Archive for 2010

Twelve Years Ago

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010
Twelve Years Ago

I got the following email today, sent from myself exactly 12 years ago. A University of Michigan alum was looking for people to join his new startup. I was a little bit tempted by it, but instead just forwarded it to my future self in anticipation of the "prototype" he was pitching... »

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Demographic Diversity on the Web

Wednesday, December 1st, 2010
Demographic Diversity on the Web

"Men are from Mars, women are from Venus," proclaimed John Gray in his influential, yet controversial, 1992 book of the same title, which highlights differences between the sexes. This summer Irmak SirerJake Hofman and I explored an online version of this issue, examining the extent to which the... »

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How To Do What You Want: Akrasia and Self-Binding

Monday, November 15th, 2010
How To Do What You Want: Akrasia and Self-Binding

UPDATE: A revised version of this article now appears at blog.beeminder.com/akrasia. Preface: I love dog food, metaphorically speaking, of course. This article is about forcing oneself to do what one wants to do and I, among other things, want a new Messy Matters article to go out no less often than the... »

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Out With the New, In With the Old

Friday, October 1st, 2010
Out With the New, In With the Old

When the avant-garde jazz group The Bad Plus first covered Nirvana’s "Smells Like Teen Spirit” almost ten years ago, they inspired heated controversy for their supposedly non-traditional approach to jazz. But when John Coltrane first recorded his now classic 1960 performance of the show tune “My... »

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Birds of a Feather Shop Together

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010
Birds of a Feather Shop Together

(Cross posted at Decision Science News.) Do you know what the #$*! your social media strategy is? Perhaps it's "to facilitate audience conversations and drive engagement with social currency"? Or maybe "to amplify word of mouth by motivating influencers"? Well, given all the lies and damned lies being told about social, fellow... »

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