clock … watching time, the only true currency

The “old saw” is that the way to get rich during a gold rush is selling shovels. David Hornik avoids leaning on that analogy (good for him). Still, Points On The Curve made me think that in a world where data is gold, we all need better shovels. I suppose measurement is a recent theme [...]

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Seth Godin reminds us that “Most people don’t really care about price.” Don’t take that at face value, but read to remember that price is only a single obstacle in the battle to change human behavior, or otherwise precipitate action. Inertia and context form a richer part of the blend than cost alone for many [...]

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Tuesday was not my best day. I got off to a bad start. Just down the hill (east) of the intersection of Fulton and Pierce, alongside Alamo Square (see for yourself), I was given my first ticket for a moving violation. On a bicycle. Yes, my ticket says, for make and vehicle, “Specialized Rockhopper, Red.” [...]

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After the end of the Oscars, I watched Thursday’s Colbert Report, and Stephen Colbert picked all five of the top awards correctly, using The Da Colbert Code. Funny segment, though I couldn’t find a link on the website (yet?). Of course, his faux conservative schtick meant he couldn’t choose Brokeback Mountain, which helped him keep [...]

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Each of these montages during the Academy Awards seems to make a plea to the audience to keep watching movies. There is an insistence that the DVD isn’t enough, with either a bit of nervous laughter or earnest plugging (the president of the MPAA). Where’s the self-confidence? None of us want to listen to the [...]

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Only took me six years to watch O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Metacritic score of 69), and four months of a stuck Netflix queue. I enjoyed it. Almost makes me want to re-read The Odyssey, just to pick up the references. The connections are not hidden, but there were several moments when I’m sure there [...]

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Read the quote below from The New York Times article “In Baby Boomlet, Preschool Derby Is the Fiercest Yet“: After years of decline, the number of children under 5 in Manhattan, where the most competitive [pre-school] programs are located, increased by 26 percent between 2000 and 2004, according to census estimates. Yet the number of [...]

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Origami frustrates me. I’m not talking tech here, despite all the recent press (and follow-up stories). I’m talking about folding paper. The boy has some dinosaur (of course) origami, and this stuff is too damn hard. Maybe it’s just faulty instructions, or maybe this is an advanced set (I hope so!), but I’d rather back [...]

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On Thursday, February 16, the Center for Media Research published Reading: A Vital Part of Human Experience as its Daily Brief. This is a report pulling interesting data from a presentation by Gavin O’Reilly in January 2006. Several interesting stats in the Brief, but the headline caught my eye, and it was pulled from this [...]

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Yesterday’s Google analyst day commanded a lot of attention worldwide from the press and their customers. CNET News.com was no exception. What I didn’t realize until I got home last night and had a chance to take a look at my colleagues’ coverage was that we took three simple steps to make our coverage more [...]

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