Linkpile

• Inventor Saul Griffith learns the limits of technology: Shame the full text isn’t online: Great article on “the inadequacy of addressing complex societal issues with technological ingenuity alone. Nowhere is this problem more apparent than with Griffith’s main preoccupation these days: energy use and global warming.”
• Reverse engineering the perfect (or worst) TED talk – Boing Boing: Somewhat amusing talk is based on “analyzing data” from past Ted talks to isolate the phrases, words, themes, even slide-color-schemes that are and are not effective with the TED audience. My favorite observation is that “it’s okay to fake intellectual capacity,” which can be achieved, for instance, by saying “etc., etc.” instead of “I don’t understand.” Haw.
• Bad writing: What is it good for?: “The secret weapon of many writing workshop: Students often don’t get much helpful advice from critiques of their own work, as more than one teacher has confided to me. Instead, they learn the most from identifying the mistakes made by others.”
• The hunt for universal music: “Psychologists are putting universality back on the agenda, and are investigating whether certain elements of music are hard-wired into the brain.”
• For musicians, economy is the mother of invention: “Enterprising music makers are turning to the Internet and micro-financing through donations.”

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