Speechless
December 19, 2007 – 7:08 pm
Video Review: Desperate Housewives, A Distant Past
December 8, 2007 – 5:37 pm
Yo, so I know most of you don’t tune in every week, so here’s my 60 second vlog review.
My Contribution to the Culinary Arts
December 2, 2007 – 8:46 pm
I live by a simple formula. When I reach a fork in life’s road, I ask myself, “which direction will allow me to provide the greatest value to the largest number of people?” Answering this question has led me to engage a variety of pursuits, from music, to public policy, to Web entrepreneurship.
This philosophy has put me in many situations where I have been fortunate enough to make significant contributions to Earth culture. My most recent public service occurred on Saturday night, when I was debating whether to bring cake or pie to a dinner party. First, I asked myself, “Would I rather have cake? Or, would I rather have pie?” And THEN, I asked myself, “Andrew — what if you didn’t have to choose?” It was at that moment that I had a vision for what I would come to call: Cake Pie.
Cake Pie is best described as follows. Imagine a pie. Now take away the pie, and put back the pie crust. Now, imagine a cake. Imagine putting that cake onto the place where the pie was. Put the pie crust underneath the cake. Imagine it was baked like that from the beginning. Behold! Cake Pie.
I am usually eager to share my brainsterpieces with the world’s hungry children. But I’ve decided to delay the release of Cake Pie’s recipe. As long as its creation remains a secret, the Cake Pie will be the chief topic of conversation at all future dinner parties I attend. That is, unless I allow it to become commoditized by releasing its ingredients, which will relegate its mystery to that of the microchip.
Below I present the recipe, less one secret ingredient. That ingredient will be revealed when it is found written on a slip of paper in the back right pant pocket of my lifeless body on the day I die, unless I die in a place that humans are unable to reach for several days. So to be precise, it will be revealed on the day that my lifeless body is found by a human.
Cake Pie
Ingredients: Pie Crust, Secret Ingredient, Cake Icing
Instructions
- Prepare the Secret Ingredient according to the instructions on its box.
- Pour the Secret Ingredient into the pie crust.
- Bake according to the instructions on the box of the Secret Ingredient. Allow to cool.
- Spread the cake icing on top of the Secret Ingredient.
Goodbye, culinary arts, my work here is done.
The Best Ever Mac vs. PC Ad Parody
November 17, 2007 – 9:43 pm
I’m extremely proud to say that this was done by my friend and fellow Evanston Boy, Matt Houchin (he plays PC).
Income Disparity
November 11, 2007 – 10:27 pm
Richard Posner explains how someone who earns $3 billion a year isn’t necessarily one hundred thousand times more capable than someone making $30,000 a year:
As the economist Sherwin Rosen showed in a famous article, in certain circumstances a very small difference in ability can translate into an enormous different in reward. The key is the reproducibility of a product or service or innovation. If one pianist is slightly better than any other, his recordings may capture the entire market for recordings of the kind of pieces he plays best because the consumer has no reason to buy his rivals’ slightly inferior recordings, provided prices are comparable… The greater output of the superior producer confers real value, but there is only a loose relation between that value and the reward to the producer. Bill Gates is extremely able, but not a thousand times abler than pikers worth a mere $50 million.
Why it was critically important for me to go to the Apple Store at 6:00pm on Friday so I could have Leopard as soon as possible
October 30, 2007 – 2:26 pm
My dream word processor
October 17, 2007 – 10:09 pm
- Wiki-like version history
- Documents stored in a subversion repository
- Integrated GUI subversion browser
- Subversion can be pointed to a local drive, a remote server, or a host offered by the manufacturer
- GUI history browser with diff highlighting and history search
- Documents are saved in markdown.
- Documents editing in both markdown and a rich text environment
- Typing a markdown syntax (e.g. ###) in the rich text environment will automatically convert the line to that style (e.g. h3)
- TextMate’s keyboard shortcuts
I guess TextMate comes pretty close, but I like to edit in rich text.
Uninhibited conversation
October 15, 2007 – 5:13 pm
People say that our behavior on the Web is reflective of our true selves, with anonymity removing the constraints of social norms and sensitivity to the demands of sustainable relationships.
After playing Half Life this weekend, I’ve come to believe that this is how people would converse if they could be themselves.
My first serious campaign on The Point
October 8, 2007 – 10:06 pm
Well, as serious as I’m capable of.
Almost all conservatives I know a) love FoxNews, b) assume that liberals love CNN. In reality, liberals hate CNN. It embarrasses us in every possible way. Yet, I visit CNN.com several times a day — it is my “I am not sure what I intended to do when I opened this browser window” contingency plan. And as I wait for the page to load, I’m not thinking “I wonder what’s happening in the world,” rather, “I wonder what incidental bullshit CNN has deemed worthy of placement in a giant animated red ‘Breaking News’ banner.” CNN feeds only my hedonistic appetite for cynicism.
CNN was always bad, but they’ve gotten worse since Fox News raised the bar for lowering the bar. With Fox News at least, sensationalism appears to be a core ethos — on CNN, it feels like a half-baked afterthought.
Join my campaign to boot the trivial human interest news stories off of CNN.
What’s happening with Policy Tree?
October 7, 2007 – 10:08 pm
Before I made The Point, I made Policy Tree. Policy Tree is on hiatus while I develop The Point, but I definitely plan to return to it.
I believe in the idea every bit as much as I did two years ago, and there’s still nothing like it. Policy Tree attacks the same problem as The Point, but from the other side: Policy Tree makes it easier understand civic life, The Point makes it easier to join it.
I just submitted Policy Tree to the Knight News Challenge, so maybe I’ll be able to get back to work on it sooner than I thought.