A recent email exchange at work left me laughing and wondering if people lacked a basic understanding of how "Reply All" works. Occasionally, those of us who work a little too much get nastygrams from HR informing us that we've hit the limit on vacation accrual and will begin losing time if we don't take some vacation soon. On November 30th, just such a note went out. Today, … [Read more...]
Neil Gaiman’s Kicking My Ass (On Twitter) [infographic]
I decided to check out Visual.ly to see what kind of job it did creating infographics automatically. I decided to compare myself to @neilhimself, Neil Gaiman... I probably should have picked on someone my own size. … [Read more...]
Social Media: Your Peripheral Nervous System
Remember when you were in school and sat there confused while the teacher continued teaching something you didn't quite grasp? Then, after the first student raised their hand and said, "I don't get it," a number of other students raised their hand and said, "We don't get it, either." Remember how much better you felt after the teacher addressed the issue? The Silent Many and … [Read more...]
Our Bad Choices: Similar But Not Equal
I'm re-reading Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational right now. It's still amazing to me how completely manipulable we are. I just finished the first chapter, which deals with the phenomenon of how our decision-making processes are so predictably skewed by changes to the choice pool. The example Dan brings up in the book is an experiment where photos are taken of students who … [Read more...]
An Anthropology of Our Own
I just went back and read the Playboy Interview with Marshall McLuhan from 1969. It's always fun to go back and re-read some of the ideas that played a role in shaping my thinking. As a nice surprise, two ideas seemed to jump out at me as particularly relevant today. The Phonetic Alphabet Was Our Ticket Out of the Tribe In the interview, McLuhan argues that tribal … [Read more...]
Bad Javascript Humor
I'm a sucker for bad jokes in the form of code. Here's my contribution to the genre: <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> <!-- function tellBadJoke() { fence = new Object(); fence.sittingOn = new Array("Pete", "Repeat"); var fallsOff = fence.sittingOn.indexOf("Pete"); if(fallsOff!=-1) fence.sittingOn.splice(fallsOff, 1); … [Read more...]
What could possibly go wrong?
Slashdot reported today that Microsoft is filing a patent to cover using "altered parasitic organisms" as a delivery mechanism for disease-fighting substances. It seems like a good idea... And there's no real potential for things to go horribly wrong, right? And Microsoft products always work so well... … [Read more...]
The Shape of a Social Enterprise
Much has been made of the idea of a Social Enterprise. The idea of increased transparency both within and without the organization. Internally, tacit knowledge is given a new degree of latitude. Externally, the line between inside and outside the organization begins to blur. I think we've done a lot of thinking about how social media will change our relationships with our … [Read more...]
Taxonomy of Rap Names
I'm a sucker for data visualizations; especially ones that have a sense of humor. I found a pointer to a chart that presents a taxonomy of rap names. I find it funny that you need a nom de microphone to be a rapper, but I guess James Todd Smith or Calvin Broadus don't sound all that street. So have fun, get some background on the chart and check out the whole shebang over at … [Read more...]
When You Assume…
Recently, there was a post over at DiscoBlog on the Discover Magazine site that mentioned a study that claims that women who wax have better sex. It reminded me how quickly we can be led astray by settling on the first assumption. At first blush, one would assume that if you are a woman and you want to have better sex, wax. Reading the comments on the post showed me that the … [Read more...]