Time and the Infinite Blog List

My SO CALLED FRIEND, Steve Drace, finds and sends me links to the most improbable, yet interesting, sites, blogs, and knicknacks on the Web. It's maddening, for two reasons, which I fired back at him today:

Steve:

1. Where do you FIND this stuff? And (second part of question) when do you have TIME to find, read, and select the good parts??

2. Do you know how hard I have worked to winnow down my Bloglines feed list to under 100 feeds? It's like cutting off fingers. Now I just ADDED the feed for the blog Your Monkey Called, and because I can't resist clicking on a link that says "and he wants his tapes and pamphlets back," which took me to You Look Nice Today, "The audio-based Journal of Emotional Hygiene," which turned out to be a combo blog and audio blog full of sarcasm, so I added THAT TOO. I fail to resist sarcasm.

My blog list has become like my home library, like my video library, like my WINE library, ferchrissakes, and like my browser bookmarks (abandon hope all ye etc.) -- if I did nothing all my waking hours but read blog posts, I'd never catch up if I lived to be 100! Even in the unlikely event that I stop subscribing to NEW ones!

Jeez.

Hey, wait -- I think I have a blog post!

Yay!

PS: Your Monkey Called was highlighted by Steve for a recent post called "Book Titles, If They Were Written Today," such as

"Then: The Wealth of Nations

Now: Invisible Hands: The Mysterious Market Forces That Control Our Lives and How to Profit from Them"

Today their infinite amusement consists of this entry:

I LOVE HER NAME, I DO

This winter, the BBC brings you a gripping new crime drama…AMANPOUR

A fragrance. A dream. Remembered. Forgotten. Ralph Lauren presents…AMANPOUR

In a world where no man is equal until he has proven himself in a sweaty tropical locale, one man rises above the others. Leonardo DiCaprio stars in Baz Luhrmann’s…AMANPOUR

Crème fraîche over strawberries makes the most delicious…AMANPOUR

---

How can one resist? Now I have to fall behind on THIS too! Arrrrghhh!

Quotable Quotes -- A new batch

Some of my recently gathered quotables:

"What is madness? To have erroneous perceptions and to reason correctly from them"

Voltaire

--

There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965)

--

Claimant complained that Crunchberry cereal contains no berries and she was therefore deceived.

"The survival of the instant claim would require this Court to ignore all concepts of personal responsibility and common sense. The Court has no intention of allowing that to happen."

--May 20, 2009

MORRISON C. ENGLAND, JR.

UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

JANINE SUGAWARA, Plaintiff, v. PEPSICO, INC., Defendant.

No. 2:08-cv-01335-MCE-JFM

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF

CALIFORNIA

--

Lynn Greiner:

"When author Isaac Asimov turned 60, he announced he had just entered his late youth..."

[And since he went on to write another 50 books before dying in his 90s, he may have been literally right.]

--

Maureen Down:

The AP is not a relationship counselor.

[regarding public officials holding confessional press conferences about their cheating ways.]

===

The Novel as Lie

For [novelist JG] Ballard, as he explained in Salon in 1997, the novel is "the greatest enemy of truth and honesty that was ever invented. It's a vast, sentimentalizing structure that reassures the reader and at every point offers the comfort of secure moral frameworks and recognizable characters. This whole notion was advanced by Mary McCarthy and many others years ago, that the main function of the novel was to carry out a kind of moral criticism of life. But the writer has no business making moral judgements or trying to set himself up as a one-man or one-woman magistrate's court. I think it's far better, as (William F.) Burroughs did and I've tried to do in my small way, to tell the truth."

-Quoted in Reason Magazine, June 2009, Joanne McNeil.

----

The Bigger Picture

Human Intelligence consists of:

-A repertoire of concepts (objects, space, time, causation, intention) useful in a social, knowledge-intensive species

-A process of metaphorical abstraction; conceptual structure bleached of its content, applied to new, abstract domains

-Stephen Pinker, "On Language and Thought, at TED, July 2005

http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_language_and_thought.html?ga_source=embed&ga_medium=embed&ga_campaign=embed

--------

I think on-stage nudity is disgusting, shameful and damaging to all things American. But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic and a progressive religious experience.

--Shelley Winters (1922 - 2006)

----

I've gone into hundreds of [fortune-teller's parlors], and have been told thousands of things, but nobody ever told me I was a policewoman getting ready to arrest her.

--New York City detective

--

Tech theorist Linda Stone famously coined the phrase “continuous partial attention” to describe our newly frazzled state of mind.

--

"If everyone's going to get news items from AP as soon as they're out, on their Blackberries, and so on, then what's the net gain that newspapers can provide?," asked Twohig. "You do have the commentary, you do have the beat reporters that really understand the marketplace and provide a thoughtful point of view. You have to add value."

-- Marketwatch, David B. Wilkerson, May 20, 2009

--

In fact, the Residence Inns, Hyatt Places and Holiday Inn Expresses are perfect examples of disruptive technology. They are newer, cleaner and easier to use. They have a simple mission and they fulfill it. They are well-priced and hit the market bulls-eye. Do you really want to pay an extra $200 per day for turn-down service and a chocolate truffle on the pillow ... romantic getaways excepted? Whenever I hire a Residence Inn, Hyatt Place or Holiday Inn Express to do a job, I am pleased.

These new mid-market motels are the Charles Schwabs of the hotel world.

Now let us consider a few American industries that are broken or in need of a refresh: health care, banking, automobiles, energy, to name four.

The way to improve all of these sectors, seems to me, is to ask: What is the equivalent of a Holiday Inn Express? In health care it might be clinics with kiosks that take your temperature, sample your blood and ask you 20 questions before you see the nurse or doctor. In autos, it might a way to configure your car as you do a Dell computer. In banking, it might be using social networks like LinkedIn or Facebook as a platform for new lending cooperatives.

--Forbes, blog, Digital Rules, 'The Holiday Inn Express Solution,' April 2009

--

Fm Scientific American, quoting the 'year-end (2008) issue of the British Medical Journal, well known for its unusual array of offbeat articles':

"In a short item entitled 'A Day in the Life of a Doctor: The PowerPoint Presentation,' two British physicians reveal that 'the main purpose of a PowerPoint presentation is entertainment. Intellectual content is an unwarranted distraction.'

"They go on to advise that 'the more lines of writing that can be coerced onto a slide and the smaller the font, the lower the risk of anyone criticising any data which has accidentally been included' and that 'the number of slides you can show in your allotted time is inversely proportional to the number of awkward questions which can be asked at the end.' "

--

If we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going.

--Professor Irwin Corey

--

Rewriting history to fit current ideologies (i.e. Columbus as native killer) is called “presentism.”

--

10 Newspapers That Will Survive The Apocalypse

Nicholas Carlson|Mar. 28, 2009, 6:30 PM

http://www.businessinsider.com/10-local-newspapers-investors-want-to-acquire-2009-3

Believe it or not, there are investors who still want to buy local newspapers.

Our favorite person of this stripe is an investor who has already plunked millions into the industry and is in the process of spending much more.

"I might be running head first into the buggy-whip business, but I'm not sold on the death of print quite yet," he tells us. (He's asked us to keep him anonymous because many of those deals remain under non-disclosure agreements.)

So what does this investor see in the newspaper industry that the rest of us don't? Lots of room for improvement, for one thing.

His view:

*For most of their existence, newspapers were steady sources of revenue that required little management -- "cash cows that you put your brother in charge of."

*This led to bloat at the large, public conglomerates that now own many of our best local newspapers.

*Then came the Internet. It brought some competition yes, but more devastatingly it brought the perception of a paradigm shift.

*Suddenly, the bloat-tolerant managers at the top of the newspaper chains couldn't turn left without hearing from an equity analyst threatening to slap their company with a "sell" rating if it didn't invest enough in the Internet.

*After a decade of investing in the Internet -- but doing little to fight the bloat -- the conglomerates are collapsing under a weight of debt.

*This debt remains and online ad revenues aren't helping reduce it. The LA Times claims its online ad revenues pay for its newsroom, but our source doesn't buy it. "You had to pull out the duct tape and rubber hoses to make [their formula] work," he says.

Our guy is convinced that underneath the mess, there are plenty of local newspapers that, after cutting newsroom bloat and R&D costs, would be plenty profitable. He says these local newspapers just need to stop "spending on trying to find their way out" and "instead run their current good business."

What does our source think of newspapers on the Web? Not much. He says local papers should have a Web site run by two people that links to international and national news and keeps all local content behind a pay wall or off the Internet entirely.

--

I believe in God -- but I can't stand his fan club.

My favorite prayer: "Lead me to those who seek the truth, and deliver me from those who have found it."

---

[Newspaper failures]

Mono cultures spawn simultaneous failure

The problem is not the new business model, as I wrote in my DaniWeb post, it's the way the business has changed. Instead of concentrating on what they do well, newspapers have become monolithic and brittle. In his Keynote speech last week at AIIM, Andrew Lippman, Founding Associate Director at the MIT Media Lab [7] was talking about the issues related to mono cultures: "I think the institutions are out of scale, past the point of their design," he said "Another problem is they are mono cultures. They are all the same." This means, Lippman pointed out, that when it goes south--as happened last year in the financial sector--all the businesses fail at the same time because they are all doing the same thing. What he said applies to the news business.

--http://www.fiercecontentmanagement.com/node/2358/print

--Ron Miller, Apr 8 2009

--

The original name of the movie Amelie was "Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain"

--

Guaranteed Solution to Our Economic Crisis

[I regret to say that I don't know where I got this.]

"Leave it to a brainy Indian to come up with the cheapest and surest way to stimulate our economy: Immigration.

"All you need to do is grant visas to two million Indians, Chinese, and Koreans," said Shekhar Gupta, editor of 'The Indian Express' newspaper. "We will buy up all the subprime homes. We will work 18 hours a day to pay for them. We will immediately improve your savings rate -- no Indian bank today has more than 2 percent nonperforming loans because not paying your mortgage is considered shameful here. And we will start new companies to create our own jobs and jobs for more Americans."

Problem solved! The real joke is: He's almost certainly right! And of course, it will never happen, which underlines the constraints that prejudice, nutty economic theories, and shortsightedness place on our future.

-------------

The key to success for Obama, if he can figure out how:

"You gotta give 'em HOPE!"

-Harvey Milk

---

'Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. '

Philip K. Dick (1928 - 1982) "How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later" 1978.

He Who Dies With the Most Books, Wins

Now this is a topic I can get into. I have

Too Many Books. Says one side of my brain.

Another side says: What means this "too many books" please?

By one definition, I have too many: I have more books than I could read in the remainder of my life, no matter how long I live. Which is about a thousand books, I estimate.

MOVING

The last (and I do mean "last") time we moved, from one small suburban town to another about 5 miles away, we had professionals move the furniture, but for several days before that we moved the little stuff, including books, in our cars. Two-thirds of the dozen trips were just boxes of books.

It was at that point, after several moves over 20 years with increasing proportions of books to the total amount moved, that I finally understood when my

father had said to my mother, when I was 12, about the house they were about to buy, "Like it? You'd better decide for sure, because we're never moving again."

We're never moving again.

HOME LIBRARY

I once tried to make a list of my books. Fool's errand, and I only have maybe (rough estimate only) a thousand volumes or so - not up to the standards of some of you, I gather.

My kids both had bookshelves in their bedrooms, and are both dedicated readers, now grown. One daughter, as a teen, remarked wonderingly to me that when she visited the homes of her friends, she seldom saw books -- they didn't have bookshelves in the house, and none had bookshelves in the kids' rooms. She was disturbed by this.

Later, in college--USC no less--she remarked how few of her classmates ever read books. And in film school, of course, nobody apparently reads anything longer than 120 pages bound in pressboard covers.

I keep trying to winnow down my library but never seem to make a dent. It's a small miracle if I can get through the year without happening to visit the library book sale and making my problems worse.

What we all need, I think, is a good desert island....

Mac's Art Events Calendar for September 2009!

East Bay Art!

Dear Art-Type Person!

This is my art-events calendar for September, 2009 - and the first of what I hope is a useful monthly series. It is not exhaustive -- just what swims into my ken from time to time. I include art exhibits, art classes, and miscellaneous, mostly from the San Francisco East Bay area.

Many are from the Frank Bette Center in Alameda, which has wonderful classes.

Hope you enjoy! Spread the word!

---

Frank Bette Center for the Arts:

"FIRST FRIDAY GALA OPENING"

September 4th, 7-9 PM

See latest exhibition and meet the artists, chat about art, drink wine and munch on snacks!

Also at Frank Bette:

MUSIC: SAGA -Saturday Afternoon Gallery Acoustic Starts September 5th: "Songwriters Open Mic"

"Come and participate in, or simply enjoy, performances of live acoustic music, in a sunlit room full of fresh air, the latest art exhibit and delightfully congenial company."

At the Frank Bette Center for the Arts - 1601 Paru St (corner of Lincoln), Alameda CA 94501 http://www.frankbettecenter.org

-----

SKETCHBOOK ALAMEDA

Come out and sketch the beautiful sites of Alameda Island with friends. Free, open to all. Saturdays and Wednesdays each month, varying schedules.

Upcoming: Sat. Sept 12 and Wed. Sept 23 Naval Airbase on Alameda Island.

Both days: 10:a.m. at Hanger One distillery site -- Start sketching by 10:15 -- We have lots of buildings, the distillery inside, the SF skyline, BIG ships -- a good day to bring a picnic for chat and critique around noon. Just Show Up!

ART CLASSES

OIL PAINTING CLASSES WITH THE GREAT CAROL TARZIER

Carol, a wonderful painter in oils, teaches this fall through the San Leandro Adult School, starting Sept. 11 thru Jan. 29, $

195 for 18 weeks (good price, actually!), Fridays 10-2, in the Great Room at the Methodist Church, 1600 Bancroft Ave., San Leandro ("huge open room with high ceilings). Beginning class as well as for continuing students. "The first half of the class focuses on landscape painting, the second half on still life."

I've taken her class and she's terrific and inspirational (even though I will never reach her level of artistry if I live to be 99). The school online enrollment is not active yet, so to enroll send a check for $195 to San Leandro Adult School, 2255 Bancroft Ave, San Leandro 94577, marking the envelope "Attn Bradley Frazier, Vice Principal" and write on the check "Fine Art-Painting Fridays." School phone is (510) 618-4420, www.sanleandroadultschool.org. To reach the church, take the Grand Ave. exit off 580 East, down several blocks, and the Methodist Church is on your left at Bancroft, park in the lot.

Carol is also teaching the same course at her own studio, SATURDAYS Sept 12 thru Nov 6 and again Nov 13 thru Jan 30. Cost is $180 for each half, or $320 for both (cost is higher because she has to cover her own insurance, utilities, etc.). For these classes, make out the check to Carol Tarzier and send it to her studio at 1217 32nd St., Oakland, CA 94608. You can see some of her painting at http://tarzier.com/portfolio/painting/

LEARN FROM THE INCOMPARABLE SUSAN LEA HACKETT!

"EXPRESSIVE FIGURE PAINTING WITH WATERCOLOR"

Watercolor techniques to develop the expressive quality of value, color, and composition with the figure.

Hackett is one of the finest watercolor figure painters, and the opportunity to learn from her is a privilege not to be missed! More info and enroll at

http://frankbettecenter.org/hacket-expressive-figure-painting.html

and see samples of her wonderfully expressive work!

Classes, $135 (nonmembers) for three-day sessions, 9:30am to 12:30pm:

Sept 11-18-25

Oct 9-16-23

Nov 13-20-27

"LIQUID THERAPY--DRAMA BY DESIGN"

WATERCOLOR WORKSHOP WITH TERRI HILL

Oct 23-25 a the SWA Gallery in Redwood City, $247.

Limited to 15 students.

"3-Day Workshop in transparent watercolor works that tell a story by going deep with pigment, reflecting the past with juicy material incorporating our personal framework. There will be demos on painting liquids, both contained and not. We will get wet and wild under it all, painting from photographic references. Demos and discussions each day followed by painting in class.

SWA--Society for Western Artists, 2625 Broadway St, Redwood City 94063; more info and registration form available at SocietyofWesternArtists.com; or email mzsherrylee@msn.com, or call Sherry Vockel (650) 873-0118.

BRIANA LEARNIHAN: "MIXED MEDIA ART MADNESS!"

Sundays, 11-2 pm on September 6, 13, 20

Mix it up! Save money and have more fun with your gift giving this year.Make art with anything! Learn new and unusual approaches and techniques. They make great art gifts!

Sept 6: Unforgettable Greeting Cards, and more.

Sept 13, Artist Trading Cards, Tags, and Tag Books to share with family and friends

Sept. 20, Paper Bag Books, Match Covers, and more!

Take any one class for $30 or all three for $80.

Get all the information you need on this class and about Briana at

http://frankbettecenter.org/Learnihan-briana.html

where you can sign up for this and other Frank Bette classes.

DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY POTENTIAL, with Chris Rochette

Are all the special features and creative options in your digital camera collecting cobwebs? Explore the inner workings of your camera and brush off the cobwebs! Learn to use the powerful tools which often go unleashed in most digital cameras. Turn those complex menus and extra buttons into something with real potential.

6 classes - Thursdays 6-8:30PM

September 10, 17, 24 Oct 8, 15, 22

Members $100 - nonmembers $120

http://frankbettecenter.org/chris-rochette-photography-class.html

LUMINOUS PASTELS!

with Gema Lopez

Come learn how to produce breathtaking still life portraits glowing with brilliant color!

Class will cover color theory, composition, setting up and drawing the still life’s lighting, as well as experimenting with different surfaces and types of pastels.

There is a $10 materials fee payable at first class.

Sat/Sun October 10-11, 2009

9:30 – 4:30pm

$125 members and $160 non-members.

Register at:

http://frankbettecenter.org/gema-lopez-pastel-workshop.html

ALAMEDA "ESTUARY ART ATTACK" GALLERY EVENINGS

Alameda appears to be rivalling Berkeley as an art colony kind of a place.

They've started something they're calling Estuary Art Attack, which is a "First Thursdays" kind of a thing, in that you get a map of the local art galleries which will be open from 6 to 9 each 2nd Friday of each month.

And of course as long as you're traipsing over the Alameda, you might as well dine -- and there are of course lots o' cool restaurants, clubs, cafes, and bars to check out -- including the tiki bar, Forbidden Island, that we went to last month (cute, but service that night was awful! Maybe it will be better when you're there.)

Go to http://www.estuaryartattack.com for the map & all necessary details including promos from many eateries and wine places.

Check it out, arties!

FRANK BETTE NEEDS VOLUNTEERS!

Debra Owen, who woman's the front desk daily and eveningly at the Frank Bette Center for the Arts, goes on vacation in September and they need volunteers to sit in for her!

If you're available to staff any of the following dates, please contact her at debra@frankbettecenter.org

1-7pm, Saturday Sept 5

7-9pm, Thur Sept 10 (during classes)

7-9pm, Fri Sept 11 (during Art Attack & Movie)

11am-2pm, Saturday Sept 12 -Just a couple of hours here, folks!

7-9pm Saturday Sept 12 (during Poetry Reading)

11am-1pm, Wednesday Sept 9 - another short one!

7-9pm, Thursday Sept 10 (during classes)

4-5pm, Wednesday Sept 16

7-9pm, Wednesday Sept 16 (during classes)

7-9pm, Thursday Sept 17 (during classes & storytelling)

11am-7pm, Saturday Sept 19

7-9pm, Saturday Sept 19 (during Special Poetry Reading)

Contact Deb now at debra@frankbettecenter.org or call 510-523-6957 (leave message if you have to).

Debra says: Yes, you will get training!

And: "I’m also looking for someone who’ll be the “Team Leader” for gallery staff while I’m gone. The job is to be the follow-up point person for “difficult” questions (calls). A also work out scheduling glitches (if someone cancels, try to find a replacement). Maybe it would be a good idea to have two/three Team Leaders!"

LIFE DRAWING

Frank Bette Center, every Tuesday 6:30 - 9:30 pm.

Gesture Poses with a nude model

.

All skill levels welcome. Bring your own materials.

Space limited. Pay by the month to cover model fee: $35 - $45 depending on number of artists.

Limited Drop-in Spaces are available at $15 per session.

Frank Bette Members only please! (No Instructor)

INTERESTING ON THE WEB

Two interesting artists to gawk at, envy, and hate for their astonishing technique. These two are 'realists,' to say the least:

The Art of Rob Hefferan

http://www.robhefferan.net/

and mind-blowing

Underwater Paintings by Eric Zener

http://www.ericzener.com/recentwork/recentwork.htm

LOCAL PLEIN AIRE PAINTING GROUPS

See http://www.pleinairlinks.com/Plein_Air_Links/Welcome.html

the organizing site for a number of Bay Area outdoor painting groups:

Benecia Plein Air Painting Group (aka DaGroup)

http://www.pleinairlinks.com/Plein_Air_Links/DaGroup.html

Peninsula Outdoor Painters (aka POPs)

http://www.pleinairlinks.com/Plein_Air_Links/POPs.html

A Few Other Painting Groups listed at http://www.pleinairlinks.com/Plein_Air_Links/Other_Group_Links.html

See also http://www.pleinairlinks.com/Plein_Air_Links/Introduction.html for an overview of how to get on the mailing list(s) and what it's all about. The groups post photos of their weekend adventures every month so you can see what your competition looks like ;-).

On Twitter now, God help me!

Image via CrunchBase

When I was Reviews Editor of InfoWorld in the 80s, I would get a stack of (postal) mail literally three feet high, every morning. Obtaining an electric envelope-opener was a major convenience -- as was obtaining an assistant to actually do the work, since slicing open the envelopes was the half of it -- you had to remove the material from the envelope, unfold it (usually), and place it in the pile.

Then I'd go through the pile, throwing out the 60% irrelevant. Then go through the remainder again to sort into Useful/Interesting and Dunno Yet.

That took an hour each morning.

By mid-90s, I got almost no physical mail at all. I was editor-in-chief of SunWorld Online, so most relevant mail went to my editors; but communications were mostly through email. That meant about 100 relevant emails a day -- plus 200 or so spam messages. I had two dozen subfolders in my inbox to sort through it all and felt it was a great personal victory to sort my inbox down to under 100 active messages on any given day. (Of course, filed-away mail was often forgotten thereafter.)

I also subscribed to about two dozen magazines at work, mostly free trade and professional journals, which piled up in the corner with only an article or two read in each. At home I subscribed to another 18 or so computer magazines plus fun reading like Forbes and Wired. Never kept up on them either. By the year zero (2000), I had cancelled most pubs and was down to perhaps five.

I retired three years ago and the first thing I did was subscribe to The Wall Street Journal and The Economist, Now That I Finally Have Time to Read Them -- fatally innocent conceit!

Image via CrunchBase

The WSJ, my favorite newspaper in the world, plus two local papers (the metro and the local), extended my breakfast to two hours each morning. I couldn't keep it up -- it was just too much. And The Economist--my god, what a labor that came to be! It covers all the topics you normally skip by or don't get much sense out of in the regular press -- especially what's going on in other countries -- and you *think * you can just skim through them and get a sense of what's going on in the rest of the world -- but you dip into *any* article and the high-quality writing and the depth of your ignorance combine to force you to read the whole article.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Since the magazine is 100 pages with not more than 10 pages of ads, that's 90 dense pages of text every week on MEGO subjects (Mine Eyes Glaze Over -- a Washington term for Very Important but Very Boring subject matter, like the Fed or Kazakhstan). It takes *hours* to read the thing. And while you're in the middle of reading it -- here comes another issue!

Tip for magazine publishers: A magazine whose main virtue is that you can skim through it quickly and toss it should not be dismissed. When I subscribed to all those tech pubs, the lighter ones that I could skim-and-toss in ten minutes I read every week -- Wired, I still have back issues from the 90s here!

Then I installed Bloglines and joined to the great Blog revolution. Despite occasional severe pruning, I have 96 feeds, some with 200 unread blogs, others with two or three hundred Saved blog writings. I love it; I can't spend four hours a day on it. Of course, I started four blogs of my own, to add to the general noise level. Sigh.

I finally signed up for Twitter, which offered me the opportunity to Follow the tweets of the people in my Gmail contacts list -- it turns out 82 of my friends and colleagues are Twittering. Eighty-two.

I Followed them all, just to get my feet wet. I now spend 20 minutes twice a day scrolling through Tweets, almost all of which aren't especially of interest to me. I UnFollowed two friends today and it was like losing five pounds.

Ovewhelmed by info? Oh yeah. Yet I love the stream of info, some of which is amazing, fascinating, amusing, shocking. Bury me with my stacked-up magazines, and my laptop tuned to Twitter and Bloglines -- I'll smile all the way to damnation, and complain to St Peter about it.

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• How to Simply Explain Twitter

Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat,Pray,Love) On Creativity & Dobby the House Elf

Gilbert's talk at the (wonderful) TED Conference can be an inspiration to each of us who hopes for creative opportunities to blossom in our retirement:

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/453

Ole!

-mac

PS: As one who has already had an achievement that leads to the suspicion that one's greatest achievement is behind one, I was particularly impressed with this speech.

"Elderhostel" Force to Change Its Name....

The education-travel company that has specialized in (pricey) trips with educational themes, mainly aimed at retired people, has hit the Boomers wall, apparently: They feel compelled to change their name, on the grounds that some members and would-be members object to the notion of the word "Elder."

Some also don't like the word "hostel" because the accommodations are actually first-class hotels and the like.

They claim they will also try to find ways to cut the prices of their (to me) breathtakingly expensive packages. (They have "scholarships" but that's not a solution for most of us.)

The new name will be unveiled in the fall.

COMMENT: I think this is another in what will be a wave of problems created by us Age Deniers, the Boomer generation: We hate any reference to aging, so it becomes a problem for any marketers. I've run into this: I have a site for those of my generation who are retiring; BoomersRetired.com -- and I can guarantee you, the word Boomers will be a problem on an ongoing basis. But it's hard to work around: My site is aimed at my generation, not the previous generation now in their 70s, and not at GenX either, who are too far away from retirement to worry about it other than financially.

Dealing with the deliberate self-delusions of your market is one of the great challenges every marketeer faces, I think.

mac