Josh Linkner, writing for Fast Company:

When looking at the most successful people and organizations, we often imagine geniuses with a smooth journey straight to the promised land. But when you really examine nearly every success story, they are filled with crushing defeats, near-death experiences, and countless setbacks.

In short, “overnight” is in the eye of the consumer. The people and companies that we all think attained success in short order, actually persevered through disappointment and failure. Linkner offers a great reminder to forge ahead with your ideas, even when others say the opposite.

If there was any doubt how dysfunctionally partisan the United States has become, the Pew Research Center reports how views of the Affordable Care Act and Supreme Court have changed following last week’s hearings:

Roughly a third (35%) of Republicans say they have a less favorable opinion of the 2010 health care law after the hearings, compared with just 13% of Democrats. The pattern is reversed when it comes to the Supreme Court itself, with 32% of Democrats saying they now view the Court less favorably, compared with just 14% of Republicans.

Remember the news that employers were asking applicants for their social media passwords? Reginald Braithwaite writes a fictitious resignation letter to highlight the short-sighted absurdity of those policies:

Therefore, please consider this my formal resignation. The COO does not tell me how to write software, so I will not tell her how to set HR standards, but I suggest that you review this policy and ask whether it is truly in the company’s interest to indiscriminately dig through a candidates’ private life. Either that, or we should move to a jurisdiction where we have zero exposure to legal consequences for discrimination.

Des Traynor, The Intercom Blog, on Android phone names:

Here’s a simple rule: if your product isn’t a condom then don’t name it like one. What am I talking about? Let’s take a look…

Stephen Marche, Esquire:

The recession didn’t gut the prospects of American young people. The Baby Boomers took care of that.

The article offers a look at generational conflict and its role in the current economic environment. In short, Marche notes that the United States is currently a gerontocracy, that Baby Boomer claims of youth entitlement are rather ironic, and that youth serve as collateral damage in the name of their own future.

Dave Caolo:

Many of us work 40 hours a week to receive a paycheck. My kids make their beds and I kiss them and tell them what a great job they’ve done. They enjoy the praise and affection from dad, so they’re likely to clean up again to get more kissie face.

Others hurl birds at pigs. When you conquer a level by demolishing the structure and defeating the pigs, you feel good. “Hey, I did it!” You enjoy that feeling, so you’re likely to repeat the behavior that introduced it. Namely, playing Angry Birds.

Admittedly, I own every available iOS version of Angry Birds. The game’s simple nature and quick payoff make it one of my go-to apps when time is limited.¹

MacNN reports that NBC used Apple’s Xcode icon on a webpage advertising a new show:

NBC is not the first to run into such seeming hypocrisy – having recently sent a letter to suppliers calling “theft” of its programming the greatest risk the company faces – but it illustrates the complexity of copyright issues concerning art found on the Internet.

There’s no complexity involved. There’s just plain laziness on behalf of the designer. That reflects poorly on NBC, who has long cried about stolen content. For shame.

I wanted to share this site’s statistics for March 2012, just as I did for January and February. Visitor information is given for both March and the cumulative totals for 2012. Page views, unique visitors, and international traffic all saw their greatest increases to date.

Most Visited Posts

• Nike+ FuelBand Review
• Blogging With Second Crack
• Giving Introverts A Hard Time
• The New iPad
• Hoodies

Most Visited Linked Posts

• Lighten Up
• Oh Hai Sexism
• Please Stop Apologizing
• Tornado Emergencies: Stirring the Pot
• This Is A Work of Non-Fiction

Visitors

• 1,295 page views (8% increase; 3,627 for 2012)
• 546 unique visitors (357 new to site; 965 for 2012)
• 93% visits were from U.S., including 40 States + D.C.
• International traffic included visits from more than 18 countries.

Platforms

• Macintosh (64%, up from 62%)
• Windows (30%, up from 23%)
• Linux (6%, down from 15%)

Browsers

• Chrome (32%, up from 23%)
• Safari and WebKit (30%, down from 38%)
• Firefox (18%, down from 19%)
• Internet Explorer (6%, unchanged)
• Mobile Safari (2%, up from 1%)
• Other (12%)

In March, I added pagination to the front, popular, and archive pages - making it easier to go back to older articles. The popular posts page was also trimmed to only show titles, permalinks, and publication dates. This reduced scrolling and made it easier to see a list of the most viewed pages. I also added the site to Google+ and hope to implement auto-posting there soon. Additionally, several “under the hood” improvements were made that aided with speed and reliability.

In April, I intend to add search capabilities and cleaner URLs. I also plan to add a Daring Fireball-ish linked list functionality, which will allow better search and delineation of linked content versus original posts. As usual, design tweaks are always considered. Content for April will include more new product reviews, the story of how I lost 110 lbs., and perhaps a personal announcement. Stay tuned.

Thanks again to everyone who has visited this site. I especially appreciate those who have offered feedback via Facebook, Twitter, and email. The audience is engaging, thoughtful, and eager to discuss disagreements. I look forward to yet another month of sharing. If you have any suggestions or comments, do get in touch.

Adam Ruben presents funny yet true rules on writing like a scientist:

We’re taught that scientific journal articles are just plain different from all other writing. They’re not written in English per se; they’re written in a minimalist English intended merely to convey numbers and graphs. As such, they have their own rules.

In other words, we scientists often write dry, soulless, weirdly-worded reports. I honestly hate reading and writing journal articles for this very reason. Seriously, there are times I would rather jab my eye with a ball-point pen than read a scientific paper - including (and perhaps especially) those I’ve written.

Ruben concludes with perspective and inspiration for scientists:

But there’s a reason scientific journal articles tend to be dry, and it’s because we’re writing them that way. We hope that the data constitutes an interesting story all by itself, but we all know it usually doesn’t. It needs us, the people who understand its depth and charm, to frame it and explain it in interesting ways.

This is, in fact, one of the most appealing aspects of science: We’re more than just the people who push the pipette buttons. We’re advocates who get to construct and tell the stories about our science.

I’m going to try and keep that in mind as I write my dissertation and any future publications. Though in fairness, there’s only so much I can do with a subject like turbulence. If only I studied tornados.

More awesome robot stuff from Boston Dynamics.

Jason Kottke:

I did a quick calculation…if a 6-ft-tall human could jump as high as this robot relative to its height, they could jump 315 feet into the air, high enough to land on the roof of a 30-story building. (If you ignore the scaling issues, that is.)