The Big Think

I’m currently reading “The Cobra Event” by Richard Preston. Preston is a wonderful popularizer (Barbara Sher would call him a “Scanner”) and has written several extraordinary non-fiction science books (notably “The Hot Zone”). In The Cobra Event, Preston steps into a fictional modern world to tell the story of a terrorist attack via an engineered biological virus. Terrifyingly plausible. The cover of the book says “President Clinton was so alarmed by The Cobra Event…. that he instructed intelligence experts to evaluate its credibility.” I can see why. Note: if you’re squeamish, this book is probably not for you. It contains one of the most graphic (but interesting) autopsy descriptions I’ve ever seen.
Strangely, I’d never heard the word “diener” before, and then in the last week I’ve encountered it in at least three separate and unrelated settings. Weird when that happens. Diener is a morgue attendant.

Richard Preston also wrote one of my absolute favorite science books. First Light: the Search For the Edge of the Universe. Preston follows a group of Mt. Palomar Observatory astronomers around for a few months and gets inside their heads and jobs. It’s a FASCINATING look into the world of the professional astronomer and, for a science geek like me, a must-read.

Rather, the opportunity lies in the corporations that long ago stopped paying attention to Macs. Right now, three key trends are leading IT guys to take a second look at Apple. The first is the lure of the cheap and dirty Unix workstation. The second is the rise of laptops. The third, and most potent, is the growing frustration with the Microsoft monoculture and all too common worm attacks that gum up corporate networks. All three factors have long lurked in the background, but now they can’t be avoided. From Businessweek

Scully uses the crowd like nobody else. He still gets those goose bumps from the roar of a crowd, and he makes it a part of the broadcast. At the most exciting, historically significant moments, when other announcers would blather on about how exciting and historically significant the moment is, Scully shuts up. When Koufax struck out Harvey Kuenn to complete his perfect game, Scully stayed quiet for 38 seconds while the crowd roared. When Henry Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s career home run record with his 715th in 1974, Scully said, “It’s gone!” — and then took off his headset and stood in the back of the booth so he wouldn’t be tempted to ruin the moment by talking. When the Brooklyn Dodgers won their only World Series, in 1955, he said, simply, “Ladies and gentlemen, the Brooklyn Dodgers are the champions of the world.” (He would later claim that he would have been unable to say more, for fear of bursting into tears.)
Yes.
I pulled this material from this brilliant piece of sportswriting by Gary Kaufman. You owe it to yourself to read it and see another artist at work.

If you’re a baseball fan, check this story out. It reminded me that customers are much more than just a means to a paycheck, that good business means making the customer feel appreciated, and that Vin Scully is a classy guy.
“My love affair with the Dodgers went on for decades. I even met my husband sitting next to him at the stadium. I wrote about it to Scully, and he told the story during the broadcast on the day of our wedding, in between pitches to Cubs great Billy Williams. The Dodgers even sent me and my husband box-seat tickets, the first we’d ever had, with a letter from the president of the club, and they put congratulations on the message board in the outfield. “

CNN.com has another story about the benefits of black tea. According to a recent study, black tea lowers bad cholesterol. Many thanks to the brave study participants who drank the “caffeinated-tea-like-flavored-water-placebo”. Aren’t you supposed to not be able to tell when you’re taking the placebo? yech.
Thanks Patrick

At first, I was annoyed that a Denver judge blocked the DNC list on the basis of a free speech argument. “Free Speech?” said I, “bull-oney.” Why is it okay for someone selling something (which I have preemptively said I do NOT wish to buy) to claim free speech, and yet my wishes as a citizen and consumer go unheeded? Don’t I have the freedom to refuse to listen to a sales pitch? Well, it turns out the judge in Denver may be more on the consumer’s side that I originally thought.
From Yahoo News: But the judge’s decision points to a possible solution: creating a do-not-call list that treats all annoying calls equally. It would provide no special protection for political fundraising or charities. Instead, each household could decide which calls to let through.

So hopefully this means we can someday get a real DNC list that does what is promises. Direct marketers would be wise to heed the list even if it doesn’t become backed by the force of law. Voluntarily agreeing to stop calling the 51million Americans on the list means they save serious money on phone bills and payroll for employees who won’t be wasting their time calling consumers who don’t want what they’re peddling. The DNC can be a serious boon to the industry if they would just open their eyes to see it.