*NOTE: This is my first post to Blogger, but I have blogged on MySpace for quite a while. To dig through my MySpace blogging history, go here.
After a thoroughly enjoyable month of employment based in the Chicago suburbs, I'm back on the road this week, writing this blog on my 4-1/2 hour flight to LAX. Fortunately, I brought along some excellent reading material that's making me forget that I have felt my legs atrophy significantly over the course of the flight - looks like my traveler's fortitude has suffered from the respite. The nice thing about evening flights is that you can play the cloud shapes game with the patches of light from the towns below; I just passed a crop of lights that looked like a giant beetle.
Malcolm Gladwell has finally returned from a hiatus of several months with a great article on how the FBI's long-revered criminal profiling methodology is really just pseudo-scientific cold reading. He spent his hiatus working on his next book, and although I have no idea what it's about I'm getting antsy just thinking that more Gladwell goodness will soon be rolling off of a printing press somewhere, rife with counterintuitive wisdom backed by rock solid case studies. Try to stay with me here, but there's something similar about Malcolm Gladwell's work and the web services/products that Google provides. In both cases, the simplicity of their packaging makes the content more intuitive. It reminds me of the way the word "elegant" is used in the context of computer programming to describe a solution that implies a harmony of simplicity and robustness. Leonardo da Vinci said that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, and I think that idea is manifest in output such as Gladwell's Blink and Google's RSS feed manager Google Reader.
But I digress.
I'm also slowly working my way through Naomi Klein's No Logo, which is an examination of the state of advertising, branding and marketing at the end of the 20th century. The big picture so far isn't too surprising - Guess what? Corporations are EVERYWHERE! - but the cited examples of out-of-control branding still strike your gut as foul, such as Fashion Licensing of America's line of Ernest Hemingway furniture ("designed to capture the 'brand personality' of the late writer"), or Nike internally coining the term "bro-ing" to describe its process of borrowing style, attitude and imagery from black urban youth. She just wrapped up a chapter on how the Seattle grunge scene didn't really stand for anything but an aesthetic, making it perfect for brands to swoop in and co-opt. That section is followed with some well-worded passages about how being interested in something ironically is a vapid cop-out, which I LOVED reading because I feel like I've never really understood the "so bad it's good" theory.
* * * * * * *
I'm now in the cab on the way to the Beverly Hills Hilton, where a room awaits me. Let's see if I can still remember my hotel room arrival routine: open suitcase on second bed, put toiletries by the sink, iron and hang shirts... yes, yes, it's all coming back to me.
Lucy & I had a fabulous time this weekend seeing They Might Be Giants at The Vic, eating at our favorite Wicker Park restaurants, and falling asleep during two consecutive attempts to watch Ratatouille. We also had some heavy-duty conversations; it was good to get away from the catch-up we play over the phone every week, and to interact deeply with someone so close to me. Those experiences don't happen every day.
After a thoroughly enjoyable month of employment based in the Chicago suburbs, I'm back on the road this week, writing this blog on my 4-1/2 hour flight to LAX. Fortunately, I brought along some excellent reading material that's making me forget that I have felt my legs atrophy significantly over the course of the flight - looks like my traveler's fortitude has suffered from the respite. The nice thing about evening flights is that you can play the cloud shapes game with the patches of light from the towns below; I just passed a crop of lights that looked like a giant beetle.
Malcolm Gladwell has finally returned from a hiatus of several months with a great article on how the FBI's long-revered criminal profiling methodology is really just pseudo-scientific cold reading. He spent his hiatus working on his next book, and although I have no idea what it's about I'm getting antsy just thinking that more Gladwell goodness will soon be rolling off of a printing press somewhere, rife with counterintuitive wisdom backed by rock solid case studies. Try to stay with me here, but there's something similar about Malcolm Gladwell's work and the web services/products that Google provides. In both cases, the simplicity of their packaging makes the content more intuitive. It reminds me of the way the word "elegant" is used in the context of computer programming to describe a solution that implies a harmony of simplicity and robustness. Leonardo da Vinci said that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, and I think that idea is manifest in output such as Gladwell's Blink and Google's RSS feed manager Google Reader.
But I digress.
I'm also slowly working my way through Naomi Klein's No Logo, which is an examination of the state of advertising, branding and marketing at the end of the 20th century. The big picture so far isn't too surprising - Guess what? Corporations are EVERYWHERE! - but the cited examples of out-of-control branding still strike your gut as foul, such as Fashion Licensing of America's line of Ernest Hemingway furniture ("designed to capture the 'brand personality' of the late writer"), or Nike internally coining the term "bro-ing" to describe its process of borrowing style, attitude and imagery from black urban youth. She just wrapped up a chapter on how the Seattle grunge scene didn't really stand for anything but an aesthetic, making it perfect for brands to swoop in and co-opt. That section is followed with some well-worded passages about how being interested in something ironically is a vapid cop-out, which I LOVED reading because I feel like I've never really understood the "so bad it's good" theory.
* * * * * * *
I'm now in the cab on the way to the Beverly Hills Hilton, where a room awaits me. Let's see if I can still remember my hotel room arrival routine: open suitcase on second bed, put toiletries by the sink, iron and hang shirts... yes, yes, it's all coming back to me.
Lucy & I had a fabulous time this weekend seeing They Might Be Giants at The Vic, eating at our favorite Wicker Park restaurants, and falling asleep during two consecutive attempts to watch Ratatouille. We also had some heavy-duty conversations; it was good to get away from the catch-up we play over the phone every week, and to interact deeply with someone so close to me. Those experiences don't happen every day.
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