Walter Russell Mead on Al Gore:
The most visible leader of the world’s green movement cannot live a life of conspicuous consumption, spewing far more carbon into the atmosphere than almost all of those he castigates for their wasteful ways. Mr. Top Green can’t also be a carbon pig.
Solid article by Agile Bits, the company behind 1Password, a program I wholeheartedly endorse.
Wanna know why movies suck? Read this.
I just ordered David Mamet’s new book, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture, about his path to conservatism. The Left can have all the Alec Baldwin’s, Sean Penn’s and Susan Sarandon’s they want. None of them can carry Mamet’s pencil.
Here is Mamet’s seminal Village Voice article from two years ago, “Why I Am No Longer Brain-Dead Liberal.”
And here is Andrew Ferguson’s excellent writeup in the Weekly Standard.
Update: Here is a John Podhertz column about Mamet. The story at the end is priceless.
Update 2: And here is a long transcript of Mamet’s interview on the Hugh Hewitt show.
I have a terrible habit of spending what little free I have surfing the web rather than writing for it. I just spent the last couple of hours messing with some new Safari extensions (Instapaper Beyond, Firebug for Safari), which led to various excursions into fonts, bookmarking tools (why do I need Zootool when Pinboard works just fine?) and other corners of the web.
Learning about web design and (very poorly) trying to apply some those things here is my hobby, especially with all the new-fangled things going on with HTML5 and CSS3. I have a laundry list of things I would like to accomplish here, from small (use Typekit) to long (complete redesign and move to a new CMS).
I also spend an inordinate amount of time looking for shiny new software toys and not nearly enough time using them to do anything, you know, productive with them. So here is a random rundown of about a week’s worth of time wasting:
Bottom line: More doing. Less looking.
Insane.
There is a lot to not like about the New York Times. Biased reporting, unremarkable editorial writing at best, expensive and confusing new online access paywall (WTF?), Maureen Dowd…but damn if their info-graphics aren’t top-notch. Here’s one on the issues with spent nuclear fuel.
Interesting read about Apple’s VP for Design.
So far at least. Here’s Jake Tapper:
@RumsfeldOffice Mr. Secretary, I’d like to see you use some emoticons every now and then. OK? :)
And here is the former SecDef:
From now on I will add an emoticon in response to reporters who tweet questions I find disappointing, uninformed or both. @jaketapper :(
I like Jake Tapper, but he teed himself up for that one.
As I’ve watched countless movies and TV shows over the years, when some character sits down at a computer and furiously types away to access the all-knowing database, crack a computer network in 6.9 seconds, or zooms a digital image eleventy billion percent and then hits the magic “unpixelate” button, I have always wondered (besides the obvious):
What in the hell operating system are you running?
Seriously, you’re some government minion and that’s not Windows on your machine? I don’t think I have ever seen a character on film or in the movies that worked for the government read an email using Outlook.
I have always thought there was some cabal of Hollywood creative types that sat around and created these multitude of fictional user interfaces. Well, I guess I wasn’t the only one. Via Smashing Magazine on Twitter, I came across Access Main Computer File, an awesome website that is a “visual study of computer GUI in cinema.” A single page that scrolls forever with screenshots of computer screens in movies over the years. And no two are the same, except for the rare examples where an actual Windows or Mac screen is shown.
A version for TV shows would be great too. I’m pretty sure the sixteen different flavors of Law and Order and CSI:Wherever all use some some superkickass, and completely different, operating system to track down the bad guys.