onfocus

Some good ways to improve ColdFusion application performance. Doing a lot of these already, but picked up a few new coding practices I should follow.

Umberto Eco on the features of Eternal Fascism. "In spite of some fuzziness regarding the difference between various historical forms of fascism, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism." [via MeFi]

"...there’s a nearly infinite universe of things you might wish to express that simply can’t fit into 140 characters. It's not that the Twitter form forces triviality upon us; it's possible to be creative and expressive within Twitter’s narrow constraints. But the form is by definition limited. Haiku is a wonderful poetic form, but most of us wouldn’t choose to adopt it for all of our verse." [via sippey]

Greenwald on Cronkite, Russert, Halberstam, Lapham, Hunter Thompson, and journalists as celebrities.

MetaFilter is #1 on a list of companies that don't get Oregon cred. Not only is Matt Portland-ish, but I'm Corvallish, and Josh is smack-dab Portlandy.

"...increasingly, we're seeing people with similar levels of access engage in fundamentally different ways. And we're seeing a social media landscape where participation 'choice' leads to a digital reproduction of social divisions."

A disposable email service for single-use, throwaway accounts. [via nelson]

"Different things work for different people but I thought I'd share what worked for me in the hopes that maybe one or more of these tips will help your own weight loss as well." Good tips and motivation for healthy eating.

MetaFilter is turning ten and we're celebrating with meetups across the globe. We have members planning meetups on six continents. We just need to find a MeFite in Antarctica to cover them all.

A collection of pictures and postcards from Portland's past. The design is wacky but the stories are good. [via MeFi]

Fun discussion of the song Aquarela do Brasil, WWII propaganda, Frank Sinatra, and Disney.

Why are passenger trains slower today than in the 1920s? Short answer: more freight, interstates, jets. [via MeFi]

The White House is on Flickr with great photos.

It's a good time to revisit this Lakoff article on framing taxes. Basically, taxes are an investment, our fair share, patriotic, and our dues for enjoying our high standard of living.

You deserve this!

This is spectacular. They're suggesting high speed rail between Eugene and the Canadian border.

Cameron expands on the Economist article: "...while the average Facebook user communicates with a small subset of their entire friend network, they maintain relationships with a group two times the size of this core."

"...people who are members of online social networks are not so much 'networking' as they are 'broadcasting their lives to an outer tier of acquaintances who aren't necessarily inside the Dunbar circle'..."

SBJ's talk at SXSW about the future of news. "...in times like these, when all that is solid is melting into air, as Marx said of another equally turbulent era, it's important that we try to imagine how we'd like the future to turn out and set our sights on that, and not just struggle to keep the past alive for a few more years."

"Las Vegas casinos increasingly pay attention to their customers - their likes, dislikes, moods and patterns - in order to create an engaging experience." This was my favorite talk at Gel 2008.

"What Bruce Sterling Actually Said About Web 2.0 at Webstock 09."

"It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves -- the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public -- has stopped being a problem."

The new whitehouse.gov robots.txt file lets search engines and other bots roam free. This is a fantastic change, but I can't help wondering what they're hiding in the /includes/ directory. I want an open government with no disallows!

Fun discussion overthinking the timing of the President's oath of office with some nice historic trivia thrown in for good measure.

"My process of interviewing people is I do not interview people," said the cheerful Hustwit. "I'm trying to get them to forget that they're being interviewed." Also, signs of increased interactivity: "Are you a robot?" [via glass]

In a perfect world their jobs would depend on their accuracy rather than their ability to produce entertaining content. [via long now]

Here's another way to hide Google's awful SearchWiki images with Adblock Plus.

This Greasemonkey script will hide the new Google SearchWiki buttons. Strange that Google doesn't offer a way to opt-out of this feature.

Nice JavaScript date picker.

Scandal is our growth industry.

If one were to construct an amendment to the Constitution based on a literal reading of the Bible it might well contain the following stipulations. [via lancearthur]

Audio recordings of animals and environments throughout the western United States.

"Here is a collection of some of the best photos of President-Elect Barack Obama over the past several months."