——————-Top Five——————-
1. I just finished reading “How to Win a Cosmic War” by Reza Aslan (great author who wrote the must read history of Islam called “No God But God”). Read this book. Nuanced and well researched plan for saving us from global Jihadism (please understand that this is very different than Islamism and the destructive tactics can be traced back to the original “zealots” of biblical time) which is without a question one of the most important challenges of our times. Quick secrets to winning? Don’t get pulled into a cosmic war. Reframe the argument. Supporting democracy, even when you’re not happy with the results, in the long run, is the best way to unmask the crazy people for what they are. When they win and can’t provide basic services (because they have no intention of winning and no goal other than destruction and the zealous killing of all who don’t subscribe to their particular brand of hate) they find themselves out of power time and again. Remember what Churchill said, “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried.” When people feel that they are part of the process, that there is fairness, they stop listening to crazy talk. This is the playbook for the right way to end the war on terror.
If we don’t figure it out as a society we should get used to solastalgia…
3. Hey maybe someday we won’t just do flash stunts but we’ll actually interact with visualization and use them to actually make better business decisions and help get life saving drugs (for example) into the world? Our friends over at Viz have some great news on this front, Array Biopharma just found out they were selected for the CIO 100 list from CIO magazine for exemplifying the highest level of operational and strategic excellence in information technology (IT). Their system is an amazing example of the power of collaboration and decision-making fostered by information-centric visualizations. They’ve been a wonderful client/partner who has pushed the capabilities of viz to the limits and helped make the tools far more effective. Wonderful job by all involved! More here on Array’s site…
GEEK ALERT: For those new to the links, much of the initial research that formed the foundation of this software came out of the Visage project back in the 90s. Here is a real blast from the past…
Hey is that VME stuff in that last link stuff geeks now call sparklines?
This is an interesting topic (not sparklines per se but the reinvention of things on the web with shiny new names until they become “popular”). We were talking about this the other day while working on our new book. Twitter is all the rage. But Pete (our mastermind) reminded us that there was a huge amount of social networking going on using computers on the Internet (back before the web when there were probably 10,000 computers connected to the net). You could change your short signature line in emails and many people did as “messages of the day” or small updates about what they were doing. And there was a little service you could subscribe to that would let you sign up for who you wanted to “follow” and you’d get updates whenever the message was updated or changed. Let’s see, short messages about what you’re up to (or thinking about), subscribers to the messages who follow certain people. Sounds an awful lot like Twitter, huh? So what happened? A strong case could be made that the “web” killed social networking on the Internet for a decade or so (the browser distracted us with blinky text and flaming logos among other things) and only now are we “inventing” social networking… again. Cell phones made it much more widespread and mobile. But people have probably been “socially networking” since there were people, no? You could probably spend a diverting hour or two mapping all the things on the web (facebook you know who you are) that are really just things that were around decades ago but now with snappy names and claims that they are the future and incredibly innovative!
4.The pop psych list of persuasion. Related… we should also figure out a way to nudge people sometimes…
5. What IS the appeal of aged news? Warning, seems a bit more casual with nasty (though bleeped) words than is really necessary and kinda mean.
—————The Rest—————-
Social contagion…
How a board game can make you cry.
How to afford the rising cost of raising a child Yes, two weeks in a row the answer has been babies. Do you see how they are manipulating us now?
Hmm, haven’t seen a good sweded video in a while, this one’s for Delicious Library on the iPhone…
Oh, this is just nice, every time an application is downloaded from Apple’s iPhone app store it ripples. Way to show off how many people are not only making things but the iPhone but buying them.
Bad week to try to quit sniffing glue?
Maybe if you had the geek atlas you wouldn’t have to read these links, no?
I want to like these because graphically they are nicely done, but… meh.
Ditto, only not really that well done graphically either.
Just really nice graphic design and illustration.
He may someday have to check himself in to doodlers anonymous…
If you’re in Chicago after June 19th you should definitely go see the Zaha Hadid designed pavilion in Millennium Park! It is part of a celebration of Daniel Burnham (“Make no little plans…”) who designed the plan for Chicago. My friend and fellow collaborator, Tom Gray worked with Zaha’s team to create an immersive video projection experience that sounds like it’s work the price of admission (I really don’t know if there is a price of admission but whatever it is it’s worth it).