found_drama

Whitney Hess at A List Apart:

My client says, “I want to build a spaceship!” I say, “No, we need to make a kite.”

at msnbc.com (via B²)

at Mother Jones:

I sat down, and they said on the back of your Social Security card, there's a number. That number indicates the bank that bought you when you were born based on a projection of your life's earnings, and you are collateral. We are all collateral for the banks. I have this look like, "What the heck are you talking about?" I'm trying to hide that look and look clueless. I figured clueless was better than argumentative. So they said, "You don't know this?! You are a member of Congress, and you don't know this?!" And I said, "Please forgive me. I'm just ignorant of these things." And then of course, it turned into something about the Federal Reserve and the Bilderbergers and all that stuff. And now you have the feeling of anti-Semitism here coming in, mixing in. Wow.

at Theresa Neil

at markitechture:

Marissa Mayer had a question – the right question – and she answered it by testing. ¶ “If you make links less blue, do we lose money as a business?” ¶ Yes, yes you do.

at msnbc.com — Let's check back in annually, shall we?

at Beautiful Interfaces (via @rmurphey)

Zeldman on "HTML5":

To encourage what should be encouraged, yet not add confusion to an already over-vague understanding, folks like us might want to say, “HTML5 and related technologies,” or “HTML5 and other new technologies,” or something along those lines. ¶ Sure, it’s a bit stiff. But such a construction allows us to participate in the current frenzy and be understood by non-technical people while not fostering further misunderstandings—particularly as we also need to concern ourselves with web colleagues’ and students’ knowledge of what HTML5 is and is not.

"JavaScript performance playground" (via <a href="http://badassjs.com/post/893443459/jsperf-the-github-of-javascript-performance-testing"?Badass JavaScript)

at Wise Bread — resonates with me because I've been thinking about making a bookshelf or three…

at NCZOnline — yes please, anything to kill off sprites

by Marc Ruxin (via B&sup2;) — contains many of the same thoughts I have as I wrestle with this quirk of our modern landscape:

And so, as the tactile pursuit of the cultural arts disappears, it is only fair to acknowledge how, in many ways, you were never armed with the right equipment in the old days. There was no Amazon collaboratively filtered recommendations to check, no www.metacritic.com meta scores to cross reference, no social web to tap for peer review. and feedback. There was no www.IMDB.com available for film, no Pandora for music discovery. Of course, part of that old paradigm is that mistakes were made. Bad records and books were bought. Disappointing films were rented. Despite these minor setbacks, the joy of the unexpected existed, and the mitigation of mistakes took actual work.

by Eric Meyer (at ALA) — a worthy and reasonably in-depth discussion

at BeerAdvocate (via @tharx75) — ZOMG! want!!

"One-touch cleaning system" — really? this is the only way to get a new foot cap?

at Unreported

Isn’t that nice? Businesses get to dress up delinquency as “a negotiated transfer to lenders.” The next time you can’t make your credit card payments, try calling up your Visa representative and say, “No, no. I’m not late. We just need to engage in payment negotiations.” See how that goes. Also, enjoy prison.

JavaScript Application Framework for HTML5

at nvie.com

via @ebertchicago:

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.

at Thomas Hawk Digital Connection (via DF) — this makes me want to try Lightroom (…and dump Aperture?)

at Boing Boing — a quote within a quote, re: Exxon Valdez:

Despite heroic efforts involving more than 11,000 people, 2 billion dollars, and aggressive application of the most advanced technology available, only about 8 percent of the oil was ever recovered.

In other words, off-shore drilling (and petrol, in a more general sense) is a fundamentally bankrupt institution and we better start in earnest on our alternatives right fucking now.

at blog maverick (via DF):

If you dont think the company you are buying is worth at least a quarter more than what you are paying , why are you buying shares ?

at Etsy's Code as Craft blog — an awesome (and thorough) run-down of their push-button deployment process. Good readin'.

A List Apart:

In recent years, I’ve been meeting with more companies that request “an iPhone website” as part of their project. It’s an interesting phrase: At face value, of course, it speaks to mobile WebKit’s quality as a browser, as well as a powerful business case for thinking beyond the desktop. But as designers, I think we often take comfort in such explicit requirements, as they allow us to compartmentalize the problems before us. We can quarantine the mobile experience on separate subdomains, spaces distinct and separate from “the non-iPhone website.” But what’s next? An iPad website? An N90 website? Can we really continue to commit to supporting each new user agent with its own bespoke experience? At some point, this starts to feel like a zero sum game. But how can we—and our designs—adapt?

via DF:

If it were only that the prequels were ruined by subpar writing, I would be okay. Disappointed, but hardly inconsolable. Maybe Lucas had just caught lightning in a bottle with the originals. But unfortunately, the nature of the prequels seems to spoil the originals merely by occupying shelf space near them, via some sort of heinous osmosis. Now, if you watch the prequels before the original trilogy (in chronological order), the ending of Empire is completely without weight. The biggest reveal in the history of cinema is ruined. Sure, there’s the dramatic irony of watching Episode IV and V knowing Luke and Leia are siblings and Vader is their father, but it’s not played for dramatic irony; for that you need suspense, and the climax of Empire is dependent on surprise, not suspense. It is the reason I will ensure that my children not watch the prequels until they’ve seen the original trilogy (in whatever form it exists by that point).

at merhl (via JL) — The implicit question here: at what point does distinctive look-and-feel become a barrier to user comprehension and/or adoption?

at The Washington Monthly:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) doesn't want Faisal Shahzad, the suspect in the failed car bombing in Times Square, to be Mirandized. Neither does Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.).

"Did they Mirandize him? I know he's an American citizen but still," King said.

"But still"? What does that mean, exactly?

"Providing utilities to Gowalla fans everywhere"

at Smashing Magazine

at Tor.com

at Redfin Corporate Blog

at Ajaxian — an interesting-looking article series by Dmitry A. Soshnikov

at ScienceInsider — in a nutshell:

"Discussing American science literacy without mentioning evolution is intellectual malpractice" that "downplays the controversy"…

at Princeton University — the real "this is why you're fat":

"Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn't true, at least under the conditions of our tests," said psychology professor Bart Hoebel, who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction. "When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they're becoming obese — every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don't see this; they don't all gain extra weight."

at The New Yorker (via DF):

For Apple, which has enjoyed enormous success in recent years, “build it and they will pay” is business as usual. But it’s not a universal business truth. On the contrary, companies like Ikea, H. & M., and the makers of the Flip video camera are flourishing not by selling products or services that are “far better” than anyone else’s but by selling things that aren’t bad and cost a lot less. These products are much better than the cheap stuff you used to buy at Woolworth, and they tend to be appealingly styled, but, unlike Apple, the companies aren’t trying to build the best mousetrap out there. Instead, they’re engaged in what Wired recently christened the “good-enough revolution.” For them, the key to success isn’t excellence. It’s well-priced adequacy.

at NYTimes.com — frustrating that we have not come farther on this:

The report found ample evidence of continuing cultural bias. One study of postdoctoral applicants, for example, found that women had to publish 3 more papers in prestigious journals, or 20 more in less-known publications, to be judged as productive as male applicants.

The fiber, we wants it…

at Democrats.senate.gov (via Balloon Juice) — Harry Reid on John McCain:

For someone who campaigned on ‘Country First’ and claims to take great pride in bipartisanship, it’s absolutely bizarre for Senator McCain to tell the American people he is going to take his ball and go home until the next election. [...] At a time when our economy is suffering and we’re fighting two wars, the American people need Senator McCain and his fellow Republicans to start working with us to confront the challenges facing our country—not reiterating their constant opposition to helping working families when they need it most.

And to keep it balanced, a quote from FrumForum:

This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none.

UPDATED: looking at this again, this here might be the more relevant pull quote^[1]:

Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994. [...] Barack Obama badly wanted Republican votes for his plan.

And perhaps that was the take-home lesson about the Republican obstructionism? and why they all voted “nay”? Because in their heart-of-hearts they knew that they could live with the outcome either way^[2]?

at Talking Points Memo:

Again, I don’t want to paint any rosy pictures. And, as I said, I don’t want to hazard any predictions. But I think this conventional wisdom is quite mistaken. Hard fought victories don’t deplete political capital; they build it. And political wins themselves often have a catalyzing effect that shapes political opinion far more than we realize.

at NYTimes.com:

Here is a look at some of the main ways the health care overhaul might affect household budgets.

at NYTimes.com:

“This isn’t radical reform,” he added, “but it is major reform.”

at The Daily Dish (by Andrew Sullivan; via DF) — good round-up of responses to last night’s historic passage

at Sprinkle Bakes — what could be better?

at ReadyMade Editors’ Notes (via S. McC.) — nyuk-nyuk-nyuk…

at NYTimes.com — $300 911 calls and:

C-Span is just ESPN with only two teams.

at I Am Bored (via DF) — holy WTF

at Recipezaar