Speaking of people who are great at writing, Clay Shirky’s post on the failure of Healthcare.gov is spot-on.
I could blockquote the whole thing, but here’s just a few nuggets I loved:

It’s certainly true that Federal IT is chronically challenged by its own processes. But the biggest problem with Healthcare.gov was not timeline or budget. The biggest problem was that the site did not work, and the administration decided to launch it anyway.
And:
The idea that “failure is not an option” is a fantasy version of how non-engineers should motivate engineers. That sentiment was invented by a screenwriter, riffing on an after-the-fact observation about Apollo 13; no one said it at the time. (If you ever say it, wash your mouth out with soap. If anyone ever says it to you, run.) Even NASA’s vaunted moonshot, so often referred to as the best of government innovation, tested with dozens of unmanned missions first, several of which failed outright.

Failure is always an option. Engineers work as hard as they do because they understand the risk of failure. And for anything it might have meant in its screenplay version, here that sentiment means the opposite; the unnamed executives were saying “Addressing the possibility of failure is not an option.”
And one more:
An effective test is an exercise in humility; it’s only useful in a culture where desirability is not confused with likelihood.
The launch of Healthcare.gov has been an embarrassing mess.

I love reading Jean-Louis Gassée. He has a remarkable ability to beautifully and concisely explain things in the world of technology (he probably could do it with any subject).
His latest post is about Microsoft’s CEO search, now that Ballmer is out:

For a large, established company, having to use an executive recruiter to find its next CEO carries a profoundly bad aroma. It means that the directors failed at one of their most important duties: succession planning. Behind this first failure, a second one lurks: The Board probably gave the previous CEO free rein to promote and fire subordinates in a way that prevented successors from emerging.
I still contend it’s going to get worse for Microsoft before it gets better.

Forbes contributor Mark Fidelman says Microsoft will overtake Apple in 3 years.
And that, my friends, is the comedy to start your weekend.

Sipho Mabona is raising funds so he can make a life-size origami elephant. (out of one, huge, single sheet of paper, obviously).
I’ve loved and done origami since I was a kid, therefor I think this is a worthy cause.

via The Verge

By H Concept (via The Verge)

John Gruber is confused:

I still don’t get what Medium is. These new features certainly look pretty, but they make me more confused than ever regarding what Medium, as a whole, is.
Just read Ev Williams’ blurb at the bottom of his Medium page:
I make systems that encourage typing and thinking (Blogger, Twitter, Medium).
Medium is a blogging platform in my eyes (Blogger ‘2.0’). Yeah, I know their goal is to redefine what a magazine is, and I think becoming blog-like is part of it. There’s also a lot of semantical things happening. People saying the same thing with different words.

—from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, ‘The Red-Headed League’

If anything is true in this world, it’s that there’s a market for anything. Anything.
Take this recently-funded Kickstarter project, Ever, Jane, “a virtual world that allows people to role-play in Regency Period England.” The goal was $100,000, they hit $109,563.
Judy L. Tyrer, the creator, explains in her video the players need more to do in the game than “just gossip.”:

“So we’ve planned a series of mini-games: Dinner parties, balls, estate management [!], landscaping [!!], sewing, embroidering, card games, farming, hunting, fishing…”
This sounds like the most boring game ever conceived. I’m not hating on this project by any means—ok, I am—I’m just in shock. I love video games, I’ve never been a fan of MMORPGs. I probably shouldn’t knock it until I try it.
According to the FAQ, Ms. Tyrer is keeping the ‘legal distinctions’ between men and women consistent with the time period. The FAQ also mentions the game, “will provide historically accurate racial diversity.” I guess if we have video games glorifying stealing cars, we can have a game where the white people are the ruling class, women are inferior and you can diving into mini-games of embroidering.
If we’re making video game worlds based on classic literature, can I request an MMORPG of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road? A game where I can speed across the country, get loaded with my writer friends, go to parties, meet girls, run from the law, hang out in Greenwich Village and sleep on peoples’ couches?
Update: It looks like someone has made one of the most boring games ever, Waiting In Line 3D

via Yimmy’s Yayo

via Behance

Great piece in the NYTimes on the benefits of exposing children to art:

FOR many education advocates, the arts are a panacea: They supposedly increase test scores, generate social responsibility and turn around failing schools. Most of the supporting evidence, though, does little more than establish correlations between exposure to the arts and certain outcomes. Research that demonstrates a causal relationship has been virtually nonexistent.

A few years ago, however, we had a rare opportunity to explore such relationships when the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opened in Bentonville, Ark. Through a large-scale, random-assignment study of school tours to the museum, we were able to determine that strong causal relationships do in fact exist between arts education and a range of desirable outcomes.

Students who, by lottery, were selected to visit the museum on a field trip demonstrated stronger critical thinking skills, displayed higher levels of social tolerance, exhibited greater historical empathy and developed a taste for art museums and cultural institutions.
It’s unfortunate art programs are usually the first to get axed when there’s budget cuts in schools.
via Co.Exist

via YIMMY’S YAYO