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Thursday, November 15, 2012
Saturday, November 10, 2012
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“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Team Romney’s polling cluelessness comes after years of conservatives demonizing pointy-headed academics, including scientists. On subjects like evolution, global warming, the biology of human conception, and even macroeconomics, conservatives have been increasingly bold about rejecting the consensus of scientific experts in favor of ideologically self-serving pronouncements. That attitude may have contributed to their loss of the White House in 2012. It will be much more costly for the country as a whole if it doesn’t change before the GOP next captures the White House....The conservative movement seems to have adopted the same attitude toward Nate Silver. The world is messy and complicated, and understanding it often requires years of study and a willingness to consider evidence objectively regardless of where it comes from. Yet the conservative movement has increasingly become a hostile place for people who think for themselves, no matter how deeply they understand their subjects."
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Wednesday, November 7, 2012
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1. Process Matters: Sharp data analysis beats squishy feelings. The accuracy of a handful of statisticians versus the bloviating punditry is for me, the single most dramatic storyline of the election. Nate Silver showed data, logical reasoning and mathematics outperform “gut feel” and instinct.
2. Think Deeply Before You Speak: Grand pronouncements with limited upside but immense downside are suicidal in every field. The Romney OpEd about letting Detroit go bankrupt may have doomed his candidacy in Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin.
3. Be True to Yourself: Romney is a former moderate, pro choice governor who worked as bipartisan chief executive in Massachusetts creating a state wide healthcare program. He ran away from that, first tacking hard to the right to win over the base, then shifting to the middle during the election. He should have ran on his credentials instead of trying to please every one.
4. Planning and Execution Matter: The blocking and tackling in states like Ohio Florida and Virginia were a huge advantage to the incumbent. His team executed well, where as Romney team (apparently) came up short. Being able to put together a smart plan and then execute on it is crucial.
5. Choose Your Business Partners Well: The VP choice is a major decision a Presidential candidate makes, and Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan added nothing to his chances. If you are trying to shore up your base at your convention, you have not done the requisite planning. Ryan could not even deliver his home state and fumbled his debate to a grinning goofy Biden. All told, a net negative for the Romney campaign.
6. Dont Live in a Bubble: Large swaths of the conservative movement live in an alternative universe where facts don’t matter and science is irrelevant. The selective perception of bubble people who never venture beyond Fox News and Drudge and UnskewedPolls is self reinforcing. If you spend most of your time rationalizing why the polls are inaccurate and the media is biased, don’t be surprised at what happens next.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Haha
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"Karina Sengupta, College and Wharton senior, said the announcement is “the best thing that has happened to investment banking. Sengupta had an internship in asset management at Goldman over the summer. She is participating in on-campus recruiting for a variety of careers including banking. “Goldman Sachs has a fantastic HR division that really knows how to keep talent,” Sengupta said. “This termination would let the firm keep people who are actually passionate about finance instead of just being in it for the money."
Monday, October 1, 2012
The Common Touch
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"Not as closely as some of the most ardent fans. But I have some great friends who are NASCAR team owners."
-Romney, when asked by the AP reporter if he follows NASCAR
-Romney
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Bigger than Hip Hop
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He gets a little agitated when the subject of Zuccotti Park comes up: "What’s the thing on the wall, what are you fighting for?” He says he told Russell Simmons, the rap mogul, the same: “I’m not going to a park and picnic, I have no idea what to do, I don’t know what the fight is about. What do we want, do you know?”
“I think all those things need to really declare themselves a bit more clearly. Because when you just say that ‘the 1 percent is that,’ that’s not true. Yeah, the 1 percent that’s robbing people, and deceiving people, these fixed mortgages and all these things, and then taking their home away from them, that’s criminal, that’s bad. You know what's worse? Not being an entrepreneur. This is free enterprise. This is what America is built on.”
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Wednesday, September 5, 2012
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“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Dear Alabama,
We're going to kick your ass this year. Did y'all watch last weekend? Did you see us wilding all over the place? Gangtackling like banshees and scoring on huge huge 60+ plays? We've got the best receivers in the league this year and y'all've found a pretty good running back from somewhere near Obalaska county, okay okay roll tide, but your secondary is younger than Simba and ripe for a scorching. Beware, for on the third Saturday in October, the red moon will rise fast after a blazing orange sunset....
Monday, September 3, 2012
Jungle Boogie
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"By hanging on beyond this point, Tarzan begins to convert some of this horizontal velocity into vertical speed, which sends him on an upwards parabolic trajectory that can increase his time in the air and therefore the distance he travels along the ground...."
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Thursday, August 30, 2012
Tennessee News
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"In Lebanon, Tennessee, a town of less than 30,000 people, Mike Justice, the public safety coordinator, was so eager to accumulate military goods that he used to wake up at 3:00 a.m. so he was the first person logged in at the government’s first-come, first-serve online store. Thanks to his sleepless nights, since 2007, Lebanon has collected $4 million worth of stuff, including tanks, weapons and heavy equipment like bulldozers and truck loaders. Lebanon’s tank, an LAV 150, has been used only “five or six times” according to Justice, although it did help save a man who tried to commit suicide, spotting him with the tank’s infrared camera...."
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* That's not the photo from the story but it had to be included
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Hard Knocks
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(Ryan Tannehill, on why it’s important for him to work with the starters) – “Well, I want to be the guy. You don’t want to be a backup. It’s not a goal to be a backup. I want to play and I want to get in there. The more reps I can get with the ones, I feel like that’s more like a game situation as much as you’re going to get in practice.”
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"Last year, I took a year off to give everybody else a chance to catch up.”
“Are you watching? You been out there? I’m fast as shit.I feel good. I look good. I feel like I’m moving. I feel like a cheetah. I feel…I feel black.”
-Chad Johnson, first media interview
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"Hey Coach, I’m going to go get arrested on my day off.”
-Chad Johnson, episode 1 of Hard Knocks
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(Coach Joe Philban, on if tight end Les Brown looks like a football player or a basketball player playing football) – “At times. At times. I would say both. He’s certainly a young player. We all know he hasn’t been in pads. This is a new, kind of brave new world for him. You could probably watch a couple plays and say, ‘Boy this guy doesn’t fit in.’ Conversely, you could watch a couple plays and think he’s a five-year veteran. So I think there’s a little bit of both. I think how quickly he can eliminate those pictures or those film clips where he doesn’t look like an NFL player.)
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Monday, August 27, 2012
Sunday, August 26, 2012
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“Among men who rise to fame and leadership two types are recognizable–those who are born with a belief in themselves and those in whom it is a slow growth dependent on actual achievement. To the men of the last type their own success is a constant surprise, and its fruits the more delicious, yet to be tested cautiously with a haunting sense of doubt whether it is not all a dream. In that doubt lies true modesty, not the sham of insincere self-depreciation but the modesty of “moderation,” in the Greek sense. It is poise, not pose.”
-William T Sherman
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Saturday, August 4, 2012
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"Parag Khanna’s contempt for democracy aside, he is simply an intellectual impostor, emitting such lethal doses of banalities, inanities, and generalizations that his books ought to carry advisory notices....
When the Khannas discuss the charms of their newly found profession in Hybrid Reality, the whole enterprise is revealed as a jargon-laden farce: “Futurism is a combination of long-term and long-tail, separating the trends from the trendy and the shocks from the shifts, and combining data, reportage, and scenarios.” It doesn’t sound like a very demanding job: “It helps to travel and be imaginative, but it is even more useful to observe children.” And why all this effort? So that we can better predict the apocalypse. “Avoiding civilizational collapse will require harnessing technologies that help us decipher complexity, overcome decision overload, and produce comprehensive strategies.” The Khannas have come to accomplish nothing less than the rescue of civilization....
The recipe is simple. Find some peculiar global trend—the more arcane, the better. Draw a straight line connecting it to the world of apps, electric cars, and Bay Area venture capital. Mention robots, Japan, and cyberwar. Use shiny slides that contain incomprehensible but impressive maps and visualizations. Stir well. Serve on multiple platforms. With their never-ending talk of Twitter revolutions and the like, techno-globalists such as Khanna have a bright future ahead of them.....
When they launched their publishing venture, the TED organizers dismissed any concern that their books’ slim size would be dumbing us down. “Actually, we suspect people reading TED Books will be trading up rather than down. They’ll be reading a short, compelling book instead of browsing a magazine or doing crossword puzzles. Our goal is to make ideas accessible in a way that matches modern attention spans.” But surely “modern attention spans” must be resisted, not celebrated. Brevity may be the soul of wit, or of lingerie, but it is not the soul of analysis. The TED ideal of thought is the ideal of the “takeaway”—the shrinkage of thought for people too busy to think."
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