Meme Weaver In which
"the author tries—and fails—to cash in on a big idea". Warning: skippable full-screen ad alert. Behind it is an article in the Atlantic (the magazine, not the ocean). Of possible interest to fans and critics of the popular science genre of books, Wikipedians, and underdog/failure sympathisers.
posted by nthdegx
on Nov 18, 2011 -
7 comments
Milton Glaser on fear of failure "This is the way to professional accomplishment: You have to demonstrate that you know something unique that you can repeat over and over and over, until ultimately you lose interest in it. The consequence of specialization and success is that it hurts you. It hurts you because it doesn't aid in your development. The truth of the matter is that understanding development comes from failure."
[more inside]
posted by heatherann
on May 25, 2011 -
30 comments
Dude. Articles on the failed musical
Dude by
Hair cocreator
Gerome Ragni. Where to start? Well, there is
this summary of the disaster by the New York Times, which is just mind-boggling: "He also made demands, phoning Adela Holzer at 2 A.M. to say he wanted a hundred butterflies let loose into the audience before each performance. No? Well then what about having a couple of oinking pigs and chickens run down the aisle at intermission?"
[more inside]
posted by Astro Zombie
on Jun 20, 2010 -
27 comments
"For Dirk McLauren, Wedesnday January 19 2381 has
begun very poorly." The
Zybourne Clock was to be a hundred-hour long electro-punk-themed RPG made by members of the
SA subforum BYOB. After only a few weeks, the project collapsed in drama and failure, leaving only hilarious snippets of text, original "artwork," and level designs. More
effort and skill went into
parodying The Zybourne Clock than into
creating it.
posted by Optimus Chyme
on Nov 19, 2009 -
35 comments
1995 Contractor Study Finds that U.S. Analysts Exaggerated Soviet Aggressiveness and Understated Moscow's Fears of a U.S. First Strike. During a 1972 command post exercise, leaders of the Kremlin listened to a briefing on the results of a hypothetical war with the United States. A U.S. attack would kill 80 million Soviet citizens and destroy 85 percent of the country's industrial capacity. According to the recollections of a Soviet general who was present, General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev "trembled" when he was asked to push a button, asking Soviet defense minister Grechko "this is definitely an exercise?" This story appears in a recently released two-volume study on Soviet Intentions, 1965-1985, prepared in 1995 by the Pentagon contractor BDM Corporation, and published today for the first time by the National Security Archive.
[more inside]
posted by DreamerFi
on Sep 14, 2009 -
42 comments
How designers fail — "During college at the University of Arizona in 1992, I learned with other design freshman that revisions were part of the discipline; if you cried at critique you were a wimp, and the computer was just a finishing tool. . . . But something has happened since I was a college student in 1992: students just don’t believe these things."
posted by camcgee
on Mar 27, 2009 -
64 comments
The savings and loan’s decision not to settle the lawsuit made no economic sense for a solvent institution, but it made perfect sense if their principle objective was to maintain the false appearance of solvency for as long as possible. The savings and loan was undoubtedly inflating all of their assets, including my homely little lawsuit, to postpone the inevitable.
What reminded me of that incident from my late, unlamented law practice was the persistent failure of financial institutions to modify mortgages voluntarily. It makes perfect economic sense for a safe and sound institution to avoid the ruinous costs of foreclosure by agreeing to reduce the principal and monthly payment for homeowners who can pay a mortgage, but not the one they’ve got. But according to the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys, fewer than ten percent of mortgage modifications in November reduced the principal. About half added late payments and penalties to the principal, and either increased monthly payments or added payments at the back end of the mortgage. If a borrower was in default already, what’s the chance the borrower can make a higher monthly payment?
Brad Miller, US Congressman for the
Thirteenth District of
North Carolina advances
a possible motivation for the apparently illogical behavior of US banks.
posted by orthogonality
on Feb 5, 2009 -
75 comments
When programmers kill. [pdf] In 1982, Atomic Energy Canada, Limited, introduced the now-infamous Therac-25, a solely software-driven successor to its earlier medical linear accelerators.
Six patients received massive amounts of radiation, and three died, before AECL was compelled to supplement the (faulty) software-only error-checking with hardware interlocks to prevent overexposure.
[more inside]
posted by enn
on May 20, 2008 -
18 comments
It could have been the greatest disaster in US history. On January 18, 1978, 30 years ago today, the 1400 ton 2 1/2 acre roof of the
Hartford Civic Center, covered by a blanket of snow and ice, suddenly and completely
collapsed, damaging almost all of the seats underneath. Just four hours earlier there was a basketball game packed with 5000 fans. Had it collapsed then, many, if not most, of the fans and players could have died.
[more inside]
posted by eye of newt
on Jan 18, 2008 -
37 comments
Newsfilter: 30,000 customers in the San Francisco area lost power today at about 1:50pm PDT, in a series of power failures which knocked out a major datacenter hub: 365 Main. The hub controls servers for many social media sites, including
Technorati,
Netflix,
Yelp,
Craigslist and all
Six Apart properties, including
TypePad,
LiveJournal and
Vox. (6A's
twitter stream has updates.) More
here and
here.
Amusingly enough, 365 Main tempted fate and released a
press release today patting themselves on the back for "two years of 100-percent uptime".
posted by zarq
on Jul 24, 2007 -
82 comments
Remember this? While randomly reading some assorted Digg posts, I saw someone mention the old Toshiba Liberato laptop. On doing a GIS search, up came a link to the "Apple Doomsday Clock".
It just floors me that this anonymous anti-Apple blog (which even predates the word "blog"), is still online. It dates from the period when Jobs retook the CEO chair, and started turning the failing company around--the last posting was in June, 1999. Perhaps it should be treated as a historical site, and preserved for the future amusement of Mac users?
posted by metasonix
on Apr 14, 2007 -
28 comments
Combining incredible hubris with deep incompetence,
Active Enterprises was probably the worst game company of all time. They released precisely two games in the early 1990s. The first was the insanely horrible
Action 52, (retail price: $200), which was designed to
take advantage of a "silent wave of anti, far-eastern [sic] made products," and featured an
unwinnable contest. More amazing, however, was the sequel to the 52nd game in their Action 52 cartridge,
Cheetahmen II. Never quite the breakout hit that Active intended, perhaps because it was crippled with
bizarre bugs and
middle school art, the world never got to see the second issue of the
Cheetahmen comic book, nor the planned set of
action figures, nor their
Action Gamemaster console.
posted by blahblahblah
on Jan 19, 2007 -
26 comments
William F. Buckley: "If you had a European prime minister who experienced what we've experienced it would be expected that he would retire or resign."
posted by EarBucket
on Jul 24, 2006 -
80 comments
Bush has put the production of
coal above the safety of coal miners. As is sadly demonstrated in the two recent
mining disasters. They even went so far as to
remove Clinton era safety regulations and then had the
audacity to claim that resource production and "
other priorities" took precedence. These
budget cuts come at a time when coal prices have gone up 30% and led to huge profits for the coal industry. Sound like any other resource industry you know. /*hint
OIL! hint*/ Once again the government has favored the big corporation over the little guy to disastrous results. Is the death of miners and the death of soldiers worth our reliance on fossil fuels?
posted by stilgar
on Jan 24, 2006 -
89 comments
For misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once he has been removed from office, put on trial along with the rest of the president's men. If convicted, they'll have plenty of time to mull over their sins.
Costly Withdrawal Is the Price To Be Paid for a Foolish War Martin van Creveld, a professor of military history at the Hebrew University, is author of "Transformation of War" (Free Press, 1991). He is the only non-American author on the U.S. Army's required reading list for officers.
An interview with Martin Van Creveld. See also
Nowhere To Run
posted by y2karl
on Nov 29, 2005 -
73 comments
Failure is not an option, it's mandatory. "For more than three decades, the Republican Party has relied on the "culture war" to rescue their chances every four years, from Richard Nixon's campaign against the liberal news media to George H. W. Bush's campaign against the liberal flag-burners. In this culture war, the real divide is between "regular people" and an endlessly scheming "liberal elite." This strategy allows them to depict themselves as friends of the common people even as they gut workplace safety rules and lay plans to turn Social Security over to Wall Street. Most important, it has allowed Republicans to speak the language of populism."
An opinion about how the surety of losing wins votes for the Republican party.
posted by Dipsomaniac
on Jul 16, 2004 -
61 comments
Sorry, you've flunked. This gave me the best laugh I've had all week. I love the way you can tell the teacher marking the paper is getting more and more pissed off by the increasing ferocity of the red pen strokes. Heheheh. Give the kid an A.
posted by essexjan
on Mar 3, 2004 -
31 comments
