In an amusing example of the way in which conversations can take unexpected turns, somebody on a mailing list I frequent posted the question “Are Xena and Buffy Really the Same Show?”. As a long-time Buffy fan, I immediately had to jump in to claim that they were not because Buffy was far superior. As […]
The Power of Song
I’m on the Carnegie Hall weekly events list. Last week’s email announced a Community Sing of Mozart’s Requiem, to commemorate the fifth anniversary of 9/11. That immediately became a priority for me to attend. Some background: The Saturday after 9/11 was our choral retreat. We were rehearsing the Brahms Requiem at the time, and Vance, […]
Multi-dimensional patterns
Okay, so I should be tooling. But I was just out to dinner with friends, and had a thought and want to jot it down so I can think about it later. I was trying to define what made people interesting to me. And the answer I came up with was that I liked well-rounded […]
Nonfiction roundup
Lipstick on a Pig, by Torie Clarke Subtitled “Winning in the No-Spin Era by Someone Who Knows the Game”, this book is one woman’s perspective on playing the PR and communications game in the panopticon era. I thought it was pretty decent for providing some good overall principles for a communications strategy, with advice like […]
Articulation of virtual cues
Jofish wrote me at the end of last week: i like that i have had four different communications of varying degrees of privacy from you in the last few days: nehrlich.com blog posts, lj blog posts, email to a handful of people and individual emails. wow. it’s almost like this whole electronic medium lets you… […]
Deconstructing Sweet Home Alabama
I saw the movie Sweet Home Alabama yesterday. It was decently entertaining, but later in the evening, I started thinking about the cultural memes that it is propagating, possibly because I have been reading too many of Jessie’s posts. The rest of this post will involve spoilers so if you have not seen the movie […]
High school nostalgia
Ei-Nyung’s post about her high school got me thinking about my high school experience. That was reinforced by going out to dinner with a high school friend last week, and realizing I have completely failed to keep in touch with anybody from high school (other than this friend, who I found out moved to New […]
Sci-fi roundup
Lots of book reviews to catch up on, so I’m going to do capsule reviews until I’m caught up. Balance of Trade, by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller I really like the Liaden universe books, but hadn’t gotten around to reading the new books in the universe. When I saw this one in the library, […]
Living in a viral world
Yesterday, Grant McCracken posted a link to a music video by a band called Ok Go. It’s an amazing video, where the four members of the band do an intricate dance involving eight treadmills. I’ve probably rewatched it five times, and it still consistently puts a smile on my face because it’s so endearingly goofy. […]
Taking the Blame
One of the threads running through my head recently is the importance of stepping up and taking responsibility. I’ve been noticing it in lots of places, in Seth Godin’s blog, in the book Lipstick on a Pig (where Torie Clarke’s first piece of advice is “Deliver bad news yourself, and when you screw up, say […]
