professional
Ken Burns on filmmaking
If you wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer or a feature film I could tell you the steps to take to do that, but every working documentary filmmaker I know has gotten there through their own unique path. There is no career path.
The Pines : Tremolo
The Pines‘ latest album, Tremolo, has earned some great reviews fresh out of the chute, including
Penguin Eggs, which reviewed it in this month’s issue:
Potent, poignant, minimalist country from Iowans David Huckfelt and Benson Ramsey (son of Greg Brown sideman Bo, who produced this record). The duo spin spare, haunting melodies and imagistic words over deceptively gentle intertwinings of acoustic and electric guitar, stand-up bass, keys and drums.
But song after song, with soft, wearied voices, they reveal a lyrical world view both thoughtful and tough, keenly attuned to harsh realities and the glimpses of consolation that peek through the solitude and loss inherent in life. “We surrender, just to survive/ But no matter how hard you try/ No, you can’t put the tears/ Back into your eyes,†Ramsey sings (with the help of his dad) on Shiny Shoes. What’s remarkable is how such an unsentimental outlook is married to music at once so fragile, so gravid and, ultimately, beautiful. If I were a betting man, I’d say watch for this album on a lot of critics’ top 10 lists for 2009.
Joie de vivre
I read this today in the Business Insider:
A new survey from UBS has shown that the French continue to work the least amount of hours per year in the world. Once again, the French have blown away the competition.
People work an average of 1,902 hours per year in the surveyed cities but they work much longer in Asian and Middle Eastern cities. People in Lyon and Paris, by contrast, spend the least amount of time at work according to the global comparison: 1,582 and 1,594 hours per year respectively.
Upon seeing this data, some might criticize the French for being lazy, but that misses the point completely. The real message here is that the French are likely some of the most productive people in the entire world.
Think about it. Nationmaster ranks France as #18 in terms of GDP per capita, at $36,500 per person, yet France works much less than most developed nations. They achieve their high standard of living while working 16% less hours than the average world citizen, and almost 25% than their Asian peers as per UBS. Plus, if you visit France you’ll also realize that their actual standard of living is probably much higher than GDP numbers would indicate.
Thus, if one were to divide France’s GDP per capita by actual hours worked, you’d probably find that the French are achieving some of the highest returns on work-hours invested. Labor Alpha, if you will.
We can actually calculate this Labor Alpha using statistics from Nation Master.
France has $36,500 GDP/Capita and works 1,453 hours per year. This equates to a GDP/Capita/Hour of $25.10. Americans, on the other hand, have $44,150 GDP/Capita but work 1,792 hours per year. Thus Americans only achieve $24.60 of GDP/Capita/Hour.
This puts the French Labor Alpha at about $0.50 GDP/Capita/Hour over the US. It may sound small at first, but add that up across millions of people, and a few decades. Now you’ve built a lesson for the rest of the world to learn.
Winning is not about working hard. It’s about working smart… and less. As the French know well.
MIT Media Lab: Personas
Personas is a component of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit, currently on display at the MIT Museum by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab. It uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one’s aggregated online identity. In short, Personas shows you how the Internet sees you. Here’s one of mine but you can click on it to make it bigger and easier to read: 
=
c
