Josh Shear – Final Archive – Page 24 – The final archive of the former JoshShear.com

Guest Post: Could mixed martial arts save the New York State budget?

This is a guest post from Alexia Krause at MMA Industries. Obviously, she’s got an angle on this, so take it at face value. Personally, I’m open to any reasonable suggestion to help this state dig out of its budget crisis. With the New York state deficit hitting $8 billion, steps need to be taken…
Putting roller derby in the context of life

Note: I wrote an [since-deleted] entry on the Assault City vs Roc City roller derby bout on May 15. It elicited such a warm response from Crazy Diamond, who handles Assault City’s PR, that I asked if I could post it here. These are her words, unedited. —JS I work in a nearly all-male environment…
On innovation, with Tom Kelley of IDEO

Tom Kelley, co-founder of design firm IDEO and author of The Art of Innovation (2001) and The Ten Faces of Innovation (2005), spoke in Syracuse January 12 as part of the Famous Entrepreneurs Series. Here are some take-aways. About IDEO IDEO began as David Kelley Design (after Tom’s brother), and was a group of engineers…
1989

My bar mitzvah was Saturday morning, November 11, 1989. Some of you who read this blog are very familiar with what a bar mitzvah is; I’ll beg your patience for a few moments. I’m sure the rest of you have an idea of what a bar mitzvah is, but perhaps not the full significance. The…
Thought Review: Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth by R. Buckminster Fuller

This isn’t really a book review. It’s more a look at thought and inspiration. First off, read up on Bucky Fuller. He’s best known for the geodesic dome, the architectural style that uses the least amount of material to maximize space. In Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969), Fuller launches some great ideas as instructions…
Retread: Conversation with The Poet

An email came to me this morning that reminded me of a conversation I had had several years ago, and posted on an old blog of mine. I’m going to recreate that here for you, because it was an interesting night. The conversation was composed on one of those pads servers at restaurants carry around.…
Catching up with the bassist

Seth Horan and I go back to our early-to-mid-20s, when Seth was trying to break the strings that held him tied down in Buffalo. He had long, curly hair and was peddling CD-Rs with two-piece ink-jet-printed inserts that never fit quite right if you were trying to get them back in the case. The short…
The cost of anonymity on the Web

“That’s what the Internet’s for, slandering others anonymously!” — Jason Lee as Banky Edwards in Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back Last night I said, “The abuse of anonymity makes me sad,” and also that I would find some time this week to write about it. So here goes. I used to be…
Parsing the election: Equality edition

In case you missed it, the U.S. elected Barack Obama to the office of the presidency on Tuesday. It didn’t really surprise anybody. Even Karl Rove predicted he would win in a landslide. Obama is African-American, and if you’re not up on your U.S. history, please leave right now, go to the library, and educate…
Poverty isn’t just someone else’s problem

Today is Blog Action Day, a day when bloggers band together to hit on one topic. This year: poverty. I’m going to focus on poverty in the U.S., because, well, I can’t begin to imagine what it looks like in other countries. Countries that might be considered “underdeveloped,” “developing” or, God help them, “poor.” We…