Chuck Picture
Welcome to the best picture ever. “dooce: Not very happy about his recent bath.”
Sprinkler
Welcome to the best picture ever. “dooce: Not very happy about his recent bath.”
I’ve stopped updating my recent post about the bridge collapse, as information can reliably be located at many places online. One particularly useful website to follow is the Star Tribune’s Ad-Free dedicated page covering the collapse and all the associated, from the human stories to the engineering work to assess the cause.
Of particular interest lately is the “Motorists find an unexpectedly easy commute” headline, and Bush’s visit (with accompanying ideal of cutting through all the paperwork). I’ll be interested to see if an accelerated timetable on building an important span, all under the intense scrutiny of the public, can be accomplished.
The rented lens made shooting just about anything fun.
The picture is only the beginning in “Activision Reports Sluggish Sales For Sousaphone Hero.”
Have you ever seen software that animates and compares data in an utterly useful yet also entertaining way? I hadn’t, until this presentation… At last year’s Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) conference, the Swedish leader of the organization Gapminder gave a fantastic talk. Here’s the video of “Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you’ve ever seen”.
What Mr. Rosling advocates is freeing the dizzying array of statistics about nations of the world (available from the UN), all of which are in their unique formats and incompatible units. By “freeing,” I mean he wants to make the data accessible in a format that allows people to form hypotheses about the data. The question “How has the world distribution of wealth changed since the 1960s?” can be answered through an exhaustive statistical analysis — and there is still a place for that. However, if people wish to discuss this, a visual tool which illustrates these trends is tremendously useful… this is what the Gapminder organization is developing.
Now, the talk itself is tremendous, it is done “with the drama and urgency of a sportscaster,” which makes it mesmerizing.
The fact that there are “instant replays” is hilarious and useful. Here were some interesting points by Mr. Rosling:
That final point is extremely important - we can’t talk about “improving Africa,” we must talk about “targeting the delivery of AIDS prevention in these principalities, and educating the doctors needed in these other areas.” Visual statistics will help us improve our mental picture of what is happening around us.
If you watched the first video, take a look at this year’s follow-up, with a “literally jaw-dropping” twist at the end.
This slow motion video of Roger Federer gives a person a good perspective on how expertly he uses his wrists and follow-through form. It’s a nice compliment to the occasionally fuzzy but always amazing Top 10 Best of Roger Federer.
Conan O’Brien’s commencement address at Harvard makes a pretty quick read and an excellent examination of fantastic comedy writing. In addition to functioning on the levels of entertainment and humor, the speech goes a step further: it actually inspires. This line between laughter and inspiration is particularly difficult to walk in public speaking, but Conan did so quite successfully here. I’d highly recommend reading the entire speech, but here’s my favorite part, in which Conan speaks about starting up [Late Night with Conan O’Brien] in 1993.
So, this was undeniably the it: the truly life-altering break I had always dreamed of. And, I went to work. I gathered all my funny friends and poured all my years of comedy experience into building that show over the summer, gathering the talent and figuring out the sensibility. We debuted on September 13, 1993 and I was happy with our effort. I felt like I had seized the moment and put my very best foot forward. And this is what the most respected and widely read television critic, Tom Shales, wrote in the Washington Post: “O’Brien is a living collage of annoying nervous habits. He giggles and titters, jiggles about and fiddles with his cuffs. He had dark, beady little eyes like a rabbit. He’s one of the whitest white men ever. O’Brien is a switch on the guest who won’t leave: he’s the host who should never have come. Let the Late show with Conan O’Brien become the late, Late Show and may the host return to Conan O’Blivion whence he came.” There’s more but it gets kind of mean.
I find it heartening to remember that choosing to pour your heart and soul into some things is extremely empowering, but the satisfaction from doing so will not immediately (and perhaps, ever) come from without. I believe that everyone, at some point during their life, decides “I want to do… this.” I think the pursuit of the this can help provide structure in our lives. Anyhow, Conan frequently mentions how much he loves doing the show; and to me he appears very very sincere — he didn’t know what exactly he was looking for during his early years as a comedy writer, but he recognized it when it came along.
↓ More