Correction Appended THERE'S nothing wrong with self-pity. As a spur to songwriting, it's right up there with lust, anger and greed, and probably better than the remaining deadly sins. There's nothing wrong, either, with striving for musical grandeur, using every bit of skill and studio illusion to…

I was eating Cocoa Pebbles recently for dinner (yes, I'm a bachelor) when I noticed something strange on the nutrition label. Cocoa Pebbles, according to the box, is a "good source of fiber." Who knew that I could get as many grams of fiber from Cocoa Pebbles as I could from a bowl of Cheerios or a…

Yeee -haw, Apple buckaroos! Whooz ready for some good timin', multitaskin'? Who wants their iPhone served up with a hot bucket'a grits? HOOOOOOOOOOO BOY. Jonny Ive's deep in the hooch pan again? Saddle up, grab yer partner, and let's make some truck-ugly apps! Apple's UI design has, for a long time,…

The Awl Be less stupid. The Awl Be less stupid.

Twitter and epic poetry IT BEGAN as a lark. Dan Sinker, a professor of journalism at Columbia College in Chicago, started a fake Twitter feed called @MayorEmanuel. It was September 27th 2010 and rumours had been circulating that Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, would run for mayor of…

Raymond Tallis likes a fight. On a recent afternoon, visiting this historic city to lecture at the University of Kent, the physician-philosopher intends to pick one. His target: a rash of pseudo brain science that purports to explain behavior as varied as believing in God and falling in love.…

Steve Jobs didn't change the world by playing nice When filmmaker Stanley Kubrick died, the steely perfectionist who ground actors into submission died with him. Kubrick was a good man -- Matthew Modine once described him as "probably the most heartfelt person I ever met" -- but by all accounts, his…

On August 5, 2011, moments after the U.S. government watched a rating agency lower its credit rating for the first time in American history, the market for U.S. Treasury bonds soared. Four days later, the interest rates paid by the U.S. government on its new 10-year bonds were plummeting on their…

I will admit, I am not known for being sensitive. Yet, at the same time, I feel I’m one of the most optimistic people I know. I have faith in everyone. I don’t believe anyone is a loser. I don’t believe anyone is incapable. It’s born into me. I can’t help it. Homeless people. Drug addicts.…

Max Linsky and Aaron Lammer I store my very favorite works of long-form journalism in a hard-drive folder titled "Keepers." There's Jonathan Rauch's 1995 defense of prejudice from Harper's , Gary Wolf's stunning 1995 profile of Ted Nelson in Wired , John Tierney's 1996 piece on recycling in the New…

[I’ve received several requests to complete the missing part two of an earlier column, “Making Usable Products: An Informal Process for Good User Interfaces.” I read this early column again recently and thought it was awful. So now you’re getting part two, which, in my mind, is really a thinly…

In a recent piece for #Eye80 I lamented the loss of insight in document design that the vertical flat screen and zoom brought. I also dropped an aside that “palettes are evil”. I wasn’t clear enough, and confused @mmBubbleTea who thought I meant colour palettes. I meant the interface ones, and I…

This entry originally appeared on my disability blog, I hate stairs. Something happened the other day. A coincidence of sorts. I had a moment where everything came together to lift me out of what seemed like a hopeless situation. This is the kind of coincidence that one feels was intended to happen.…

“WISCONSIN appears to be in the driver’s seat en route to a win, as it leads 51-10 after the third quarter. Wisconsin added to its lead when Russell Wilson found Jacob Pedersen for an eight-yard touchdown to make the score 44-3 ... . ” Those words began a news brief written within 60 seconds of the…

In a hypothetical trial on two kinds of mice, several tests are needed to prove statistically significant differences. Photograph: Sam Yeh/AFP/Getty Images W e all like to laugh at quacks when they misuse basic statistics. But what if academics, en masse, deploy errors that are equally foolish? This…

Ali Soufan, as the F.B.I.’s lead investigator on the U.S.S. Cole bombing, suspected a larger Al Qaeda plot. Credit Illustration by Steve Brodner On October 12, 2000, in the deep-water port of Aden, Yemen, the U.S.S. Cole, a guided-missile destroyer weighing eighty-three hundred tons, was docked at a…

News & Culture The Girl from Trails End In a small, rough-edged town not far from Houston, nineteen men and boys await trial for unspeakable acts—the repeated gang rape of an 11-year-old girl. Good god, you think: How could so many men treat a child so brutally? And how could so many people leap to…

Early in my career as a business owner, I thought being clever was more important than being on time. In retrospect, I probably would have never renewed a contract with my 20-year-old self.Flash forward and today my partners and I run a service business that thrives for a simple reason: we…

Yesterday afternoon, Mike Arrington and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong announced the launch of “the CrunchFund”, a venture fund that will — according to the New York Times — “invest in start-ups, including some that [Arrington] and his staff write about”. Oh boy. But it gets better. Apparently keen to pour…

The E-Reader of Sand: The Kindle and the Inner Conflict Between Consumer and Booklover By posted at 6:00 am on August 15, 2011 “I can show you a sacred book that might interest a man such as yourself” – Jorge Luis Borges , “The Book of Sand” 1. Like many people who love to read, I exist in a…

At about 9 a.m. on what would be a very bad day, Paul Sagan, then president of Akamai Technologies Inc. of Cambridge, was on the phone with a company attorney who had just been in touch with cofounder Daniel Lewin. Lewin, 31, who had invented technology to help the Internet handle huge amounts of…