Links for 2011-02-26

“A good business requires a good story. The customer needs to understand the story of how the business can help solve a problem or deliver a benefit. There are many ways of telling a business story. Some stories are utilitarian; others are romantic or inspiring. Many stories require the consumer’s willing suspension of disbelief. This isn’t dishonesty, but the customer has to benefit broadly from a business’s services and not be harmed by bits of the story that aren’t really true. Macs sometimes crash. Facebook sometimes leaks your personal information. The New York Times sometimes really gets the facts wrong.

What you can’t do, if the details of your business don’t line up with your story, is to create cognitive dissonance for your customers by flaunting the untruth of your story. That’s what HarperCollins is doing with its new policy for lending its books through libraries”

“I think I would have been more open to this argument a year or two ago, but I’m less sure now. First, because it’s obvious that guys like Walker couldn’t care less about ed reforms. As Mike says, in private Walker makes it clear that his union busting efforts are mostly designed to show that he’s a tough guy, not to hasten ed reforms that will help Wisconsin’s kids. 

More importantly, though, I’ve simply become less convinced about the value of all the ed reforms that periodically capture the hearts of the Beltway chattering classes. I’m generally in favor of things like charter schools and disciplinary reforms that make it slightly easier to fire bad teachers, but even if they’re worthwhile on their own merits there’s not an awful lot of evidence that these things actually improve the overall quality of the educational system. It’s not that there’s no evidence to support these kinds of reforms, just that the evidence is thin and contradictory every time I look at it. “

“For those who knew Jimmer before he became the Jimmer, the moment that best crystallized his sun-kissed senior season came when Fredette effortlessly swished a shot from one step inside halfcourt in a game against Utah.

“That’s the shot that tells you who he is because he doesn’t even react,” said Jim Hart, who coached Fredette in summer basketball with the Albany City Rocks. “He doesn’t smile or pump a fist. He’s more likely to pump his fist when someone else hits a shot, he knows that he’s going to do it.””

A new site providing lots of videos about science. Because you need another time-sink.