My favorite thing to do after an Apple event is read the coverage. It’s usually a mixture of disappointment and “this will never work” followed by Apple making billions of dollars off it. Mashable provides my favorite example of a group covering all their bases today so they’ll have been right from the beginning in the future.
I dislike the phrase, “the sky is the limit” because it isn’t. We should have stopped using it when the Soviets successfully put Sputnik in orbit. For a while, it legitimately was the limit. Now we have Voyager 1 more than 11 billion miles from the Sun on the edge of interstellar space.
There’s a story making its rounds about Amazon’s new app that lets you scan bar codes in stores. Amazon had a promotion that let users take a percentage off their purchase if they went to a store and scanned an item. Apparently, because this happened on the Internet it’s evil in comparison to my going into two brick-and-mortar stores and purchasing the cheaper product using a coupon.
The problem, which this story alludes to, is books as a product and books as culture. I frame this debate on the Internet vs. brick-and-mortar as two people fighting over the right to sell something with one person trying to piggy back on the idea that they’re a cultural guard and that if they should fail, we’ll lose a part of who we are. Any guesses about who is on which side?
I’m supposed to divorce myself from the reality of book stores and think of them on a higher level.
No.
Books are packaged, promoted and sold as a mass-market item. Book signings and book tours are press and marketing. We’re kidding ourselves if we think John Q. Local isn’t tracking traffic and conversion in his book store at signing events. He wants you in the door so he can sell something else. If not, the signing would have been someplace that fit more than 10 people.
Industrial design is art, but no one (well, there are probably a few) is complaining that Jony Ive isn’t signing iPads at Grand Central. Fashion is art, but I’m not upset that Simon Kneen isn’t signing my Banana Republic sweater.
I completely agree that books are works of art to celebrate. I just think cramped, musty book stores are an insulting place to celebrate them. Don’t get on your high horse and chastise me as a “scorched-earth capitalist” over your lack of a business model.
If you want to support literacy and books in your community, volunteer in schools or attend a book festival.
It’s messages like this one that foment my anger toward politicians. Senator Tea Party didn’t support realistic debt ceiling plans by his Republican colleagues or President Obama and in subsequent tweets said we should privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after complaining about a failed liberal spending experiment.
Facts are, of course, not on his side. President Obama has created significantly less new spending than President Bush and privatization hasn’t worked in the past. We are now also aware that the downgrade occurred specifically because he and his Tea Party colleagues were unwilling to work with others. He also said we must pass Cut, Cap and Balance because it would have prevented a downgrade and would help us in the future, despite the fact that, again, the S&P said that’s a bad idea.
Raising taxes as part of a solution is naturally off the table, because that’s a job killer. I’d like some evidence that lower taxes encourage the wealthy to create jobs. I’ve never seen any.
I always seem to leave my house when it’s pouring. It thundered for four hours today and did nothing until I left for the evening.
Dear Sarah Palin,
I would like to show you something you wrote yesterday. I added my own emphasis for clarity.
As we approach 2012, there are important lessons we can learn from all of this. First, we should never entrust the White House to a far-left ideologue who has no appreciation or even understanding of the free market and limited government principles that made this country economically strong. Second, the office of the presidency is too important for on-the-job training. It requires a strong chief executive who has been entrusted with real authority in the past and has achieved a proven track record of positive measurable accomplishments. Leaders are expected to give good speeches, but leadership is so much more than oratory. Real leadership requires deeds even more than words. It means taking on the problems no one else wants to tackle. It means providing vision and guidance, inspiring people to action, bringing everyone to the table, and with a servant’s heart dedicating oneself to striking agreements that keep faith with our Constitution and with the ordinary citizens who entrusted you with power. It means bucking the status quo, fighting the corrupt powers that be, serving the common good, and leaving the country better than you found it. Most of us don’t see a lot of that real leadership in D.C., and it’s profoundly disappointing.
You quit early. Shut the fuck up.
Sincerely,
Travis Walters
I often read through the Starcraft 2 Mac Technical Support forum to see what the state of things are for the Mac. Today I came across this post in a topic on OS 10.6.7. I haven’t updated to 10.6.7 because I’d read elsewhere that the update caused Starcraft 2 to become unplayable on some machines. Why I check to see if my Macbook Pro can play SC2 when I play it on my PC anyway is a post for another day.
The very first line by AtomicBanana struck me. “TL;DR: Mac OS X 10.6.7 update makes SC2 unplayable on MacBook Air.” After reading “TL;DR” for probably the thousandth time, it occurred to me that in old media we’d call what came after “TL;DR” a headline.
This image serves no purpose other than to show a piece of cool artwork.
The evolution of writing on the Web amuses me. We consolidated our writing styles to make things move quickly and get right to the point. Efficiency is key. We dropped all the rules and now we’re realizing some of them were important. We inefficiently add “TL;DR” wherever we need a head or subhead because we didn’t design a special place for headlines in comments or forums. The only improvement is that this special type of Web headline can go at the beginning or end.
Of course this isn’t really meant to be a headline. It’s the product of a certain segment of Generation Y hellbent on making the rest of us look bad. “Too long; didn’t read” is there to summarize a post so someone can guess what was said and reply with their own opinion without having to read.
I hope bringing grammar rules back even if in a broken roundabout way catches on. We might be able start using punctuation again. Until then:
TL;DR blogger realized TL;DR are headlines at the top or bottom of text.
This fantastic ditty has a some pretty awesome lyrics, specifically at the 1:33 mark.
Girl I turn that thing into a rainforest
Rain on my head, call that brainstorming
I recently drove to Atlanta in a rented car. I should clarify. It’s a car if we’re excepting the societal expectation of what a car is to include machines made by Dodge. At any rate, I drove to Atlanta in this tangible realization of the word mediocrity and decided to turn on the radio to see what Sirius XM is all about. Why do I live in a world where the Dodge Caliber and that song exist?
Here’s the deal. You’re not telling me anything.
“This is going to be the best speech,” said one of you. “I didn’t expect that,” said another of you with equal certainty. All I’m left with is this single question, “What?”
The whole reason we live tweet is because others can’t be there. In that scenario, the key thing to do is provide context. And, no, your hash tag isn’t context. “Best speech #oscars,” isn’t context. The only way that could work is if I get the time stamps of your tweets and a recording of the Oscars and watch the damn thing. You could have said, “Aaron Sorkin gave the best speech so far at the #oscars for his best screenplay win,” and saved everyone a lot of trouble.
But, you didn’t. You’re just throwing inane drivel into space for no reason.
And for all of you who will quickly say, “But we’re talking to each other!” No! You’re not! Because if you were, you’d do this: @traviswalters Ha! He sucked. LOL MY THOUGHTS ARE ORIGINAL #oscars.
But, you aren’t doing that either.
