August 2011
35 posts
“Weekends don’t count unless you spend them doing something completely pointless.”
—Bill Watterson (via kari-shma)
“
The secret of Mr. Obama is that he isn’t really very good at politics, and he isn’t good at politics because he doesn’t really get people. The other day a Republican political veteran forwarded me a hiring notice from the Obama 2012 campaign. It read like politics as done by Martians. The “Analytics Department” is looking for “predictive Modeling/Data Mining” specialists to join the campaign’s “multi-disciplinary team of statisticians,” which will use “predictive modeling” to anticipate the behavior of the electorate. “We will analyze millions of interactions a day, learning from terabytes of historical data, running thousands of experiments, to inform campaign strategy and critical decisions.”
This wasn’t the passionate, take-no-prisoners Clinton War Room of ‘92, it was high-tech and bloodless. Is that what politics is now? Or does the Obama re-election effort reflect the candidate and his flaws?
Noonan: They’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling - WSJ.com
Other parts of this essay are worth reading, but these two grafs may be the most clueless (and potentially disingenuous) thing that Noonan has written of late - and I say that as a fan of her writing.
To say Obama isn’t particularly good at politics is to parse things rather poorly. He may (arguably) be bad at Presidential politics, but he’s rightly recognized as being eminently skilled at electoral politics. And this job req, rather than point out how “bloodless” the President is as a politician, only demonstrates how well he understands how to win.
Passionate boots on the ground are good. Brilliant minds in the war room are better. But data? Data won the last Presidential election, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Any Republican who pretends that this req doesn’t terrify them isn’t paying attention.
July 2011
46 posts
“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
—
Arthur Schopenhauer (via nevver)
That’s beautiful.
“Operation Paperclip was the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) program used to recruit the scientists of Nazi Germany for employment by the United States in the aftermath of World War II (1939–45). It was conducted by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA), and in the context of the burgeoning Soviet–American Cold War (1945–91), one purpose of Operation Paperclip was to deny German scientific knowledge and expertise to the USSR and the UK.”
—Operation Paperclip
“In the safest, most boring country, the worst lone gunman shooting happens. The worst in the world, in history. But it will not make our country worse. The safe, boring democracy will supply him with a defense lawyer as is his right. He will not get more than 21 years in prison as is the maximum extent of the law. Our democracy does not allow for enough punishment to satisfy my need for revenge, as is its intention. We will not become worse, we will be better. We lived in a land where this is possible, even easy. And we will keep living in a land where this is possible, even easy. We are open, we are free and we are together. We are vulnerable by choice. And we will keep on like that, that’s how we want to live. We will not be worse because of the worst. We must be good because of the best.”
—Ola (via youmightfindyourself)
“Early scenes at a World’s Fair (featuring Iron Man’s dad, Howard Stark, played by Dominic Cooper) remind you of the impulse behind the thirties superhero mythos, the mixture of patriotism, Utopianism, and hucksterism — the belief that scientists, capitalists, the military, and nerdy messianic dreamers could come together to free the world from evil.”
—
Movie Review: The Appealingly Old-Fashioned Captain America — Vulture
I still believe in this.
“Basically, I came to the conclusion that if I wanted to design great user experiences then that old model of being a design contractor or a studio or an agency would not work. Instead, it’s necessary to be a part of the company that owns the product, to be in a position where I can continually work on and improve the product without the artificial constraints of a services contract.”
—
Subtraction.com: The End of Client Services
I’ve been advocating something similar, to friends still in client services and on Twitter. I’ve gotten some push back, but also a number of earnest replies. Glad to see Khoi is headed in the same direction (and articulating his reasoning far better than I have).
American Drink: An American Tales →
americandrink.net
From some time next Tuesday, July 19, through the following Sunday, we’ll be “covering” Tales of the Cocktail from New Orleans. What that means exactly (posts, live tweets, drink reports, pleas for medical assistance) we honestly don’t know yet. But if not informative, it should at least be pretty entertaining, as evidenced by Albert’s one-sentence response to my email that Saturday with my wife.
“As your attorney, I advise you to take a hit out of the little brown bottle in my shaving kit.”
Wish us luck. And don’t try this at home.
