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Thursday, August 10, 2006

Talk is Cheap… Dreams are Priceless





Last night, Krista and I went to see the play "Talk is Cheap... Dreams are Priceless."

The play is a one-man show by Jim Jarrett. It was fantastic, both in terms of execution and content.

The play showcases the teaching of Sandy (Sanford) Meisner. In fact, the play proceeds as if the audience were in fact a gathering of one of Meisner's classes, and Sandy confronts the audience as he did his students.

His teaching style was "unconventional" but absolutely thrilling, focused and of pure intention.






Krista's father William Alderson was one of Meisner's protoges, so the play had special meaning for Krista who knew Meisner as a child.

Go see this play!

Monday, August 7, 2006

Commentary on MySpace / Google

Today I was a last minute standin for Andrei Broder on the "The Search Laboratories" panel at SES in San Jose. Also on the panel were Peter Norvig of Google and James Colborn of MSN.

Now in the realm of search, I am not fit to carry Dr. Broder's bag. He's truly a legendary character - to wit, after the panel a self-described "Broder groupie" approached me with a copy of one of his papers that she'd brought to get autographed. I kid you not.

The panel went great. The final question was directed at Peter and myself. The questioner asked (and I paraphrase):

"Today we read that Myspace partnered with Google. For Peter, do you have a comment? And for Bradley, was this a partnership you wanted?"

Peter replied, "I've been in here all day! No comment."

I replied, "Myspace partners with Google... Is this a partnership we wanted?"

Long pause.

"We already tried partnering with Google. Been there, done that."

Methinks I sold the line pretty well. ;-)

Saturday, August 5, 2006

Plagiarized, but it’s cool

Browsing the web, I came upon my eulogy for Martin Friedmann on a free homework site: 123helpme.com. It was listed under "Eulogy for a Friend." What's amusing to me is that someone (or perhaps just some automated crawler) thought this would have any reuse or remix value. Marty was so unique (and the eulogy itself tried so hard to capture this) that I can't imagine anyone else would find value in it. (Check it out you'll see what I mean.)

Then I found this eulogy for this young man, with a few lines lifted wholesale from Marty's...


Although what we’ve lost is tremendous, what he gave us is immeasurable.

To those who knew him no explanation is necessary. To those who didn’t, no explanation is possible.


So I hereby grant unlimited use with or without attribution. Have at it. If it helps anyone in any way, by all means....