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From the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago comes this emotionally intelligent sign on the hotel’s revolving door. It’s a bit goofy, but it sure made me use the revolving door instead of the regular one. What’s more, Kermit’s watchful eyes are consistent with some interesting research in social psychology.
John Jantsch began by writing a great blog about marketing. The blog led to a book. And the book led to a new piece of software. A very innovative and intriguing progression — and one I suspect we’ll be seeing more of in the future.
First came six-word autobiographies. Now come even more succinct movie reviews.
The web site, The Four Word Film Review, is collecting opinions and summarizes of your favorite flicks rendered in no more than a quartet of words. Here are two reviews of “The Incredibles,” (one of the very few kids’ movies I actually enjoyed):
My review of this site: Thumbs up for brevity.
Being a truly exciting guy, I’ve spent the last couple of days reading Robert Shiller’s The Subprime Solution: How Today’s Global Financial Crisis Happened, and What to Do about It. It’s not exactly a page-turner. But it’s an interesting book.
Take bailouts. I have a deep and abiding distrust of them. In fact, I happen to live near Fannie Mae headquarters. And whenever out-of-town visitors have asked me what the enormous brick building is, I’ve always told them, “It’s a moral hazard.” (They don’t laugh either.) Nonetheless, Shiller convinced me — in a 60%, more-right-than-wrong kind of way — that bailing out banks and borrowers who’ve been clobbered might be the right the thing to do.
But today I encountered a more persuasive pitch for a bailout on the WSJ’s Real Time Economics blog. Former Fed Vice Chairman Alan Blinder was speaking at the annual econowonk confab in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and offered a parable:
One day a little Dutch boy was walking home when he noticed a small leak in a dike that protected the people in the surrounding town. He started to stick his finger in the hole, but then he remembered his moral hazard lesson. “The companies that built this dike did a terrible job,” the boy said. “They don’t deserve a bailout. And doing that would just encourage more shoddy construction. Besides, the dumb people who live here should never have built their homes on a floodplain.” The boy continued on his way home. Before he arrived, the dike burst and everyone for miles around drowned, including the little Dutch boy.
Then Blinder offered an alternative narrative:
In this kindler, gentler version, the little Dutch boy, somewhat desperate and very worried about the horrors of the flood, stuck his finger in the dike and held it there until help arrived. … It was painful. The little Dutch boy would much rather have been somewhere else. But he did it anyway. And all the foolish people who live behind the dike were saved from the error of their ways.
Yes, it sounds too good to be true. But Get Your War On is now available in a surprisingly compelling animation that somehow remains true to its clip art origins. Maybe I should try this for Johnny Bunko.
As students young and old head back to the hallowed halls of learning, the US Census Bureau reminds us of these three intriguing edu-factoids:
No, it’s not a skin lesion. It’s the boost in fundraising that U.S. Democratic political candidates get after appearing on The Colbert Report.
As political scientist James Fowler discovered, and as the American Political Science Association reported:
“Democratic politicians receive a 40% increase in contributions in the 30 days after appearing on the comedy cable show The Colbert Report. In contrast, their Republican counterparts essentially gain nothing. These findings appear to validate anecdotal evidence regarding the political impact of the program such as the assertions by host Stephen Colbert that appearing on his program provides candidates with a ‘Colbert bump’ or a rise in support for their election campaigns.”
One-third of American men between the ages of 51 and 61 are self-employed.
(Source: NDE, citing a Boston College study)
Four of my favorite things in life are: charts, T-shirts, new business models, and experimental art.
So I nearly plotzed when I heard about the T-Shirt Project, in which a couple of young designers put newspaper infographics on T-shirts and sell them via subscription.
Pinch me. I might be dreaming.(Major HT: Flowing Data)
The founders of the Swedish company My Paper recently made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. They would reproduce part of The Adventures of Johnny Bunko – for free — to showcase their amazing new digital paper technology.
We accepted, of course. (Free is our second-favorite four-letter word.) And the results are pretty spectacular. You can now read the first 61 pages of the book online in an interface as crisp, clear, and elegant as paper itself.
Check it out. It’s worth every cent.
