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I put out to sea once more with Aubrey and Maturin in The Nutmeg of Consolation. The Nutmeg is a ship loaned to Aubrey to replace the wrecked Diane in the South Seas, where we left our heros at the end of The Thirteen-Gun Salute.

While it’s been a few months, I felt right at home with the words and the flow. I am not eager to finish the last six books Patrick O’Brian wrote in this series. I’m fortunate that I didn’t cotton to these novels earlier, while he was still writing them — then I would have had to wait until he finished each one. Of course, if I’d learned of these earlier, maybe I would have been smart enough to make these and the Hornblower novels the subject of my senior thesis… that would have been fun to write!

Anyway, the only lull in this volume is the plot to lure out a French ship with more firepower. The plot fails, but is miraculously saved when Aubrey and Maturin rendezvous with the Surprise. O’Brian is usually a bit more elegant about his contrivances.

I found the author’s note intriguing, as he notes his dues to Robert Hughes The Fatal Shore, a comprehensive history of the birth of Australia as a colony and a prison. Before we enjoyed our honeymoon in Australia, I read the book, and it was one of the main reasons I wanted to see Tasmania… to see Port Arthur. If you get the chance, go.

Australia and the English Army don’t get a kindly look in this book. Aubrey and Maturin reach Sydney without much anticipation, and Maturin’s sword makes enemies all over the colony quickly… which delays their departure, giving O’Brian more pages for Maturin to roam about the countryside. The novel ends with Maturin being stung by the poisonous spurs of a platypus. O’Brian makes it clear that he will live, barely, and then the pen leaves the paper, until the next book.

Tangentially… I can’t read or write the word “nutmeg” without thinking of someone kicking a soccer ball through someone else’s legs. Sorry, but there it is.

I feel like I’ve seen/thought about/discussed most every single of the 101 ways to improve your news site listed… but sure is interesting to have them in one place.

RSS Feeds Can Build Web Traffic, but Fence Sitters Note Problems is Staci Kramer’s new piece for the Online Journalism Review. I spoke to Staci, and answered some of her questions via e-mail. Although I made it clear that she need not feel compelled to use the photograph I shared, it’s there (scroll way down), straight from the office ID. I may come back and update this post after I’ve actually read the whole thing, but for now I’ll just note its existence.

Update 1: I see Staci also spoke with my friend Eliot Pierce at the New York Times.
Update 2: The confusion over CNET vs. CNET News.com continues. The link in the article to “News.com feeds” actually goes to one of the CNET.com Reviews pages.

The weekend before Memorial Day, I rattled through Malcom Gladwell’s The Tipping Point. This short book does feel like an extended New Yorker article (which it is), but that is not perjorative. I found this book fascinating, and some ideas I’ve had in my head found words… well, Gladwell found the words.

I never read the magazine piece, but I had heard/read various characterizations of its main points, so the book felt familiar to me right from the start. Guess that’s a telling proof of how well Gladwell captured and reported on something which was a rising meme when he published in the late 1990s (book was 2000).

That said, the examples and the labels were new and intriguing to me, particularly (as a parent) those on the application of these ‘marketing’ principles to children’s television, both with Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues. I knew Sesame Street was “educational,” but I had no idea it was so carefully planned (and tested!) to be that way. I’m even more impressed now… and I watched a lot of Sesame Street as a child!

Big Bird aside, it was Chapter Five that had me nodding. Titled “The Power of Context (Part Two): The Magic Number One Hundred and Fifty,” this section spells out the “social channel capacity” attained through evolution. Gladwell pulls together examples of book clubs, religious communities, brain size, anthropological literature, and Gore Associates (makers of Gore-Tex, among other high-tech fabrics) to make a single point: humans have the capacity to handle relationships within a group of, at most, about 150 people. Beyond this number, context changes and “people become strangers to one another,” in the words of one religious leader Gladwell interviewed. Another quote, from the Gore who founded the company: “We found again and again that things get clumsy at a hundred and fifty.”

One of my goals is to work with a small enough group of people (even in a larger company) that the friction of communication remains low enough to avoid being a problem. So far, this has worked out fairly well, and I strive to work transparently enough to spread beyond that small group. Whether it works or not is something to ask my colleagues. Gladwell goes into further detail about “transactive memory.”

When we talk about memory, we aren’t just talking about ideas and impressions and facts stored inside our heads. An awful lot of what we remember is actually stored outside our brains. Most of us deliberately don’t remember most of the phone numbers we need. But we do memorize where to find them — in a phone book, or in our personal Rolodex. … Perhaps most important, though, we store information with other people.

Gladwell continues on to discuss how this plays a part in couples’ relationships with each other. However, this is part of what people mean when they talk about the ‘institutional memory’ of a company. Knowing who knows what is often half the battle. Making this kind of memory available beyond small groups, and even beyond the limits of individuals’ employment with the company, is the whole kit-and-kaboodle that has come to be called “knowledge management.” All because of The Rule of 150?!?

I’ll have to move this book to the top of my wife’s ‘to read’ pile, which is where I borrowed it from. Find your own copy… it’s a quick, worthwhile read that gives you a new way of thinking about patterns you’ve seen all your life.

Victor Lombardi lauds Storm King Art Center, an outdoor museum spread over 500 acres in farmland north of New York City. I grew up less than 30 miles away as the crow flies, but I’ve never visited.

It took me five years in San Francisco before I made it to Alcatraz, and I’m still planning to visit the Cable Car Museum, among other local/regional favorites. What other ones should I add to the ‘must-see’ list? (Trackback to tell me.)

Thanks to Dave Winer for pulling Scott Rosenberg’s 1999 Salon column Fear of Links out of the past. I’m happy to say I work for a publication which does believe in linking, and always has… but this kind of reminder never hurts, and we could always make more intelligent connections.

News.com just introduced News around the Web, an expansion of, and a riff, on the More news around the Web section which has anchored the home page for seven-plus years. More news around the Web collects hand-picked editors’ selections of interesting stories elsewhere. News around the Web employs a more hands-off approach, casting a wider net. It’s in a first incarnation, but I’m glad to start learning what works (and what doesn’t) from a real audience. One thing I do know is that links work. If these links save readers time, then we’re off to the right start.

Share your thoughts on News around the Web.

Skim the blogs, read some. Skim the WSJ, read some. Skim the SF Chronicle, read the comics and the sports section. Read Sports Illustrated cover to cover. Try to find time to read a few pages of The Nutmeg of Consolation.

Oh yeah… spend some time with the kids and wife, before and after a 10-hour day at work. Hmmmm… maybe it will be a good thing when this initial run of the WSJ ends, since it only came about because of expiring airlines miles.

For Some, the Blogging Never Stops [NYT]

Indeed, if a blog is likened to a conversation between a writer and readers, bloggers like Mr. Wiggins are having conversations largely with themselves. [emphasis added]

Me: What do you think?
I: Ignore them… they’re not part of this.
(insert awful comedy routine here)

Mr. Jarvis characterizes the blogging way of life as a routine rather than an obsession. “It’s a habit,” he said. “What you’re really doing is telling people about something that they might find interesting. When that becomes part of your life, when you start thinking in blog, it becomes part of you.”

Thinking in blog. I like that.

Wondering if this NYT article will be linked to by every blogger in the world… what do you think? (Oh, wait, I’m talking to myself.)

Shrek 2 was a collection of amusing outtakes, with references galore to other movies and pop culture icons/brands. But it wasn’t as much fun as the first one. I will say that the trailer for Spiderman 2 looked pretty good.

Intolerable Cruelty is a somewhat funny blend of the Coen brothers, George Clooney, and Catherine Zeta-Jones. I thought Clooney and Zeta-Jones did a great ‘arch’ and the black comedy about divorce and divorce lawyers almost works throughout. But I thought Down with Love was better. Still, George Clooney continues to make a good impression in comedies, from Ocean’s Eleven to Out of Sight to Three Kings. (Footnote: I didn’t know they were making Ocean’s Twelve. But I guess I’m not surprised.)