from NYT here:
When he was a Harvard undergraduate, Mr. Gates lamented that so many of his fellow students pursued a “narrow track for success” instead of being willing to “take big risks to do big things,” recalled Michael Katz, a Harvard contemporary
I used to be a victim of this mindset. It was as if I didn’t have the right to “Dream Big” or to dream in general. It was in the way that people seemed to interact with you whenever you are in dream mode. The trying to take you seriously look, coupled with doses of Is this Guy Serious and is this Guy Crazy look. I’ve read the signs well enough that I generally show my dreamer side once and look for the reaction of the people I’m talking with and calibrate from their.
One of the things I love with where I am working right now is the fact that the people I hang with in the office are receptive to my dreams, they don’t encourage it overtly but they allow me my space. This is the reason why I am at their asses most of the time telling them to maximize their potential and stop wasting their time feeling inadequate.
Another place where I find people who allow themselves to dream is at out technology cooperative (aic). The hivecc as we fondly call our hq may be interpreted as a place where bold minds and daring hearts commune. It is a diverse community whose common denominator is that alone we may reach amazing heights but together we may dream of much bigger things.
Well the bottom line is never sell yourself short! You are allowed to dream , and if you are already dreaming why dream small when you can dream big. Limit your interactions with people who continually dismiss your dreams, foster an environment where you are allowed to make mistakes and to try. Find people you trust who can tell you when you are somewhat going the wrong ways, People who would act somewhat as a North Star.
My Bohemia the Net
The feeling of alienation that one feels with the world at large leads one to a nuanced depression.
A sense of limbo and utter dejection with the present reality that engulf ones own existence.
To me the internet was my bohemia, a place for misfits, rejects, dreamers and people somewhat unhappy/unsatisfied with the world as it is.
from Vanity Fair here:
It isn’t possible to quantify the extent to which society and culture are indebted to Bohemia. In every age in every successful country, it has been important that at least a small part of the cityscape is not dominated by bankers, developers, chain stores, generic restaurants, and railway terminals. This little quarter should instead be the preserve of—in no special order—insomniacs and restaurants and bars that never close; bibliophiles and the little stores and stalls that cater to them; alcoholics and addicts and deviants and the proprietors who understand them; aspirant painters and musicians and the modest studios that can accommodate them; ladies of easy virtue and the men who require them; misfits and poets from foreign shores and exiles from remote and cruel dictatorships. Though it should be no disadvantage to be young in such a quartier, the atmosphere should not by any means discourage the veteran. It was Jean-Paul Sartre who to his last days lent the patina to the Saint-Germain district of Paris, just as it is Lawrence Ferlinghetti, last of the Beats, who by continuing to operate his City Lights bookstore in San Francisco’s North Beach still gives continuity with the past.
rePost: My Business Magazines Lied to Me
Excellent Article,
We succumb to the startup itch because of the promise of getting rich but most of the time we fail to understand that (I got this from a Paul Graham essay) people who succeeded from their startups were paid on account of their productivity and output. I distinctly remember my aha moment when I read in the footnotes that “what you do in a startup is compress a lifetime’s worth of work into a few years. .”
I think that the problem is you seldom know who would be extremely successful in a startup environment. You can see who would be successful but not who might be (explanation: If you knew Steve Jobs or Bill Gates before their success you would probably say they had a high chance of succeeding whilst the majority of people are like millionaire’s next door types you wouldn’t know they are successful if they didn’t tell you!).
And I believe their (magazines/bloggers/tech-evangelist) skewed views are somewhat sound because some people need to get started at doing before they get their groove and find that they were meant to do great/amazing things.
all in all read the whole thing!
from here:
Telling Us What We Want To Hear
Have you ever had a close friend whose engagement isn’t working out, and now they wonder if they should be concerned about getting married? Sometimes there are signs it isn’t going to last, but they don’t want you to tell them that. They are scared to leave the relationship, scared of failing, scared of being alone, and so they don’t want to you help them go down that path. They want you to tell them it will all be ok. They want to hear that he/she will probably change.
Likewise, people don’t want to read that hard work and discipline are the path to success. They don’t want to have to analyze numbers, because it isn’t as fun as going with the gut feeling. They don’t want to be told that the latest trend is just a fad, even though it almost certainly is. Business magazines that don’t cater to what people want will go out of business. The result then, is that business magazines (and books and blogs) tell us what we want to hear. Then we go off and implement that bad advice, and when it doesn’t work, we make up some other excuse. Or, if we come to realize the advice was wrong, but it is still popular, we keep it to ourselves, because speaking out about it is a quick way to get chastised and be labeled (negative, luddite, sour grapes, etc). People want to believe what they want to believe, and if you try to show them a truth that conflicts with that, you will most likely fail.
rePost: This man is an island
from FP:
This man is an island
Mon, 06/23/2008 – 1:40pm
Stuart Hill, the owner of a small island off the coast of Scotland, declares he is no longer under British rule:
I have recently become the owner of a tiny island off Papa Stour, which itself (for the benefit of non-Shetlanders) is a small island off the west coast of Shetland. I am returning to the Nordic tradition by re-naming it Forvik Island – Island of the Bay of Sheep. On 21st June 2008, Forvik, by my Declaration of Dependence, reverted to Shetland’s true constitutional position – that of a Crown Dependency. Other Crown Dependencies include The Isle of Man and The Channel Islands.
Forvik Island, or Forvik for short, recognises neither the British Government, nor the European Union as its superior. Because of Shetland’s unique history, there can have been no legal basis for Shetland to have been involved with either. It recognises Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I of Scotland and II of the United Kingdom as head of state.
Hill is also inviting others to apply for citizenship. If you are not a resident of the Shetland Islands, you can become an “honorary citizen of Forvik” by forking over one Forvik gulde, a currency tied to the daily market price of gold at a rate of 13 percent. Honorary citizens get a share of the profits from land sales (the island is 2.5 acres in size) as well as “duty-free activities, company registrations, vehicle registrations and other activities.”
I wonder if was inspired by our primer on “How to Start Your Own Country in Four Easy Steps.”
(Hat tip: Reason)
FP's top 20 public intellectuals (1-3)
FP’s top 20 public intellectuals 1-3:
FETHULLAH GÜLENReligious leader • Turkey
An Islamic scholar with a global network of millions of followers, Gülen is both revered and reviled in his native Turkey. To members of the Gülen movement, he is an inspirational leader who encourages a life guided by moderate Islamic principles. To his detractors, he represents a threat to Turkey’s secular order. He has kept a relatively low profile since settling in the United States in 1999, having fled Turkey after being accused of undermining secularism.
MUHAMMAD YUNUS
Microfinancier, activist • Bangladesh
More than 30 years ago, Yunus loaned several dozen poor entrepreneurs in his native Bangladesh a total of $27. It was the beginning of a lifetime devoted to fighting poverty through microfinance, efforts that earned him a Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. Over the years, his Grameen Bank, now operating in more than 100 countries, has loaned nearly $7 billion in small sums to more than 7 million borrowers—97 percent of them women. Ninety-eight percent of the loans have been repaid.
YUSUF AL-QARADAWI
Cleric • Egypt/Qatar
The host of the popular Sharia and Life TV program on Al Jazeera, Qaradawi issues w .eekly fatwas on everything from whether Islam forbids all consumption of alcohol (no) to whether fighting U.S. troops in Iraq is a legitimate form of resistance (yes). Considered the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Qaradawi condemned the September 11 attacks, but his pronouncements since, like his justification of suicide attacks, ensure his divisive reputation.
click through to view the whole list: list here:
Worthy
We have only one life in this world let us not waste is! Always ask yourself:
Is What I Am Doing Worthy Of ME?
from Seth’s Excellent Post here:
Is being negative or bitter or selfish within reason in face of how extraordinarily lucky we were to have been been born here and born now?
I take so much for granted. Perhaps you do as well. To be here, in this moment, with these resources. To have not just our health but the knowledge and the tools and the infrastructure. What a waste.
If I hadn’t had those breaks, if there weren’t all those people who had sacrificed or helped or just stayed out of my way… what then? Would I even have had a shot at this?
What if this were my last post? Would this post be worthy?
The object isn’t to be perfect. The goal isn’t to hold back until you’ve created something beyond reproach. I believe the opposite is true. Our birthright is to fail and to fail often, but to fail in search of something bigger than we can imagine. To do anything else is to waste it all.
Boston Party
some link love to the Big Picture blog:
No School Today!
Its been almost non stop rain for the past three days, but today was nothing but sunshine.
I wish I had a camera worthy enough to capture the beautiful sunset I am witnessing at the office.
Yes I am at the office, and wasting a beautiful day. (I am on break so forgive my quick post/rant)
The DECS (Department Of Education, Culture and Sports; a cabinet level department in charge of schools and other institutions in the Philippines that fall under its name) declared that there would be no classes today.
My beef is since I was in elementary school the DECS has always declared classes suspended “”a day late and a day long” (just love how you say the previous phrase).
Its been happening for 15 years and probably longer its really shameful how the DECS does their job too poorly.
In a related note. I can’t seem to stop shaking my head whenever I hear kids, young adults (college level students) wishing there was no class.
Let me qualify:
1. I can understand college kids dreading an exam or an oral recitation the next day.
2. I can understand small children wanting to spend time with their parents.
3. I can understand highschool kids wanting to hang out with friends.
What I can’t understand are the people who think of school as boring and worthless.
You control your lives, if the classes are boring you then cut classes and do something productive with your life.
Me and Chuckie were talking after watching Get Smart and the topic veered towards potential.
And I told him that “Its not about maximizing your potential, its maximizing what makes you happy” (I’ll write about this another time).
I just realize that my sentiments were incomplete. i should have said that “Its not about maximizing your potential, its maximizing what makes you happy, as long as you know that you are not modifying what would make you happy because of fear”.
It took me awhile before I finally got this, I hope you do to (Yeah whoever read my blog)
Counter Hegemonic
hope we can start something like this in the Philippines where there seems to be extreme void in intelligent discourse !
from here:
(Counter)-hegemonic memes
Although the left invented the concept of cultural hegemony, they (we) have been pretty bad at practicing it. In many ways, it is the right’s preconceptions that are still hegemonic – for example, its use of “middle class” to mean rich, or its stigmatizing of single parents, welfare claimants, trades unionists or public sector workers.
Which raises the question. Shouldn’t we try to start an alternative hegemony?
This would not consist in more than just challenging the above preconceptions. Indeed, merely to challenge them is to lend them credence. To say “welfare claimants are not scroungers” is like a man saying “I don’t beat my wife.” It doesn‘t establish his innocence, but draws attention to suspicions.
No. What we need is something bolder, alternative memes. I’ll get you started with three quick ‘uns:
….
I offer this as a mere start. We can never tell which memes will take and which won’t, so it’s best to spread a load of them and see what grows.
The point of these, though, is not to be explicitly “radical“ or “transgressive.” Instead, it‘s to claim that we should take for granted certain things, which only idiots or extremists would challenge; this is how the right regards the above-mentioned claims.
And don’t be hung up by the “truth.” After all, the right wasn’t when it began those successful hegemonic memes.
The point about hegemonic memes is not that they are “true“: no simple statement about people or society is ever wholly true, a fact which usually only the most fatuous pedant points out. Instead, they act as default positions – things that are believed as a matter of course by many people, and whose challengers are regarded as marginal or eccentric.
So, what will be the new hegemonic positions?
Which raises the question. Shouldn’t we try to start an alternative hegemony?
This would not consist in more than just challenging the above preconceptions. Indeed, merely to challenge them is to lend them credence. To say “welfare claimants are not scroungers” is like a man saying “I don’t beat my wife.” It doesn‘t establish his innocence, but draws attention to suspicions.
No. What we need is something bolder, alternative memes. I’ll get you started with three quick ‘uns:
….
I offer this as a mere start. We can never tell which memes will take and which won’t, so it’s best to spread a load of them and see what grows.
The point of these, though, is not to be explicitly “radical“ or “transgressive.” Instead, it‘s to claim that we should take for granted certain things, which only idiots or extremists would challenge; this is how the right regards the above-mentioned claims.
And don’t be hung up by the “truth.” After all, the right wasn’t when it began those successful hegemonic memes.
The point about hegemonic memes is not that they are “true“: no simple statement about people or society is ever wholly true, a fact which usually only the most fatuous pedant points out. Instead, they act as default positions – things that are believed as a matter of course by many people, and whose challengers are regarded as marginal or eccentric.
So, what will be the new hegemonic positions?
|
Interactional Expertise
More evidence of how crucial a choice our friends/seat mates/acquittance’s are to the decisions we can make. If this is true and my gut points me to the truth of this, we may be fast entering an age of great decision making. Why because usenet/googlegroups/yahoogroups or other conversational/ web 2.0 social interactivity interconnection technology is allowing us to be in the loop with the world’s foremost experts in the hard and social sciences. We (the early adopters) may be the first wave of people blessed with an Interactional Expertise spanning a large part of human knowledge.
the interview is from here:
How do you distinguish the people who can and can’t contribute to a specialized field?
The key to the whole thing is whether people have had access to the tacit knowledge of an esoteric area—tacit knowledge is know-how that you can’t express in words. The standard example is knowing how to ride a bike. My view as a sociologist is that expertise is located in more or less specialized social groups. If you want to know what counts as secure knowledge in a field like gravitational wave detection, you have to become part of the social group. Being immersed in the discourse of the specialists is the only way to keep up with what is at the cutting edge.
Is this where interactional expertise comes into play?
Interactional expertise is one of the things that broadens the scope of who can contribute. It’s a little bit wider than the old “people in the white coats” of the 1950s, but what it’s not is everybody. (Within science, lots of people have interactional expertise, because science wouldn’t run without it.)
You did experiments to test your theory of expertise. What did you find?
The original version we did was with color-blind people. What we were attempting to demonstrate is something we call the strong interactional hypothesis: If you have deeply immersed yourself in the talk of an esoteric group—but not immersed yourself in any way in the practices of that group—you will be indistinguishable from somebody who has immersed themself [sic] in both the talk and the practice, in a test which just involves talk.
If that’s the case, then you’re going to speak as fluently as someone who has been engaged in the practices. And if you can speak as fluently, then you’re indistinguishable from an expert. It’s what I like to call “walking the talk”. You still can’t do the stuff, but you can make judgments, inferences and so on, which are on a par.
We picked color-blind people because they’ve spent their whole lives immersed in a community talking about color. So we thought color-blind people should be indistinguishable from color-perceivers when asked questions by a color-perceiver who knew what was going on. And we demonstrated that that was in fact the case. Now we’re planning to do another imitation test on the congenitally blind to see if they can perform as well as the color-blind.