Spend a few minutes and watch this ESPN Century video over at YouTube for some of the greatest/saddest sports moments captured on TV. Set to an awesome soundtrack, you’re sure to get the chills.
(Hat tip: Dan Saper)
My close friend Tim Taylor has started a blog called My Agapic Life.
On the surface, Tim is just another Silicon Valley connector. He’s the oral presentation coach at the Band of Angels, the oldest angel investment group in the Valley, which means he works with all presenting entrepreneurs before they go in front of the group. He’s a Wharton MBA, a CPA, and on the side helps start-ups find capital.
Dig deeper, though, and you’ll discover why I like Tim and why he’s been a formative influence on my life. He’s a published poet, writer, ex-stand-up comedian, avid reader, and devoted father. He’s a deep thinker with a strong spiritual bent. In his own words, Tim has a single mission in life: to bring more love into the world.
Tim’s blog is sure to reflect his very interesting mind and life, and if his first postings are any indication, he’s already found a voice that fits the blogging medium.
Welcome to blogland Tim!
This latest New Yorker article is a nice follow up to my quote of the day on the pursuit of happiness. It’s required reading for anyone interested in this, and includes nice overviews of the recent books The Happiness Hypothesis and Happiness: A History.
I’m a believer in positive psychology (that’s why I loved Flow – happiness is an experience to be cultivated) but some folks quoted in this article say that once we’re out of poverty the most important determinant of happiness is our "set point," which is inherited. "Within a year, lottery winners and paraplegics have both (on average) returned most of the way to their baseline levels of happiness."
Do you buy this? I buy it halfway. I still believe voluntary activities, state of mind, and other circumstances play a role. But I’m also an unabashed "nature" believer.
The article concludes with a witty yet misguided assumption. "If you want to be happy, don’t ever ask yourself if you are." I suppose that it’s possible for an unhappy person to become even more unhappy as they contemplate their unhappiness. Yet I think this is a one way street. I don’t think a happy person can become unhappy if their contemplation "presses unhappily hard on us." I am happy, and also like thinking about my own energetic quest for even more happiness, and more spiritual fulfillment.
My basketball team plays at 8 PM tonight at Kezar Pavillion (Stanyan and Waller) in San Francisco in a semi-final playoff game. Come one, come all.
See preview of the game in today’s San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner.
…Larry Summers resigned from Harvard today. Never I have seen so many references to a single person’s brilliance. The man’s intellect clearly soars above most. Yet, as I’ve said repeatedly on this blog, raw intelligence means much less than emotional intelligence for leading/accomplishing anything. And by the way, just because I say this, doesn’t mean I’ve mastered it. A glaring weakness of mine is valuing intellectual vigor above emotional connection.
Related Post: Nice Guys vs. Intimidators in Leadership
My company Comcate is hiring for a youthful inside sales person.
For fun, I aliased myself on the email address resumes are sent in to. It’s shocking how poor some people’s career skills are.
Every time I see articles about "How to prepare and send your resume" I think: "Ugh, how many of these articles need to be written? There must be a million such articles and books."
But apparently people aren’t reading them. So far I’ve seen:
The best one I’ve seen is where someone included a personal testimonial at the top of the resume, such as "John Doe is an excellent sales executive with experience doing XYZ." Even though I’ve never heard of the quoter, it instantly provides credibility since it’s "objective" and encourages me to read on.
I maybe have shopped for casual clothes 2 or 3 times my whole life. I didn’t have a mirror in my room until a few months ago. I love sweatpants, t-shirts, and hooded sweatshirts – mostly hand-me-downs. All this presents an interesting contrast with my other more Polo minded friends: me, in my ripped sweatshirt, Ecko sweatpants (my Mom sometimes buys my clothes at Goodwill and doesn’t know which brands are "black" so I end up with lots of getto apparel), and unbrushed hair, and them, button down shirt, nice shoes, etc. All this is very ironic because with my BlackBerry, pretentious eye-glasses, and loud mouth, I am most unlike my clothes.
I’m told on the east coast the fashion scene becomes even more egregious, with 19-year-olds wearing boat shoes, pink Polo shirts, and brown belts every day of the year. Yuck.
For my business appearances, I DO care a lot about how I look, since I think it makes a big impression. But even in business, I’ve gone decidedly casual since I don’t do sales pitches anymore. But – be careful – give me an opportunity to wear a bow tie, and I won’t let you down.
In an otherwise unexceptional March Atlantic, I did enjoy the cover piece (subscribers only) on the increasing emphasis on science to figure out the chemistry of attraction and falling in love.
A few cute tidbits. Since my index finger is slightly shorter than my ring finger, I am likely a "director" type, which "is associated with being rational, analytical, exacting, independent, logical, rank-oriented, competitive, irreverent, and narcissistic." Pretty accurate! Director types also rarely imagine extreme situation, like winning the lotery or being stranded on an island. That’s me. Of course, we’re all a little bit of everything, but it’s fascinating that science can predict certain traits.
I’ve always found it odd that people marry someone they meet in graduate school, for example. The pool of candidates is so small; I have to think that marriage happens because both people are at a stage in their life where they want to get married, and thus they lower the bar for that to happen. Online dating/matchmaking services certainly seem like they should offer better fits, but the whole trend should be unsettling to those who still believe in love at first sight.
Michael Veseth has had it with too-convenient metaphors of globalization such as McDonalds and Michael Jordan. It’s all baloney – err, "globaloney."
Globaloney: Unraveling the Myths of Globalization challenges the rhetoric of Thomas Friedman, Benjamin Barber, William Greider, and other globalization commentators as high on words and images but low on accurate content. Veseth’s previous book was critical of globalization, but in this thin volume he’s more upbeat. In fact, he spends most of the time challenging doomsayers. Americans who look out and see McDonald’s everywhere and groan "Americanization" are really Americans looking for symbols of their homeland. People who bemoan the erosion of local culture as overtaken by massive corporate culture are blind to the reality – people have more choices than ever before, the "bottom" of the market is better than it’s ever been, and competition for high quality product is as active as ever.
He’s on-point when discussing sports analogies. He identifies basketball, for example, as a winner-takes-all market. Michael Jordan isn’t on the walls of an Argentinian fan because of some American takeover. He’s on the wall because he’s the best. Why would you want to cheer for the second best? Also, basketball was spread by YMCA missionaries a century ago and was played by people around the world well before it became popular in the U.S.
The frustrating part of this book is how it does not move any argument forward; rather, it simply reacts to arguments already set forth. Its thesis is humble: as Veseth says in the conclusion, his goal is to simply train people how to detect "globaloney" in a pro or anti-globalization argument. After all, it’s a massively complex issue with a gazillion dimensions. I couldn’t agree more, but an ending that resorts to "Ahh! The complexity!" leaves something to be desired.
Related Post: Globalization and Its Impact on Culture: Increases Diversity or Not?
I’ve always loved haiku, despite not being a poetry buff by any means. There’s something addictive about trying to communicate in 5 – 7 – 5. Back when I was a young lad, like in the 2nd or 3rd grade, I did a haiku in crayons and watercolors. I kept it all these years, framed it, and it’s hanging in my room.
Rain falling softly
My flowers our watered now
Lucky day for me
Here’s a picture of this artistic brilliance:
I spent 30 minutes today with Harold Henderson’s An Introduction to Haiku, a little book with the best of Japanese haiku and some brief words on its history. I learned that the best haiku masters rarely followed 5 – 7- 5 syllable patterns and that my obsession on this one style is a sign of my poetic ignorance. I also learned that the best haiku expresses emotion, and should evoke a "flood of other emotions" not necessarily named by word.
