“Ten years ago, Apple’s largest asset was an incredibly innovate research & development department. Today, Apple’s greatest asset is cash.”
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Author Archives: Jan Van Haver
Logical fallacies – download the free poster now!
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Please spend a minute or two to have a look at this wonderful initiative from Jesse Richardson, an ad guy who decided to finally use the skills he developed while working in advertising for something useful: a website that lists a number of common logical fallacies in a very user-friendly way. On the site you can also download – for free – the poster you see here. A perfect tool for the development of critical thinking, which will no doubt help to uncover half truths and fake news!
After having downloaded your own copy, please do make an extra effort to point out this initiative to your family and friends, especially if you know people working in education. Both the website and the poster are published under a creative commons license, so all of the material can be used at will.
The website & poster are available in various languages, such as:
English: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/
German: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/de
French: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/fr
Spanish: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/es
And since this week also in Dutch (which is where I got involved, as I made the tranlation into Dutch): https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/nl
Case closed
“Your case has been closed” is a sentence you come across from time to time in the process of interacting with a helpdesk team. And in normal circumstances you feel pretty good when that sentence is presented to you, as it typically implies that your problem has been fixed. If, however, that particular sentence – in a case I have recently experienced myself – is the opening sentence of the very first reply you get after submitting a question, you will agree with me that this is far away from what is commonly understood as normal circumstances. Continue reading
Quote of the day #73
“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion.”
Nelson Mandela
Song of the day: Josh Rouse – Hollywood Base Player
With some songs, everytime I hear them being played on the radio or presented to me by the coincidence of shuffle function on my iPod, I have no idea who the artist or band is, often no idea about the title of the song (until it pops up in the lyrics of course), but still they manage to bring about a positive vibe somewhere inside. And that’s really all that counts for me. Here’s one of them.
Quote of the day #72
“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in”
Leonard Cohen
![By Gorupdebesanez (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://janvanhaver.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/leonard_cohen_1988_01.jpg "By Gorupdebesanez (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons")
3 Things I said goodbye to in 2016
Some years go by without a lot of reasons for them to be remembered in great detail afterwards. 2016 will not be one of those years – for readers in the distant future: google ‘Brexit’ or ‘Trump’. Looking back to what happened in my personal everyday life, it turns out to have been a year of saying goodbye to some things.
Continue reading
Song of the day: Belle & Sebastian – Step Into My Office, Baby
I never watch music videos. It’s only when I have selected a song as Song of the day that I start searching for a good way to include the song into a blogpost. Originally, the plan was to mainly use links from Soundcloud (as videos can be a distraction from the songs itself), but this soon turned out not to be a feasible option, as official versions of most songs are simply not on it, and the songs that are on it, often don’t stay on it – unlike for example video clips officially posted on YouTube or Vimeo. So I ended up posting links to videos most of the time.
A long intro to simply point out: the songs are not selected because of the videos. Just to make sure you don’t start thinking – as I now realize you might when taking a good look at the clips I have been posting – I am a sex maniac. On the other hand, this apparent correlation between good music and sex(ual undertones) in the videos accompanying them might be something worth looking into in more detail. So, while you are enjoying Step Into My Office, Baby by Belle & Sebastian, I will engage in some more YouTube exploration. To be continued.
Quote of the day #71
“Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.”
Jim Rohn
Song of the day: Frank Sinatra – It Was A Very Good Year
Given the fact that the previous post was a reference to Mad Men, and that I had already given a Twin Peaks quote ages ago, how long did you figure it would take before the Sopranos were brought up?
The song, originally released in 1961, was used in the opening scene of episode 1 of the second season. To fully appreciate the footage, the music (those enchanting violins!) and the lyrics, my advice would be to watch and/or listen at least twice – and then go off bingewatching at least one full season of Sopranos, obviously.
THE SECOND HALF 