Tag Archives: John Gruber

I have a “Hunch” that I’m an Apple fanboy

Daring Fireball tipped me off to an interesting new site, Hunch.

Hunch is a site to help you make decisions. Naturally the first question I tried out with it was one of Gruber’s suggestions: Should I buy an Apple iPhone or a Palm Pre?

It became pretty clear to me as I answered the dispassionate, objective questions, what the answer was going to be. And I was right:

Hunch thinks I'd prefer a Pre.

However, the reality is that I own an iPhone, and have scarcely even considered looking at a Pre, even for the sake of simple curiosity. So while the questions Hunch asked seemed dispassionate and objective, and let’s for the moment assume that they are, the experience leads me to a few questions of my own:

  1. Who wrote the questions? And how did they verify the accuracy of their answers?
  2. What criteria led them to choose the questions they did? Were there any other suitable questions that were omitted? Do the questions asked reasonably cover the scope of factors that may go into the decision?
  3. How are the questions weighted? Assuming they are not weighted at all, should they be? And should the weight of the questions be left to the user, rather than the author?

These are just a few of the many questions not answered by the Hunch experience.

I’m not at all suggesting that the site is a bad idea, or that it’s necessarily poorly implemented. This is just some food for thought on the merits of taking someone else’s advice when making a personal decision. It also reminds us to be wary of fully placing our trust in the All-Powerful Oz Internet. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

David Sedaris on the election

I’m posting hand-me-down blog content here. As is often the case, I have just become aware of something I feel is blog-worthy by reading it on Daring Fireball, simultaneously affirming its blog-worthiness and obviating the need for me to blog about it myself. But I know a few among my meager audience probably do not read Daring Fireball regularly, so I’m helping to spread the word nonetheless.

It is frustrating that often I learn about articles from the “current” issue of the New Yorker from Daring Fireball (or, in the case of the infamous Obama cover, from… everyone) on Monday or Tuesday, when (and it frustrates me to no end) I won’t actually receive my copy in the mail until Friday or Saturday. I’m not sure what crime I’ve committed against Condé Nast besides living in an insufficiently sophisticated region of the country, but they punish me weekly by delaying the arrival of the magazine until after the rest of the world has already moved on.

Anyway… this week’s “Shouts and Murmurs” column is by one of my favorite writers, David Sedaris, and he dishes up a great metaphor for the current election. I’ll rip my block quote directly from Gruber:

To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

Indeed. You can read the full article here.