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January 28, 2011
Who profits off you being unhealthy v. healthy?
Jay Parkinson, MD 
16 hours ago in reply to fran- Coca-Cola makes a direct profit off you behaving unhealthily. What are the companies that make a direct profit off your everyday behaviors that optimize health?Like Reply
Jon Christianson 13 hours ago in reply to Jay Parkinson, MD- This is a good question - much of the US economy clearly benefits from promoting unhealthy behavior (e.g, mainstream food industry, energy, health care, retail, etc.).
I suspect most facets of tourism make a direct profit off of behaviors that optimize health.
January 20, 2011
Third Space
Inspired by Ray Oldenburg’s "Third Space" concept which states that society needs a place away from home (First Space) and work (Second Space). Third Spaces are "Anchors of Community Life and facilitate and foster broader, more creative interaction." Societies across the world have third spaces that manifest themselves as coffee houses, pubs, plazas, etc. The Summit is the ultimate Third Space.
I've loved the idea of a "third space" since I learned of it only a year ago. I can't wait to go here.
January 14, 2011
There's no space for the extra space
There’s no space for the extra space. By Farhad Manjoo on Slate.
I saw this piece earlier in the day and loved it. We don't need two spaces after the period. It's just a convention that can be changed. Although, as I typed this I found myself double-tapping the space bar after periods and corrected it after the fact. Ugh.
Also, why do people put their hats on AFTER they get outside? You lose all that heat off the top of your head and then trap cold air inside. Put it on before you get out the door and you won't even feel the transition into cold weather.
January 12, 2011
The joy of not being sold anything
I've been thinking a lot lately about useful ads, good ads, value-filled ads that inform us and motivate us. Ads about community events, blood donation, clean sidewalks, and healthy living. Ads that communicate the variety in our culture, the foods, the music, the arts, the people and their ways of thinking.
Ads that don't have to sell.
Why are we willing to believe things that are false?
Why, despite all the evidence to the contrary, do so many people remain adamant in their belief that vaccines are responsible for harming hundreds of thousands of otherwise healthy children? Why was the media so inclined to air their views? Why were so many others so readily convinced? Why, in other words, are we willing to believe things that are, according to all available evidence, false?
Newsletter: Winter 2011
This is a quarterly email newsletter with ideas, cool links, book
recommendations and a personal update.
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Read time: 2 1/2 minutes
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IDEAS
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1. Are you saying what you mean or is everyone listening to what they want to hear?
What's in our heads doesn't always translate verbally. Being bilingual,
I often wish I could use Hindi words to communicate what I'm trying
to say. Hindi has the ability to invoke various emotions with a single word.
I imagine Native American languages work similarly, exhibiting an emotive
quality that requires several English sentences to explain. English is far more
analytical, which is obviously its strongest quality. It reduces the strong cultural
and historical effects subject to shift meaning and clearly connotes a message.
Interestingly though, single words in English can have a different meaning
based on context. We may not think about word choice, but it has an impact
on how well we communicate with others. George Bernard Shaw said, "The
single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
At work and with friends, I notice how much time and energy is spent on
correcting misunderstandings. Viewing language as variable and subjective
has made me much more attentive to whether I'm truly understanding what's
being said and whether I'm truly communicating what I want to say.
2. What will the internet look like in 10 years?
Every generation feels removed from the previous one and the
internet has widened the gap even more in the last 10 years. The
rate of growth, especially in social media, seems to have surpassed
the rate of adoption, with a few obvious exceptions; Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
With no barrier to entry and an ubiquitous, open-source platform,
one would think the internet would allow very few people or companies
to rise to the top. The internet though is an enormous, real-time
sociological experiment that makes us either participants or observers.
Clay Shirky explains it brilliantly:
"In systems where many people are free to choose between many
options, a small subset of the whole will get a disproportionate
amount of traffic (or attention, or income), even if no members of
the system actively work towards such an outcome. This has nothing
to do with moral weakness, selling out, or any other psychological
explanation. The very act of choosing, spread widely enough and
freely enough, creates a power law distribution."
3. Is the economy shaping the job market or is it the other way around?
It's hard not to think about the job market right now. Unemployment
at 9% not only affects recent graduates, but also increases job lock
among current employees, shifts where we live, increases housing
prices, and diminishes productivity through long-term underemployment.
The soft side of unemployment is different though. While morale is
still low, people are finding creative ways to find work and companies
are responding with an increase in project-oriented work.
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BOOKS
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1. Daemon by Daniel Suarez
Fast-paced from the beginning, Daemon represents a whole new
thriller genre mixing technology and crime while staying out of the
sci-fi realm. Great summer/airplane/couch read.
2. F**k It: The Ultimate Spiritual Way by John C. Parkin
Existential philosophy boiled down to two words that convey a
flippant yet energized attitude. The ability to fearlessly achieve
your goals is a strong theme in this book. A little bit of a
throwback to the 70's new-age, hippie motif (Parkin runs a retreat
called The Hill That Breathes), it's still a hilarious must-read.
3. White Noise by Dan Delillo
Strange and captivating, White Noise was written in 1985 and yet
eerily speaks of societal problems we face today, especially
media-induced fear. The writing is quirky, funny, and has a
lackadaisical style that makes tough vocabulary somehow easy to
understand. I felt like a better writer having read it.
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CONNECT
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PERSONAL UPDATE
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Hi from NYC! My last year has been a thorough exploration of
restaurants and neighborhoods in NYC. I've expanded my horizons
beyond Manhattan into Brooklyn and I'm always amazed how the city
organically changes from street to street. If you're around, give
me a buzz and we can get together for coffee or dinner.
Cheers,
Akshay
January 10, 2011
Working Hurts Less
On procrastination and how to think about the substitute activities that we do instead of dong work:
When you procrastinate, you’re probably not procrastinating because of the pain of working, because on a moment-to-moment basis, being in the middle of doing the work is usually less painful than being in the middle of procrastinating.
That is pretty useful to remember. And another tidbit:
I’m starting to think that […] you do not regain mental energy from [procrastination. Success and happinesscause you to regain willpower; what you need to heal your mind from any damage sustained by working is not inactivity, but reliably solvable problems which reliably deliver experienced jolts of positive reinforcement.
I think this is a pretty useful insight - when compelled to procrastinate, what you choose to do can greatly affect whether you manage to get actual work done later.
In October of last year, there was a great piece in the New Yorker about procrastination that convinced me to change my working habits immediately.
I took on exactly this philosophy that procrastination is a personal signal of unhappiness. Neal Stephenson once wrote, "Boredom is a mask that frustration wears". The usual precursor to procrastination was boredom, which told me two things; I was frustrated about something that was making me unhappy, which in turn was making me avoid what I was frustrated about.
I began looking for segues that would lead me back to productivity. If I had to read a long policy paper and I was procrastinating, I would read a novel instead, which would gear the reading side of my brain and get the right word-scanning juices flowing to ease into governmental policy.
If I had to analyze a report on work RVU productivity variations for five specialty practices, I would take a break from the computer, walk, and observe in detail my surroundings, exercising my analytical brain to see things I normally wouldn't see. When I got back to the task at hand, it'd be a natural transition to sit in front of the computer for a few hours comparing numbers.
As noted above, having self-awareness about how you feel when you're in the middle of something produces direct results in your behavior. I'd rather be in the middle of a good book or walk than surfing the web. Scheduled surf time is far more rewarding.
January 9, 2011
Bill Maher - Anti-Pharma Rant
“New rule, if you believe you need to take all the pills the pharmaceutical industry says you do, than you are already on drugs …” - Bill Maher
January 8, 2011
The Great College-Degree Scam
Here it is: approximately 60 percent of the increase in the number of college graduates from 1992 to 2008 worked in jobs that the BLS considers relatively low skilled—occupations where many participants have only high school diplomas and often even less.
How to land a job
"Here's how career changers are most likely to land a job: Make a list of 100 people who know you. They don't even have to love you. Let's take the worst case: a boss who fired you. He might be willing to give you a lead on a better-suited job. And that's the worst case. Chances are that if your list includes your relatives, your parent's and wife's relatives, your friends, your wife's and parents' friends, your past and present coworkers, bosses, customers, and vendors, your haircutter, accountant, lawyer, doctor, church members, co-volunteers, etc., you'll likely get leads to people willing to consider you for a project manager job outside of defense or refer you to someone who might. And you might hear about career areas you never would have thought of in a million years. Last week, I got a call from a client who got a job at a toy company monitoring plush stuffed-animal factories in China."
January 7, 2011
We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already
“If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”
January 6, 2011
Hans Rosling: Visual Statistics
The health & wealth of 200 countries over 200 years, in less than 5 minutes. Wait for the post-colonial explosion.
Via WaPo’s Ezra Klein.
Hans Rosling is amazing. If you like this, don't miss his TED talks.
January 5, 2011
Doubts can find no foothold
Doubts can find no foothold in our minds as we seldom concern ourselves with fleeting visions of failure.
January 4, 2011
Know what you eat
“Yet Americans watch 35 hours of television a week, according to a Nielsen survey. (Increasing amounts of that time are spent watching other people cook). And although there certainly are urban and rural pockets where people have little access to fresh food, about 90 percent of American households own cars, and anyone who can drive to McDonald’s can drive to a supermarket. But perhaps most important, a cooking repertoire of three basic recipes can get anyone into the kitchen and beyond the realm of takeout food, microwaved popcorn and bologna sandwiches in a few days.”
Cut-and-dry advice from Mark Bittman that seems sensible enough. The staple stir-fry, salad and rice/lentil combo are basically how I got started cooking again. In NYC, fighting the urge to eat out is difficult. It’s too easy to get great restaurant food and on top of that, grocery trips seem outrageously expensive and you wonder about the cost/benefit.
Bottomline: You know what you put in your food. Salt, oil, fat, and a clean kitchen is up for grabs at a restaurant. The peace of mind you get cooking at home is worth it.
Steve Pavlina On Leaving Facebook
"So I’ve crossed the threshold where Facebook’s value isn’t worth the hassle to use it. I concluded that the best choice was to simply drop the service altogether and invest my time elsewhere.......From a subjective perspective, I’m not particularly disappointed. I’ve been wanting to spend less time online and more time connecting with people in person, so these problems may simply be part of the way that desire manifested."
-Steve Pavlina on Leaving Facebook
Steve's eloquent reasoning for leaving Facebook echoes my sentiments exactly. It's a clunky time-suck that doesn't add to the strong friendships I already have and creates an awkward resentment towards prior friends who I believe should have called when they got married, had a baby, moved and so on.
Snowpocalypse 2010
I'm sad to say I missed Snowpocalypse 2009 completely. But I still got some good shots. The city was a mess on Thursday so I can only imagine what Monday was like. That last shot truly is a burnt-out car, most likely set on fire from skidding its wheels too much.
January 3, 2011
Heat Source Matters
Having successfully weened myself off the microwave over the last 7 months, I'm now sensitive to the taste of heat when I do use the microwave. Microwave hot is sharp and sudden, as opposed to say stove hot, which has an even distribution and stays warm for much longer. Sensing the different quality of heat is most apparent in liquids, especially tea. If not for any other health benefits, gaining the ability to note the difference was worth it.
Similarly, another experiment I've been running in the winter is heating myself through exercise instead of turning up the thermostat. Coming in from the cold, blistery weather, my natural instinct used to be to turn on the external heater or crank up the dial on the thermostat. Over the next half hour, I warmed up, but the room felt like a sauna. You could smell the nutty odor of the heat. The rest of the time became a battle trying to find a balance between the ups and downs of fake heat.
Instead, I began doing 10 minutes of jumping jacks, high knees, butt kicks, and pushups. My muscles needed to move and no external heat source was going to make them truly heat up the way exercise did. At the end, I felt great thanks to the endorphins, and the feeling of warmth lasted for hours. If I did need to use the heater, I was more attuned to when I should turn it off.
Discovering alternatives to the usual wasn't planned. It truly just happened as a result of following my instincts or trying something new. Planning helps tremendously with a clear, task-based objective. I'm amazed though at the power of long-term experimentation and the unexpected benefits it can offer.