There are seven words that make my heart sink these days more than any others. No, they’re not “high heels are bad for you: fact”, or “there is no chocolate left for you”, but: “then people can upload their own versions”. Of course they can. But why on earth would they? The assumption-without…

Update 1/6: Wow, this made top of HackerNews! I’m honored. Hope you enjoy this post – let me know what you think in the comments. Besides this blog, I can also be followed on Twitter @hunterwalk Michael Arrington wrote a compelling piece suggesting Facebook’s continued success is dependent upon…

From 2001 to 2003, Glenn Hubbard was chairman of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers. Today, he’s the dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business, an economic adviser to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign and an active commentator on economic affairs. We spoke…

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

The idea of "buying media" always struck me as a bit odd. If anything, what brands have been doing is renting: Paying the media owner to borrow the audience's attention for a short period of time. In the pre-internet days, rental was pretty much the only game in town and that was just fine. But then…

Short Profile Name: William James Murray DOB: 21 September 1950 Place of Birth: Wilmette, Illinois, USA Occupation: Actor, Comedian Mr. Murray, you don’t have an agent or a manager and people say you don’t even own a cell phone. What does it take for a filmmaker who has a perfect role in mind for…

B ack in March, Bill Simmons asked me, “In your dream scenario, what would you write about?” There was really only one answer: “I would move to Vegas and write about my life there.” To the horror of every civilized aspect of my life, he green-lit the idea. So, at the beginning of August, I moved…

Last week’s episode of Louie opened with a quasi simulation of his failed HBO show Lucky Louie , punctuated by Louis C.K. wearing a backward baseball cap and destroying the concept (and his hypothetical career) by questioning the realism of what they were doing. For maybe 90 seconds I found myself…

Q: I’m having a rough patch in my life. I am a broke college student home for the summer and can’t find a job. I deposited $6 to my bank account today and the teller literally laughed at me when she saw that my balance was $13. Then I went home and cut my nipple when I was shaving my chest. All I…

Most of us have grown sufficiently used to the idea of gang colors that we don’t bother to ask why they exist. But, if you think about it, they’re paradoxical: Why would people who belong to groups that sell drugs or commit crimes go out of their way to advertise their membership in those groups ? A…

The Making-Sh*t-Up Rally Back when I did more reporting on mergers and acquisitions, I used to get a lot of calls from merger arbitrageurs. Merger arbs, as they’re known, are the traders who are a cross between journalists and Hercule Poirot ; their whole professional lives are devoted to…

Over the last three years, the No. 1 question I've gotten from brand marketers is : "What should I tweet about?" These are not small brands, either, and not junior marketers. The industry seems to be confounded with its new-found power to speak directly to audiences. Marketers know it's worth…

I love a good interview. To me, there’s nothing so useful for demystifying the creative process as hearing an artist or entrepreneur speak from a very personal perspective about how, and why, they do what they do. This weekend, I combed through my archive of epic and inspiring interviews and came up…

Most musicians become household names, and only then, if they’re lucky, do high-end labels line up to work with them. Rapper Theophilus London skipped straight to the end. Before his first album is even out this month, he’s collaborating with Gucci, designing shoes for Cole Haan, and is the new fall…

Andy Hertzfeld worked on the Macintosh project at Apple after having been hired on in 1979 as Apple employee #435. He was one of the main authors of the system software and the User Interface toolbox. After working at Apple, Andy left and founded three companies including Radius and Eazel. In 2005,…

My discussions with the fans and employees who tasted and produced the food revealed a general consensus that—with the exception of the Whoa Whoa Avocado Margarita, which former Padres outfielder Brian Giles described as “fucking toxic”—the food was actually better than it looks in print. Fieri,…

These are audited financial statements for the NFL's league office, the nerve center of professional football, covering the years ended March 31, 2009, and March 31, 2010. The documents below deal with only one piece of NFL operations, and there aren't any obviously mind-melting revelations about…

For many people in their twenties, Internet dating is no less natural a way to meet than the night-club-bathroom line. Credit Illustration by ADRIAN TOMINE In the fall of 1964, on a visit to the World’s Fair, in Queens, Lewis Altfest, a twenty-five-year-old accountant, came upon an open-air display…

I never thought, ever since I expressed my unique childhood wish to become a veterinarian, that design would ever figure on my list of things to do. Stories are told primarily by the things we surround ourselves with. Then again, even though I had fallen in love with movies as a teen, I only…

Anyone who was in the Valley during the late 1990s knows exactly the guy I’m about to describe. He wore blue shirts and khakis. He was a regular at the Bubble Lounge. He always insisted on grabbing the check, throwing down the dot com AmEx for everyone’s drinks, making sure everyone knew he did and…

A disruptive hypothesis is an intentionally unreasonable statement that gets your thinking flowing in a different direction. It's kind of like the evolutionary biology theory of "punctuated equilibrium," which states that evolution proceeds slowly and every once in a while is interrupted by sudden…

The Los Angeles Lakers now face an 0-3 deficit to the wonderful Dallas Mavericks , a margin that's never been overcome in the NBA. L.A., winners of the last three Western Conference banners and two straight NBA Championships, must win four straight, two of them in Dallas, against a team that has…

Featured Insights Our latest thinking on the issues that matter most in business and management. Article - McKinsey Quarterly Finding the true cost of portfolio complexity September 2016 – A fine-grained allocation of costs can help companies weed out “freeloader” products and improve performance.…

by in Food on Apr 4, 2008 11:30 am Update : The Doheny sent over some fun facts regarding items mentioned in this piece. You can read about the biometric fingerprint reader, Sheperd Fairey's artwork and other information here . For the record : In the original story below, it was said that the…

Norm MacDonald ’s stand-up is raunchy, often despicable stuff that deals in the darker side of news and taste. But the veteran comic is so matter-of-fact with his punchlines that it’s easy to forgive him, and see the brilliance in his bluntness. It takes a little getting used to, though, and…

Here’s a clunky but unremarkable sentence that appeared in the British press before the last national election: “Britain’s recovery from the worst recession in decades is gaining traction, but confused economic data and the high risk of hung Parliament could yet snuff out its momentum.” The sentence…

Tim Murray has a daunting job. As creative director of the Creative Vision Group at Target, he oversees the work of 10 agencies, 4 digital partners, and 3 branding studios. And those are the external contributors. Internally, Target, a Fortune 30 company with a market cap of $34.6 billion , has more…