My son’s half-Asian — his mom is Thai — and he feels like he’s missing out on an important Asian tradition. “On Chinese New Year,” he says, “Chinese kids get wads of cash. Koreans have a holiday where kids go to relatives’ houses, bow to people and get wads of cash.” He mentions a Korean friend of his who raked in 180 bucks the last time this holiday rolled around. “Why isn’t there a Thai holiday where kids bow to people and get wads of cash?” he asks. “Isn’t that how pretty much every day goes for you?” I ask. “Without the bowing, I mean. Handing you wads of cash though — that part is in full effect.” Read more →
Author Archive: Paul Epps
He Said, She Said
I know I shouldn’t say this about one of my own speakers, but I thought Sarah Silverman was god-awful. — Chris Anderson Kudos to @TEDChris for making TED an unsafe haven for all! You’re a barnacle of mediocrity on Bill Gates’ asshole. — Sarah Silverman Read more →
Happy Valentine’s Day
How Can I Help You?
How can I help you succeed? How can I help you ask strong questions, take wise risks and deliver great content? How can I help you prosper? Most importantly, how can I help you learn and make new connections? How can I help you serve the larger group, of which we are both a part? — Marcia Conner Read more →
Twitter: 2010-02-10
"I thought the more money I had the happier I would become, but it was not the case." http://bit.ly/d8yDMt # Read more →
The Eternal Footman Held My Coat and Snickered
Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a longtime fixture on the House subcommittee that oversees Pentagon spending, died after complications from gallbladder surgery, according to his office. He was 77. The Democratic congressman recently underwent scheduled laparoscopic surgery at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, to remove his gallbladder. The procedure was “routine minimally invasive surgery,” but doctors “hit his intestines,” a source close to the late congressman told CNN. — CNN.com OMG I HAD THAT SAME OPERATION I COULD HAVE DIED!!! On a lighter note, how ironic is it that the president loses a pro-ObamaCare vote due to medical error in a government-run hospital? Read more →
Berman Leaving Bristol?
[Chris] Berman could go all the way to DirectTV or the NFL Network when his ESPN contract expires? Its probably just a negotiating ploy, but it sure would be neat to see him exclusively on channels my TV doesn’t have. — Deadspin Read more →
There is No Such Thing as Information Overload
Looking over my notes from an Edward Tufte course . . . There is no such thing as information overload, just bad design. Example: Google News presents hundreds of links on a single page and no one complains about information overload. Example: The financial section of the newspaper presents thousands of numbers and no one complains about information overload. Read more →
Saints 31, Colts 17
OK, but I’m more of a college football fan so here’s a picture of Reggie Bush at USC: Read more →
Books Etc.
Thanks to the annual Super Bowl Sunday Buy One Get One Free sale at Books Etc. in Laguna Hills, the works of Bellow, Borges, Bukowski, Brautigan, Cheever, Eco, Grace Paley, Dennis Potter, Pynchon, Robbe-Grillet, Philip Roth and Tom Wolfe have found their way onto my bookshelf for a capital outlay of only 32 dollars American. Read more →
If I Had a Toyota
If I had a Toyota, I’d drive it to work one morning, crash it right into the front lobby of the building, get out, say good morning to everyone, and blame the whole thing on a faulty accelerator, just to break up the monotony of daily living . . . Read more →
Twitter: 2010-02-04
RT @sportsguy33: To honor the Mike Dunleavy era, I just botched my drive-thru order at Arby's, then blamed House and the drive thru lady. # Read more →
Twitter: 2010-02-03
Does this city make my butt look big? – http://goo.gl/N72i # Sign of the times: I noticed this morning that the newspaper racks (LA Times, OC Register) in front of LA Fitness have been removed # Read more →
Pride and Prejudice
As my son comes downstairs for dinner, he says, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune –” I finish it with him: “– must be in want of a wife.” “We spent 45 minutes in class today analyzing that one sentence,” he says. “It’s a very famous sentence,” I say. “The next sentence will probably go faster.” Read more →
Deterrent Effect
A Columbus man has been charged with killing a teen who was out with friends throwing eggs at cars on the Hilltop three years ago. — The Columbus Dispatch In other news, Columbus police report a significant decrease in the number of people throwing eggs at cars. Read more →
Did Mozart Play Kickball?
Do we hear about Mozart playing kickball? I know, there wasn’t kickball. But if there had been, he wouldn’t have played it. Because you give up stuff. So I guess what I’m saying is that being an expert in something requires frugality. It’s not just a spending frugality. It’s a focus frugality. — Penelope Trunk Read more →
Evolving a System
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works . . . A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. — John Gall Read more →
How to Get an A in Hell
At Northwood High School, Honors Euro Lit is known by its acronym — HEL (pronounced hell) — and widely regarded as the hardest class at the school. In order to get an A in the class for the first semester, my son needed a very high score — around a 98 — on the final exam, didn’t get it, and finished with a semester grade of 89.27 — a high B. If he’d had at least an 89.5, the teacher would have rounded it up to an A. So out of 1,000+ possible points over the course of the semester, an 89.27 means you missed an A by only three or four points. I’ve always encouraged the boy to be proactive with his teachers. Some people call this “sucking up” but I’ve been a teacher myself and I can tell you that teachers like students who are engaged and make… Read more →
Empathize
As design thinkers, the problems we are trying to solve are rarely our own—they are those of a particular user; in order to design for the user, we must build empathy for who they are and what is important to them. . . . The best solutions come out of the best insights into human behavior. . . . We engage to… Uncover needs that people have which they may or may not be aware of Guide innovation efforts Identify someone to design for Discover the emotions that guide behavior — D.School Bootcamp Bootleg Read more →