Several weeks ago I went to hear Paul Graham be interviewed by David Weinberger at Harvard’s Berkman center (video online) discuss his article “Taste for Makers”. As the discussion got more abstract and approached the “what is beauty?” stratosphere, my mind wandered. I’d seen Paul talk before, at Startup School last year and RailsConf this summer, and seeing him this time I put my finger on the fact that he reminds me of Travis Morrison of the disbanded Dismemberment Plan. Both strike me as very bright, have a rather high pitched voice & boyish looks, a certain nerdy charisma, a penchant for funny wordplay, and are a little, well, weird. But in a good and thoroughly entertaining way.

Toward the end of the Q&A (where it is required someone ask him about Arc) Paul mentioned that he’d been working on Arc this summer and that an upcoming redesign of the Y Combinator site to be more a resource for entrepreneurs is being written in it. That could be interesting.