Kelly wrote a great blog post about product reinforcement at the 3Ones blog. It’s inspired by the Simon Sinek’s TedX talk. Here’s the video of his talk:

http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

I think I posted it here previously. I’m a huge fan of Sinek. Go buy his book “Start With Why“. This guy actually called Kelly to personally thank him for the evangelism. I love personal touches like that.

In conclusion, here’s a photo of my leg.
No reason other than it’s an awesome photo and Kelly included it in his blog post. 🙂 Kevin Baird snapped the photo at a wine event MindTouch hosted in San Diego a couple years ago.

A senior astronomer has said that the hunt for alien life should take into account alien “sentient machines”.

via BBC News – Alien hunters ‘should look for artificial intelligence’.

Coincidentally, just last week at work I quoted Terry Bisson’s 1990 short story: “They’re Made Out Of Meat“.

It’s very short and starts like this:

“They’re made out of meat.”

“Meat?”

“Meat. They’re made out of meat.”

“Meat?”

“There’s no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They’re completely meat.”

“That’s impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?”

“They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don’t come from them. The signals come from machines.”

“So who made the machines? That’s who we want to contact.”

Read the whole thing, it’s great.

“Thinking meat! You’re asking me to believe in thinking meat!”

Earlier today I found this photo log of the Russian wildfires on Boston.com: http://bit.ly/azxrOC. They’ve also posted color photographs taken between 1909 and 1912 in Russia by photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) who undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II. These are fantastic.

An Armenian woman in national costume poses for Prokudin-Gorskii on a hillside near Artvin (in present day Turkey), circa 1910. Google Map, (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC)

via Russia in color, a century ago – The Big Picture – Boston.com.

I was so lazy on my ride to work this morning.
http://connect.garmin.com:80/activity/embed/45145351
It wasn’t until I got to work that I realized I was completely dehydrated. My ride home was much better even though it was one of the hottest days I’ve commuted.
http://connect.garmin.com:80/activity/embed/45145362

A team of students from MIT’s SENSEable Cities Lab have just won the American round of the 2010 James Dyson Award for inventing the Copenhagen Wheel. This simple contraption transforms a regular peddle bicycle into a hybrid electric bike.

The wheel (PDF) employs a method used in Formula 1 race cars known has Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS). Normally when a car brakes, energy is created in the form of heat on the rotors and pads. In vehicles with KERS, that energy is captured and reused by the motor during acceleration.

The Copenhagen Wheel works on the same principal. Energy from the braking is captured an electric motor, which generates a current that is stored on a battery. Later, when the rider is going uphill or needs extra speed, she can tap into that stored energy.

via Bike Wheel Transforms Peddling Into Power : Discovery News.

This is fantastic.

As for how to write well, here’s the short version: Write a bad version 1 as fast as you can; rewrite it over and over; cut out everything unnecessary; write in a conversational tone; develop a nose for bad writing, so you can see and fix it in yours; imitate writers you like; if you can’t get started, tell someone what you plan to write about, then write down what you said; expect 80% of the ideas in an essay to happen after you start writing it, and 50% of those you start with to be wrong; be confident enough to cut; have friends you trust read your stuff and tell you which bits are confusing or drag; don’t (always) make detailed outlines; mull ideas over for a few days before writing; carry a small notebook or scrap paper with you; start writing when you think of the first sentence; …

Keep reading, it gets even better: Writing, Briefly.

I had a great 40 mile ride this morning around the San Diego Harbor.

http://connect.garmin.com:80/activity/embed/44668607
I also took some photos while I was on the ride.

Captain Tenacity (Company Premiere 1998) by Ashley Roland. Photo by Brian Hill. Just because I like it.