Blog

  • Book & Movie: Watchmen

    My first book & movie review in one post. I finished reading Watchmen on Thursday and saw the movie on Friday. Both were excellent for different reasons.

    The book is actually a collection of a twelve-comic series released by DC Comics in 1986 and 1987. Alan Moore was the author, Dave Gibbons was the artist and John Higgins was the colorist.

    The story is this: The U.S. has a superhero, Dr. Manhattan, by way of a lab accident. He allowed them to win the Vietnam War and has kept the Russians at bay since. However, the possibility of a nuclear holocaust looms larger with each passing day. Preventing this is what the ultimate arc of the comic is about. On less of a superhero and more of an action hero level, the characters of the comic are seeking the mask killer – an unknown person who, in the first scene, killed the Comedian. Eventually, the two stories come together, though I will spare you the spoilers.

    The story is nuanced, insightful and intriguing. It takes a hard look at society as it existed in the 1980s and saw that there was a lot wrong with the way we were living our lives. In one poignant scene on the gang infested filthy streets of New York City:

    Dan Dreiberg: What’s happened to the American dream?.

    The Comedian: It came true. You’re lookin’ at it.

    Watchmen reminds me of Alan Sorkin’s writing for the West Wing. One of the many reasons I like the West Wing is because of the supporting facts, stories, and links between those facts and stories brought into the fiction of the show from reality. Doing so adds a great deal of credibility to the performance. The same is done in Watchmen to an equally effective degree.

    The movie is very true to the book, excepting a debatable minor change to the ending. It is long, though entertaining. I would recommend that anyone wanting to see the movie first read the book. The movie will better keep your interest that way and you’ll have a better appreciation for the depth of the comic and the faithful adaptation of the movie.

    Go read! Go see!

  • The Empathy of Critical Thinking

    Marissa Mayer, the V.P. of Search Product and User Experience at Google made an interesting point during the last ten minutes of her interview on the Charlie Rose show. (link)

    Charlie Rose: Why did you choose computer science at the beginning?

    Marissa Mayer: I grew up thinking I was going to be a doctor. And I started off as a biochem double major at Stanford. And at the end of my freshman year, I realized I loved chemistry, was very good at it, but it’s a lot of memorization, right? It’s a lot of memorize this chemical equation. And when I went home, I realized that all my friends who were at other schools studying biology and chemistry were learning the exact same material. In the exact same way. And I thought, well what could I do that would be unique to Stanford, that Stanford does really well and also would teach me not just facts but how to think better, how to be a better critical thinker, how to be a better problem solver. And that’s when computer science came in because in computer science, they have one of the best programs in the country, and you get to working on a new problem every day. So it’s not so of what you know or what you’ve memorized, but it’s more how do you think about problems.

    Marissa’s comment regarding wanting to challenge her thoughts struck a nerve with me and made me realize that most of my post-secondary education has been the type that encourages rigorous and critical thinking.

    In undergrad, I studied economics – what we do with what we have. That simple summary leaves open many variables and a lot to think about. Beyond understanding the language necessary to be fluent in any field, the study of economics provides a student with a unique method of viewing each and every daily interaction. One of the basic assumptions is that we are rational beings. Moving from that assumption to the next, and trying to solve a problem takes on a step-by-step process. A chain is setup as the student realizes that shifting one variable may have an effect on many others. Once he’s thought long enough like this, it becomes difficult to make decisions because he realizes that everything can be rationalized. It’s just that some outcomes are better than others.

    I studied creative writing as well, which was, and still is, to this day, the most challenging task I’ll ever undertake. Nothing is more intimidating than a blank page because it is completely on the writer to fill it. He can draw from his life, the news, stories friends tell, or nothing at all. But when it comes down to it, making something up for others to read is an incredibly frightening thing to do. It’s a narcissistic and selfish thing to do. To think that what he has to say is worth someone else’s time. Yet, writing is the single most freeing thing I do on any given day because it challenges and renews me. It is a way to order my thoughts, my perception of the world, and my understanding of my relationships.

    And perhaps now, more than ever, critical thinking is a matter of my daily routine. The appeal of a law degree upon applying to law school was that the degree would have a wide application – law, business, entrepreneurship, teaching, etc. What I underestimated was what exactly would compose that degree. Now that I’m nearly finished with law school, I’ve come to group the value of my expected degree as follows. Primarily, I have learned a critical and logical method of thinking. This is a vague and fleeting tool, but significant nonetheless. Ancillary to the method of thinking is the day to day knowledge and experience – basically, how to find what I’m looking for – that comes with having attended law school for three years. While there is value in each of these things, only from critical thinking do I derive any personal satisfaction.

    It’s only now, as I review my education, that I realize why I have pursued my chosen fields of study. Each one has challenged my thinking and opened my eyes to new things. Economics, writing and law have each allowed me to better make sense of the world around me. Not only can I attempt to answer life’s questions, but I can give answers with support and argue for my position. I can understand where others are coming from and empathize with their viewpoint. I can challenge them and be challenged, knowing full well that there may not be a definite answer.

  • Embrace the Internet Already!

    Dear Newspapers and Television Networks, the fact that I can’t get everything you offer for free on the internet at the same time, or earlier, than when you print or broadcast it is unfortunate in this day and age.

    Newspapers, most of you are starting to get it. But you’ve been slow on the uptake. The pay walls were not smart (Come on WSJ!). I understand you’ve yet to figure out how to make enough money from your websites to cover costs. That, coupled with declining print subscription rates is doubly bad.

    My suggestion is this: stop paying reporters to write content for you. Cut that part of your staff. It’s got to be a significant portion. Instead, make the people your media. Tap the collective mind, and hire a smaller herd of editors to refine submissions. I’d be surprised if the contributions were not overwhelming. Exposure would be compensation.

    It is here that we can take a page from Twitter’s book. At the rate the world turns today, printed news is old news. In fact, CNN is often old news. During an event nearly anywhere on the globe, search for relevant keywords on Twitter’s search and I assure you that you’ll be more in the know than anyone reading a newspaper or watching cable news.

    Broadcasters, you, too, need to accept the web. I can deal with the commercials you splice into your online offerings. I get that your linear brains see that as the obvious way to do things. There were commercials on TV, so there should be commercials on the internet, right? Wrong, but I forgive you for the time being.

    There can’t be a delay and the content needs to be high definition. Further, you need to flip your current stance and make the Internet your primary focus and television your secondary focus. New goes online because online is where we find new things now. That’s where it will be shared on Facebook, talked about on Twitter, and recut for YouTube.

    Stop showing kids toys they can’t play with. Instead, give them the toys early and let them play and share them. Embrace that the kids may find new uses for the toys you didn’t think of instead of being scared of such an outcome. The worst case scenario is that the toy sucks. Best case scenario – the kids love the toy and do your marketing for you. Do yourself a favor and loosen up a little!

  • Facebook Takes On Twitter

    You can’t not use Facebook! You just can’t. The website is too usable, too huge, and too addicting. Whether, like me, you use it mainly as an elaborate address book or you are a power user who can’t live without knowing the latest about what’s on your friends’ walls, a Facebook presence is a must.

    With that said, it’s obvious that the folks over at Facebook are a little jealous at the recent success of Twitter. So much so that they will soon be introducing a redesigned homepage that mimics Twitter’s functionality. The Facebook homepage will have a status input area at the top and below that will be a real time stream of your friends recent updates. The Facebook homepage has more functionality. Where twitter is 140 characters of text only, Facebook allows text, photos, videos, causes, etc.

    Further bringing Facebook in line with Twitter’s model is Facebook’s merging of personal profiles and public pages. Like on Twitter, where you can follow a user without them following you back, Facebook’s integration of pages and profiles will give it a more Twitter-like feel by making the overall experience more transparent.

    Facebook has come a long way from where it began. It its original inception, it allowed the user to view static profiles and had minimal interaction. With this change, Facebook will retain the robustness of its many services while gaining the agility necessary to compete with Twitter and other similar limited-purpose websites.

    I can’t wait to try out the new Facebook homepage. I doubt it will replace my “need” for Twitter, but it may for some. What are your thoughts?

  • Check Out the New Old Posts!

    I just finished migrating, via copy-and-paste, hundreds of posts from my old blogs – The Yugflog Blog and another. I was disappointed to have lost the backed-up databases, but fortunately I had imported most of the old posts into Facebook. Although some of the links in the posts were lost, I’m thankful that I’ve been able to recover much of the writing!

    The posts go as far back as February of 2006, a time of transition for me. I had just left Ruckus and had not yet started working at K12.com. The posts pass through my first days in law school and my travels to China in the summer of 2007. Many of the late 2007 and early 2008 posts are from The Yugflog Blog and are largely golf related. And the writing continues to this day.

    That’s the quick overview. Here are some links to some to some of the larger groups of newly imported content:

    China posts.

    Golf posts.

    Law posts.

    Writing posts.

    Biographical posts.

    If none of these interest you, check out the “Tags” cloud and the “Categories” list in the sidebar to the right. Enjoy!

  • Movie: The International

    I saw The International and was pleasantly surprised. The movie is about an Interpol agent trying to expose a bank’s role in an international arms dealing ring. It’s a bunch of people chasing each other. The U.S. DOJ is tracking down the Interpol agent. The Interpol agent is chasing the bankers. The NYPD team up with the Interpol agent and the DOJ at one point. The bankers are speaking with an African General, then later with a Middle East arms dealer. There’s also an Italian politician and an assassin involved.

    What the movie lacked in substance, it more than made up for with its numerous sub-plots that came together as one. Despite the fact that the acting was suspect and the plot unbelievable, the movie submerged me in the plot quickly, and kept me interested throughout with action and pace.

  • My Information Experiment

    A few years ago I heard that the most informed people were those who regularly watch the evening news – local and national. This came as a surprise to me, a guy thoroughly overwhelmed by hundreds of minute-by-minute RSS feed updates. I thought that I was surely the most up-to-date fellow around. But, I’ve never been able to get a solid grasp of “real” world news from online sources. Either I get overwhelmed by the amount of information or I get distracted by geek news and pictures.

    So, two years after first learning that despite being highly tech savvy I was among the less-informed, I am going to undertake an experiment and get my news from three different sources each of three months.

    March: I will read one local and one national newspapers daily for one month. I will do my best to avoid both online and television news.

    April: I will watch the local and national news daily, avoiding newspapers and online news.

    May: I will read online news (sources TBD), avoiding tv news and newspapers.

    My prediction is that if I can make/find the time to read the newspapers, I’ll be most informed during March. Least informed in May.

    I’ll post my thoughts at the end of each month and a conclusion in June.