http://www.dolectures.com/lectures/do-things-the-long-hard-stupid-way/?layout=embed
Do things the long, hard, stupid way – Frank Chimero. Finally got around to watching @fchimero’s talk on struggle, creativity, gifts. Worthwhile, as usual.
Tim Tebow and the Taxonomy of Clutch » Skeptical Sports Analysis. I was getting worried about the recent @skepticalsports drought, but those dark days are past for now.
Compulsive avoidance of embarrassment is a form of suicide.
I get sick every time I go home for Christmas, and while it isn’t helped by lack of sleep and alcohol abuse, I’m pretty sure 75% of it is the 3-5 hours I spend on what is, essentially, a flying petri dish.
So thanks to The Wall Street Journal for these tips (which I’ve summarized):
- Hydrate (drink water, use saline spray).
- Clean your hands with alcohol-based hand sanitizer
- Use disinfecting wipes to clean off tray tables before using
- Avoid seat-back pockets.
- Open your air vent, and aim it so it passes just in front of your face. Filtered airplane air can help direct airborne contagions away from you.
- Stay the hell away from people who look sick
The air vent thing was new to me! Now I’m off to get disinfecting wipes and some saline spray.
Update: thanks to @aweissman for this suggestion: “i do this and it almost always works: basically OD on Vitamin C before you get on the plane – right before. Use EmergenC or a similar product, drink it all up while waiting.”
See also: Daniel Pink’s travel tips. Episode #1 is about avoiding illness. I like his ointment-in-the-nose trick. And don’t forget (environ-)mental health tactics: earplugs, headphones, eye mask!
I Will Follow. Hmm. Promising beginning. There were moments when I really liked this one, but I couldn’t hang with it the whole way.
The Purple Rose of Cairo. This is a tremendous movie. If you love movies, I think it’ll stay with you. So good. Ebert agrees with me. As in Sherlock, Jr. the characters break the screen and go back and forth from the film world to reality (Allen is a science fiction filmmaker, you might recall) and wrestle with the rules and expectations on either side. There’s clever satire of movies, movie culture, movie-lovers. Much of it is bittersweet, but there’s almost always some jumping dixieland jazz playing in the background that keeps things from getting too sour. Thus, we have an escapist film about film escapism. After all, we need delusions to keep us going.
Since no one asked, here’s my ranking of Woody Allen films I’ve seen:
Definitely need to see some more. I’ve done similar, ongoing lists for Clint Eastwood and Alfred Hitchcock.
Embrace all change, not just change that benefits you.
Correlation or Causation? – Business Week.
Statistics are easy: All you need are two graphs and a leading question.
It’s so easy not to realize you’re under someone else’s influence. When we tell ourselves something, it’s always in our own voice, so it naturally seems like our idea. (Though we can often hear the influence when we say things aloud to others.)
I attempt to explain how this came about, in the podcast and in one chapter of my forthcoming book An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies.
I will read this book.
Being cheerful is really no recipe to get down to work: nothing happens until paranoia, jealousy, competitiveness and guilt arrive.
Landscape Absurdism: Las Vegas – Design – The Atlantic Cities. The natural vs. the built.
Don’t Be A Free User – Pinboard Blog. (via)
Avoid mom-and-pop projects that don’t take your money! You might call this the anti-free-software movement. […]
So stop getting caught off guard when your favorite project sells out! “They were getting so popular, why did they have to shut it down?” Because it’s hard to resist a big payday when you are rapidly heading into debt. And because it’s culturally acceptable to leave your user base high and dry if you get a good offer, citing self-inflicted financial hardship.
I like this litmus test that Damien Hirst suggests:
If I put a painting outside a bar at closing time, and it’s still there in the morning, it’s a crap painting.
He also suggests the market for art is bigger than you think, even at his prices:
I remember flying into L.A. at a time when my paintings were 20,000 to 50,000 pounds and looking at the swimming pools here and thinking everyone who has a pool can afford one of these. The market is so much bigger than anyone realizes.
I hadn’t thought about it that way. Also, on the idea of masterpieces vs. ubiquity:
You also have to ask yourself as an artist, “What would be more appealing … to have made the Mona Lisa painting itself or have made the merchandising possibilities — putting a postcard on everyone’s walls all over the world?” Both are brilliant, but in a way I would probably prefer the postcards — just to get my art out there.
All this reminds me of one section in Andrew Potter’s The Authenticity Hoax, a part where he writes about Robert Hughes’ criticism of Damien Hirst’s work:
“The idea that there is some special magic attached to Hirst’s work that shoves it into the multi-million-pound realm is ludicrous,” [Hughes] wrote. But there is a special magic attached to Hirst’s work. That magic is the spectacularly successful brand known as Damien Hirst. And for those to whom the brand is successfully markted—hedge fund types, tycoons of all sorts, generally anyone who happens to be cash-rich but taste-poor—it makes his products worth every cent. […] Some people think a Lamborghini is vulgar, and lots of people can afford yachts. But put a Damien Hirst dot painting on your wall and the reaction is, “Wow, isn’t that a Hirst?” The point is, Hirst is not selling art, he’s selling a cure for rich people with severe status anxiety. Judging Hirst’s work by the criteria of technical skill, artistic vision, and emotional resonance is like complaining that the Nike swoosh is just a check mark.
Damien Hirst prepares to unleash another round of art for buyers – latimes.com
5. To name is to rule. […] After watching sugar being poured into two glasses of water and then personally affixing a “sucrose” label to one and a “poison” label to the other, people much prefer to drink from the “sucrose” glass and will even shy away from one they label “not poison.” (The subconscious doesn’t process negatives.) Rozin has also found that people are reluctant to tear up a piece of paper with a loved one’s name written on it. Arbitrary symbols carry the essence of what they represent.
I also like this bit on rituals and luck:
People who truly trust in their rituals exhibit a phenomenon known as “illusion of control,” the belief that they have more influence over the world than they actually do. And it’s not a bad delusion to have—a sense of control encourages people to work harder than they might otherwise. In fact, a fully accurate assessment of your powers, a state known as “depressive realism,” haunts people with clinical depression, who in general show less magical thinking.
We need some delusions to keep us going. And the people who successfully delude themselves seem happier than the people who can’t.
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Not so hot on this one. It seems like too much of a message film. Greed is bad! Money corrupts! I do like seeing Bogart as a bad guy, though. The only other John Huston movies I’ve seen are Key Largo, which is pretty good, and The Maltese Falcon, which is superb. I’d like to see The Misfits at some point.
[The app] uses a global positioning network to activate different themes as the listener wanders through the park. The app contains more than 400 tracks, each tied to a location. They were written to fit together harmonically like a sonic jigsaw puzzle.
I’d download it on iTunes if I lived anywhere nearby. Oh, and how cool would it be if they had a bigger map with famous recordings from around NYC? Take the “A” Train at the relevant time? Maybe cue up a random clip from a CBGB show if you’re strolling down the Bowery? Or a Gaslight Cafe recording if you wandering around Greenwich Village? Or a bit from Heartbeats/Boats and Buoys if you wander over near the river? Please tell me someone has beaten me to this idea.
Filed under: sound sculptures.
Bluebrain’s App Central Park (Listen to the Light) – NYTimes.com
On a recent evening, Ms. Monroe-Cassel used boar tenderloins to recreate a dish served during a wedding feast with 77 courses in “A Storm of Swords.”
I really hope I invented this word: cuisplay.
Mesrine: L’instinct de mort. I need to see more movies with Vincent Cassel. The guy is awesome. This one is the first of a two-parter about a real French gangster/bank robber and it’s great. No CGI silliness. No melodrama silliness. Just a magnetic, unhinged sort of guy going about his dirty business. Good stuff. Looking forward to the second part when it arrives.
Mark Larson 