I spent the past weekend in Charleston for a wedding and brief respite. While there, I couldn't help but notice the prevalence of Papyrus (the typeface) employed on many signs, restaurant menus, plaques, and brochures. This is not surprising. It's such a crappy typeface that people can't help but play a cruel joke on the typography geeks of the world by promoting its use.
My birthday was on Monday and, thankfully, no one gave me any birthday cards set in the Papyrus typeface. Don't get any ideas folks. You know how deep my well of hate for Papyrus is.
The self-aware robots now have a leader.
Jokes Lord and I came up
- all that pragmatism is just robo speak for "destroy all humans!"
- Yes We Can.... destroy all humans
- Robobama Smash!
We linked to a very cool Vimeo ad for the Honda Insight a few weeks back, but now the reviews of the actual car are out and they aren't very good.
With gems like
So here goes. It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn’t have to drive it any more.
and
So you’re sitting there with the engine screaming its head off, and your ears bleeding, and you’re doing only 23mph because that’s about the top speed, and you’re thinking things can’t get any worse, and then they do because you run over a small piece of grit.
I can't see many people wanting to drive this car.
First, go and read the New Yorker article, How David Beats Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell. It's worth the read, promise.
Then, help me with these questions.
- Why did Rick Rick Pitino fail in the NBA?
- His players did not buy into his system. They were too concerned about looks (Why George Washington went to traditional warfare) to play the press.
- He didn't fully implement his system in the pros. (I don't like this answer. I think he tried hard to do the press)
- Maximum effort and traditional strategy beats maximum effort with untraditional strategies and sub-par players.
- Following the '1.3' thought process further, if Goliath is willing to work just as hard as David, how can David win?
The answer to this seems to be untraditional strategy might give him a chance but untraditional strategy alone is not a sure winner.
I submitted this to my soon-to-be former insurance company after trying (unsuccessfully) to cancel my account today:
Having done some work with Lotus Notes myself, I understand the difficulty in building features that actually work. Lotus Notes / Domino is one of the worst (I hesitate to say platforms or frameworks or environments) handicaps to modern web development. The Blue Cross Blue Shield site and the "tools" therein are about as easy to use as the Lotus Notes foundation they're built upon. So it's not surprising that the website is useless and so much responsibility is placed on telephone operators. Honestly, it would probably be better to just not offer any online tools than offering what's there now. The fact that a website as critical as BCBS exists and uses Lotus Notes is astonishing. What's perhaps more sad than astonishing is that instead of investing in an online system that would allow customers to manage their accounts online 24 / 7 / 365, funds seem to flow to an antiquated customer support infrastructure that only operates during regular business hours (8:30am - 5:30pm M-F). So, it's understandably frustrating for me to set aside time outside of my normal work week to manage my insurance only to find out that (1) customer service doesn't work after 5:30pm or on weekends, and (2) the website is so utterly useless that I can't accomplish a single useful task on it
I hope this email reaches someone who can affect change and ultimately invest in a more useful web-based system that would alleviate strain on the customer support staff, improve member satisfaction and (probably) the bottom line.
I love almost all of Neil Krug's photos. Retro and beautiful and dangerous. Thanks to Yewknee for linking to Neil's work.