You're Probably Using the Wrong Dictionary An Essay by James Somers jsomers.net As if a word were no more than coordinatesAnother mind as alive as yoursA soft and fitful lusterPathosAn affection for words Webster's Dictionary, 1913 Edition languagewriting
A brief foray into vectorial semantics An Article by James Somers jsomers.net One of the best (and easiest) ways to start making sense of a document is to highlight its “important” words, or the words that appear within that document more often than chance would predict. That’s the idea behind Amazon.com’s “Statistically Improbable Phrases”: Amazon.com’s Statistically Improbable Phrases, or “SIPs”, are the most distinctive phrases in the text of books in the Search Inside!™ program. To identify SIPs, our computers scan the text of all books in the Search Inside! program. If they find a phrase that occurs a large number of times in a particular book relative to all Search Inside! books, that phrase is a SIP in that book. mathmeaningwordsnotetakingsearchchance
Learning About Work Ethic From My High School Driving Instructor An Essay by James Somers www.theatlantic.com Should we really demand that the guy who checks ticket stubs at the movie theater hones his craft? Well, yes. No job is too low to not warrant care, because no job exists in isolation. Carelessness ripples. It adds friction to the working of the world. To phone it in or run out the clock, regardless of how alone and impotent you might feel in your work, is to commit an especially tragic—for being so preventable—brand of public sin. Bob [the driving instructor] oozes concern; he wants to infect the state of New Jersey with good driving habits. He respects his public role, the fact that the minute he's done with these kids they head straight for their parents' car keys and out onto the roads we share. When I asked him what he likes to do outside of work, he laughed: "This is my life." His reward is the pleasure of depth itself. craftworkethics
Design Leadership Truisms An Article by Peter Merholz www.petermerholz.com PEOPLE ARE NOT THEIR JOB TITLES. TEAM MEMBERS ARE NOT “RESOURCES”. PEOPLE WORK BEST WHEN THEY CAN BE THEIR FULL SELVES. YOU CANNOT CALCULATE AN ROI FOR DESIGN. FRAMING THE PROBLEM IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN SOLVING THE PROBLEM. (DESIGN) LEADERSHIP IS MORE TALKING THAN DOING. YOU’LL DO A BETTER JOB IF YOU LIGHTEN UP IF YOU HAVEN’T PISSED SOMEONE OFF, YOU’RE NOT DOING YOUR JOB RIGHT. NO ONE OUTSIDE YOUR TEAM UNDERSTANDS WHAT IT TAKES TO DO GOOD WORK. THE OUTCOMES ARE BETTER WHEN EVERYONE IS A DESIGNER. AGILE TRANSFORMATIONS ARE HOSTILE TO GOOD DESIGN. WHAT A DESIGN TEAM NEEDS MOST IS A CLEAR SENSE OF PURPOSE. YOU ARE ON THE FRONT LINE OF A GLOBAL WAR FOR TALENT. EVERYONE APPLYING FOR A ROLE HAS AN INFLATED TITLE. INTERVIEWS ARE A POOR WAY OF ASSESSING CANDIDATES. DESIGN EXERCISES ARE A BAD INTERVIEWING PRACTICE. YOU WILL NEVER HAVE ENOUGH DESIGNERS. YOU WILL NEVER HAVE ENOUGH TIME. THE SKILLS THAT GOT YOU HERE ARE NOT THE SKILLS THAT WILL CARRY YOU FORWARD. Truisms designleadershipteamwork