But first, a story.
When I was younger, I had a friend who could draw anything you wanted on 
command. I’m not talking a simple line drawing: Kit could whip up something nearly photographic in under two minutes that would take me a solid week to try to match. I’d say, “Hey Kit, draw a stapler,” and Kit would grab a pencil, looking utterly bored, and perfectly whip up a perfectly-shaded sketch of a perfect stapler that would fit into a design catalog.
I decided, upon seeing this a few times, that I wanted to be able to draw like that too.
Somehow, I harangued my parents into art lessons, which were (a) expensive and (b) an utter waste of my and the instructor’s time. I simply wasn’t good. Turns out that in the business, what I had was called “very little talent” mixed with “pathetic delusion.” My short art career – which led me to create a horrible picture of a wolf’s head and a some variety of mutant panther prowling on some sort of mesa or something – lasted about six weeks.
I tell you this story because a few weeks ago I tried to draw a picture of a dog or wolf or hyena or something, and it was so horribly bad – so laughably buggered – that it actually became funny in its horribleness. It wasn’t something someone looks at and goes, “Wow, that’s a pretty bad mess, whatever that is,” but instead looks at, nearly chokes on coffee, and starts to laugh audibly.
I am not making this up. See?
What IS that? It has three front paws, a pig snout, a one-dimensional mouth and eyes that are set in some sort of trench on the right side of its face. Not to mention it looks like it’s been in Vegas for the weekend.
I suck.
But the Internet doesn’t! Look:
- Economist Tyler Cowen argues that autism can be an advantage in the academy, not a detriment.
- Ever wonder where gyro meat comes from? You needn’t wonder anymore.
- NASA will be releasing “greatly improved” video imagery to commemorate yesterday’s 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission.
- TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington takes a ton of heat (see the comments) from the web community after writing a post about his dilemma regarding whether or not to publicly post internal Twitter records that were stolen by a hacker named “Hacker Croll”. After the barrage, Arrington responds.
- Incredible what a half year can bring: 20 brands and products that died in 2009. (thx @bchesnutt)
- Microsoft is presenting a series of lectures on physics by Caltech legend Richard Feynman. Bill Gates, using personal funds, help secure secure the rights to these. Bravo, Microsoft. Awesome stuff.
- The Words You Wear – Rands (Michael Lopp) at the absolute top of his game. Everyone who works in corporate America needs to read this. Twice.
- Turns out the simplicity of the iPhone GUI allows users to actually make use of more of the features afforded by the device. Who knew that accessible interfaces translated into user adoption? Bizarre.
- John Gruber has the best analysis (and context-setting) of Google’s Chrome OS announcement I’ve seen yet.
- Finally, here’s a mind-bending series of videos collected by Jason Kottke entitled What Fast Looks Like. As a sports car nut and speed freak, I couldn’t get enough of this. Also: I would very much like a Lamborghini Murcielago, so if you have an extra one lying around, I’ll draw you a few thousand three-legged wolves in exchange for it. Thanks.
Have a good weekend, everyone.
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