Awareness / Blog / Nature

Things aren’t suddenly getting worse

  Whenever I read about how today's world is moving faster, competition is greater, people are more separated, more together, or whatever superlative that supposedly sets our time different than any other, I think of this quote Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers. This quote defines our time, doesn't it? Except that it was written centuries ago. I've seen it attributed to Socrates, but I've seen people claim it's much younger, but still generations old. Every generation changes its values from the…

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July 16, 2012
NorthKorea

North Korea and inequity

Inequity and its consequences If some people succeed without having to work and others have no chance to succeed, you create feelings of unfairness. Those feelings of unfairness will motivate people to return the unfairness at those who create, maintain, or benefit from the system. Everyone recognizes this situation in North Korea. Even outsiders, who have no interaction with the system, feel outraged and wish harm on the people in charge. People feel the type of wish to harm them normally reserved for ticks, leeches, and genuine parasites. We see the North Korean people not revolting and conclude the regime must be repressing them more. The reason I mention inequity, as usual with me and observations of North Korea, is what it reveals about my…

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July 16, 2012
Awareness / Blog / Leadership / Tips

You don’t find your passion, you create it

A client asked how to find your passion (in the context of relationships, as you'll see). I wrote the following (slightly edited). -------------------------------- You don't find some single latent passion within you, if only you can find it. You create it. What is passion? It's powerful emotion. Emotion doesn't come from out there. It comes from in here. How do you create something in here? Not by looking out there. By growing, learning, building, exploring, and developing skills in here. Stuff out there gives you something to work with, but your passion is inside you. You have a zillion things you like, each of which could grow to into one of, or the, overarching source of passion that drives your life. Until I found out…

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July 15, 2012
In North Korea, many people just sit by the roadside with nothing to do
NorthKorea

In North Korea, many people just sit by the roadside with nothing to do

Many times daily in North Korea you see someone crouching doing nothing but passing time. Usually they're alone, but sometimes in a group. I kept meaning to take pictures, but it feels funny to take a picture of someone doing nothing. I found the two below on the web. As best you can tell they've been squatting all day and will be for a while longer. They'll be in a park or on a street corner. Not far away someone else may crouch alone doing nothing too. I don't see them complaining. I didn't see any police telling them to move along or other people asking them to join an activity. It got me thinking about government, systems, and motivation. I don't know the cause…

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July 15, 2012
Awareness / Blog / Leadership

Every moment counts

If you like improving your life enough to read my stuff, you probably know about a study (probably one of many) that found that people who won the lottery and people who had accidents that left them in wheelchairs both returned to the same emotional levels a year later. What do you conclude from such results? How much can we misunderstand ourselves if winning the lottery doesn't help out lives? Or if spinal injuries don't? These results sounds counterintuitive. Most of us would prefer winning the lottery to losing control of our arms and legs, or even just not winning the lottery. But if winning the lottery doesn't improve our lives, why do we feel like we'd rather win than not? And what importance, if…

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July 14, 2012
Blog / Tips

How to generate tons of hits and posts and why I don’t do it

Having written daily for a while I've found out great ways to generate lots of hits and to generate online discussion. I don't do them on this page, despite how well they work. The tactics attract people to any media -- press, tv, etc. Title Start with a title with a provocative question the answer is usually no to. Is Obama secretly working with the GOP? Can you make millions without working? What is the government not telling you about healthcare? Subject Express an opinion as indisputable fact on something there is no right answer to or no one knows. Judge. What's hot this season Why Portland is the best city to live in The truth behind global warming Tone Polarize. Moralize. Suggest people can…

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July 13, 2012
Blog / Leadership / Tips

Public speaking: one way to captivate audiences

Between my talks and seminars and the university courses I've taught, I get to speak in public a fair amount. We all know one of the main challenges of public speaking is keeping the audience engaged -- a bigger one being how to recapture an audience's attention if you lose it. Here's a trick that works every time. Although doing it can challenge you more than you think you can handle (another reason to do it) if you aren't comfortable with yourself. I learned it giving talks on entrepreneurship -- mainly talking about starting Submedia. Sometimes my talks required talking about troubling times -- when the company nearly went bankrupt, when the Board argued and fought, when we couldn't make important deadlines, when funding sources…

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July 12, 2012
NorthKorea

More North Korea posts to come

I've been meaning to write more about my April 2012 North Korea trip. I took tons of video, pictures, and notes there, but have been trapped behind China's censoring of YouTube and I wanted to start by showing video. Well, you'll have to wait to see the video, but I'll start posting some text and pictures. I'm writing this post partly to sink my ships and force myself to write these posts. Meanwhile, if you want amazing pictures, make sure to check out Joseph's American in North Korea blog. You'll never think of North Korea the same again. You may even want to visit.

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July 12, 2012
I like luxury when someone gives it to me just for being myself
Blog / Freedom

I like luxury when someone gives it to me just for being myself

I mostly post pictures of cultural things like the Great Wall, Forbidden City, and millenia-old terracotta armies, but why not pictures of luxurious resorts I've indulged in? Maybe because the former are cultural and the resort in question -- Singapore's Marina Bay Sands -- is commercial and makes its money from gambling? Maybe, but swimming in an infinity pool above Singapore also recalls when I swam across the Hudson River. And with my posts on how spending less improves your life, maybe I should show I enjoy luxury too. Besides, since I used my social skills to get my friend and me invited to the roof (hence my swimming in boxer shorts -- we didn't plan on going and they were all I had), it cost…

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July 11, 2012
Blog / Nature

My satellite in the news!

With all the news of the Higgs boson, you may have missed a big discovery in dark matter, a major remaining mystery of physics and astronomy. Most of the matter we can detect in the universe we can't see directly. We can only see how it affects other things through gravity. Very mysterious! We have almost no way to constrain its properties besides gravity or experiment with it. Yet it seems to make up 85% of the universe. On July 4th Nature published "A filament of dark matter between two clusters of galaxies," According to one of its authors, "It's a resounding confirmation of the standard theory of structure formation of the universe. And it's a confirmation people didn't think was possible at this point."…

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July 10, 2012
Awareness / Blog / Nature

Would you eat the cherry tomato?

Here is a deep question about values, spontaneity, risk, adventure, the best things in life, and your appetite for them. The context It begins with my mom's garden years ago when she lived in Nebraska. Now I'm not that big on tomatoes, like some people are, and less so then than now. But when I tasted the cherry tomatoes from that garden they tasted like sunshine. I couldn't believe how much flavor they had -- sweet, tangy, juicy... everything you could hope for in a piece of fruit. And with all the vines there, you could pop cherry tomatoes in your mouth all day. There were more on the vie and overnight yet more would appear. Plus she had  -- I should mention it was…

5 Comments
July 9, 2012
Art / Blog / Education / Leadership

A leadership dream

Since posting on lessons leaders can learn from method acting, I've been thinking about parallels between acting and leadership -- in particular how acting changed when Constantine Stanislovski led changing the art to expressive and internal from impressive and external. "Impressive and external" means the actor tried to impress the audience with outward showiness. "Expressive and internal" means the actor tries to find emotions inside and express them. You know what acting before looked like. Jon Lovitz and John Lithgow mocked that style on Saturday Night Live in its Master Thespian sketches in the late 80s (this transcript of a sketch made me laugh after all these years). I haven't studied the history of acting, but I think the comedy sketch gets some of the…

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July 8, 2012
Blog

The scourge of romantic comedies

Romantic comedies hurt us. If you know me long enough you'll hear many reasons why. Today I'll talk about a couple. In nearly all of them the girl comes to realize how great the guy really is under the surface. She realizes who he really is. She also realizes who the bad guy is and why he's bad. Unsuccessful guys who just know how great they are underneath see them and think, if only people could see how he is inside he'd be a winner. He hopes that if he stays the course a girl will recognize him for it. How many counterproductive beliefs and behaviors does this model reinforce? It makes people worse by any standard I can think of. Probably the aspect that…

7 Comments
July 7, 2012
Blog / Freedom

If you crave something you don’t have, people who have it will always be able to control you

The title of this post speaks for itself so I'll keep it short. I just keep seeing people wishing they had more than they need not realizing how they are creating jails for themselves, giving others control over their lives. If you always want more money, people with more money will get you to work for them. If you want fame, people with access to media will get you to work for them. If you want power and influence, people with power and influence will get you to work for them. You get the idea. Oh, and when they get you to work for them, they won't reward you for it. If you don't crave something, someone will try to convince you that you do…

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July 6, 2012
Art / Awareness / Blog

You don’t have to accept anyone else’s hierarchy of taste

I posted on another board in a discussion on taste Is classical music better than punk? Museum art better than street art? Haute cuisine better than burritos? Is the op-ed page better than stand-up comedy? Is classical philosophy better than folk wisdom? My life improved when I learned I didn't have to accept anyone else's hierarchy of taste. Most people may consider one better than another, but I've learned to see them as meeting the values of a community better, not being absolutely better. Classical music meets the values of some communities better than punk. But punk meets other communities' values better than classical. I prefer evaluating things by the values of the communities that practice it. Then I appreciate more things and judge less.…

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July 5, 2012
Blog / Freedom / NorthKorea

Frederick Douglass on the Fourth of July

As I consider the U.S. Declaration of Independence perhaps the founding concepts of the country I was born in and lived most of my life, I celebrate our Independence Day by reading at least one relevant historical work. Having visited Vietnam and North Korea since last July 4th, I've had pause to think about what freedom means to America and some things of what America is doing to freedom. Vietnam's War Remembrance Museum certainly affected my perception of how the U.S. has affected freedom in other places. To say the least, the Vietnamese government views the United States' activity there differently than does American culture. On the other hand, learning about and observing the North Korean government's oppressing its people -- which I distinguish completely…

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July 4, 2012
Blog / Fitness / Nature / NorthKorea

Ultimate in Shanghai!

I played ultimate in Shanghai for the first time Monday and Saturday since the tournament in August in North Korea (in particular getting the end zone D and catching the goal to win the game), which was the first time in something like five years. Wow, nothing compares to playing ultimate. Even with probably 90 degree temperatures and high humidity, running around, throwing, and catching was awesome. It's like what our bodies evolved for. At 40, I thought I was done playing, but I think I'll play regularly this summer. They have games scheduled twice a week and the community, as with ultimate communities everywhere, is fun, welcoming, international, and spirited. Come to think of it, I saw a random guy in Singapore dressed like…

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July 3, 2012
Ten Years of Submedia’s New York City display!
Blog / Entrepreneurship

Ten Years of Submedia’s New York City display!

I wrote the other day about my six-month anniversary of burpees. A couple days before was a bigger anniversary -- the tenth anniversary of Submedia's Manhattan display in the PATH system. We launched June 18, 2002. I don't write that much about Submedia here, the company I co-founded in the late 90s, but it still pays my bills and I still work on developing the technology, relationship, and other things there. Pursuing that project got me out of academia and kindled my still-strong passion for entrepreneurship. The press covered it extensively. When I get back out behind China's government's repressive blocking of YouTube, I'll include some of the videos from the launch. I remember hearing some of the investors saw news about the launch in Asia…

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July 2, 2012
Blog / Freedom / Tips

Another awesome blog — this one on living richly

I began yesterday's post on how cutting costs improves your life intending to write about a blog I just found and enjoyed. As per my extensively field-tested and verified practice of sharing what you love, I'm sharing the blogs I enjoy reading and find improve my life. The blog is called Mr. Money Moustache. The author writes about living well by getting rid of crap. By word count he writes about money, but, as readers of this blog would expect, I like it because of the values and emotions it's about: freedom, fun, independence, joy, relationships, and things like that. Money brings so many people down. It doesn't have to. It's just a medium of exchange. You can use it to account for what you…

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July 1, 2012

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