Review: America the Book by Jon Stewart

America (The Book) by Jon Stewart (2004)
[Photo courtesy of Amazon.com]

I had high hopes for America (The Book), but that's probably because I already read/listened to Colbert's "America Again". Jon Stewart's book is smart and very true in its assessment of U.S. politics, but it's a bit too real to be funny. 

It's not so much a satire. It's more a bunch of honest truth about our messed up political system, delivered with swear words and tongue-in-cheek observations about the way things actually are.

In a way that mirrors the difference between Stewart and Colbert - Jon Stewart is full of one-liners and funny assessments of the goings-on of the day in U.S. politics and media. Colbert, on the other hand, plays the long game, constructing an all-encompassing satire that will occasionally venture into the absurd. Stewart's comedy is somewhat tame in comparison.

Strangely, America (The Book) really seems to work as an actual textbook of American politics, as it points out the many illogical characteristics of our system. It does so though with a bit of negativity and cynicism that mean it isn't as lighthearted and funny as it could be.

3 Stars.

Mashable redesign: 5 Pros, 1 con, 1 caveat

[Screenshot of Mashable.com from Jan. 16, 2013]

+Mashable redesigned its website in December, and while I don't think it does everything right, the folks at the popular tech site made some very interesting decisions about how to present content that I think reflect some new realities about how people navigate content on the Web.

It's a bold redesign that is almost consciously different than anything that currently exists on the Web. Here are the takeaways for me. [tl;dr at the bottom]

3-COLUMN LAYOUT: Using the eye's natural tendencies

Mashable has chosen to believe that the eye will gravitate to the right naturally, so instead of putting the biggest stories top left, they put their newest stories on the left, with small thumbnails that ensure more new content is visible above the fold in that column. 

In the second column you get the fastest-growing content (a friend at Mashable confirms these are the ones most rapidly growing in traffic) to see what's buzzing right now. Think of it like a Rally-car race: these stories haven't gone as far as the ones that went before them, but they are going the fastest. Each one even comes with a tiny line graph showing its speed.

On the right, with the biggest images and therefore most editorial weight, are the biggest stories on the site right now. Most-viewed overall.

INFINITE SCROLL: The killer app

While a bit buggy and jumpy, the most important thing about the redesign (though of course not unique to Mahsable) is the dynamic loading of content as you scroll down. This creates literally endless pages. The more you scroll the more content you get. Readers can go as deeply as they want.

And while this is great for section fronts, it is most innovative on the story level - if you read to the bottom of a story, the site basically loads the section front for that category below. Reading a lifestyle story or a story about social media? Well when you're done you'll get a basically endless amount of other stories in that category without clicking back to any section fronts. Very nice.

MINIMAL NAVIGATION: Goodbye stacks of subnavs

While you can navigate by content type along the top of the page, where a simple rollover will load links and images for 5 top stories, there are not a million subnavs and buckets breaking things up on the page. 

To me this reflects a new philosophy of what people look for when they come to your homepage. They don't come thinking "I wonder what the latest lifestyle/business/video game content is on Mashable", rather they are thinking "I wonder what's new, I wonder what's trending, I wonder what I should know about because everyone else does."

Adjusting to this reader mindset is a very smart move.

MOBILE-FRIENDLY: Perfect integration with a phone or tablet, whichever way you hold it

Consistent design is important in our multi-screen lifestyles now, and Mashable now delivers the exact same experience no matter what device you are using to access it. Stories are all easy to click and navigate on iPhone (1 column at a time) and iPad (2 columns in portrait mode, 3 in landscape), and everything works the same way.

IMAGES EVERYWHERE: Gives readers something to click on 

No plain headlines anywhere on the page, which is very satisfying. Click-maps that I have seen at several websites that I have worked show that people click on the thumbnail way more often than they click on the headline.

~There is one drawback~

NO CLEAR CATEGORIES: All stories look the same

When you have pages with infinite scroll, I believe it's important to give more at-a-glance information for people skimming the whole page. 

Some visual cues so you could see which stories are in which category (if you want to scan for the latest social-media-specific content, e.g.) would be helpful. The topnav, which follows you down the page, takes care of that to some extent, but they have to look somewhere else to get it.

THE CAVEAT: It's Mashable

While this type of design makes more sense for a narrowly focused site like mashable than a truly general-news website, I do think it's smart in some of the ways it adapts to the way people consume content online (coming in one story at a time instead of navigating section fronts), which I think is a relevant lesson for any news website.

Verdict: 5 stars, once they fix the laggy loading.

[tl;dr] 

Mashable's redesign succeeds in 5 big ways: Infinite scrolling, 3-column layout that emphasizes new content and works perfectly on mobile devices, minimal navigation menus and photo-heavy layout. It has one drawback in that categorization of stories is not very clear, but there are lessons to be learned for all news websites from the new Mashable.com

Review: The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver

The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver (2012)
[Photo courtesy of the Penguin Group]

A book about statistics is always going to be a book about statistics, but in the same vein as Freakonomics, The Signal and the Noise is definitely packaged for broader social appeal. 

While it does go into some wonky detail about the academic underpinnings of probability theory, Nate Silver's book is an interesting look at how prediction and probability works and doesn't work when applied to a variety of real-world issues. That is both useful and entertaining.

He looks at earthquake prediction, hurricane prediction, probability in poker, predicting elections, and most of it is interesting. Some of the themes repeat - some predictions fail for the same reasons, which leads to some repetitive moments - but overall the vignettes are engaging. 

And the thread that ties it all together is a valuable takeaway: trying to make a specific prediction is impossible, but looking at the overall probability of events occurring is incredibly effective, provided there is enough data to look at.

It's no Freakonomics, but it's definitely worth reading.

4 Stars.

Review: Tension City by Jim Lehrer

Tension City, by Jim Lehrer (2011)
[Cover image courtesy of PBS.org]


For people who follow presidential debates, Tension City is both wonderful for its insights on the process and tiresome for its focus on the "key debate moments" that we have heard about many times through the years: George W. Bush looking at his watch, the "you're no Jack Kennedy" moment, Ford on Soviet influence in Europe, sweaty Nixon, etc.

So why did I like it? Two reasons:

1. Jim Lehrer has moderated more debates than anyone else, and his unique perspective from the moderator's chair gives insight that one rarely sees or hears about in all the discussion and punditry of presidential debates.

2. I listened to this book as an audiobook, narrated by Lehrer himself and including actual audio from the moments in debate history that he refers to throughout the book. That alone makes this a brilliant piece of nonfiction, because you can't read a quote and get the tone and tenor of the moment that is the most important aspect of how a statement is PERCEIVED in a presidential debate.

So it's a fantastic book when listened to in audio form, but otherwise just a good book about presidential debate history coupled with the view from the moderator's chair if you're reading it in print.

4 Stars.

Paradigm shift: Apparently the only way things change anymore

Political discourse about the U.S. economy and the government's role in fixing it seems to have coalesced around the gulf between the party of the wealthy (Republicans) and the party of everyone else (Democrats).

Frustrated by the absolute vehemence of wealthy conservatives to defend any perceived controls on "job creators" (i.e. rich, profit-driven corporations), I made a graphic:

I think a lot of younger people like myself, who don't yet have a bunch of amassed wealth to defend against the clutches of government, believe in fairness and redistribution to some extent, and that a measure of a good society is how well it helps those at the bottom of the economic pile.

The fact that the GOP seems to work so hard to prevent this from happening really makes it seem like the old wealthy conservatives who don't want anyone taxing them more (while still of course demanding that they get all the Medicare in the world, regardless of whether they need help paying for medical expenses or not) are just fundamentally uncaring.

Entrenched beliefs are hard to change, and I'm not in the business of teaching old dogs new tricks, so I came to the frustrating if ultimately satisfying conclusion that, given time, the selfish old people will die out while young and compassionate people will hopefully take those qualities into their golden years.

And maybe when the next generation (my generation) starts running things we'll do so with more of an eye toward making more of our people comfortable instead of protecting the interests of the already wealthy.