OverMatter

On College

"College is a big bureaucracy that trains you to be a successful bureaucrat. You're one of those unique snowflakes, but when you're in a blizzard, who really notices?" (Dale Dauten)

World Language Mapping

Huffman Language Phyla

TomCar

Anywhere and Back™

Allofmp3.com

"No matter what the legality of the situation is, in the Recording Industry's odd focus on how downloading is evil, they've apparently never stopped to recognize that Allofmp3.com completely disproves the basic point of their argument on copy protection. They've said for years, that without copy protection, no one would buy downloadable music, since it would all just be available for free. The fallacy, of course, is that most of that music is already available for free -- so the only thing copy protection is doing is limiting actual customers (that is, lowering the value of the music). What companies like Allofmp3.com and eMusic have shown is that there's a real market for unencumbered digital music at a reasonable price. While the industry likes to assume the worst of its customers, it's clear that many people are perfectly happy to pay a reasonable price for the music they want -- knowing that it doesn't limit them and lock them into a proprietary solution. So rather than learning from a perfect example of giving the customers what they want, and seeing that they're willing to pay for it, the industry spends all this time and effort working to shut it down." (Techdirt: Recording Industry Still Trying To Shut Down Allofmp3.com)

The Bottomless Well

"Before electrical power became standard, the demise of our forests was the dire prediction, but they've been growing back since electricity became ubiquitous. In 1910, we spent 27% of farmland just to "fuel" our horses for transportation; now, our entire transportation grid, including roads, oil wells, refineries, and so on uses less land than that, while moving orders of magnitude more people and goods. Their philosophical analysis: we use far more dense, ordered energy, which enables us to preserve the environment more efficiently as well as do what we want more efficiently." (The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy)

Spanish-American War Finally Over!

"Treasury Dept. concedes a Spanish-American War tax on long-distance service is antiquated and consumers are entitled to a refund...

The tax was passed in 1898, when there was no federal income tax and telephone service was something that only the rich had access to. It was designed as a luxury tax to help the government during a time of high military spending.

Since then, it has become a good revenue generator for the Treasury, raising $5.9 billion in 2005."

(Treasury to give telephone tax refund - May. 25, 2006)

Stock Photography Cliches

Forty Media Blog

Cervelo Cycles

"This relentless pursuit of excellence will continue to remain our focus. We figured that each time we go to the windtunnel it cost us about $25,000. It might make more sense to spend that same amount of money on ads and marketing, but that won’t get you a better bike. We apologize in advance if our ads look like they were written by engineers. We figured you would rather read an ad designed by an engineer than ride a bike designed by the marketing department." (About Cervelo Cycles)

The Real Deal

Mark Fletcher presentation at Startup SIG

iMods

Wired News: Audiophiles Become IPodiophiles