“As I write now, in May, 2010, the industry’s prognosticators have moved on from writing blogging’s obituary to declaring the imminent mortality of the Web itself. According to them, these new networks aren’t just popular; they are eclipsing the Internet As We Have Known It — blogging included.”

“Geeks control the Internet because geeks built the Internet. We earned the freedom we have here. We earned it by creating something incredibly valuable and sharing it with millions and millions of people. What did we earn with the App Store? Did we build the App Store? Did we write iPhone OS? Did we design the groundbreaking hardware? Or are we just customers?”

“It’s no mystery why so many publishing companies are revved up about the iPad: they’re hoping the new gizmo will turn back the clock on their business model, allowing them to make consumers pay while delivering their eyeballs directly to advertisers via costly, eye-catching displays.”

“That is, they re-report stuff, rather than linking. And that's often because traditional reporters lived by the "scoop" and the idea that they had to be first. Acknowledging that someone else got the story first is seen as an admission of failure. But in the blogging world, it's seen as a sign of respect and of gratitude. But it's difficult for those who've lived in that first world to get their heads wrapped around this. ”

“I want to share with you something I’ve learned. I’ll draw it on the blackboard behind me so you can follow more easily [draws a vertical line on the blackboard]. This is the G-I axis: good fortune-ill fortune. Death and terrible poverty, sickness down here—great prosperity, wonderful health up there. Your average state of affairs here in the middle [points to bottom, top, and middle of line respectively].“

“A secondary surprise was that I felt implicated in the ignorance I observed -- relating to gay rights, to the environment, to feminism. I started to believe that their reactionary attitudes on these subjects were a result of profound insularity, which itself seemed the legacy of a culture that rejected them: mine. Why would they open themselves up to influence from a culture that made no space for their beliefs?”

“One way to get noticed as a scientist is to tackle a really difficult problem. Physicist Sean Carroll has become a bit of a rock star in geek circles by attempting to answer an age-old question no scientist has been able to fully explain: What is time?”

“When people think of knowledge, they generally think of two sorts of facts: facts that don’t change, like the height of Mount Everest or the capital of the United States, and facts that fluctuate constantly, like the temperature or the stock market close.

But in between there is a third kind: facts that change slowly.”

“Is there a way to know what fonts will work together? Building a palette is an intuitive process, but expanding a typographic duet to three, four, or even five voices can be daunting. Here are four tips for navigating the typographic ocean, all built around H&FJ's Highly Scientific First Principle of Combining Fonts: keep one thing consistent, and let one thing vary.”

“The remarks by 85-year-old Father Gabriele Amorth, for decades the chief exorcist in Rome, have taken many by surprise. Far from being superstitious medieval nonsense, Amorth has said in promoting his new book, Memoirs of An Exorcist, the Devil is 'lodging in the Vatican' and can be seen in the activities of paedophile priests, over-ambitious clerics and 'cardinals who don't believe in Jesus'.”

“From businesses we’ve never heard of, to countries we’ve never visited, to infants who’ve had the random misfortune to be born into a family that’s on TV – it’s all grist for obvious jokes and shortsighted commentary that, for at least a few minutes, helps both the maker and the consumer feel a little less bored, a little less vulnerable, and a little less disconnected. For a minute, anyway, it makes us feel more alive. Does me, anyway.”

“n virtually every other area of life, strength is categorically, universally preferred to weakness. Using such language to describe fluctuations in the value of a currency invests emotional meaning into the situation, implying that a strong dollar is always preferable. In fact, the strong dollar/weak dollar debate is more complicated than it initially seems to be. ”

“This month, we'll be discussing "the crowd" - particularly the way group activity, creativity, and awareness are both enhanced and exacerbated by our digital networks. We do not need to reach conclusions or even consensus about the impact of technology on our collective fate (or the fate of collectives). We are less concerned with finding definitive answers than asking the right kinds of questions, reframing our interrogations in new and informative ways, learning from one another's perspectives, and seeing how the public participants respond to and inform our conversation.”

“But why achieve at all when you can plug into any number of 'achievement games' and get the same personal satisfaction? That’s when it becomes pathological.”

“Researchers from the Université de Montréal made their discovery by comparing the grey matter thickness of Zen meditators and non-meditators. They found evidence that practicing the centuries-old discipline of Zen can reinforce a central brain region (anterior cingulate) that regulates pain.”

“In some cases, you'll have to hold down one button, and then another, and then another. This can lead to your hands doing weird things on the DualShock 3 […] This may sound weird, or even counter-intuitive, but these challenges are put in places where your character is being subjected to heavy emotional or physical stress. You're supposed to feel like you're on the edge of failure and pushing your dexterity to the limit, because that matches what the game is putting its characters through.”

“But now Tumblr has been an Alexa Top 100 site for a while and is still growing strong. Meanwhile Posterous has about 4 times less uniques. Yet Posterous has everything to win: it’s a Y Combinator company with top-tier investors like Chris Sacca and Mitch Kapor. Its founders are experienced software engineers with computer science degrees from Stanford. How come it’s eating dust from a small startup started by a high school dropout?”

“There is a widespread concern that the winner takes all mentality of the banker, and the corrupted values of the politician, have replaced a common sense ethics of fairness and integrity. Many worry that an emphasis on a shallow individualism has damaged personal relationships and weakened important social bonds.”

“As we’ve made our institutions more meritocratic, their public standing has plummeted. We’ve increased the diversity and talent level of people at the top of society, yet trust in elites has never been lower.”

“In the world according to TED, where high-powered über-networking between very smart people and their very big ideas is the best way to address the various social, political and economic crises facing the world, would our entreaties for more organizing, more rebellion, more creative activism to change the rules of the game fall on deaf ears? ”

"Where's that fucking beer, baby?" He dropped the book on the rug. "Look, if I want to develop an image, I'll do it my own fucking way."

1. You need a good idea
2. Professional work requires professional tools
3. Take care of yourself

“But I also wanted to make sure that there are some things that are, in fact, awesome. The world’s been through a hell of a lot, and I’m not sure I trust my own eyes anymore. I don’t agree with every one of Obama’s policies and I doubt that I’ll buy an iPad, but does that make their existence any less amazing?”

“Ebert is dying in increments, and he is aware of it.”

“As it is, men between 22 and 30—nearly two-thirds of the male dating pool—focus almost exclusively on women younger than themselves. I'll be investigating this phenomenon today, with gusto and charts. Ultimately, I'll argue that they would be well-served to expand their search upwards, to women in their thirties and forties.”

“First we compared leaving the donation amount blank, suggesting a $20 donation, and suggesting $100. We quickly saw that $20 was sub-optimal, resulting in fewer transactions and a lower total amount collected.”

“They can do it because lateness is part of the order of things, and grownup professionals plan for it, just as they plan for budget shortfalls and extra rounds of revision.”

“Is there a middle path—a way to provide feedback and reduce password errors that doesn’t sacrifice the user experience? At least two design patterns address this issue in offline applications, and with a little JavaScript, we can bring them to the web.”

“She was neither a threat (the left) nor an opportunity (the right), but just a fantasy -- until the American people turned the lights on.”

“Think of the millions of hours of human effort spent on preventing and recovering from the problems caused by completely open computer systems. Think of the lengths that people have gone to in order to acquire skills that are orthogonal to their core interests and their job, just so they can get their job done.”

“It is easy to see that through the randomness of the shuffled deck the player is unable to say what cards he will play before he actually draws his hand. And as he draws a new random card every time he plays a card, he can also not know exactly what cards he will hold next round. But just like in a poker game, he can make tactical decision.”

“It’s a dilemma all artists confront, of course. When do you stop creating and send your work out to face the public? Plenty of Hollywood directors have delayed for months, dithering in the editing room. But in videogames, the problem is particularly acute, because the longer you delay, the more genuinely antiquated your product begins to look — and the more likely it is that you’ll need to rip things down and start again”