On The Road

I’m on the road quite a bit these days and meeting lots of new people. It’s fun and exciting. Because of it, i thought i’d give one of my favorite quotes from Kerouac’s book On The Road:
They danced down the streets like dangledodies, and i shambled after as i’ve been doing all my life [...]

Building Participation & Cognitive Surplus

Clay Shirky has a great speech about cognitive surplus. A phrase that refers to the free time we have away from our jobs or studies to do stuff. Over the past 30-50 years, what everyone did with this cognitive surplus is watch TV. Sitcoms were the big universal thing everyone did. [...]

“Just Enough” is the new “Big” - but can it work?

They should draw an equation: What level of fame do you need to achieve to keep doing what you want? Because you don’t want any more than that.
if you get too famous, you have people wanting to take a picture of your butt on the beach.
(Tina Fey

These are quotes i read from Grant’s blog [...]

Grandmaster Flash’s Science

Everyone’s a pioneer in their own way.  This is from a quote i picked up in this month’s Wired Magazine.  In 1973 Grandmaster Flash invented Turntablism:
The DJ’s at the time were picking up the arm and dropping it down exactly on the break of the song. But i was dancing, and i noticed everybody’s head [...]

In Defense of Boredom

In the latest copy of The Week, i read a great article about boredom. My favorite lines:

To be bored is to stop reacting to the external world, and to explore the internal one. It is in reflection that people often discover something new, whether it is an epiphany about a relationship or a new theory [...]

American Idol’s Top 10

My thoughts on the Top 10. It turns out i don’t need to post my thoughts, but Television Without Pity summed it up perfectly for me:
…when Amanda sings, I feel like I’m in a bar; when David Cook sings, I feel like I’m in a club; when Brooke sings, I feel like I’m [...]

Warren Buffett on Life

I thought this was an interesting quote by Warren Buffett to a class of Emory students:

What if you could buy 10% of one of your classmates and their future earnings? You wouldn’t buy the ones with the highest IQ, the best grades, etc, [...]

Beauty - Looking vs. Eating

I read this post on Caterina Flake’s blog. I thought it was worth a repost. I love the concept of looking vs. eating. I believe we live in a culture that is consistently eating rather than appreciating.

“Beauty is the only finality here below. As Kant said very aptly, it is a finality which [...]

America: a maximum-security prison with walls of Radio Shack, Burger King and MTV episodes

For today a poem titled “America” by my favorite poet Tony Hoagland…
America
Then one of the students with blue hair and a tongue stud
Says that America is for him a maximum-security prison
Whose walls are made of RadioShacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes
Where you can’t tell the show from the commercials,
And as I consider how to [...]

Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth” were the words spoken by Mike Tyson. Probably the smartest thing he’s ever said
As Giants lineman Michael Strahan pointed out after the game, this is exactly how you describe Super Bowl 42. The Patriots had a great offensive plan until Tom Brady [...]