I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

  • Slartibartfatsdomino

    Is anyone else having problems with BoingBoing loading and then disappearing off the browser to a blank page? This has been happening to me multiple times today. Refresh, ah there it is, nope it’s gone again, refresh, nope gone again, refresh, ah there it is…and…it stuck around, yay!

    This is with Chrome.

    • http://twitter.com/writebastard Ian Wood

      Yeah, I just now ran into that again while trying to see the comments for this post. It’s been happening off and on for the past several hours. The code’s still present, but the page is blank white. (Mac OSX/Chrome)

      And while I’m on the subject of broken site things: Disqus frequently crashes Safari on the iPad. The main site crashes it occasionally, but I’m constantly getting booted out of the browser when I view comments.

      • http://twitter.com/dizietembless Paul Downs

        I have that problem with the ipad, never tracked it down to disqus though.  I tend to visit boingboing in chrome when I’m using the iPad now.

      • Gilbert Wham

         I thought crashing was just what Safari did?
        (I used to work for Apple helldesking. Safari makes me REALLY cross)

    • timquinn

      Yes, I am using Safari and having the main page go blank after loading.  I could only get to this page from the feed.

    • trackofalljades

      This has been driving me nuts for a while now. It mostly happens to me on iOS, or I should say it happens on my desktop computer but it’s so powerful that the redraws are speedy and minimally invasive on my experience. On iOS though, in Safari especially (but also to a lesser extent in Chrome) the random redraws are completely destructive to readability. The display goes mostly or completely whited out, and whenever it comes back (entire seconds later, often several) the page is in a completely different place than where I left off…and when I try to scroll to where I was? You guessed it, the whole process starts over and loops.

    • http://marjaerwin.livejournal.com/ Marja Erwin

      And with Firefox.

    • chgoliz

       I’ve just gone back to using Firefox for BB rather than Chrome thanks to the problems I was having.  I seem to have to change between the two every few months.  (This only affects BB, not other blogs.)  You must be on the same schedule but with slightly different timing.

  • doniphon

    Is the link to the MP3 mung(er)ed up?

    • gibbon1

      I’m hard of hearing and I can’t stand audio, not to mention read about four times faster than normal humans can speak, and about twenty times faster than I can write.

      A link to a transcript, much much easier to digest.

      http://www.rbcpa.com/Mungerspeech_june_95.pdf

      • Petzl

        I think one misses something by not hearing the man speak; he’s got a great delivery.

        • chgoliz

           When one has hearing issues, one misses something by not hearing the audio….yes, this is true.

          Thanks for the link, gibbon1.  My ears can hear, but my brain has auditory processing issues, so I appreciate having access to hearing-impaired solutions.

    • http://jambeeno.com/ Jambe

      You can download the same thing from this soundcloud link:

      https://soundcloud.com/alekliskov/charlie-munger-harvard-1995

  • AustinZaletel

    I’m having a hard time with the feedback that is ever present after every sentence.  Someone take care of that, I can barely hear the man speak.

    • gibbon1

       Check the link above.

  • chaopoiesis

    Cialdini’s Influence has an odd publishing history. The full title of the first edition was Influence: How and why people agree to things, and the book seemed to be aimed at a general readership in need of protection from predatory business/sales/marketing practices. 

    In a perfect world that would have been that, with the book being issued to and studied by every 6th-grader in America. But instead the subsequent edition was retitled Influence: The New Psychology of Modern Persuasion, and festooned with cover quotes from retail management gurus. 

    The publishers evidently decided the best market for this invaluable book was the wolves, not the sheep.

    • Boundegar

      Maybe the sheep are, by definition, the ones who pay no attention to ideas like this.

      • Wreckrob8

        So they don’t fall for the twenty-fifth cause of human misjudgement and misery.

        • trackofalljades

          …no, you read the first twenty-four to know what’s already been tried and tested, so you can INVENT the twenty-fifth. Then you’re a marketing genius and you can start selling your own book. ;)

  • SomeDude

    I’m listening to the mp3 while reading the pdf.  For me the style of the delivery is endearing (the guy’s voice and manner remind me of Jimmy Stewart a bit), while the content is frustratingly strewn with jargon (whether from econ or psych, I’m not sure) that I can sort of partially guess the meaning of but which often leaves me grasping. Extrapolating from the parts I do understand, it’s not clear to me that working at comprehending the rest would be illuminating, rather than redundant. Just my 2 cents, ymmv.

    • http://beautifulsynthesis.com Andrea

       I agree on the “nice delivery, too much jargon” part. I’m assuming the jargon is thanks to a) Munger working in a world that uses that jargon a lot and b) Munger talking to people who rely on that jargon to communicate. For myself, I want to learn the jargon simply so people can’t confuse me with it. :-) And I want to know what Munger is referencing, because whatever he’s referencing is probably important to economists and investors – and therefore, right or wrong, has bearing on the rest of us.

      (Jimmy Stewart? Maybe ’cause he’s gravelly and takes his time. I just like hearing my native accent.)

    • http://www.facebook.com/gryffin.becker Gryffin Becker

      Yeah, it’s not the easiest read, but I made it through the PDF, and IMHO it was a worthwhile effort. He draws on Robert Cialdini’s classic work “Influence” quite a bit. If you find the topic interesting but can’t handle Charlie’s delivery, I’d highly recommend checking out Cialdini’s book. It’s easy reading and you *will* get a lot out of it.

  • lewis_stoole

    he left out attention span (1hr + of talking)
    and
    the phrase “i am the president (of the united states)”

  • Preston Sturges

    He looks like he’s about to introduce “Funny Or Die.” 

  • orangedesperado

    I’m confused – this guy is a lawyer and successful investor, who is essentially citing other’s work, particularly the book, Influence. He is not a psychologist, behaviourist or sociologist – but he is a guy who has partnered with big business to make hundreds of millions of dollars.

    What is he doing here ?

  • http://www.facebook.com/dimitrios.papagiannis Dimitrios Papagiannis

    #25 The incapacity for humans to understand large numbers. Or maybe it’s just really a tangent to the contrast theory of understanding.