I enjoyed reading through Wikipedia’s list of common misconceptions.
Sasquatch Gathering
This weekend I’m in Easyford, Alberta at the Sasquatch Gathering. (Not to be confused with the Sasquatch! Festival.)
Honestly, I’ll be more surprised than you if we actually gather any Saquatches. Sasquatchi?
Edit: Here are some photos and video from the Sasquatch Gathering.
Cocksure
Malcolm Gladwell’s new article, Cocksure, is about the psychology of overconfidence. In it he postulates that the brashness of experts caused the current financial crisis.
Since the beginning of the financial crisis, there have been two principal explanations for why so many banks made such disastrous decisions. The first is structural. Regulators did not regulate. Institutions failed to function as they should. Rules and guidelines were either inadequate or ignored. The second explanation is that Wall Street was incompetent, that the traders and investors didn’t know enough, that they made extravagant bets without understanding the consequences. But the first wave of postmortems on the crash suggests a third possibility: that the roots of Wall Street’s crisis were not structural or cognitive so much as they were psychological.
Three River Rendezvous
My kayaking friend Gemma recorded some footage at the Three River Rendezvous last May. She’s finished editing and tossed it up on YouTube:
[Three Rivers Whitewater Rendezvous 09 | YouTube]
I make a couple of appearances in the video — I’m the guy with the bright yellow helmet, blue PFD, and red dry top.
The Bad Review Revue
I Love You, Beth Cooper: “Wants to emulate a John Hughes film, in much the same way that a crack whore wearing a dime-store tiara wants to emulate Queen Elizabeth.” — Eric D. Snider, film.com
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: “If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination.” — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs: “if you want some jokes that aren’t prehistoric, you’re better off letting this Ice Age defrost.” — Jeffrey Lyles, Gazette (MD)
Bruno: “The new Sacha Baron Cohen movie, ‘Bruno,’ really isn’t a movie at all. Calling it one is sort of like calling mutton the new white meat.” —Christopher Smith, Bangor Daily News (Maine)
The Proposal: “It sounds like a faint recommendation, but trust me when I say that calling it ‘not terrible’ is high praise indeed.” — Marshall Fine, Hollywood & Fine
Backmasking in Michael Jackson’s Beat It
Despite the continued media frenzy surrounding Michael Jackson’s death, I have to admit I’m kind of over it.
However, I felt inspired to look for the “backmasking” message known to be in the song “Beat It”. So I now present, for your skeptical analysis, a new addition to my backmasking page, Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”.
First Moon Landing 1969
Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon and he did it forty-years ago today. He spoke the now legenday words “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Played backwards, “small step for man”, sounds like wait, I won’t ruin it for you, give it a try below:
Play forwards
Forward:’a small step for a man’
Play in Reverse
Reverse: ‘Man will spacewalk.’
Not that it means anything, I just thought someone might find that an interesting coincidence.
Nephews
My younger sister, Jackie, recently attended her 10 year high school reunion. I decided to take some time and visit with her and her kids in Medicine Hat and put together a few family clips of her boys putting in some serious effort at having a good time.
Canada Day 2009
Last Wednesday was Canada Day. My parents met me in Raymond and we drove out to Waterton to enjoy a day in the world famous Waterton International Peace Park.
I strolled down to the beach with some cousins and their kids and together we put together a Canadian flag using red and white rocks that we found near the lake.
It’s nice to live in Canada and I can’t think of many places I’d prefer to celebrate the nation’s 142nd birthday.
Is the Future Free?
Yesterday I listened to a bit of the CBC radio documentary News 2.0: The Future of News in an Age of Social Media, (The mp3 is here) about changes to our understanding of ‘journalism’ now that anyone can create, report and publish news.
Chris Anderson, editor in chief at Wired Magazine, coined the term the Long Tail to describe the niche business strategy of selling a large number of unique items, each in relatively small quantities. He translates this model to the news industry, invoking a new kind of reputation economics, implying that monetary rewards are not the only incentives for those reporting the news. He believes “free” is the future of business.
[Anderson] believes that low-cost digital distribution has reduced the break-even price of many products (movies, books, music) to near zero. As a result, giving your product away for free has become a viable economic model.
For example, a musician might decide to give recorded music away for nothing, knowing that the widespread distribution of the latest CD would give a considerable boost to ticket sales for the next concert. The profit is made in the concerts, not the music. And in case you were wondering, no, Chris Anderson will not be giving copies of his latest book away for free.
Malcolm Gladwell thinks Chris Anderson is wrong about the future of free. In his new article in The New Yorker, PRICED TO SELL, Gladwell rebuffs Anderson’s idea that free journalism is the future of news, and that despite a growing trend of technology and other goods becoming “too cheap to meter”, it’s unlikely the future cost of our commodities will actually be free.
Update: Chris Anderson Responds to Gladwell’s criticisms.