The Poptimist

Back from Asia! Here’s Shanghai in living color. The trip...

Fri, 18 May 2012 14:52:35 -0500

Back from Asia! Here’s Shanghai in living color. The trip was incredible, and I’ll hopefully be back there sometime!

I’ll be out of the country for the next 10 days in Tokyo...

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:06:08 -0500

I’ll be out of the country for the next 10 days in Tokyo and Shanghai, so have posted the above picture because it seemed fitting. The top frame is Shanghai in 1990 and the bottom frame is the exact same view over the river in 2010. Pretty incredible.

"China has hundreds of millions of not only new middle-class consumers but also first-time buyers in..."

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 00:18:53 -0500

“China has hundreds of millions of not only new middle-class consumers but also first-time buyers in any number of product categories who haven’t yet established brand preferences. In that sense, Chinese consumers are like the golden demographic for marketers in the United States: youngsters with disposable incomes who are just learning to prefer Pepsi or Coke.”

- From “As China Goes, So Goes the World” by Karl Gerth (I’m finishing up a research paper on China and Japan, and both of their histories are pretty incredible. I oddly want to learn Manadarin or Japanese. If I’m going to learn a second language, might as well start with one of those easy ones, right?)

I promise I’ll stop posting only Toothpaste for Dinner...

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 23:31:29 -0500

I promise I’ll stop posting only Toothpaste for Dinner cartoons soon. That’s a lie. I love TfD.

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Sun, 22 Apr 2012 21:42:52 -0500

"A couple of years ago, I spent three months playing World of Warcraft – partly as research for a..."

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 22:02:21 -0500

“

A couple of years ago, I spent three months playing World of Warcraft – partly as research for a short story I was writing, mostly because I became addicted to it. This convinced me of one thing: If the computer games which exist now had existed back in 1979 I would not have read any books, I think; I would not have seen writing as an adequate entertainment; I would not have seen going outdoors as sufficiently interesting to bother with.

Similarly, I find it difficult to understand why any eleven-year-old of today would be sufficiently bored to turn inward for entertainment.

”

- The Reader and Technology | New Writing | Granta Magazine (via ayjay)

I’ve gotten a little tired of this song (“Somebody...

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 22:11:54 -0500

I’ve gotten a little tired of this song (“Somebody That I Used to Know) after the 500th play on the radio, but I have a soft spot for fantastic covers like this one.

(Am going to see Ben Kweller this Friday, and last time I saw him in concert he covered “Friends in Low Places.” A Texas boy covering a Texas song in a Texas town…. let’s just say he was well-received.)

A short video on how iPads are made- pretty interesting....

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 21:44:12 -0500

A short video on how iPads are made- pretty interesting. I’m headed to China in a couple weeks for a school trip and the labor force in China is pretty incredible. The country seems to be caught between trying to raise the living standard for its population and wanting to keep providing cheap labor to continue outsourcing as much as they do.

From The DW: “Budweiser Canada surprises two recreational...

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 02:09:22 -0500

From The DW: “Budweiser Canada surprises two recreational league hockey teams from Port Credit, Ontario, with professional-league-grade theatrics, including a flock of fans, play-by-play commentary, and other accouterments of a professional game.”

As far as viral ads go, I just loved this one. I’m a sucker for anything with a “triumph of the human spirit” feel to it.

This is, GUARANTEED, the best video about an order-fulfilling...

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 00:33:01 -0500

This is, GUARANTEED, the best video about an order-fulfilling warehouse robot that you will watch TODAY. No seriously, watch this because it answers the question of how all those Amazon orders, etc. get to you.

Also, I can’t even imagine the complexity of building a system like this. Pretty incredible.

Preview for Aaron Sorkin’s new show. Let’s just...

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 15:06:06 -0500

Preview for Aaron Sorkin’s new show. Let’s just say…. I’m highly intrigued.

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Sat, 24 Mar 2012 01:25:41 -0500

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Fri, 23 Mar 2012 09:30:05 -0500

"This is America; pick a job and become the person who does it."

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 09:30:06 -0500

“This is America; pick a job and become the person who does it.”

- Bobbie Barrett, in Mad Men

"Hart and Risley estimated that by the age of 4, children of professional parents had heard on..."

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 09:30:05 -0500

“

Hart and Risley estimated that by the age of 4, children of professional parents had heard on average 48 million words addressed to them while children in poor welfare families had heard only 13 million.

It was no wonder that the underprivileged children they saw at their preschool could not catch up and often lagged behind once they went to school. They simply weren’t getting the experience with language provided to their peers.

”

- NPR: Closing The Achievement Gap With Baby Talk (Via) (The study also found that, unsurprisingly, children don’t absorb words from TV nearly as well as they do from another person)

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Tue, 20 Mar 2012 09:30:05 -0500

"No culture in history has been more distracted. If you are wondering why there are no more C.S...."

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 10:30:06 -0500

“No culture in history has been more distracted. If you are wondering why there are no more C.S. Lewis’ in the world, no more stories as good as Tolkien’s, no cathedrals as great as the gothic’s, no music as moving as Pachelbel’s, it may be because the writers of these books, the tellers of these stories, the architects of these buildings and the composers of these symphonies are sitting on their couches watching television. I wonder what’s on tonight.”

- Donald Miller - While I think the quote is an oversimplification, I think the point is well taken.

I love this idea. The guys over at Horrible Logos will give you,...

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 10:30:06 -0500

I love this idea. The guys over at Horrible Logos will give you, in exchange for $5…. a horrible logo. You need a logo, and they need beer money (no, seriously, their motto is “Drawing logos for beer money since 2010.”).

For what it's worth....

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 10:30:05 -0500

For what it's worth....:

Hedge funds managed by women outperformed those managed by men over the past nine years. (Via)

And yet…. women only manage 3% of hedge funds. Hmmm.

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Fri, 16 Mar 2012 11:22:05 -0500