On Compassion
Albert Camus begins The Myth of Sisyphus with a rather dark assertion: "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy." In essence: you can wax intellectual about the meaning of life until you're sore in the throat, but what really matters is whether or not your train of thought leads you to conclude that...
To a Scribe
Imagine you're a scribe in the 15th century. Imagine that you know what it means to sit by candlelight in the cold and copy books by hand. One day, this groovy cat named Gutenberg shows up on your doorstep and tells you he's just invented this thing called moveable type, which makes the printing of books much faster, cheaper, and more efficient than it ever has been before. Remember, you're a scribe...how do you react...
Less Is More
I was in a meeting last week with about a dozen people who were planning an event for Christmas day. At the back of the room was a hard-working, good-natured gentleman who had a lot of things to say. And he said most of them out loud, without reservation, for the rest of us to hear. It was painfully obvious to anyone, including him, that after so long, people were starting to tune him out....
Waiting
Waiting isn't always the hardest part. Most of us spend our entire lives waiting for people to give us things. We email the resume, then wait for the right person to find it and offer us a dream job. Usually, waiting is the easiest thing we can do. Waiting for a recruiter to call us is easier than calling companies on the phone. Waiting for the casting director to call us back so we can...
Don't Blame Me
There's a warning before a lot of DVDs start to play. You've probably seen it hundreds of times, and ignore it along with the piracy warning: "The views expressed in this DVD's commentary reflect those of the individuals expressing them, and not those of Twentieth Century Fox or its subsidiaries." What does this imply? It says that the production or distribution company (in this case, Twentieth Century Fox) is keeping the film and its makers...
Break Stuff
Mark Zuckerberg tells the developers at Facebook that they should work fast. He was quoted as instructing his developers, "Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough." If you're not a developer, it might not make sense. Or it may sound like the Facebook CEO is a slave driver. He's not. To me, the intent of his statement is clear, and the idea resonates with me. Part...
Blood Work Visualization
Wired magazine wrote an article this month about making the results of the blood tests from our doctors less cryptic, by add visualization charts, graphics, and color coding. Only one question remains after reading this article: why on earth did it take so long for someone to do this? The last time I got my blood results, the doctor had scrawled some notes next to the results. A check mark for each item that was...
Commitment
Okay...before you'll commit to something, you want to make sure that you're going to get some money for your trouble, right? Writers need advances, because they need beer, and because it puts them on the hook to finish the work they started. It's a publisher saying, "Hey, we believe in you, your work, and we want to take a chance with you." Part of the reason that author royalties (for new writers) are such a...
Gift Ideas
I was brainstorming recently about how to create a gift idea engine for people trying to determine what to get their friends and relatives for Christmas. After a bit of Googling, I found Amazon's Facebook app, which generates gift recommendations for each of your friends on Facebook based on their profile info. Less than two weeks to go, I thought I'd share the link. Find it here...in the column at the far right, there's a...
Cold War
Just over nine years ago, when I was going to Michigan State, the university hosted an ice hockey game between themselves and their biggest rival, the University of Michigan. Instead of hosting it inside of the ice arena, but instead converted their football field into an ice arena and held the game there. As a result, they set the world record for attendance at a hockey game. (The game was called the "Cold War" and...