6) Dream on a shelf — ESPN.com OTL. Interesting read on the insides of big money sport. More interesting as a human interest story than financial sports.

7) What makes us happy? The Atlantic. A look at a study that’s been going on for *72* years of 268 men at Harvard college. Probes the question of what the factors were that made some men happy, and others miserable (and suicidal).

8 ) The secrets of self control - The New Yorker. Self control has always fascinated me and this article was one of the most interesting I’ve ever read on the topic.

9) When underdogs break the rules - The New Yorker. Why people pick fights they know they are going to lose has long been one of my favorite questions. It’s not that I don’t like the underdog, or those who fight long odds bravely. Far from it. But I never understood the masochism of confronting a foe in the manner in which you know you’re at a disadvantage. Find your advantage. Gladwell, in his typical fashion, explains this idea simply and elegantly.

10) Geithner and the gilded age - NYTimes. Good read on Geithner, who as Treasury Secretary, currently is one of the most important people in the world. This is at turns fascinating and depressing. Try not to throw up in your mouth as you read about his best friends on wall street. full disclosure: i was not successful.

After screwing over their country (and, to be fair, many other countries) the banks have decided they’ve been “punished” enough. They are passionately lobbying against regulation of the exact complex financial instruments that pushed the world economy to the brink of collapse and destroyed significant long term value from the dollar. They push for less transparency and less oversight. The money quotes?

“The banks run the place,” Mr. Peterson said. “I will tell you what the problem is — they give three times more money than the next biggest group. It’s huge the amount of money they put into politics.”
…
“The outrage among the public means that things have a chance to change, if things move quickly,” said Michael Greenberger, a professor at the University of Maryland Law School and a former director of trading and markets at the C.F.T.C. “We’re in this brief moment of time when the average citizen is on a level playing field with the lobbyist.”

The banks run the place? A brief moment in time when the average citizen is on a level playing field with a lobbying group out to bankrupt taxpayers? Wait. What was that sound? Oh, just me throwing my laptop against the wall.

2) NYTimes Magazine: Tom Davis Gives up on Washington

An old article on a republican congressman from Virginia. Half human interest story and half sad state affairs of Washington. I would take 435 Tom Davis’ over almost anything else you could give me. I found it really interesting to read the story of a man who spent a lifetime in politics, played the game enough to exist within the power structures, yet refused to compromise on some core ideas and principles.

3) The New Yorker: Money Talks - the Obama budget

Peter Orszag, Obama’s budget head may have the toughest job on the planet. By all appearances he’s a non-political, intellectually honest policy wonk trying to follow through on an ambitious agenda while not bankrupting America. In times like these, saying that last phrase, all of a sudden becomes more than empty rhetoric. Interesting to read about the schism within the administration between those who are scared of our deficits and those who feel we need to march ahead to “right America”. Though, unlike the battle in 90’s, we live in a different world where the dollar is actually in some (small?) amount of danger.

4) New Yorker: Cost of healthcare…

Atul Gawande, the author of the piece, is an *amazing* writer. He wrote a great book on medicine (and life) called Better: A surgeon’s notes on performance. Here he takes on the peculiarities of health care costs. Gawande writes with the credibility of a renowned doctor and with the incisiveness of a gifted doctor to speak about a taboo in the world of medicine– the profound import that money now plays. Examining a city in TX that boasts health care spending far above the national average and surrounding towns, he dives in full bore. You’ll note a synergy to this and the Orszag article and you’ll see how, hopefully, we’re approaching a consensus in potential approaches to quell the death knot of health care expenses. Make no mistake, health care is the single biggest threat to our country’s future. It threatens our private sector viability and there’s also the looming bankrupting of the government. Social Security and bailouts can’t touch our medical system.

5) New York Review of Books: Crisis and how to deal with it.

I’ll say that Niall Ferguson is one of my favorite authors and speakers on economic issues. I’ll also say that please don’t read this link next to any sharp objects, prescription drugs, or other dangerous things. The conversation, between some of the “brightest economic minds”, offers very, very little sunshine.

I’ll have 5 more in a few days.

In Mullaley’s thoughts on the Ramayana, he focuses on the notion of duty. Growing up with parents who are apart from the culture you find yourself in presents all kinds of interesting and unique experiences. One of them was being surrounded by the notion of duty to family. When I was reading about duty, I was struck by what our predominant cultural notion of duty actually is. Those that grew up with JFK heard about duty to country. Generations before, duty to country was quite widespread and easily seen through voluntary military service. What is *our* generational/cultural sense of duty towards? I worry. Is it money? Prosperity? Have we been trained to believe that our duty is to maximize our personal prosperity and in doing this we do our service to society? If not this, then what?

Skill and will.

“Skill and will”, he told me, “win battles.”…

“Any knucklehead with sufficient practice can shoot a rifle straight,” he said. “Will, on the other hand, is different. Will takes character.”
The Unforgiving Minute, page 192

An elegant expression of what it takes to succeed. While, clearly, *skill* is not nearly as trivial as the quote makes it appear, the balance of the two rings true. Success can often seem far off, hard to realize, questionable, or even impossible. But, really, it requires but these two things. The hard work to acquire the skills necessary. This could be hours of training, practice, research, education, etc. And then it requires the will to believe. To truly, and completely believe, that once you apply your will to a problem, you *will* solve it. I’ve used the phrase “impose my will” previously, and I believe it. If you want something bad enough, I actually do believe you can will yourself to achieving it. Life is often a question of will. What’s harder? Acquiring the skill or the will?

What did it mean to fight the world’s fight? How do you dedicate yourself to this? Is it a lifetime goal? Do you work towards it every day? Do you pay your dues so you can one day fight it? Is it one overarching fight? Is 1,000 little ones?

Since I first read about the fight, it has been echoing in my head. What a perfect phrase/question. As a member of the Google generation, I of course googled it. I came across this graduation speech (which I immediately recognized as an order of magnitude better than the one i gave). It’s a great speech and exploration of service.

How do you think we fight the world’s fight?

I read Joker One and The Unforgiving Minute back-to-back (thanks, Amazon recommendations). I expected both books to be very similar given they are about a veteran’s experience in Iraq and Afghanistan respectively. This turned out to not be the case at all. While Minute was very readable, I found that it lacked the power and voice of Joker One.

Fair or not, I can’t help but compare The Unforgiving Minute with Joker One. was the story of Craig Mullaney’s life as a military man. Unlike Joker One which track’s the author’s experience as a platoon commander, Minute is more Mullaney’s life story. Much of the story surrounds his experience at West Point and subsequent trainings. The West Point account is supplemented by his tour in Afghanistan, his experience as a Rhodes Scholar, falling in love, and his relationship with his family. If you’re looking for a glimpse of life at West Point and into military culture, this is the book for you.

Strangely, though Minute is nearly an authobiography and Joker One is more of a military account, I learned more personally about Joker One author Donovan Campbell than I did Mullaney. I think this is due to how honest Campbell is in his detailed accounts of his failures, insecurities, and the details of war. Despite glossing over all the human details of his life, you’re left with a vivid portrait of the man and a feeling that you know (and admire) him. Whereas Mullaney’s book though diving deeply into his personal relationships, carry a different (almost detached) feeling. It was strange to read such personal details (his relationship with his father or his wife) and still feel so distant. I say all this to point out that for an aspiring author, the two books are a study in tone and direction. I can’t deconstruct the elements that makes one profoundly personal and the other slightly detached, but I’m pretty sure the reasons are remarkable. Any friends who are literary experts and can do this, please reach out and help!

Oh, and after reading Minute, you’ll have a new found admiration for discipline and a soldier’s training. Good book. My next three posts will be nuggets from the book that struck me.

At one point in 2004-2005 I was tearing through a book or two a week. In retrospect, it was a phenomenal time. I’d stay in for hours at a time on a weeknight or weekend and just read. Since my earliest memories, reading has been one of my favorite experiences. For a while, I remember my brother and I being so engrossed with what we were reading that our father took our books away from us when we had company over since we’d retreat to our room and read. Anyway, since 04-05 there’s been a long, slow decline in my reading volume (thought not really in my amazon books purchases. though that’s another problem/story). I’ve recently made a conscious effort to pick up my old reading habit.

This weekend I read Joker One A Marine Platoon’s Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood by Donovan Campbell. My review? Simple: run out to borrow/buy it and read it. It’s amazing stuff. This ends the book review.

I’m left with three thoughts now that I’m done and the book is fresh in my mind.

1) Read Joker One to learn about leadership. I probably have another post in me on what I think good leadership is between all of the jobs and experiences I’ve had, but this isn’t that post. Joker One does an amazing job of elegantly boiling down what leadership comes down to. In his final few pages he boils it down to one, elegant, powerful word. I have never heard of leadership described in this manner (nor really thought of it purely in those terms) but once I read it, it resonated. I won’t call out what it is here, because, honestly, it’s a powerful culmination of the 300 pages that came before it. To talk about it out of context is to not only give it its due, but also to spoil the powerfulness of its words and meaning when you read it. Obviously leading men in battle, with the weighty consequence of life and death surrounding you, is far different than civilian leadership. Yet the lessons and universality of the questions the author raises should speak to anyone who has or will be put in a position of leadership. Great stuff.

2) I’ve posted previously about Generation Kill. Glimpses into the military have always enthralled me. Reading Joker One, you can literally sniff war. I just finished the book maybe an hour ago, and I’m struck by the same thoughts I always have. It’s almost criminal how we like to turn a blind eye to our unpleasant truths. War movies fail at the box office when the country is at war. People tune out the news when the death toll or other such updates are reported. No one complains when everyone closes their war-locale reporting bureau. We don’t want to talk about the thousands of dead and multiple of those who have been badly maimed and injured. We don’t pay attention to the horror stories of the lack of long-term medical treatment and job opportunities afforded upon their return. We turn a blind eye to the post-traumatic stress disorders that have shown up in so many upon their return.

But this is all after the fact. What responsibility do we all bear, as citizens, for how much we know about the foreign policy that guides these troop deployments? Our troops do their part by answering the call, charging towards gunfire, and following orders. The dictates that guide them are from the highest levels of the military following the orders of the highest levels of government. We put those people into power, and so, ultimately, are responsible for those orders. They are representative of our will. As easy as it is for us to get bogged down in our lives, our trials and tribulations, it’s our greater responsibility to think deeply and honestly about our views that will guide the fate of so many of our brothers and sisters.

Ultimately, society is a grand bargain. We are inextricably interdependent. It would be a shame if the only ones who were holding up their end of the deal are the ones at the end of the line risking their lives to follow orders and represent America honorably.

Have we done our duty honorably?

3) After reading Joker One, you literally feel an emotional connection to the marines in the story. You care for them. Admire them. Like them. Empathize with them. The same typically goes after you read an in depth into any group or person. Even if you take the polar opposite of this group, and find people you have no reason to respect or admire, and dive into their life you would find a story worth telling. Something of value. A story of sadness, some amount of triumph, but you’d find something that you could likely relate to and empathize with. This is why it’s always struck me as strange the amount of contempt that people have for strangers. Instead of the benefit of the doubt (let’s forget kindness for a moment), you’ll so often see people ready to believe the worst and treat each other as such. What if you thought about each random person you met and put in their place someone you cared about: an old friend or family member. I’ve just read this book, and since I’ve never met any of these amazing marines, they could literally be any of the strangers I’ll bump into next week. How would I treat them if I knew who they were? How would I treat a stranger if I didn’t know their personal story? What does this say about us?

Now go buy Joker One.

I kept a journal back around 2000 and kept it going for a few years. It’s remarkable to me when I go back and read the detailed entries about my day. Things that had all but completely disappeared from my mind rush back to me. Stories and events that had such an impact at the time, doomed to be forgotten, are revived. Aside from nostalgia, I’ve actually found it useful. When I see how I thought about things. How I reacted to events, people, challenges, successes, etc and how I thought about them, it’s really helpful for me to compare and contrast. In someways I think that everything is different in my life now. In some ways this is true. Yet, in many others, I find that the themes that ran through my life then– are still present and powerful. They’ve taken a dramatically different form in many cases, but they still control my life all the same. It amazes me how, had I not had this record, I would have remembered the past so differently.

As I think about the Wired article’s conclusions now, that memory is strengthened by how we treat, record, and revisit it, I wonder how memory is changing for all of us. With our Facebook status updates, blogs, and (especially) Twitter, millions of us are constantly sharing details of our lives. Does this act of recording, sharing, and commenting on our lives enable us to remember better? Whereas previously, we had to live in the moment, today, we constantly stop and “document.” Then again, given that most social posts contain very little substantive contemplation of our lives, it’s doubtful any of us will remember anything important

“…the future of business lay in its ability to manufacture customers as well as products.”

That’s a quote from an advertising trade publication from the early 1900’s in referencing mass production and the shift from scarcity to abundance. But it struck me as what’s often missed about advertising.

Marketing and advertising has two central components (that is if you hyper-simplify):

1) To convince people to buy your product when they’re interested in the category (ie. I need toothpaste…hmm…what kind should I buy)

2) To convince people that they should want your product/category when they don’t really. (ie. creating demand where there it inherently does not exist)

When you think about #1, Google AdWords could come to mind. Google makes their money selling ads based on what your perceived intent was. If you searched for “web hosting plans”, you’ll see a slew of offers from companies that offer this service. You could say it’s worked out pretty well for them.

#2, the latter is manufacturing customers. It’s been at the core of so many advertisements for years. It summons the culture of guilt, of playing on insecurities, of keeping up with the Joneses. It’s exactly the world we live in, when you think about how crassly superficial and commercial as a global society we’ve become. But I digress. I’m struck by how few marketers, and more specifically, advertisers think explicitly about this division. (Yes, it is true, that it’s not truly a division. If you create the demand (#2) for the category, then you need to close the deal by getting the business for your brand (#1). But, for our purposes we’re simplifying.)

To close the tangent, I wonder what the Great Disaster of ‘08 that the global economies are in will mean for our consumer culture. Will we step back from the age of abundance back to a more rational time of earnings and expenditures being in line and neither falling into excess? Will advertising and marketing as a whole completely change as a result? As long as there is a choice of products, there will always be marketing. But the kind of marketing is dictated by the times.

This runs a straight line through a few of my previous posts, and this thought stream brought me to reading The Age of Abundance which is a lightly-heavy read, but so far quite good (and were I got the intro quote from).

1) When I moved to SF, one of the things that I was most stoked about was being able to be surrounded by ridiculously smart, ambitious people. One of those people is Ramit. To compound his ridiculous awesomeness to date, his book was just released. How did it do? Well, on its first day he got it to #1 on Amazon. If you’re thinking “wow. that’s impressive” that’s an understatement. Anyway, if you think your personal finances could use a little improvement, look no further than his book. If you’re unsure if you’ll like his book, check out his finance blog.

2) I went skiing on Thursday for the first time since 2000. What an awesome experience. Two things were interesting: one, it reminded me of how it important it is to find good teachers. I had a ridiculously great teacher, Milt, who moved me from the awful skier category to marginally incompetent. He had great patience, a joy for what he was doing, and was very motivational. In every part of life we need great teachers — in school, college, at work, at play, etc. Second thing that struck me is how great it is to do new things that you suck at. It’s ridiculously frustrating but it’s also memorable and rewarding if you make progress. I think I spend 99.9% of my time on stuff that’s pretty routine. I wonder how much more rewarding my life would be if I could move that to 95% routine 5% new every week. It’s such a low bar, but I know it’ll be hard.

3) There’s some crazy stuff going on. We’re in the middle of crazy deflation. And in the middle of an attempted hyper-inflation? The signs of deflation are everywhere around us. A huge list of companies are doing paycuts, no more bonuses, raises, layoffs, etc. Massive losses in household wealth from stock market crash, housing crash, no new credit, etc. People have less money and so spend less. So you go to almost any store and you see one of two things a “closed” sign or a “SALE!!!” sign. Cars aren’t selling and are being discounted and soon to be given away. Money isn’t moving, so the price of everything is going down. This is deflation. On the other side, the US (and most other countries) are printing massive amounts of money. In it’s simplest, they can do this by “buying” debt issued by the treasury with dollars that they’ve just printed. This is all mind boggling stuff. When I take this and a bunch of other stuff together, I want to go move to the beaches in Goa for the next decade or so and just write.

OK, I’m trying to read this. And now I just spent the last 20 minutes surfing sites about Goa and indulging my escapist fantasies about moving there. So I’m going to end this pointless entry and remind you to buy ramit’s book.

Back in the day, around age 10, I went door-to-door selling greeting cards, candies, and other random things out of a catalog. We’re talking big money here: I think I made $2 for every item I sold. Things went well until the day I went out to canvas my neighborhood after receiving the newest catalog in the mail. At first I thought it might just be a coincidence, but soon realized it was not. Someone was moving in my territory. People were telling me that they had already bought or “my partner” had already stopped by trying to sell to them. I had previously figured out that there were other people selling the same stuff in my development, and had more or less figured out the boundaries they weren’t covering and made them my own. Until now that was. So what happened? As soon as the next catalog came out, I immediately started selling way into his territory. And with my beloved mother backing me, I had my competitive advantage of no money down to help me out (she fronted the cash allowing me to not ask for money up front, reassuring prospective customers that I was not a 10-year old scam artist) allowing me to hustle a few deals up. Within a few months, the encroachments into my area stopped and detente was reached. This was sort of the G-rated version of people getting popped over corners on The Wire. Errr…yeah, OK, maybe not.

What the hell am I talking about? Facebook and Twitter of course. This post is mostly for my friends in the Valley echo chamber. In the rest of the normal world, no one really cares about battles between websites. Here? We live for this stuff. But I digress… As many of you have no doubt already experienced, Facebook launched a completely new home page among other things.

Two things spell out the declaration of war:

The adoption of the Twitter stream look:
Naturally, the public (especially social media “experts” and the media) have caught on to the fact that Facebook has jacked Twitter’s flow and incorporated it. There’s not much to say here, as the visual similarities are so clear.

Making Facebook the place where celebrities want to broadcast.
I think that one of the biggest drivers of Twitter’s surge in mainstream adoption has been the influx of celebrity users. I follow Shaq. But Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Britney Spears, Barack Obama (’s campaign), and a ton of other notables have used twitter to broadcast snippets from their lives. This kind of direct connection to someone that you would have only been able to previously watch on TV or the big screen, is powerful stuff. Facebook has, until now, only had extremely limited “Fan Pages” which basically were good at, um, I’m not sure. But now, with these pages becoming much more like regular profiles and allowing public figures to broadcast out information in a uni-directional manner similar to Twitter, Facebook has moved to head off one of Twitter’s most popular aspects. With this new page functionality, and vanity URL’s (soon to come?) it’s clear that FB means business. They want to be the platform of choice for public figures, and they want them badly.

It’s clear Facebook has some of the smartest talent in the Valley thinking over there. You better believe that they’ve closely analyzed how many people are piping in their latest tweets into their facebook statuses and with that number growing, no one was happy. That’s someone potentially dis-intermediating you. If you’re facebook, you can’t stand for that. That’s strike one.

Strike two? Twitter was becoming the service de jour of celebrities. You could practically see it. Diddy: “What? Shaq has a twitter account? Man. I’m on it.” It seemed like every other day Stewart or Colbert was mentioning them or a new celebrity was signing up. Shaq has even been encouraging interaction with his fellow twitteroni’s. I can hear the conversations now. johnny: “Why would I want to sign up for Twitter?” miguel-ramon: “Because I talk to shaq, diddy, and a bunch of people we know on there.” Actually, that doesn’t sound so bad…

No doubt the facebook gang has watched Friendster get eclipsed by MySpace, and then they, themselves, did the dirty to MySpace. Seeing a near hockey stick growth curve, a lot of twitter action within their own service, and the popular media/celebrities fawning over Twitter is a recipe for higher highs, and so facebook tried to, apparently, buy twitter. No deal. So now facebook has decided to come for the corner.

Battles aren’t fought in one direction though, right? Twitter can’t stand pat (can they?) and wait for Facebook to bludgeon them with their near 200MM active user advantage (And *adding* 5MM users a week means they’re adding a Twitter just about every week to their user base. gulp.). No, standing pat probably isn’t the play. So what is? I’ll suggest going after facebook’s corners. One of facebook’s biggest advantages is how easy it is to efficiently share information, content, photos, etc. (To be clear, it’s awesome and I’ve been a die-hard facebook fanboy/addict for years). Twitter should allow you to link/import your content shared from elsewhere on the web. I post photos to flickr and link it to my twitter account and my followers get a tweet. I upload a YouTube video? My followers get a tweet. I comment on a blog using my twitter identity? My followers get a tweet. I buy tickets to a concert and want to tell my friends(OPT-IN, relax!)? Tweet. You get the picture. If this clutters up the Twitter stream, why not add a second tab for shared content? Wow, wait a minute, that looks like Facebook! Oh, and while you’re at it, why not auto-create a classification for me of “friends” basically people who I follow who also follow me back vs me and Shaq who it’s clear that I’m not friends with. Privacy does matter to many, and this would allow granularity of who gets to see these updates (or any for that matter). Wait a minute, information sharing is starting to look very similar…

Will this happen? I have no idea. But I call tell you what Avon, Stringer or Marlo would have done…OK, maybe not Stringer. I still remember back when he was trying to explain to a recently-returned-from-prison-Avon why they shouldn’t be worried about reclaiming their corners and focus on the bigger picture. But, again, I digress.

Oh, and if I was twitter, I so would not be stressing monetization right now. The future of communication is at stake! (sic)

As always, pardon the grammatical errors and typos because these are stream of consciousness posts and please sign up for the RSS feed.