Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #130

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, iambik, PressBooks, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we’re recommending to one another:

Solving The Broken Crossword Puzzle Economy – The AWL. "You guys spend a lot of time talking about publishing. But oh, the plight of the crossword creator! Slaving in anonymity, her work sitting on a shelf for years, underpaid, unloved. In this behind-the-scenes post, Ben Tausig shows how the crossword industry is changing forever." (Alistair for Hugh).
A Short Lesson in Perspective – LINDSREDDING.COM. "We live in a world where we pay extra to have someone’s logo on our shirt. Marketing permeates our society; it’s the right hand of capitalism. Before he died, one Linds Redding wrote about the marketing industry. It’s a pretty bleak take on the world. I chose to find this uplifting and inspiring: as we’re flooded with commercial pressures this holiday season, it’s the gleam in my daughter’s eye as she sees blinking lights, the grin on my wife’s face as the streets are dusted with flakes, that matter." (Alistair for Mitch).
Funes, the Memorious – Jorge Luis Borges. "You may well have read this famous story by Jorge Luis Borges, about a young man who remembers everything, not only ‘every leaf on every tree of every wood, but even every one of the times he had perceived or imagined it.’ It’s worth reading again." (Hugh for Alistair).
Ladies and Gentlemen… Mr. Leonard Cohen – NFB. "My wife went to see Leonard Cohen in concert a couple of weeks ago. The 78-year-old put on one of the best concerts she has ever seen (I missed it!). Here’s a NFB documentary from 1965, when Cohen was a 30-year-old poet, famous, but not yet the adored pop star he would become. Great footage of Cohen, and of Montreal in a bygone era." (Hugh for Mitch).
Humanoid robot flexes its 160 muscles for creepy realism – FutureTech. "I’m as fascinated with Internet culture as I have ever been. That being said, I’m eyeing robots and the maker movement like nobody’s business. Take a look at this video. Can you feel it? I think we’ll have robots truly among us much sooner than people expect or realize. Yes, we’re still a ways away, but it’s happening. And I, for one, welcome our robotic overlords!" (Mitch for Alistair).
Making The Impossible Approachable: The Amazing Illustrations Of NASA’s Storyboarder – Fast Company. "This falls into the ‘I never even thought of that!’ category. Imagine if your job was to imagine entire worlds, planets, star systems and more. Not in a science fiction kind of way, but in a way that could best be used to help the mass population visualize something as important as space exploration. This is somebody’s full-time (and serious) gig. This is an amazing piece that looks at the job of Pat Rawlings, a professional space artist. Incredible." (Mitch for Hugh).