props: bill hader on lafferty

In today's post on Paper Cuts, the New York Times' blog on books, Dave Itzkoff offers up a list of recommended books from none other than SNL's own Bill Hader.

To my great satisfaction, first on the list of his recommendations is the compilation Nine Hundred Grandmothers by R.A. Lafferty.

It all goes back to Neil Gaiman. In the foreword to “Fragile Things,” he wrote that his short story “Sunbird” was his way of trying to write his own R.A. Lafferty story. So I found “Nine Hundred Grandmothers,” and it’s like nothing I’ve ever read before. It’s very blue-collar science fiction – all the familiar tropes of people going to outer space and to other planets. It’s hilarious, incredibly funny and at the same time it’s insanely dark. You get the feeling like it’s a guy just writing to amuse himself: “I don’t care if any of this makes sense, but I want to see weird stuff happen.” One of his stories starts off, “He began by breaking things that morning.” There’s a short story called “Ginny Wrapped in the Sun,” and it’s just about this little girl who’s super strong, running around, picking things up. You get such a sense of joy and boundless imagination in every sentence – even if the story doesn’t totally cohere, you feel like it’s about something. It’s so incredibly Tulsa. You get that feeling when you see a Flaming Lips show. It’s not like we’re dark and hurt and twisted. It’s like, “I’ve got blood on my face – come on, y’all, this is awesome.”

Through the magic of the intrawebs and the gracious permission of the Virginia Kidd Agency, you can read the short story that gives this collection its name here.

Ann Cecil's review of Nine Hundred Grandmothers is more in-depth than Hader's shout out, but I like Mr. Hader's brief review for its ability to distill what makes Lafferty so remarkable.

Here's a quick synopsis that captures Ray's style; do a quick search on R.A. Lafferty and you'll find a lot of sites like this.

I'm also a big fan of Don Webb's article, R. A. Lafferty: Effective Arcanum, because it deconstructs some of the techniques Ray used as a writer. It's appearance in SF Eye was a turning point for me as a reader - and writer - of fiction, and I encourage you to read it too.

choices: how do you talk about futures

Hypothetical situation here. Let's say you have a new product you want to release. Let's say you've just raised a few million dollars to get this product to market. Now let's say you've decided to put a short description of this product in the press release announcing the funding round you've just completed. This will be the first time you've mentioned this product to the market in writing.

Would you describe it like this:

The funds are being used to launch a new product line with multi-tier capabilities that will help IT managers directly and confidently address an ever-accelerating rate of change and complexity while controlling costs and ensuring that applications and databases perform as expected.

Or like this:

The funds are being used to launch a revolutionary new "first in class" product that will extend the company's portfolio of application performance management solutions.

The question here is do you go detailed, or do you go vague? Does less equal more? Or are you expected to detail what you're going to spend the cash on (other than "operating expenses")?

How to talk about futures in public is a hard topic for all of us. My personal guidance is to put nothing in writing without an NDA, but that's just me.

paul and storm: if james taylor were on fire

Somebody, please, won’t you
Get me a fire extinguisher
And put me out?

I can’t stand the heat
Though I’ve seen fire and rain
I can do with a little less fire

You can enjoy a lovely recording of this song on the Paul and Storm website along with these other ditties:

If Bob Dylan Were Hiding at the Bottom of a Well
If James Taylor Were on Fire at the Bottom of a Well
If Leon Redbone Suffered a Major Head Injury
If Aaron Neville Were Waiting for a Parking Spot at the Mall, But Someone Else Snagged It
If They Might Be Giants Were the Ice Cream Man

(PS, this song will stick in your head until you pry it out with a shrimp deveiner)

(PPS, I mean that with all respect. And I hope the Paul and Storm folks won't be terribly upset at my throwing them some link love, or revealing their lyrics, or song titles. . . they really are quite good. Go there now.)

reinvention: iterating the mundane

Sundays are days for doing things a bit differently in the kitchen.  We generally have a little more time and a little less urgency, two sentiments that combine nicely, but at the same time we're also less inclined to try wacky new things on Sunday.  Instead we prefer to go back over the well-travelled roads of familiar recipes and tweak them, changing something here, adding something there. 

Why?  Just because.  

Tonight we made five changes to the Gratin Savoyard recipe I gave you back in November of last year:

1. Replace the Comté cheese with Gruyere
   
2. Replace the circularly-cut Yukon Golds with longitudinally-cut organic Idahos
   
3. Replace the yellow onions with shallots
   
4. Replace the "sturdy Rhone wine" with a cold "grocery store Chardonnay"
   
5. Switch the oven to convection bake for the first 30 minutes and the last 10
   

We also took a chance on a plain-looking apple & pear eau-de-vie from Austria called Bauer's Obstler, which at $20 the liter wins big in the price-performance department.  

Not every iteration of the mundane works.  But these did.  I'm glad we don't take a cargo-cult approach to cooking, drinking, or living.  Sometimes you need to shake things up for no other reason than they haven't been shook up in a while.

On a semi-related note: I saw the debut episode of Jamie Oliver's new cooking show yesterday, and I'm counting the episodes until the gardener is revealed as Sam Elliott.  But seriously, the concept of doing a cooking show that depends on what you pick each day in your 18-acre potager is very interesting.  Until you find yourself counting the number of times Mr. Oliver uses the words "lovely" and "scrunch", and wincing every time he breaks out the dill.

marsquatch: spotted (again)

I can't take credit for calling this little fellow "Marsquatch" - that belongs to Elysianartist as far as I know.

(sources 1, 2, 3)


(original photo can be found here - warning, it's big. Marsquatch can be spotted on the far left side, just above the large formation of rocks at the bottom of the photo. Right. . . there.)

I'm not one to make fun of people for spotting the Virgin Mary on the wall of an underpass or a grilled cheese sandwich, so I won't line up against anyone who wants to believe Spirit caught this wee little Barsoomian sitting on a bar stool with his TV remote.

Of course, it's worth repeating that Marsquatch has been spotted before.

one star: bruni downgrades mesa grill

Today's Frank Bruni review of celebrity chef Bobby Flay's flagship restaurant Mesa Grill is brutal.

". . . there’s frequent evidence of sustained pride and caring."

"It’s an overly familiar, somewhat tired production. More to the point, it’s an inconsistent one."

". . . some meals at Mesa Grill devolve into a redundant, vague haze of smokiness and syrupiness, the heat-with-sweet effects delivered in a blunt fashion."

Even the title of the review, "Southwestern Sun, Late in the Day", carries a suggestion that Mesa Grill's moment has passed, its relevance as the standard-bearer for a fresh new style of cooking diminished by time.

In the end, Frank lays it all on the line when he says, "I wonder if Mr. Flay has taken his eye off Mesa Grill, and not just because I never spotted him there." The reader is left to wonder whether celebrity chefs can still be counted on to the job that made them celebrities in the first place - cook.

The folks at eater.com described the review as follows:

Frank Bruni issues a summons to Mesa Grill, Bobby Flay's long-neglected Flatiron flagship, in the form of a one star smack down.

New York Magazine was even more harsh:

This is one of the worst one-star reviews you'll ever read, even going so far as to compare [Mesa Grill's food] to gulag gourmet.

A comment on eG Forums put the demotion into perspective:

I guess most chefs would take a [New York Times] demotion seriously to the extent that it might hurt their business. Also, Mesa Grill NYC is supposedly Bobby's flagship restaurant. Then again, Bobby, as a brand, is more of the flagship than any of his restaurants, if that makes sense.

I'm curious to learn what steps Mr. Flay will take to return Mesa Grill to its former glory. Perhaps he should start with service:

I asked her what the spices were in the restaurant’s so-called 16-spice-crusted chicken.

“Salt, pepper and 14 other spices!” she buoyantly reported, as if the details didn’t really matter. It was a Bobby Flay recipe, after all. Wasn’t that enough?

oh my: corriganville

"You know, folks who come to Corriganville say that this place is timeless, and I guess they're right. It stands as an epitaph to an era, so rich in romance, so wild in adventure, that it has captured the hearts of many." (source)

I guess they're right indeed.

say it: my father shovels ashes at the shipyard

Say the following:

"My father shovels ashes at the shipyard."

Now please stick out your tongue and pinch it (gently) between your forefinger and thumb.

Without letting go of your tongue, say "my father shovels ashes at the shipyard" once more.

Congratulations, you're seven again.

To my great surprise, a Google search on the phrase quoted above appears nowhere on the intrawebs.

But now it does.  My job is done for this evening.

Sister Mary Noel, late Principal at the Saint Martin de Porres Elementary School in Red Oaks Mill, New York would be oh so proud right now to know that I've shared this with all of you.

milestone: 100 visits per day

After 2 years of progress, ack/nak now enjoys one hundred (100) unique visits per day, according to the nice people at Sitemeter.



Thank you to all of you who visit ack/nak for your daily dose of confusion and delay. On average, you spend almost two minutes of time with me that you will never, ever get back, so I feel kind of responsible for making sure you get some value for that two minutes.

scrabulous: quote of the day

. . . the early dreams of being a happy-clappy, open-source, "do no evil" kind of business soon fade when the realisation dawns that you are worth suing.

- Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC technology correspondent

(more from Rory on this topic here)

macbook air: built to exist, not to sell UPDATED

When I see the MacBook Air I'm immediately struck by the elegance and simplicity of its design. Who doesn't want a super-light notebook with a beautiful screen and all-"green" innards?

But when I look closer, I notice it has no ethernet port. Then I notice you can't change its battery. And then I see it has no optical disc drive.

OK, maybe it was made for the home user with a serious addiction to Apple products. This is an individual who has access to an optical disc on an iMac, is probably interested in a laptop that can access the internet wirelessly, and is not likely to be far from a power source for an extended period of time. Maybe Apple was figuring this person would be a great candidate for the MacBook Air...

. . . Were it not for the fact that for $700 less, the MacBook is a better overall value with a 13 inch screen, a 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB memory (expandable to 4GB), a 80GB hard drive, a Combo optical drive and built-in AirPort Extreme (802.11n) and Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR.

By comparison, the MacBook Air has a 13 inch screen, a 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB memory (maximum), a 80GB 4200-rpm PATA hard drive, built-in 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR.

(source)

OK, let's look at it another way. Let's say Apple is targeting the business user with this product. If you're a business user, even one in an industry that uses Apple products, you are likely to encounter all of the following on a regular basis:

1. The need to connect to the web in places that don't have wireless
2. The need to access an optical drive on a moment's notice
3. The need to change a battery when you don't have access to a power supply

In light of the availability of the MacBook Pro that has none of these shortcomings, is the average corporate buyer going to authorize the purchase of a MacBook Air that has all of these shortcomings?

No.

In short, the MacBook Air is beautiful, but impractical - and I think that's OK.

Because the purpose of the MacBook Air is to exist, not to sell.

By demonstrating the ability to get component vendors to miniaturize components, the ability to make bold decisions on peripherals and connectivity, and by declaring that batteries are integral to laptops, Apple is showing us where they plan to go. They are demonstrating the will to execute on a product roadmap, even if the first expression of that roadmap falls short.

Ross Rubin, an analyst at NPD, "doesn't think Apple is using the MacBook Air as a sideways entry into the corporate market; he notes there have been no such channel or distribution announcements to support that sort of move." (source)

Ross is right. Apple is using the MacBook Air to demonstrate leadership. The MacBook Air is not a Power Mac G4 Cube. It is the first entrant in what I think will be a new category of full-function computing device - wireless, integrated and super-portable.

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
- Flannery O'Connor (1925 - 1964)

Update 1 - There is a terrific post over at Gizmodo referencing some comments by Sony regarding the MacBook Air (MBA). In the post the author references a comment by Steve Jobs, who replied to a question relating to the MBA's storage with "Maybe this isn't the computer for you."

That is a very telling comment by the Apple CEO. If you take issue with the small storage, fixed 2GB memory, lack of optical drive, ethernet connection or removable drive, the MBA is not the computer for you. It will be interesting to see just how large of a population has those issues.

heliocentrism: everything old is new again

Inquisition (1633)

That the sun is the center of the world and motionless is a proposition which is philosophically absurd and false, and formally heretical, for being explicitly contrary to Holy Scripture;

That the earth is neither the center of the world nor motionless but moves even with diurnal motion is philosophically equally absurd and false, and theologically at least erroneous in the Faith.

- excerpt from the Inquisitorial Sentence of Galileo, 22nd June, 1633 (source)


Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (1990)

“At the time of Galileo the Church remained much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself. The process against Galileo was reasonable and just. ”

- excerpt from a speech in Parma, Italy, 15th March, 1990 (source) quoting Paul Feyerabend


Pope John Paul II (1992)

"Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant physicist and by relying on different arguments, Galileo, who practically invented the experimental method, understood why only the sun could function as the centre of the world, as it was then known, that is to say, as a planetary system. The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the Earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world's structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture...."

– Pope John Paul II, L'Osservatore Romano N. 44 (1264) - 4th November,1992 (source)


Pope Benedict XVI (2008)

Stay tuned.


Additional commentary: Storm over Rome: Physicists against Pope Ratzinger

dieter rams: 10 principles for good design

Good design is innovative.

Good design makes a product useful.

Good design is aesthetic.

Good design helps us to understand a product.

Good design is unobtrusive.

Good design is honest.

Good design is durable.

Good design is consequent to the last detail.

Good design is concerned with the environment.

Good design is as little design as possible.

(references: 1 2 3)

sarabande: 2005 cotes du roussillon villages

Côtes du Roussillon wines, like their Côtes du Rhône buddies, are some of my favorite wines, especially when you stand them up against charcuterie.

We did just that tonight. Well, to be honest, my wife and I did, the kids had pasta.




A few slices of pata negra, stinky cheese and Comté, some Fra'Mani Salametto, a little pâté, artichokes hearts, cornichons and a terrific baguette care of Fox & Obel were matched with the 2005 Sarabande Côtes du Roussillon Villages.

At about $13, it was tremendous; spicy, concentrated, with lots of black fruit and a deep, rich finish. It held its own against a meal that would have punished a lesser wine.

And you have to groove on the quote on the label:

Danse, vraisemblablement d'origine orientale, si lascive et impudique qu'elle suffit à mettre le feu, même aux personnes les plus honnêtes.

It's a take on a description of the Sarabande by Juan de Mariana, a Spanish historian, political philosopher and Jesuit who lived from 1536 to 1623, translating as:

"Dance, probably of Eastern origin, so lascivious and shameless that it can start a fire, even with the most honest people."

That's a lot of love for $13. Hoo-dawg.

response: you can't fix stupid

Tales from an XOD author Greg Strouse wrote yesterday that you can't fix stupid. 

What blew me away was the following:

I was talking to a buddy today who's struggling with a non-performer, a sales guy who hasn't sold anything in nearly a year. So, I'm wailing on my buddy about what part of "nothing" and "nearly a year" he's not latching on to. 

Now all of us have had the opportunity to work with salespeople who underperformed.  Some of us have even been that salesperson.  It's frustrating and sad to have colleagues who struggle.

In the past, I might have been more sympathetic to people complaining about underperforming salespeople.  But over the last year I've come to realize that the success of a sales organization has more to do with the quality of the sales design than it does with the relative intelligence of the members of that sales organization (sales management included).

Of course, having bright salespeople and sales management makes everything better.  That's a shout-out to my current crew, just so you know.

I've also come to appreciate that depending on the sales cycle for the products you sell, it is reasonable to anticipate a new salesperson (especially one in a new territory in a new market) may not sell a dime's worth of product for a year.  Or more.  You planned for that, I hope.  If they sell something earlier, swell.  

What you're looking for in those first few months (or more) on the job is whether salespeople are learning your sales design and implementing it religiously.  Are they building a funnel of prospects who can be served by your value proposition?  Are they transitioning deals from phase to phase at the rates and percentages you expect?  Are they able to navigate through the contracting process?  Do they play well with others (this is one of my top success criteria, BTW)?

Here's the cold fact - in the absence of an explicit design that you teach and enforce, each salesperson you hire brings with them their own way of selling and managing the sales process.  99%+ of the time this is the same process that got them fired from their last job.  So why should you expect anything different?  

Dangerously, in the absence of an explicit sales design many companies manage to sell, which only masks the company's failure to implement a transparent, repeatable design.  "Hire more people like Chad," they say.  "Chad's a superstar."  This is moving the responsibility for selling from the company to the salesperson, which is not something I'd advise.

Let's look at this another way.  What does the largest national chain of hamburger restaurants (LNCoHR) do when they hire a new cook?  Do they let him sling burgers the way he did at the beach?  No, they teach him to do it the LNCoHR way.  That's how they guarantee consistent, quality results everywhere.  It's their design that creates success; they trust that if individuals follow the design, they'll get the results they expect.

They've figured out a way to fix stupid.  This is not to suggest that the people who work on the burger line at the LNCoHR aren't bright.  But the management of LNCoHR don't need bright.  They just need people to follow the design.

 

The next time you hear someone complain about an under-performing salesperson, try the following.  Ask him or her what part of the funnel is the salesperson having the most problems with.  Is it prospecting or qualifying?  Is it getting appointments?  Talk about funnel math: how many deals does it take at the top of the funnel to produce enough deals at the bottom to meet quota?  Who is getting the appointments - the salesperson or a call center?  Who is doing the market segmentation and targeting?  Who is handling account management?  Is everyone using the same tools, the same understanding of the value proposition, the same appreciation for the problems the company is looking to solve?

In other words, drill down to figure out whether or not they're working from a design.  You may find that most people don't think of sales from a design perspective - they're just counting closed deals, no matter what unnatural acts it took to close them.

I won't argue whether or not you can fix stupid.  But you can fix ignorance.  Smart people can seem stupid in the absence of models for success - and that's true of salespeople and executives alike.   Focus on fixing the design, then trust the design.  

Shooting an underperforming salesperson in the absence of an explicit design is more of an admission of failure on the part of management than it is of the fired salesperson.

reminder: real ultimate britney

I used this photo to festoon a post from a little under a year ago. As I trolled my archive pages this evening (which I do from time to time to remind me of just how Damned Clever I used to be), I discovered it and felt you should all enjoy it again.

Sean Bonner has prepared some more Real Ultimate Britney for you here, where he reminds you that:

1. Britney Spears is a mammal.
2. Britney Spears fights ALL the time.
3. The purpose of Britney Speakrs is to flip out and kill people.

Bon week-end.

transition: falling to free

"The economy as we knew it before was the science of the administration of scarce resources."
--- Max Ugaz, from The Emerging Digital Economy

Rather than bore you with a faux dissertation on a topic that has already been. . . dissertated. . . into oblivion, let's just think about what makes the business of creating digitally recorded music vulnerable to a fall to free:

Music is:

• Primarily purchased by individuals
• Primarily implemented by individuals
• Primarily operated by individuals
• A product that can be copied and distributed easily, and with complete success, with a minimum of technical savvy
  

For manufacturers of music:

• There are too many competitors to justify raising barriers to individual consumption
• There are too many consumers to police against "unauthorized" consumption
• There are too many implementation environments to support, resulting in a "you're on your own" usage mentality (no personal support always equates to no personal loyalty)
  

I posit that individuals, left to their own devices, equipped with the right tools, and free of any supervisory authority, will only pay for what they need to pay for. So it follows that in an era of functionally limitless storage and bandwidth and ineffectual license enforcement, individuals will not pay for music in the same way they did in the past, if at all. QED.

Is it any wonder that the music industry is falling to free, even as it attempts (with varying levels of success) to explore business models that will preserve it?

I use the word preserve because I think before the music industry will grow again it will need to be completely remade; there is no future in free, unless free is part of a larger "solution" that delivers a uniquely compelling product that individuals see as scarce, perishable, and worth paying for out of more than a sense of personal honor.

This is truly a new age - for musicians, there is no need to sell your soul to the company store anymore. For record companies, there is no need to lie to musicians and tell them that they will fail without your support. Neither scenario is believable.

I know this topic has been done to death, I know. But as I see Radiohead sell a little more than a third of the number of albums than they did with their last release, and only one in five of those who downloaded their new album for free paid a cent for the privilege, it's clear that we're at a tipping point.

Be prepared to see more examples of this. Which in and of itself is the surest sign of an industry clutching its concrete life preserver.

concept: vending machine art

At one point in our recent 13-hour deathmarch trip out east over the holiday break someone in the car opened a box of Cracker Jack.

"What's the prize?" I asked after I heard the box open.

"It doesn't matter, the prizes are always junk," was the reply.

For that matter, most so-called "prizes" are junk these days, especially in cereal boxes. Unless you're pumping cash into a gashapon machine, you're not getting anything good. And that's only true if you're in Japan.

You can also give up any prayer of finding something truly interesting, or whimsical, or surprising from your typical USD$0.25 gumball machine capsule dispenser. It's either little figurines of neighborhood figures, rubber balls, water-slide tattoos or Small Portions of Goo.

The folks at Art-o-Mat have come close to getting it right, but who wants to plunk down five bucks (or so), sight unseen, on "art"?

I want to have an experience of discovery, not regret, when I drop a few coins into a machine. This is likely not something that will be possible through a traditional vending machine, it's going to have to be created. Think of it as "vending performance art".

It's an idea I've got. More to follow.

z scale: let's get small

At the 1972 Nuremburg Toy Fair a German company called Märklin released the first model trains in Z scale.

Z scale (1:220) is Really Small. So small that you can create a complete (and satisfying) layout in a fraction of the space it takes for even the next-larger scale.

Over the last year, z scale was one of the fastest-growing segments of the model train industry (according to Model Railroad Magazine), with new manufacturers cropping up on both sides of the Atlantic on a constant basis.

The unique value proposition of z scale sets it apart from the other segments of the model train industry - in an age when people are pressed for space and very sensitive to quality, z scale promises to deliver both. Even the "Z Scalers", as they call themselves, are different than traditional "model train enthusiasts". Taken together, this is a formula for transformation.

As a marketer, I find it fascinating to watch niche markets emerge from within mature markets. It's clear to me that these are not your grandfather's model trains - they are something entirely new and compelling. Well, they're new to me.

(Hand photo care of Marklin, Marklin Solar care of FAB Railways)

moyashimon: livejournal community

While you're waiting for the next fansubbed episode of Moyashimon (one month and counting), go visit the Moyashimon page at Livejournal.

score: 5, interesting

What I would like to know more than anything (Score:5, Interesting)
by Steeltalon (734391) on Monday January 07, @12:34PM (#21943714)

Why is there a need for a 4th edition (D&D)? 3.5 wasn't released all that long ago (and the books were just as expensive as the 3.0 versions), so why do we need a 4.0? Is there a compelling reason or is this just a symptom of Hasbro casting "Animate Dead" on TSR's corpse?

(source: /. games)

vista: in loco parentis

I had the opportunity to spend some time with a PC running Vista over the holiday break. For me, this was the first time I've had any appreciable stick-time with this new OS since its release.

With each instance of "Continue or Cancel" I encountered, and in the many ways Vista works Very Hard to prevent you from damaging yourself, a particular phrase came to mind:

In loco parentis

The term in loco parentis, Latin for "in the place of a parent", refers to the legal responsibility of a person or organization to take on some of the functions and responsibilities of a parent (source: Wikipedia).

For those of you who've been using Vista for a while, let me know if this analogy works for you.

Do you get the sense that Vista doesn't trust you to do the right thing? I sure did.

phooey: needy applications

I'm growing increasingly frustrated with needy Web 2.0 applications like Facebook and Twitter.  While both appeal to the short attention span dilettante in me, I'm finding the relative value I get from them does not make up for the work they require.

Someone just put something on my Super Wall?  Lovely.  Someone has noted that they're making a sandwich?  Swell.

In moderation, such non-news is fine.  But neither Facebook nor Twitter are moderate - they ping me with the ferocity of a hyperactive spider monkey throwing pebbles against my car window, and when I don't reply, I am left feeling guilty. . . which is ridiculous.

Or am I just not getting it?  Is the goal of these applications to suck you in and trap you like a patient etherised on a table by combining social indebtedness with "free" debt relief?

It makes me painfully aware that my time is worth more than the value I'm getting for spending it with them. 

so: whaddya get?

Oh, and good morning.

Was Santa good to you? If so, what did that old breaking-and-entering geezer bring you?