100 Most Influential People List from Time

Interesting stuff written about some really interesting people in the Time Magazine "100 Most Influential People in the World" list for 2010... as featured in the May 10 issue.



Linked to below aren't the ones that stood out to me as most influential (note the omission of President Barack Obama), but rather the ones whose story struck me as particularly interesting and/or entertaining.

- President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil profiled by filmmaker Michael Moore. Incredible to me that Brazil will be making the dual splash (hopefully positive) of hosting first the 2014 World Cup and then 2016 Summer Olympics.

- Admiral Mike Mullen Chairman Joint Chiefs profiled by Joe Klein. An important guy that I recently posted about being on the cover of Fast Company.

Performing artist Lady Gaga by Cyndi Lauper. As is written about in great detail in this Esquire piece, someone in the mold of Madonna at the height of her fame who's been able to transcend performance and package themselves as the product.

Actor Neil Patrick Harris by fanboy darling Joss Whedon. A seemingly super cool guy (based on this Joel Klein piece from Time).

Singer/songwriter Prince by not even near Prince's level singer/songwriter Usher. Another artist like Lady Gaga who made themselves a persona. Additionally... the genius behind the song Purple Rain.

Surgeon, writer and policy advisor Atul Gawande by Tom Daschle. The author of three insightful books... last of which I reviewed here.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs by artist Jeff Koons. Piece contains an interesting comparison of consumer product and art.

Pandora founder Tim Westergren by novelist Kurt Andersen. A missive by an excellent writer about a guy who created just an excellent service.
Ivory Coast soccer star Didier Drogba by Eben Harrell. Can't wait for the World Cup to begin next month...

US Military Chief Master Sergeant Tony Travis by Sully Sullenberger. A guy called into post-earthquake Haiti that took control of the wreckage that was the airport and immediately got aid flowing in.

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There was certainly some great and influential people from this issue I didn't include above (and I'm sure are also great and influential people that Time left off the list), but this was quite a cross-section of interesting folk that in many cases had very compelling stuff written about them.

Supreme Court Piece by David Von Drehle

Really good piece from Time titled "Who Will Get Steven's Seat?" about the Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and his pending retirement from the bench.

Similar to Charles Pierce's "The Genuine Point Guard" on Steve Nash (which I posted about here), this David Von Drehle story on Stevens combines excellent writing and an interesting subject.

Most Innovative Companies Story from Fast Company

Some interesting mentions in the "50 Most Innovative Companies" Fast Company cover story.

Yea, Facebook, Google and Apple (among others) are all innovative and interesting companies, but the ones on the list that stood out to me weren't because of who they were, but because of what's described in the Fast Company writeup.

- Walmart and it's sustainability initiatives

- Cisco and it's efforts in sports

- Patients Like Me and the idea of social networking your own health care

- Sportvision and technology to measure the effectiveness of MLB players

- Twitter and mention of twitter using Daily Show correspondent (and author of "More Information Than You Require") John Hodgeman

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Also of note from this issue of Fast Company was mention of the video sites Fora.tv and Ted.com. I've certainly heard of both sites beforfe... maybe someday I'll actually spend some time perusing them.

Admiral Mike Mullen Story from Fast Company

Some pretty interesting stuff from the May 2010 issue of Fast Company.

The cover story is a profile of Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Written by Jeff Chu, "Mullen on the Move" is an interesting look at the nation's top military officer. What comes across is a guy who combines together a huge work ethic (as evidenced by a snapshot of one day's schedule) with what appears to be an excellent grounding in his role and that of the U.S. Armed Forces.

In terms of his role, Mullen describes himself as being someone who doesn't necessarily do anything (in the sense that he doesn't make troop decisions), but does seek to advise well President Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates as his bosses. Beyond that, he comes across as a strong advocate of the military understanding and interacting with both business and the public. From dinners with CEOs to time on Jon Stewart and Facebook accounts, he does seem to be a guy that... gets it. As he says "I am resourced by the American taxpayer. I take great care with the stewardship of the money they pay for the national defense."

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Two other things of interest from this issue were this piece on IBM's World Community Grid (whereby spare computing power is used for large scale public good projects) and this on Susie Wee and touch efforts from HP. Tis' the thing of the future, that touch technology.

"The Checklist Manifesto" by Atul Gawande

Finished reading "The Checklist Manifesto" by noted surgeon Atul Gawande and found it to be a fairly interesting book.

Gawande is the author of two bestsellers that I enjoyed quite a bit, "Complications" and "Better"... both about his experiences as a doctor. Where "The Checklist Manifesto" diverged is that is covered not just medicine, but the wider-reaching concept of using a checklist in the pursuit of excellence. Fields discussed in the book range from aviation (where the checklist is perhaps most ingrained) to investing, building and yes... surgery.

While I found definite value in the checklist concept, I was more captivated by his prior two books in that they were all about a topic that he's dedicated his time to. Gawande is a good writer (contributes frequently to The New Yorker), though, and I'm interested in his National Magazine Award winning piece "The Cost Conundrum" (on health care expenditures in McAllen, TX) linked to from his website.

I'd recommend "The Checklist Manifesto" to anyone who either enjoyed Gawande's previous two books or is interested in the idea of peak performance and how to attain it in a given effort.

Ford in India & iPad for Work Pieces from BusinessWeek

Two interesting stories from the Apr 12 issue of BusinessWeek.



The first was titled "Alan Mulally's Asian Sales Call" and details how Ford Motor Co. and it's CEO have been focusing on expanding it's minimal 2-3% market share in India, China and surrounding countries. On the heels of other posts I've done on Ford lately, it really does seem the company is both making good moves and has a huge opportunity to grow.

The second was "The iPad, Your Newest Workplace Productivity Enhancer" about... yep, the iPad. The new boy wonder device from Apple has been pretty much everywhere lately including a recent cover story in Time linked to in this post, but what was interesting about this BW piece was the notion of the iPad for work. With someone like Marc Benioff of Salesforce making quotes about the iPad, perhaps it's applications (no double entendre intended) do go beyond entertainment to work functional.

Danger Around Us - Plastics & Bombs: from Time Magazine

A couple of interesting pieces from Time lately about two very different threats to public health...

The first was "Environmental Toxins" from the Apr 12 issue... which also contained the iPad and Apple stories I posted on and linked to here.

The toxins piece is by Bryan Walsh and all about the chemicals in plastics and other products we purchase. What it immediately brought to mind for me was my blog post from Feb 2009 on the BPA chemical component in shatterproof plastic (such as yep... baby bottles). The linked to BusinessWeek piece "The Real Story Behind Bisphenol A" was one of the more disconcerting articles I've come across in the last few years of reading BW.

The subheading of this Time article is "chemicals in plastics and other products seem harmless, but mounting evidence links them to health problems — and Washington lacks the power to protect us." To that end, here's a quote in the piece from Walsh...

"If you want to market a new drug, you need to convince the FDA-in multiple tests, over the course of years-that it won't cause serious harm. If you want to sell a new pesticide, you need to prove the same thing. The burden of proof is on the manufacturers to make the grade, and government regulators are the final judge. But if you want to market a new chemical for use in a product-even one that will come into contact with children or pregnant women-it's up to the EPA to prove that it's unsafe, using whatever data are provided by the chemical company, with little power to ask for more."

Not much more to say than that.

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The second "danger around us" piece from Time was "Rescuing a Potential Nuke from the Chile Quake" out of the Apr 19 edition.

In it, Eben Harrell recounts a story of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) which is charged with seeking out and securing around the globe sufficient quantities of highly enriched uranium (HEU) to build a nuclear bomb. Specifically, representatives of the agency were in Santiago, Chile to take possession of around 40 lb. of HEU when the magnitude 8.8 quake hit.

From that point, it was quite a tale of speed and alternate action in getting the material and then getting it safely out of the country.

Equally interesting was Harrell's mention of how HEU became so widely disseminated through a mid-1950s program called Atoms for Peace. To whit... HEU was given out to countries that could both prove they would use it for peaceful research (into things like medical isotopes) and would submit to regular inspection of said potential bomb material.

Maybe a good idea, maybe not... but, certainly an interesting one.

"Have a Little Faith" by Mitch Albom

Recently finished “Have a Little Faith” by Mitch Albom and found it a nice read.

Albom is a Detroit-based sportswriter (website here) who also wrote the bestselling memoir of alltime, “Tuesdays With Morrie” about his time spent as an adult with his aging former college professor.

In a very similar vein, “Have a Little Faith” is about the time Albom spent with his lifelong Rabbi as well as a recently met pastor in poor inner-city Detroit. Through the tale of these Men of God (but, different Gods) and his interactions with them, Albom weaves a narrative of faith, hope and impact.

The faith part is summed up well by the Rabbi with "faith is about doing… you are how you act, not just how you believe” when speaking of the import of ritual in daily life. The hope part applies in great measure to the Detroit pastor who struggles to keep his hole in the roof and no heat inside Church operating as… a Church. The impact part could pertain to either the Rabbi or Pastor, but for me, I felt it applied best to Albom himself… and what came out of his local newspaper columns on the Church.

“Have a Little Faith” definitely has a religious component to it (and multiple religions at that) and for that reason and others may touch some readers more than others, but back to what was said at the beginning of this missive… it’s a nice read.

Steve Nash Profile from Sports Illustrated

Really good feature on Steve Nash in the latest issue of Sports Illustrated.



The story is titled "The Genuine Point Guard" and interestingly (well, to me) was written by Charles Pierce. I first came across Pierce probably ten years ago via his book "Sports Guy" and have since seen him published (fairly regularly) in Esquire. Just a really good writer who penned the late 2008 essay "American Surprise: How Election Night Brought Us Home Again".

Back to the piece on Nash... what was so compelling about it was the rare combination of excellent writing about an interesting subject. I found particularly of note Pierce's description of Nash as "genuine" as opposed to "authentic". Authenticity is described as something packaged for the purpose of public favor, but genuine the much harder to find concept of someone who just is themself... and that being a good thing. Among other things, Nash founded the production company Meathawk... which is producing an upcoming ESPN movie on Terry Fox (that I posted about here with link to a Fast Company cover story on Nash.)

In Nash, there seems to be a really good guy who acts good without ulterior motives. An admirable concept that Pierce does a great job of bringing home to the reader through his usage of language and the meaning behind specific words.

In short, words they be might powerful things and are used really really well here by Pierce.

Apple iPad & New Media: from Time Magazine

Some really interesting writing from Time Magazine lately about the iPad, it's potential impact and the related area of journalism and new media.

To the iPad itself, the April 12 issue gave us a cover image of Steve Jobs and mention of two stories within the pages (but, more later on this idea of "pages").



First was "The iPad Launch: Can Steve Jobs Do It Again?", a fanboy piece penned by novelist and screenwriter Stephen Fry and second was "Do We Need the iPad? A TIME Review" by Lev Grossman.

Grossman wrote a number of nice things about the iPad, but also noted that it's usage appears to be "lovely for consuming content, but not creating it"... which echoed what I've seen from writers such as Jeff Jarvis in his BuzzMachine post "iPad danger: app v. web, consumer v. creator."

Fry's essay takes a very different approach in that he writes of his visit to Apple headquarters to speak with Jobs and his lieutenants responsible for running various facets of company business. While not having anything that would contradict the idea of the iPad as being for content consumption, Fry presents a compelling vision of it being an elegant and personal device for it's intended purpose... allowing users an immersive user-friendly experience with the things they want to access on a computer (including, but not limited to: music, videos, pictures, games, books and websites).

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While the iPad itself is simply a device, the Editor's Letter from this April 12 issue gave a glimpse of at least the potential for it to change markets (in this case the field of Journalism). In "Ushering in a New Era", Richard Stengel writes of Time's efforts to get a version of the magazine available for the iPad.

In the same category of "Journalism: Where it's Been, Where it's Going" was an essay by Alan Brinkley from the April 19 issue of Time. "What Would Henry Luce Make of the Digital Age?" covered the co-founder and former head of Time Inc. and addressed how he might have approached the current business climate and rush to digital facing print media.

What media should do doesn't have an easy answer, but is a fascinating topic. In February of last year I linked to and wrote about the Walter Isaacson Time cover story "How to Save Your Newspaper" and also find interesting (and encouraging) people like the aforementioned Jeff Jarvis and his BuzzMachine blog (and teaching around Interactive/Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York Journalism School).

No way to tell where things with media will wind up, but ranging from the guys writing about and working on it to the new products coming up in the space (even if they're designed more for content consumption than creation), there's a lot of interesting stuff going on around this field of new media and user experience with media new and old.

Duke over Butler CNNSI Story

Compelling piece by Joe Posnanski on CNNSI. Titled "Magical game comes down to last shot and Duke earns greatness", it's all about the Duke NCAA basketball title.

Really, though... it's about the excitement of sports and how anything can happen. Very cool stuff.

Roy Halladay Profile from Sports Illustrated

Excellent cover story from the latest issue of Sports Illustrated.

Written by Tom Verducci, "What Makes Roy Run" is a detailed profile of new Phillies ace Roy Halladay. I found myself drawn to the story of Halladay for the same reason I found compelling this SI story on Sidney Crosby (which I posted on here)... it chronicles a gifted athlete who works perhaps harder than anyone else to become even better.

So much to be said for someone that couples together work and skill... and it would be so easy to just be content with being near, but not at the top of the game.

Ford Motor Cool Tech Story from Fast Company

I wouldn't have had this view a few years ago, but if I were buying a car right now, me thinks I'd buy a Ford. Coming together Toyota's imploding quality, Ford being the only US automaker to not take huge bailout dollars and their very cool innovation... that's good stuff.

On the innovation front, the April issue of Fast Company featured the most excellent "How Ford’s Sync Technology Will Turn It Into America’s Most Surprising Consumer Electronics Company" from Paul Hochman.

A sidebar piece was all about the Sync communications platform from Ford. Copied directly from this "A Look at the Next Generation of Ford Sync" is the instrument panel on one of the new models with the forthcoming MyFord Touch user interface.



So great... car design that mimics and incorporates the best of consumer technology. From the story I really liked this featured quote from Ford Motor CEO Alan Mulally...

"It's cool to connect. But it's past cool. It's a reason to buy. We're going to be the coolest, most useful app you've ever had."

And to answer the question in advance, Mulally is quoted elsewhere in the story as saying "we won't do it unless it lets you keep your eyes on the road and hands on the wheel."

This combines with other mention in the piece of how the open system aspect of the Sync system has influenced other areas of automotive development (related to this June 2009 blog post about the company)... very compelling.
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Also from this issue of Fast Company was a pretty interesting story from Ellen McGirt titled "How Adam Carolla Became a Podcast Superstar".

Podcasting has been around for a while, but stories like this along with the companion piece about available podcasts show that it's starting to reach mainstream status.

Time Magazine Cover Story on Jobs... & Job Ruminations

Solid Time Magazine cover story by Barbara Kiviat titled "The Workforce: Where Will the New Jobs Come From?".



All about the economy and how eventual real growth will have to be in the form of newly created jobs (and job categories), I particularly found of note the ending of the piece (below) and what it make me consider.

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"If the key characteristics of the American economy are flexibility and forward motion, then we would all be better off if people felt more support — both financial and social — to invest in their education, switch jobs and industries and venture out to start new firms.

Establishing job creation as a discrete goal is a misleading enterprise. Beyond cyclic swings in demand, what we're really talking about creating is not jobs but ideas and technologies and more efficient ways of producing and selling goods and services."
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I've always felt that career success is a complicated recipe which incorporates the following ingredients (probably among others):

1. hard work
2. ability/proficiency

3. knowing what you want to do and actually doing it
4. being in the right place at the right time

5. being in a place where the first two things above matter and the second two are possible

Of this list, hard work and ability should (hopefully) be required things (but, sadly... aren't always).

Knowing what you want to do and actually doing it is hugely important because for many, that doesn't describe their work situation. When you hear stories about people who came up from the bottom floor of something, they in many cases were fortunate enough to know early on that thing was what they wanted, so they could start working on it early in their career when most everyone is on the bottom floor. Where it gets tougher (but, not impossible) is for people who don't know early on what they want to do... and don't have the same flexibility to start at the bottom of a field.

The fourth one is just as it's written... being in the right place at the right time is where many people have that big leap forward in their careers. If you combine effort and ability towards a goal that really matters to you, that right place at right time break "should" eventually come.

This is where the fifth career ingredient comes into play. There's a lot of different types of companies and work opportunities out there. Many of them are going to reward the first two, have the types of positions that let people let people who know their area of interest work in it and then have those chance to shine and advance... but, not all.


So, to tie back full circle to the Kiviat piece and quoted section at the end of it... I agree completely with her statement about people being willing to take career leaps, whether those be at a job role, company or industry level.

Working hard and becoming proficient at something is all good and well, but it should be at an activity that someone wants to do and in a place that provides rewards and opportunities to move forward.

Can be scary to move out of something comfortable that doesn't allow for this, but sometimes... it's just plain needed.

NCAA Basketball Tourney SI Article

Excellent piece from this week's Sports Illustrated on the NCAA Basketball Tournament.



From Tim Layden, "High Stakes" is all about March Madness and the ramifications of what can happen out of the tournament... with reference to some great past storylines in Bryce Drew and Valparaiso from 1998 and George Mason 2006.

For me personally, though, I think of Tyus Edney going coast to coast to win an early round game en route to a UCLA Championship and the #16 seed Princeton Tigers almost taking down Georgetown in a first round matchup. In the not quite as amazing, but still memorable category were the games I saw this last weekend with Michigan State taking down Maryland at the buzzer and Northern Iowa beating #1 seed Kansas.

One great thing about the tournament is each memorable game can stand on it's own as exciting, but then you never know what will follow and just how much that win can mean... i.e. UCLA wouldn't have advanced out of the early rounds to later win the title if not for that Tyus Edney bucket.

Even if someone's not a huge basketball fan, it's compelling writing from Layden about something with a lot of human drama.

Going beyond this piece again, if the below clip isn't human drama, I don't know what is...

BusinessWeek Magazine: Mar 22/29 Issue

Three articles of note I found in the latest issue of BusinessWeek... all with a common theme that I'll call hubris about money.

The most interesting was the last I came across... a review of the new Michael Lewis book "The Big Short". Being a fan of the handful of Lewis books I've read (most recent reviewed here), I'm always curious about new stuff by him and based on the BW review, this sounds fascinating. The idea is a chronicling of several individuals who made boatloads of money predicting the real estate crash of 1998. Specifically, they shorted some of the high-risk mortgage securities out there and flew in the face of conventional wisdom at the time... which assumed everyone would continue getting rich forever off real estate.

It certainly didn't help me at the time (since I still bought a house at the 2005 peak of the market), but I recall thinking about what would happen if home values actually were to go down... and be down when people's exotic low fixed rate loans adjusted to significantly higher conventional loans. Well, these guys did think about that and made themselves rich from it.

I'll now have to actually read the book to say any more, but the review itself is an indicator that it should be good.

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In the same category of books and people assuming perpetual riches was an excerpt from the Harry Markopolos book "No One Would Listen". All about the author's experiences with those close to and making money (or so they thought) in Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme, it's pretty compelling reading. Even if it didn't make sense upon examination, people wouldn't question the source of money that they thought Madoff was making them.

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Finally from this issue was the short piece "Can Manchester United Kick Its Debt Habit?" Simple summary would be... rich guys thought they'd get richer by borrowing huge sums of money and then began to get crushed under the debt payments.

Hmmm... seems to relate a bit to the other two articles linked to here, doesn't it?

"White Fang" by Jack London

Recently finished "White Fang" by Jack London and found it to be a good read.



Having previously used the "Classics" app on my iPhone to read "Call of the Wild" by London (which I reviewed here), I used the Amazon Kindle Reader app on my phone to read this one. Really didn't see much difference at all in the user interface or experience with the Kindle Reader app as opposed to Classics... both solid.

To "White Fang" itself... I definitely enjoyed "Call of the Wild" more as it simply seemed to have more action packed into a tighter space, but still did like this book. Particularly the ending I enjoyed in that it showed how multiple events over a long period of time can all come together to influence a moment. Also, London as a writer definitely is one of those people that I read and wonder how the heck they can write so well...

Author Websites

Following up on the heels of my blog post on tags or labels noted, I wanted to create a new label category for posts with an "author website" linked to within.

This certainly doesn't mean that each site will be tremendously interesting as I know at least a few are there just to help sell the book and don't have much else on or from the author. On the flip side... I know there's also at least a few that have lots of content from the writer and should make for compelling reading.

It will of course be searchable via the tag cloud on the blog now that I've put this new lablel onto the given posts, but just for giggles, I've listed out below those authors I've reviewed who do have a site I linked to (with the site hyperlinked on his or her name and then the review post itself also linked):


From January-March 2010 blog posts:

- John Grisham - "Ford County" reviewed here

- Malcolm Gladwell - "What the Dog Saw" reviewed here

- Chris Brogan - "Trust Agents" reviewed here



From 2009 blog posts:

- Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner - "Superfreakonomics" reviewed here

- David Kord Murray - "Borrowing Brilliance" reviewed here

- Alain de Botton - "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work" reviewed here

- Kurt Andersen - "Reset: Financial Crisis" reviewed here

- Scott Rosenberg - "Say Everything: Blogging" reviewed here

- Lee Gutkind - "Keep it Real: Creative Nonfiction" reviewed here

- John Grogan - "The Longest Trip Home" reviewed here

- Stephenie Meyer - "Eclipse" reviewed here

- Jeff Jarvis - "What Would Google Do?" reviewed here

- Dr. Andrew Weil - "Healthy Aging" reviewed here

- Will Leitch - "God Save the Fan" reviewed here

- Dave Bidini - "Tropic of Hockey" reviewed here

- Doris Kearns Goodwin - "Team of Rivals" reviewed here



From July-December 2008 blog posts:

- Jason Peter - "Hero of the Underground" reviewed here

- Mark Jenkins - "The Hard Way" reviewed here

- Randy Pausch - "Last Lecture" reviewed here

- Tom Vanderbilt - "Traffic" reviewed here

- Curtis Sittenfeld - "American Wife" reviewed here

- Sarah Lacy - "Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good" reviewed here

- Jason Roberts - "A Sense of the World" reviewed here

- Garth Stein - "The Art of Racing in the Rain" reviewed here

- Stefan Fatsis - "A Few Seconds of Panic" reviewed here

- J.K. Rowling - "Harry Potter" series reviewed here

- Max Barry - "Company" reviewed here

- Eric Weiner - "The Geography of Bliss" reviewed here

"Tom Hanks: Historian" Cover Story from Time

Excellent cover story from the Mar 15 issue of Time Magazine.



Titled "How Tom Hanks Became America's Historian in Chief" the story is about... that. Really interesting stuff detailing Hanks' big and small screen ventures about our nation's history with "The Pacific" starting Mar 14 on HBO following on the heels of: "Saving Private Ryan", "Bank of Brothers", "John Adams", "Apollo 13" and "Charlie Wilson's War".

The article itself is an interesting read as Hanks speaks of some of his more well liked historical writers such as Doris Kearns Goodwin, Stephen Ambrose and David McCullough.

One other piece of the story I found interesting was mention of Hanks obtaining the rights to the Vincent Bugliosi book "Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy". From the prosecutor of Charles Manson, it's a debunking of the various conspiracy theories surrounding Lee Harvey Oswald and whether he acted alone.

Spring Training Stories from Time & CNNSI

Man, I do so love this time of year in sports...

You've got hockey starting to get really interesting leading into the NHL playoffs and MLB Spring Training has officially sprung. The time two months from now with baseball past it's "playing in the snow" phase and hockey fully into the Stanley Cup playoffs is great as well, but what this current time has is... anticipation.

Two different pieces I recently came across that really encapsulate this idea for me. The first was David Von Drehle's (extremely short) Time Magazine piece "The Moment" about Spring Training and promise of the future. Love the way Von Drehle can describe so well with so few words on a page...

The second piece was from CNNSI and by Joe Posnanski... he of the frequently written to Joe Blog. Titled "Chapman justifies hype in debut", it's about Cincinnati Reds lefty Aroldis Chapman, but more than that... it's about this same idea of how every Spring, each team has an equal shot at glory that year. Even beyond that, Chapman represents the idea of a previously unknown talent stepping up in the Spring to show would could be possible.

Maybe Chapman will wind up in the Hall of Fame, maybe he won't and maybe the Reds will win a pennant (more than likely not), but for sports fans who love the great and unexpected story, it's fun to think about.

BusinessWeek Career/Business Pieces - Mar 15 issue

Some pretty interesting stuff from the Mar 15 issue of BusinessWeek... much of it around a common theme.



The first story that struck me as interesting was "What I Learned from My Dad"... a commentary by Peter Buffett following the much larger profile of his uber-investor father, Warren Buffett. The piece is actually excerpted from his forthcoming book "Life Is What You Make It: Find Your Own Path to Fulfillment" and tells the interesting tale of how the younger Buffett was staked with a roughly $90K inheritance at age 21... and used the money to fund making a go of it in the music field he loved.

Immediately following that in this BW issue was "And Google Begat..." about the Angel investing (no, not these kind of Angels) done by current and former Googlers. Pretty interesting stuff about the "next generation" impact Google wealth is having by helping fund tech startups such as Twitter, Tesla Motors and a host of smaller unknown (but, probably not always) ventures. The story was also noteworthy to me with mention of Truckee, CA based ex-Google guy Chris Sacca (his blog here). Granted, the town is what I noticed, but it was cool to read how Sacca came across one of his investments after posting a message on his Twitter account one Friday night asking if any startups were working late.

Finally, from this issue I liked "The Road to Reinvention" about career changes following personal setbacks. Specifically the one that got me (out of three vignettes) was that about Todd Morris... a 30 something tech sales guy who had an interest in a product category (security and surveillance gadgets), didn't see anyone dominating the field and up and created a now successful company, BrickHouse Security) in that space. Gotta be something to that idea of building a business around something you think valuable, but not already out there.

Three stories... one theme. Two guesses... that's right, building a career/investing in a business around something that interests you. Solid.

Fast Company Magazine - Feb 2010 issue

Couple of things of interest of the Feb 2010 issue of Fast Company Magazine...



The first was from the cover story on Phoenix Suns point guard Steve Nash. Rather than the entirety of the story, what struck me was mention around his off the court involvements.

One of Nash's business ventures is a film production company, Meathawk, and it's first documentary is an ESPN 30 for 30 project on Canadian hero Terry Fox. The movie is titled "Into the Wind" and will chronicle the run across Canada that Fox made to raise money for cancer research after losing a leg to the disease. While Fox passed away in 1981, his legend has carried on to the point that his mother was a featured participant of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremonies.

No ESPN air date yet for the documentary, but I'm looking forward to seeing it.
Looking into details on "Into the Wind" led me to read further about the 30 for 30 documentary project. The main website features this Bill Simmons essay on 30 for 30 along with a listing of the features. Among these is "Kings Ransom" about Wayne Gretzky going from the Edmonton Oilers to the LA Kings. Directed by Peter Berg, this movie aired fall 2009 on ESPN and appears to be shown next April 25 on ESPN Classic.

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Completely unrelated to Steve Nash, Terry Fox, ESPN or Wayne Gretzky... I also found of note from this Fast Company issue mention of the "weblog about the liberal arts 2.0" Kottke.org from blogger Jason Kottke.

Customer Service Rankings from BusinessWeek

In what has now being an annual event, BusinessWeek in the Mar 1 issued published their "Special Report on Customer Service".

Within the report, there's a feature on the typically highly ranked and 2010 #2 for Customer Service company USAA.

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Related to the Politics Frozen blog post from a week ago and also from this issue of BW was the Charlie Rose interview "Evan Bayh: Why He's Sick of Washington". Just a shame what's become of politics these days...

BusinessWeek Story on AT&T Problems

Pretty interesting cover story on AT&T in the in the Feb 15 issue of BusinessWeek.



The story is titled "AT&T's iPhone Mess" and stood out to me as it's got multiple angles worth reading about, with one leading to another.

First, I'm a huge fan of the iPhone and am usually interested in reading about the device itself and ramifications of it... in this case, to basically swamp the AT&T data network that provides net access for the $30/month that most iPhone users pay.

Second comes the interesting question of how companies reach for short term profits vs long term investments... with the apparent answer in this case being this one large company metaphorically squeezing the lemon and neglecting needed network investments.

Lastly, what AT&T has created is a situation ripe for the forces of Social Media. If people feel that they're being shafted by a company, there's so many avenues to communicate disgust to the masses.... and communicate disgust people have, in forums ranging from blogs to Facebook and even the simplest not even media form of Social Media, word of mouth.

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From the same BW issue came another piece tied to Apple... only this one even more so. "An iPad in Your Pad? It's Up to the Apps" is a short commentary about the content that should be available on the iPad, and how important the availability of worthwhile content is to the future success of the hardware.

Personally, me thinks the content will be stellar (maybe not at first, but not far in the future) and I think the device will be, for lack of a better word, rad.

Politics Frozen Cover Story from Time

A few interesting pieces in the Mar 1 issue of Time Magazine... highlighted by "Why Washington Is Tied Up in Knots" by Peter Beinart.



Prior to reading this cover story, I saw the David Von Drehle article "Why the Tea Party Movement Matters"... and the order in which I read them led to some interesting thoughts (you know, for myself).

Von Drehle writes of how this loosely organized political movement is gaining traction with people frustrated with government and feeling there has to be a better. Contained within this group of people are those ranging from former Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo and his "Barack Hussein!!! Obama" references to much more measured non-wack job types.

From this, I found myself wondering a bit as to why exactly it's been so difficult for Obama to gain traction (not with The Crazies types, but with people who have legitimate frustration as to why it's hard for Washington to get stuff done)... and this is where the Beinart piece comes in.

It's a fascinating look at how difficult it is to get anything accomplished in a two party environment where one party contains the power (the Democrats right now) and the other party (the Republicans) is intent on blocking anything not proposed by themselves. This blocking is achieved through the tactic of a filibuster and Beinart writes that "in 2009, Senate Republicans filibustered a stunning 80% of major legislation... and GOP leader Mitch McConnell led a filibuster of a deficit-reduction commission that he himself had demanded."

Beinart closes his well written piece with his recommendations for what may help get past this political gridlock situation. Less caucuses... open primaries, a larger number of talk shows and blogs that consider both Democratic and Republican viewpoints and another legitimate 3rd party candidate (ala Ross Perot)... all things that seem like they would be a benefit.

All in way, Beinart gives some compelling writing... which may well repeat itself in much longer form in the June 2010 release of his book "The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris."

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Way way unrelated to the topic in these two articles above, the product review "Shout Hallelujah, Come On, Get Appy" is some more interesting content from this issue of Time. All about the Windows Phone 7 Operating System from Microsoft... it makes me very curious to see (after a Christmas 2010 release) phones with this OS.

They may not be quite as great as the iPhone, but new handsets with this WP7 may also have access to a better wireless network than AT&T is now providing.

Sports Illustrated Pieces - Brian Burke & Defense in Baseball

Two different stories that I really liked from this week's Sports Illustrated.



The more impactful was "Man Of His Word" about Team USA Men's Hockey GM Brian Burke. Written by Michael Farber, the piece was about how Burke has dealt with the passing of his son Brendan at 21 years of age. Very powerful piece that gets into the support that the elder Burke showed after Brendan came out publicly as a homosexual only a few months ago. Now after Brendan's death, Brian Burke pledges to use his name to help fight for gay rights... great stuff.

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On a very different note... "Feel The Glove" was by Albert Chen and a story to get one excited for the upcoming baseball season. All about how defense is the "new on-base percentage" as trumpeted in the Michael Lewis book "Moneyball", the Seattle Mariners are featured as a team built around preventing runs in the field. Can't wait for baseball.

" Planet Google" by Randall Stross

I've had the book out from the library for a while and finally got around to reading "Planet Google" by San Jose State Professor and New York Times Digital Domain columnist Randall Stross.



I was initially interested in the title after reading "What Would Google Do?" By Jeff Jarvis (which I reviewed here) and while I liked the Jarvis book more, Stross did provide good insight into one of the more interesting companies out there.

Below are the chapters of the book along with some of the topics covered in each:

Introduction - Google's stated goal of "organizing the world's information."

Chapter 1 - Open and Closed... about how Google in some areas really is "open" and not so much in others. Interesting comparison to rival Facebook on the "Open vs. Closed" question.

Chapter 2 - Unlimited Capacity... lots of data centers out there.

Chapter 3 - The Algorithm... concept of the "brains" behind Google and PageRank being done by computers.

Chapter 4 - Moon Shot... a look at Google Book Search... seems to fit very well as a venture within the overall goal of the company.

Chapter 5 - GooTube... about Google's efforts around video and subsequent purchase of YouTube. Relates to two larger questions addressed in the book of how "open" Google is and how tightly aligned with corporate objectives are all it's efforts... with YouTube perhaps being more outside the bounds than something like Google Book Search.

Chapter 6 - Small World, After All... Google Maps, Google Earth, mashups. Cool areas that certainly seem in line with the organization of information.

Chapter 7 - A Personal Matter... about privacy and ads in Gmail being targeted as a result of text from user emails.

Chapter 8 - Algorithm, Meet Humanity... looks at the initial concept of computers making search results based on PageRank, and whether there's a different or better way.

Conclusion - contains mention of how Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt control 40% of the stock voting power. That plus the fact the ad dollars have been there has enabled the founders and CEO take the company where they want it to go and avoid the problem of short term growth needs hindering long term initiatives.

Overall... pretty good book if you're curious about Google.

Sports Ilustrated Pieces: Olympic Spirit & Bob Costas/Al Michaels

Two different stories that struck me from the Feb 22 issue of Sports Illustrated.



Starting off in this first SI issue since the Vancouver Olympics began was the Tim Layden piece "The Spirit Is Back" with an overview of the Games thus far. Really, though, it was Layden's first section about (for lack of a better phrase) the Olympic Spirit that got me good. I'm quite the sap for genuine Olympic human interest stuff.

The second story (and the one of the two which I really liked in it's totality) was "It's Not As Easy As It Looks" by Joe Posnanski (who I recently posted about as the frequent writer of his voluminous "Joe Blog"). This SI article is about the Olympic co-hosts Bob Costas and Al Michaels and is a really good look at two guys doing what they love and always wanted to do, but doing it in different ways. Posnanski writes of the hard work and study that Michaels brings and the different approach that Costas brings of sheer brilliance with language on the air.

Regardless of how they go about the job, Costas and Michaels are titans of Sports Broadcasting and it's impressive to me to think of how well (and for how long) they practice their craft.

Roger Ebert Profile from Esquire

Great piece on Roger Ebert in the March 2010 issue of Esquire.

From the frequently linked to in this blog Esquire writer Chris Jones, "Roger Ebert: The Essential Man" is an in-depth look at the film critic.



What comes out in the piece is the health battles that Ebert has gone through and how that's impacted and guided his life and work.

I'm always interested in the idea of a writer who also does a large amount of blogging and Ebert's blog definitely puts him in this category (with another writing resident being Sports Illustrated writer Joe Posnanski who publishes his "Joe Blog").

To the mention of Ebert's blog, Esquire included online a link to his blog post about Jones writing the profile. Not often that you get to read both a deeply personal story about someone and then the subject's thoughts about that story.

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Also of interest to me from this March 2010 Esquire issue was the extremely short Scott Raab piece "How to Teach Your Kid About Money" and a reference to the W.C. Heinz book "The Professional".

I don't find the Raab piece online so I'll just list out here some of the concepts I liked from it:
- Even at a young age, your kids should learn about money... and a $100 bill from the Tooth Fairy can help accomplish that.
- An allowance says your kids work for you... they don't, they're part of the family.

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The W.C. Heinz book reference was of interest as Heinz was written about shortly after his death by the aforementioned Chris Jones... with his story "Death of a Racehorse" noted as an example of great writing.

As I looked online a bit for Heinz and his work, I found he also had a few different pieces included in "The Best American Sports Writing of the Century". Pretty good company there for Heinz...

Kennedy Writing from Esquire

Really enjoyed the cover story from the Feb 2010 issue of Esquire Magazine.



This was Esquire's annual "Meaning of Life" issue with many different short pieces of (mostly) public figures giving their views of what things matter. For this particular iteration of the series, Esquire chose to have a large piece with various quotes and thoughts from Ted, JFK and Bobby Kennedy.

The piece is titled "The Kennedys: What I've Learned" and truth be told, would be a bit of a slog to get through online with it being done as a 78 page slideshow. I did find, though, linked on the Esquire site the excellent one-page "Ted Kennedy: What I've Learned" from 2003.

These pieces combined with the Sept '09 Ted Kennedy pieces from Time Magazine that I linked to in this blog made me interested in Kennedy... and in (eventually) reading his book "True Compass".

Jobs in Writing Books

It really wouldn't be accurate to say that I've read them all the way through, but I skimmed the interesting (to me) parts of two different books on the same topic... jobs in writing.

The first was "Opportunities in Writing Careers" by Elizabeth Foote-Smith and second "Careers in Writing" by Blythe Camenson.





I felt Camenson's book had more interesting content, but my thoughts out of reading each was the largest take away for me. So... first with the specific stuff and second with the thoughts:

Specific Content

Technical Writing - defined as any form of business communication that's not advertising. Takes the field out of the realm of technical manuals to the larger area of words which make up ideas.

Places to Work:
- Marketing agencies (with the smaller ones typically offering the chance to work on a wider variety of stuff)
- Corporate advertising or marketing departments
- Freelance writing

Resources for Information:
- Society for Technical Communication
- Documentation Strategies, Inc.
- Essential Data Corporation

Take Away Thoughts

Areas that could be written about:
- Business of sports
- Sports
- Building a career (in and outside of the corporate world)
- Education
- Social Media

Things that could be done:
- Volunteering
- Education… certificate programs in Technical Writing or Entrepreneurial Journalism
- Writing and more writing... perhaps a work history

"Avatar"

I've only posted once previously about a movie I've seen (that being this post about "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"), but "Avatar" was compelling enough to me to warrant mention.

What was so interesting to me was both the story and the technology... both of which brought to mind other great films.

From a story perspective, the same "epic tale of life" that I liked so much in "Titanic" (of course also directed by James Cameron) and the aforementioned "Benjamin Button" were both here, but really... "Dances with Wolves" is the movie I most thought of based on the plot.

On story alone I would have found it a solid movie, but what really took into into a higher category for me was the technology (and I highly recommend watching it in 3D). It was amazing on the screen... and also fascinating to view the movie in the context of it being likely the first in a long line of current 3D technology live-action films.

Based on this front of the curve usage of technology and coupled with the great story, the comparison film that probably most comes to mind for me is "Star Wars."

Quite a comparison, but "Avatar" to me was quite the movie.

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Postscript: Ok, after thinking about it further and being a few days removed from the amazing 3D effects, I feel now the story probably wasn't the greatest in the world (and certainly not up to "Star Wars" story territory), but the technology made this a great film to me.

To that point... interesting BusinessWeek cover story on James Cameron a few weeks ago.



Titled "King of the World (Again)" the piece details how even after the huge success of Titanic, the director had to win over sceptical studio executives when he expressed desire to make the most expensive movie ever filmed. In fact, he had to put his own money in to help develop the cameras used during shooting... which should pay off nicely for him with other directors interested in that technology for their own 3D films.

"Last Words" by George Carlin

Finished reading "Last Words" by George Carlin and found it to be fairly interesting.

Reminded me of Steve Martin's autobiography (which I reviewed here) for a few different reasons. The obvious one would be them both being stand-up comedians, but beyond that, they both knew what they wanted to do from an early age and went through periods of pretty big internal struggle around their careers. Another connection between the two is Carlin's mention of his respect for both the work of Martin and the apparent niceness of the guy himself during their sporadic interactions.

What I really liked about Carlin's book (and I guess the guy by extension) was his focus on and fascination with the power of words (as evidence, he titled one of the chapters "I do love words". What they are, what they mean... all of this fodder for examination given the weight they can hold in the world.

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Two other things from the book...

- I liked his concept of children... basically "leave them alone, they're going to be alright, they're smarter than you are."

- I found interesting his time spent on the children's shows "Shining Time Station" and "Thomas the Tank Engine", both with Britt Allcroft.

After reading his book, I now find myself wanting to see one of Carlin's HBO Specials. In particular, "Jammin' in New York" sounded to be his favorite.

Sidney Crosby Profile by S.L. Price for Sports Illustrated

Great piece on Sidney Crosby in the Vancouver Winter Olympics Sports Illustrated Preview Issue.



Titled "Destiny's Child", it's written by one of my favorite SI writers, S.L. Price, and is an in-depth look at the 22 year old Captain of the Stanley Cup Champion Pittsburgh Penguins... and now major piece of the Canadian Olympic Hockey Team's hopes for Gold.

Through Price's story a view of Crosby emerges that is consistent with other truly great athletes... that of someone born with exceptional potential who then works harder than anyone else to maximize that. This concept coupled with a recent Michael Farber SI story about Crosby stepping up his goal-scoring for the Pens by necessity really heightened the respect I've got for the guy.

The other thing that struck me about the Price story, though, was just how important winning Gold in the upcoming Olympics is to Canada. Granted, I'll be rooting for the U.S. (even though I think their shot at winning is slim to none), but unless lightening doesn't strike in the form of Gold for America, I really hope Canada does in fact beat the Russians and take the tournament.

Best Time Magazine Writing: Parenting & Family

Over the last few months, I've done multiple blog posts aggregating some of the best magazine stories I've linked to... including my favorite writing from Esquire & Sports Illustrated, BusinessWeek & Fast Company, and Time Magazine... specifically around the topics of Politics & the Economy. In addition, I've linked to a Sports Illustrated piece on their picks for Best SI Writing.

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With all this, though, there's another category of great writing that I wanted to aggregate in a post... that of writing around family. It's not by design, but all of the best magazine writing I've come across in this area of family has been from Time.

Included in this category were pieces from two of my favorite Time writers. As a cover story, David Von Drehle wrote "The Myth About Boys"... a really interesting piece that basically says "the kids are alright." Additionally, Nancy Gibbs penned a short back page piece titled "Listen to the Kids" about children, tradition and establishing family traditions.

Also in this Family Writing area was an essay by Elizabeth Gilbert (author of the bestseller "Eat, Pray, Love") and a book excerpt from Karl Taro Greenfeld.

The Gilbert piece is titled "A Family Divided by Obama and McCain" and about her reconciliation of differing political beliefs from her father. A compelling read not so much about politics, but rather about this idea of close family members who don't agree on everything.

From Greenfeld is "Growing Old with Autism"... an excerpt from his book "Boy Alone: a Brother's Memoir". All about the struggles associated with his adult brother's autism, it makes one think of the circumstances that some are dealt and also how that impacts their loved ones.

Just great writing all...

Tags Used Within Blog

I've been putting in labels on blog posts since I started this blog, but only in the last month or so have I realized the value of them and ability (now acted upon) to show them via a widget on the blog itself.

So, to the right of the actual posts, below the subscribe to buttons and above the archive list is...

Labels / Tags / Source Linked / Authors / Companies / Point of Post

Pretty self-explanatory, but the way it works is I've selected to appear on this label list what is now around 30 of the 900 some odd labels I've used within the blog. The criteria is based heavily on # of posts done with each label (the label of Sports Illustrated is chosen over say... McDonald's), but also keys in on authors I really like, but may not have posted about a lot... Austin Murphy as an example).

Usage of the actual labels is of course you click on one noted in this list and all the posts with said said will list out. Simple, yet a nice way to find stuff around a topic or category.

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To the topic or category I've chosen to highlight (again, 30 or so at this point and likely to expand over time)...

1. Book review - you know... a book that I've reviewed after reading.

2. Where was the story I'm linking to from - typically a magazine. Reflects as a tag of the publication or website (but, mostly publication at this point) name.

3. Who was the author of the book (if I'm reviewing it) or story (if I'm linking to it).

4. What's the company being posted about - again, not every company I mention or link to a piece on, but the ones of greatest interest (which relates closely to most frequently posted on).

5. Blogging - similar to "book review" in that it's a label that I use to note what the post is about... in this case, it's about the process involved in the writing of this blog.

6. Best writing - links to pieces or books I really liked... often posts that I did pulling together said favorite pieces.

7. Websites of interest - post containing links to websites of note... stuff I want to check out further.

8. Business topics - posts around categories of business I find interesting.

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This list of tags I highlight in the aforementioned tag cloud is very much a work in process (in part because I'm still working on tagging all the stories containing "best writing", "websites of interest" and "business topics"), but it leads to a pretty cool organization of the blog output.

Ahh... the blog output. I do enjoy when I read great stuff that I want to write about and just as much enjoy creating content of value... you know, at least value to myself.

Hockey Playing Lamoureux Family SI Piece

Great story in the latest issue of Sports Illustrated from Senior Writer Gary Smith.



Titled "House Of Hockey", it chronicles the lives of the Lamoureux family of Grand Forks, N.D. and their six hockey-playing kids. Interesting story on a lot of different levels...

First and foremost is that these six kids aren't simply average hockey players. Offspring in the family plays or has played: top-level US college division one (two of the kids, including one who has been a NCAA Player of the Year candidate), Canadian college hockey, US Junior hockey and... oh yeah, Olympic hockey via the twin sisters who will play in Vancouver.

This by itself would make for an interesting story, but there's a lot more to the piece... ranging from the backyard pond that everyone skated on growing up (gotta build me one of those backyard rinks some day) to the battles with depression faced by one of the sons, Jacques.

I would have liked to know more about his struggle, but can't help but be impressed by someone who went through so much and still reached his current point as one of the best players in US College Hockey while playing for Air Force.

Good stuff and a compelling read for any hockey fan.