I noticed that we no longer thank God on Thanksgiving, it is now a day of national appreciation to each other...
From President Obama's Thanksgiving Proclamation:
I encourage all the people of the United States to come together, whether in our homes, places of worship, community centers, or any place where family, friends and neighbors may gather, with gratitude for all we have received in the past year, to express appreciation to those whose lives enrich our own and to share our bounty with others.
in another decade, just about the time I'll need one...
Computers capable of mimicking the human brain's power and efficiency could be just 10 years off, according to a leading researcher at IBM.
From my former economics professor...
No statement is more unnecessary than the statement that the government should "do something" about some issue. Politicians are going to "do something," whether or not something needs to be done, and regardless of whether what they do makes matters better or worse. All their incentives are to keep themselves in the public eye.
...there was Kenny Washington. Another testament to UCLA's excellence in athletics, and pioneering in breaking the color barrier.
From Sports Illustrated:
Three men deserve enshrinement in the Pro Football Hall of Fame -- as a player in at least one case, as a contributor in all three.
The easiest argument to be made is on behalf of UCLA's Kenny Washington. Acclaimed as the best college player of 1939 in a vote of the men who faced him, Washington nonetheless went undrafted and unsigned by the NFL because of the owners' "gentlemen's agreement." Thus through the early '40s he played four seasons in the Pacific Coast Football League, which he dominated, even as he suffered several knee injuries. He passed, ran and commanded the defensive secondary. By the end of his minor league career, mostly with the Hollywood Bears, Washington had taken on placekicking duties too -- kicking lefty, on account of those knee injuries' ruling out use of his right leg.
When the Rams finally signed him in 1946, Washington was well past his prime, yet he turned in three creditable NFL seasons, including a 1947 campaign in which his performance -- he led the league in total yardage, average yards per carry (7.4) and the longest run from scrimmage (92 yards) -- hinted at what he could have done if only he hadn't been cheated of six years. Upon Washington's death in 1971, former Rams teammate Bob Waterfield said, "If he had come into the NFL directly from UCLA, he would have been, in my opinion, the best the NFL had ever seen."
From David Sax, author of "Save the Deli"
Yet Los Angeles delis have managed to thrive in a niche market. Acre for acre, Sax maintains that Southern California boasts "more delicatessens of higher quality, on average, than anywhere else in America." He commends Nate 'n Al in Beverly Hills; Factor's in Pico-Robertson; Junior's in West L.A.; Greenblatt's on the Sunset Strip; Art's in Studio City; Canter's in the Fairfax district; and the various Hat locations.
But Sax reserves his highest praise for Langer's, near MacArthur Park -- where the pastrami sandwich "encapsulates perfection at every turn" -- and Brent's in Northridge and Westlake Village -- which he calls "absolutely sensational."
Where New York delis tend to be cramped and covered in an intangible layer of old world schmutz, Los Angeles delis are the height of midcentury, suburban modernity. If New York delis are as intimate and familiar as your bubbe's kitchen, then Los Angeles delis, with their spacious banquettes, polite wait staff and abundant parking, are like younger, sexier spokesmodels for the deli world.
Aerial views from the LA Times...
From the LA Times, retracing the steps of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson:
In early April 1786, they set off on a six-day tour west from London along the Thames River Valley, then north toward Birmingham before circling back to the capital. Of course, I couldn't re-create their itinerary exactly. Some of the places they saw are long gone, in private hands or utterly transformed, like touristy Stratford-upon-Avon, which I'd seen before and therefore skipped.
But others -- Blenheim Palace and the University of Oxford Botanic Garden, for instance -- remain open to visitors who follow in the great Americans' footsteps, which help to explain their times, very different characters and complex relationship.
From the LA Times:
15 places to visit to see the real California...
From Seth Godin:
Dunbar's number is 150.
And he's not compromising, no matter how much you whine about it.
Dunbar postulated that the typical human being can only have 150 friends. One hundred fifty people in the tribe. After that, we just aren't cognitively organized to handle and track new people easily. That's why, without external forces, human tribes tend to split in two after they reach this size. It's why WL Gore limits the size of their offices to 150 (when they grow, they build a whole new building).
If a church is going to create community, should it limit its size to 150 adults? Then "hive-off" new groups where people
know each other, multiplying instead of expanding?
An alarming evaluation of President Obama's foreign policy, or lack of. I do not know how accurate or objective these criticisms are, but they certainly do not paint a hopeful picture. Read the article for specifics.
All of Obama's campaign and inaugural talk about "extending an open hand" and "engagement," especially the multilateral variety, isn't exactly unfolding according to plan. Entirely predictably, we see more clearly every day that diplomacy is not a policy but only a technique. Absent presidential leadership, which at a minimum means clear policy direction and persistence in the face of criticism and adversity, engagement simply embodies weakness and indecision.
Michael Barone of USNWR says we are learning more and more about health care coverage. It will cost a lot of money! And no one wants to pay for it. He gives specific examples, but here is his conclusion:
So the learning process may not be over. We know now that it costs a lot of money to pay for insurance policies with expanded coverage for an expanded number of people. And we know that no one wants to pay the price.
We may be in the process of learning something else. Which is that insurance coverage that further insulates patients from costs results in unanticipated increases in health care spending. Yes, it bends the cost curve, but in the wrong direction. That's what has happened with the much-praised Massachusetts system.
Democratic leaders may still have the votes to jam something through. In which case it could, as the Atlantic's Megan McArdle predicts, "spin out of control and eat a gigantic hole in the deficit." Who's going to pay for that?
I like megachurches. I started attending one in 1974, and have been in them ever since. I think megachurches can do everything small churches can do, and they usually do them better.
I like small churches, too. I just wouldn't want to attend one...
The number of megachurches has grown steadily for the last four decades. Researchers say there are now at least 1,350 such churches nationwide, more than double the number a decade ago. [193 in CA, 191 in TX]
They draw an average of 4,100 weekend parishioners. By contrast, most U.S. churches attract 500 people or fewer on Sundays.
"They are essentially re- creating a small-town milieu and giving folks . . . a place to plug in and share experiences with like-minded people," said sociologist Scott Thumma of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research in Connecticut, who studies the megachurch movement.
But the growth also has sparked criticism that large churches are siphoning people away from smaller congregations.
A sad lesson, from Michael Jordan. Upon his induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame, the man considered by many to be the greatest NBA player of all time just seemed petty. He used the speech as a chance to put down his rivals, from his high school coach to opposing players and coaches throughout his career.
It is so sad to see when people are driven, not to excel - but to beat others. To prove (to themselves) that they are better than others. It must come from a deep insecurity.
"Jordan revealed himself to be strangely bitter. You won, Michael. You won it all. Yet he keeps chasing something that he’ll never catch, and sometimes, well, it all seems so hollow for him."
...who brought you Social Security and Medicare.
According to President Obama, that is the reason to not fear that his health care proposal will be "socialism" or a "government takeover" of health care.
Hardly reassuring to me, when I consider that Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid currently account for one third of the US government Federal budget, are leading to larger and larger budget deficits, and no one has a proposal on how to prevent them from going bankrupt as the population ages in the next 30 years.
As I understand it, the main point of the health care proposal is for tax payers to pay for medical insurance of the 30% of people who cannot afford it. So then they can go to the doctor more often, because it is already paid for by insurance. And the process is managed by the government. And somehow this will lower the cost of health care for everyone...
President Obama says we will pay for the cost of this increased coverage by eliminating all the current waste and inefficiency in the health care that is already managed by the government. Then with this expanded coverage, government will get more efficient and less wasteful.
From the opinion piece on President Obama's speech in the LA Times:
"The challenge for those who want a comprehensive bill is more in the politics -- in particular, the allegation that "Obama-care" is a government takeover of the healthcare system, burdening taxpayers with a ruinously expensive new obligation. The president offered a persuasive response to part of that critique, making the case that the flaws in the current system threaten all Americans. He soft-pedaled the controversial"public option" plan, and portrayed his plan as a melding of Republican and Democratic ideas with the same moral underpinning as Social Security and Medicare. Those initiatives were also branded "socialism" or a "government takeover," Obama noted, subtly warning opponents that they risk being on the wrong side of history."
Now this article describes the way I want to see New Zealand - in a VW Vanagon!
"Imagine the most beautiful places you've ever seen -- Grand Teton, Big Sur, Alaska's Inside Passage -- cram them all into a skinny strip of land, and that's New Zealand. We'd wanted to visit the Pacific island nation even before director Peter Jackson made the landscape a star as the setting of the "Lord of the Rings" movies. One friend told us that of all the dream destinations of his childhood, it was the one that proved every bit as glorious as he'd imagined."
Gary Hamel wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal about how "Generation F" - the Facebook generation - will change expectations in the workplace.
Here's his list of 12 characteristics of online life he believes will be applied to the work environment:
All ideas compete on an equal footing.
Contribution counts for more than credentials.
Hierarchies are natural, not prescribed.
Leaders serve rather than preside.
Tasks are chosen, not assigned.
Groups are self-defining and -organizing.
Resources get attracted, not allocated.
Power comes from sharing information, not hoarding it.
Opinions compound and decisions are peer-reviewed.
Users can veto most policy decisions.
Intrinsic rewards matter most.
Hackers are heroes.
Are these global characteristics??? Are you seeing them affect your context? How will they shape Asian cultures, like Singapore's? How will they shape the Church around the world? How will they affect the people you lead, and your leadership style?
I resonate with this way of thinking from Seth Godin, and want to live it out in my life and work.
Will you join me in resisting scalejacking? Let's reject the quest for size and do all we can for the ones who need and want our service! Sounds like Jerry Maguire's manifesto.
Scalejacking - Dave Balter coined this great term. It describes the quest of marketers for size at all costs. Because marketers were raised on the scale of mass—TV, radio, newspapers—they have a churn and burn mentality. The internet turns this upside down. The internet is about who, not how many. The internet lets you take really good care of 100 people instead of harassing 2,000.
Yet, panicked marketers still look for scale (How many followers can we get? What can we do with a Facebook fan page?) and then hijack that attention, hoping to filter out the masses and get a few sales.
Scalejacking inevitably tarnishes most communities, because individuals (people) hate being treated like numbers just standing by to be filtered.
Stephen Stills wrote, "If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with." I think he was wrong. On the Internet, the mantra that works is, "Be with the ones you love (and the ones that love you.)" Ignore everyone else. It doesn't have good internal pentameter, but it's true.
What will the US look like in 20 years? The ethnic makeup of the country is rapidly changing.
Young Americans who are minorities outnumber young whites in almost one of every six U.S. counties. It's a demographic wave that is transforming more parts of the nation and raising questions about who is a minority.
The multiplying effect of diversity is rapid. In 2008, 34% of U.S. residents were minorities, but 48% of babies born in the USA were minorities. The number of white youths has dropped 5.3% since 2000 while the young minority population grew 15.5%. "It will be hard to define who is a minority in the future...."
Change is happening so quickly that the youngest Americans are much more likely to be minorities than those who are a few years older, says Johnson, who did the research with Daniel Lichter, demographer at Cornell University.
Among youths ages 15 to 19, 60% are non-Hispanic whites. Among those 4 or younger, 53% are white.
London sounds like a great vacation!
The London I've finally discovered is as rumpled and comfy as old corduroy (which I like) and as stylish and smug as the sassiest fashionistas (which I don't).
But what a buzz fest. London is a city on the verge of a nervous breakdown yet so sated on its own glories that nothing seems to bloody bother it. At this European crossroads, I found the mad pace and the musty masterpieces a perfect contrast. Just when you can't take another minute of London's twitchy streets, you can slip into some spectacular ancient hall and, like Sherlock Holmes himself, spend an afternoon seeking Anne Boleyn's bones.
Or, more festively, you can take a day and just sample the pubs, which are everywhere, a drinker's dream.
Read about social, political, and religious realities in Iran from this fascinating article in Mission Frontiers from Sep-Oct 2008:
"By the late 1980s, the number of Persian Muslim-background believers had grown into many thousands. Then in the 1990s, two things converged to turn this momentum into one of the greatest watershed events in the history of Persian Christianity. The first was a wave of government-organized crackdowns and assassinations of Christian leaders....
In the year 2000, Christian satellite broadcasting began beaming the gospel to almost every home in Iran. This was made possible by the fact that millions of satellite dishes had been illegally smuggled into Iran by corrupt members of the same government that had outlawed them. The Christian satellite programs became a lifeline for the church in Iran. Much more, when the Iranian people learned that the government was trying to scramble the broadcasts, they became an overnight sensation. Recent nationwide surveys reveal that over 70% of the population is watching Christian satellite programs. These same surveys indicate that at least one million have already become believers, and many millions more are on the verge. This growth has happened so fast, the underground church can hardly keep apace....
Starting churches in Iran is easy! Everywhere you go to evangelize, people are ready to receive the gospel, or they have already become believers through satellite broadcasts. ”Training leaders is also easy, remarks another leader. The government has left young people with nothing to do. So believers spend time with one another every day. They are constantly gathering for prayer, Bible study and evangelism. When a group reaches 25 people, they divide in half and begin again. Within two years, a new believer is expected to become a leader of a new house-fellowship and a discipler of new leaders...
The growth of the car market in China will cause huge headaches, where roads are built for bicycle traffic and there are few parking lots for all the multistory apartment buildings. It will also keep pressure on oil prices for years to come.
China is on track to sell 11 million vehicles this year, according to the China Passenger Car Association. That would be up 17% from 2008, and a stunning 20 times the number of vehicles sold in China just a decade ago. Zhang says this year China likely will overtake the USA, where expected sales are around 10 million units, and become the world's biggest car market for the first time.
China's 1.3 billion people "are simply wild about cars," says Michael Dunne, a Shanghai-based managing director of J.D. Power and Associates, an auto industry group. He says the surprising strength of China's auto market has been driven not just by economics, but also by a kind of psychological shift that has come with prosperity.
"There is the thrill of individual mobility, going from point A to point B in their own time, and on their own terms. But it's also an opportunity to declare and project their own success," Dunne says....
U.S.-style suburbs, where cars are a virtual necessity, are sprouting everywhere....
China has one-seventh as many autos on the road as the USA, Dunne estimates, but nearly twice as many traffic deaths — 73,484 last year, according to the Chinese government.
