Author: admin

Today I showed a demo to somebody, and right afterward, I realized things that I wanted to improve. Some of this was due to the reaction of the person I was demoing to, and some of it came out of thinking “Gosh, I wish I also could have shown …”

And I realized, for the first time, that all of my years of showing demos has not been just to show demos. It has also been to learn from the experience. And then to use that knowledge to make the demo better.

It turns out that giving demos is an iterative experience: Learn from doing it, make it better, repeat.

Which means, in essence, that a good demo is something that is organically grown, not from one person, but from an entire community. I kind of like that.

As the days go by I have noticed that life seems to teeter back and forth between order and chaos. This is true not just on the national and world stage (we are all experiencing that together) but in my personal life as well.

I suspect that this is a very common experience. One moment is calm, and the very next is crisis, and on any given day we are not sure which will come next.

What I am wondering is whether there is a word for this experience. It seems to common and universal that surely by now someone has coined a term for this particular kind of ping-ponging of reality.

If there is no such word, maybe we need to invent one. I am open to suggestions.

Today in 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered President Richard Nixon to hand over the White House tapes to a special prosecutor. Fast forward 50 years.

If Nixon had instead been facing today’s Supreme Court, the outcome might have been very different. Based on their rulings to date, the current Court might well have decided that it was perfectly ok for Nixon to cover up a crime intended to influence a presidential election.

Because, after all, he was doing it in his official capacity of president of the United States.

I find myself feeling cautiously optimistic.

To be more specific: I’m getting used to the idea that our world may not. after all, be about to go totally insane.

I recently walked past the Empire Diner on 10th Avenue in Manhattan, and a memory came floating back from many years ago. When I was in my twenties, my colleagues and I once went there after a long day working on computer graphics.

We had never been there before, and back then their menu was more, um, eccentric than it is now. We noticed that “Soup of the day” was listed for $3.00. And right below that, “Soup du jour” was listed for $3.50.

When the waitress came over, we asked her what the difference was. “Well,” she said, “here’s the difference. If you order the soup of the day, we charge you $3.00. If you order the soup du jour, we charge you $3.50.”

I ordered the soup of the day. And to this day, I have no regrets.

So that happened.

Am I the only person who, in the last week, thought of the phrase “Lipstick on a pig?”

I appreciate all of the effort. A lot of people worked extremely hard, and on the whole it was a very impressive show.

But at the end, after all of that, the main reveal produced — exactly what you would expect.

To be fair, you’ve got to have a certain respect for the pig. A pig knows what it is. It is completely itself, and always remains true to its own identity.

So however much fanfare precedes its appearance, a pig will proceed to act exactly like a pig.

No matter how much lipstick you put on it.

I was at a Whole Foods market yesterday, and for the first time I really took a good look around and tried to deconstruct my experience. And I realized how much Whole Foods is not just about food — it’s about an idea.

Sure, you can buy food there, and you generally do, but so much more is going on. The lighting, layout, signage, placement of items within the aisles, the checkout experience, everything works together.

The entire time that you shop, you are receiving a well crafted narrative. That narrative is about variety, freshness, cleanliness and eco-friendliness. But it’s also about having an upscale elite experience, a feeling of being pampered within an orderly world where things are taken care of — where you are taken care of.

Sure, it costs more. But that extra amount that you are paying is for a high quality entertainment experience that often leaves you in a better mood than you were in before you entered.

And I say that’s ok. High quality ambience is worth paying for.

For example, high quality ambience is a lot of what you are paying for when you go to a museum. And a museum doesn’t even have food.

Today I read a surprising number of snarky comments online about Nancy Pelosi asking President Biden to consider withdrawing as a candidate. The comments all centered on her age.

She is 84, and the President is 81. So people were basically saying that it was the pot calling the kettle black.

But it isn’t that at all. Pelosi is reckoning not with age, but with the President’s performance in the first debate.

As we all saw, his opponent was a ranting snake oil salesman who ignored the moderators’ questions, while managing to say nothing truthful. Debating that kind of shallow blowhard should have been like shooting fish in a barrel. Biden should have wiped the floor with him.

But he didn’t, and that is the issue Pelosi is facing. It has nothing to do with age — it’s about winning — and the stakes are very high.

If your star quarterback suddenly couldn’t throw the ball, you would consider taking him out of the game. That is, if you wanted to win.

And the problem with those people complaining about Pelosi? They’re ageist.

“Those who cannot remember George Santayana are condemned to misquote him.”