➜ Anti-intellectualism in American life

poploser:

On anti-intellectualism in American life.

While he doesn’t seek to explain all of American history as the conflict between “eggheads and fatheads” or between populist democrats and cultural elites (though it can sometimes sound that way), he does stress the pervasive influence on our culture of politically conservative evangelicals and the harm done to our children by a system of education that regularly favors personal development over intellectual challenge.

★ Permalink

20:53, june 8th, 2012.

that’s the bottling timestamp on the four-pack of dogfish burton baton i purchased earlier this evening.  i’m going to continue its aging process by postponing consumption and “cellaring” it.  sam’s favorite, i must follow the creed:  ’please share it with loved ones and hoard it from the non-believers.’

“cellaring” denotes the fact that i don’t have a cellar in my apartment, just a brown paper bag tucked away in a kitchen cabinet.  there is the opportunity to bring it to wayne, though.  there is a true cellar there and even a room specifically made to hold the canning efforts of the original homeowners.  the house, built in the 1920s, i think - still has some of the original mason jars unopened in that room.

i’ve never been in, it scares the shit out of me.

Factlets

yourmonkeycalled:

Mark Liberman:

when someone is channeling a Deep Meme (here O tempora O mores),  supporting factlets become Too Good To Check. Confirmation Bias rules.

A nice little mini-post on those ostensibly damning statistics thrown into every article to better illustrate how shitty we all are, as a people. Stuff like, “among high-school seniors surveyed in the late 1990s, 50 percent had not heard of the Cold War.”

amen.

Culture

bleikamp:

I enjoyed Peter Thiel’s essay on culture. We take culture really seriously at GitHub and it’s a hard thing to define. Saying someone is a culture fit doesn’t mean they like good beer or that they’re a Ruby fanboy. It’s much bigger and much deeper than that.

Part of Thiel’s definition of company culture is:

Good company culture is more nuanced than simple homogeneity or heterogeneity. On the homogeneity side, everyone being alike isn’t enough. A robust company culture is one in which people have something in common that distinguishes them quite sharply from rest of the world. If everybody likes ice cream, that probably doesn’t matter. If the core people share a relevant and unique philosophy about something important, you’re onto something.

A lot of people assume culture fit means that someone is more like than them than other people. Strong companies have people with diverse opinions and diverse backgrounds that all share a common goal.

you gotta have skin in the game.

Path: Share life—and make it count.

thepersonalnetwork:


Your alarm goes off at six a.m. It’s a good day for a run, so you tie your laces and step out the door. The first steps work out the morning stiffness but you start to hit your stride, and soon you’ve reached your route’s first hill. Your legs are beginning an early burn. Then through your earphones comes a welcome sound. It’s your dad, your sister, your best friend––they’re sending cheers your way. Because this morning, the moment your shoes hit the pavement, they saw you start your run on Path. They’re supporting you each step, from across the city, across the country, across the globe. You sprint the hill. With their help, you make it count.

This is the story of your morning run. It’s an important part of your day; it’s how you stay fit and healthy and happy. Now with Path 2.1, you can record and share it on Path.

From the routine to the extraordinary, there are countless special moments in your day to share with the people you love. We want to help you journal all of them in your Path. To do this, we’ve built the first version of the Path API to enable you to include stories from your other favorite mobile apps. After all, the story of your life is reflected in the apps you use every day.

We are delighted to announce Nike as the first Path API partner. Starting today, you can connect Nike+ GPS to Path to share your runs, in real time, with your family and close friends.

The completion of your workout automatically creates a beautiful Running Story in your Path––a map of your route dotted with pictures of those who cheered you on along the way. You can see your best pace, mile markers, your time and distance. Whether you run marathons or run for the morning paper, you can keep a journal of it on Path, track your habits and set goals with the support of the people you love.

Running is just the start. Nike is pioneering an entirely new way to integrate activity and sport in your everyday life. In the next few weeks, you will be able to connect the revolutionary NIKE+ FuelBand to your Path to journal your daily activity. We can’t wait to share it with you; stay tuned.

For more information about the Path and Nike+ GPS integration you can visit: http://path.com/nike

We’ve also taken time with 2.1 to improve two popular Path stories: Music and Photos. To Music, we’ve added what we call Music Match, a single button you can tap to record and recognize the music playing around you, so even an unfamiliar song in a coffee shop or a newly released track playing at a friend’s house can be remembered and shared easily with the ones you love on Path. For Photos we’ve worked hard to refine each of our free lenses, and we’ve also added a new comic book-inspired lens called Pow. Camera previews are now high-definition, and a new advanced feature that separates focus and exposure points will help you take beautiful photos, even in the trickiest lighting situations.

It’s our hope that you can use Running, Photo and Music Stories to better share life with the people you love. We hope you enjoy Path 2.1.

If you’re interested in our API, please let us know here.

emphasis mine.  i’ve been cheating on flickr lately and awesome like this is why.

also, this might be the second project i help kickstart.

jidoka & sweet jams.

slantback:

“In her book Life on the Screen (1995), Sherry Turkle discusses the concept of bricolage as it applies to problem solving in code projects and workspace productivity. She advocates the “bricoleur style” of programming as a valid and underexamined alternative to what she describes as the conventional structured “planner” approach. In this style of coding, the programmer works without an exhaustive preliminary specification, opting instead for a step-by-step growth and re-evaluation process. In her essay “Epistemological Pluralism”, Turkle writes: “The bricoleur resembles the painter who stands back between brushstrokes, looks at the canvas, and only after this contemplation, decides what to do next.””

—

Bricolage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

via tina, i used dropmark to create a not-too-shabby mix of tunes.  in theory, it’s my new radio show.

there is this weird half-life of programming that i’m obsessed with.  things like dropmark, yahoo pipes, ifttt, etc.  they’re tools to create narratives but also find solutions at the same time.  they’re digital manifest of, what feels to me, intense focus & playfulness at the same time.  they’re designed.  jen bekman tries to take bruce to task in the piece i linked previously:

Mmmm, OK. That doesn’t strike me as the clearest mission statement ever – the first paragraph describes design as a “powerful force”. Then the second paragraph talks about harnessing “emerging forces” but to me it’s a weak link. I’m sorry to be nit-picky. The project sounds cool, but clear communications of goals is really important in any endeavor, and especially one that has this kind of hand-wavey, change the world idealism.

jen, frankly, this is the kind of shit bruce is talking about.  it should be clear that the current modes don’t work anymore.  the linear focus our worlds have been built on (both in a manufacturing sense and in a learning sense) aren’t the same anymore and “design” is helping re-tune our approach.  it’s a change of focus & attention to make sure a solution is appropriate.  expand your definition of “appropriate” here, too.  i’m not talking about spec sheets or is it white or black or has curves or doesn’t.  i’m talking about tools & solutions that are created to do no more and no less.  both in a physical world and in a digital world.  the “design element” is the fact that immense consideration was put towards that affect and effect modes.  how does it affect me in use?  and what are the effects something has?

the world has to be tailored and it can’t afford not to be.

between bricolage, jidoka and all of the sweet tunes i’ve been writing this post to - i’ve realized that i need some coffee.

Autonomation prevents the production of defective products, eliminates overproduction and focuses attention on understanding the problem and ensuring that it never recurs.

silver skin.

i’ve spent the majority of the morning (since ~4a) catching-up on a months worth of back-log.  out of 200 feeds, maybe i focused on 20.  dumped the rest.  i’ve shared, am sharing and talked about the items i feel matter the most.  the ones you get to when you cut away the silver skin.  this is becoming a habit that i don’t mind.  two more:

cycles of invention and commoditisation (via), simon wardley explains - 

Explosions of industrial creativity rarely follow the invention or discovery of a technology but instead its commoditisation i.e. it wasn’t the discovery of electricity but Edison’s introduction of utility services for electricity that produced the creative boom that led to recorded music, modern movies, consumer electronics and even Silicon Valley. However, utility provision of electricity did more than just create a new world, it disrupted existing industries (both directly and through reduced barriers of entry), it also allowed for new practices and methods of working to emerge and even resulted in new economic forms - such as Henry Ford’s Fordism. This isn’t a one off pattern. The cycle of invention/commoditisation repeats throughout our industrial history, following a surprisingly consistent pathway. Understanding this pattern is critical to anticipating the changes emerging in our industry today - whether that’s the web, cloud computing or the future changes that 3D printing will bring.

related, adam smith lives in brooklyn - 

Instead of rolling our eyes at self-conscious Brooklyn hipsters pickling everything in sight, we might look to them as guides to the future of the American economy. Just don’t tell them that. It would break their hearts to be called model 21st-century capitalists.

see you in a month?