Monthly Archives: June 2007

“I Would Be Happy To…” and “Entrepreneurism”

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Does anyone else notice when someone says, “I would be happy to,” as in, “I would be happy to have lunch with you.”

We reciprocal mammals always seem to need to make it explicit who’s doing who a favor.

If you want to be hierarchy-neutral, I prefer “I’d love to have to lunch with you” or, with a little less enthusiasm, “Sure, I’d like to have lunch with you.”

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Since we’re on the verbal pet peeve topic, I also must also voice protest with the widespread usage of “entrepreneurism”. My friend Dave first tipped me off to this some time ago, and ever since I’ve cringed when hearing it. “Entrepreneurial” – sure. “Entrepreneurship” – great. “Entrepreneurism” – meaningless. Right? Or does it contain some other meaning not encompassed in the other two words?

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Logistics Technology Behind FedEx and UPS

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I’ve always been fascinated with logistics — how does FedEx, UPS, etc. manage to deliver so many packages around the world? The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a quickie on UPS protocols to maximize employee efficiency:

While at a stop, drivers are supposed to hang their key ring from a finger so it’s handy when they get back behind the wheel, where they simultaneously start the engine with their right hand while fastening the seat belt with their left.

Also, check out this cool YouTube video of FedEx planes being diverted during a thunderstorm in Memphis. Here’s to the air traffic controllers!

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Seth Godin on Squidoo and Viral

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Seth Godin has one of the best jobs, in my view: he thinks, writes about what he thinks, and then propagates those ideas.

Eric Enge has a worthwhile text interview with Seth which touches on the Squidoo phenomenon (it blows my mind how successful that site has become), viral marketing in general, Yahoo, Google, etc.

We tried to get out of the way of people’s ability to share. We tried to make it so that it’s very easy to set up, and it’s very easy to promote.

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Innocence Versus Insight

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Robin Hanson wrote an interesting two page essay on "Innocence Versus Insight". Here’s the summary:

There seems to be a fundamental tradeoff between innocence and insight. This tradeoff occurs at both personal and social levels. Adam and Eve are said to have lost their place in Eden because they ate from the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil;" their knowledge cost them their innocence and comfort. Our insight often comes at a similar price.

Several practical examples follow. Interesting!

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I found the essay from Robin’s post on the Overcoming Bias blog. He notes that many people dismiss random and odd behavior such as decorating, blogging, and joking as unrelated to our mandate for survival and reproduction — ignoring obvious explanations like signaling theory  — but the fact remains that "while our behavior may be far from optimal, there is surely a detailed correspondence between our behavior and the functions they perform." Functional is not necessarily optimal.

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By the way, speaking of those always-interesting George Mason folk, don’t forget to pre-order Tyler Cowen’s new book and get special access to his secret blog. Cowen, in the tradition of Freakonomics, promises to help us "Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist". It should be terrific.

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Book Short: Reading Like a Writer

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Francine Prose‘s Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and For Those Who Want to Write Them is a fun, instructive guide for people who like to read word-by-word and study the craft. She includes tons and tons of excerpts from a range of genres. She also offers straight advice, and gently rebuts some "writing rules" like "show don’t tell".

Although I burned out by 150 pages (there’s only so much super close reading you can do in any given time), I still recommend this book to any writer or careful reader who wants to get better.

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