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We can know when personal software is right, in exactly the same way we know when a theory is right, when a painting or a sentence is right. — NeoVictorian computing by Mark Bernstein

Mark’s posts made me smile. I do yearn for personal software. I think the word ‘enterprise’ sounds clumsy. You can have an intuition for detail. You can only guess at the whims of markets. (Besides, the real way to win a market is to build what people love.)

I feel less violently Romantic than I did as a teenager. Tortured geniuses don’t seem that cool anymore. But I still idolize anyone who creates.

The Spitzer slip-up provoked the expected reaction: glee from the previously persecuted, questions of why private life should influence public life, calls for the legalization of prostitution, reminders that many prostitutes are abused as children. The scandal tied in neatly to the Democratic presidential campaign: while Obama parried charges that his race made him popular, the web displayed comments imploring people to elect a female president so that we don’t have to endure embarrassment again.

I deplore the popularity of personal stories over policy debates. But I refreshed nytimes.com frequently the past few days. People like stories. I like stories. They move quickly. Economics papers trudge along. You have to work through each sentence.

The secret may be to make the essays read like stories.

After a few beers, it’s tempting to say that most people are stupid and that politicians cater to the lowest common denominator. People like stories. They like the personal. We’re drawn to charisma. That’s why we hear about biography and character. When you go to the ballot box, you don’t put a check mark next to a list of policies. You pick a person. You don’t want to do that blindly.

I can understand how identity politics arises. It’s a shorthand for talking about biography. But it’s roundabout. Instead of saying ‘I have done this, this, and this under these circumstances,’ you start with, ‘Assume a population with these characteristics shares these common traits,’ and work from there.

Stick to the facts. Hew to the simple.

Had to drive out to the western suburbs (Oak Brook) three days this week for work. I now understand why people complain about their jobs so much. If you have to drive anywhere from one to two hours per day in addition to working, you can’t get anything else done. You can’t write or run. Sitting in traffic doesn’t do you any good. Walking for fifteen minutes can clear your head.

Some of the people I talked to out there drove much farther than I did. They said they got used to it. If you collect enough podcasts and plug in your iPod to the car speakers, then maybe you don’t notice anything. I prefer to read, though. Several people agreed that they get more done on the train than they do in the office. What that says about offices is left as exercise for the reader.

Luckily I got along with the dude who drove me in every day.

Sitting in traffic reminded me of March of the Penguins. The penguins in the Antarctic stand for months without food or sunlight in order to protect their young. The process sucks for the penguins, but doesn’t kill enough of them off in order to force them to (a) change their ways or (b) go extinct. Many people put up with inconveniences like commuting. The inconveniences suck enough to make them complain, but not enough for them to change their ways. This is not a new idea, but it’s often said more bluntly.

Evolution is dumb. Persistent, but dumb.

This blog is an experiment in writing first and thinking second. I type for a while then click ‘Publish.’

After a few weeks of creating stuff just for the heck of it, I’m still in the flow. I don’t upload photos every day, but I do take them. In fact, by not forcing myself to upload them immediately, I’m more likely to snap a few at any moment.

The stuff I’ve written here has been crap. I’m particularly embarrassed about yesterday’s piece. It doesn’t say anything new or interesting. But at least I’m putting my half-formed thoughts into writing instead of letting them fly by.

I’m also much more focused on actually doing stuff. Given a few minutes, I’d rather write code or prose than read, and would rather read something interesting instead of a fluffy link on Reddit. When I go more than a few hours without making something, I feel specifically unsatisfied.

I don’t code as often as I’d like. When you know what you want to do, coding is easy. You just chip away at the program. Writing takes more effort. Good writing takes the most effort. But deciding what to program is the hardest task, requiring both ambition, humility, a sense of humor, and focus. It’s hard to pull all those qualities together for twenty minutes before running out the door to work.

It’s important to pay attention when people you like screw up. I read in a textbook on communication that people view their own actions as the result of personal choice mixed external constraints, whereas they see others’ actions as the result of character traits. In other words, if I cut you off in traffic, I think that I had to because the light was changing or because the sunset clouded my vision. If you cut me off, I think it’s because you’re an asshole.

You give yourself and your friends the benefit of the doubt. So if you want to understand what causes people to make mistakes, you have to look at yourself and people you like. It’s too easy to dismiss people you don’t know or already disagree with.

Obama’s taking flak for disparaging NAFTA. To trash the agreement in front of Ohio voters while moderating his position in private smacks of hypocrisy. It undercuts his image of being honest and straightforward.

A vague, unsubstantiated anecdote: in Afghanistan, NATO forces face a problem: guerrilla warriors threaten violence against civilian populations. No matter what the soldiers do, they’ll have a hard time winning over civilians unless they make that threat moot or threaten violence themselves.

In politics, if your opponent panders, you can either cry foul or match them. In a tight race, it could make a difference.

When politicians with whom we disagree pander, we assume they’re slightly evil or stupid. I like Obama, so in this case I can see the tightrope that he must walk. I don’t like it, but I can see it.

I ran a 5k on Sunday morning. Luckily the sun was out and the thermometer hit forty-five degrees Fahrenheit. Right after the race finished the wind picked up and the clouds blew in.

I drank six beers the night before, pounded three glasses of water before going to bed at two, and felt fine. The race was at ten in the morning.

I ran 20:06 by the clock, probably a few seconds faster by the chip. According to the calculator, that works out to a 6:29 pace. Slightly faster than I’ve been training. I ran the first mile in a little over six minutes. I didn’t mean to do that. It happens. The splits went something like this: 6:10, 7:00, 7:06 (last 1.1 miles). Slow by high school standards, but fast considering I’ve run no more than three times a week on the treadmill for the past few weeks.

Next up: banditing the Shamrock Shuffle. I hope to run 6:20 pace for five miles.

When I was nine I started a family newspaper. I even charged subscription fees. I wrote many of the articles and laid them out using some Adobe product on my Mac Classic II.

I’ve wanted to start a newspaper ever since. I contributed off and on to the paper that my friend Rob started in high school. I was one of the managing editors for the College Hill Independent my last semester at Brown.

There’s nothing like running the whole show, though. I like writing, editing, layout, the black newsprint that rubs off on your fingers. I daydream of starting my own newspaper again. Except now it would all be online. And I’d do it all. Write and hack.

I know what we’d cover: tradeoffs. How much security do you gain through massive surveillance? How much privacy do you surrender? Newspapers try to present ‘both sides,’ but rarely move past quoting multiple people or citing a few pieces of evidence. There’s room for more depth. And there’s room for more succinct writing — rip out the traditional journalistic hooks. Chopping the first three paragraphs from most feature stories would do the trick. Use tighter language. Kill bland pronouns. Delete the phrase ‘experts say’ or ’some consider’ and just say ‘I think.’

I read The Economist and The New York Times. The NYT’s lack of depth annoys me to no end, but where else can you find timely and well-written news? The Economist’s web presence is weak. The front page takes forever to load. I link to them, but cautiously; I never quite know which links will stick around.

Actually, I think timeliness is overrated. I try to read every issue of The Economist cover-to-cover. At times, I’ve fallen behind by two months. At that point I’ll slog through or skip articles that don’t interest me. Even stale articles tell me a lot. If they’re about nations that don’t penetrate U.S. headlines, I learn. If they’re about media-drenched events that I’ve heard of, I can find out how well the writers captured the situation and predicted the future.

Newspaper layouts on the web aren’t spartan enough. The papers want you to stay on the site and look at their ads. Why not solve the real problem? People want to read the news. Let them read it without attacking their eyes.

How would you make money then? Everyone wants to find the answer to that question. Then they could save the newspaper industry and make a ton of money.

I don’t like ads. I read the ‘printable’ versions of articles whenever I can. I mute the television (no, I don’t even a DVR yet). I don’t click on ads. I don’t like being sold to. People do sell me stuff successfully. But I don’t like the feeling. I don’t think other people like being sold to either. What to do?

The problem with most ads is that they suck. I’ll watch some beer commercials if they’re funny. I’ll read an AdWords ad if the banner intrigues me and the snippet of text is well-written. It sounds obvious, but a small number (one or fewer per page) of well-written, non-obtrusive (text) ads may appeal to snooty people like me.

TipJoy just launched. They reframe the problem of micropayments. Instead of convincing people to pay $1 x 10^-n for each page view, people can simply tip the stuff they really like. We’ll see how much money ends up flowing through TipJoy. I doubt a company could survive off tips alone. But a small news outfit could use the cash.

I’ve spent more time daydreaming about software startups than newspapers these past few years. I think the software world has a lot to offer other creative fields. Most of all, software rewards indulgence in ways that most people still don’t understand. If you work hard on a difficult problem that interests you, you can make a lot of money. Most people still seem to think that you have to endure pain to make money. You might have to do some stuff you don’t want to, but if you find a really interesting problem that schlepping gets lost in the noise. The creator of GMail likes to say that ‘work should be no more than 10% awful.’

What does that mean for newspapers? A small outfit that can let rock star writers work on whatever they want to work on can kick ass. I don’t know what annoys journalists the most. But I’d imagine that if they could spend their time writing and exploring their own stories instead of touching up the news of the moment, they’d be happy. I would.

Successful software startups use carrots instead of sticks. Work hard and you can make a lot of money doing something you love. Don’t work hard because some tells you to. Actually, they do use a stick: if you don’t work hard, you’ll go out of business. But the message is implicit and obvious. You don’t have to be told.

Bloggers use the term ‘mainstream media’ for today’s newspapers and TV stations. The implication is that these channels kinda suck and will soon disappear. Maybe. A lot of lazy news companies will go out of business in the next decade. But there’s still a place for CNN and NYT. They win on speed and reach. It’d be nice to think that in the future we can rely on hyperlocal blogs for news, but there’s still a place for companies that can afford to send writers into war zones and other places they couldn’t get to on their own.

The mainstream media loses in depth, writing quality, and revenue growth. That’s where I’d attack.