Paul Buchheit wrote a piece the other day entitled, “What to do with your millions.” After answering: “First, don’t lose the money!”, he goes onto explore a second question — in my opinion, the more significant (and much harder) one — “What do I do with my life?” He writes: “First, it’s important to understand [...]
1. Methods Tried To Stop Leaking Oil — June 4, 2010 (nytimes.com) “Since a fire engulfed the Deepwater horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, engineers have attempted a number of techniques to slow or stop the torrent of oil leaking from the wellhead 5,000 feet below the surface.” 2. Top Kill [...]
Steve Jobs on “Creativity” (5th paragraph) “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize [...]
1. Why Humans Triumphed (wsj.com) “Human evolution presents a puzzle. Nothing seems to explain the sudden takeoff of the last 45,000 years—the conversion of just another rare predatory ape into a planet dominator with rapidly progressing technologies. Once “progress” started to produce new tools, different ways of life and burgeoning populations, it accelerated all over [...]
1. The Value Of Attention (dilbert.com) “Most people enjoy getting attention. It’s one of our basic needs. Little kids go through a “Look at me!” stage that lasts years. I believe we never grow out of that. All we do is learn how to be more subtle in saying, “Look at me! There are lots [...]
1. Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule (paulgraham.com) “One reason programmers dislike meetings so much is that they’re on a different type of schedule from other people. Meetings cost them more. There are two types of schedule, which I’ll call the manager’s schedule and the maker’s schedule. The manager’s schedule is for bosses. It’s embodied in the [...]
1. 1,000 True Fans (kk.org) “The long tail is famously good news for two classes of people; a few lucky aggregators, such as Amazon and Netflix, and 6 billion consumers. Of those two, I think consumers earn the greater reward from the wealth hidden in infinite niches.”
1. The No-Stats All-Star (nytimes.com) “He had more or less admitted to me that this part of his job left him cold. ‘It’s the same thing every day,’ he said, as he struggled to explain how a man on the receiving end of the raging love of 18,557 people in a darkened arena could feel [...]
1. How To Save The News (theatlantic.com) “Everyone knows that Google is killing the news business. Few people know how hard Google is trying to bring it back to life, or why the company now considers journalism’s survival crucial to its own prospects. Of course this overstates Google’s power to destroy, or create. The company’s [...]
1. The Crisis Comes Ashore by Al Gore (tnr.com) “The continuing undersea gusher of oil 50 miles off the shores of Louisiana is not the only source of dangerous uncontrolled pollution spewing into the environment. Worldwide, the amount of man-made CO2 being spilled every three seconds into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding the planet [...]
1. The Whole Earth Catalog (wikipedia.org) “The Whole Earth Catalog was an American counterculture catalog published by Stewart Brand between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998. Although the WECs listed all sorts of products for sale (clothing, books, tools, machines, seeds — anything for a self-sustainable “hippie” lifestyle) the Whole Earth Catalogs themselves [...]
1. How (And When) To Motivate Yourself (hbr.org) “I woke up this morning to pouring rain and temperatures in the low 40s. I had planned on going for an early bike ride in Central Park but now I wasn’t so sure. I like to get some exercise every day and given my commitments for the [...]
Lady Danville – Cars Lady Danville is an acoustic folk pop trio from Los Angeles, California. With Michael Garner on keys, Matthew Frankel on the cajon, and Dan Chang on the guitar Lady Danville is most recognized for their well-crafted harmonies, thoughtful lyrics and refreshing dose of energy, wit and charm, evoking the sound of [...]
1. Organic Startup Ideas (paulgraham.com) “The best way to come up with startup ideas is to ask yourself the question: what do yo wish someone would make for you? There are two types of startup ideas: those that grow organically out of your own life, and those that you decide, from afar, are going to [...]
One area of study that really interests me is Attention. A simple Google search for “Attention” will populate many results, but I usually favor Wikipedia’s content for a good overview of something. And this held true for this particular subject. Wikipedia: “Attention is the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment [...]
Kanye West “For most people it’s easier to just agree. For me the hardest thing is to ‘just’ agree and that is what sparks creativity, the feeling that something can be better, the feeling that something’s missing. The feeling that something’s needed.”
Since today is Berkshire Hathaway’s 2010 Annual Shareholder’s Meeting, I thought I’d share some Warren Buffett quotes with you. “Great investment opportunities come around when excellent companies are surrounded by unusual circumstances that cause the stock to be misappraised.” “Stock picking is like gambling: those who win well, seldom bet, but when they do, they [...]