I like it when information is presented in a way that makes us think

It winds me right up – every time anything, and I mean anything is seen as getting in the way of people being chained to their desks, it costs the UK economy. Never a mention of how driving people into an early grave or mass depression from unrealistic demands would cost the UK economy.

We worship at the alter of productivity, if something isn’t seen as productive (and who knows what that means) then it must be demonised and ultimately we must put a price on it.

Today it’s facebook at £14bn, but what else costs the UK Economy?

Google Pacman - it will cost you

• Free downloads £12bn
• Twitter £1.38bn
• Social Housing Squeeze £2.5bn
• Sickness £16.8bn – (because people wilfully get ill)
• physical inactivity £8bn
• Dementia £23bn
• Agisim £72bn
• bad weather £600m a day
• Dry central heating £200m
• Criminal Gangs £40bn
• EU Membership £60bn
• delivery problems in online shopping £1bn
• truancy £800m
• poor middle management £220bn

and Google’s Pacman doodle cost the UK $120m – so here is the link to play it some more…

How to Analyze People on Sight

A very scary book from 1921 on how to analyse people. Apparently their are five types:

• The Alimentive Type (the enjoyer)
• The Thoracic Type (the thriller)
• The Muscular Type (the worker)
• The Osseaus Type (the Stayer)
• The Cerebral Type (the thinker)

some fantastic bits like

Thus the fat man’s mind acts as his body acts—evenly, unhurriedly, easefully and comfortably. The florid man’s mind has the same quickness and resourcefulness that distinguish all his bodily processes. The muscular man’s mind acts in the same strenuous way that his body acts, while the bony man’s brain always has an immovable quality closely akin to the boniness of his body.

He is not necessarily a “bonehead,” but this phrase, like “fathead,” is no accident

I like the idea of style guides, maybe it’s because I’m a secret list maker – but knowing the correct way to refer to pensioners is something i think we should all have easy access to.

My usual preference is for the Guardian style guide, probably because I’m a pinko liberal – but also because it’s free online, and I can’t bring myself to pay £11 for a book I really know I will never use.

Well now Yahoo! have a style guide – and it’s all about writing for the web – yes it has the list of words but it also has some actually quite helpful stuff about how to make web copy readable… you can even buy it as a actual book maybe I should stop this ramble and go read it.