interrupted an extremely good story right before the punch line to ask if everything is all right.
The answer is no, it’s not.
Actually the answer is, No, it’s not! You ruined the punch line! Go away!
I don’t say this either.
• • •
We have ordered dessert. They are giving us dessert spoons. Dessert spoons are large, oval-shaped spoons. They are so large that you could go for a swim in them. I’m not one of those people who likes to blame the French for things, especially since the French turned out to be so very very right about Iraq, but there’s no question this trend began in France, where they’ve always had a weakness for dessert spoons.
One of the greatest things about this land of ours, as far as I’m concerned, was that we never fell into the dessert-spoon trap. If you needed a spoon for dessert, you were given a teaspoon. But those days are over, and it’s a shame.
Here’s the thing about dessert—you want it to last. You want to savor it. Dessert is so delicious. It’s so sweet. It’s so bad for you so much of the time. And, as with all bad things, you want it to last as long as possible. But you can’t make it last if they give you a great big spoon to eat it with. You’ll gobble up your dessert in two big gulps. Then it will be gone. And the meal will be over.
Why don’t they get this? It’s so obvious.
It’s so obvious.
I Just Want to Say: The World Is Not Flat
Last week I went to one of those Internet conferences I get invited to now and then, and of course
New York Times
columnist Thomas Friedman was there. He wasn’t actually there in person. It wasn’t that important a conference. He sent a tape of himself. He took the entire thesis of his best-selling book
The World Is Flat
and squished it down into twenty minutes. Coincidentally, two nights earlier, I had found myself standing across from Friedman, in person, at a craps table in Las Vegas. As he rolled the dice to make a five, I shouted, “This is it, Tom, this is your chance to makeup for being wrong on Iraq.” But he rolled a seven and crapped out.
And then there he was at this conference. There was a big banner over the screen that said THE WORLD IS FLAT , and all the bright, young Internet people watched Friedman talk about globalization and say that technology had flattened the walls of the world. They were enthralled by him and actually managed to stay focused and off their mobile devices for the entire time he was speaking. Afterward, instantly, they all turned their mobile devices back on, and the huge conference room was suddenly illuminated by hundreds of small boxes and orchestrated by the sound of thousands of tiny fingers tapping away.
Friedman, of course, is not just a columnist for the world’s most powerful newspaper—he’s something else. He’s a panelist. There’s an entire population of panelists today, mostly guys, who make a living in some way or another but whose true career consists of appearing at conferences like this. Some of these panelists are players and some are merely journalists, but for a brief moment, the panel equalizes them all. The panelists perform in front of audiences that include ordinary people, but their real performances are for one another at places like the Foursquare Conference in New York and Herbert Allen’s summer CEO-fest in Sun Valley; the panelists’ job is to put into perspective whatever conventional wisdom happens to apply at the moment, and to validate it.
In fact, these conferences tend to be validating inevery way, and it’s no surprise that at the last two I attended, there were representatives from Walmart who appeared onstage and were never once asked about their public-relations difficulties over pesky things like the way they treat their employees. (At both conferences, though, the men from Walmart were cheerfully asked about their company’s policy of requiring executives to fly tourist and sleep two-in-a-room on business trips.
The answer is no, it’s not.
Actually the answer is, No, it’s not! You ruined the punch line! Go away!
I don’t say this either.
• • •
We have ordered dessert. They are giving us dessert spoons. Dessert spoons are large, oval-shaped spoons. They are so large that you could go for a swim in them. I’m not one of those people who likes to blame the French for things, especially since the French turned out to be so very very right about Iraq, but there’s no question this trend began in France, where they’ve always had a weakness for dessert spoons.
One of the greatest things about this land of ours, as far as I’m concerned, was that we never fell into the dessert-spoon trap. If you needed a spoon for dessert, you were given a teaspoon. But those days are over, and it’s a shame.
Here’s the thing about dessert—you want it to last. You want to savor it. Dessert is so delicious. It’s so sweet. It’s so bad for you so much of the time. And, as with all bad things, you want it to last as long as possible. But you can’t make it last if they give you a great big spoon to eat it with. You’ll gobble up your dessert in two big gulps. Then it will be gone. And the meal will be over.
Why don’t they get this? It’s so obvious.
It’s so obvious.
I Just Want to Say: The World Is Not Flat
Last week I went to one of those Internet conferences I get invited to now and then, and of course
New York Times
columnist Thomas Friedman was there. He wasn’t actually there in person. It wasn’t that important a conference. He sent a tape of himself. He took the entire thesis of his best-selling book
The World Is Flat
and squished it down into twenty minutes. Coincidentally, two nights earlier, I had found myself standing across from Friedman, in person, at a craps table in Las Vegas. As he rolled the dice to make a five, I shouted, “This is it, Tom, this is your chance to makeup for being wrong on Iraq.” But he rolled a seven and crapped out.
And then there he was at this conference. There was a big banner over the screen that said THE WORLD IS FLAT , and all the bright, young Internet people watched Friedman talk about globalization and say that technology had flattened the walls of the world. They were enthralled by him and actually managed to stay focused and off their mobile devices for the entire time he was speaking. Afterward, instantly, they all turned their mobile devices back on, and the huge conference room was suddenly illuminated by hundreds of small boxes and orchestrated by the sound of thousands of tiny fingers tapping away.
Friedman, of course, is not just a columnist for the world’s most powerful newspaper—he’s something else. He’s a panelist. There’s an entire population of panelists today, mostly guys, who make a living in some way or another but whose true career consists of appearing at conferences like this. Some of these panelists are players and some are merely journalists, but for a brief moment, the panel equalizes them all. The panelists perform in front of audiences that include ordinary people, but their real performances are for one another at places like the Foursquare Conference in New York and Herbert Allen’s summer CEO-fest in Sun Valley; the panelists’ job is to put into perspective whatever conventional wisdom happens to apply at the moment, and to validate it.
In fact, these conferences tend to be validating inevery way, and it’s no surprise that at the last two I attended, there were representatives from Walmart who appeared onstage and were never once asked about their public-relations difficulties over pesky things like the way they treat their employees. (At both conferences, though, the men from Walmart were cheerfully asked about their company’s policy of requiring executives to fly tourist and sleep two-in-a-room on business trips.
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