Posts in the “personal” category

Looks like I’m going to have another body part removed via surgery in ~30 days. In terms of recovery this will be the most difficult surgery yet, so I’m going to try to really enjoy these 30 days.

Bill Gates has a great story about Leonardo da Vinci. I haven’t bought Walter Isaacson’t book on da Vinci yet, but Isaacson is a terrific writer, and I will either buy the book or audiobook soon.

I created a vision board many years ago during a retreat, and I have to say, everything on the board came true. I was thinking recently that it would be even more true if I didn’t have health problems for several years, and more recently providing financial support for family members. If it weren’t for those things I’d probably be living in Talkeetna or Palmer, Alaska today, writing more books.

I have The Dancer Upstairs playing while I work today. I don’t remember how/where/why I saw it the first time, but I remember when I saw it I thought, “That Javier Bardem guy is really good.” Other than the dog scenes, it’s a very good movie.

“Wherever you have friends, that’s your country; wherever you receive love, that’s your home.”

~ an old Tibetan saying, as read in The Book of Joy

I just learned about Hanlon’s Razor, which states, “we should not attribute to malice that which is more easily explained by stupidity.” I have often been guilty of the malice assumption, so I found this interesting.

In a related note, Wikipedia’s definition of philosophical razors is also interesting.

Farnam Street blog has a good article, Nine mental models to solve difficult problems.

Ram Dass on being a parent, and a soul (and attachment).

On this day (May 16th) in 1990, Muppets creator Jim Henson died. He left this note for his children. (There’s a little more information at lettersofnote.com.)

“Knowing that when light is gone, love remains for shining.”

~ from “To Flush, My Dog,” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

TIL that Season 8, Episode 1 of “House” is about mast cell disease. I found that tidbit in a great little book titled, My Crazy Life: A Humorous Guide to Understanding Mast Cell Disorders.

I just read about Subaru of Indiana’s “Zero-Landfill” status. It makes me wonder how the rest of the world can be more like this.

I started to kill a gnat tonight, and as I went to hit it, it rocked back on its back legs, looked up at me and screamed, “Stop! It’s me, Zeus!”

I looked at it and said, “Zeus was too good, he taught me kindness and compassion; I can’t believe he would have been reborn as a gnat. But l’ll let you live. Go on, enjoy your life.”

a facebook post from may 9, 2014

I just received a BrainFood email with this recommendation about this new book about Tiger Woods:

“Even if you don’t like golf, this book is hard to put down. One of my working hypotheses is that people with extreme abilities are not balanced. Attempts to address the imbalance usually cause them to lose some or all of their advantage, which contributed to the outlier success.”

There’s probably a well-known psychological theory about this, but I had the same thought many years ago. A recent example for me is that Bobby Petrino was once considered an offensive genius in college football, but since his personal scandal he seems much more human. A “balanced” life seems to take away from the obsession that makes certain people great about what they do.

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

~ Desmond Tutu

Hillary Clinton was quoted today as saying that being a “capitalist” probably hurt her with Democratic voters. IMHO, being a stiff, non-authentic politician hurt her with all voters. To me all of her answers seemed rehearsed, rather than authentic, and as a result of appearing disingenuous she inspired no passion in voters.

By contrast, Bernie Sanders seemed to passionately say what he believed, and as a result he fired up a portion of the electoral base, even if his views were a little too far “left” for many voters.

Here’s a great 1999 interview with Jeff Bezos on YouTube. And here’s a transcript of an interview with James Comey, where he says, “so much of what I’ve tried to do as a leader is guardrail around what I think my weaknesses are. Really important to me that I avoid the danger — which I think all humans have, but I know I have — of falling in love with my own view of things, my own righteousness.”

“The new basic principle is that in order to learn to avoid making mistakes, we must learn from our mistakes. To cover up mistakes is, therefore, the greatest intellectual sin.”

~ Karl Popper (a quote from Farnam Street Blog)

“Complaining is not a strategy. You have to work with the world as you find it, not as you would have it be.”

~ Jeff Bezos

“People have a voracious appetite for a better way, and yesterday’s ‘wow’ quickly becomes today’s ‘ordinary.’”

~ Jeff Bezos, Amazon, in his 2017 (2018?) letter to shareholders

In a slightly related note I find that work is easier when you have the attitude that what you’re working on is constantly changing, constantly evolving. If one day you think, “There it is, Product 1.0, I’m done,” you’ll find it mentally hard to come into the office tomorrow to work on the same product. The only constant is change, and if you accept that your job is to be in that process of change, life and work are easier.