Miscellaneous

Two Links You've Perhaps Already Seen

By jeremyblachman

Two things I found yesterday that have already gotten tons of media attention and I'm late to discovering:

1. A professor at Carnegie Mellon who's unfortunately dying of pancreatic cancer gave a lecture about time management that's really interesting and readable, PDF here.  As well as a lecture called "The Last Lecture" where he talks about lessons learned in his life, PDF here.  Apparently six million people have watched this online, and he's got a book coming out, written with a Wall Street Journal reporter.  I find reading a PDF transcript infinitely preferable to watching an hour-long video of a lecture, but you can find the video and a bunch more stuff on his website.

2. A blog called "Stuff White People Like," started by Internet copywriter Christian Lander about 6 weeks ago (it's poking fun at over-educated young people more than anything else -- for something that very well sounds like it could be offensive, I don't think it is, but since I'm in the target group, maybe I'm just blind to it), that somehow immediately went insane and got tons of readers, article in the LA Times, segment on NPR.  It's solid, I was surprised how much I responded to it -- a friend sent me the link and I clicked expecting garbage and my first thought was, "oh, there's something interesting here," and then I googled it and realized I'm a couple weeks late and it's already all over the place.  The surprising part to me is how quickly it went viral.  I'd think that with so many blogs out there by now, it'd be that much harder to break through than it was a few years ago, but maybe it indeed is a lot harder, but if something's going to, it does so orders of magnitude more quickly.  In any case, I would be surprised if this thing doesn't turn into a book somewhere, because it's a really easy and straightforward book concept I can see in the humor section at Barnes & Noble or wherever.  Six weeks from nothing to something.  There's a nice motivational story for you.  Or something to make you cry.  Depending on your point of view.

Full post as published by Jeremy Blachman's Brand New Weblog on March 07, 2008 (boomark / email).