I also want to send e-mails to some of my students.

As for what style exercises are for, I can’t say it any better than Stevie did, so I’m republishing it here:

I often hear people say things like, “I’m not good at writing.” Quite simply, the point of style exercises is to remind yourself that that is ridiculous.

When you say something like that, you are often comparing yourself to this writer or that writer whose style is mysteriously able to move your or inform you or make you laugh. A style exercise takes the mystery out of good writing. Well, it takes the mystery out of any writing. You learn through imitating different writing styles, first ridiculous and then more subtle, that you can choose to use longer sentences to make your writing sound more grandiose or choose simple words to make it playful. You can also choose not to do these things. When you see patterns in other people’s word choice, sentence structure punctuation, and point of view, you get to know very well what makes a piece sound epic or silly or biting or intense. You also get to know that all writing has rhythm.

It’s all about control. Once you can play dress-up in someone else’s style, you can learn to control your own. Then, you decide what kind of a writer you want to be and how you want to make your readers feel.

Okay so this subject has been bothering me for a while now. I’ve been hearing so many people talk about how Obama hasn’t been doing anything and he’s all talk. Uhm, hello? Bush came in for 8 years and created all this crap and everyone expects Obama to fix it in less than 2 years? It doesn’t make any sense. I’m not saying that Obama is the answer to all our problems or that he’s going to fix everything during his term but I’m just saying that people need to give him a chance. I mean really, does everyone expect him to fix the economy, the war, and this country in less than half a term? So, please if you’re one of those people who are saying, “Obama is all talk” or “Obama doesn’t do shit”, I seriously need you to think about what I’m saying. OBAMA CAN’T FIX EVERYTHING IN 1 1/2 YEARS! I just needed to get this off my mind, that I tried to do something about this problem, and if you don’t disagree with me, I don’t mind, but you should really think about how long it takes to fix 8 years worth of damage.

This is a good reminder — one I even need myself — for our hyper-fast times.

Have fun with your essays! I’m going rafting!

And this:

I’ll just tell you what a kiss SHOULD be like. Well, nobody wants a hella dramatic twilight kiss. Like, what the hell, Edward looks constipated. “I LOVE YOU SO MUCH IT HURTS.” No.

–Kathy

It’s a well known industry secret that Nokia was not at all happy that their 6310 model lasted for years and years. People loved that phone. Hung on to it for ages. Nokia fired the man who made it. Their average handset is engineered to last for two years. Based on my own experience, the iPhone is not much better.
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Now, 1.2 billion phones were sold last year. If I’m to believe what I see in the grey market in Africa, that number is even higher. About half of those went to first-time buyers. The other half, replacements.
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I want you to take a few seconds and picture the heap of junk that 600 million mobile phones are going to create.
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Landfill, anyone?

The curse of the innovation age

(via Umair Haque on twitter)

(Note: Nothing I say is original; it’s mostly me summarizing/synthesizing what I’ve lately been obsessively reading.)

I wasn’t able to justify my love of Machiavelli properly last night. Allow me to do so here. I love The Prince because it is as subversive as The Art of War.

The Art of War is a Taoist book. This feels contradictory because Taoism is all about peace. Yet the book, despite talking about war, is actually anti-war. The best victories are those that come without fighting. Protracted war is the worst. Moreover, it defends this anti-war position by using the language of the belligerent. It is a smart, subversive book.

The Prince is also a subversive book. It’s written to a jerk and couched in amoral language. However, he warns princes not to isolate themselves from the people. It’s in their best interests (amorally) to be supported by the people. One can’t get this from merely reading the Prince, although if one reads it with the right frame of mind, one can feel its subversive nature. Those who have ever read The Prince and laughed aloud know what I’m talking about. The evidence comes from The Discourses, where he makes clear his love for Republican government. The next evidence comes from his life. Machiavelli despised mercenaries and tried to build a citizen army. He spent his latter years in exile, spending most of his time reading the ancients. Through his reading, he conversed with men such as Cicero, no doubt. These people were obsessed with virtue and freedom. Machiavelli was also a fun person, constantly playing practical jokes. This leads me to believe that he’d have the necessary mindset to write a subversive text. He did not take himself too seriously, so I wonder why the rest of us do.

I think people also make the same mistake with Plato and Ben Franklin. There is an intellectual tradition of not taking one’s self too seriously, and I believe Machiavelli is a part of it.

Sure, an asshole businessman can read The Art of War, and maybe get something out of it, but he won’t understand the message behind the book. The same applies to The Prince.

Perhaps one day, I’ll back this up with all the necessary textual evidence. For now, I thought it important to defend my thoughts, no matter how poor that defense was.

As always,
Shawn