Colin Powell with Tony Koltz. It worked for me. In Life and Leadership

Powell's success, like so many other's, seams to be about doing a great job with the basics, simplicity, follow though and establishing respect and professionalism. This isn't a beep book, but it is filled with stories from his career. The chapter titles tell it all…

The Rules…

It aint as bad as you think, it will look better in the morning.

Get mad, then get over it.

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.

It can be done. Presume things can be done until the facts and analysis pile up against it.

Be careful what you choose, you may get it.

Don't let adverse facts stand in the way of a good decision.,

You can't make someone elses choices. Don't let someone else make yours.

Check small things.

Share credit.

Remain calm. Be kind.

Have a vision. Be demanding.

Don't take counsile of your fears or nayseyers,.

Perpetual optimism is  force multiplier.

Always do your best. Someone is watching.

Where on the battlefield.  Leaders should be at the point of decision.

Trust your troups.

Establish mutual respect.

We are mammels

Never walk past a mistake,.

The guys in the field are right. The staff is wrong.

It takes all kinds.

One team. One fight.

…

Provided feedback. Be tactful to those who ask. Keep it private and confidential.

Keep metings uninterrupted. Use lots of questions and debates.

Remain accessible.

Be sure correspondence is excellent.

No surprises.

Speak precisely.

Don't rush into decisions.

How much time do I have to execute? Take a third of that time to anayzie and decide. Use the remainder for subordinates to analyzie and plan.

Compete to win.

f

Flash Boys-- by Michael Lewis.

This is a very clear story about High Frequency Trading.

People earn money, much money trading thousands of times a second. But these trades have entered a doom loop. If you can trade faster, you can earn more money than the competition. But this extra speed comes at a high price. High Frequency Traders are on a death spiral. They must by the latest tech, the latest network no mater the price. If they don't they will go out of business.

I still don't know how I should feel about HFT. Worst case, over the 20 years I've been investing in the stock market, they have cost me, maybe $50.00.  If you are a large institutional investor, then yes, HFT can eat into your earnings. But for small long term investors, like me, they are less relevant.

Tom Hodgkinson--- The Freedom Manifesto & How to be Idle.

I was expecting Thoreau. Hodkinson is not Thoreau. Thoreau preferred the simple life and if the simple life called for work, then so be it. Hodkinson wants us to be idle and if that means stretching the truth to stay on unemployment insurance a little longer…

Hodgkinson raises a good point though. We needlessly keep our selves busy, for no reason other than that's what's expected of us. Hodgkinson encourages us to let go of the rate race by any means necessary.

Maybe we can be happy by doing less. But we can also be happy by pursuing our opportunities, to push our limits and to find enrichment and engagement.

Bones, Fat & Bitter

All by Jennifer McLagan

Three very good, very themed cook books.

These books are a great source of inspiration.  The Brussels Sprouts and Chickpea recipe is worth stealing. It may be one of those recipes that  I make once or twice a week for the years. Everyone enjoyed it, and it's so easy.

I will also make more of an effort to save my chicken fat.

The Norm Chronicals

Stories about numbers and danger. By  Michael Blastland and David Spiegelhalter

Perhaps this book can be thought of as actuarial tables with stories.

I read an excerpt of this book and was fascinated. Unfortunately, the excerpt was the most interesting thing to me.  Not that the book is bad.

The excerpted chapter was bout how lifestyle affects your life. What happens if you exercise? Smoke? Drink? Are Sedentary? Eat vegetables? Eat Beef?

The numbers are all there. Unfortunately, even though I forget them now, I've already learnt the lessons-- Don't smoke. Exercise regularly, every day even, but after about 30 minutes of exercise there are diminishing returns. One drink a day is good for you. Two or more are not. Eat your vegetables.

Stay a away from radiation.

A 12 mile motorcycle ride is as about four times as risky as your average daily death risk.

There were many other stories there. Many. After you get out of the big risks, their contributes to your life expectancy are almost noise.

Take beef for example. Regularly eating beef slightly decreases your life expectancy. The change is measurable, but just barely. On average beef eaters will die a year or so sooner than non-beef eaters, however the distribution and overlap is huge.

Maybe that's the big lesson of the book. Outside of the big five (Eat your vegetables, exercise, sleep properly, don't smoke, maintain a healthy body weight) most activities have a tiny impact on your life expectancy. Sure radiation and extreme sports don't help. Just use common sense.

There is also a chapter on cancer. It's possible that about 20% of cancer is cured by the body. This is troubling since diagnostics are getting better and treatments can be tough on you. The rule of thumb may be, don't go looking for cancer unless you have health problems. Cancer diagnostics and treatments are not yet at the point where we should be very proactive.

Falling to Earth

by Al Warden

Memories Fade.

I didn't know about the postal covers scandal. I picked this book up because it was written by an astronaut, and I've always had astronaut dreams.

Al Warden flew on Apollo 15. At the time, he and his fellow crewmates brought postal covers along with them with the intent of selling them at a later date as special  memorabilia; a souvenir of something that had flown to the moon and back.  

But that nots all what the book is about. It's also about the life of an astronaut. How they got there, what it takes. Al admits that he got lucky. He was an astronaut because at the time the government believe that test pilots with an engineering background would be great astronauts and he fit the bill

He did have a lot of passion for his career. This did cause him much personal pain as his wife never had an appreciation for a husband who had to take great risks with his safety.

 

Money, The Unauthorized Biography. By Felix Martin.

Documents the history of money, especially the tension between the two concepts of money. One as an absolute standard of value. The other as a transferable system of credits.

Money as an absolute standard of value (Such as the gold standard) has always been favored by less-government types because it can be maintained without a powerful government. It's only when money is treated as a system of transferable credit, managed by a government, that the economy can stabilize.

The book also has a strong opinion on how banks should be reformed to deal with the great recession. It calls for a separation between payment-transfer banking and investment banking. There were other recommendations, all good I'm sure, but they have fallen out of my mind.

Mastering the Craft of Smoking Food

by Warren R. Anderson.

This is a good over view of smoking food, different types of smokers, and how to build your own.

Good, Good Enough, and My Over Refined Pallet

Two Vines wine. It's about $6.00 a bottle and I enjoy it very much. Yes, sometimes I like a good $30.00 bottle of wine. But you know, for me, a $30.00 bottle of wine isn't $24.00 better than Two Vines. I'd rather have five bottles of Two Vines. When it comes to wine I'm very careful to rein in my pallet. I like being able to enjoy a $6.00 bottle of wine.

 

Dicks Hamburgers and Red Robin. Red Robin makes a good burger. No doubt about it. Dicks makes small, inexpensive sliders. They are not gourmet by any standard. But, if you are out late drinking with friends, then nothing is better than pulling up to a Dicks Drive In and ordering a meal—a Deluxe burger, fries and a vanilla shake. If I remember, I'll splurge and spend an extra 10 cents on ketchup.  The whole thing costs less than $8.00.  It's all lower quality than Red Robin, but it's right for that moment.

 

These are situations where absolute standards and relative standards live in stark contrast to each other. Is my life worse off because I settled for a Dicks Deluxe instead of a Red Robin Whiskey River burger? Or because I settled for $6.00 of Two Vines instead of $30.00 for Five Star? No, of course not.

 

Of course this view creates a problem. How do I tell what good quality is if external factors, the place the time, my feelings, turn something that's cheap into something that's wonderful. I think Persig dealt with this "Zen and the Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance" when he asked "What is quality?" and went off into the weeds trying to answer that question rather than accepting that we can't easily define quality.

 

If I can't define quality, then how do I hold high standards? Perhaps the answer is that I have to hold myself to high standards, but accept that the world around me is going to be filled with experiences of various levels of quality.

 

I've spent the past few days working near Christiansburg VA. It's a very nice place. Very pastoral. One thing that frustrates me is how difficult it is to find a nice restaurant. BBQ and Greasy hole-in-the-wall's are all that's around. BBQ is good for one day but then…

 

Is this a regional cuisine that I don't have an appreciation for, or does this region just accept bad cooking? Could I develop my pallet to appreciate the finer points of places that consistently over boil there vegetables and serve iceberg lettuce with some brown bits still attached? By all accounts the people of Christiansburg are very happy with their city. If I were to tell them that I wanted to spend lots of money on well roasted vegetables drizzled with the right amount of a tasty sauce, a prime cut of rare steak and a nice glass of wine, they would look at me a little puzzled and point out that I could have five chicken friends steaks with all you can eat vegetables for the price of one of my meals. That the chicken fried steak isn't that bad, especially when it has good gravy on it. In short, they would point out I had overly refined tastes that weren't doing me a lot of good.

 

Where is the balance in all of this? When are tastes over refined? When are they too low? This all can't be a regional popularity contest, can it? Perhaps this is why Persig went mad when he thought about the nature of quality.

 

 

 

How Not To Be Wrong

By Jordan Ellenberg

Kind of in the same vein as "The Signal and the Noise" Not that it's a clone. More like an intellectual cousin. How Not To Be Wrong discusses how math has been used as a tool to guide us through life, the limitations of what we can know, and how we can get a feel for the size and shape of the unknown, and how to take action when we are unsure.

"For this is action, this not being sure!"

"Error will bring us to the truth more quickly than vagueness."

There is a great chapter on smoking-- does smoking cause lung cancer, or does lunch cancer cause people to smoke. The answer is obvious now. Not so in the 1950's. While the statistics said that smoking was correlated to cancer, the mechanism was not known. Since correlation is not causation… since 90% of all statistics are made up… how do you prove that smoking causes cancer? How much data do you need? And what type? How do you show that you are not biased in your experiments? How do you make progress?

Several times the author touches on this theme. A mathematic process can give you a result if you give it any set of numbers. But, does that process make sense? Are you asking a question the data can answer?

Sometimes the answer is "I don't know" Randomness and noise can have very subtle effects that our brain erroneously thinks are patterns.

In this situation, can you measure the size and shape of the unknown? Control it's distribution and variability? This is preferred to deluding yourself into believing that you can create an answer if you torture your data enough.

Drunk Tank Pink

… and other unexpected forces that shape how we think, feel and behave.

By Adam Alter

We like to think we are cleared headed beings. That are behavior, our choices, are ground with  good reasons. Alter argues that in ambiguous situations, any little bias can make a difference. Ambiguous situations occur far more often than we'd like to admit.

The presence of other people makes us more competitive.

The absence of other people makes us more reflective.

Labels take on a life of there own. Alter mentions that Russians can describe and identify shades of blue more accurately than Americans. This is because Russia has distinct words for light blue, blue and dark blue. In America identifying the shade of blue is left to judgment. In Russia there is a right and wrong.

The Muler Lyer lines… That illusion only works in WEIRD cultures (Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic.) Cultures that don't live around strong hard lines don't see the illusion.

People with easy to remember, fluent to say names are more successful that people with hard to remember or disfluent names.

See the circular effects here? A label, or a quirk of culture, affects my abilities. Not like a placebo, but in a real way. When we use those abilities, depend on them, then they take on a life of there own.

I believe the core of the book. I'm a little worried about the validity of much of the science. I don't know how many of the sited studies have been replicated.

 

Mind over Matter. The Epic Crossing of the Antarctic Continent

By Sir Ranulph Fiennes

Together Sir Ranulph Fiennes & Dr. Mike Stroud  crossed Antarctica unsupported. They towed all their supplies with them, 400lbs each, on sleighs. They were the first to do so. They did so for science and for charity.

I have a lot of respect for them, pushing themselves to their limits on this journey. Ranulph lost 40lbs and was badly frost bitten.

It's difficult to explain my respect.  There had to be better ways to raise money for charity than to risk life and limb. Was the science that important?

Ranulph has done some good thinking on leadership. How democratic should a leader be? Ranulph says you should listen to everyone, but don't hesitate to ignore them if they group chooses a path you disagree with. Ranulph pointed out that many leaders have stocked their teams with people they knew would not challenge them.  I've never thought about team building that way. I've always focused only on skills.

Ranulph also has thoughts on the type of people it takes for extreme endurance journeys in Arctic or Antarctic. One weird qualification-- the team should be physically about the same size. Someone who is too big will need many more calories than someone smaller. In the Arctic, after weeks of traveling, everyone will be very hungry. It's hard to regularly give the bigger guy more food without causing hard feelings. If the bigger guy needs more food, shouldn't he carry more weight too? More hard feelings.

The World's End

Five old friends go for a pub crawl in a town that has been taken over by aliens.

RO called this move unnecessary. I can see his point. It's not funny enough to be a great comedy to watch. The action isn't good enough to be a great action flick. The drama isn't important enough for this to be a good drama. The ending was arbitrary.

Yet, it's a very well done movie. Think of it as a high quality Doctor Who episode.

From Shaun Gallagher, author of "Experimenting With Babies: 50 Amazing Science Projects You Can Perform on Your Kid" and "Correlated: Surprising Connections Between Seemingly Unrelated Things."  by way of Reddit.

Tell me ...

• your sex
• whether you have any children
• whether you think pot should be legalized
• whether you think you're a good singer, and
• whether you like mayonnaise

... and I can predict a whole lot about you.
Your sex, Correlated's statistics suggest, can be used to predict your level of risk aversion (men, for instance, are more likely to want to skydive) and your capacity for empathy (women, for instance, are more likely to think we're too stingy with foreign aid).

Whether you have children tends to be a pretty good indicator when it comes to pop culture preferences (parents, for instance, like in-vogue artists such as Lady Gaga less than non-parents do) and, as you might imagine, youth issues (parents, for instance, approve of single-sex schools at a higher rate than non-parents).

Your opinion about marijuana legalization tends to be a good indicator of your political leanings and your opinion about a whole host of other social issues, from the death penalty to legalized prostitution to gay marriage, as well as your beliefs about religion and morality.

On average, people who describe themselves as good singers also tend to say they're good at a lot of other things, such as dancing or math or hula-hooping. On the flip side, people who say they're bad singers also tend to think they're bad at a lot of other things. So basically, this question tells us something about people's self-image and their perception of their abilities.

Similarly, people who like mayonnaise tend to also like a bunch of other foods, and people who dislike mayo tend to dislike a bunch of other foods. So this question tells us something about how picky a person is.

Given a person's answers to these five questions, I'd bet you could do a pretty decent job of guessing their responses to most of the other daily poll questions that have been asked on Correlated.
Still, day in and day out, Correlated is able to discover correlations that continue to surprise me — and I hope that they continue to entertain you.

Catch 22

Folklore has it that Cortez ordered his ships to be burnt so that his men would have no chance of retreat. They would be victorious, or they would die. Catch 22 argues there is an alternative... when then enemy is trying to kill you, when your leadership offers you no chance of retreat, then going crazy is a perfectly valid choice.

And what of our leaders? What if they can't lead us to victory? If they are no more than small pieces in a larger game, if they can do little more than achieve small tactical goals, then isn't it inevitable that they would focus on themselves and their careers, giving little care to the greater goals?

"Man was matter, that was Snowden’s secret. . . . Bury him and he’ll rot, like other kinds of garbage. . . . Ripeness was all."

Brilliant Blunders

By Mario Livio

Mario digs deep into big mistakes made by big minds-- Darwin, Pauling, Einstein. He covers there theories, the times and speculates why they did, or didn't make a mistake. In Einstein's case the jury is still out on the Cosmological constant.

I'm surprised he didn't cover Pauling's obsession with Vitamin C.

Why are mistakes made? Ego, oversight, laziness, bad luck.

The Grapes Of Math...

An history of math, mathematicians, and they problems they were trying to solve.

David and Goliath...

By Malcom Gladwell

Gladwell is the master of collecting interesting stories, retelling them well, and stringing them together to support a bigger theme.

Between this book and 'Outliers' he's developed an interesting perspective on how we succeed or fail. I like that the two books support each other.

David & Goliath takes a look at the limitations of the powerful, and the advantages of the underdog.

Success makes you conservative. It makes organizations larger and slows them down.

The under dog is smaller, quicker, and doesn't have to play by the rules.
 

When you have nothing to loose, not even respect, there are many things you can do that the respected and successful can't. Guerrilla warfare is successful very often. Middle class parents are better at teaching there children the value of hard work and investing than the rich.

The book discusses the notion of the inverted U curve-- diminishing returns. It applies this idea to money and power.

David and Goliath also discusses "Desirable Difficulties" Difficulties that force people to learn skills that are very valuable. For example,,, someone with dyslexia who learns to compensate by being a great listener and by working very hard.

Debt. The first 5000 years.

The book is a good history on the history of debt and it's impact on society.

The book starts off with a rant against the world bank and the debt held by some third world nations. It never really completes that thought which is too bad.

In general the author has a fondness for raising complications and questions as a way of suggesting there is weakness in a system. I'm not fond of this rhetoric. Conflating personal confusion with greater causation…

The book does raise some good points about what debt is, and it's effect on us. Sometimes paying off a debt is a way of saying you'd rather not have anything to do with another person. So, some debts shouldn't be paid off.

Debt is an equalizer. The fact that a King can go into debt to someone else suggests that on some level the king is in the same class as that person. An aristocrat can be obligated to a commoner.

Tiny...

Draft essay…

The Big Tiny by Dee Williams

The Small House Book by Jay Shafer

"I've found that even when you have your freedom-- when you've liberated yourself from your debit, and are happy enough living like a polar bear in winter-- even then you are still stuck with who you are.' Dee Williams. The Big Tiny.

 

You can live quite happily on far less than you own. Most of our stuff is not needed.

A movement is forming behind these thoughts. People building and living in tiny houses, shedding their possessions.

I sympathize with this.

Everynow and then I'll look around for a small, but high quality house. This is very hard to find. Small square feet most always equates with low quality-- poor neighborhoods, poor building quality. Big square feet equates with quality good neighborhoods, good build quality. Why is it so hard to find a small home, well built in a good neighborhood?

More space equates with more stuff, more maintenance, more debt, but not more happiness.

The environment is very high up on the list of concerns in the tiny house movement. Of course someone who lives in a 100 square foot house and who pays 20 dollars a month in utilities has an environmental impact that a tiny fraction of someone who lives in a 2000 square foot house. But what is the overall impact? I'm not a big fan of plans that depend on the moral high ground and declare "I'm doing my part to solve the problem. If everyone did like I'm doing then everything will be great." Unless that tiny house movement becomes broad, it's overall impact will be negligible. It risks becoming another niche with no broad impact.

I do like that they push the limits though. Maybe that's good enough. With enough pressure, then one day I could live in a high quality house, in a good neighborhood that's not 3000 square feet big.

Every now and then I'll run into someone who takes on the world, who proves they are tough, by adopting needlessly harsh goals. Want to prove have what it takes to survive in the wild? Build a cabin in the wild and subsistence farm there. It'll be tough. But it will give you comfort that you are tough enough.

Plus you don't have to deal with society. Engaging with society, with other people is hard work. For some it's very anxiety provoking. If society makes you anxious, why not rebel and leave?

That current is in the tiny house movement. Don't depend on society, it's bad. Do it all yourself. Society won't come face to face with its problems if more than a few people think that way.

People with tiny houses obsess over their house plans. A tiny house must be well planned and laid out or there will be trouble. I like this obsession. I only really use 600 square feet of my 2000 square foot house-- the bedroom, the bath room, the kitchen and living room. With a smarter layout I could easily get by on 400 or 500 without impacting the quality of my life. If I put effort into cutting back, how low could I go? 100 square feet? 200?

Where do families exist in this movement? The tiny house people all seem to be single. What does a family of 4 need?

Tiny houses let's you occupy your time with the minutia of how you live, rather than deal with your real problems. I worry this and Dee Williams. Dee has heart problems. Rather than dealing with these problems, she puts all of her energy into her friends and her tiny house. Anything that doesn't fit within those priorities is left out. Of course It simplifies her thoughts about her life, which helps with anxiety. But she still has big health issues. I think a world with Dee Williams in it, is better than a world without. I wish she would be more forward looking.

Of course the tiny house movement isn't a utopia that solves all our problems. But maybe it points to a better way to live.






 

  

Zen mind. Beginners Mind

Zen is practice. It is a practice I which we may learn a bit more about our nature. For any more than that, you should practice Zen, and read the book.

Sham. How the self-help movement made America Helpless

By Steve Salerno.

The book has a very good point, and much bombast. Take the title its self "How the Self help movement made America helpless' Well… America is far from helpless.

A large part of the book cover the business behind the self help movement-- Dr. Phil, Men are from mars… Deepak Chopra.. and so on. These are people more interested in selling you something then in helping. Often the only think you get out of their message are over simplified feel good platitudes that have little or no real benefit. Maybe you think they work because the problem cured its self with time. Maybe it's a placebo.

The book also has problems with support groups such as AA. Support groups a great if they actually help you deal with your problem. Sometimes  they encourage you to cope, or to cheat or to just accept that you are the kind of person who has a problem. All of which just delays action and defers responsibility. That is dangerous

The book also discusses the problems with the self esteem movement. Poorly done encouraging esteem is just a way of lowering standards and not talking about it.

Maybe the reason people succeed after they "get self confidence" is that they allowed them self to practice a few times. It was the practice that brought the success. The lack of self esteem was just an excuse to not learn.

competing against time.

George Stalk Jr & Thomas M. Holt.

Business usually think in terms of reducing costs. Competing against time argues we should think in terms of reducing time.

A small store than can refresh it's inventory every week will need less inventory than a big store that refreshes its inventory every month, yet have just as much variety. It may be price competitive with the bigger store since it will need far less inventory on hand.

A business that can incorporate customer feedback within weeks is far better off than a business that releases a new product line every year. Mistakes are costly when they can only be corrected once a year. Long term planning is a guessing game that's often wrong. Short product cycles reduce these risks

Ducker covered some of this in "Hustle as Strategy" It's good to dig deeper into the subject.

Of course its very difficult to change an organization to support short product cycles. Much of the book covers this topic. Short cycles require integrated cross disciple thinking and action, and veers away from silos of specialization that drive cost reduction.

Organizations that expedite things to make things faster or create skunk works projects are implicitly admitting their regular structure doesn't support fast product cycles

Read This Before Your Next Meeting

There are three kinds of meetings…

1. Brainstorming meetings where you come up with possible solutions to problems.
2. Working meetings where you actually do work.
3. Meetings where you discuss a decision and how it should be implemented.

Meetings that don't fit into one of these categories are a waist of time, especially meetings that are called with the purpose of making a decision. ​The decision, and all the leg work to support it, should be made before the meeting. The meeting organizer should act like a benevolent dictator.

If you have to choose between delaying a decision, and making a possibly wrong decision, error on the latter side. You will be wrong sometimes. That's not as bad as endless delaying for certainty.

Parents worry "much too much" about what their children are reading, said the author Judy Blume. She argued that they will simply "self-censor" by getting bored of anything they do not understand.

I've wondered and worried about that. If I find a book boring, then is the book boring, or am I self censoring?

When I write down the parts of a book I want to remember, am I self censoring out parts that are important, but I just don't get?

AntiFragile

By Nassim Taleb

Draft of an essay...
 

I have to choose my words carefully here. There is much to dislike about Antifragile. But that misses the point. This is a very well thought out book. And the act of disagreeing with parts of it can be very clarifying. Not something you can dismiss.

I don't think the author, Taleb, is a very pleasant man. He'd rather insult and fight with those that disagree with him, than work with them to foster understanding. It makes for great writing. Though It makes me doubt how effective he'll be in getting people to believe him.

Not that he'd care. In fact he's probably scoff at me fore using the word 'effective' You are either a sucker, or you are not. Compromise and slow steps are not for people who are as clear on what they believe as Taleb.

What does Taleb believe? That some things gain from time and disorder. These are anti fragile. Other things break over time and through volatility. That sounds self evident. It's really the impact of these two statements that he dwells on.

He hates corporations and their top down control. Too many people who will say whatever it takes to keep there job. No integrity. He hates and fears people with conflicts of interest and the systems that foster them. He is disgusted by people making decisions and offering opinions when they have no skin in the game, or even worse, people who have no downside and have there poor choices paid for by other people. This latter disgust is what drives his hate of corporations. The manages can only get bonuses. If the company fails, the failure isn't paid for by the executives. Its paid for by the owners.

He has a large distrust of much modern technology, but a great respect for the process of innovation.

Smart observation-- if you sample many things randomly, on average you will sample them half way through their life. So the things most likely to be around 50 years from now, were probably around 50 years ago. Something that's only been around for a year will probably be gone in as much time.

From this he develops a great respect for the past. Things that have been around for 1000 years will probably be around for the next. Where does this leave much of modern medicine and nutrition?

One of my problems with this book is that pushes his respect of the past, and of tradition almost to the point of fear and of being unwilling to experiment and tryout new things. Taleb would point out that it can take decades to figure out if something new is safe... trans fats, driving with a cell phone. Let someone else be the guina pig.

He has a great discussion on the non-linearity of failure. We often project growth and change linearly. That's not true for most things. If you dropping a glass from 10 feet is not just 10 times worse than dropping a glass from one foot. The glass will probably be ok in the later case, it will shatter in the first. He calls the barbell effect.

For all my complaints with the book, I do want to develop the discipline to apply it's ideas to my life.

From the web...

http://theweek.com/article/index/260729/6-hostage-negotiation-techniques-that-will-get-you-what-you-want

How does hostage negotiation get people to change their minds?

The Behavioral Change Stairway Model was developed by the FBI's hostage negotiation unit, and it shows the five steps to getting someone else to see your point of view and change what they're doing.

It's not something that only works with barricaded criminals wielding assault rifles — it applies to most any form of disagreement.

There are five steps:

1. Active Listening: Listen to their side and make them aware you're listening.

2. Empathy: You get an understanding of where they're coming from and how they feel.

3. Rapport: Empathy is what you feel. Rapport is when they feel it back. They start to trust you.

4. Influence: Now that they trust you, you've earned the right to work on problem solving with them and recommend a course of action.

5. Behavioral Change: They act. (And maybe come out with their hands up.)

The problem is, you're probably screwing it up.

What you're doing wrong

In all likelihood you usually skip the first three steps. You start at step four (Influence) and expect the other person to immediately go to step five (Behavioral Change). And that never works.

Saying "Here's why I'm right and you're wrong" might be effective if people were fundamentally rational. But they're not.

From my interview with former head of FBI international hostage negotiation, Chris Voss:

… business negotiations try to pretend that emotions don't exist. What's your best alternative to a negotiated agreement, or 'BATNA'? That's to try to be completely unemotional and rational, which is a fiction about negotiation. Human beings are incapable of being rational, regardless… So instead of pretending emotions don't exist in negotiations, hostage negotiators have actually designed an approach that takes emotions fully into account and uses them to influence situations, which is the reality of the way all negotiations go…

The most critical step in the Behavioral Change Staircase is actually the first part: Active listening. The other steps all follow from it. But most people are terrible at listening.

Here's Chris again:

If while you're making your argument, the only time the other side is silent is because they're thinking about their own argument, they've got a voice in their head that's talking to them. They're not listening to you. When they're making their argument to you, you're thinking about your argument, that's the voice in your head that's talking to you. So it's very much like dealing with a schizophrenic.

If your first objective in the negotiation, instead of making your argument, is to hear the other side out, that's the only way you can quiet the voice in the other guy's mind. But most people don't do that. They don't walk into a negotiation wanting to hear what the other side has to say. They walk into a negotiation wanting to make an argument. They don't pay attention to emotions and they don't listen.

The basics of active listening are pretty straightforward:

1. Listen to what they say. Don't interrupt, disagree, or "evaluate."

2. Nod your head, and make brief acknowledging comments like "yes" and "uh-huh."

3. Without being awkward, repeat back the gist of what they just said, from their frame of reference.

4. Inquire. Ask questions that show you've been paying attention and that move the discussion forward.

So what six techniques do FBI hostage negotiation professionals use to take it to the next level?

1. Ask open-ended questions

You don't want yes/no answers, you want them to open up.

A good open-ended question would be "Sounds like a tough deal. Tell me how it all happened." It is non-judgmental, shows interest, and is likely to lead to more information about the man's situation. A poor response would be "Do you have a gun? What kind? How many bullets do you have?" because it forces the man into one-word answers, gives the impression that the negotiator is more interested in the gun than the man, and communicates a sense of urgency that will build rather than defuse tension. [Crisis Negotiations, Fourth Edition: Managing Critical Incidents and Hostage Situations in Law Enforcement and Corrections]

2. Effective pauses

Pausing is powerful. Use it for emphasis, to encourage someone to keep talking or to defuse things when people get emotional.

Eventually, even the most emotionally overwrought subjects will find it difficult to sustain a one-sided argument, and they again will return to meaningful dialogue with negotiators. Thus, by remaining silent at the right times, negotiators actually can move the overall negotiation process forward. [Gary Noesner, author of Stalling for Time: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator]

3. Minimal encouragers

Brief statements to let the person know you're listening and to keep them talking.

Even relatively simple phrases, such as "yes," "O.K.," or "I see," effectively convey that a negotiator is paying attention to the subject. These responses will encourage the subject to continue talking and gradually relinquish more control of the situation to the negotiator. [Gary Noesner]

4. Mirroring

Repeating the last word or phrase the person said to show you're listening and engaged. Yes, it's that simple — just repeat the last word or two:

For example, a subject may declare, "I'm sick and tired of being pushed around," to which the negotiator can respond, "Feel pushed, huh?" [Gary Noesner]

5. Paraphrasing

Repeating what the other person is saying back to them in your own words. This powerfully shows you really do understand and aren't merely parroting.

The idea is to really listen to what the other side is saying and feed it back to them. It's kind of a discovery process for both sides. First of all, you're trying to discover what's important to them, and secondly, you're trying to help them hear what they're saying to find out if what they are saying makes sense to them. [Former head of FBI International hostage negotiation, Chris Voss]

6. Emotional labeling

Give their feelings a name. It shows you're identifying with how they feel. Don't comment on the validity of the feelings — they could be totally crazy — but show them you understand.

A good use of emotional labeling would be "You sound pretty hurt about being left. It doesn't seem fair." because it recognizes the feelings without judging them. It is a good Additive Empathetic response because it identifies the hurt that underlies the anger the woman feels and adds the idea of justice to the actor's message, an idea that can lead to other ways of getting justice.

A poor response would be "You don't need to feel that way. If he was messing around on you, he was not worth the energy." It is judgmental. It tells the subject how not to feel. It minimizes the subject's feelings, which are a major part of who she is. It is Subtractive Empathy. [Crisis Negotiations, Fourth Edition: Managing Critical Incidents and Hostage Situations in Law Enforcement and Corrections]

Curious to learn more?

To get my exclusive full interview with former head of FBI hostage negotiation Chris Voss (where he explains the two words that tell you a negotiation is going very badly) join my free weekly newsletter

The Games People Play

By Eric Berne

People play games. The run through little tricks, follow scripts and roles that gratify them, protect their ego, allow them to avoid responsibility for looking at their difficult problems. Sometimes you will do anything to blame someone else for your problems, rather than accepting responsibility and addressing them yourself. Sometimes you will do anything for a little attention, even if it's negative attention.

It can be hard to act as an adult. To tackle your life head on.

The book feels very self evident. I'm a little worried about it's scientific bases though. None the less, it gives you much to think about.

Games People Play is an introduction to transactional analysis. It describes our three ego states-- the Parent, The Adult and the Child. All roles are healthy in the right context. Problems arise when the roles get crossed-- when you don't talk down to an Adult and treat him as a child, when you act like a child, when you need to act like an Adult.

The book contains a list of mind games that we play, some very sophisticated. For example, the game called "alcoholic" is centered around a self identified alcoholic who uses his problem to keeping acting like a child, to acquire attention from those trying to help him, and to avoid taking responsibility for anything important. Wither or not the "alcoholic" actually has a dependency on alcohol is actually a secondary question. What matters is that the alcoholic has an excuse that he can use to avoid dealing with his failings.

As follow ups, I'm going to read "I'm OK, you're OK" and "I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional " and "Sham: How The Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless" The first to dig a little deeper into the subject. The second to balance it out. It appears the criticism is that it oversimplifies things and allows people call their troubles diseases and blame others for them. Which is an odd statement. That seams to be the exact problem that the "Games People Play" is trying to point out.

Running away from it all Part II

In 2008 I wrote about what I'd take with me if I were to star over from nothing. I decided to revisit the list. It's changed a little.

I no longer like photography like I used to, so that's dropped off the list. I'm much more physically active that I was, so a gym is on the list, As is a beautiful park where I can hike and run.

The full list…

1. A good place to sleep
2. The internet and a decent laptop plus tablet
3. toiletries, clothing
4. The means to cook a good meal
5. I'd live someplace near a library,
6. someplace near a gym.
7. someplace I can hike and run.

The Happiest Toddler on the Block

By Harvey Karp.

Someone recommended this to me as a good management or effectiveness book. There is a grain of truth to that. The core messages of "The Happiest Toddler on the Block" can apply to everyone.

1. Fast Food Trick-- repeat back what you just heard. It shows you are paying attention. It offers the speaker an opportunity to confirm that you heard correct.
2. It's not just what you say, it's how you say it. When you talk, match the tone and mood of the listener. Maybe a notch or too more upbeat if you are trying to lift spirits, or a notch or two more downbeat if you are trying to calm things down. This shows you are really paying attention to the mood of the conversation, and not just parroting back what you heard. It also gives the 'toddler' feedback on what their mood comes across as to others.
   For example, if the 'toddler' says "I'm Angry!" say back "You are Angry." in a slightly less irritated tone of voice. Not "Don't be angry" in a calm soonthing voice. The second approach shows that you have listened, but is dismissive of the speaker's point.
3. Be consistent and build trust.

Runner's World Complete Guide To Trail Running

A good common sense book on trail running.

I've fallen a few times while trail running. I've worried about that. Am I too clumsy for trailing running? The book says… "It's okay to fall. I fall a lot-- it's not that big a deal" … "don't think your goal should be to run stumble-free. A more realistic goal is to feel comfortable running and handling tricky situations."

The book points you to cycling gloves to protect your hands against falls.

I often have to walk up steep hills. The book says the following on running up hills… "Don't put so much pressure on yourself to run the same pace as on even ground. It's difficult to maintain. Impossible to maintain is more like it."

"Everyone will tell you it's smart to walk uphill… It's more energy efficient even if you're just on a run of 6 to 8 miles. It's better to slow to a walk than to waste energy."

"If your breath becomes so labored and your heart rate so fast that you slow down dramatically, save your energy and walk. Once you catch your breath, pick up your jogging pace again."

Assholes-- a theory.

By Aaron James.

A lot of deep thinking about assholes, who they are, their effect on the world, and how to deal with them.

1. Don't try to change the asshole
2. Stoically accept the asshole.
3. Engage the asshole on your terms.
4. Strengthen your ties with non assholes.

LED Lights Are Ruining Laundry Detergent's White-Brightening Trick

LED lighting is great. The right bulb gives the same warm incandescent glow you love from a fraction of the energy. But there's a downside: while LEDs make cities look awesome, the most common type of LED lighting dims the ultraviolet trick laundr...

Gizmodo - Saturday, April 19, 2014

If you have Windows 8 or Windows Phone 8, you can read the full article at:

bingnews://application/view?entitytype=article&pageId=0&contentId=274928407&market=EN-US&referrer=share

Sent from my Windows Phone

The Sober Truth

Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-step Programs and the Rehab Industry by Lance M. Dodes.

Don't fool yourself. You are the easiest person for you to fool.

How does that contrast with knowing yourself?

If you find something that works for you, or gives you hope, but don't test it well, then how do you know that you haven't fooled yourself?

People love stories that give them hope. They love to solve problems with other people who face the same challenges.

Add to this that Alcoholics Anonymous and Rehab retreats are not incented to measure their success rates, just tell there success stories. The result is an industry that offers a lot of hope, but doesn't really know how well it's doing.

Addiction is very complicated. Many addicts hop between addictions. Get them off of alcohol and they switch to gambling, or sex, or drugs. Treating substance abuse is only the start of treating an addiction.  

Description of spacetime and the spead of light, cribbed from the web in answer to the question "Why does light travel at the speed of light?"

Everything, by nature of simply existing, is "moving" at the speed of light (which really has nothing to do with light: more on that later). Yes, that does include you.
Our understanding of the universe is that the way that we perceive space and time as separate things is, to be frank, wrong. They aren't separate: the universe is made of "spacetime," all one word. A year and a lightyear describe different things in our day to day lives, but from a physicist's point of view, they're actually the exact same thing (depending on what kind of physics you're doing).
In our day to day lives, we define motion as a distance traveled over some amount of time. However, if distances and intervals of time are the exact same thing, that suddenly becomes completely meaningless. "I traveled one foot for every foot that I traveled" is an absolutely absurd statement!
The way it works is that everything in the universe travels through spacetime at some speed which I'll call "c" for the sake of brevity. Remember, motion in spacetime is meaningless, so it makes sense that nothing could be "faster" or "slower" through spacetime than anything else. Everybody and everything travels at one foot per foot, that's just... how it works.
Obviously, though, things do seem to have different speeds. The reason that happens is that time and space are orthogonal, which is sort of a fancy term for "at right angles to each other." North and east, for example, are orthogonal: you can travel as far as you want directly to the north, but it's not going to affect where you are in terms of east/west at all.
Just like how you can travel north without traveling east, you can travel through time without it affecting where you are in space. Conversely, you can travel through space without it affecting where you are in time.
You're (presumably) sitting in your chair right now, which means you're not traveling through space at all. Since you have to travel through spacetime at c (speed of light), though, that means all of your motion is through time.
By the way, this is why time dilation happens: something that's moving very fast relative to you is moving through space, but since they can only travel through spacetime at c, they have to be moving more slowly through time to compensate (from your point of view).
Light, on the other hand, doesn't travel through time at all. The reason it doesn't is somewhat complicated, but it has to do with the fact that it has no mass.
Something that isn't moving that has mass can have energy: that's what E = mc² means. Light has no mass, but it does have energy. If we plug the mass of light into E=mc², we get 0, which makes no sense because light has energy. Hence, light can never be stationary.
Not only that, but light can never be stationary from anybody's perspective. Since, like everything else, it travels at c through spacetime, that means all of its "spacetime speed" must be through space, and none of it is through time.
So, light travels at c. Not at all by coincidence, you'll often hear c referred to as the "speed of light in a vacuum." Really, though, it's the speed that everything travels at, and it happens to be the speed that light travels through space at because it has no mass.
edit: By the way, this also covers the common ELI5 question of why nothing can ever travel faster than light, and why things with mass cannot travel at the speed of light. Since everything moves through spacetime at c, nothing can ever exceed it (and no, traveling backwards in time would not fix that). Also, things with mass can always be "stationary" from someone's perspective (like their own), so they always have to move through time at least a little bit, meaning they can never travel through space as fast as light does. They'd have to travel through spacetime faster than c to do that, which, again, is not possible.

1 photo

At work, while discussing our architecture, we categorized one of the feature areas as "Permissive Drunken monkeys"

So Good They Can't Ignore You...

It's all common sense.

Passion often happens after you succeed at something, not before. Before is angst, hard work, effort, practice and building your skills. Do what you can be paid the most for. The passion will grow.

Chasing passion can be dangerous. "The pleasures and sorrows of work" also touched on this idea. There is a naïve thinking behind passion. Many people believe that if they follow there passion, their happiness and desires will follow. Not true. Life can still be hard. You still must work at it. Passion may help you over the hump, it does not prevent problems.

This book argues that many people who preach "follow your passion" do so only by looking at the past with rose coloured glasses. There was a time when they were doing it for the money, then the success came, their passion grew out of the success.  

One thing Amazon Fresh can do that my normal grocer can't… email me product recalls.

General Principle: the solutions (on balance) need to be simpler than the problems.

(Otherwise the system collapses under its complexity). Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The Better Angels of our nature

By Stephen Pinker.

The book is very interesting. It argues that violence is decreasing over time, and goes into how and why.

But that's not what I want to remember.

One of the common themes in this book deals with the perspective switch from "idealism" to "integrated complexity"

idealists often hold a common narrative. They believe the world is unhealthy and on the wrong path. All our problems would be solved if only everyone believed in … Marxism, Nazism, Capitalism, Socialism, the Catholic Church, Anti-Islamacists, Anti-Americanism; whatever. People who don't support your cause are demonized. A revolution or judgment day is pushed to deal with these troublemakers. Once  get rid of these people our problems will be solved.

Of course the great judgment, the big revolution is destructive and inconclusive.

The alternative is to acknowledge our "integrated complexity," the fact that we have to make compromises. But, not to give up and accept the problems, but to dig in and understand the different dimensions of the problems, the different viewpoints, their connections, synergies, balances and compromises.

One of the reasons why we like ideologies and shy away from "integrated complexity" is that we like to believe in stories. An emotionally compelling story of good v.s. evil is far more believable and motivating that a more probable explanations that results in a set of compromises that must be resolved by hard work.

Long Term Relationships

On learning surprises about your fiancé shortly before your wedding…

Old man here. Married four decades.

Look, it doesn't matter what you find out about them now. The question is what are you going to find out about them after 10 years, 20 years, and 30 years?

People change. They change a lot. Boy Scout this year. Ten years from now? You find out he is secretly doing hard narcotics and has been for a couple of years. She's shy and doesn't talk much? Raising teenage boys will change that for sure. She'll be a loud mouth harpy and dressing you down loudly by association. Sexually driven almost to obsession? How about zero libido in the same person ten years later. Or how about libido that suddenly manifests in a prude who suddenly can't stop fucking everything shaped like a cucumber.

Kids (shaking head), you have no idea what it means to be in a long term relationship. You think it is about getting to know each other and then you cruise through.

That is wrong!

You think you are cruising, and while you are busy taking them for granted, then turn around and BANG! Some ridiculous new hobby, a new look... now fat, now skinny, now muscles, now fat again, and now back to muscles, oops cancer, and affair, more cancer, how can you have an affair during chemo?... it does not stop.

Marriage and long term relationships are not for cowards or the weak of will. You don't stay together because of love (romance fades into family familiarity and competition for control of children's future) or trust (you cannot trust humans - they are unpredictable even to themselves). You stay together only out of sheer willpower, and because you have a sense of humor about what the person might be up to next, and you want to see it and help them through it.

The first decade of a relationship is like some kind of a joke. People get divorced during that time. Good. They needed to. Because after 4 decades, those pussies would be taking their own lives or end up in 12 step rehab centers.

Oh, that happens too. You'll see.

Wait until their parents die. And then yours die. And then your brother sues you to get all of the inheritance, but won't clean out the basement of their house filled with shit. Then you find out he has a grow lab on a farm, and DEA is investigating him. Oh wait, your brother was shot to death. Now you need knee replacement. What do you mean you slept with my brother? Why the hell are you telling me this now after 30 years? Good god, woman it doesn't matter now.

Walking down the aisle tomorrow? GRAB THE "OH SHIT" HANDLES NOW.

In 40 years, you will be able to look a Marine Drill Instructor in the eyes and say, "Out of my way, kid. I have seen shit you would not believe.”

David Foster Wallace

I want to like David Foster Wallace, but can't. Maybe he over generalizes too much, or latches on to themes and patterns that just don't exist. In "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again." he compares the queuing system for getting on a cruise ship, to the system that carted Jews off to Auschwitz. No, that is not a valid comparison. Just because the Nazi's moved thousands of people, it doesn't follow that activities that involve thousands of people should be compared to Nazi's.

Infinite Jest

I've abandoned reading Infinite Jest. I just don't care for it. I've checked it out of the library twice, and I've checked it out in audio book form. I keep putting it down, or turning it off. It just doesn't click with me.

Made by Hand

By Mark Frauenfelder

Mark tries a lot of things-- raising chickens. Living on a tropical island for a year, making high quality espresso by hand with a custom modified espresso machine, home fermenting.

In his efforts, he confronts the problem of home made goods-- sometimes they can  be better. The often take more time. The whole experience can be more pleasureful, meditative even. But the end result may not justify the effort.

I struggle with this myself, with minor home renovations and repairs. It takes a lot of time to do a good job. Yet it costs hundreds of dollars to get a professional. If I spent the money on better tools, would I be better off? More often than not, I do a mediocre job and regret the experience.

American Gods

By Neil Garman.

Am starting to read fiction for the first time in years.

Religion is a vantage point from which to view the world. It's power and strength come as much from people who share the same view, as from any inherent supernatural backing.

People want to believe in something. Anything that will give them hope and a feeling of control.

The book supposes that when enough people believe in and worship a thing, then a god of that thing will emerge. The god of TV, of Drugs, of the Internet, all exist in America and live uneasily along other older gods. Oden, Ganesh, too many other gods to count.

Disease Proof

By Dr. David Katz.

The book has a very blunt point-- if you eat a proper diet, exercise regularly, sleep properly, keep a healthy weight and stop smoking, then you will improve your health and life expectancy far more than any drug, supplement or treatment ever could. Low carb diets, or omega-3's or whatever else you can imagine, do not have nearly the benefits of a proper diet, with regular exercise, keeping a healthy weight, proper sleep, and not smoking.

The Essays of Michel de Montaigne

I want to read these essays. I'm trying to read these essays, but they are so hard to focus on. The English is old, and that English is a translation of older French.

Who out there still reads Montaigne? How did you manage it?

Do You Believe in Magic

The sense and nonsense of alternative medicine. By Paul A. Offit.

There is Medicine that has been adequately tested, and there is medicine that has not.

Too often well-tested medicine leaves us without hope. If I have cancer with a low chance of survival, If have a terminal disease, why wouldn't I switch to an alternative healthy provider that offered hope? Am I supposed to just give up?

If you go to a faith healing center, there are lots of cancers and braces and pains, but few wooden legs, toupees and casts.

The book is also very skeptical about vitamin supplementation. Once you have a balanced diet, extra vitamins don't help or can even hurt you.

So, what alternative medicines and supplements work? Omega 3, but not too much (causes bleeding) Calcium and Vitamin D if you are older woman, or live in a dark location. Folic acid if you are pregnant.

I wish there was a guide to well tested medicines and treatments. I would not be able to tell if a smart enough doctor who actually believed in his treatments was a quack or not.

The twelve week year

By Brian P. Moran & Michael Pennington.

Do everything in 12 week sprints. Always make progress. Have great metrics to keep you honest. The way you think about a plan changes the way you execute on it, so create plans that you think you can execute on.