Sometimes, I think folks’ mouths run about a hundred yards out in front of their brains. And our conversations are more colorful for it.
I was in a group discussion recently when someone, in pointing out a dilemma, announced that there were “two sides to the knife.”
I guess this now means that the coin cuts both ways.
Especially if the penny has been pinched.
But I digress.
My son — 16 years old and some change — is a bright, hard-working boy who has been fortunate enough to travel to many interesting and sophisticated parts of the world. He is a member of the National Ski Patrol at Killington, trained in both rescue and outdoor emergency care, and gives his every winter weekend to the task of serving and protecting tender-footed suburbanites from Bergen County, New Jersey.
He is a thoughtful, clear-headed young man. But he had better hope the Theory of Natural Selection called in sick the other day.
We had had a significant mid-week snowstorm, and I asked the boy to park his car for the night in a parking area on our lower driveway, so our snowplow guy could easily clear our upper driveway overnight.
When he went out to his car the next morning to go to school, there was approximately 8 inches of snow around his car. Not enough to scare most folks in this neck of the woods; with good snow tires and front-wheel drive, he should be able to just drive away.
Of course, he simply assumed he was stuck. A small error in judgement — which we will excuse. But what came next boggles the mind.
He got in the car, and started the engine. Then, he put it in gear — “D” for drive. He got out of the driver’s seat and went to the back of the car.
And then he pushed.
Twenty minutes later, as I was leaving for work, I found him frantically trying to dig the car out of a snowbank. Or should I say, trying to dig the snowbank out from under the car, as the front wheels were no longer touching the ground.
I nearly lost it — not because of the car or its situation, but from the complete inability to comprehend how any human being could have thought what he did was a good idea. And, (mostly) from the fear that I and mine might have a genetic marker for “boneheadedness” and that the Theory of Natural Selection might come knocking on our door sooner rather than later.
So, happy birthday, Charles. If you don’t mind, I’ll just tell everyone he’s adopted.
Imagine my surprise as I stumbled across this sign near a spectators’ area at my son’s cross-country invitational meet outside Montpelier, Vermont this weekend:
Anyway, I poked around a little more and, for the life of me, couldn’t find any “Keep Out Italian-Americans!!!!” signs, so, eh…no skin off my back, right?
You know, the same things that are scarce in the “real world” are just as scarce on the Internet.
Which is odd to a lot of people, particularly those whose exuberance about the Internet and Web 2.0 resembles a kind of creepy utopianism. Don’t get me wrong — the digital age has given us a lot of potentially great tools and resources, but it’s still no cure for the human condition. As someone I deeply admire is fond of saying, “we’re in the twenty-first century technologically, but we’re still in the first century behaviorially.”
The Internet (and the digital “revolution”) has made us more connected, but still searching for intimacy:
And so the rules of success on the Internet will be the same as in the real world — the people who will continue to make the greatest contributions to society are the ones who can give us (or lead the way to) the things — online or off — that are most scarce in life and in work.
Like sweepin’ dust bunnies out from under the bed:
Victor Davis Hanson. Like any great historian, particularly classical, Hanson helps make sense of the present. Some reflections on world events and politics, including this key passage:
We shall see what liberal therapeutics accomplishes in this war that started on September 11 when Hillary & Co. come to power—or rather relearn the lessons of everything from the Khobar Towers and East African embassy bombings to the USS Cole.
After all the lectures about not being safe after 9/11, and taking our eye off bin Laden, we await her revocation of the Patriot Act, wiretaps on terrorists, etc., and planned intrusions and hot pursuit into nuclear Pakistan—and, of course, calls for national unity during time of war, a renunciation of the politics of personal destruction, and a plea to tone down the strident rhetoric.
Imagine, if she were elected, that a Bush emeritus played Jimmy Carter to her presidency, or documentaries came out calling for scenarios about her demise, or Alfred Knopf published a book about shooting the president— or any of the other reprehensible things we have witnessed the past six years, all to the silence of the liberal opposition.
To get to the presidency, the Democrats must demonize the war effort and assume we will lose in Iraq; but to run the country, they would almost immediately have to reverse course, call for unity, and explain why we must continue anti-terrorism at home, and fighting al Qaeda abroad. And if they adopted a truly pacifist stature, a single 9/11 like attack would ruin their fides for a generation. Politics is to be accepted, but in wartime one expects a modicum of national interest first.
My only complaint: he doesn’t blog enough (look who’s talking - ed).
Guy Kawasaki Runs the Numbers. And the numbers are amusing. Interesting, even. But Guy should have taken the time to stress that what builds successful businesses (websites, products or services) is quality. And the quality that built this business is reputation, and meeting people’s need to participate, to join the conversation. Unfortunately, my $12,000 won’t do what his can do.
Time is the one truly limited resource (Signal vs. Noise). Yes, yes it is. Sadly, in my experience, the prescription discussed here is almost pathologically beyond the grasp of most managers and leaders I come in contact with.
Happiness is a moral obligation. “We should regard bad moods as we do offensive body odor. Just as we shower each day…
…so as not to inflict our body odors on others, so we should monitor our bad moods so as not to inflict them on others. We shower partly for ourselves and partly out of obligation to others. The same should hold true vis a vis moods; and just as we avoid those who do not do something about their body odor we should avoid whenever possible those who do nothing about their bad moods.”
