Glenn Kubish

Peggy Olson is admittedly distracted. She's been dropped from the Heinz account and now she believes she is only hours away from being dumped by her boyfriend. And so when the agitated Ginsberg and Stan come back to their common office playing roles in one of the oldest stories known to man, she is not quite there. And maybe that is part of the point. Ginsberg: She couldn't have been struck by lightning a week ago? Stan: You think that's her idea? Peggy: What happened? Ginsberg (sarcastically): The boss's wife had an idea. Peggy: Any good? Stan: It's better than what we had. Peggy (after a pause): Good for her. It is not the most memorable scene from Mad Men, and, at 34 words, it is only slightly longer than the trademark silent scenes, but it makes you think. Ginsberg, the junior copy writer, and Stan, the art director, have just come back from Don Draper's office, where they were told to take a completely different direction on the Heinz pitch....

So that I don't forget this, I am going to write it down. There is a great scene in Mad Men season 3 in which a hungover Kinsey sits at his desk, devastated. He is working on a project for Western Union and is actually competing against Peggy for Don's approval on it.  He is as upset this morning as he was elated the night before when the idea, maybe the best idea in his life, had come to him. But now it is gone. Not because it wasn't good. But because he didn't write it down. It is a short scene. Kinsey recounts the empty outcome of the conversation with the office custodian, Achilles. Peggy: Are you ready? Don's expecting us. Kinsey: I've got nothing. Peggy: What a relief. Mine's garbage, too. Kinsey: No, I had something, something incredible. But I lost it. I didn't write it down. Peggy: Oh, I hate that. Kinsey: It might have been the best idea I ever had. I did everything. I talked to Achilles. I spent last night recreating every detail...

As far as 3D movie experiences go, The Avengers was good, not great. But while Hulk was swinging wildly this way and that, busting out of his small shirt and the big screen, protecting New York City from a spectacular,  alien,  airborne invasion, it was also good to think about 3D itself, or, at least, the attempt to break out of the rectangular dimensions of the screen. Or the frame. Or the page. Or just think about breaking out. Ted Nelson wrote what the editors of The New Media Reader  call "the most important book in the history of new media," Computer Lib/Dream Machines . They write: "He believed the importance of computers lay not in their capacity for calculation, but in the fact they would enable new generations of media." (p. 301) At the beginning of a Youtube video about a project called Xanadu, Nelson shows his resistance colours as he finds insufficient the page itself. "It seemed to me that paper was a prison.  Four walls, right?  ...