Category: General

I was baffled by uproar from the Stewart v. Cramer bit a few days ago. I got the sense that I misunderstood what Cramer did on his show (attempt to time the stock market). Stewart made it seem like Cramer was driving the ambulance, rather than simply chasing it.

Then I remembered that Stewart’s show “followed sock puppets making prank calls” and Stewart’s show, Cramer’s show, like online dating is a great percentage of pure, value-free, entertainment.

Why CNBC should inherently be considered any more or less credible than Comedy Central is really the pre-requisite question to ask.

“If you want a television host, or network, to blame all of our troubles on, you’d do better to cast your ire on Home and Garden Television, and Flip This House. They’re the ones who told Americans, over and over and over and over, that it was possible to get rich by installing granite countertops.” – Megan Ardle

Bull Markets are a Lazy Way of Measuring Happiness

The funny thing about metrics – the wrong one distracts more than it helps. And in this modern age, a technological hack can be built (if it doesn’t already exist) to give you the desired numbers.

Bernard Madoff
Click Fraud

This is why I’m not a big fan of measuring the success of a website based on click-through-rates or unique visitors. Both of which are distractions, and things automated scripts can be written to steadily increase the rates of.

On a much smaller scale, take a look at my “Twitter influence” according to Web Analytics Demystified.

For kicking Twitter’s tires for 2 years, I’m ok with my influence “becoming apparent” – it just betrays this report is worth exactly what I paid for it.

WebAnalyticsDemystified’s algorithm is obviously heavily weighting ‘retweets’ – the act of someone else repeating what you’ve said within Twitter. If you’ve followed along, I’ve railed against the act of retweeting that I’ve fostered an echo. I find @retweetgarrick an amusing joke. WebAnalyticsDemystified says it¹ increases my influence.

Ummm.

So, to increase my ‘influence’ on Twitter, I should create an army of @retweetgarricks?

Yeah, we should probably just find a different metric.

1. Robots are neuter.

Back in college we made this joke (usually around finals week) about being so busy you have no idea where you are.

After fighting with technology all day – I noticed;

• It’s the third week of February.
• My inbox just passed 100 again.

My current approach on resolving this:

• A good night’s sleep.
• Focus.

just thinking about the lyrics “here we are now, entertain us” makes me want to smash guitars as well.

I don’t care if it’s
Media
Meaning
Cake
or
Happiness

Being neutral or destroying aren’t then only options. Nor are they the preferable ones.

We all have the capacity to make.

and not just martinis.

Elsewhere:

“It’s not enough to feel. You also have to build.” – Hugh McLeod

When I separate my trash, how do I know I’m putting the ‘recyclable’ bits in the right bucket?

Without being an expert in waste handling, I don’t really know.

Plus, if there’s an innovation in the waste processing – and something previously bound for the landfill can now be re-processed, the non-waste-handling experts among us would be the last to know.

Meaning a great deal of potentially useful resources are still getting buried, along with years of other now-useful bits.

What if we could mine landfills, for all the un-recycled treasures they’re holding prisoner?

Forget ANWR, we need to encourage drilling for oil in Puente Hills.

If not oil from plastics or aluminum from cans, how about just the land itself?

“At some point the land upon which landfills are located will become too valuable to leave as landfills….” Patrick Atkins, president of Atkins 360 LLC

This post inspired by MPR’s “Food: the next frontier in recycling” report

(Yes, this goes back to my single-sort post)

“A wall calendar showed August 1988 and an empty bottle of Vita Cola, Marella margarine, Juwel cigarettes and a bottle of Kristall vodka were in the kitchen.”

Reminds me of an art installation I saw during my time in Germany.

Imagine a room.

With a single, wall-sized, framed painting leaning against the wall.

Hanging tools littering the floor.

As I pondered this room, a woman approached me, and gave me the background.

In Soviet Russia, it was common for workers to just stop. Mid-task. And walk away, onto another task. Different orders.

Also, if you haven’t seen it, Goodbye Lenin is quite enjoyable.

There are 1,630 results in Amazon’s book search for ‘podcasting’, 11,301 for ‘twitter’. Feels bubbly.

Just a few moments ago, I published my 114th First Crack Podcast.

I get the greatest sense of accomplishment and satisfaction out of that process (conducting an interview, editing, publishing).

It got me to thinking of the other electronic publishing I regularly do, and how they rank in sense of accomplishment/satisfaction

1. Podcasts
2. Software
3. Skype calls
4. Blog posts
5. Instant Messages
6. Email
7. Twitter messages

Not sure if there’s anything more profound in there, just where my head is at right now.