May 2011
82 posts
1 tag
Parkinson's Law of Triviality →
bestofwikipedia: Parkinson’s Law of Triviality, also known as bikeshedding or the bicycle shed example, is C. Northcote Parkinson’s 1957 argument that organisations give disproportionate weight to trivial issues. Parkinson demonstrated this by contrasting the triviality of a bike shed to a nuclear reactor. Later, Poul-Henning Kamp applied the law to software development and introduced the colour...
May 12th
32 notes
2 tags
U.S. should legalize drugs, says former Mexican... →
May 12th
1 note
3 tags
May 12th
May 12th
2 tags
Presbyterians Approve Ordination of Gay People -... →
After 33 years of debate, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has voted to change its constitution and allow openly gay people in same-sex relationships to be ordained as ministers, elders and deacons. New favorite denomination! They just passed the Episcopal Church. I snickered when I read this: Cynthia Bolbach, moderator of the church’s General Assembly, its highest legislative body, said...
May 12th
2 tags
Music Thing: Captain Beefheart's rules for... →
PRACTICE IN FRONT OF A BUSH Wait until the moon is out, then go outside, eat a multi-grained bread and play your guitar to a bush. If the bush doesn’t shake, eat another piece of bread. DON’T WIPE THE SWEAT OFF YOUR INSTRUMENT You need that stink on there. Then you have to get that stink onto your music. These are some of the best creativity tips-n-tricks that you can find.
May 11th
4 notes
3 tags
Fake Science: Keep The Air Clean
fakescience: Fake Science is my new favorite…comic? Source of scientific information? It’s funny and smart and has high production values, and information on how to beat the Soviets.
May 11th
238 notes
3 tags
Cranking | 43 Folders →
Merlin Mann is my favorite writer on productivity. He is working on a book, and he is behind what is expected of him contractually. He also has a daughter. In this piece, he talks about how he decides what is important when that decision is costly.
May 11th
1 note
2 tags
May 10th
2 tags
May 10th
May 10th
2 tags
WatchWatch
Via Daring Fireball: Jon Stewart: Maybe we should always show pictures. Bin Laden, pictures of our wounded service people, pictures of maimed innocent civilians. We can only make decisions about war if we see what war actually is — and not as a video game where bodies quickly disappear leaving behind a shiny gold coin.
May 10th
4 tags
Man high on bath salts kills neighbor's goat,... →
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Police say an Alum Creek man high on bath salts killed his neighbor’s pygmy goat and that neighbors found him in his bedroom, dressed in a bra and panties, next to the dead animal, said Lt. Bryan Stover of the Kanawha County Sheriff’s Department. Evidently, people are getting high on bath salts these days. This article is funny from start to finish.
May 10th
2 tags
YouTube - Movies →
YouTube offers rentals of 3,000 movies now, typically for $3-$4 a piece. You can watch Supersize Me and Ghostbusters for free.
May 10th
May 9th
3 tags
The War Prayer, by Mark Twain →
A very short story by Mark Twain about people in a church praying as they send their soldiers to war.
May 9th
5 tags
Giving our feelings a name →
On the development of the fake Mark Twain quote: I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure. And the fake Martin Luther King, Jr quote: I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. These quotes ran around Twitter over the past couple of days, in reference to the killing of...
May 8th
3 tags
Teens Don’t Know Who Osama Bin Laden Is, According... →
Searches on Sunday for Osama bin Laden spiked nearly 100,00% on Yahoo!, also making him the most-searched person of the day. Nearly 1 in 5 searches for “osama bin laden” are by teenagers, many of who grew up during the war on terrorism. Thanks, Yahoo!, for being creepy and tracking the searching habits of minors.
May 8th
3 tags
Inside the SEAL team that 'doesn't exist' -... →
I’m impressed by the efficiency with which the US military operates. In particular, to prepare for the final raid on the Osama compound, a duplicate compound was built to practice in; also, when one helicopter stopped working, the SEALs destroyed it to keep information about it from becoming open.
May 7th
2 tags
Is this what closure feels like? - Joan Walsh -... →
After years of Catholic school, I am constitutionally unable to feel joyous about anyone being killed, but I got close tonight with bin Laden… I also wish this achievement could mean we get our country back, the one before the Patriot Act, before FISA, before rendition and torture and Guantánamo; before we began giving up the freedom and belief in due process that makes us Americans,...
May 7th