Another reason to avoid proprietary software is that it allows its creators privacy on your hardware. That lets them spy on you, among other things. Who wants that? For example, here is a report that the iPhone keeps record of everywhere you go Security researchers have discovered that Apple’s iPhone keeps track of where you go – and saves every detail of it to a secret file on the device[…] Keep reading →

“Does Harvard pay off?” was the title of a thread a friend posted on A Small World (and re-posted on his blog) whether a higher education was worth it. The discussion didn’t lead to a full consensus, but many people from within Harvard’s community and the Ivy League answered yes for various reasons. Based on my faithfully rewarding strategy “don’t look for blame, but take responsibility for making things better[…] Keep reading →

I can tell you the root of happiness. I’m talking about the root of the word, not the emotion per se, but they’re related, so the answer is telling. First, let’s note that for many people, happiness is their highest value, over money, fame, fortune, and power. More pointedly, when you ask people what they want for their children, happiness ranks yet higher. The root of happiness is hap, which[…] Keep reading →

Grete Waitz, superhero of marathons and especially the New York City marathon, which she won 9 times (!!), died today of cancer. From Wikipedia Grete Waitz (1 October 1953 – 19 April 2011) was a Norwegian marathon runner who won nine New York City Marathons between 1978 and 1988, more than any other runner in history. She also won a silver medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles[…] Keep reading →

Jesse Eisinger, my former teammate and friend in college, in fact the captain of the team, won a Pulitzer with ProPublica. Congratulations, Jesse! ProPublica reporters Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein have been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for their stories on how some Wall Street bankers, seeking to enrich themselves at the expense of their clients and sometimes even their own firms, at first delayed but then worsened[…] Keep reading →

Why would anyone want to feel fake? When do you want to feel fake? Developing leadership skills or other types of personal development aren’t like learning typical how-to skills. When you develop leadership skills or develop personally, you change how everyone sees you and how you see everyone. You change as a person, in other words. You used to be person A and expect to become person B. As person[…] Keep reading →

Do you have weaknesses you just can’t seem to lose? Maybe you interrupt too much? Or solve problems when you should be building relationships? This perspective may help. When clients tell me about their weaknesses, I generally ask them for examples of how the skills in question worked or didn’t work. A common pattern emerges, though it’s not universal. One example is my student/client with great listening skills who interrupted[…] Keep reading →

A friend and I were playing around with logo ideas for the Freedombox project based on this email solicitation from the Freedombox Foundation for T-shirt designs: T-Shirt Designs ————— One of the things we offered Kickstarter donors was a T-shirt. We are thus soliciting T-shirt designs. The theme of the shirt is Community Angels. It would be good to involve our current logo http://freedomboxfoundation.org/images/freedombox_large.png. Sorry, we don’t have a bigger[…] Keep reading →

Leadership does not require perfection — far from it. Effective leaders don’t have to be strong in many leadership skills at all. Effective leadership emerges more from knowing your strengths and weaknesses than on having many strengths. Speed and strength are valuable to any position in football, but a quarterback doesn’t need strength like a lineman. And a lineman doesn’t need to be as fast as a running back. A[…] Keep reading →