NateTharp.com

Paul Graham provides an elegant analysis of why religious and political discussions are so polarizing.

What’s different about religion is that people don’t feel they need to have any particular expertise to have opinions about it. All they need is strongly held beliefs, and anyone can have those. No thread about Javascript will grow as fast as one about religion, because people feel they have to be over some threshold of expertise to post comments about that. But on religion everyone’s an expert.

Then it struck me: this is the problem with politics too. Politics, like religion, is a topic where there’s no threshold of expertise for expressing an opinion. All you need is strong convictions.

[via clusterflock]

Powerful and timeless.

[via Scott Robbin]

Edenspiekermann, a design agency based in Germany and The Netherlands, has a great manifesto. It’s outlined in 7 simple points:

1. We work for your customers.
We may have to take their side at times

2. Challenge us.
Complacency is the enemy of great work.

3. We don’t give answers.
Unless we can explore your question.

4. We are not suppliers.
Partnership gets the best result.

5. Talk to us.
We thrive on feedback.

6. Trust us.
You hired us because we can do something you cannot do.

7. Pay us.
Our work adds to your bottom line, so invest in our future

UC San Diego conducted a study about how much data we consume each day. The result: a lot. I believe it too, because this is about how my head feels at the end of a long day.

[via clusterflock]

This reminds me of I did not know that yesterday, but presented in funnier and a more succinct manner.

[via Swissmiss]

Giving the attention they deserve to some of the great, unappreciated correspondences of yesteryear.

I love my Moleskine notebooks, and the Behance Dot Grid Book is pretty sweet too. But the construction of the Konigi 5.25″ floppy disk sketchbook is giving the other two a run for the money.

Demetri Martin once said,

I think hair gel was invented to make it easier to identify a**holes from a distance.

I can say with a degree of certainty, that fedoras are the new hair gel.

For a toy that was invented in 1932, it’s pretty amazing that the boundaries and uses continue to be expanded to this day.

Helping clarify conversations of future plans nationwide, hopefully.

[Via Shawn Blanc]