Posted by Ryan
March 25, 2009
A few quotes I’ve collected over the last few weeks on twitter, or just had lying around, or whatever.
My Goal of the Day: Fully listen to my critics, even if they may not know exactly what they’re critical of.
– Malcolm Gladwell
I don’t think I mentioned it, but I ran into Malcolm Gladwell in the lobby of the office building I work in. I always feel a little bad in interrupting someone who probably gets interrupted a lot, but if I actually care about who they are I will usually interrupt anyway. Some may see that as backwards, but whatever. I don’t try to become their friend. I just say hi, express my appreciation for their work, and go on my merry way.
The following advice, given by the deceitful Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood in C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, describes a common malady afflicting many of us today: “Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient’s soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary.”
– Michael J. Teh quoting The Screwtape Letters
I posted this quote back in November of 2007 and I’ve already said everything I have to say about it (for now).
“To carry a grudge is like being stung to death by one bee.”
– William H. Walton
Which would be pretty terrible, especially if you had no allergic reaction to the bee. I choose a grudge-free life.
Also, that would be quite the persistent, death-resistant bee.
Few concepts have more potential to mislead us than the idea that choice, or agency, is an ultimate goal.
– Dallin H. Oaks, “Weightier Matters,” Ensign, Jan 2001, 13
Choice, or agency, is a condition of life. This should not be confused with the ability to act on choices without undesired consequences. That’s called freedom.
If your knees aren’t green by the end of the day, you need to seriously rethink your life.
– Calvin (Calvin & Hobbes)
And in the spirit of Calvin & Hobbes, here’s a semi-sad reminder (if you love Calvin & Hobbes) about saving things for your children instead of throwing them away. I’m really just putting it here because I like Calvin & Hobbes, I’m sentimental, and I wanted an excuse to post it.
Posted by Ryan
November 18, 2008
“Outlier” is a scientific term to describe things or phenomena that lie outside normal experience. In the summer, in Paris, we expect most days to be somewhere between warm and very hot. But imagine if you had a day in the middle of August where the temperature fell below freezing. That day would be outlier. And while we have a very good understanding of why summer days in Paris are warm or hot, we know a good deal less about why a summer day in Paris might be freezing cold. In this book I’m interested in people who are outliers—in men and women who, for one reason or another, are so accomplished and so extraordinary and so outside of ordinary experience that they are as puzzling to the rest of us as a cold day in August.
– What is Outliers about?
I’ve been waiting for this book, Outliers, to come out for, well, as long as I’ve known about it. I don’t know how long that is, but it’s felt like a long time.
It finally came out today.
Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
- On Audible
- On Amazon
I bought it in both audio and paperback. If you like audiobooks at all I highly recommend the audio versions. He reads them himself and does a fantastic job.
Posted by Ryan
November 3, 2008
I’m currently listening to The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. It’s a fascinating book. I love it.
In the book he mentions some studies that suggest that the more social an animal, the bigger its brains are. I’m sure I’m greatly oversimplifying, but basically the size of our neocortex is directly related to how many people with which we can maintain a stable social relationship. This number is about 148.2. You may have heard of Rule of 150. Many social groups and even colonies have used 150 or numbers close to it for years because they recognize that when a group of people gets bigger than 150 you end up with groups within the group and it gets really difficult to maintain cohesion. If you’d like to verify these facts, read the book as I don’t intend to put references here.
Anyway, as I listened to that portion of the book I couldn’t help but wonder that with all our social networks (facebook, myspace, linkedin, twitter, friendfeed, etc.) if the human race will evolve huge heads a few thousand or million years in the future. Or maybe even next week! I have 380 or so friends on Facebook alone. If I tried to have a stable social relationship with all of them, I would fail, but what if my neocortex grew and I succeeded? I’d have a huge head and look funny. Forget about balance, especially if I had to wear a motorcycle helmet. It’d be hard to even find a motorcycle helmet that big. That would be tragic (about the big head, not about the motorcycle helmet).
I like our heads the size they are. If you do too and want your great great great great great great great great grand children to have good sized heads I suggest you cut back on your facebook friends.
P.S. I’m glad we’re on this end of the evolutionary scale. Nevermind the fact that I don’t believe in that whole evolution thing.
