Clate Mask:

In a startup, passionate employees almost always outperform experienced corporate types who command big bucks.

Johan de Kleer:

One passionate person is worth a thousand people who are just plodding along ...

Bill Gurley:

Customers seem to really like free as a price point. I suspect they will love "less than free."

Paul Carr:

If we all started thinking a bit more like friends, and a bit less like attention whores, the privacy problem would be solved at a stroke.

Maggie Jackson:

Despite our wondrous technologies and scientific advances, we are nurturing a culture of diffusion, fragmentation, and detachment. In this new world, something crucial is missing -- attention.

Sanjay Jha:

If I didn't have smartphones in the market for Christmas of '09, this business wouldn't have a runway.

Saul Hansell:

Mr. Jha does not have Motorola flying again, but he at least has it poised for a takeoff.

Paul Vigna:

There's a line from an early Bruce Springsteen song that's been ringing in my head this morning. "Well the runway lies ahead like a great false dawn."

Who can say the worst has passed?

Anthony Shadid:

"Bodies were hurled into the air," said Mohammed Fadhil, a 19-year-old bystander. "I saw women and children cut in half."

George Soros:

The short-term needs are the opposite of what is needed in the long term.

Interior Minister Roberto Maroni:

We are closing the net on the super-fugitives.

Have you seen Gomorrah?

Gomorrah has been hailed as a classic mafia movie, which lays bare the savagery of the Neapolitan Camorra and how it develop... [ Read More (0.1k in body) ]

DARPA:

To mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet, DARPA has announced the DARPA Network Challenge, a competition that will explore the role the Internet and social networking plays in the timely communication, wide area team-building and urgent mobilization required to solve broad scope, time-critical problems.

The challenge is to be the first to submit the locations of ten moored, 8 foot, red weather balloons located at ten fixed locations in the continental United States. Balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roadways.

Google's Santiago de la Mora:

If you are not found, the rest cannot follow.

Google's Eric Schmidt:

The "smart people on the hill" method no longer works.

Mathew Honan:

Simply put, location changes everything.

Alexander Karp:

We were very naive. We just thought this was a cool idea.

Samantha Power:

There are great benefits to connectedness, but we haven't wrapped our minds around the costs.

Katie Shilton:

Participatory sensing opens the door to entirely new forms of granular and pervasive data collection. The risks of this sort of data collection are not always self-evident.

Marshall McLuhan:

Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit by taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don't really have any rights left.

Joshua-Michele Ross:

The iPhone does a whole lot more than display information. It is an environmental sensor. Its value lies just as much in sensing information as it does in displaying information.

Libby Purves:

There is a thrill in switching off the mobile, taking the bus to somewhere without CCTV and paying cash for your tea. You and your innocence can spend an afternoon alone together, unseen by officialdom.

A lamentation:

There is no pleasure in the chase anymore.

DARPA Network Challenge

Is Atlanta just as hosed as Las Vegas?

A quarterly survey of housing-market data in 28 major metro areas shows sharp drops in the number of homes listed for sale across the country. But the potential supply of homes is far larger because banks are likely to acquire significant numbers of foreclosed homes in some areas, notably Las Vegas, Atlanta, Detroit, Phoenix, Miami and other parts of Florida, and Sacramento, Calif., over the next few years.

The national apartment-vacancy rate in the third quarter was 7.8%, the highest in 23 years. Apartment rents may face further downward pressure as investors buy foreclosed single-family homes and turn them into rental units.

David Leonhardt, in April:

If you are part of the 30 percent of American households who rent and you're trying to decide when to buy, relax.

The market is still coming your way.

Nouriel Roubini:

Things are going to be awful for everyday people.

John Bird and John Fortune:

They thought that if they had a bigger mortgage they could get a bigger house. They thought if they had a bigger house, they would be happy. It's pathetic. I've got four houses and I'm not happy.

Sheila Bair:

We need to return to the culture of thrift that my mother and her generation learned the hard way through years of hardship and deprivation.

Have you seen "Revolutionary Road"?

Hopeless emptiness. Now you've said it. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.

Is the Housing Market About to Get Even Uglier?

Tim Kreider:

The Referendum is a phenomenon typical of (but not limited to) midlife, whereby people, increasingly aware of the finiteness of their time in the world, the limitations placed on them by their choices so far, and the narrowing options remaining to them, start judging their peers' differing choices with reactions ranging from envy to contempt. The Referendum can subtly poison formerly close and uncomplicated relationships, creating tensions between the married and the single, the childless and parents, careerists and the stay-at-home. It's exacerbated by the far greater diversity of options available to us now than a few decades ago, when everyone had to follow the same drill. We're all anxiously sizing up how everyone else's decisions have worked out to reassure ourselves that our own are vindicated -- that we are, in some sense, winning.

Quite a lot of what passes itself off as a dialogue about our society consists of people trying to justify their own choices as the only right or natural ones by denouncing others' as selfish or pathological or wrong.

Tim's married friend:

It's not as if being married means you're any less alone.

An introvert:

One of the greatest compliments I have ever given anyone I dated is that being with him was like being alone.

Decius:

Wow, life is boring.

Nora Johnson:

In our unending search for panaceas, we believe that happiness and "success" -- which, loosely translated, means money -- are the things to strive for. People are constantly surprised that, even though they have acquired material things, discontent still gnaws.

Carolyn Johnson:

Paradoxically, as cures for boredom have proliferated, people do not seem to feel less bored; they simply flee it with more energy.

Pico Iyer:

It seems that happiness, like peace or passion, comes most freely when it isn't pursued.

I have no bicycle, no car, no television I can understand, no media -- and the days seem to stretch into eternities, and I can't think of a single thing I lack.

Mason, Waters, Wright, and Gilmour:

And you run and run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Lisa Moore:

It has always been this way. Finite. But at forty-five you realize it.

Vijay Seshadri:

Yes, only in the forest do you feel at peace,
up in the branches and down in the terrific gorges,
but you've seen through everything else.
You've fled in terror across the frozen lake,
you've found yourself in the sand, the palace,
the prison, the dockside stews;
and long ago, on this same planet, you came home
to an empty house, poured a Scotch-and-soda,
and sat in a recliner in the unlit rumpus room,
puzzled at what became of you.

The Referendum

Merlin Mann:

Here's a video I made about a video I made. Consequently, it's also about writing a book, fake self-help, the long road to developing expertise, and the ups and downs of repeatedly asking the world to tell you who you are.

Acidus:

Think of cookie storage like having to remember an errand to do after work by shouting it at the end of every sentence you say.

Michael Lopp:

You should pick a fight, because bright people often yell at each other.

Richard Sennett:

It takes 10,000 hours of practice to become a skilled carpenter or musician -- but what makes a true master?

Matthew Crawford:

Some diagnostic situations contain a lot of variables. Any given symptom may have several possible causes, and further, these causes may interact with one another and therefore be difficult to isolate. In deciding how to proceed, there often comes a point where you have to step back and get a larger gestalt. Have a cigarette and walk around. The gap between theory and practice stretches out in front of you, and this is where it gets interesting.

Matt Knox:

It's hard to get people to do something bad all in one big jump, but if you can cut it up into small enough pieces, you can get people to do almost anything.

Carolyn Johnson:

We are most human when we feel dull. Lolling around in a state of restlessness is one of life's greatest luxuries.

Shane McAdams:

If we abstain from real judgment someone will fill the void with an alternative judgment, one that only appears to be critical, but is actually defensive.

Ridley Scott:

How close is cynicism to the truth?

They're almost on the same side of the line. Cynicism will lead you to the truth. Or vice versa.

Johnny Cash:

I'm gonna learn the right way to talk
I'm gonna search and find a better way to walk
I'm gonna spit and polish my old rough-edged self
Until I get rid of every single flaw
I'm gonna be the World's best friend
I'm gonna go around shaking everybody's hand
I'm gonna be the cotton-pickin' Rage of the Age
Yes, I'm gonna be a diamond some day

Makebelieve Help, Old Butchers, and Figuring Out Who You Are (For Now)

Dexter Filkins:

In a tour of bases around Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal repeated this mantra to all his field commanders: Time is running out.

Stanley McChrystal:

One of the big take-aways from Iraq was that you have to not lose confidence in what you are doing. We were able to go to the edge of the abyss without losing hope.

Have you seen "Revolutionary Road"?

Hopeless emptiness. Now you've said it. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.

Richard Haass:

After eight years of mismanagement and neglect every choice the United States faces in Afghanistan is dreadful. The weight of the evidence suggests that curtailing our ambitions is the option least dreadful.

Let's not kid ourselves. We're not going to find some wonderful thing that's going to deliver large positive results at modest costs. It's not going to happen.

Elizabeth Rubin, from the Korengal Valley:

It didn't take long to understand why so many soldiers were taking antidepressants.

George Packer:

Richard Holbrooke must know that there will be no American victory in this war; he can only try to forestall potential disaster. But if he considers success unlikely, or even questions the premise of the war, he has kept it to himself.

Stewart Brand:

In some cultures you're supposed to be responsible out to the seventh generation -- that's about 200 years. But it goes right against self-interest.

Ahmed Rashid:

If it is to have any chance of success, the Obama plan for Afghanistan needs a serious long-term commitment -- at least for the next three years. Democratic politicians are demanding results before next year's congressional elections, which is neither realistic nor possible. Moreover, the Taliban are quite aware of the Democrats' timetable. With Obama's plan the US will be taking Afghanistan seriously for the first time since 2001; if it is to be successful it will need not only time but international and US support -- both open to question.

Nir Rosen:

"You Westerners have your watches," the leader observed. "But we Taliban have time."

David Kilcullen:

You've got to make a long-term commitment.

Milt Bearden, in March:

The only certainty about Afghanistan is that it will be Obama's War.

From 2006, a snowflake:

Building a new nation is never a straight, steady climb upward. Today can sometimes look worse than yesterday -- or even two months ago. What matters is the overall trajectory: Where do things stand today when compared to what they were five years ago?

Stanley McChrystal's Long War

John Bird and John Fortune:

Well, you know ... Ideas above their station, up to their ears in debt ... They thought that if they had a bigger mortgage they could get a bigger house. They thought if they had a bigger house, they would be happy. It's pathetic. I've got four houses and I'm not happy.

Louis CK on Conan:

Louis CK: When I read things like, "The foundations of capitalism are shattering," I'm like, "Maybe we need that." Maybe we need some time ...

Conan: You think that would just bring us back to reality?

Louis CK: Yeah, because, everything is amazing right now, and nobody's happy ...

'CNN', from earlier this year:

The Dow and S&P 500 tumbled to levels not seen in nearly 12 years Monday, as investors slowly came to the realization that they have been living well beyond their means while harboring wildly inflated expectations about the viability of their future prospects.

Nicholas A. Christakis & James Fowler:

Each additional happy friend increases a person's probability of being happy by about 9%.

Nora Johnson:

In our unending search for panaceas, we believe that happiness and "success" -- which, loosely translated, means money -- are the things to strive for. People are constantly surprised that, even though they have acquired material things, discontent still gnaws.

Previously, on Bird and Fortune:

Somehow, this package of dodgy debts stops being a package of dodgy debts and starts being what we call a structured investment vehicle.

Banking with Bird and Fortune

Back in August, Malcolm Gladwell must have read "Bringing Down the Dogmen" and found himself wondering:

How different are dogfighting and football?

On a not-unrelated side note, David Segal recently observed:

As soon as you dig beneath the surface, the similarities between talk radio and gangsta rap are nothing short of uncanny.

After presenting a litany of evidence about the inherent inhumanity of American football, Gladwell concludes:

What football must confront, in the end, is not just the problem of injuries or scientific findings. It is the fact that there is something profoundly awry in the relationship between the players and the game.

Two from Robert McNamara:

Rationality will not save us.

You can't change human nature.

Michael Tomasello:

Human beings do not like to think of themselves as animals.

Skip Hollandsworth:

Dogmen view their fighting pit bulls as nothing less than spectacularly trained athletes.

Winston Churchill:

Are we animals? Are we taking this too far?

Offensive Play

"For three weeks only, Amazon and Mojo Nixon are offering his entire catalog in MP3 format completely free, including his latest album, Whiskey Rebellion."

All of Mojo Nixon in free, legal MP3 - Boing Boing

First, sit back and twist open a tasty bottle of Dungeons & Dragons Spellcasting Soda. Ready?

One time, at cyber camp ...

Winners of the Cyber Challenge will be invited to attend Cyber Camps at California State University, Sacramento, where they will further develop the technical skills needed to become cybersecurity experts.

One time, at D&D camp ...

It was the summer of 1982, at the Shippensburg College Dungeons & Dragons summer camp ... There were a lot of other summer camps going on at the Shippensburg campus at the same time: baseball, tennis, cheerleading, etc. Everybody stayed in the dorms, with different buildings for different camp groups ... All the usual coming-of-age stereotypes were in force: gamers gawked at cheerleaders and were hunted by baseball players. The cheerleaders were in the neighboring dorm and literally did their practices in our front yard. Every morning. I was always curious whether some clever administrator intentionally put the cheerleaders next to the relatively-safe gamers (as opposed to baseball players), but that's just speculation.

To be fair, the gamers were pretty busy just getting to know each other -- you're packed in a dorm with more gamers than you've ever seen in your entire life. There's a lot to talk about.

Murray Gell-Mann:

I was still discouraged, though, about having to go to MIT, which seemed so grubby compared with the Ivy League. I thought of killing myself (at the age of 18) but soon decided that I could always try MIT and then kill myself later if it was that bad but that I couldn't commit suicide and then try MIT afterwards. The two operations, suicide and going to MIT, didn't commute, as we say in math and physics jargon.

Tamar Lewin:

Many high school seniors avidly follow student blogs at the colleges they are interested in, and post comments. Luka, one of dozens responding to Ms. Chinea, for example, wrote: "I didn't know about the anime club. I would have never guessed that people at M.I.T. are interested in anime. Oh well ... +1 on my 'Why should I go to M.I.T.' list."

Chris Mills:

"Now you know what you're in for, you know the sleepless nights and frustrations are never far away, but this knowledge can't seem to remove the exhilarating smile on your face. And it's in that masochistic moment that you realize who you are. That this is what you're made for."

From the archive:

Thirty-one years after the invention of Dungeons & Dragons, the original role-playing game remains the most popular and financially successful brand in the adventure gaming industry.