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You have arrived at the web home of Noah Brier. This is mostly an archive of over a decade of blogging and other writing. You can read more about me or get in touch. If you want more recent writing of mine, most of that is at my BrXnd marketing x AI newsletter and Why Is This Interesting?, a daily email for the intellectually omnivorous.

December, 2006

Best Links of 2006 (vol. 1)

[Editor's Note: This is volume one of my favorite links of 2006. Volume two can be found here.]

This is one of my very favorite entries to write. I get to pull all the great stuff I read all year and throw it into one post for your reading enjoyment. Hopefully this will be a fun way to fill some of that extra holiday time.

So without any further ado . . .

Best Links of 2006 (vol. 1)

  • The Omarosa Experiment: This is an amazing inside look at what life on reality television is really like. Beyond just talking to some former stars they speak to psychologists who help choose the participants. After all is said and done, I had a much better idea of the psychological imbalance of the people on these shows.
  • Warning: May Contain Non-Design Content: I've found myself quoting this Design Observer article quite a bit this year. In it Michael Bierut answers some critics who complain he doesn't write about design enough: "The great thing about graphic design is that it is almost always about something else. Corporate law. Professional football. Art. Politics. Robert Wilson. And if I can't get excited about whatever that something else is, I really have trouble doing good work as a designer. To me, the conclusion is inescapable: the more things you're interested in, the better your work will be." A rule to live by.
  • Cookie Monster Searches Deep Within Himself and Asks: Is Me Realy Monster?: I'm a huge Jim Henson fan. Runs in the family. In this article cookie monster asks some tough questions as he tries to deal with his monsterous tendencies. "Me thinks me have serious problem. Me thinks me addicted. But since when it acceptable to call addict monster? It affliction. It disease. It burden. But does it make me monster?"
  • The Worst President in History: Lots of people have said it casually, but when a historian wonders out loud whether George W. Bush is actually the worst president in history, it's worth listening.
  • Roger Federer as Religious Experience: Every year David Foster Wallace writes an article that's extraordinarily long and detailed about something I've never thought about and I find it impossible to put down. Last year it was Consider the Lobster and this year it's this New York Times article highlighting every detail of Federer's greatness. I'm not really a tennis fan myself and this gave me an entirely new view into the intricacies real tennis fans love.
  • A Cup of Tea: As a blogger myself every so often I ask myself "what should I blog about?" Lucky for all of us, Momus uses a cup of tea as an example of five approaches to blogging about anything. The techniques include: Quotation, anecdote, binaries, politics, personal and sociology.
  • The Best and the Interesting: This is actually two articles smushed into one. Reading it again, I remember why I loved it the first time: It's inspiring and beautifully written. "My hope is, at some point in my life, I will hit such a stride, some skillset I have where the best of me just happens as a matter of course. I'm good at some stuff, bad at others, but I would love to hit some point, in a few years, where I throw out perfection as calmly as a child tosses a ball. It's something to strive for."

That wraps up the first half, check back for more links in the next few days. Also, if you're not already, you can subscribe to the site by RSS or email (there's a subscription form below the fold).

December 23, 2006
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Noah Brier | Thanks for reading. | Don't fake the funk on a nasty dunk.