RT @jdickerson: Breaking News: Person unknown to you did something of dubious distinctIon or is no longer missing or married. # RT @joshcomers: "Everything’s going to be okay." (First lie to self of week). # RT @TheOnion: In Focus: Al-Jazeera Introduces 'Lighter Side Of The News' Segment http://onion.com/dknefU # RT @fredthompson: Obama warns GOP planning to privatize Soc Sec. Very upsetting for him. Interferes with the current plan of bankrupting it. # Read more →
Author Archive: Paul Epps
Aggregating Intellect
A team can aggregate the intellects and elevate the nobility of the group as a whole to create a greatness of effect comparable to, or even surpassing, any individual genius. — Jim McCarthy Read more →
Twitter: 2010-08-16
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to retweet it. # Read more →
A Beautiful Mind
Princeton University Read more →
Short Books
My kid’s got a summer assignment for AP English — select and read two novels from a list of about 20. I’ve been telling him since June that I’d be glad to go over the list with him and recommend books that he might enjoy reading but he’s put it off so long now that I’m limited to recommending short books that he might enjoy reading, and that leaves us with Ethan Frome, Wide Sargasso Sea and All the Pretty Horses. He comes back from the bookstore with Frome and Sargasso, two books about men who marry crazy women. He ruled out All the Pretty Horses because it’s 300 pages long and “I read the first sentence and it had like six adjectives.” Read more →
We Live Like Baboons but at Least We Have Television
Baboons who live in the African plains spend about one-third of their life sleeping, and when awake they divide their time between traveling, finding and eating food, and free leisure time–which basically consists in interacting, or grooming each other’s fur to pick out lice. . . . And as the historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie has shown, in thirteenth century French villages–which were among the most advanced in the world at the time — the most common leisure pursuit was still that of picking lice out of each other’s hair. Now, of course, we have television. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Finding Flow Read more →
Twitter: 2010-08-13
RT @alaindebotton: What is most offensive about militant atheists is their seeming lack of sympathy 4 desperation. They seem so… un-needy. # Read more →
A Dog at the Airport
Picking up my family at John Wayne Airport . . . There’s a guy walking around the baggage claim area with a toy poodle on a leash. I point this out to my son and say, “I didn’t know you could walk your dog around here. I would have brought Lightning.” “Maybe it’s a bomb-sniffing dog,” he says. “A bomb-sniffing poodle?” “Yeah.” Read more →
Why People Don’t Succeed
In summary, I claim that some of the reasons why so many people who have greatness within their grasp don’t succeed are: they don’t work on important problems, they don’t become emotionally involved, they don’t try and change what is difficult to some other situation which is easily done but is still important, and they keep giving themselves alibis why they don’t. They keep saying that it is a matter of luck. — Richard Hamming Read more →
This Sounds Familiar
Bias is particularly an issue on cross-boundary initiatives, where multiple groups of stakeholders work together on a project. Each stakeholder group has particular goals and is judged against metrics that may be unique to that group. Bias tends to be a substantial driver of project disruption in organizations where goals or metrics across groups are in conflict. — “Behavioral economics: The IT failure domino effect” Read more →
Twitter: 2010-08-12
RT @ChelseaVPeretti: When someone's telling you something is it ok to say "who cares" if you do it tenderly and touch their arm? # RT @eddiepepitone: Just drank a coffee the size of a Buick. I think I will write an outline of the history of civilization. # Read more →
Twitter: 2010-08-11
Other than it's not in the plan, what's the argument for not doing it? http://goo.gl/Hbu4 # RT @eddiepepitone: tweets of Bob Frankenstein ( the monster's normal brother)- Frank is just big and unfortunate. # Thank god Emma Thompson has come along to save us from G.B. Shaw, Lerner & Loewe, and Audrey Hepburn. # RT @fakerahmemanuel: This just in from Ted Stevens: Hell is actually a series of tubes. # Welcome to Twitter, @Steven_Slater # Read more →
Twitter: 2010-08-10
RT @joshcomers: “I’m ready to take this to the next level!” (overly dramatic guy walking into an elevator) # RT @joshcomers: Just saw that a guy following over 28,000 people unfollowed me. I must have really fucked up. # Risk creates value. Except when it destroys value. # RT @Jesus_M_Christ: #ILaughEverytime I send a Fundamentalist to Hell. # RT @Jesus_M_Christ: Whenever someone pleads with me for World Peace then ends their prayer by asking for bigger boobs #ilaugheverytime # Read more →
Twitter: 2010-08-09
RT @robdelaney: Just saw a cute little boy eating a HUGE cookie! I taught him a lesson about loss that I know he'll appreciate one day. # Read more →
Yankee Stadium
Good seats! Be alert for bats and/or balls! My wife sent this next one from her phone with a note: “May be last picture for tonight. Can you tell from casey face.” The game hadn’t started yet! Read more →
Hello from Times Square
Regrets of the Dying
I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. I wish I didn’t work so hard. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. I wish that I had let myself be happier. — Top Five Regrets of the Dying Read more →
Stat of the Day
Nearly 60% of the teenage readers of an online men’s magazine say they would punch a coworker in the face if they could get away with it, and nearly 40% would do the same to their bosses. The magazine, AskMen.com, says the number of positive responses to those statements declines steadily with respondents’ age, dropping to about 20% for readers 50 and older. — Male Teens Ready to Punch Coworkers – The Daily Stat – August 6, 2010 – Harvard Business Review Read more →
Twitter: 2010-08-08
RT @serafinowicz: Jet Li has a Russian cousin, Jet Ski. # RT @Jesus_M_Christ: #liesitoldmyparents Sure, Mom. "Immaculate." I believe you. # Sun over yardarm. Switching from iced tea to Wild Turkey. # Read more →
Twitter: 2010-08-07
RT @eddiepepitone: stay away from people who say- 1) I can do 5 years in the big house standing on my head. 2) Let's pray together. # Read more →