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An Apt Analogy

More Abstruse Goose comis HERE

The Younger the Ninja, the Deadlier

I don’t mean to brag, but if a two-year-old sneaks up behind me in a dark alley, I am now fully equipped to defend myself.

This revolution will get messy

We’re in the middle of a technological revolution -most everyone agrees on that- but most everyone also wants to ignore what a “revolution” really is.  It’s chaos with no guarantee of a good outcome. As Clay Shirky, a “New Media” professor and consultant for the likes of the Library of Congress and the BBC, notes, “That is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place.” So, when the print world screams, “You’ll be sorry when we’re gone!” they’re probably right; we certainly have no system to replace them or the good they do for society, but publishers are deluding themselves if they think their temper tantrums will maintain the status quo.

There will be no seamless transition of the old print business model straight into the new medium. There will be years of fumbling around, until some random guy introduces some innocuous idea that actually works. But will the current publishing industry survive the transition? Doubtful. As Shirky points out, “It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves — the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public — has stopped being a problem.”

Really, Shirky continues, society doesn’t need newspapers, what we need is journalism and once we start concentrating on how to save society, instead of the the publishing industry, we may come up with a solution. Perhaps for the next few years, we’ll see a return to the Renaissance concept of patrons where journalism and literature will be funded by endowments. Ideal? Perhaps not. But if you think the first thing we try will be the perfect solution, you probably also think Edison got light the first time he threw a filament into a glass jar.

Clay Shirky’s essay on the topic is here.

The Internet Archive Way Back Machine

The Internet Archive Way Back Machine has over 100 terabytes of archived web pages, snapshots of web pages frozen in time. I just can’t think of anything to search for. Any suggestions?

The trick is you grow ‘em IN the bottle

Honky Tonk v. Honky-Tonk

Hazards of working in the game show industry: On a Country Karaoke show, I once got in an argument over whether Honky Tonk should be hyphenated or not. Turns out, that oddly, the frequenters and purveyors of our country’s Honky Tonks have utterly failed to standardize their punctuation.

How to Tick People Off (with only a copier)

Leave the copy machine set to reduce 200%, extra dark, 17 inch paper, 99 copies.

Note: This is a series where I feature a selection off a hilarious list by blogger Joe Crawford about How to Tick People Off.

This Luggage Is Carrying

Boing Boing has a unique tip on how to fly securely: fly with a gun.  Not in your carry-on, silly, in your checked luggage. Apparently, TSA won’t let you lock your luggage UNLESS you’ve declared a firearm, then they’ll lock that baby up tighter than a Chinese finger trap and you’d better believe they won’t lose it!! Extra hint: it doesn’t even have to be a real gun, a starter pistol qualifies.

Auditorium

Auditorium is a physics game for the musically inclined. Soothing AND challenging.

Confident man = “go-getter”; confident woman = “*#~”. Sigh.

Unfortunately, what is perceived as confidence in men is often seen as pushiness in a woman.  A Psychology Today articles suggest that a  firm handshake may go a long way in subconsciously conveying a positive view of your confidence. Um, maybe?