The back story on the first link I will offer is interesting.
Everyone knows that I hate babies and think they are evil manipulators hellbent on controlling us with their giant eyes, over-sized heads, and constant need for attention. Really YOU need to be carried? What about ME, maybe I don’t feel like walking everywhere. Their disdain for authority is just off-putting. They know that later, once they can talk and walk and borrow your car and most of what you make (borrow?), that you will want to sell them for medical experiments (or wait til they have left on a trip to pack up and join the circus without leaving a forwarding address). They know that their time is limited.
They pull out all the stops. Stumbling around on those nubby little legs, head dragging them around like a small planet disturbing the orbit of all they encounter. Even the burping up on your shoulder is just a cynical ploy, reverse psychology in action. Instead of thinking (rightly) that “this thing clearly doesn’t have boundaries and has just ruined my shirt, it has no respect for the property of others” you find yourself dismissing it, “oh, look, he burped,” and, “Baby dubbin wike Daa Daa’s Guiness dub he?” We all know that when we feel needed, when we help someone else, we feel a sense of pride and accomplishment, “I’ll just change my shirt, don’t even think about it,” and “next time I’ll be careful to make sure he doesn’t hang himself upside down, bouncing and dangling from that bungee cord for so long, looks like little Mister Projectile burp-up dubbin hab da tummy for it, dub he?”
So even knowing all this, what do we do? We institute a babies at work policy because being manipulated so blatantly at home isn’t really enough, we have to share the joy. Our director of HR did a great job of working out the details and then just to compound the humiliation, she gets us press in Fortune Small Business about our delightful (read evil) new policy. So without further ado I give you the cover story for this month’s issue.
NOTE: If you just love to see how great photographers (and Photoshopping) can be (or want to stare longingly into my eyes), scroll to the bottom of the page (“really worth seeing in the print edition,” says the woman who is sitting next to me on my couch at home who appears to now have a crush on the photographer instead of me).
After seeing it all I could think was “why do I spend all that money on Clearasil?”
I can’t wait til this sort of technology is available in video conferencing. I’ll just refuse to see anyone in person and live inside of a Max Headroom, Gigilo Joe world.
Yes I’m now insufferable and will not take your calls.
You can go straight to the cover story here if you’re already tired of even thinking about looking at me. In fact, skip the cover story and just go straight to the secret, which of course is, babies!
Baby baiting aside (yes I know you newly born digital natives read the blogs before you learn how to talk), in the end it’s a bittersweet story given the truly brutal commercial climate out there (especially for small companies who I suspect will see things get worse before they get better). We could have evaded the questions about the downturn (claiming corporate policy or just remaining silent with “no comment”) and our own internal austerity decisions and contingency planning. But, we felt it important for the small business article to make note, not only of our own attempts to balance supporting our fellow travelers, but also of the hard choices we’ve had to make to be sure we’ll be here for the long term. I think the real answer is transparency over ego (even my massively gigantic, rapidly growing, but doomed to be deflated at any moment, one).
———————Top Five—————————
1. And now for something completely different. Learning design through reality TV…
Gestures are getting cheaper to track using camera chips that can detect depth and Microsoft of course had a competing offering to Sony’s based on this sort of thing… So what gestures would you use?
3. Shai Agassi explains a better place. He’s got a good story about the value of shifting to electric cars AND infrastructure AND a different business model. Watch the whole thing. This is a better place.
5. Beautiful short film, a simple experiment with perspective that unfolds in a contemplative spiral.
——————The Rest——————
Think again.
Ask Nature. Because it probably figured it out already at least a few million times.
Persistence of vision goes full color! I guess it’s only a matter of time before we have Google bike-driven adwords.
Fun with metal that is liquid at room temperature (hint not mercury).
Shape memory alloys come closer to use in buildings…
Some really wonderful 20th century classic car ads.
Graphic design geek alert! New Deal typeface designed in part by Neville Brody.
Part 1… Really powerful story of human-centered design making the difference for our soldiers.
Pretty amazing honesty (“I hated it. I wanted it to go away.”) How about this line from the first one: “It never gets better until someone tests it.”
I occasionally like to read Mark Cuban’s blog.