January 2008
80 posts
America’s Most Miserable Cities →
1. Detroit, MI 2. Stockton, CA 3. Flint, MI 4. New York City 5. Philadelphia, PA 6. Chicago, IL 7. Los Angeles, CA 8. Modesto, CA 9. Charlotte, NC 10. Providence, RI Woo, 2 down, 8 to go…the JD Misery USA Tour starts here!
“The co-pilot of a [London] Heathrow-bound plane had to be dragged screaming from...”
– Sounds like great fun, doesn’t it!? (from Brit newspaper Daily Mail, which I hate, via Bigmouth Strikes Again, which I like)
Jonathan isn't creating the buzz, but letting the... →
“The atmosphere is so tense that if Elvis walked in with a portion of chips, you...”
– Darts commentator Sid Waddell with surely one of the best phrases ever to be uttered
“Life Content Management”
– The tagline of Mark Bean’s tumblelog
Successful Google bomb: "dangerous cult" →
What is Web 2.0? Ten answers to the un-answerable... →
It’s a technology that allows no thought to remain unexpressed. No matter how stupid or grammatically incorrect it may be. It’s when clouds have tags, not rain. And more…
The 5 Whys (Wikipedia) →
Kottke says: “Just keep asking ‘why?’ until you get to the true cause of a particular situation or problem”.
From BBC News: “Prime Minister Gordon Brown says he wants to see one in five young people on apprenticeships within 10 years, in a push to win the global ‘skills race’”. Good ol’ Browny Points (as no-one but me calls him). He may lack charisma, and do that funny inhaling-his-lower-lip thing when he talks, but when it comes to education policy he knows what matters. And it’s this,...
Idea for the next Tumblr update
How about a simple panel on the dashboard that tells you how many people have reblogged your posts recently? It’s always interesting to see who’s reblogging my stuff, but I get fed up with having to go to my original post on the dashboard to find out.
50 signs you’re a blogaholic →
Your friends and family don’t call anymore, they just check your blog. Your breakfast of choice is toast, cornflakes and Google reader. You think “I wonder how this’ll look on Flickr?” when posing for photos. And other gems…
McDonald's to offer its own "A-level" study course →
Surely this will take media studies’ place in the public perception as the ultimate Mickey Mouse course? (I say “in the public perception” because I genuinely think that media studies has the potential to be a useful qualification, it’s just implemented very poorly at the moment. But that’s another discussion altogether.)
“He raises a hand in greeting to a plumber from Calcutta whose van bears the...”
– Nadeem Aslam’s “Maps For Lost Lovers” (via And Another Thing)
Why is it that King of Queens and Everybody Loves Raymond are the only things ever on the Paramount Comedy channel? They’re both horrendously unfunny. Which should be something of a problem for a channel with the word “comedy” in its name.
The Life Cycle of a Blog Post: from servers to... →
Great infographic from Wired - what happens to a post once you click “publish”?
If I search for my name on Google, of course my blog comes up. I then click “similar pages”. And the Wikipedia page for self-deprecation is listed. What’s that all about?!
Jonathan finds new obsessions every day. Today... →
Travis frontman to select best new talent from... →
News item over on my other blog.
“My job is to put some poetry in the machine, put some funk in the machines.”
– Bono on his role “designing” a new dell PC. As one of the post’s commenters says, even James Brown couldn’t put the funk into a Dell. Plus Bono is a twat.
“Google rank will become a political argument. Instead of saying “this is why I...”
– From Laurent Haug’s great blog post “eight things I think I think”. Other interesting items include “work will be an socially accepted reason for divorce” and “entrepreneurs will equal adventurers”.
Great Tumblr design →
And funny writing too.
In this day and age, when I can buy Häagen-Dazs at three in the morning, why can’t I pay in a cheque at the bank after lunchtime on a Saturday?! It’s hugely annoying. I know that point is nothing new, but I just had to vent somewhere.
Parable of the broken window (Wikipedia) →
“The parable describes a shopkeeper whose window is broken by a little boy. Everyone sympathizes with the man whose window was broken, but pretty soon they start to suggest that the broken window makes work for the glazier, who will then buy bread, benefiting the baker, who will then buy shoes, benefiting the cobbler, etc. Finally, the onlookers conclude that the little boy was not guilty of...
Books That Make You Dumb →
Calculated by plotting people’s favourite books (as indicated by Facebook data) against the average SAT score of the college they attend. According to this, people who’ve read Fight Club (my favourite book) are only marginally more intelligent than those who say they “don’t read”, while those who enjoyed the Da Vinci Code are smarter than those who’ve read The...
The economics (and biology) of free ice cream →
Many people in Indonesia are lactose intolerant. McDonald’s consequently had trouble selling ice cream there. The answer? Give it away. (Via this person, and good ol’ Chris Anderson, of Long Tail fame)
Jonathan elevates æsthetics to a living religion. ... →
“Who’s Terry Firmer?”
– A mate who was, evidently, quite unaware of the EMI takeover by Terra Firma. Maybe he should read this tongue-in-cheek layman’s look at recent events at the major label.
Jonathan has wonderful friends :-). →
“The definition of someone with a musical addiction is when you buy a CD, put it...”
– My name’s Jonathan, and I’m an addict. I have a huge mountain of CDs in my “to listen” pile. (from You Are So Relevant)
The Lionheart Brothers live in Liverpool →
Review of the Norwegian shoegaze band from my other blog.
Actually the best thing ever
My Norwegian friend has a pet rat called Johnny Rotten. “Rotten” is Norwegian for “the rat”. Funny on so many levels. Or just one. But still.
“I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates”.”
– Steve Jobs in Newsweek (October 2001)
“She is Robyn. The most killingest pop star on the planet. A pint-sized atom bomb...”
– Unintentionally hilarious biography of Swedish pop star Robyn
Wikipedia To Get Its Video On →
This will either be a total revolution (heralding the death of TV and a new era of user-generated content), or Wikipedia’s proverbial shark-jumping.
Godwin's law (Wikipedia) →
States that as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
Jonathan is the last of the famous international... →
“I was marked down at University for using PowerPoint in a presentation in 1998.”
– So says some bloke commenting on an interesting little post by Robert Scoble about how some professors when he was at school banned “those newfangled Macintoshes”, preferring students to use typewriters.
“EMI: soon it will just be two staplers and the Robbie Williams back catalogue”
– No Rock And Roll Fun on the label’s rumoured staff cuts
