YakShaving

Yak•Shaving (noun) Any apparently useless activity which, by allowing you to overcome intermediate difficulties, allows you to solve a larger problem

Month: October, 2007

Anti malarial hope?

I forget where I heard this quote recently: “The bugs are winning” (I think it was a CDC officer in reference to malaria and insect borne pathogens. Hopefully not much longer. Die, malaria. Die.

They won.

I just realized I didn’t blog about the Oxford style economist debate hosted at the Harris theater a few nights ago. Luckily, Vince had some tickets to it, so I decided to head over with him. The title of the debate is “Will China’s Rise Lead to an Environmental Catastrophe?“. Prior to the event, and [...]

I’m a street cleaner…err run an advertising company?

Check this out! Smart idea, I’m still surprised that the government is okay with it though. It seems like it creates an incentive for authorities to clean the streets more than anything. What might be interesting in this supremely cheap and potentially very effective form of advertising is to actually use it as for political [...]

links for 2007-10-25

EPROM – Entrepreneurial Programming and Research On Mobiles (tags: mobile research programming africa mit)

Futurist Meetup Today: China and Environmental Catastrophe, Economist Oxford Style debate

Tonight, we have a Futurist Meetup in Chicago, so come on out if you’re free from the shackles of doing Systems work or Structured planning class with Chuck. We’re going to have a special meetup– meeting at Intelligentsia on Randolph at 6:30pm and then walking on over to Harris Theater to listen to an Oxford [...]

Watch out Kiva, there’s a new P2P MFI lender in town.

Classic case of business, Microplace, entering the social sphere. Yikes! I wonder if the increased competition will help Kiva, or hurt it? Here are a few points of differentiation between MicroPlace and Kiva from a user perspective: Brand independent of eBay, but retains association to legal entity, so consumers may feel safer (has “eBay company [...]

I might cryogenically freeze myself…

…So I can have kids later in life. So that they can be freakin’ geniuses. No, but seriously, I have a strong conviction that a vast preponderance of the Flynn effect, if it still exists (see here) can be attributed to the proliferation of visual media, ample and diverse in forms. From Wikipedia: Still another [...]

links for 2007-10-23

Economist Confused About the Semantic Web? (tags: semanticweb web2.0 oreilly) Flynn effect – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (tags: psychology intelligence iq)

Talkin’ bout my generation

The world seems to be a lot smaller (to use a now cliche, flatter?) when it seems that generational peers in completely different geographic regions with different socio-economic circumstances tend to share the same consumer preferences. I could be overstating this point, but my gut tells me there is something here. This Sepia Mutiny article, [...]

Please help save ChicagoLand mass transit

The fact that mass transit needs to be saved, is, in my opinion, hokey. What kind of city/state/country are we living in?? One that cannot afford to reasonably improve and upkeep its public transportation to a post-1980s level. The subway lines are in such a state of disrepair– And to top it off, they’re going [...]

links for 2007-10-22

Data Visualization: Modern Approaches | Graphics | Smashing Magazine (tags: visualization design data graphics information) Graphical visualization of text similarities in essays in a book | munterbund.de (tags: visualization Design information infoviz graphics)

links for 2007-10-19

50+ Social Bookmarking Sites | Lifehacker (tags: bookmarking web2.0 folksonomy) Stephen King“s Top 7 Tips for Becoming a Better Writer (tags: writing tips) 10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work | Copyblogger (tags: writing copywriting blogging headlines) Word Wise: Subject to Change (tags: email writing subject howto productivity) Can a Lack of Sleep Set Back Your [...]