January 2015

The Picard Maneuver

Mesmerizing tick. Make it snug… via Ode To The Picard Maneuver (With Data) – YouTube.

Still need to blog

One day Facebook will be gone. But your blog can live on… Recently I’ve been writing stuff on Facebook, because the engagement level there is so high. But I’ve found that if I want people who don’t use Facebook, and there are still important people who don’t, you have to put it somewhere else, and …

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Realizing Our Place in the Universe

“This image, captured with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, is the largest and sharpest image ever taken of the Andromeda galaxy — otherwise known as M31.This is a cropped version of the full image and has 1.5 billion pixels. You would need more than 600 HD television screens to display the whole image.” via Sharpest …

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Let’s Play Two

“He was Mr. Cub and no other player in franchise history — or in the club’s future — will ever be adored in the same way.” via Cubs Hall of Famer Ernie Banks dead at 83

R.I.P. Mr Cub

Sad day for us Cubs fans and baseball fans in general. What a great man. We should all earn from his example Ernie Banks

Nonprofits and Affordable Marketing

Interesting thread here from a non-profit group looking for good, but cheap, marketing. We hear this every day (multiple times) as Harrelson Agency mainly focuses on helping non-profits, religious groups, community organizations, and startups get marketing right. My solution? Realize that marketing is an investment, and one that you should budget for wisely but not try …

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Sweet Carolina

“I bought a borrowed suit and learned to dance I was spending money like the way it likes to rain Man I ended up with pockets full of cane Oh my sweet Carolina What compels me to go Oh my sweet disposition…” via Ryan Adams – Oh My Sweet Carolina – Live On Letterman – …

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State of the Union… in emoji

If digital archaeologists ever “dig this up” 2,000 years from now, they’ll surely be puzzled by our lapse back into character driven hieroglyphics (complete with the ability to hover over emoji’s if you can’t figure it out): Barack Obama said his address to Congress this year was all about “finding areas where we agree, so …

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Economic Virtue

We’ve been taught to think that the only economic virtue is competitiveness. This is a faith: I’ll get into it for all I’m worth, seeking the maximum advantage for myself. via The “Mad” Farmer » American Scientist.

Do Vegetarians Eat Eggs?

A few days ago, Merianna asked me if I was still eating eggs. It’s a good question, after all. Part of my 2015 package of resolutions (trying to make it sound congressional) was to not eat meat or animals unless I killed them (which is unlikely, but had to make that allowance). When I moved …

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Keeping the Canon

The older I get, the more I want to share the joys of “the canon” and liberal arts in general. Every generation feels that its world is slipping into the morass of public, but our Amazon reviews and Buzzfeed listicles don’t make me feel any more assured that we’re not… Although serious writers continue to …

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New Album with Old Music

Looks like a beautiful collection of ancient Mesopotamian poetry set to the original lyrics (relatively, of course) with close-to-original instruments. I’ve always wondered what the Hymn to Nikkal (the world’s oldest song that we’ve recovered) might have sounded like. Of course, we don’t really know what ancient Sumerian, Babylonian, Akkadian, or even Attic Greek really …

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Who Is Paul McCartney?

I hope that many of these tweets are people just trolling us old folks… Kanye West’s emotionally charged new single, “Only,” is dedicated to his late mother and 18-month-old daughter. It’s become an instant hit, with a little help from another musical genius, Paul McCartney, on keyboards. Based on their tweets, it appears that some …

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Apple’s Marketing Problem

I suspect the rapid decline of Apple’s software is a sign that marketing has a bit too much power at Apple today: the marketing priority of having major new releases every year is clearly impossible for the engineering teams to keep up with while maintaining quality. Maybe it’s an engineering problem, but I suspect not …

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Unless…

My theme for 2015

My 2015 Resolutions

I put them in writing in my notebook, so they must come true.