On the 47 headed to work. An R’nB song is playing on someones headphones. The only part coming thru is the whiney muffled voice of a male singer and the familiar slow boom/clap rhythm. Boom- , boom-clap, boom boom.
This boom/clap rhythm takes me back to middle school, a time when I listened to boyz 2 men.
This wasn’t the same though. After a while the pattern changed to include more claps. Boom-, boom-clapclap, boom boom. Then more until it was more clap than boom. It slowly turned into nothing but rapid fire claps. More of a Clappity-clappity clap-boom-clap. This was a musical transition that left me thinking “where is this going?”
I watched two documentaries today. One was called War Made Easy and was all about the reoccuring narrative of American wars. Pretty interesting but also very anti-war biased; Not much coverage of why war may be nessesary. The other one was Where in the World is Osama bin Laden. It was very interesting and brought up the point that for the most part everyone in the middle of the war on terror doesn’t want to be in war. It also covered many opinions that terrorism is largely created with poor foreign policy. I definitely agree with that.
It brought to mind a couple concepts. First of all is choose your battles and what that means. Choosing your battles is essentially deciding when to make a stand and when to take things in stride. I believe that America could choose its battles better and this would allow us to keep our friends close and our enemies closer.
That’s another saying that I think’s pretty smart. It doesn’t literally mean be closer to your enemies than your friends. Keeping your friends close and your enemies closer means keeping them within friendly smalltalk range. For instance, sometimes there are people that you have to work with who you just have to tolerate and it’s easier to tolerate them than to battle them at every pass. Doing this manages perceived threats.
Once a relationship has a lense of a perceived threat, it changes everything. Being a perceived threat redefines your position in a relationship. For instance, have you ever seen a close friend do something that completely changed your perception of them, and changed how your friendship worked? If you can’t put that past you, the relationship is pretty much kaput. If that perceived threat keeps coming up then the relationship is set back.
So I think limiting perceived threats by choosing your battles and keeping your friends close and enemies closer makes a better strategy than going out bullying the world. You can’t change minds that way and it’s no way to lead in the workplace or in the world. It makes taking a stand, and the relationship in general, much more meaningful.
Yep
“The process of bringing our wants and our needs into realignment,” says Merrill Lynch economist David Rosenberg, “is going to involve years of savings and frugality.” Or, to put more it more simply, “there is an anti-bling thing going on,” says Marian Salzman, chief marketing officer of Porter Novelli.
Party’s Over is the general theme of this article about how Americans are realizing that a reductionist lifestyle is easier and more fulfilling. Finally, I can confirm that I made the right decision staying a renter. Yes!
http://www.usnews.com/articles/business/economy/2008/08/08/the-end-of-credit-card-consumerism.html
Yelp is really cool. I found my first SF sushi restaurant, Sushi Zone, on Yelp.
Last night I went to another restaurant which I had been to before. The place had essentially found it’s mojo for me. It went from average to my new favorite.
The food was great, the environment and clientel were fitting, and the service was friendly like they were strangers having a party and wanted me to join them.
This is where Yelp comes in. I don’t want to yelp this place. I don’t want it to become popular. I don’t want people to come there for the first time. I realized, for the first time, why many of my elder foodie friends don’t use Yelp.
There is a very important layer to information disemination that Yelp doesn’t acknowledge. That layer is what I experienced last night. I would have shared this place with my close friends, in fact I will share it, I can’t wait to. But it won’t be by posting a review, or putting it into a bucket on my internet-public profile. No offense public, I think you’re great, but there are a lot of things that you have to find for yourself.
Please watch this video of copyright lawyer Lawrence Lessig presenting his new project: Change Congress.
His premise is that until we remove the money from the job of Congress-person we’ll never be able to trust Congress to work for us. It’s worth a listen and it really resonates at a time like this, when only 9% of Americans believe that Congress is doing a satisfactory job.
Found this on Alaska Airlines. You probably can’t make it out but the people tucking in this illustration have small Nike swooshes on their shoes.
I thought I was on to something. Sitting in a stall in the bathroom was a great idea for passing the time at the airport. It seems I was not alone.
Well this was after I put rice on it. Basil in SOMA, service sucks but the ribs were good.
My landlord is unlocking the cage on my kitchen window. My apartment is on the second floor of our building and outside of my kitchen window is a small piece of roof. My other two beautiful bay windows face across an alley at the adjancent building about seven feet away.
Our apartment doesn’t get tons of natural light but it gets some. More than some basement apartments. At least we have tall ceilings.
