Why be content with being your ideal self in just two-dimensions? Take a good, long look at how you project yourself on Facebook then figure out how you can become that in real life. Ultimately, Facebook is a tool. Use it to build a persona, or use it to become more of a person.
January 10, 2012
The quote below is an excerpt from A Man Without A Country — a diamond of a book by the inimitable Kurt Vonnegut. To be as wise, incensed and articulate as Vonnegut is here (age 83) is surely one definition of success. If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don’t have the… [Read more…]
December 17, 2011
Over at Harvard Business Review Jeff Stibel writes about embracing failure. His office is home to a “failure wall” where employees are encouraged to: “(1) describe a time when you failed, (2) state what you learned, and (3) sign your name.” He concludes by saying: “If we hadn’t hired people who cherish failures, my entries… [Read more…]
November 4, 2011
Last year I wrote a column for Snipe pondering the continued existence of News of the World How the News of the World avoids prosecution under the Trade Descriptions Act is one of life’s little mysteries. The venerable tabloid stakes its reputation almost entirely on elaborate entrapment schemes designed to catch gullible semi-public figures with… [Read more…]
October 30, 2011
I am amused to find a 1999 newspaper column (see below) that I wrote for The Daily Pennsylvanian preserved on the Harvard Crimson site. Did I write it at their request? Syndicate it? Damned if I remember but at least I can claim to have published at Harvard. Joan Didion wrote: “We are well-advised to… [Read more…]
June 6, 2011
Perhaps my time at Q magazine is to blame for my obsession with lists. Four years of “100 Greatest Albums”, “20 Worst Rock Haircuts” and so forth turned my brain into a list-generating machine. I like lists, though. They reduce life to neatly quantifiable parts. Black and white. “To do” and “done”. The problem is… [Read more…]
April 15, 2011
Discouraged by an aimless and effortful morning’s writing, I go browsing for inspiration. Perhaps the University of Iowa Writing Center will have some wisdom. Sure enough, the first words I encounter are so to-the-point that I check to make sure the author isn’t peering over my shoulder: I’ve noticed three frequently recurring traps that beginning… [Read more…]
April 6, 2011
Posted by Cila Warncke As usual, I’ve been in Ibiza about five minutes and am already bored to the back teeth. Nothing and no-one, has changed. Walk into a bar and the same drunks are propping it up, the same coke-heads are rambling to anyone who will listen, the same high-pitched squeals are coming from… [Read more…]
December 17, 2010
Lists are the complementary bread rolls of journalism: stuff trotted out to sate the reader when there is nothing of nutrional value on offer. A list that ranks mental illness as if it were a competition sport, however, aspires to more. It seeks to interpret experience, to tell us what or who is “depressed” or… [Read more…]
June 11, 2010
Posted by Cila Warncke Experts say “The Scottish population seems to be living dangerously”. Unfortunately, not in a Aston-driving, sky-diving, lady-killing kinda way, a la favourite son Sean Connery. Instead, risk-taking Scottish style involves scoffing burgers, downing “the equivalent of 46 bottles of vodka each in a year”, smoking furiously and not taking any exercise… [Read more…]
May 2, 2012
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