about the Hadoop barclamp but quickly getting into a broader discussion about Crowbar.
by Damon Edwards at January 25, 2012 06:02 PM
Letters of Note ran a 1955 letter from advertising legend David Ogilvy that details his process for writing advertising copy.
Tags: advertising David Ogilvy writingI have never written an advertisement in the office. Too many interruptions. I do all my writing at home.
by Jason Kottke at January 25, 2012 05:12 PM
Continuous delivery is a software development strategy that optimizes your delivery process to get high-quality, valuable software delivered as quickly as possible. This approach allows you to validate your business hypothesis fast and then rapidly iterate by testing new ideas on users. Although Continuous Delivery focuses on engineering practices, the concept of continuous delivery has implications for the whole product-delivery process, including the “fuzzy front end” and the design and analysis of features.
Read the rest of this article on InformIT (free, no registration required)
by jez at January 25, 2012 04:19 PM
David Galbraith updated his post on where the web was invented (which includes an interview with Tim Berners-Lee) to include the juicy tidbit that the building in which TBL invented the web is in France, not Switzerland.
Tags: CERN David Galbraith France Switzerland Tim Berners-Lee WWWI'll bet if you asked every French politician where the web was invented not a single one would know this. The Franco-Swiss border runs through the CERN campus and building 31 is literally just a few feet into France. However, there is no explicit border within CERN and the main entrance is in Switzerland, so the situation of which country it was invented in is actually quite a tricky one. The current commemorative plaque, which is outside a row of offices where people other than Tim Berners-Lee worked on the web, is in Switzerland. To add to the confusion, in case Tim thought of the web at home, his home was in France but he temporarily moved to rented accommodation in Switzerland, just around the time the web was developed. So although, strictly speaking, France is the birthplace of the web it would be fair to say that it happened in building 31 at CERN but not in any particular country! How delightfully appropriate for an invention which breaks down physical borders.
by Jason Kottke at January 25, 2012 03:41 PM
The itSMF International Executive Board (IEB) announced Marianna Billington as chair for the coming year. Yay Marianna! Another high-flying Kiwi in ITSM. Congratulations.
Actually the news was on Twitter days ago, I think @servicesphere called it first.
by skeptic at January 25, 2012 10:40 AM
Before he died last year at the age of 44, Mike DeStefano shared the story of his wife's final days many years earlier. She's in hospice care, DeStefano shows up with his new Harley and takes her for a ride, morphine drip and all.
She's holding the pole [of the IV drip]! Marc, it was a pole with four wheels on the bottom, and we're riding around this hospice, and you could hear the goddamn wheels jangling and banging; it was insane.
And then I pass the front door, and all these nurses are standing out front, and they're all crying. They're watching us, and they're crying. And I didn't know why they were crying. I was like, Why are they crying? I didn't get what they were seeing. I didn't know. Because I was just in it; I was living it. I knew my wife who had suffered, she was a prostitute, she was a freakin' heroin addict, she was beaten by pimps -- this was her past -- and then she ends up with AIDS, and she's dying, and all she wants is a goddamn ride on my motorcycle.
So the next thing you know we're on I-95, because women, it's never enough for them. We're on I-95, and she unhooks the pole, and she's holding the morphine bag over her head with her gown that's flying up in the air so you could see her entire naked, bony body with the morphine bag whipping in the wind, and we're passing by these guys in their Lamborghinis, and I'm looking at them like, What the hell kind of life are you living? Look at me, I'm on top of the world here.
I love this story. The podcast from which it was taken is available here.
Tags: death healthcare Mike DeStefanoby Jason Kottke at January 24, 2012 06:38 PM
The headlines like, "Sen. Reid kills SOPA bill" should really read, "Sen. Reid tells people SOPA is dead so Hollywood can work on more stealthy bill."
What to do about this kind of thing in general?
(1)
The internet seems to ignore legislation until somebody tries to take something away from us... then we carefully defend that one thing and never counter-attack. Then the other side says, "OK, compromise," and gets half of what they want. That's not the way to win... that's the way to see a steady and continuous erosion of rights online.
The solution is to start lobbying for our own laws. It's time to go on the offensive if we want to preserve what we've got. Let's force the RIAA and MPAA to use up all their political clout just protecting what they have. Here are some ideas we should be pushing for:
* Elimination of software patents
* Legal fees paid by the loser in patent cases; non-practicing entities must post bond before they can file fishing expedition lawsuits
* Roll back length of copyright protection to the minimum necessary "to promote the useful arts." Maybe 10 years?
* Create a legal doctrine that merely linking is protected free speech
* And ponies. We want ponies. We don't have to get all this stuff. We merely have to tie them up fighting it, and re-center the "compromise" position.
(2)
The dismal corruption of congress has gotten it to the point where lobbying for legislation is out of control. As Larry Lessig has taught us, the core rottenness originates from the high cost of running political campaigns, which mostly just goes to TV stations.
A solution is for the Internet industry to start giving free advertising to political campaigns on our own new media assets... assets like YouTube that are rapidly displacing television. Imagine if every political candidate had free access (under some kind of "equal time" rule) to enough advertising inventory on the Internet to run a respectable campaign. Sure, candidates can still pay to advertise on television, but the cost of campaigning would be a lot lower if every candidate could run geo-targeted pre-roll ads on YouTube, geo-targeted links at the top of Reddit.com, even targeted campaigns on Facebook. If the Internet can donate enough inventory (and I suspect we can), we can make it possible for a candidate to get elected without raising huge war chests from donors who are going to want something in return, and we may finally get to a point where every member of congress isn't in permanent outstretched-hand mode.
Read the entire thing here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/117114202722218150209/posts/4GgaRiSyaTf
by Tom Limoncelli at January 24, 2012 05:17 PM
Gavin Purcell produces Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and the other night on Twitter, he shared some info about how the show comes together.
Tags: Gavin Purcell Jimmy Fallon TVby Jason Kottke at January 23, 2012 08:20 PM
If recent movies like The Hangover, Drive, Inception, and Rushmore had been made in an earlier era, who would have starred in and directed these premakes? How about Dean Martin, Jack Lemmon, and Jerry Lewis in The Hangover?
Or Inception directed by Fritz Lang?
(thx, al)
Tags: design movies remixby Jason Kottke at January 23, 2012 06:29 PM
‘Don’t panic.’ ~Douglas Adams
Why is it that we cannot break the bad habits that stand in our way, crushing our desires to live a healthy life, be fit, simplify, be happier?
How is it that our best intentions are nearly always beaten? We want to be focused and productive, exercise and eat healthy foods, stop smoking and learn to get rid of debt and clutter, but we just can’t.
The answer lies in something extremely simple, but something most people aren’t aware of:
We don’t know how to cope with stress and boredom in a healthy way.
The bad habits we’ve formed are often useful to us, in dealing with stress and boredom. Consider the bad habits that fit this bill:
This isn’t a complete list, but all of these habits fill a strong need: they are ways to cope with stress and/or boredom. We have formed them as coping mechanisms, and they stick around because we don’t have better ways of coping.
So what if instead, we replaced them with healthier ways of coping? We’d get rid of the problems of these bad habits, and start getting the benefits of better habits.
How can we deal with stress and boredom instead? There’s no one answer, but the habits we form should be ones that lead to healthier results. Some ideas:
These are some good examples. Each habit above will help cope with or prevent stress or boredom. If you replace the bad habits with these, your life will be less stressful and healthier. You’ll have less debt, less clutter, less fat, less disease.
The old habits of coping didn’t build up overnight, and they won’t go away overnight either. We built them up through years of repetition, and the only way to change them is also years of repetition.
But an important start is to realize why we do them — stress and boredom, largely — and realize that there are other ways to deal with these two problems. We need to be aware when stress and boredom start to kick in, and instead of being afraid of them, realize that they are problems easily solved by other habits. Let’s take the fear out of stress and boredom. Let’s learn that we can beat them simply, and prove that with repeated good habits.
Once you have that realization, follow the usual Zen Habits steps to changing a habit:
We have been crushed by the habits we’ve formed out of fear of stress and boredom. We can fight back, by learning to breathe, to smile, to go slowly. We can humble these giants that crush us by turning them into mere gnats to be shooed away with a smile.
by Leo at January 23, 2012 06:26 PM
I like to listen to New Age talk radio on iTunes while I work on comics. I don't know why everyone doesn't listen to New Age talk radio. It's a hoot. It just asked me, "Did you know you are already wired for holiness?" (I hadn't known that.) Right now, of course, all the stations are falling over themselves telling us what will happen when the Mayan calendar ends. Because those guys whose gods demanded human sacrifice, they really had the right idea spiritually. (And yes, the god of the Hebrews demanded human sacrifice, but only the one time. He didn't make a habit of it.)
My favorite stations are 7th Wave Network and Law of Attraction Radio Network. The Law of Attraction is particularly funny to me because it's such a cruel and childish belief system, but those who espouse it always cloak it in New Age commonplaces about love and light. There is nothing loving or light about telling people they choose everything that happens to them! What was I thinking, putting "chronic mood disorder" on my vision board?
Camera shutters used to be verrrry slow so to help young kids stay still during the long exposure, the photographer would have the mother be in the frame but typically covered by a blanket or cloth. Like so:
(via cup of jo)
Tags: photographyby Jason Kottke at January 23, 2012 04:30 PM
For his new book, Tim Mantoani took hundreds of portraits of photographers posing with prints of their most well-known work. Here's Neil Leifer holding his photo of Ali standing over Liston.
(via sly oyster)
Tags: photography Tim Mantoaniby Jason Kottke at January 23, 2012 03:16 PM
One of the keys to my ability to work 40 hours a week and homeschool two kids is that I have great time management. Which is to say, I say no to just about everything. But learning when to say no is still a work in progress. Here's what I know about saying no to phone calls:
1. It's more efficient to read the book than talk to the author.
I get about ten emails a day asking me if I want to talk to someone about their book so I’ll recommend it on the blog. My answer is always no.
I said yes once because it was Gloria Steinem. And it turned out to be a really disappointing phone call. If she is disappointing pitching to me, then everyone else will be, too.
Now I ask people to send me the book. If I like the idea of it, I’ll read it. I just read a book by Alexandra Robbins about why high school is destroying the kids who go there. She didn’t come to that conclusion, I did. But see, that’s why it’s good that I read the book myself instead of talking to her.
2. Interviews are a faster form of entertainment than going to a movie.
But I do try to say yes to all interviews. I like the Russian Roulette aspect of interviews in that I never know what I’ll get. I liked getting grilled on CNN about my miscarriage. They didn’t tell me that was the topic, but it’s okay. It was interesting to answer the questions.
And I didn’t like talking to Steve Roy about his career, but whenever I listen to the recording of the call, I laugh out loud, so in hindsight, even that was a good interview to say yes to.
So this guy, Michael Zenn, sent me this email:
Subject hed: Your Input
…I am currently in the process of producing a new edition of my book and reaching out to interview some of the leading female thought leaders in the nation, which I believe you are one.
I will be adding a brand new material to the book and am looking for female influencers, bloggers, websites, resources and ideas that I could potentially feature in the new book that would benefit women readers.
Please let me know when you might have a few minutes for us to chat.
I replied with a yes. I figured I’d give him 15 minutes, and anyway, people never call me about food, so it might be fun to answer questions about that.
3. Smalltalk goes faster with short responses.
Here’s what happened. He opened up with some platitudes. Like, who he is and that his book is sold in Whole Foods and it’s the only book the CEO of Whole Foods has ever endorsed.
I think a few things. I think, I hope he gets to the questions fast. Then I think, he must be the illicit lover of the Whole Foods CEO to be leveraging the checkout counter in the way that he is. He is telling me how his first printing will sell out in one month. And I am thinking, something is fishy here.
Then he says he reads my blog, and he wonders if I have always been so direct and unfiltered.
I say, "Yes."
He asks, “Do you know why?”
I say, “Yes. I have Asperger's Syndrome.”
He has never heard of it.
“It’s like autism,” I say. “But with a high IQ. I’m smart about some things, but not social skills. So I have no patience for you making small talk with me.”
He laughs. He says “Oh, it’s like you can’t tell a lie.”
“Yeah.”
“I wish I had more people in my life like that,” he says.
“No you don’t,” I say. “You’d get sick of it.”
Pause.
4. Tirades take too long (and they're hard to stop once you get going)
He asks, “What is your goal? What do you want to tell the world?”
“I don’t want to stand in front of everyone and tell them what to do. Because I don’t know. Life is hard. I’m trying to figure out how to deal with the difficulties of life, and I like that people do that with me, on my blog.”
He says, “Yeah, it’s much better to just be honest about what you’re doing.”
Pause.
Then he asks me if I have written at all about the food I eat.
I think to myself that he is either illiterate or a liar. I say, “Yeah, I live on a farm. With animals that we eat. I write a lot about that. With pictures.”
I can’t remember what happens next. I think I decide to tell him that all of the goat cheese that’s labeled by Whole Foods is made by killing the boy goats as soon as they are born. I hear nothing on his end. So I add that they are crushed underfoot, in the snow.
I tell him people need to pay a lot more money for pork if they want to have pork from mothers who are not chained like prisoners while they are having their babies. It costs a lot more money to raise pork if the farmer lets the mom roll on top of some of the piglets, but it’s what she would naturally do.
5. A fast way to feel good is to attack a caller you're sick of. (Childish but effective.)
I don’t know what he says next. He is saying something about how I have strong opinions or something. He is not used to this.
I tell him people don’t have enough money to pay 50% more for groceries at Whole Foods. I tell him that group child care for kids under two is very bad for the kids and people should spend their money solving that problem. It’s a lot more important than not having food additives.
He says his book tells people to do small steps.
“Like what?”
“Like eggs.”
I say, “Do you buy your eggs at Whole Foods?”
“Yes.”
“Well, they suck compared to my free range farm eggs.”
“The eggs at Whole Foods are free range.”
“What does that mean? Free range for one day a year? Who regulates the words free range? Free range on sawdust? You can look at my eggs and the eggs you eat and you can see a huge difference in how yellow the yolk is.”
“People need to know what they are eating.”
“You don’t even know what you’re eating. This is a black hole for spending and it’s not appropriate for poor people. You can buy pork at Whole Foods where the moms are chained at birth and the pork could be organic.”
5. Get off the phone as fast as possible.
Then I tell him it’s time to go to skateboarding. I tell him that my son gets more out of the money I spend on skateboarding lessons than the money I spend on organic juice with 50% less sugar which he thinks taste terrible, by the way.
The guy says, “Can I send my book to you?”
I can’t believe it. I want to tell him that he should have just sent that email to me, instead of wasting my time talking to me about his book. I would have said yes to just an email but now I hate him. I hate that he told me he wants to interview me for his book but he doesn’t. He’s a lifestyle guy, really. He’s telling people how to have a good life. And he’s lying to me.
So I say, “Why do you need to pitch your book to me? You have a monopoly in Whole Foods checkout lines. Your book is selling out it’s first printing. Why don’t you do something more interesting than marketing a book?”
He says, “I want to change the world. Obesity is a huge problem in this country.”
“You’re going to solve obesity by telling people to buy free-range eggs?”
“Yes. Education is the key to curbing obesity.”
“You think fat people are too stupid to know that if you pay double for your food you get better food? I think they know that. Try being a single mom with two jobs and four kids and then tell her she has weight problems because she doesn’t buy free range eggs.”
He asks, “Well what do you think is the panacea?”
And I say, “Panacea? You are looking for a panacea? There aren’t those in this world.”
by Penelope Trunk at January 22, 2012 08:00 PM
DEAR INTERNET,
THE SAFEWORD IS *NOT* "YIFF".
When you are young and in possession of a shiny new Arts degree, that single word of advice from the film The Graduate – “Plastics” – seems hilariously inapt. When you have children of your own, it seems in retrospect like reasonably sound advice.
by rachel at January 22, 2012 04:59 AM
According to this YouTube video, Japanese do multiplication by drawing lines like this:
(via ★vuokko)
Tags: mathematics videoby Jason Kottke at January 20, 2012 09:40 PM
Type designer Matthew Butterick sent a letter to director Brad Bird about the use of Verdana in captions and subtitles in the latest Mission Impossible movie.
Second, it's not stylistically suitable. Verdana is a built-in font on nearly every Windows and Mac computer. It's used on zillions of web pages. It's ubiquitous. Therefore, the person who uses Verdana suggests to readers "I couldn't be bothered to pick anything better." It's also well-known as the corporate font of IKEA -- probably not the association you're going for.
(via ★aaronsw)
Tags: Brad Bird Matthew Butterick Mission Impossible movies typographyby Jason Kottke at January 20, 2012 07:42 PM
From McSweeney's, In Which I Fix My Girlfriend's Grandparents' WiFi and Am Hailed as a Conquering Hero.
But then one gray morning did Internet Explorer 6 no longer load The Google. Refresh was clicked, again and again, but still did Internet Explorer 6 not load The Google. Perhaps The Google was broken, the people thought, but then The Yahoo too did not load. Nor did Hotmail. Nor USAToday.com. The land was thrown into panic. Internet Explorer 6 was minimized then maximized. The Compaq Presario was unplugged then plugged back in. The old mouse was brought out and plugged in beside the new mouse. Still, The Google did not load.
(via @coudal)
by Jason Kottke at January 20, 2012 06:54 PM
In therapy lately I am learning to identify my feelings. Maybe you’re thinking this is elementary, but did you know that envy is about wanting something you don’t have, but jealousy is the fear of losing something you already have?
I am thinking about those two things. I am almost never envious, but I am often jealous. Most of my emotions, in fact, are rooted in fear.
I am thinking a lot lately about where my joy comes from, and one thing I love is writing well. When I have a blog post that people love I am happy for weeks. And the excitement of doing good creative work gives me energy to do more.
So I have been thinking about how to get better at writing, and I’ve been trying to notice stuff that I wish I had written. The process teaches me a lot about identifying my own emotions.
1. A New Yorker article.
There is not much in the New Yorker I wish I had written. Most of it I think is too long and could use a stronger editor. (Like this article about Ikea.) But there is a piece in the Nov. 28 issue that is just one page, and so funny that I carry it with me and make people read it just so I can watch them laugh.
It is We are the One Percent, by John Kenney. Will you click to read it? Go read it now.
I'll wait.
I am not funny. I mean, I am funny but in an unintentional way. When I try to make a joke it is usually a pun. I love puns but I have realized, late in life, that people do not think puns are funny.
When people read my writing and say that I am funny, I feel lonely, because I know better than to try to be funny on purpose. So honestly, I don’t feel that funny. It’s a lot like when people say that I write stuff just to get a lot of traffic. If I knew how to churn out a 300-comment post on demand, don’t you think I’d do it every day?
In fact, it’s like funny. I have no idea when it’s coming. Feeling: Lonely, because I’m always surprised.
2. An email from Melissa.
I wrote to Melissa that I messed up my PayPal account and I hit my limit on money I can transfer to my checking account and I wanted the money right then, while I was in Florida, with the kids. We were at the Waldorf in Boca, which I would have never chosen, but there was a wedding.
And actually, in the list of things I wish I had written should be the pricing plan for this resort. It reminds me of buying a printer. They seem so reasonably priced until you get killed on the ink. And that’s what happens here—when you have to pay five dollars for an apple juice, and $25 to get the hotel to remove the $5 juice from the fridge in the room so the kids don’t drink it.
Anyway, I asked Melissa if I could pay her through PayPal and use her credit card at the hotel. This is the sort of fucked up behavior that Melissa and I have done in the past, so it seemed like a reasonable request.
Melissa wrote back, “No. I’m not doing stuff like that anymore.”
And I thought, “She is really smart. Of course we should not do stuff like that anymore.” It is bad boundaries and I am working on having better boundaries with everyone, even Melissa.
I am hoping she will send me an email asking for something bad so I can write a response that blows her away with my ability to establish good boundaries. Feeling: Determination to change and excitement about what my life could be like with good boundaries.
3. The ad copy up there.
The girl. In the hot outfit, with all the guys around her. Do you see her? It’s an ad for work clothes, of course. But it’s an ad that gives women the freedom to use their sexuality to get everything they can get. I love that. Women are doing better than men are at work in their 20s. Women earn more and women are less likely to get hit in layoffs.
OK Cupid – one of my favorite blogs for the combination of amazing data and amazing analysis, and really, that should be on my list of stuff I’d like to write too, except that the guy who writes it – Chris Rudder – has his personality all over it which makes me just want to enjoy it and not be it. Like Joel Stein’s column in Time magazine. It’s too too too him for me to want it to be me. But I love reading it.
Anyway, OK Cupid concludes that women are in highest demand when they are in their late 20s. Which makes sense to me—they are high earning, stable, and still very hot. So women should leverage their sexuality to get promotions, make sales, get high-earning husbands—great legs help with all that stuff.
I want to write advice like the advice in this ad. Be great. Reach high. Inspire people around you by being inspired yourself. And when you don’t feel that way, at least look that way and eventually that good look will get you back on track.
Feeling: Hopeful. The ad reminds me of all the positive psychology research – that you can create hope in yourself by giving it to other people.
If I focus on what I wish I'd written, I realize that what I'm scared of has nothing to do with other writers. What I'm scared of is not growing. It's freeing to recognize that, really. Because I can't control what other people write. But I can control how much I push myself to grow. And I'm convinced that jealousy and envy — whichever is your sin of choice - have very little power over us when we are growing fast enough to surprise ourselves with what we can accomplish.
by Penelope Trunk at January 20, 2012 06:34 PM
The Internet Archive is hosting a copy of the American Specimen Book of Type Styles put out by the American Type Founders Company in 1912. It's a 1300-page book listing hundreds of typefaces and their possible use cases.
There's also a 1910 copy of what is basically the German version of the ATF book. Look at these swirls! (via @h_fj)
Tags: books design typographyby Jason Kottke at January 20, 2012 04:10 PM
Note: SCALE is the Southern California Linux Expo which will be held January 20-22, 2012 at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport hotel.
Aleksey Tsalolikhin will be teaching a SCALE University (a joint project between SCALE and LOPSA where LOPSA instructors teach classes on topics related to system administration as part of LOPSA's mission to educate on system administration topics) based on "Time Management for System Administrators".
Here is a sample success story from a student that completed the practice run of the course a week ago:
I think that "The Cycle" system is a pretty comprehensive approach to time planning, but very simple concept to implement. And it looks very practical in it's approach. i definitely plan to follow up on it and give it a try right away. One thing it really encourages you to be very strategic in your thinking, which also helps with achieving long term goals. Putting some time to think about the important long term goals both personal and professional was a real eye opening for me, since I pretty much discovered that I am spending a lot of time and effort on things that are not important from the long term goal perspective.I liked also the attitude towards the vacation time -- you know as a sysadmin you always feel guilty for taking too much vacation time in one lump, now I will feel guilty for not taking vacation time instead :-) It also helps to encourage your colleagues to take on more ownership and responsibilities over company's infrastructure while you are on vacation.
I haven't seen the slides but based on his past experience I predict good things.
Sign up for the class: Time Management for System Administrators at SCALE
Sign up soon before it fills up!
by Tom Limoncelli at January 20, 2012 04:33 AM
Claire said: “If you take two numbers that are two apart, and multiply them, it’s the same as if you square the number in the middle and subtract one.”
Me: “Really?”
Claire: “Yeah, like nine elevens is 99, which is one less than ten tens.”
Me: “Huh. Four sixes are 24, which is one less than five fives. Five sevens are 35. Six eights are 48. You might be onto something.”
I find paper and scribble:
n(n+2) = (n+1)^2 – 1
n^2 + 2n = n^2 + 2n + 1 – 1
Me: “How about that.”
by rachel at January 20, 2012 12:01 AM
“Why isn’t this soup spoon design fashionable any more?”
“Don’t ask me. I was raised by wolves.”
“Seems like wolves would have rules about that kind of thing.”
“Oh we weren’t allowed to eat the liver before the alpha. There was a strict hierarchy. We weren’t ANIMALS.”
by rachel at January 19, 2012 11:08 PM
From the February 2012 issue of Esquire, an interview with former President Bill Clinton about the current political and governmental landscape in America.
Tags: Bill Clinton interviews politicsOne of the real dilemmas we have in our country and around the world is that what works in politics is organization and conflict. That is, drawing the sharp distinctions. But in real life, what works is networks and cooperation. And we need victories in real life, so we've got to get back to networks and cooperation, not just conflict. But politics has always been about conflict, and in the coverage of politics, information dissemination tends to be organized around conflict as well. It is extremely personal now, and you see in these primaries that the more people agree with each other on the issues, the more desperate they are to make the clear distinctions necessary to win, so the deeper the knife goes in.
by Jason Kottke at January 19, 2012 09:26 PM
Adele's Rolling in the Deep has been covered thousands of times on YouTube...here's 70 of those performances cut together into one seamless song.
(via ★davidfg)
Tags: Adele music remix videoby Jason Kottke at January 19, 2012 07:08 PM
A collection of things that New Yorkers say. Like "where's the train?", "you have to go to Brooklyn, it's the law", and "tourists!"
Tags: NYC videoby Jason Kottke at January 19, 2012 05:03 PM
Watch as John Scalzi's 13-year-old daughter sees an LP record for the first time.
This is... This is... What? What?! This is huge! This is like ten CDs in one. How many songs does it have on it?
I believe the record in question is from Jonathan Coulton. (via ★mathowie)
Tags: John Scalzi videoby Jason Kottke at January 19, 2012 03:41 PM
Scott Carpenter was one of the original seven Mercury astronauts and the second American to orbit the Earth. Just before he went into space, his father wrote this wonderful letter.
Tags: NASA religion science Scott Carpenter spaceAnd I venture to predict that after all the huzzas have been uttered and the public acclaim is but a memory, you will derive the greatest satisfaction from the serene knowledge that you have discovered new truths. You can say to yourself: this I saw, this I experienced, this I know to be the truth. This experience is a precious thing; it is known to all researchers, in whatever field of endeavour, who have ventured into the unknown and have discovered new truths.
by Jason Kottke at January 19, 2012 02:52 PM
By popular demand, here's another installment of "Things Authors Always Get Wrong." Truly, I never know what people will respond to. Except my renderings of various personages as My Little Ponys, I know you like those, so here is another:
Click for a larger version, in case you want My Little Bela as your desktop wallpaper. He is not one or two solid colors, but rather a shimmering shifting spectrum that cannot be captured by my freeware graphics program, so I approximated two aspects of the various blue-green-red-purple that makes him what for convenience's sake we call a turquoise. The hoofy bits (My Little Ponys don't really have hooves) are the cherry red that his ventral fins turn in direct sunlight. (The ventral fins are the long beautiful ones that trail down from his belly, which in his case branch delicately at the ends.) He is a pegasus, of course, so he can drift lazily through the sky, and he has no facial expression, because he doesn't. I'm not sure what his name would be as a My Little Pony: maybe he would be called Paddy. Or Nestor.
Lastly, because you already hate SOPA, I think you'll like Get Your Censor On. I should have drawn a picture of Bela attacking the square black censorship bar over the Google logo.
From photographer Steven Siegel, a reminder of what a magical shithole NYC was in the 1980s. Oh hey, here's a hole in the Manhattan Bridge walkway:
See also kids digging up graves in Greenwood Cemetary, the abandoned West Side Highway, and what looks like a bombed-out Bushwick. (via gothamist)
Tags: NYC photography Steven Siegelby Jason Kottke at January 18, 2012 11:19 PM
SOPA and PIPA are two pieces of proposed legislation designed to "stop" Internet piracy… in the most hamfisted way imaginable. As Mitchell Baker explains:
Assume there's a corner store in your neighborhood that rents movies. But the movie industry believes that some or even all of the videos in that store are unauthorized copies, so that they're not being paid when people watch their movies. What should be done?SOPA/PIPA do not aim at the people trying to get to the store, or even the store itself. The solution under the proposed bills is to make it as difficult as possible to find or interact with the store:
- Maps showing the location of the store must be changed to hide it.
- The road to the store must be blocked off so that it is difficult to physically get to there.
- Directory services must delist the store’s phone number and address.
- Credit card companies would have to cease providing services to the store.
- Local newspapers would no longer be allowed to place ads for the video store.
- To make sure it all happens, any person or organization who doesn’t do this is subject to penalties. Even publishing a newsletter that tells people where the store is would be prohibited by this legislation.
Just substitute "corner store" with "website" and I think you can see where this is going. These bills are so rife with potential for abuse and misuse, so clearly dangerous to the very fabric of the Internet, that frankly I have a hard time getting worked up about them. The Internet is under constant siege by large companies, and will be for the forseeable future. This is nothing new. These bills will be defeated, because they must be.
Instead, I'm scratching my head and wondering how such boneheaded bills made it this far in Congress. I can think of a few reasons:
I often bemoan the state of Slacktivism on the internet, where changing your Facebook or Twitter picture is considered a valid and effective form of protest. But this time, I am happy to say, was indeed different.
Perhaps because of the obvious danger of these bills, geek websites and communities banded together weeks ago to protect themselves and the greater Internet. Like many other technical communities, we wrote about it on our blog, talked about it on our podcast, and even put up a little banner on Stack Overflow for a day. Users were encouraged to call, fax, and write their representatives in Congress and express their concerns. And they did, in droves! But outside of our technical geek ghettos, there was precious little mainstream coverage of this dangerous legislation.
That is, until major sites like Wikipedia, Google, and Craigslist joined the bandwagon today. Most notably, Wikipedia actually went dark for all of today, January 18th, rendering all of English language Wikipedia inaccessible. That turned the tide, and transformed SOPA/PIPA into something that average people would actually talk about and care about. There's no better way to raise awareness of the danger these bills pose than blacklisting one of the greatest resources the Internet has ever produced.
While SOPA/PIPA are still alive -- barely -- for now, I think it's safe to say that they are well on their way to defeat. I'm glad to be a part of that, however tiny, but I cannot in good conscience celebrate.
Yes, we likely succeeded in defeating these two specific bills and galvanizing the political will of major Internet communities, including our very own Stack Exchange. These are good and noble and just and necessary things. They are things to be proud of. But instead of celebrating, let's take this time to reflect and ask ourselves a deeper question: how is it that these dangerous bills came to exist in the first place?
First, and again, this is a critical battle to wage and win. SOPA is just the latest, but in many ways, the most absurd campaign in the endless saga of America’s copyright wars. It will be yet another failed attempt in a failed war, and I obviously believe it should be opposed.But second, and as you describe, this isn’t my war anymore. Not because my heart isn’t in it, but because I don’t believe we will win that war (or better, win the peace and move on) — even if we can win battles like this one — until the more basic corruption that is our government gets addressed. That’s the fight I have spent the last 4 years working on. That’s where I’ll be for at least the next 6.
For this is what I know: We will never (as in not ever) win the war you care about until we win the war against this corruption of our Republic.
Of course, as my book, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress -- and a Plan to Stop It, describes, this is an insanely difficult, possibly impossible, fight. But whether difficult or not, it is the fight that must be waged.
We have done much. But in our celebratory enthusiasm, please take a moment to hear out Mr. Lessig, and appreciate just how far we have yet to go.
So yes, join us in fighting the obvious insanity of legislation like SOPA and PIPA that threaten the open, unfettered Internet. But please, please also join us in attacking the far more pernicious problem of lobbyist money subtly corrupting our government. If we don't deal with that, we will never stop fighting bills like SOPA and PIPA.
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Well, from making blockbuster movies anyway. And that's only one of the interesting tidbits in this long NY Times profile of Lucas
Tags: George Lucas Hollywood movies Star WarsLucas has decided to devote the rest of his life to what cineastes in the 1970s used to call personal films. They'll be small in scope, esoteric in subject and screened mostly in art houses. They'll be like the experimental movies Lucas made in the 1960s, around the time he was at U.S.C. film school, when he recorded clouds moving over the desert and made a movie based on an E. E. Cummings poem. During that period, Lucas assumed he would spend his career on the fringes. Then "Star Wars" happened -- and though Lucas often mused about it, he never committed himself to the uncommercial world until now.
Sitting in a sun-drenched office, his voice boyish, Lucas talked about himself as if he were a character in one of his movies. He's at the end of an epic saga; he's embracing a new destiny ("Make the art films, George"); he's battling former acolytes who have become his sworn enemies; and George Lucas is -- no kidding -- in love. Before he takes his digital camera with him into obscurity, though, Lucas has one last mission. He wants to prove that with "Red Tails," he can still make the kind of movie everyone in the world will want to see.
by Jason Kottke at January 18, 2012 09:21 PM
I don't know if the nudie playing cards are absolutely essential, but this trick is pretty neat.
(via @itscolossal)
Tags: food physics science videoby Jason Kottke at January 18, 2012 07:19 PM
This article, about how gender is manipulated in South Asia, is very difficult to read.
It's a girl, a film being released this year, documents the practice of killing unwanted baby girls in South Asia. The trailer's most chilling scene is one with an Indian woman who, unable to contain her laughter, confesses to having killed eight infant daughters.
The statistics are sickening. The UN reports approximately 200 million girls in the world today are 'missing'. India and China are said to eliminate more female infants than the number of girls born in the US each year. Lianyungang in China has the worst infant gender ratio on record with 163 boys born for every 100 girls. Taiwan, South Korea and Pakistan are also countries in which unwanted female babies are aborted, killed or abandoned.
Here's more information on the mentioned film. (via @cshirky)
Tags: It's a Girl moviesby Jason Kottke at January 18, 2012 05:09 PM
Stanley Kubrick's meticulousness about his movies extended right on down to how they were marketed. When A Clockwork Orange came out in the US, he spent weeks crunching theater ticket grosses to figure out which theaters the film should play in.
Clockwork would be shown in standard cinemas as a quality platform release, which meant there were many options per city. I knew that Don Rugoff's Cinema 1, the most prestigious cinema in New York, had to be the New York theater, but how to be sure that the film would be booked into the best cinema in Indianapolis or Cleveland or Atlanta? To choose the right theater in each city, we needed to know which cinema sold the most tickets to the most interesting pictures. But while a studio would know what its own films grossed, detailed box-office figures of competitive films were closely held secrets. There was no comparative information, and that is exactly what Stanley wanted.
Influenced by Kubrick's system, Variety released their first nation box office rankings chart a few months later. (via df)
Tags: A Clockwork Orange movies Stanley Kubrickby Jason Kottke at January 18, 2012 03:11 PM
Matt Haughey shares a bad experience he had backing a Kickstarter project and what the project creators could have done to avoid it.
This is the story of the worst project I've funded on Kickstarter. I am posting this not to single out the creators behind it, or bad mouth their business, but to go over my disappointment in the hopes that future Kickstarter project creators can learn from it. It's all about communication with your funders, setting up and delivering on expectations for funders, and doing the right thing when things go wrong.
Shipping a product or app is hard. It requires experience, hard work, and a little luck. But providing effective and genuine customer service might be even harder because you just have sit there, take it, and react well under pressure over and over and over. The entrepreneur side of your brain is saying "this is a great product and I am proud of it and anyone who says otherwise is wrong and I will show them and succeed" and sometimes customer service is acknowledging publicly and repeatedly the exact opposite thing...that the product isn't meeting needs, you are right, we will fix it, and thank you sir may I have another? That's a lot of potential cognitive dissonance! The best teams and companies deflect that dissonance and turn customer service problems into opportunities to improve their products, their teams, and their relationships with their customers (current and potential). That's when the magic happens.
Tags: business Kickstarter Matt Haugheyby Jason Kottke at January 17, 2012 11:15 PM
Susan Cain argues that the lack of privacy and freedom from interruption in modern offices might not be the best way for those office employees to be creative...particularly for introverts.
The New Groupthink has overtaken our workplaces, our schools and our religious institutions. Anyone who has ever needed noise-canceling headphones in her own office or marked an online calendar with a fake meeting in order to escape yet another real one knows what I'm talking about. Virtually all American workers now spend time on teams and some 70 percent inhabit open plan offices, in which no one has "a room of one's own." During the last decades, the average amount of space allotted to each employee shrank 300 square feet, from 500 square feet in the 1970s to 200 square feet in 2010.
The new offices of Foursquare and Buzzfeed (where I work from) are a perfect example of the New Groupthink Cain refers to....rows and rows of people sitting next to each other in open spaces. Much of this is because of NYC's insane rental market, but Fog Creek's offices are a nice counterexample:
Tags: business Buzzfeed Foursquare NYC Susan Cain workingEvery developer, tester, and program manager is in a private office; all except two have direct windows to the outside (the two that don't get plenty of daylight through two glass walls).
by Jason Kottke at January 17, 2012 09:00 PM
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