Bruce Schneier has written a long draft on the psychology of security.
Category: writing
Interview with comics genius Alan Moore on the BBC.
Umberto Eco’s 1994 essay on the Future of the Book.
Plato was expressing a fear that still survived in his day. Thinking is an internal affair; the real thinker would not allow books to think instead of him. Nowadays, nobody shares these fears, for two very simple reasons. First of all, we know that books are not ways of making somebody else think in our place; on the contrary they are machines that provoke further thoughts.
It reads a bit dated now, but it’s still pretty good.
This is a pretty cool collection of electronic literature/ hypertext fiction/ web poetry or whatever you want to call it.
The New York Times has a good profile of comics writers Robert and Aline Crumb.
Cory Doctorow writes about giving away his books for free.
Here’s a great essay exploring the connections between comics, games, and world-building.
Perhaps when we find ourselves disturbed or bewildered by the popularity of a new genre or medium, itÄôs precisely by giving it that “serious consideration” that we will begin to get to grips with what it is and how it works. But how do we do this, when the new work often seems to have so little to do with our existing aesthetic criteria?
Here’s some clever comment spam, the bastards:
I got the same tramadol attackĶ well, not the same, because it was only about 20 comments instead of 90, and i t have any filtering set up, and I just deleted them one at a timeĶ hmm.. the only thing really in common was that it was about tramadolĶ what filter do you have set up that caught them all?
[thanks, akismet]
How to Write a Book in Three Easy Steps. This was actually pretty good.
Marc Singer reviews the MOME Spring/Summer 2006 comics anthology, and riffs on the state of today’s independent comics: “When comics aspire to the stature of literature or art they have to succeed as literature or art, not as not superheroes.” There’s some great discussion there in the comments, where Kevin Huizenga and some others weigh in.
Robert Niles writes on the silliest and most destructive debate in journalism. “They don’t know how we make the sausage, or even who makes it. They just want to eat.” This also relates to Steven Johnson’s Five Things. [via magnetbox]
Brian K. Vaughan on breaking into comics: “Oh, and “writer’s block” is just another word for video games. If you want to be a writer, get writing, you lazy bastards.”
We’re moving beyond the pie chart now: here’s a periodic table of visualization methods.
An interview with Steven Johnson.
I came out of college in the late ’80s amid the science wars. Literary theorists were deconstructing the scientists, and scientists were making fun of the literary theorists. There was no realm where you’d come into a classroom and say, “This complexity theory might be useful in thinking about the kind of urban system Dickens is describing.” If you talked about science, it was entirely to show how it was Eurocentric or something.
I always felt like that was a total waste of time. There were obviously insights that both domains could productively share. A lot of what I’ve been trying to do since then is figure out what those connections could be, and figure out a way to work them into the books.
[via… Steven Johnson]
Using Enron as the foil for his argument, Malcolm Gladwell writes about mysteries as opposed to puzzles. He’s talking about situations where there is no magical missing piece, but instead we often have an overload of information, a tangle that requires finesse and interpretation that isn’t necessarily open-and-shut.
In the case of puzzles, we put the offending target, the C.E.O., in jail for twenty-four years and assume that our work is done. Mysteries require that we revisit our list of culprits and be willing to spread the blame a little more broadly. Because if you canÄôt find the truth in a mysteryÄîeven a mystery shrouded in propagandaÄîitÄôs not just the fault of the propagandist. ItÄôs your fault as well.
There’s a couple related posts in his blog. Gladwell writes about the strange fact that Wall Street insiders–those with motivation to really care ($)–didn’t publicize the weirdness around Enron’s financial statements. Enter the journalist hero: “Maybe we have underestimated the value of impartial, professionally-motivated, under-paid and overworked generalists in tackling the kind of information-rich, analysis-dependent ÄúmysteriesÄù that the modern world throws at us.”
“People all over the world are making a list of 365 people they’ve met during the course of their lives–people who left an impression and whose name they remember–then they’re randomly writing a set number of words about someone on their list. They’re doing this once a day–for a year.” [via rule, brittaniea]
The Wall Street Journal is shrinking their newspaper. I’m really going to miss those 3 inches. I love giant newspapers like WSJ that make me feel like I’m flipping through billboards. Maybe there’s a niche market for people like me who want huge newspapers? I’m thinking 36 inches by 48 inches or so for each page. Something I’d have to spread out on the floor and read like I did when I was a kid.
Wikipedia has a list of fictional books. That is, books that only exist in other works of literature. [via the man that ate dictionaries]
An interview with SNL writer Bryan Tucker.
One thing people still don’t seem to get is that the show is actually live and on Saturdays – just like the title says (when I got the job my mom asked me what night the show came on), Things are literally being rewritten and changed until minutes before they get on the air – usually not radically changed, but definitely tweaked. The whole show is put together in about four days, and it’s frustrating when people compare SNL to other comedy shows that have the tremendous advantage of pre-taping things and controlling every aspect of what ultimately gets produced.
And here is part two.
Mark Larson 