I’ve finished my third Malcolm Gladwell book this year, his most recent book is Outliers, The Story of Success. An outlier is one who is outside the norm, they are special and accomplish extraordinary things. The book is basically an argument against the American Dream, the notion that in “the land of opportunity” anyone, with enough hard work, can become rich and successful. Gladwell would say that not just anyone can make it big, you have to have opportunity and come from the right legacy.
We are all largely products of our environments and outliers are from environments that present opportunities that few others get. Bill Gates had a home computer that rivaled those of computer science professors at the age of 13 and the Beatles played shows for 40 - 50 hours a week in Hamburg during their formative years. An outliers date of birth is also very important, Bill Gates came of age just as computer programming was starting to flourish. Also, I was very interested to find out that 40% of NHLers are born between January and March, so much for Gibson being a pro, he’s an August kid.
One’s cultural legacy also plays a huge role. Gladwell looks at why Asians are so good at math, why every year Asian kids from various countries dominate the rest of the world in math competitions. He believes that, as strange as it seems, they owe much of their success to the legacy that a culture of rice growers has instilled in them since they were born.
As usual I’ve just skimmed the surface of this book for this blog. If any of this sounds interesting I highly recommend picking up either Outliers, The Tipping Point or especially Blink. I found all of them really fascinating and informative, with great stories that translate so well into understanding the world and people around us.
I had the opportunity this weekend to take off with a couple of friends to Seattle for an ad hoc disc golf tour. In a day and a half we ended up playing six different courses and a total of seven rounds, it was a lot of fun and surprisingly my shoulder is not that sore.
The high lite of the trip was playing at Dalaiwood in Olalla, which is across Puget Sound from Seattle. The course is on the property of a pro disc golfer named Scott Papa whose putting video I had previously watched on YouTube, it was really helpful. There was a Pro shop in his garage and after we dumped a few dollars on some new plastic we asked him if he wanted to come out and play with us, he actually said yes. It was a unique experience to play a sport with a pro, how many chances do you get to do that, even in a fringe sport like disc golf? Scott was more than willing to answer any and all questions we had about the course, our technique or what it’s like working at Home Depot.
After playing all those new courses my appreciation for what we have at Passive Park in Langely has grown. We’re really lucky to have a local course that is diverse and challenging, but still fair.
I’ve raved before about how much fun I’m having with my ipod now that there is a stereo in my forklift at work. Now I’ve discovered that I can get audio books for free online from BC Libraries, all I needed was a library card. The only catch is that the first book I downloaded was DRM protected and I couldn’t convert it to mp3’s to go on my ipod. But don’t worry friends, I’ve discovered Tunebite, a program to convert the files for me. It takes a little while to do but I just set it up to do it’s magic overnight and voila, presto change-o. Now if only I could find a way to convert my nano into an ipod classic.
My latest read was 12 Steps For a Recovering Pharisee (like me) by John Fischer. I had been meaning to read it for a while but didn’t feel like overpaying online for it, so I eventually borrowed it off my Pastor. I’m really glad I did. It is rare that I read a book of this ilk that at some point doesn’t become a little redundant. Usually, after I uncover the authors direction for the book, the fleshing out of the idea either becomes repetitive or just looses steam. 12 steps is only 150 pages in length, but successfully brought me from one point to another and hit home many times while doing so.
The author, John Fischer, has a way of exposing my propensity to judge others without coming off as aloof or condescending, after all he is a judger too. Since reading it, I have taken to looking the other way when I see certain castes of people because I know my mind will begin dissect their flaws. And while I feel good about this technique and improving how I view people, I wouldn’t be surprised if sooner or later I walked straight into a street sign or something while averting my eyes. Well, hopefully I can avoid that, maybe I need to strike a balance?
I can now see that I’ve been reading or hearing this book for a few years now, it has influenced those that have influenced me. Other themes include accepting others, gratitude and score keeping.
This video says so many things to me. It’s a song by a comedic musical act from Australia called The Axis of Awesome (which is an awesome name if I do say so myself), the song being called “Four Chords.” The song is a compilation of many songs across many genres that all have the same four chords as the foundation, it’s pretty impressive. OK, not all the songs have the same four chords but they do all follow the same progression, the tunes were adjusted to fit the Axis of Awesome version.
I have often thought to myself, “Are we going to run out of music some day? Will there come a day when all the different combination’s of chords and notes have been used up?” A silly question, but videos like this one show how at times pop music has run out of originality. Far be it from me to say that artists like U2, The Beatles, Micheal Jackson or Elton John are hacks or simply ripping off other artists. Whether I personally like them or not they are all excellent musicians, innovators and true artists, at times though, they will use simple progressions that convey a certain mood for a song. Some “artists” are hacks though, they can’t grow past… well, four chords—-BORING!!! Another popular method is to make cover songs your top singles or just hire a cool producer to mix some beats on top of a cover song, which probably have these same four chords in them, or better yet only three. Or you could just reuse one of your old hits with a new chorus. OK then, enough cynicism for today.
Last year around this time a friend of mine blogged about a Fruit Fly trap that I then constructed for our kitchen. It worked great and was simple to make, sort of arts and crafts time for me. This year I learned of a similar idea for wasps. For some reason I get a real kick out of building a trap to capture bugs that annoy me. It only takes a bottle, some tape, scissors and some apple juice (that’ what I used anyway). You just cut the top quarter of the bottle turn it upside down and reattach it, for some reason bugs go in but don’t come back out. All I did was put it out on the table on the deck and shazam, dead wasps. I’m highly allergic to wasps and had been trying to spot the nest all summer, to no avail. But vengeance is mine!
This is my 100th post! I guess this isn’t just a fad for me, it is in fact something I enjoy doing. Blogging let’s me express things that are on my mind and forces me to think a little deeper about them before I put them out in the blogesphere. Although I am ultimately doing this for me, I don’t think I would write it if nobody was reading it, so thank you. And big thanks to anyone who adds a comment, you make my day.
I’ve finished my third Malcolm Gladwell book this year, his most recent book is Outliers, The Story of Success. An outlier is one who is outside the norm, they are special and accomplish extraordinary things. The book is basically an argument against the American Dream, the notion that in “the land of opportunity” anyone, with enough hard work, can become rich and successful. Gladwell would say that not just anyone can make it big, you have to have opportunity and come from the right legacy.
I had the opportunity this weekend to take off with a couple of friends to Seattle for an ad hoc disc golf tour. In a day and a half we ended up playing six different courses and a total of seven rounds, it was a lot of fun and surprisingly my shoulder is not that sore.
I’ve raved before about how much fun I’m having with my ipod now that there is a stereo in my forklift at work. Now I’ve discovered that I can get audio books for free online from 
My latest read was 
Last year around this time a friend of mine blogged about a Fruit Fly trap that I then constructed for our kitchen. It worked great and was simple to make, sort of arts and crafts time for me. This year I learned of a similar idea for wasps. For some reason I get a real kick out of building a trap to capture bugs that annoy me. It only takes a bottle, some tape, scissors and some apple juice (that’ what I used anyway). You just cut the top quarter of the bottle turn it upside down and reattach it, for some reason bugs go in but don’t come back out. All I did was put it out on the table on the deck and shazam, dead wasps. I’m highly allergic to wasps and had been trying to spot the nest all summer, to no avail. But vengeance is mine!
This is my 100th post! I guess this isn’t just a fad for me, it is in fact something I enjoy doing. Blogging let’s me express things that are on my mind and forces me to think a little deeper about them before I put them out in the blogesphere. Although I am ultimately doing this for me, I don’t think I would write it if nobody was reading it, so thank you. And big thanks to anyone who adds a comment, you make my day.
