“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.
The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference.
The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference.
And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”
[ Elie Wiesel ]
As someone who spends a good chunk of every weekend hauling stacks of childrens’ books to and from the library, I had to smile at Jessica Hagy’s clever diagram.
Libraries (and librarians) are perhaps our communities’ most underutilized public resource, which is a shame. Americans collectively hold (and pay crushing interest on) more than one billion credit and debit cards, compared to 90 million actively used library cards.
“There are worse crimes than burning books,” Ray Bradbury once said. “One of them is not reading them.”
Saw this short bumper video while watching Nick Jr. with my kids this morning. Bob Marley’s classic “Three Little Birds” visualized in a charming cartoon. Couldn’t resist sharing it here.
Is it sappy and lightweight to offer this up as content on a business-oriented blog? Perhaps. But it’s two minutes of whimsy and encouragement—and two minutes of not checking the DJIA or Irene coverage. We could all use a bit of that right now. Enjoy.
UPDATED: The YouTube video previously linked below has since been removed. (Apparently Twentieth Century Fox didn’t appreciate the user’s copyright infringement.) You can instead view it here on the website of the animators who created it.
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I remember when this was a statement of defiance, not a public health warning.
Saw this in a well-to-do gated community. We’re all making tradeoffs in the Great Reset.
You can’t judge a book by its cover, Part I…
…and Part II.
The hallmark of a strong community. All for one, one for all.
The hippies should have joined forces with the trailer park.
Score one for the nonconformist.
Maybe it’s our perception of beauty that needs elective surgery.
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NB: Some photos taken by yours truly, others posted through a Creative Commons license, with thanks to the creativity and generosity of the artists who freely shared them.
Under the category of ‘not exactly the smoothest PR move,’ a Pulte Homes division president was caught removing neighbors’ lawn signs displaying an anti-Pulte message.
It’s a case of childish behavior on both sides, actually, beginning with a neighborhood tizzy over Pulte’s purchase of lots in what was originally planned to be a village of entirely custom-built homes. But custom sales stalled, the developer sold some of the lots to Pulte, and protest signs began appearing in front yards.
(You can certainly see why. I mean—horrors!—those luxury production homes attract all manner of riff-raff. Before you know it, your tony little enclave is a suburban ghetto.)
In an ironic twist to the story, the Pulte prez lives in the very same community—in a custom home, no less.
Think the next HOA meeting will be a little dicey?
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I’m thinking the placement was intentional. A vicious cycle of customers.
Your move. Be sure to lift with your legs, not your back.
Dreams can be had for 99 cents. But the cheap, shitty trinkets that end up in landfills—those will set you back a dollar or more.
The Social Web, version 0.0.
The weather’s always nice, your marriage will be happier, your kids will never need braces, and your golf handicap will drop to single digits.
Even in sidewalk graffiti, there’s always an idealist. And always a cynic.
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NB: All photos posted through a Creative Commons license, with thanks to the creativity and generosity of the artists who freely shared them.
Hugh McLeod writes:
Don’t you think we’re taking this whole Social Media thing a bit too seriously?
Put down that phone, and grab your kid, wife, boyfriend and remember why we’re here.
Exactly.
Right after I tweet this.
Jessica Hagy nails it yet again.
Funny how a throwaway line can be so empty and so loaded at the same time.
This’ll get you thinking twice the next time someone asks how you’re doing. (As one of her readers comments, “Fine is the little sister of shitty.”)
Jessica will be speaking at PCBC in June btw. Twice actually.
Hat tip to Amie MacPhee for calling our attention to Coolhaus, a mobile purveyor of architecturally inspired ice cream sandwiches.
Coolhaus is the brainchild of food architects (“farchitects”) Natasha Case and Freya Estreller, who bought and renovated an old mail truck found on Craigslist. Decked out in chrome rims (or Rem’s, ha ha), a pink top, and a fold-down bar and table, the truck regularly appears at Los Angeles area events and festivals, drawing crowds by tweeting its locations to followers (a la the famous Kogi BBQ truck).
Their menu is an homage to modern architects, featuring selections like the Frank Behry, Mies Vanilla Rohe, Richard Meyer Lemon, and Oatmeal Cinnamoneo.
The marketing and merchandising are extremely clever, to be sure. But underneath it all, what appeals most to me is the simple pleasure of people flocking to the ice cream truck — a grownup reincarnation of one of childhood’s most enduring memories.
This is no accident; Coolhaus is a product with social engagement baked in. When describing the company’s core characteristics, the website declares Coolhaus to be “a thinker about reclaiming public and urban space for eating and gathering.”
And when the eating and gathering involves something as decadent as what you see here, we say all the better.
NB: There’s a great firsthand account of the Coolhaus dining experience here. And more photos here.
Chris Guillebeau is a professional nonconformist. He writes about life, travel, work, meaning and passion…sometimes all in the same blog post.
His recent commentary on busyness is spot-on. And, for me anyway, convicting.
For all of us who have ever said, “Sorry I [fill in the blank], I’ve just been so busy lately,” take this to heart.
Thanks for the tweak, Chris.
Amie MacPhee points us to this intriguing perspective from David Brooks, reflecting on the value of emotional education—life’s formative experiences that shape us in ways that are unexpected, unknown (at the time) and indelible.
Unlike the traditional, structured education we get in school, emotional educations are “unsupervised and haphazard.” And they are, Brooks argues, far more important to our long-term happiness and quality of life.
“In a normal schoolroom, information walks through the front door and announces itself by light of day. It’s direct. The teacher describes the material to be covered, and then everybody works through it.
The knowledge transmitted in an emotional education, on the other hand, comes indirectly, seeping through the cracks of the windowpanes, from under the floorboards and through the vents. It’s generally a byproduct of the search for pleasure, and the learning is indirect and unconscious.”
For Brooks it was the music of Bruce Springsteen. For me, I suppose it was discovering (as a ten-year-old) the early writing of Stephen King (The Stand and ’Salem’s Lot still among my all time favorite books). Not exactly classical literature, granted, but being drawn into his rich and bizarre imagination utterly engaged my own. The work I do today is, at its core, the transfer of emotion. And the path to get here began, I now realize, there.
Where did yours?
Michael Cannell has an entertaining piece in Fast Company about the (not incidental) connection between architectural and footwear design.
As he points out, “What are shoes, after all, but mini buildings for your feet?”
To offer one illustration: the Eamz shoe, inspired by Charles and Ray Eames’ iconic chair.
What’s even more interesting, to me anyway, is the shoe’s backstory. (It has a ring of mythology to it, but, like Fox Mulder, I want to believe.)
As the story goes, designer Rem D. Koolhaas—nephew of the Rem Koolhaas—had a broken heart.
In his attempt to win the girl back, he downsized architecture “to its smallest and most vulnerable scale, that of a woman’s foot.” The girl, alas, was gone. But a shoe company was born.
Tongue-in-cheek humor, courtesy of my three-year-old daughter’s favorite cartoon series.
As I write this, I’m sitting in a coffee shop, Coldplay’s “Speed of Sound” is playing on the satellite radio, and it gets me thinking:
1) It’s trendy to hate Coldplay. If you want to establish cred as a musicophile, dismiss them as a ripoff of U2. (Or Radiohead. Or Creed.)
2) Sasha Frere-Jones and other critics be damned, I like their music. And if you’re being honest, you probably do too.
3) The reason they sell so many CDs is they’ve found a sweet spot on what Seth Godin calls the passion/pop curve.
The curve on the right is bigger and more lucrative, but more crowded. The curve on the left is smaller and more devoted, but more discerning. You can’t appeal to both (unless maybe you’re Apple…but you’re not Apple).
The danger is not knowing which market you’re serving, falling in the middle, and satisfying neither.
Know who you are and what you can do. Choose one. Be willing to forego the other.
Kelly Borgen and the creative folks at Roxburgh point us to this amusing commentary on Facebook etiquette. (Read to make sure you’re not one of “those people.”)
And the wits of McSweeney’s serve up a modern rendering of Hamlet, Facebook news feed-style.