It’s not an accident that almost all the executives in charge of Microsoft’s music, e-books, phone, online, search and tablet efforts over the past decade have left.
— Dick Brass, Microsoft’s Creative Destruction
In the moment, you’re angry, and focusing only on that one awful person that did you wrong. Your thinking is clouded. You start thinking everyone is awful, and see the world as against you.This is a horrible time to make a new policy.
— Derek Sivers, Resist the urge to punish everyone for one person’s mistake [via Merlin Mann]
I have a choice of believing the 98 percent or the 2 percent. If you believe my 98 percent and we go ahead and try to reduce our carbon, we’ve gotten rid of the dirty fuel, we’ve made ourselves energy independent, improved our national security, improved our prosperity and quality of life and health for American citizens. If we believe Mr. Blankenship and his 2 percent, and they’re wrong, the whole of civilization is destroyed.
— Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., quoted by Erica Peterson in Blankenship, Kennedy debate coal, climate change [via Al Gore]
…the First Amendment to this Constitution shall not be construed to limit the power of the People to restrict any significant and disproportionate non-party financial influence during the last 60 days before an election, where such influence would reasonably draw into doubt the integrity or independence of any elected official.
— From a proposed constitutional amendment in reaction to Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commisson, from Change Congress’s Call A Convention
We should reward people who kick significant ass and then go home. Early. Not those who pull all-nighters for things that were never that complex to begin with. All sorts of goodness happens when managers learn to reward results, not effort.
— Scott Berkun, Should Americans get more vacation?
No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens
— Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Top Defense Officials Seek to End ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ [via Political Wire]
![A comment on the Supreme Court’s decision of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commssion [via Charlie Todd]](http://artoftheprank.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/supremecourt-425.jpg)
A comment on the Supreme Court’s decision of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commssion [via Charlie Todd]
Real Work is not formatting the margins, installing the printer driver, uploading the document, finishing the PowerPoint slides, running the software update or reinstalling the OS.
The Real Work is teaching the child, healing the patient, selling the house, logging the road defects, fixing the car at the roadside, capturing the table’s order, designing the house and organising the party.
— Fraser Speirs, Future Shock [via Marco Arment]
We silence the cognitive dissonance through self-imposed ignorance.
— Jonah Lehrer, quoting from his book How We Decide, in Cable News [via James]
The surprise came at the conclusion of the event.… Weak human + machine + better process was superior to a strong computer alone and, more remarkably, superior to a strong human + machine + inferior process.
— Garry Kasparov, The Chess Master and the Computer [via Idea of the Day]
From the MTA: “1 of 2 caverns that will house LIRR platforms and tracks underneath the lower level of Grand Central Terminal.” More photos
The human brain has a remote root exploit in 70% of the installed base
— Notes on a talk by Matt Knox, speaking about the Milgram Experiment, in On Weakness [via Aaron Swartz]
