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wanderingstan
San Francisco, Boulder, Berlin
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I had never thought much about this issue before seeing --of all things-- a South Park episode "Crack Baby Athletic Association". From the wiki:
Despite Cartman insisting that they are a nonprofit organization, Kyle tells him that he is uncomfortable with the idea of selling the babies' likenesses to EA Sports while giving them nothing, so Cartman promises to find out how "other companies get away with it". He goes to the athletic department at the University of Colorado dressed as a Southern slave owner and referring to the University student athletes as "slaves", but gets no advice on how to treat his own "slaves" from the affronted president.
It is ridiculous that the universities can profit so much from the players.
http://www.southparkstudios.com/guide/episodes/s15e05-crack-baby-athletic-association
NCAA Student-Athlete Commits to Alabama
Two nights ago, a top high school football recruit announced live on ESPN--during the "Under Armour All American Game"--that he will go to Alabama for college. The video of him being interviewed is pretty amazing. His mother, sitting right next to him, follows up her son's announcement by declar...
Interesting Vonnegut quote from a related thread on Metafilter: http://www.metafilter.com/110986/Tyler-Cowens-story-about-stories
"I had become more and more enraged and mystified by the idiot decisions made by my countrymen. And then I had come suddenly to pity them, for I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave so abominably, with such abominable results: they were doing their best to live like people invented in story books. This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: It was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books.
Why were so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as paper facial tissues? Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their made-up tales.
And so on.
Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done.
If all writers would do that, then perhaps citizens not in the literary trades will understand that there is no order in the world around us, that we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions 1973
When We Tell Ourselves Stories
Someone at LessWrong transcribed Tyler Cowen's TEDx talk on the problem with stories and narrative--and how we let ourselves be governed by them. It's a good one, and faster to read than listen. I think of a few major problems when we think too much in terms of narrative. First, narratives tend...
Each minute bursts in the burning room,
The great globe reels in the solar fire,
Spinning the trivial and unique away.
(How all things flash! How all things flare!)
What am I now that I was then?
May memory restore again and again
The smallest color of the smallest day:
Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn.
Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day
Everything is on Fire...Slow Fire
I'm reading The Pale King by David Foster Wallace, his unfinished novel. There are lots of dark passages. Here's an excerpt which addresses, as DFW often does, terrible truths: I'm talking about the individual US citizen's deep fear, the same basic fear that you and I have and that everybody ha...
Horning doesn't mention if he was alone in nature, which another factor. On a remote jungle hike in Columbia, totally off the grid, I found myself to be far more "present" with my hiking companions. For one thing, there were no interruptions; no text messaging during conversations, no one running to meetings, no breaking news. But also, my mind stopped wandering around so much. I could get totally lost in the story of a dinner companion without those background thoughts of, "I need to email X later" or "How should I answer that text message from Y?" Everyone was simply and fully paying attention to each other.
It was a good reminder of how communication and relationships can be. And it wasn't really so bad to catch up on email when I got back!
The Effects of Going Off the Grid and Exploring Nature
Is going off the grid and retreating into nature sure to be relaxing and rejuvenating? Not for Rob Horning, who spent some time in Idaho for a nature trip awhile back. He reports: Contra Thoreau, retreating into nature, instead of bringing me back to myself, made me feel like less of a self an...
Amazing! I just read that essay a few days ago. It appears along with other great essays in her book Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
From that collection I would also recommend "On Self Respect", available here:
http://mallaryjeantenore.wordpress.com/2008/11/17/an-essay-worth-sharing-joan-didions-on-self-respect/
For myself, I keep two sets of notebooks going at all times. One is private, usually left at home, where I record what's going on and how I feel. (As Didion says, "Remember what it was to be me: that is always the point.") The other is smaller, messier, always in my pocket, easily withdrawn for writing good ideas and to-do items.
Smartphones do not work. Often the crux of a thought is expressed by arrows across the page linking words, or small diagrams. And Ben's point is gold: you do not want to appear to be emailing.
Krishna, with a little practice you can learn to continue to listen even while writing. And when people see you begin to write, usually will stay in a "holding pattern" around the idea while you jot.
Keepers of Private Notebooks
Joan Didion writes about people who keep and carry notebooks with them wherever they go: The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself....
Berlin has a similar late night culture, with some of the "Best clubs" not starting until 4-5am. Young friends in startups here say that it's acceptable to show up as late as 10am, but still there is a general feeling of sleep-deprivedness for those that try to balance social fun and work success.
Even without workplace timelines, I find it hard to be productive when in the "party timezone." Starting to work at noon just never feels right!
Impressions and Lessons from Argentina
I’ve been in Argentina the last 1.5 weeks. Buenos Aires, Iguazu Falls, and Cordoba. It’s a beautiful country, inexpensive, good food, friendly people, and functional transportation infrastructure. It is not exactly undiscovered land. Buenos Aires has become the go-to place for laid-off Wall ...
"...because they feel they need to understand things better if they are to understand a thing at all."
Amen!
Are Big Picture Thinkers Neglected by Our School System?
One of my favorite blogs, the Eide Neurolearning Blog, has an interesting post up about big picture thinking, defined as: 1. Having a simple framework 2. Using analogies and metaphors 3. Developing multiple perspectives 4. Looking for patterns and commonalities The post explores whether big pic...
...and possibly also the proliferation of short-n-sweet online media: blog posts, youtube clips, twitter, etc. It's weird how simply checking my Facebook news feed can feel like an "accomplishment" sometimes!
It's also why I like books with short chapters.
(Though the trend has not historically always been from long-to-short. I remember reading Augustine's "Confessions" and loving his uber-short chapters and how I could read an entire "book" in one sitting. E.g. see http://www.ccel.org/ccel/augustine/confessions.iv.html )
Cater to Your Inner-Completionist
Today while making lunch I realized that when I cut my sandwich into two halves it tastes better overall than when I eat it in one piece. Why? When I eat two halves of one sandwich, it feels like I am "completing" two things, not one. It's the same reason why we'd prefer to read two short books ...
Back in 2000 Courtney Love --of all people-- wrote a prescient article about music that I still think off in the context of "free".
"Music is a service to its consumers, not a product. I live on tips. Giving music away for free is what artists have been doing naturally all their lives."
http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/print.html
Grand Unified Theory of Economics of Free
Mike Masnick has a terrific, brief post up about the economics of free and the scarce and infinite components of a company's offering. It's a thought provoking framework to think about scenarios such as "All music is legally free for consumers by 2015 -- how do the artists make money?" Here's ho...
"Hiked around an active volcano."
That was an adventure! All-in-all a good year. I was glad for my part in it, and glad for your part in mine.
2008 Personal Executive Summary
Executive summary of my 2008, a bit late. Off the top of my head and somewhat random. Representative photos below of my brother and me swimming in the Amazon and of me signing books in San Antonio. I traveled to Quito and the Ecuadorean Amazon jungle, Zurich, Prague, all over Costa Rica, Alaska,...
Remember that there are forces behind these "Everyone must vote" movements, and these forces have agendas.
I'm sure the group registering voters at the rock concert would not be equally zealous about reaching those coming out of churches on a Sunday morning. Any interest group who wants to compete politically must get their supporters to register and vote--even the dumb ones or those just following social pressure.
Signing up voters has become an arms race that every political agenda must compete in.
"I Support Obama Picking Sarah Palin"
A couple weeks ago I said that if you're not informed on political issues, don't vote. Listen to this MP3 clip from a recent Howard Stern show. A guy goes to Harlem and asks people who they're voting for. All three say Obama. He then attributes McCain's views to Obama and asks whether they agree...
I tend to agree with Richard Feynman that it's good to require professors to teach.
The questions of the students are often the source of new research. They often ask profound questions that I've thought about at times and then given up on, so to speak, for a while. It wouldn't do me any harm to think about them again and see if I can go any further now. The students may not be able to see the thing I want to answer, or the subtleties I want to think about, but they remind me of a problem by asking questions in the neighborhood of that problem. It's not so easy to remind yourself of these things.
Richard Feynman on Teaching
Professors must remember how to to communicate their ideas with non-experts. One class a semester, which they can choose, hardly seems a distraction.
Thanks for posting your IM chat, Ben. Nice format.
Cal Newport and Ben: IM Conversation
Cal Newport is one of my favorite people. Although his "day job" is that of a PhD student in theoretical math at MIT, most of us know him as author of the Study Hacks blog, or freelance writer, or bestselling author. In my ongoing quest to engage Cal's mind in new and interesting ways, I asked h...
"...setting up sophisticated life hack infrastructure IS their time wasting device."
So true! Friends of mine in Boulder talked about "Productivity Porn". They would waste all there time reading about new tips and systems to be productive, only to be more behind than ever.
Cal Newport and Ben: IM Conversation
Cal Newport is one of my favorite people. Although his "day job" is that of a PhD student in theoretical math at MIT, most of us know him as author of the Study Hacks blog, or freelance writer, or bestselling author. In my ongoing quest to engage Cal's mind in new and interesting ways, I asked h...
Chris Yeh's point about people with wrong convictions is true. But on in the long run, I'll take someone who is active within an idea over someone content to be ignorant.
Someone who is engaged--even wrongly--is eventually bound to learn *something*.
Is It Better to Have No Ideas Than False Ones?
Thomas Jefferson is supposed to have said the following: It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong. Now contrast that with this great quote from Teddy Roosevelt: It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the s...
Excellent point. New non-entrepreneur acquaintances sometimes have trouble fitting me into their "Who's higher, Who's lower" mental model. I love that.
Lead an Idiosyncratic Life and Envy of Others Goes Down
That "funny feeling" of envy / jealousy only exists when the subject of our envy resembles us in some way. I don't get jealous if Bill Gates has a big success, but I do get jealous if someone close to me in age / race / location does something very similar to what I'm trying to do. I don't get j...
I would also add "similar time zone" to the list. When one person is in "early morning coffee wakeup mode" and the other is in "after work late night work call mode", it's hard to find the right rhythm for the call.
The Best Phone Conversations Happen When Both Are in a Similar Physical Environment
If you travel a lot you tend to: Make a lot of phone calls while on the road / in airports / on-the-go. Cherish any stationary time you do have at your desk as an opportunity to undergo some focused, uninterrupted work. I've noticed a tension that arises when I'm traveling and call someone who...
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