George Orwell posited that thought could be controlled and manipulated through the language we speak (in his case, Newspeak). Many other philosophers and scientists have pondered this question, while most politicians simply accept it as fact and use it to their advantage. However, there has been a disturbing lack of empirical evidence for this phenomena. A psychologist at Stanford has conducted a study showing that the gender of nouns in a language influence our perceptions of that noun. The French, who use the masculine pont for bridges, generally highlight their elements of power and strength, while Germans (who use the feminine Brücke) describe bridges as elegant and airy. You can see the bridge for yourself at NPR and see which set of adjectives matches your perceptions. Does this make English more neutral and accurate, since it largely lacks gender?
Via the excellent linguistic twit ThatWhichMatter.
In response to a horrendous chart by John Boehner, Robert Palmer released a well-designed visual aid to the Democrat’s health care proposal. At its best, information design can help the general public to understand a complicated issue. At its worst, as demonstrated by the House Minority Leader, information design becomes a tool for obfuscation and political maneuvering rather than education. Instead of muddying the waters with absurd “death panel” claims and confusing charts, Republicans should commit to an honest debate about policy and ideology. Of course, that’ll never happen: they’d lose.
(Via idsgn)
Netflix has released a (rather long) set of slides outlining their astonishingly open corporate culture. There are quite a few gems, such as allowing employees to choose their own vacation time. In general, their focus is laser sharp on what matters: output over input. It doesn’t matter how long you work, just as long as you get the work done. This should serve as a model for other companies and organizations, especially schools, of how to genuinely embrace an open culture.
In other news, I had a wonderful time in France. Now that I’m back, the output frequency should be bumped up considerably.
(Via Khol Vinh)
Tomorrow I leave for a month in Paris. I expect my Internet access to be limited, and won’t be able to post — though I doubt it’d be noticeable if I didn’t post this. I’ll return July 28, upon which you can expect an increased post frequency as I sort out some priorities.
Au revoir, mes amis!
iPhone OS 3.0 has been released and I’ve had the opportunity to play with it. All in all, it is a very welcome improvement, with numerous enhancements and improvements. Quite a few guides have been published enumerating these additions, so I’ll keep this brief. Among the many new features, I found the following seven to be particularly helpful.
- Spotlight. While being able to access everything in a couple of keystrokes is extremely useful, the real benefit is in the iPod app. I often have a particular song on my mind, and I can now call it up within seconds. For apps, it’s still easier to swish between screens: typing on the iPhone still isn’t efficient.
- Notes Syncing. The previous lack of Notes syncing forced me towards Evernote. With syncing now supported, it’s more of a toss-up: Notes is easier and more efficient, but Evernote is more powerful.
- Widescreen Keyboard. The widescreen keyboard which previously was only available in Safari has been extended to Mail and Notes, making typing a quick email a breeze.
- Undo. Shake to undo. Simple and intuitive.
- Stocks. There is now a landscape view featuring a large graph, which can be clicked to view historical prices. Stocks also have more information available, including market statistics and news. It’s still far too cumbersome to quickly look up a stock.
- AutoFill. Safari now automatically saves form and login information, nullifying the need to mess around with 1Password.
- Google Calendar. Though iPhone OS 3.0 includes support for CalDAV, it unfortunately doesn’t support delegated calendars, making it relatively useless for my dozen calendars. Thankfully, Google has updated their Exchange-based sync tool to support up to 25 calendars.
For the low price of free, it’s a no-brainer for existing iPhone owners to upgrade. For iPod Touch users, the added features merit the $9.95 upgrade price.
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