You have to like what you do enough that the concept of “spare time” seems mistaken. Which is not to say you have to spend all your time working. You can only work so much before you get tired and start to screw up. Then you want to do something else—even something mindless. But you don’t regard this time as the prize and the time you spend working as the pain you endure to earn it.
] Paul Graham on How to Do What You Love
I send this article to friends every so often… and I re-read it 3-4 months. Its a fantastic, fantastic piece of writing. Its part of the reason I left my old-old job in 2007.
…the purpose of The Joker for us was always that he has no arc, he has no development he doesn’t learn anything through the film, he’s an absolute. He cuts through the film sort of like the shark in Jaws so he’s a catalyst for action, people are reacting off and being affected by him.
] Christopher Nolan interviewed @ Slashfilm
One of the criticisms that could be directed at the Dark Knight is that the Joker’s mechanations are not shown. With the exception of the opening heist, we are never shown HOW the Joker is able to do what he does - we never see his hideout, his henchmen, or his operation.
But that’s not the point at all.
He is the shark. Showing the audience how the Joker operate would remove the mystery and the menace and the fear. We (and Batman) need to feel that he is everywhere.
… and its also why the Joke is very deliberately labelled “a terrorist” by Gordon.
(from the UPS gripe sheets after every flight)
P: Left inside main tire almost needs replacement.
S: Almost replaced left inside main tire.
[…]
P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
S: Evidence removed.
] Plenty More @ Coming Anarchy
Watching 300 today, I was struck by ludicrousness of trying to find a single, unifying political or even moral idea in the film. Zach Snyder wanted to shoot the comic, he wanted to fry your brains with pictures. And did so — kudos to Zack.
] John Rogers on 300
(the rest is worth reading cause he does a fantastic analysis of 300)
In case you’ve missed the collective geekgasm, the Watchmen trailer has been released. Visually, it looks pretty reverential to the material. but its not the visuals I’m worried about. Its the story. The Watchmen is significant because of the sophistication of its cohesive morality and its deconstruction of superheroes (ubermensch)… particularly in the context of 1970s/1980s geopolitcs*. Given Zack’s previous films, I’ve got reason to be worried. Replace “300” in the above quote with “the Watchmen” and you’ll understand why.
Zack Sydner is obviously a gifted visualist (sorry “visionary”) and knows how to tell a story… but having something worth saying is the hard part.
* Remember, the Watchmen is a comic book set in America, using analogues of classical American heroes… written by an Englishman.
After moving to Australia with his partner and young baby, Mick found the long hours expected in his Australian workplace difficult… This was a puzzle to him. In a beautiful country with the ocean, hills, vineyards and beautiful weather, why did people feel compelled to work until it was way past dark?
] Kath Lockett on “Real Balance for Real Men” @ Slow Leadership
NB: The article talks about “40 hours plus” being long hours.
Once upon a time 40 hours would have seemed long. Now 40 hours seems positively luxurious… and I say that with a pride that I shouldn’t.
My big problem with long working hours is two fold (although they are related): expectation and false economy. When you work longer hours your capacity to produce increases - which creates the expectation on you (and your coworkers) to continue producing at the same rate. However, this extra productivity isn’t due to effiency, its just due to shifting the timescale. You’ve engineered a culture of inefficency.
… and what happens is that the ineffiency conspires with the exhaustion (due to long hours) and productivity actually drops. People learn to do in 10 hours what once took then 8. So their hours stretch out as they play “catch up”: 10 hours becomes 12 becomes 14… until you’re fucked, chasing a tail you will never catch.
Its the lazy option to work late rather than try to find a way to be smarter and get the job done in 8.
But y’know, the real insidious cancerous part is it creates a work culture of working late. Not everyone has to stay late to get the job done… but they find themselves having to stay late to create the appearance that they are busting ass. This process values expenditure of energy over results. That’s bad for a company because you want to decrease your expediture to get results, not the other way around. This is bad. The people who should be valued are those who get results in the shorter time - who work out ways to get it all done in 6 hours and leave at 4pm, rather than those who dick around and take 12 hours.
For me, the “epidemic” of procrastination (and those worried about being procrastinators) comes from the culture of long hours rather than a culture of results. People feel the need to work 12 hours a day to feel valued, but they pad out their day with facebook or twitter or tumblr (heh) to reach that imaginary time… then they get all guilty so they work later… wash, rinse, repeat.
But you know what? I think procrastination is pretty awesome. Why die tomorrow when you can die today? Bah I want to put it off for a very long time….
I’ll come back to why I think this cancer has ingrained itself in Australia (particularly Sydney) later on…
mills:
This essay in particular explores the quasi-religious quality of “management theory” as developed and practiced, in all seriousness, by men like Stephen Covey, and it asserts that this framework of values and ideas has an implicitly religious quality: it defines the moral self for the modern American (excluding countercultural groups), and as such should be studied if we are to understand what selfhood means in the consumer capitalist world of the present, when it very obviously doesn’t mean what it once did.
Indeed. I completely agree with this thesis, but I don’t even know where to begin when discussing it - other than casually directing readers to an old essay of mine on corporatism.
… but that doesn’t touch on the personal aspects of corporatism.
![] Soundcloud via Signal vs Noise
“Instead they decided to expand the player and allow commenters to add notes directly inside on the waveform itself. The result is pretty cool. People can post tracks and receive a flurry of comments attached directly to the waves.”](http://media.tumblr.com/InBPl3iHSboasjlgzWG6lGah_500.png)
