August, 2008


28
Aug 08

The Post-American World, by Fareed Zakaria

A terrific book, and everyone should read it. A great analysis of what’s happening in the world, not from the point of view of decline of the US, but of a rising of new participants. Can’t recommend it highly enough. A couple of fantastic bits:

This is a book not about the decline of America but rather about the rise of everyone else. It is about the great transformation taking place around the world, a transformation that, though often being discussed, remains poorly understood. This is natural. Changes, even sea changes, take place gradually. Though we talk about a new era, the world seems to be one with which we are familiar. But in fact, it is very different.

And then later:

The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, America’s leading scholar-senator, once said, “The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.” That gets it just about right. Culture is important, terribly important. But it can change. Cultures are complex. At any given moment, certain attributes are prominent and seem immutable. And then politics and economics shift, and those attributes wane in importance, making space for others. The Arab world was once the center of science and trade. In recent decades, its chief exports have been oil and Islamic fundamentalism. Any cultural argument must be able to explain both periods of success and periods of failure.

Smart, thought-provoking book that everyone should read.


28
Aug 08

metacool: From Obama to Pink to Oprah

In life, pick where you want to go as much as you can, work like hell to get there, and be persistent. Learn all the time. Do good. Engage everyone around you by pursuing your passions. Help others. Do good work. Bring cool stuff to life. Above all, start.

metacool: From Obama to Pink to Oprah

amen to that. read metacool — diego is great.


28
Aug 08

How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity

Great article on helping & supporting creative organizations by Ed Catmull, one of Pixar’s founders: How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity. Here’s something from the introduction:

I don’t think our success is largely luck. Rather, I believe our adherence to a set of principles and practices for managing creative talent and risk is responsible. Pixar is a community in the true sense of the word. We think that lasting relationships matter, and we share some basic beliefs: Talent is rare. Management’s job is not to prevent risk but to build the capability to recover when failures occur. It must be safe to tell the truth. We must constantly challenge all of our assumptions and search for the flaws that could destroy our culture.

It’s pretty long, but full of great, great stuff.



25
Aug 08

The Big Picture – Boston.com

The Big Picture – Boston.com.

Great photos as usual, from an outstanding blog.


24
Aug 08

Mad Men

I wasn’t too excited about the first couple of episodes of Mad Men this season, but finally caught up this weekend, and I’m really, really, really liking it a lot. I think what’s really grown on me is how much of what happens on the show isn’t on camera — it’s implied, or happens in the characters’ heads. There’s a ton that the team isn’t making explicit, isn’t doing some sort of corny exposition of, isn’t condescending to viewers. As a result, I think it’s really capturing a lot of what it’s like to live in our own, modern world.

In the show, this season especially, you can see most of the main characters struggling to figure out who they are, and who they think they should be — or need to be — in a world that’s changing in ways that they don’t quite understand yet. (Some backstory for folks who haven’t been watching: this season is set in 1962 and centers around a second tier Madison Avenue advertising firm — and some of the characters are just beginning to see glimmers that the future is going to be pretty different than what’s come before.)

And so there’s a lot of characters posing as something; trying out lives they think they should be living, but not always with great success. It’s a sadder show this season, seems to me, but I think there’s something incredibly modern about each of the characters as they try to make sense of the changes around them, as they try to read (and draw) maps of the world, as they try to figure out which way is home.

Anyway, I was pretty blown away by the last 2 episodes — great season so far.