Lifestyle & Culture
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[ 2 Comments ]Posted on June 21, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Monday, June 21st, 2010The fact that our civilization is doomed doesn’t make me a pessimist.
How To Outsource Your Life
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on June 10, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Thursday, June 10th, 2010Why live your own life when someone overseas can do it cheaper and better?
 I have an evil plan to outsource myself to myself. |
Recently I was working on a project that became stalled, largely because I did a poor job of assessing the scope of the project in the first place, which led to a serious case of scope creep. I was frustrated, the investor was frustrated, and things were going nowhere. The solution? Ironically, I outsourced myself out of income by agreeing that the best solution to keep the project in motion was to hire an overseas freelancer. This leads to a condition I’m not too fond of, something the self-employed sometimes refer to as being “independently broke”. I set my own hours, have immense creative freedom, and can work from home, among other things. The only drawback? I don’t get paid. This got me joking with a friend though, about how great it would be to outsource my whole life. What if someone could call Verizon and AT&T and resolve the seemingly endless billing problems I have with them, something I’m really good at but never have the time to do? Or what if someone could meet the perfect woman for me, so I could settle down and finally be forced to get a real job? Or maybe even write articles like this for me, so I have more time to market them? Well, I was only slightly surprised that someone had done this, and with hilarious results. Check out My Outsourced Life, by Esquire’s AJ Jacobs. In a nice twist, Tim Ferriss (author of The 4-Hour Workweek
It’s Not Easy Being White
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on June 4, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Friday, June 4th, 2010I mean REALLY white. It’s hard to believe that in the 21st century, albinos remain an ostracized and oppressed minority.
 Model/actress Connie Chiu is one of the few that has turned her albinism into an asset |
I mean really white. As a white heterosexual male, you’d probably think I’d have it made when it comes the treatment I receive in our culture. Well, the problem is, I’m a little too white. That probably sounds silly to you, but although I’m not an actual albino, my lack of pigmentation has had a profound impact on my life, and led me to always identify more with just about any culture that isn’t “the American white”. Being hopelessly pale – much like being a “ginger“, an effeminate male, a masculine female, or a black, asian, or Muslim person (among countless other “minorities”) – sets you up for decades of being treated differently in America. If you’re pale, you’re assumed to be frail, introverted, and afraid of the sun and sports. All of which were quite the opposite of the truth for me. We like to think that in the 21st century, we treat people more or less the same, but the fact is, you’re probably more comfortable around “average” looking people than stunningly beautiful people, even if you’re stunningly beautiful yourself. And depending on your race and national origin, you probably have a profoundly different set of reactions to people other than “your own”. I can only begin to imagine what it feels like to be an albino; in spite of their rather insignificant actual differences, their visual appearance seems so dramatically different as to almost appear alien. And I’d bet that their relative rarity isn’t the only reason you probably don’t have any albino friends. Historically, albinic people have always been regarded as either evil or magical in some way, when in fact the only difference they possess is a simple lack of pigment and possible vision impairments. The results of this cultural bias can be downright horrifying; in African countries like Tanzania and Burundi there have been numerous witchcraft-related killings of albinos in recent years. Parts of their bodies are used in potions sold by witchdoctors. In Zimbabwe, belief that sex with an albinistic woman will cure a man of HIV has led to rapes and subsequent HIV infections. To learn more about Africa’s “tribe of ghosts”, see this Daily Mail piece. And if you want to offer aid to this very real problem – 53 children and adults with albinism have been killed since 2007 in East Africa alone – visit the National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation’s web site.
How To Increase Productivity & Creativity? Be Crazy, Get Paid Less
[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 29, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Saturday, May 29th, 2010To be creative it might help if you’re slightly insane, and strangely, financial reward can actually IMPEDE quality and productivity.
There are an amazing number of books and blogs offering advice on how to enhance creativity and improve productivity. Which has always struck me as rather amusing. In my opinion, if you find yourself systematically looking for ways to be creative, well, you probably aren’t. And although reviewing processes and refining or developing skills or knowledge are crucial keys to being productive, the real key to productivity is to (ahem) PRODUCE. Which is something you aren’t doing when you’re spending all day looking for ways to be more productive, right? So what’s the secret to being more creative? I’ve always been of the opinion that the most creative people I’ve known bordered on being case studies from the DSM-IV. And finally, science is backing me up. Yes, creativity is essentially a form of insanity. And frankly, if scientists were more creative, they would have realized this already, like I did. In an analagous fashion, one of the big keys to being productive and creating a successful new market is also akin to insanity, i.e.: Disruptive Innovation. Disruption is something that the creators of Skype understand well; in fact they’re funding more of it as you read this. And regarding productivity? Well, get to work. But if you need to make others get to work, you may find the concepts in this presentation by Dan Pink (also below) surprising. Being self-employed and not raised in the corporate culture, I’ve always found the number of “warm seats” at most larger companies perplexing. We needn’t go into all the theories about 20-70-10 workforces or whatever, it’s a common sense observation that large organizations inevitably end up with lots of moderately well-paid employees that produce very little in relation to their real potential. Pink’s presentation – which is based on information from top-notch academic studies – is an informative and entertaining look at the myth of “greater reward equals greater performance”. It turns out that if you want people to produce, simply paying them more can actually be counterproductive. Read the rest of this entry »
Why I’ll Probably Never Ask You To Marry Me
[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 23, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Sunday, May 23rd, 2010Oscar Wilde said that “Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence”. Me, I’m just waiting for Sandra Bullock to call.
  Some of us don’t have time for this crap. |
It was H.L. Mencken who said “Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?”, which may have something to do with my seemingly eternal unmarriedness. If – as I am – you’re over thirty-something and not married, there are two extreme poles that you may have gravitated toward. On the one hand, you may be forlorn and fill your evenings scouring Facebook for lost loves, and Match.com for new ones. On the other, you may be self-deluded into an ecstatic sort of glee with the freedoms you have, taking an irrational pride in your golf swing or bitchin’ pilates skills while you chuckle smugly at your grumpy married friends. I don’t meet too many people in between. Which seems to be one of the sad side effects of marriage in western culture. Thanks to decades of Disney and family television, many of us dream of a magical world in which you find romance and stability in the same partner, and in a very consumer-like fashion are eventually disappointed and return the product for a refund. But the fact is that our narrow perception of what marriage means is just that – a narrow perception. This Psychology today piece tidily rounds up the history of marriage in the west, and if you put the pieces together, it paints a pretty amusing picture wherein the wealthy historically got married for completely unromantic reasons and had all the real fun on the side, and then convinced the peasantry that marriage was sacred so they didn’t get too rowdy. Thank God we have such amazing technology at our fingertips these days, and may finally escape this con perpetrated for centuries by the ruling class. Yes, Facebook can predict who you’ll be dating next week, and mathematics can tell you when you’ll get divorced. If we can just find an algorithm for making the bit in between more fun, we’ll be all set. Me, I’ll get married if Sandra Bullock ever gets around to asking me, but for now, here are some quotes that sum up a lot of what I think about marriage… Read the rest of this entry »