Tufte's new book

NPR : Edward Tufte, Offering 'Beautiful Evidence'

Edward Tufte has recently released his new book Beautiful Evidence which is filled with hundreds of illustrations from the worlds of art and science.

Tufte is someone you either love or hate. Your decision will probably hang on whether you're a minimalist who use slides as just a visual aid or you genuflect towards the Powerpoint presentation as a god-like communication device.

I'm in the first camp.

Powerpoint eats more time than anything I know. Reporters who wrote stories on how people screw off at work looking at Youtube should do a comparative analysis on how much flipping time we spend building a slide full of animations just to get someone's attention.

Tufte shows really great design is timeless.

If you get the chance, spend a day with this man. He knows his stuff.

B.S. Detector: George Allen Stepped in Macaca

B.S. Detector: George Allen Stepped in Macaca

Funny how no one ever mentions George Allen's carpetbagger status, but BS Detector does a great job of pointing out the painfully obvious.

Virginia is famous for its dislike of folks interfering in the commonwealth's business. FFVs (First Families of Virginia for the unintitiated) tend to look down in disbelief when their children marry outside the tribes.

They feel the same way about politicians. Outsiders need not involve themselves and George has overcompensated for years.

There's a part of me that wonders...

did George Allen leave his sheet at home when he calls out a racial slur at guy from the opposition with a video camera?

http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-00762sy0aug15,0,6856650.story

He sure as hell left his brain at home. Scares me he's an incumbent. He juts lost any chance of me voting for his useless tail for another six years.

Just plain dumb...

Powerpoint as a information tool in the military

Crooked Timber has one of the slides featured in Tom Ricks' book Fiasco as an example of why things went wrong in Iraq:

Now, I have a long history of hating Powerpoint and everything it represents.

As someone who has worked in both industry and the government, I have seen it abused to the point of pain.

Anyone who thinks this is an effective communications medium is nuts. I have seen and argued with multiple folks over the year as how slides like this are not a total commuincations solution.

You have to have all the parts of the package: the briefer, the ability to ask questions and the context of hearing other people discuss this type of information.

Dr. Edward Tufte, the guy who helped NASA after the Challenger disaster, has for years hosted seminars on the presentation of information. He savages slides like this. I attended one of these seminars after a new boss recommended this after spending years in the Pentagon taking briefings like this.

I would rather get a well-prepared briefing without slides than a thin one with these crazy slides that take hours.

A politician a jerk? Say it ain't so!

Ok... so firefighters from a state that doesn't even come close to touching the one you represent come to help out a fire.

Do you, as a member of the U.S. Senate, thank them?

Not if you're Conrad Burns.

Apparently, Mr. Burns, with all The Simpsons puns intended, believes these firefighters from Virginia are there to rip the people of the great state of Montana off and are lazy, carpetbagging idiots.

Read this and explain to me how this man became a senator.

And then check how his staff acts...

A member of the Daily Press Editorial Board contacted Burns' Washington office to check the story and to see if the senator had any more to say on the subject.

The young man (very young, we surmise) who answered the phone responded with language that would make a sailor, maybe even Burns himself, blush. Imagine a "South Park" tirade in full force, laced with assorted colorful obscenities, and you get the idea.

"And you can tell Sen. George Allen of Virginia to [vulgarity deleted]," said Burns' spokesman.

It took close to 10 minutes to finally convince the gentleman in Burns' office that, no, the caller was not his chum in Allen's office, but in fact a representative of a Virginia newspaper.

When I see stuff like this, it reminds me the same people who vote for these chuckleheads have children who they get jobs in Sen. Chucklehead's office so their kid who majored in beer drinking with a minor in keg stands can get a job and cuss out reporters.

Makes you want term limits mandated NOW!

Power of the public

Sebastian Mallaby has a great piece in the Washington Post about the power of those who buy goods and services and the effect bad publicity has on their corporate images.

Great examples like junk food playground McDonalds becoming the largest buyer of apples because they started serving salads and other healthy fare to expanding waistline customers.

Nike also gets told to "just do it" when their brand was threatened by the bad karma that goes with people being paid 34 cents an hour to make high tops which can bankrupt all but the most financially stable parent.

The best one comes when Mallaby makes the assertion that one of my favorite brands has become a kind of shadow government pulling the real government up to speed.

The next stage may be for companies not merely to outpace government but to pull government along. Howard Schultz, the chairman of Starbucks, broke the mold by offering comprehensive health benefits to part-time workers, but now he's even more ambitious: He's lobbying Congress to fix the health system.

Now, if only we could get the oil companies as concerned. Today's Post also had articles about shutting down the largest oil field in the U.S. because of corrosion and how there only three E85 ethanol pumps within six miles of downtown DC, a place which has the market cornered on bad traffic.

Anybody else feel the E85 deal doesn't look so bad right now since we can grow that and the only corrosion comes if someone doesn't oil a tractor?

Seeking responsibility should not come from fear of a dwindling bottom line; it should come for our desire to serve the communities which support our businesses.

Recently, I heard Sen. Byron Dorgan doing an interview about how he feels that we need to get serious about corporate accountability and stop allowing offshore mailboxes being the corporate headquarters for Tax Dodger Inc.

Havae to agree with him. It's time to bring resposibiity to our communities on par with responsibility ro our share holders.

Oh come on!

I don't screw around with the teeny-pop princesses normally, but I read this and couldn't let it go.

This is from an article about Hilary Duff.

"It's hard having a boyfriend who's older because people just assume," the slimmed-down, shiny-toothed starlet, 18, was recently quoted as telling Elle of the 27-year-old Good Charlotte frontman. "But [virginity] is definitely something I like about myself."

Where the hell is this pop tart's publicist? Stay the hell away from this! My God! No one used to talk about what was your sexual status! Why even go there?

No on should care. No one needs to know.

I blame the trailer park pop tart Ms "Baby Butterfingers" Spears. She started this nonsense and she can't see why people won't leave her alone.

Hilary - pay attention. Look a K-Fed's meal ticket and see your future.

To Cuba: Sorry -- we're busy; you'll have to take a number!

Today's Washington Post has a story how the Cubans are preparing for our invasion since "we all know Fidel has passed".

Look at the U.S. military like your doctor's waiting room or your favorite deli on a Sunday morning. They are too damn busy to mess with a strip of land 95 miles south of the state that gave the president the 2000 election.

Besides, they have no oil and we already have a small foothold there where we are keeping some special guests. Do we really want another government in there?

Ever hear of keeping the devil you know?

Well... duh!

In today's Jerusalem Post....

Iran admitted for the first time on Friday that it did indeed supply long-range Zelzal-2 missiles to Hizbullah.

This one comes right out of the "we figured that one out before we had our egg mcmuffin on the first day of this nonsense" box.

Syria and Iran have been playing this game on the Bush adminstration for years like a couple of teenagers taking advantage of a substitute teache,

Read more at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1154525807791&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Only in That State Up North

From that fine (insert sarcastic hack) place north of Ohio...

A Tozer Road man was hospitalized Saturday; his wife is suspected of dragging him and running over him with a pickup truck.

Deputies suspect use of alcohol and pain medication may have been a factor in the accident that broke the man's hips, foot, arm and pelvis.
Witnesses told Lapeer County Sheriff's Department deputies Chad Whitt and Dave Winstead there was a gathering at the couple's house and people were drinking alcoholic beverages. The hosts ran out of beer and the wife got into their truck with intentions of driving to the market to buy more.
The husband tried to stop his wife from leaving by taking the keys out of the truck. Witnesses said the wife resisted, and shouted a vulgar retort to her spouse.
With an open driver's side door, she started driving and dragged her husband for a short distance. She ran him over with the left rear truck tire.