Lamar Odom Story from Sports Illustrated

Even though I don't follow basketball very closely, I found really interesting the story on Lamar Odom in the latest Sports Illustrated pictured below.



Written by Lee Jenkins, "Another Sunny Day in Lamar's L.A." is about a guy who I remember as a highly-questionable "student-athlete" signing by the University of Rhode Island. It could well be that my view of Odom at the time was right on, but he's certainly been through a lot since then and has much more to him that I would have suspected.

Very nuanced and well-written portrait of an interesting guy.

"Keeping it Real" Writing from Esquire

Some interesting writing in the issue of Esquire Magazine... much of it around the general theme of identity / being true to yourself and yep, keeping it real.



The cover story by Tom Chiarella is about celebrity guy Ben Affleck... who also happens to be: a parent of two (yes, with a celebrity girl), an accomplished writer (if you recall "Good Will Hunting"), a pretty good actor (reference back to his monologues in "Boiler Room" and the aforementioned "Good Will Hunting") and an up and coming director (with "Gone Baby Gone" to his credit).

All of this being said, the Chiarella piece manages to convey how Affleck is often stuck in this "celebrity guy" role despite all accomplishments above and beyond that. It's an interesting read showing what someone in this position faces. If someone doesn't have time to read the piece itself, the story title of "Ben Affleck: A Smart, Talented Man Trapped in Lindsay Lohan's Life" conveys the point pretty well.

Additionally, this issue of Esquire contains a piece by my writing man-crush object of admiration, Chris Jones. The story titled "Jonathan Papelbon Grinds His Teeth" is a profile of the Red Sox closer that reveals the focus and downright anger that Papelbon channels to help him pitch so successfully.

Finally, there's another piece by Chris Jones that's much shorter and (using the results of google searches as a yardstick) gathering more attention than the one he did on Papelbon. Titled "My Vacation from Hate" it's about the return to competitive golf of Tiger Woods and how Jones enjoyed golf more without Woods around. This piece from the Detroit Free Press website quotes Jones' story at length, but doesn't quote Jones' sentence about how depressing it was writing this 2003 Esquire story on Woods. The statement made in this most recent piece is "there's no joy for me in anything Tiger Woods does"... likely referring to how Woods closes off his personal life from view (and the 2003 story was written even before marraige and kids for Tiger).

So... all this being said, you've got three different stories from this issue all tied together by the theme of keeping it real / dealing with the spotlight / being true to yourself / etc etc. In the case of Jonathan Papelbon, there's someone who basically sticks their chin out at the world and is brutally honest. With Tiger Woods, you've got someone who shields the world entirely and then with Ben Affleck you've got some sort of middle ground with a guy working hard to maintain a private life while at the same time live a human experience. Interesting stuff.

Health-Care Cover Story from Time

Really good (and depressing) story titled "The Health-Care Crisis Hits Home" from the March 16 issue of Time Magazine.



Written by regular contributor Karen Tumulty, the story details the insurance troubles her brother has gone through after having a major medical condition. Being self-insured, Pat Tumulty would regularly buy six month policies... which was all well and good as long as he simply paid the premiums and never needed the insurance. After getting sick and filing a claim, he was proclaimed not covered because of his illness being a "pre-existing condition", even though it was the same Assurant Health company that covered him six months prior.

This is a terrible story about (I don't think it stretches to say) a terrible company, but the piece goes much further than one bad business and looks at health-care in the U.S., particularly for those underinsured like Pat Tumulty. Cited in the article was a 2005 Harvard study that looked at 1,700 personal bankruptcies declared and found that half of them were due to a medical problem... with three quarters of those people actually covered under some form of health insurance. The problem that occurs is for those who do work and do have coverage, those policies often wind up not amounting to much, but the income and coverage makes people not eligible for federal or state health coverage programs.

It's a big mess, with the biggest shame being people dealing with serious illness while at the same time trying to figure out how to pay to treat it.

"Healthy Aging" by Dr. Andrew Weil

Took me a little while to slog through it, but I just finished reading "Healthy Aging" by Dr. Andrew Weil.



I previously did a blog post about both Weil and Dr. Mehmet Oz so was interested in this book when I saw it at the library. As an aside, sometimes it's a hindrance to reading a particular author you're interested in when they have a number of books in print and you have to pick one. I this this was a good choice, though, as the book seemed to fully impart Weil's views on aging (in the first half of the book) along with his recommendations to try to age well (in the second half).

Some of the things I found most interesting from the book are noted below:

Chapter One - "Immortality": Interesting mention of cells in the human body and how they stop regenerating... with the exception of the only truly immortal cells, cancer cells.

Chapter Two - "Shangri-La and Fountains of Youth": Discusses various communities throughout the world that are known for having a longer living population. There tends to be some constants around diet in these areas, but an even more recurring thread is a pervading sense of community... as well as respect for the elderly and inclusion of them in daily lives.

Chapter Three - "Antiaging Medicine": Features Weil's view that most of the antiaging field is a sham. Also contains a sentiment from Weil that recurs throughout the book... the idea behind healthy aging is not necessarily to extend life, but rather to extend health so that quality of life remains high up until a rapid decline at death.

Chapters Five & Six - "The Denial of Aging" & "The Value of Aging": Both related to a point noted above from chapter 2... an examination of the notion that aging is a good thing as it can provide valuable experience to be passed on and can actually lead to improvement with age.

The second half of the book beyond this focuses more on specific recommendations to aid in healthy aging. Things get a bit bogged down with lots of detailed tips, but all appear good. They range from simple things like getting enough rest to foods that should be eaten as part of an anti-inflammatory diet.

Details around the diet and tons of other information can be found on Weil's website at http://www.drweil.com/ or the "healthy aging" microsite within it. Additionally, his book "8 Weeks to Optimum Health" sounds like an interesting read.

Finally, the conclusion of the book has a mention of ethical wills, a Jewish tradition that has been getting adopted by more and more people from all cultures. The idea is to create a document that passes along to your friends and family your feelings about what's important and what you want to pass on as a legacy.

This was I thought a really interesting idea and made me think of both Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture" (which I did a blog post about here) and what appeals to me about writing... this idea of creating something (sometimes profound, sometimes not at all, but I figure... if it's written, it's "created").

Crazy Bad ESPN writing

I know Eric Young likely isn't on ESPN for his writing ability, but... geesh.

Not quite the greatest writing contained within his Jonathan Papelbon-Manny Ramirez piece on the espn.com Baseball Tonight Clubhouse page.

My personal favorite sentence from the piece: "I don't agree with what Manny may or may not have done to leave the Red Sox."

Fiction Writing Notion

Not sure how entirely interesting this is to the average reader, but since I only know of four different people who regularly read this blog (and three are family), I'll go ahead and write this...

I did a post a few days ago titled "blog topics to date... & forward" and at it's conclusion I wrote of an interest in fiction writing, but the kind based based in reality (i.e. historical fiction).

Using that as a jumping off point, I began outlining (maybe I did actually learn something from the "Day of the Writer" seminars last week) and realized what I would like to write. I'm certainly making no guarantees of doing it, but I would like to do a fictional autobiography of myself.

Now... I fully recognize that an autobiography up to this point in my life may well not cover the most awe-inspiring stuff (certainly not as interesting as Buck's life in "Call of the Wild"), but... note the word fictional. This gives lots and lots of leeway on potential content.

Maybe it doesn't even need to focus on myself... who ever said that an autobiography has to be about the person writing it? Ok, maybe Webster's dictionary said it, but does that mean it has to be the case?

With this all stated, it's time for a "future details as events warrant" closing. Check.

"Call of the Wild" by Jack London

Man, technology is so cool. I just finished reading (well, rereading as I first came across the book probably 25 years ago) "The Call of the Wild" by Jack London on my iPhone.



I'll begin with the technology. I've had the 3G iPhone since last Summer and heard about books being available to read via phone from this BusinessWeek story... which I then linked to in this larger blog post.
After doing a very simple search of the iPhone app store, I found and downloaded the "Classics" application (website of which can be found here).

For what I believe was no greater than $2.99 I received first 12 and now 18 different titles (with the increase coming via software updates at no additional charge). These titles range from "Gulliver's Travels" to "Robinson Crusoe" and "Call of the Wild" among others (listing can also be found at the "Classics" website linked above).

In terms of usability, I have nothing but high marks to give... it's very easy to read the text and the user interface is designed so that you see the page turning every time you glide you finger across the screen to move forward. Super cool stuff and a very nice thing to have available... especially if you're in line somewhere or waiting for any period of time.

To the book itself... it really is a powerful read that I think should be experienced by first and foremost any kid in school, but also by adults. The reason for this is portrays such a different world than most people experience. Told through the experiences of a dog (see, that's different to begin with), the book tells a tale of the Alaska Gold Rush and... a hard life. When I say hard, I don't simply mean difficult, but rather a life requiring resiliency and self-sufficiency to survive.

Interspersed with that, though, is also a story of both love and that of a journey. The love story told in "Call of the Wild" portrays an incredibly powerful bond between dog and owner. At the same time (and running for a longer period throughout the book), there's the tale of the journey that the lead character Buck travels. Through his portrayed experiences, he becomes something new and different that is part of his heritage (an illusion to the whole "call of the wild" idea).

I suppose the story has more meaning for me as a dog owner (particularly as a Husky owner), but it's a very descriptively written story which moves forward briskly (quite a fast read). In terms of "big theme" elements... it has quite a few: high drama, love, coming of age, fighting for survival.

Did I mention I liked it?

Blog Topics To Date... & Forward

I've been thinking more and more about both what type of writing I want to do. With the way my brain works, that thinking screams out for me to look at what type of writing I've done.

-----

So... I started posting early July of last year and in these last 8 months have done... around 120 different posts.
What this means: Well, I guess that I went from wishing in June of last year that I was writing to having done a blog post (otherwise known as "writing") every two days on average. Pretty happy with that.

-----

Getting into the details of what exactly I wrote about, here's what I found:

31 book review posts (25 from non-fiction and 6 from fiction books).

89 remaining posts that fall under the following topic areas:
- 34 posts: Business
- 9 posts : Entertainment
- 10 posts: Life (kind of a catch-all category to be sure)
- 16 posts: Politics
- 8 posts: Sports
- 12 posts: Writing

What this means: Two things jump out to me. One is that I find important the idea of reading books (and then having an opinion about said tomes) and two is that I find at least some aspects of business to be interesting.

Yes... I can also really like something that's "pure art", but me thinks there's also stuff of note in the business world (you know... the one in which lots of people make the money that pays living expenses).

-----

Taking a different view of the 89 posts that aren't book reviews... here's the sources they come from / reference / link to:
- 23 posts: Time Magazine
- 14 posts: BusinessWeek
- 9 posts: Sports Illustrated
- 7 posts: Fast Company
- 6 posts: Esquire
- 30 posts: other... includes websites, television shows, my own ramblings and a few other publications.

What this means: Not entirely sure, but I'm gonna go with the idea that I like the magazines I subscribe to. One of the great things about the whole worldly-wide interwebnet information superhighway is that it gives tons and tons of material (like for instance... this blog), but one of the problems is... same as the aforementioned great thing.

With so much material out there, it's nice to have magazines (or websites if you prefer) that you expect to have good stuff contained within. What I find is that often the stuff I read serves as a jumping off point to go find out more... both on the web and... to the point of the reading books mention, to actually seek out and read books referenced from a magazine article.

-----

Trying to now take this information and tie it back to the point of the post... I'm pretty happy with both the type and content of writing (and reading) I've done with this blog thus far and will likely continue it.

What I am toying with, though, is the idea of writing fiction (perhaps based in reality in the vein of an Erik Larson), but I'll have to both chew on that to try to figure out how it may incorporate into the blog and... oh yeah... you know... actually start writing it.

Future details as appropriate...

"Day of the Writer" Cinequest Film Festival Event

I attended the "Day of the Writer" event yesterday in downtown San Jose and... some extremely interesting stuff. It was put on by the Cinequest Film Festival and featured four different events throughout the course of the day.

1. A seminar with Professor Hal Ackerman of the UCLA screenwriting program.
2. Another seminar... this one with Professor Richard Walker, from the same UCLA program.
3. A panel discussion with four accomplished screenwriters talking about their work.
4. A moderated Q&A session with "Juno" screenwriter Diablo Cody.

Yep... a pretty good value for the $20 ticket price.

The dominant theme that I took from the day was was something said in one way or another by multiple speakers... writers write. The idea being that for someone to consider themselves a writer, they simply have to put pen to paper (or hands to keyboard) and do it. Where the success comes from (keeping in mind that whole thing about talent helping) is from repeating the writing process over and over.

There were variations on this theme to be sure with some people focused more on the writing schedule that you stick to and some on just getting the words out whenever, but all seemed to echo this notion that you just have to keep writing consistently.

With this said, below are some of what I felt were the more interesting things from each speaker:


Hal Ackerman: author of “Write Screenplays that Sell: The Ackerman Way"

A really friendly seeming and engaging guy who hit probably harder than any other speaker this notion of creating a writing schedule and sticking to it. As others noted, you're not always going to create great work during that time (heck, you may not write much of anything), but you're committing to it.

Tying into the prior stated concept of "writers write", Ackerman told an anecdote about how he wanted to call his screenwriting book "Take Vienna" (as opposed to the title that he attributed to the book's publishers). The story behind this was from Napoleon Bonaparte who when asked his military strategy replied somewhat incredulously... "if the goal is to take the city of Vienna, then the strategy is... take Vienna!" As Ackerman related... nothing gets written if you don’t write it, and what makes you a writer is the physical act of writing.

Ackerman also imparted some of what I'll call high-level wisdom through his story of meeting George Burns at a party and the comedian asking “What do you do?” and then upon hearing that Ackerman was a writer, following that up with “Do you love what you do?” Ackerman then being able to respond "yes, I really do"... that's good stuff.

Was also some pretty good technical type advice from Ackerman:
- Desire: when you start writing something, don’t worry about theme, instead think about what the desire of the character is... what does the character want?... what are they willing to do?... how will they get it?

- Intimacy trumps morality: if they audience connects with a character (often through experience or the objective of the character), what they do isn’t as important… they can still be rooted for.

- The 3 act movie: end of act 1 – sea change event, end of act 2 – something horrible, end of act 3 – it all goes down.

- Inevitability: what to shoot for, as opposed to predictability.


Richard Walker: also a professor (and screenwriting author) from UCLA

Had some interesting things to say as well. Some of his ideas are listed below:

- You must write your own personal story… told an anecdote about George Lucas and his father (with whom he had a difficult relationship) influencing the story of Star Wars.

- All we have in life is time… and the clock is ticking so we have to decide how to use it.

- Integration of a story means absolutely everything moves forward the character and expands your knowledge of him.

- Be wary in writing of using “discussions” to reveal plot. Have to think about how people really interact (isn’t sitting around talking about their motivations).

1. Suck for bucks – should try to reach as big an audience as possible.
2. Sex and violence are good – remember that it’s dramatic art.
3. Lie through your teeth – it’s not a true story.


Panel Discussion featuring:
(1) Executive producer of Fringe and Everybody Hates Chris.
(2) Writer of both the book and screenplay for 1906… being made by Pixar.
(3) Writer of “The Machinist”.
(4) Writer on George Lucas Clone Wars TV show.

Lots of random interesting things from the panel discussion:

- You have to learn to write well… it’s a craft.

- Clone Wars guy started after he didn't like his 9-5 job and enrolled in a short-story program at Stanford.

- Research can be a good way to start writing.

- Exec producer screenwriter writes from 12:00-3:00AM.

- The minutiae of life is not high drama.

- Importance of the writing schedule… eventually stuff will come.

- Outlining as a critical part of writing.

- All different types of writers. Among the four panelists, three described themselves as 1. A bleeder writer, 2. A component writer & 3. A vomit writer.

- Should read “Writers at Work” from the Paris Review.

- If you sit in a chair for an amount of time, you’re a writer.

- Should be confident in your voice… from the writer of “1906”.


Diablo Cody

Super super cool. She came across as down to earth, friendly and very grateful for the success that she's had. Probably more than anyone else she provided evidence of the fact that if you're doing good work (in her case, it was writing a blog), it's actually possible for someone influential to notice it... and there's your big break.

Her appearance was a "moderated" Q&A discussion with the audience and Lew Hunter, the Chairman Emeritus and Professor of Screenwriting at UCLA. I use the quotes because... well, because it was a bizarre often rambling moderation. That said, the appearance was excellent.

Below are some of the random things I noted from her talk:

- Author of “Candy Girl” prior to "Juno" and has "Jennifer's Body" coming out this fall.

- Wrote “Juno” w/o outlining or taking a screenwriting class… just bought a script in a bookstore and followed that.

- Highly recommends blogging… it’s a way to get eyeballs w/o rejection. Just hit publish.

- Posts regularly to Twitter and does a column for Entertainment Weekly.

- Loves John Irving.

- You just have to write daily… it may not be good, but it’s done.


All in all, an excellent day with some really good content.

"God Save the Fan" by Will Leitch

Just finished reading "God Save the Fan" by http://www.deadspin.com/ founding editor Will Leitch. Pretty interesting read from a guy who built an enormous website around the types of sports stories not traditionally covered in the mainstream media.



Leitch's website with links to his work and current writing for New York Magazine can be found here and (as his website also features) "God Save the Fan" is just his most recent book, with several others, including the Young Adult book "Catch" coming prior). Back to the book at hand, though... it's an entertaining read that gives the author's view on sports through the prism of it's major entities: the players, the owners, the media and most importantly, the fans.

The fundamental point that Leitch makes throughout the book is that sports are simply games that provide an escape from everyday life for the fans who watch them. The commentators who ascribe huge meaning to events and attempt to generate epic controversy can get in the way of that basic escape and enjoyment.

Maybe it's expanding on this and maybe it's digressing from it a bit, but below are some of the more interesting things I took from the book (yep... in order from start to finish):

Introduction: Features an anecdote about the "pre-everyone finding out about the dogfighting" Michael Vick. At the time he was hugely popular and heavily promoted by ESPN and other major sports entities. Though it was posted on http://www.thesmokinggun.com/, nobody seemed to care that Vick was being accused of giving a girl herpes... and then seeking medical treatment under the most excellent name "Ron Mexico". Good stuff.

Part 1: Players
- Leitch makes the point that the steroid controvery is a touch silly given that it's portrayed as such a crime and yet taking cortisone shots described as athletes simply paying the price.
- NBA star Gilbert Arenas is trumpeted as being the perfect pro athlete for fans to relate to because... he's a bit loony and speaks of sports as being a diversionary entertainment for the fans rather than being something of enormous import that it's not.

Part 2: Owners
- Observation about how fans often side with owners over players in cases of salary disputes. The surmised reason why is that fans can see themselves as being management more than they can imagine being pro athletes. This is tied closely to the fact that people think they could be general managers "if just given the chance".
- Mention of the college football website http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/

Part 3: Media (and why it can be lame)
- Leitch's college experience reporting with Michigan basketball player Robert "Tractor" Traylor. The phrase "because he can" comes to mind... and the story is enough to push anyone away from wanting to be a sports reporter.
- The ESPN empire and it's various foibles... some amusing and relatively harmless (especially for the fellas) and some more disconcerting. Especially how ESPN influences through it's coverage choices.
- The Carl Monday saga. Too nuanced and fantastic to fully describe here so the wikipedia reference will have to do. Having seen it, I highly recommend The Daily Show with Jon Stewart report on Carl Monday.
- The idea of a "sports media expert". C'mon... please. Hence, the blogs...

Part 4: Fans
- Again... it should be about being entertained (or distracted and entertained as the case may be). Everything else... well, to borrow a phrase, it's just noise (or Dick Vitale / Stephen A. Smith / Skip Bayless shouting).

Good book. Entertaining for a sports fan.

Customer Service Special Report from BusinessWeek

The March 2 issue of BusinessWeek featured it's annual ranking of the top performing companies in the all-important area of customer service.



The list itself was interesting (with online retailer Amazon at #1), but there was lot of associated pieces of note. These ranged from the special report introductory article to the feature piece on Amazon and a host of other vignettes that can be found at this special report jumping off page from the BusinessWeek site.

I previously posted about customer service here in reference to the 2008 special report from BusinessWeek and find this to be such a hugely important thing for companies needing to compete harder than ever for every customer... and every customer dollar.

Barack Obama's Budget & Speech to Congress

Really enjoyed Joe Klein's "Obama's Speech: A Tonal Masterpiece" from the latest Time Magazine. Solid stuff and the speech it references (particularly the final minute of the speech) is below...



Also, this 3 minute video of Obama several days later introducing his first budget is worth listening to...



Really good stuff.

"Triangle" by David Von Drehle

Just finished reading "Triangle" by David Von Drehle and found it to be an excellent work of historical writing.






I've previously enjoyed quite a bit Von Drehle's writing for Time Magazine... which sent me off in search of books written by him. What I found in "Triangle" was a detailed look at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire of 1911 that left 146 Garment Industry workers dead.


What Von Drehle does with the book (subtitled "The Fire That Changed America") is paint both a portrait of the lives lost in this disaster, but also one of how that loss was not in vain. I find it terribly interesting when a writer can take an event and provide the context for that and then show it's ramifications in a larger picture. This is exactly what's accomplished here as Von Drehle starts by profiling the working lives of those who would have perished in the fire and then goes from there.


The Garment Industry grew rapidly around this time with it's ranks being filled by under paid and over worked immigrants from Europe. At the time of the fire, there had been efforts to improve the lot of these workers (most of whom lived crammed into tenement buildings in New York City), but things didn't really start to get better until after the tragedy. One would like to think that the loss of life wasn't required, but Von Drehle shows how in this situation, it combined together with efforts already undertaken (and with extraordinary individuals) to improve employee working conditions.


In fact, "Triangle" shows how the fire was in many ways the catalyst pushing forward progressive ideas as an alternative to the previous approach of the Tammany Hall regime that controlled New York politics. These progressive ideas would be later championed by FDR and become the bedrock of the Democratic party in America.


The other thing that "Triangle" does on a much more micro level is provide a face to those who perished in this tragedy. Very interesting stuff and for those who are interested in history, it's certainly worth the time to read.

Kate Winslet Cover Story from Time Magazine

Very compelling piece in the latest Time Magazine on Oscar-winning actress Kate Winslet.



Written by Mark Harris, it's titled "Best Actress: Kate Winslet's Moment" and paints a very nuanced picture of the "Titanic" leading lady... who has now won a Best Actress Academy Award for her "through the ages" portrayal of a former Concentration Camp guard in "The Reader". I've never given a huge amount of thought to Winslet or her skills as an actress, but found interesting the views of herself in the movie industry as detailed by Harris.

Also from this issue of Time was mention of the Jim Carrey narrated film "Under The Sea 3D"... sounds really cool.

Company-Employee Relationship

Interesting commentary piece by Nancy Gibbs from the Feb 16 issue of Time Magazine. Titled "Married to the Job" it features Gibb's views on the delicate balance between companies and employees in difficult economic times. It's a short read, but pretty compelling... especially for those who work in large corporations.

Related to the topic of corporations and how they interact with employees... in it's Feb 16 issue, BusinessWeek did a book review of "Everything I Know About Business I Learned at McDonald's: The 7 Leadership Principles that Drive Break Out Success" by Paul Facella. I didn't necessarily find myself compelled to seek out and read the book, but was interested in the employee appreciation practices attributed to McDonald's. The phrase that stood out to me from the review was "at McDonald's, praise is always given in public and always heartfelt."

It's a simple concept, but... there can't always be raises, promotions or bonuses given, but there can be appreciation and respect shown to employees. In the long-run this is going to help achieve success more than a different approach.

HP Mention in Shaun White Fast Company Article

I wrote previously on Hewlett-Packard with a post on various and sundry media mentions back in July of last year and then a December post about positive things in the HP PC business and recently came across a few interesting and related HP references.

The Fast Company Magazine Feb 2009 issue cover story on snowboarder/skateboarder Shaun White details White's activities with various companies looking to sell in the markets he connects most with. One of the more visible partnerships White has is with Hewlett-Packard and in the Fast Company piece, HP Marketing VP David Roman comments on how White was the subject of the first HP "hands" commercial.

The idea behind the campaign is that celebrities describe how they use their personal computers as an extension of themselves... while using their hands (and very cool ad production) to tell the story. This focus on computer functionality as an expression of personality can also be found in HP's new mini-note netbook (detailed in this BusinessWeek article) with the exterior graphics from fashion designer Vivienne Tam.

Interesting stuff.

Fast Company Investigative Piece on BPA in Plastics

Terribly interesting (and frightening) article in the Feb 2009 issue of Fast Company Magazine about the chemical BPA and it's impact. The piece titled "The Real Story Behind Bisphenol A" looks at both the effects of BPA with constant exposure and how those effects are denied by the industry producing it.

In short, BPA is produced in the U.S. by five different companies and is an enormous business with the chemical serving as a core ingredient in hundreds of different products that need to be shatterproof. This plastic or plastic-like output serves as the core ingredient in everything from cell phone parts to... baby bottles. This last item in particular is where things get a bit dicey. BPA has been shown to be harmful to the reproductive system and potentially cancer causing if exposed to repeatedly... especially for those with weakened or not fully developed immune systems.

Where things cross over from bad to worse is with the narrative around BPA from the companies making it. While one purely arbitrary research study after another shows BPA to be a harmful ingredient in products, industry-funded studies proclaim that all is well. Oh yeah, the U.S. regulatory arms charged with oversight of something like this have to date decided that the industry-funded studies are the ones to go with. Despite much more stringent regulation of BPA (particularly in products used by infants) in Europe as well as Canada, it's pretty much up to consumers to try to seek out non-BPA-containing products for their kids. Those products are definitely out there, but you have to work to find them. Good times.

Pierre Omidyar and Social Entrepreneurship

I wrote in August of last year a blog post about Jeff Skoll... the former eBay founder who has since founded Particpate Media and the Skoll Foundation. So, it seemed only right to do a post about the other eBay founder (really the guy who was there before Skoll, Pierre Omidyar.

Both Skoll and Omidyar have been pioneers in and advocates of the field of Social Entrepreneurship, the sometime for-profit, sometimes non-profit category of business that benefits disadvantaged people. Skoll's efforts are written about in the linked blog post and Omidyar's can be found through the organization he started... the Omidyar Network.

Additonally, lots of interesting mentions of Omidyar can be found through the below search results...

- Omidyar search results on the BusinessWeek site.

- Omidyar search results on the Fast Company site.

"New Moon" by Stephenie Meyer

Just finished reading "New Moon"... the second book from Stephenie Meyer's four-part "Twilight" series.



The book picks up where "Twilight" left off with Bella (human) dating Edward (vampire). From Stephenie Meyer's official website, here's a key passage from the first chapter...

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"Shoot," I muttered when the paper sliced my finger; I pulled it out to examine the damage. A single drop of blood oozed from the tiny cut.

It all happened very quickly then.

Edward threw himself at me, flinging me back across the table...

I tumbled down to the floor by the piano, with my arms thrown out instinctively to catch my fall, into the jagged shards of glass. I felt the searing, stinging pain that ran from my wrist to the crease inside my elbow.

Dazed and disoriented, I looked up from the bright red blood pulsing out of my arm—into the fevered eyes of the six suddenly ravenous vampires.
-----

So... an intriguing beginning to the book for all who enjoyed part one of the series (myself included), but as a whole it seemed like the story fell short.

There was definitely some interesting development of characters (notably Jacob Black, Bella's friend) and storylines, but sometimes things seemed to get a bit muddled. The consequence of this for me was either hard to follow action or abrupt drops in story threads.

The other criticism I would have is that the writing got weepy (lots of "can't live if living is without you") and felt like it should be set to a Taylor Swift high-school ballad. That said, the books aren't really written for my demographic so I shouldn't quibble here.

All of this said, I did really enjoy book one of the series (particularly the first half) and am terribly impressed by a writer who came out of nowhere with a great first book (story of that here) as well as someone who gets a lot of people reading (i.e. J.K. Rowling). "New Moon" as a book probably isn't the greatest piece of writing ever done (or even the greatest Stephenie Meyer writing), but does have some interesting development to Bella's story as part of the series.

If someone liked "Twilight" and wants to continue the saga, it's certainly not a bad use of time to read "New Moon" as a prelude to "Eclipse" and then the conclusion book... "Breaking Dawn".

Written Content Pricing & Delivery - from Time Magazine

Couple of interesting articles in the Feb 16 issue of Time around online news content... focusing both on the financial viability of the companies that publish it (online and in print) and on the delivery mechanism of that content.

The first piece is by Walter Isaacson, formerly a managing editor of Time Magazine, and details his views on how to make this whole financially viable thing work. The cover story titled "How to Save Your Newspaper" espouses an idea that Apple has made ubiquitous through it's iTunes Music Store... micro-payments.

It's an interesting idea in that it drills down further from the idea of online subscriptions (which are usually on a monthly basis) and questions why content couldn't be received on a micro-basis (with costs that could be anywhere upwards from a penny). This would enable the organizations that create that content to remain open for business and in essence, keep the industry alive. Isaacson's assertion is that even though it would be different than the current mostly-free model around web news content, the idea of paying Apple $.99 per song on iTunes likely seemed revolutionary to those getting content free on Napster.

The second piece around written content from this issue of Time focuses not on the type of content itself, but rather on the delivery mechanism. Whether it be a newspaper, magazine, book or other printed material, there's efforts from multiple companies to figure out the best type of mobile electronic reader for that content, and to deliver that. This is the topic covered in the story "The Race for a Better Read" which looks at both current handheld offerings and what the future may hold.

The best known option out there is the "Kindle" handheld reader from Amazon, but competition will be likely coming in the future. Some companies to keep an eye on would be the Silicon Valley startup Plastic Logic (which is being led by a former HP manager I've met) or Apple if they (as rumored) get into the market with a larger version of the iTouch. Also mentioned in the article is the Adobe AIR software program that serves as a platform for material to to be written onto.

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Not necessarily related to this topic, but two other things of interest I recently found from Time...

The book "How We Decide" by Jonah Lehrer is about the psychology of how consumers make purchase decisions and reviewed in the same Feb 16 Time issue.

From http://www.time.com/ is a listing with detailed descriptions on Time's 50 Best Websites of 2008. Interesting stuff.

"What Would Google Do?" Book Excerpt from Feb 9 BusinessWeek

Very thought provoking excerpt from Jeff Jarvis' "What Would Google Do?" in the February 9th issue of BusinessWeek.




Jarvis is the author of the Internet and media website http://www.buzzmachine.com/ and his book looks at some of the lessons of Google success that could be adapted to other companies and industries. A general theme that's examined is the idea of open-source innovation and product development and the book excerpt (that can be found here) is about how open-source could be utilized by the beleaguered Big Three automakers.

The excerpt is interesting in it's examples of what Ford, Chrysler and GM could (but, likely won't) do to utilize consumer feedback in the design and features of new autos. In addition, Jarvis writes about the concepts of both community and personalization... and how much could be done to more closely connect consumers with their cars. There are steps in these areas already being taken by both BMW and Toyota's Scion brand and Jarvis describes how this could be taken further following this "Google model" of development.

Kenny Moore Profile in the Oregon Quarterly

Very interesting profile on writer and former Olympic distance runner Kenny Moore in the Summer 2008 issue of "Oregon Quarterly" magazine. Moore was featured in the alumni publication due to his receiving first an undergraduate and then a Masters of Fine Arts degree from the U of O in 1966 and 1972 respectively.

The "Oregon Quarterly" website can be found here, but the path to the article itself is a bit more circuitous... the Oregon Library has the entire issue archived here and then piece itself, titled "Intertwining Ovals" by Todd Schwartz, is on page 40 of the pdf file.

With that long and winding route now laid out... the story is a fascinating look at Moore and his life first as an athlete and then a writer. Of particular interest are the anecdotes about how his career writing for Sports Illustrated came about... showing how opportunities can often present themselves in odd and unexpected ways.

Moore wrote for SI until 1995 and a compilation of his work there can be found through a search of the CNNSI Vault. Additionally, information on both Moore and his writing can be found on the author's website.

John Gardner "Personal Renewal" Speech

I first came across John Gardner from a March 1994 article titled "Meaning: Something You Build Into Your Life" that he wrote for "Stanford Magazine". Given to me by my parents, the piece is about the themes of human potential, character and commitment (other themes as well, but I reckon these three are weighty enough to suffice as a description).

I've not seen this exact article in electronic form ("Stanford Magazine" is archived online back to 1996), but did find a section of the PBS website devoted to Gardner, his life and his work. Part of the site is a speech that he gave in 1990 titled "Personal Renewal" containing many of both the same concepts and exact language later reprinted in the aforementioned magazine article.

Gardner's speech is reprinted here and some of the more profound highlights are below...

"If we are conscious of the danger of going to seed, we can resort to countervailing measures. At almost any age. You don't need to run down like an unwound clock. And if your clock is unwound, you can wind it up again. You can stay alive in every sense of the word until you fail physically. I know some pretty successful people who feel that that just isn't possible for them, that life has trapped them. But they don't really know that. Life takes unexpected turns."

"The things you learn in maturity aren't simple things such as acquiring information and skills. You learn not to engage in self-destructive behavior. You learn not to burn up energy in anxiety. You discover how to manage your tensions, if you have any, which you do. You learn that self-pity and resentment are among the most toxic of drugs. You find that the world loves talent, but pays off on character."

"I'm not talking about anything as narrow as ambition. After all, ambition eventually wears out and probably should. But you can keep your zest until the day you die. If I may offer you a simple maxim, "Be interested," Everyone wants to be interesting -- but the vitalizing thing is to be interested. Keep a sense of curiosity. Discover new things. Care. Risk failure. Reach out."

"Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account."

Very cool stuff...

"Tropic of Hockey" by Dave Bidini

Note from me: This isn't a common occurrence, but in addition to this blog, I'm putting the post below on my hockey blog at http://ahockeyguy.blogspot.com/. The reason for the dual-location post is simple... I'm writing about a book that I just finished... and it's about... hockey!

"Tropic of Hockey" is from Canadian musician/author guy Dave Bidini (his website here) and it's a chronicle of his experiences with the game in such hockey hotspots (maybe literally, but not figuratively) as Dubai, remote (and not so remote) China and Transylvania.

As I touched on in my hockey blog post about the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships, the impetus for Bidini to write "Tropic of Hockey" was a growing sense of disillusionment he felt with the NHL version of the game and a desire to reconnect with it by playing and seeing it from different parts of the globe. While I do love the NHL, I could understand his romantic notions of the game and this desire to experience it in a new way. Not entirely the same, but it makes me think of my appreciation for the "Original Six" teams of the NHL and the fans in hockey markets that care deeply about their local team (see: hockey blog post about Montreal).

This said, there's a lot of stuff that struck me from the Bidini book, so I'll run through some of it here and try to explain why...

Chapter 4 - "Wendel and the Bells": Bidini's story about how he became a hockey fan again as an adult. A very cool description of how it came about and how one player (the aforementioned Wendel Clark of the Leafs) became his favorite.

Chapter 9 - "Bobby Clarke's Teeth": Mention of Bidini communicating with people in China entirely through the language of Russian hockey players they all know of. I like how the words "Fetisov", "Tretiak" and "Kasatonov" can tie people together.

Chapter 14 - "Journey to the Temple of the Dog": Includes anecdotes about Bidini and his friend masquerading as members of the press to secure interviews with favorite players and entry to parts of one of my most vividly remembered hockey events... Rendez-vous '87 in Quebec City between the Soviet National Team and NHL All-Stars.

Chapter 17 - "A Busload of Espo": Primarily about Phil Esposito the '72 Summit Series between Canada and the Soviet Union. The description of the eight-game set makes me wish I had been a fan then (difficult since I wasn't born until a year later).

Chapter 23 - "The Last Canadian Game": Interesting to me for two reasons... one is how much I appreciated the description of Bidini's attendance at the final game in Maple Leaf Gardens (which I wish I had been able to watch Toronto play in). The second (and very different) reason is Bidini's mention of "The Whiskey Robber" during this section of the book on Transylvania. As I was reading this portion, much sounded familiar to me and it was because of my reading of "Ballad of the Whiskey Robber" by Julian Rubinstein. I had completely forgotten this it was a true (or at least mostly true) story about a Robin Hood-esque Hungarian hockey player. So cool... I love when stuff comes together.

So, all this said about the Bidini book... I liked it a lot and think that most hockey fans would as well... particularly those of us that love the history of the game and it's impact.

"Why We Shouldn’t End Our Manned Space Program" Article from Esquire

Finally.

I know this borders on the ridiculous, but I say... finally, the article "Why We Shouldn't End Our Manned Space Program" from the Feb 2009 issue (cover image below) of Esquire Magazine is online so I can write about it (and of course link to it).

It may seem a bit obsessive for me to have been continually checking the Esquire website, but me thinks the writing that good. Done by my favorite living writer (I know it sounds kind of odd to say that, but it's not fair to compare everyone to Ayn Rand), Chris Jones, it achieves that dual goal that I think so hard to find in writing... something about an interesting topic that's written really well.

I've linked to and written about writing from Jones several times, touching on various pieces from Esquire and about his book "Out of Orbit (or "Too Far From Home") and gotta say... I really like his writing. His stuff is insightful, poignant and colorfully written about topics of either interest or great import.

It doesn't relate at all to why I like the writing, but I'm very interested to know if as a Canadian, he's written about hockey. Hmmm... I might gotta try to find that out.

"Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell

Just finished reading "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell and I'd say that it's place high up the New York Times Bestseller List is richly deserved.



Gladwell is also the author of two prior best sellers... "Blink" and "The Tipping Point". Details of each of these (well, all three books) can be found on the author's website, but personally, I enjoyed "Outliers" the most.

The subtitle is "The Story of Success" and throughout the book Gladwell paints an interesting portrait of what causes some to achieve greatness, and others... not so much. He certainly doesn't give short shrift to the idea of talent leading to achievement, but provides example after example of how the right external circumstances are needed to lead people to the top of their professions.

In looking at this idea of the "stars being aligned", it's important to not overlook the prerequisite of hard work that Gladwell writes of. During the course of the book he details underclass New York City students achieving success academically... largely as a result of a school schedule that both takes more of the day and runs longer through the year than that of most students. Additionally, he lays out what he terms as the "10,000 hour rule" as a guide for what it takes to achieve mastery of a subject. With examples ranging from Bill Gates of Microsoft, Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems and The Beatles, he shows how these high achievers had early periods of their "professional lives" where they put in this amount of work to become truly proficient.

This all said, the external circumstance notion is where Gladwell details what he sees as a needed component of success that is often overlooked... the right time and place. For the inner-city student, they have to win a school lottery to attend this "KIPP School" in New York and for Bill Gates and Bill Joy, they were born at a particular time ideal for them to be a part of the personal computers revolution. More specifically, Gates and Joy both had the good fortune of being (through no real plan of their own) in a position to be able to put the time in (harken back to the 10,000 hour rule) to achieve mastery early on. This doesn't mean that they weren't both extremely smart, but does mean that the circumstances of their lives enabled them to be able to put the effort into their subject area and then capitalize on this mastery gained.

Another example from Gladwell around this idea of both fortunate external circumstances and development time spent comes from the world of youth hockey in Canada. It's a fair statement to say that the best adult players were likely some of the best players growing up and got the best coaching and most opportunities for meaningful practice. From this, the question becomes how they got identified as having potential... especially in a system where players by the age of 10 are grouped into "competitive" teams (which is where the elite usually come from) and "recreational" teams.

To get at the answer, you have to know that at a young age, the best players are usually... the biggest. At this same young age, the biggest players are often... the oldest. So, what you see when looking at the rosters of NHL players or the top junior leagues that feed the NHL is a preponderance of players born just after the Jan 1 birthday cut-off for classification into age groups. These players born at the beginning of the calendar year are then competing against players up to a year younger (when you match up someone born Jan 2 vs Dec 30 as an example). The difference isn't going to matter in the prime of their careers, but matters quite a bit at 10 years old when someone is determining who has more potential... and will get more ice time, access to better coaching and the opportunity to put in more work and get rewarded accordingly.

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A different section of the book revolves around how background contributes to success. Getting at this, Gladwell looks at commercial airline pilots and how their ethnic background (external circumstances in the vernacular of this book) contributes to their success or failure as a pilot (measured here in the most important scoring parlance... accident rates). For someone to fly passenger jumbo jets, they're almost certainly going to be smart and highly skilled at flying, but the external circumstance of their culture can have an impact on how likely they are to be involved in crashes.

The reason that Gladwell points to has to do with a culture's willingness to question authority. In multiple examples from the this section, he points out how people from certain cultures are going to be less likely to question their "superiors", even if they know that their superiors are wrong. This can manifest itself as deadly in a cockpit if you have a pilot who for whatever reason is making a mistake, but the "subordinates" (co-pilot and first officer in this airline example) are hesitant to directly point out or call the pilot on the error they see. Through either not saying anything or making gentle suggestions when forceful language is required, the people around the pilot could have prevented a crash from occurring... had they been willing to takes the steps needed to prevent it.

While not carrying as much import as the life or death involved in plane crashes, Gladwell also included a chapter with similar meaning around how class rather than ethnic circumstances can impact the success of two equally smart people (has to do with the interpersonal skills and willingness to question authority of those raised in the upper or middle as opposed to lower class).

These are just a few of the concepts from the book that struck me as most interesting. Whether it be about smart kids, pilots, hockey players inner-city students or computer guys, though, all the examples from the book touch on this idea of great success not coming out of the blue. Rather, a combination of talent, hard work, social circumstance and good fortune making it happen.

Very interesting read and I highly recommend.

Time Magazine - Feb 2 Issue

Great cover story by Joe Klein in the Feb 2 issue of Time Magazine.

Titled "Obama Promises New Destiny, Work Begins Today", it details both the language used in President Barack Obama's inaugural address and his actions preceding and now that he's taken the oath of office. As Klein highlights, especially interesting from the speech was Obama's message about the political process...

"What the cynics fail to understand is that that the ground has shifted beneath them- the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply."

Whether Democrat or Republican, some may feel this an impossible aspiration, but... as Pittsburgh Steeler head coach Mike Tomlin said of Obama, "he's selling hope, and I'm buying."

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Also from this issue of Time was the story "Books Unbound" about the publishing industry. As the book business has gone through great upheaval of late, one of the consequences has been the emergence of unknown authors self-publishing on the cheap... and in many cases becoming not-so-unknown.

To this idea of books not going through traditional routes to market, the article reveals that 4 of the top 5 best-sellers for 2007 in Japan were written on cell phones. Granted, the adoption of consumer technology in Asia is ahead of that in the U.S., but the statistic is amazing bordering on ridiculous.

Fortune Magazine 100 Best Companies to Work For

Fortune Magazine recently came out with it's annual "100 Best Companies to Work For" list and there's quite a few interesting views of the information.

The list itself can be found here (with the ability to select each company for a snapshot view) and a look at each of the 20 companies with over 350 job openings is here. There's also an interesting look at the online shoestore Zappos (#23 on the list) as well as info on the new #1 best company to work for... NetApp in Sunnyvale, CA.

Inauguration of President Barack Obama

From http://www.whitehouse.gov/...



From http://www.time.com/ comes Nancy Gibbs' piece "Barack Obama's Inaugural Address: Humility, Gratitude, Sacrifice". Excellent writing befitting the occasion.

Inauguration Tomorrow

The official Presidential Inauguration poster... designed by artist Shepard Fairey.

On a related note, there's a very interesting piece in the Jan 26 issue of Time Magazine titled "Obama's Permanent Grass-Roots Campaign" around the general population who got involved with the Obama Presidential Campaign.

From the 20,000 people trained in community organizing to 3 million people who donated money and 13 million who supplied their e-mail contact info, this is a large group of people with the ability to continue aiding the cause of what will now be the Obama Administration.

BusinessWeek Magazine - Jan 19 Issue

Several interesting things from the Jan 19 issue of BusinessWeek.

Probably most noteworthy was a book excerpt from Consultant Ram Charan in the Jan 19 issue of BusinessWeek. Titled "Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty", the book purports to give detailed steps on how corporations can make it through the current financial conditions. The excerpt itself provides an example of how a major company (which also happens to be a Charan client) reacted to the first signs of an economic crisis and what steps they've taken with their business.

It's of course difficult to fully evaluate Charan's book on just an excerpt... and I question a little bit the accolades heaped on a CEO who retains the author as a consultant... but, I did find interesting the employee communication that appeared to take place at Dupoint. Given that the main thrust of the actions were around reducing costs, this certainly must have both impacted employees used to the existing environment in the company, and concerned them with questions around their job security.

Probably not a lot different than actions that have had to take place at other companies lately, but where Charan appears to say Dupont has done it better is in the speed and execution/communication. From an individual employee perspective, people are going to be a lot more behind the actions of their company if they've had the reasons completely explained and share some ownership in the decisions themselves. The specific example that Charan provides is that within 10 days of official corporate action around cost control, each employee had both met face to face with a manager to discuss what was needed and also specifically asked what they could do to help. As Charan writes, these type of corporate actions are rarely going to fun for employees, but if both done quickly and with the buy-in of employees, the odds of success are going to be much higher than might otherwise be the case.

Also from this issue were the following (smaller) stories.

- "Digital Books Via Cell Phone" details the large number of books available through the App Store for iPhone downloads. Particularly interesting is the low-cost of many classic titles.

- The "Innovation" section of the magazine has as one of three different mentions what may well be the next big thing in personal computers. 2008 saw the introduction and popularization of mini "netbook" computers such as the eeePC from Asus or mini-note from HP and this type of device coupled with touchscreen technology will likely soon be coming to a store near you. Not a Circuit City, of course, but, you know... a store.

- Lastly, there's an interesting book review on "The King of Madison Avenue: David Ogilvy and the Making of Modern Advertising". Sounds like a fascinating portrait of quite a guy.

National Day of Service: Monday Feb 19

Not to be lost in the excitement of the Feb 20 swearing-in of Barack Obama as President of the the United States is the day before... Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which very appropriately has had the designation of National Day of Service attached to it.

Below is a clip of future first-lady Michelle Obama discussing the idea of Service on Monday and volunteer opportunities can be found at the at the website http://www.usaservice.org/ and either it's event search page or other service opportunities page.



For an in-depth look at the idea of National Service, there's was a great 2007 Special Report from Time Magazine on the topic.




There's multiple articles as part of the cover story and all can be found under the Time heading "A Time to Serve". Especially compelling, though, is the introductory piece by Time Editor Richard Stengel.

Sports Illustrated Point After Piece on Kayla Hutcheson

Sometimes you come across a piece of writing that is just brilliantly worded and the topic almost secondary. From a pure "good writing" perspective, that's... well, that's incredibly cool... but, also pretty rare. More frequently, you read to find writing that's solidly written, but whose style takes a backseat to it's substance.

From the Jan 19 issue of Sports Illustrated, the end of magazine Point After piece on freshman Community College basketball player Kayla Hutchson provides a story of such weight. It's a short (one page in the magazine) telling of how Hutcheson has relied on her teammates to help her cope with the effects of a concussion and subsequent memory loss suffered on the court.

Powerful story that's both interesting and has a lot to say about the impact of teammates and friendship. Good stuff.

"Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearns Goodwin

It's been some time since I read it, but I highly recommend "Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearns Goodwin (website here) for anyone interested in politics, Abraham Lincoln, or... on a more timely (and specific)note, President-elect Barack Obama's approach to coalition-building.



The subtitle of the book is "The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln" and after reading it, I can say that the description fits perfectly. Lincoln comes across as a man who may still have had faults, but above all had the strength to both recognize that he needed to both reach out to and bring together behind him people with opposing viewpoints. To this point, Goodwin writes in great detail how Lincoln devoted significant effort to recruiting some of his most bitter rivals... knowing that these people were crucial to his ability to govern and lead.

Fascinating stuff and... applying this to the present-day, Barack Obama has both spoken extremely highly of this approach and utilized it in many of his Cabinet choices... which included both former Democratic nominee rivals and Republicans from the Bush Administration. Like many things, it will now be interesting (but, also very important) to see how the Obama administration shakes out and what guiding principles it continues to use.

Living Healthy Writings from Dr. Mehmet Oz and Dr. Andrew Weil

There's no shortage of writing out there about how to improve our health and "live right", but two authors that keep coming up consistently in what I read are Dr. Mehmet Oz and Dr. Andrew Weil.

Oz is a frequent contributor to Esquire Magazine and also appears regularly on television shows such as "Oprah" and the "Today Show". A search for his name just on the Esquire website gives 63 different articles he has either written or contributed to, one of which is an "in-depth plan for better health" from the May 2008 issue. Additionally, Oz was included here on Time Magazine's list of the "100 Most Influential People of 2008".

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Weil is the founder of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona... which takes a whole body approach to medical care that focuses heavily on prevention through healthy living. He's also written extensively (as his wikipedia page illustrates) and been featured twice on the cover of Time Magazine.

Most recently was in the Oct 9, 2005 issue of Time, which featured an in-depth article by Weil titled "Aging Naturally". Not to be confused with a one-trick pony, though, Weil also has 120 other articles that come up in a search for him on the Time website.

Weil and Oz taken together provide some really informative writing on a topic that could be considered... pretty important.

"What's Wrong with Silicon Valley?" Cover Story from BusinessWeek

Really interesting cover story from the Jan 12 issue of BusinessWeek.



With it's alternate title for the web of "Whatever Happened to Silicon Valley Innovation?" the story looks at the current environment of technology innovation and how it compares to the past.

The simplistic (but, still open for debate) answer is that it's lagging as companies focus less on basic science and "fundamental breakthrough" research and more on incremental innovation. Additionally, the idea of going public as a goal is implicated by the article as a cause for concern. The reason being is that this approach favors a more short-term view of the company and can limit the chance for big game-changing innovations.

Related to these concepts, an examination is made of the hottest private Silicon Valley tech companies. Right now some the firms generating the most attention are Facebook, Digg and Twitter... all social networking ventures. Social networking is a huge growth area and shouldn't be discounted, but it's also a fair question to ask whether it's emergence is as profound as actual breakthrough technologies around hardware (either broad categories like computer processing power or specific technology like the iPod or iPhone from Apple).

Interesting questions raised by the article... which also links here to a full-chapter excerpt from a book on the topic titled "Closing the Innovation Gap". Written by Judy Estrin... formerly the CTO at Cisco Systems and now an advisor to President-elect Barack Obama, it examines further this notion of short-term focus on the part of US companies... and investors in them.

"Voice of this Generation" Piece on Writing from Time

It's not a recent piece, but an article titled "Who's the Voice of this Generation?" from a 2006 Time Magazine bears reading.

Written by Andrea Sachs, it looks at the current crop of writers out there and examines why none of them can without question lay claim to being the preeminent young writer of our times. As opposed to past generations where writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway plied their trade, today it's harder to say who speaks for whom. There are certainly great young writers like Jonathan Franzen (who wrote "The Corrections") and Curtis Sittenfeld (who had written "Prep" at the time of this story and has since published "American Wife", which I reviewed here), but not truly seminal authors.

It's an interesting topic that has to do with some very interesting and brilliant authors... none of whom have reached that proverbial "next level"... yet.

Books and Authors of Interest

Since I use this forum to list and review the books I've finished reading, it probably also makes sense to utilize it as a place to note some of what I'm interested in reading in the future...

- Final three books of the "Twilight" series by Stephenie Meyer
- Dave Bidini
- "Dreams of my Father" by Barack Obama
- Reflections on the game book (believe it's "Open Ice") by Jack Falla
- C.S. Lewis
- "The Corrections" by Jonothan Franzen
- "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell
- "The Snowball" biography of Warren Buffett
- "The Hero" by Jon Krakauer about Pat Tilman
- Erik Larson
- Eric Weiner
- Chris Jones
- Michael Bamberger
- “Heyday” by Kurt Anderson
- "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck
- Dr. Andrew Weil
- “Flow” by Mikael Csikszentmihalyi
- Susan Casey
- Austin Murphy
- Doris Kearns Goodwin
- Max Barry
- Michael Lewis

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" came as part of the Christmas Day wave of hopeful blockbusters and even for those with high expectations, it definitely didn't disappoint.

The movie stars Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, but most intriguing to me prior to release, it was directed by David Fincher. His past directing credits (which can be found on Fincher's http://www.imdb.com/ page here) include "Zodiac", "Seven" and "Fight Club".

What I enjoyed most about the film was it's effectiveness at telling an "epic tale of life"... with the twist of it being lived in reverse by Brad Pitt's character... leading to the poignant scenes of relationships between characters aging in different directions.

To this whole "epic tale of life" concept... the movie reminded me of both "Titanic" and "Forest Gump". This connection makes sense given the fact that the screenwriter Eric Roth (whose imdb page is here) wrote "Forest Gump" as well. Another thing that helped give the film it's scope is the screenplay by Roth was adapted from an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story of the same name.

A very compelling movie and the trailer provides a good slice of what it's about...