Shack Attack

Valley Girl Contest

via Kottke

NPR Parody Video: Oh, So Good

This is why you should support public radio. I want the Carl Kasell app.

via Giz

Rise, Sir Patrick Stewart

Captain Picard received New Years' honors from Queen Elizabeth II, and it now an official British knight. Looks damn good for 69, too.

(via CNN

Undercover at a Christian Gay-to-Straight Conversion Camp

Long Form, a repository of journalism "too long and too interesting to be read on a web browser" is my new favorite blog. One of today's stories, a weekend undercover at a homosexuality 'reform' weekend, is excellent.

The Friday morning of the retreat, I double-checked my bags to make sure I didn’t pack anything that might divulge my true identity or my secular tendencies. Stricken from the usual weekend-getaway packing list: My iPod, for the Rage Against the Machine and Immortal Technique albums, and my current reading list — Karen Armstrong’s The Bible: A Biography, and Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

fulltext

Ass-Slapping Your Way to B-Ball Success

From The Frontal Cortex:

A forthcoming paper by Michael Kraus and Dacher Keltner at UC-Berkeley investigates the correlation between "tactile communication" and success in the NBA. In essence, the paper demonstrates that "touchier" teams - and this includes everything from pats on the ass to high-fives - are also more likely to win. (The two touchiest teams during the 2008-2009 season were the Lakers and the Celtics, while the touchiest player was Kevin Garnett, followed by Chris Bosh.)

I'd suggest that successful workplaces engage in a related kind of interaction, in which people are forced to interact with each other, both literally and figuratively. Maybe we're talking to a colleague at the bathroom sink, or eating lunch at the same cafeteria table, but those are the kinds of "touches" that lead, over time, to better team performance. (I've got a hunch, for instance, that more successful labs have more crowded coffee rooms.) The same logic might also explain why people who have never worked together before rarely create successful Broadway plays: they're like NBA teams that don't know each well enough to exchange fist-bumps. Or why denser cities, which promote more random interactions, are also more innovative. The point is that the the most productive groups share a certain intimacy, which allows them to fully benefit from their different skill sets.

I give it a few months before a management book encourages a "culture of fondling" in the workplace. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, people.