Richard Rogers's House

Richard Rogers's sock drawer

From Deborah Copaken Kogan's Lessons from a Surprise Visit to Richard Rogers's House, recently published in the New Yorker

How does a world-famous architect organize life’s minutiae? One drawer, I vowed to myself. Just one. I randomly chose a drawer and pulled it open. In my memory of this …


Emerging Democratic Majority

The median voter theorem

I am puzzled by this passage from Ruy Teixeira's piece The Emerging Democratic Majority Turns 10, in the Atlantic

If the Democrats can do all that, the emerging Democratic majority could be here to stay.

I'm no political scientist, but this makes no sense to me.

I'm the first to …


Pocketing Instapaper

Weighing up read-later services

Recent history is replete with tech companies competing for our hearts, minds, and wallets. Ultimately, competition is good for consumers, but only if we set aside our loyalties and choose the better product. I recently decided to weigh up alternative read-later services. First, let me describe what they are and …


Imperfection in Design

The Z1 - A mechanical computer that ran at 1 Hz

Like many left-brain people, I am constantly frustrated by imperfection. But I've decided that perfectionism is totally irrational.

Many great technologies are designed with tolerance to imperfection, including the internet protocol, HTML, CSS, and JPEG images, which together form the underlying framework of modern web browsing.

To visit a website …