— Read the rest

Seth Godin's daily thoughts are always provocative and thoughtful, but today's is a particularly timely and apt one for the new year. Godin describes three ways of coping with the future: Accuracy (correctly guessing what will happen); Resilience (admitting you can't make accurate predictions, so preparing to weather a variety of storms); and "Denial" (pretending nothing will change and getting clobbered as a result). — Read the rest

I liked Seth Godin's "Eleven things organizations can learn from airports," wherein he notes, "[Of course, this post isn't actually about airports]."

2. Problems persist because organizations defend their turf instead of embrace the problem. The TSA blames the facilities people, who blame someone else, and around and around.

Click here to play this episode. Gweek is Boing Boing's podcast about comic books, science fiction and fantasy, video games, board games, tools, gadgets, apps, and other neat stuff. My co-hosts for this episode are:

Michael Pusateri — a lifelong tinkerer and former television tech executive for Disney

and

Seth Godin — author, entrepreneur, and human wunderkammer. — Read the rest

Here's a nice email from Geoff Petrie, a Gweek listener. If you haven't subscribed to the Gweek podcast yet, I hope you check it out and enjoy it as much as Geoff does!

I just wanted to send you a short note to thank you for the great work you're doing with Gweek.

In this episode of Gweek, I'm joined by Boing Boing's managing editor Rob Beschizza and Seth Godin, an author, entrepreneur, and human wunderkammer.

Here's what we talked about:

The Domino Project: Seth's partnership with Amazon to publish short books loaded with useful ideas

Searching for an adjustable standing desk that doesn't cost a fortune

Test driving the Mitsubishi i electric car

The undiscovered or overlooked or underappreciated work of John Taylor Gatto, education reformer

A wonderful how to book called Handmade Music Factory: The Ultimate Guide to Making Foot-Stompin'-Good Instruments

Penguin Magic Shop: An online magic trick store with good video demos

Sasha Dichter: Reflections on generosity, philanthropy and social change

Collin's Lab: excellent introductory videos to electronics

Bizarro comics

Seth's fondness for buckwheat soba noodles

Bobo Explores Light: A swell iPad app that teaches kids about light

Rising Card: A great $(removed) iPhone magic trick

Kaweco Liliput Ballpoint Pen from JetPens

Sous Vide Turkey for Thanksgiving

We'd like to give a special thanks EdgeCast Networks, our bandwidth provider and sponsor! — Read the rest

The paperback edition of my book, Made by Hand: My Adventures in the World of Do-It-Yourself is coming out tomorrow (October 25). It includes a new section with a recipe for making kombucha and instructions for making a nice-sounding 2-string guitar out of a tin can. — Read the rest

Joe Sabia says, "This is a sign that hangs from the wall of my local public library in Milford, Connecticut. It's a large but quaint building occupied by maybe 6 or so people, and 3 elderly kind women at the check out desk." — Read the rest

Seth Godin's Poke the Box is a breezy, short manifesto that extols the virtue of taking initiative and doing stuff, even though you might fail or annoy the people you work with. At first, it seems awfully glib — after all, Doing Stuff is easy to talk about, harder to make happen. — Read the rest

I'm publishing a lot of essays this week, but enjoy the conversations here more than out on the regular net. So I'll link to them when I think they're appropriate for the Boing Boing community as well.

This one, for Arthurmag, explains why – for my own current book, anyway – independent publishing may be a much better path than going through the traditional corporate route. — Read the rest

Jessica Hundley of the LA Times' Brand X interveiwed me about my new book, Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World.

BX: Were there stumbling blocks along the way for you during writing the book, with embarking on DIY experiments that maybe didn't work or were too hard?

JC Hutchins — he of the boundless energy! — has assembled a free "holiday sampler" of excerpts from great new books, handily bundled together in a handsome PDF, well suited to loading onto your device or printing out for your Xmas holiday. — Read the rest

Seth Godin eloquently describes the fitness factor that makes a restaurant suited to getting placement in an airport: they have to be run by corporations whose primary skill is dealing with bureaucracies. I wonder why this competency appears to exclude a comparable competency in preparing edible food? — Read the rest

Here's an hilarious video in which Seth Godin enumerates the essential broken-ness of many contemporary things, and takes a stab at explaining why all this broken junk continues to exist.

This is broken

New York Times columnist David Pogue has a nice roundup of some of the talks from TED2009, which was held in Long Beach, Calif. last week.

Kamal Meattle reported the results of his efforts to fill an office building with plants, in an effort to reduce headache, asthma, and other productivity-sapping aliments in thickly polluted India.

Seth Godin asks the question, "When newspapers are gone, what will you miss?" And answers it: "deep investigative reporting." But that reporting is only two percent of the daily rag, and the other 98 percent is stuff the web does well:

What's left is local news, investigative journalism and intelligent coverage of national news.

Tim Darling's "Surefire Strategy" for winning at Monopoly sounds plausible — a great way to suck all the fun out of the game, leaving behind nothing but the relentless pursuit of victory.

* Always buy Railroads; never buy Utilities *

* At the beginning of the game, focus on acquiring a complete C-G (Color Group) in Sides 1+2, even if it means trading away properties on Sides 2+3.

Help Seth Godin identify these dotcom moguls, from a circa-2000 Upside illustration. Link

A provocative post called "Lifehack Your Books: Dogear, Writing In Books, and Apologizing to Librarians" advocates writing in your books and dogearing the covers — hear, hear. I used to take enormous pains to ensure that my books remained in re-saleable condition, despite the fact that I never actually sold my old books. — Read the rest