Cyberflanerie: El Paso's Secret Tunnels, Gondek's Biography Podcast, Patricia Dubrava on Ursula Le Guin, Susan Coll's Trailer & etc.

El Paso's Secret Tunnels:

Chris Gondek's excellent Biography Podcast is now available on YouTube:



A most extraordinary trailer, for Susan Coll's comic novel The Stager:



Alright then! For Politico, Nicolas Carr explains Twitter

From one of my favorite blogs: Pat Dubrava celebrates Ursula Le Guin

Trailer for T.R. Hummer's After the Afterlife (Nietzsche will be mentioned.)

For my fellow Mexican history nerds: Maximilian's Memoirs (link goes to a post on my Second Empire / French Intervention blog)

Reb Livingston reads "That's Not Butter" (Reb! I miss your blog "Homeschooled by a Crackling Jackal.")

Barbara Allen Hosts Palo Alto's First Poetry Post

Click here, then scroll waaaaaaaaaaaaaay down, for the talk on "Robinson and Una Jeffers: A Life in Letters"

Ye oldie but yumsie by Dmitry Orlov, The Despotism of the Image

GIF: H?

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

REVIEW: James McWilliams' The Pecan: A History of America's Favorite Nut 

A Visit to El Paso's "The Equestrian"

"The Typewriter Manifesto" by Richard Polt, Plus Cyberflanerie on Technology

Dispatch from Palo Alto: A Joy in this Intensely Multivariate World: Edward Tufte's "Presenting Data and Information"

C'est moi in Palo Alto,
After the ET Presenting Data and Information workshop

Yonder back, about a decade ago, on the rave recommendation of a graphic designer friend, I took Edward Tufte's one day workshop, Presenting Data and Information, and it was such a joy of an inspiration that ever since I had wanted to take the class a second time. Finally, in Palo Alto this Monday, it was possible. Herewith a few notes and links:

Beautiful Evidence, one of several books by ET

Website: www.tufte.com
Includes more than 200 essays

Books by Edward Tufte

Twitter: @EdwardTufte

Links from the handout:

+ The Future of Data Analysis, video of Edward Tufte's keynote talk, September 2016

+ Ingre Druckrey: Teaching to See, docfilm produced by Edward Tufte and directed by Andrei Severny

+ "The Parable of Google Flu: Traps in Big Data Analysis" David Lazer, Ryan Kennedy, Gary King, Alessandro Vespignani  [PDF]

+ "The Quartz Guide to Bad Data: An Exhaustive Reference" 

From Envisioning Information by Edward Tufte:

"clutter and confusion are failure of design, not attributes of information" (p. 51)

"What we seek... is a rich texture of data, a comparative context, an understanding of complexity" (p.51)

Visual Explanations by Edward Tufte
Practical advice for presentations on p. 68.


From this workshop, random E.T. quotes of note:

"the world is intensely multivariate"

"respect your audience, endlessly"

"I'm not going to dumb things down, I'm going to make everyone smarter"

"How do I know that? How do they know that?"

"Start with a document, not a deck"

"Keep architecture simple, content rich" 

"A visualization should provide reasons to believe"

"If you have any reason to bring in a three dimensional object, do so"

"Find successful things in the wild. Where is the ceiling of excellence?"

"Keep an open mind, not an empty head"

"The point of an information presentation is to explain something with credibility and to help viewers understand the content, help them reason. Show causality."

"Separate the sheep from the goats"

"Sculpture is a work of art that casts shadows"

"When things are spacially adjacent this lets the audience be in charge"

I eagerly await ET's forthcoming book, Meaning and Space. 

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

On Seeing as an Artist or, 

Five Steps for a Journey to Einfuhlung

Five Super Simple Tips for Better Book Design

The Chocolate-Boxy Yum of Small Multiples