Mike Bennett has put his vampire audio novel ‘Underwood and Flinch’ up on You Tube. This is totally worth you time. Mike does great stuff.
We’re coming up on Halloween so here’s a cool, creepy vid for you (h/t i09)
We’ll stick with the animal world with this brilliant infographic on cheetahs. I include it here not only for its intrinsic value but as an inspiration into thinking about how other types of data (yes, I’m looking at you intelligence analysts) could be presented in different and (dare I say it) more effective ways. Click on the image to see the thing in it’s big, animated glory.
huh…seem to be on an anatomy kick today. Check out these amazing pics of animal skulls from the NYTimes. Lesson learned today: Do NOT screw with the Chinese water deer.
Estragon42 has put up a bit of fiction asking the questions ‘What if Hemingway deployed to Afghanistan?‘ Check it out.
Finally, courtesy of Discover magazine, is this piece summarizing research that seems to indicate that people that sign their documents on the top of documents (before they’ve entered data or made a statement) their information is more accurate than if they sign at the bottom of the document (after they’ve already done the work).
People are often dishonest in little ways on forms, rounding numbers in a beneficial direction or failing to mention a relatively small item as part of a larger list. If they sign a form once they’ve done all that, they don’t go back and correct it; instead, they’ve already woven a story to themselves—consciously or not—about why what they did was perfectly fine.
It’s worth noting that most intelligence products do not have the author(s) names attached. Now, there’s usually a very good reason for that. Namely, that the analysis done is supposed to represent the agency’s position and not the individuals. Additionally, there’s a security issue as well. Knowing that analyst ‘A’ is the one who writes all the stuff about security issues in Outer Mongolia opens that analyst up to targeting and influence.
That being said, I’ve heard analysts say things like ‘I don’t care, my name’s not on this.’ There’s got to be a way to address both problems.
