How To Get a 1000% Return on Your Investment

Posted on January 23, 2012 | 5 Comments

Multiply your money with zero risk!

Have I got an investment opportunity for you!

Sit down, relax, and pour yourself a cup of coffee. My idea might sound strange at first, but hear me out.

We’re going to make a film. A short, more accurately. It will be about one minute long. We’ll do some thirty second versions as well.

We’re going to spare no expense in making this movie. We’ll hire the cleverest, coolest director, an experienced crew, and we’ll splurge on location, talent, props, and special effects. We’ll get famous actors, athletes, and pop stars to be in it.

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Posted in Culture Rant, Utopian Speculations

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Watching Open Source Destroy Capitalism

Posted on January 15, 2012 | 21 Comments

Theft, or post-capitalism?

About twenty years ago one of my college housemates, Jerry, had an idea.

“What if you could send music over the internet?”

This was the age of 2400 baud modems that made crazy high pitched noised while they tried to connect to the internet. My 20 megabyte external hard drive for my MacPlus computer had set my parents back about five hundred bucks. High quality digital audio files were about the same size as they are now (about ten megabytes per minute of audio). In other words, I couldn’t even fit a single digital audio track on my expensive hard drive — I worked exclusively in MIDI.

So I forgive myself for my lack of vision at the time. I thought Jerry’s idea was ridiculous, and I let him know. Digital audio files were way too big, bandwidth was way too narrow. It would never happen.

Jerry persisted. What if a music file could be compressed? What if bandwidth increased? He pointed out that it would change everything about the way music was distributed, maybe even the way it was made.

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Posted in Culture Rant, Music, Utopian Speculations

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Paleo vs. Vegan, a Battle of Straw Men

Posted on January 3, 2012 | 14 Comments

Battle of the straw men.

Watching the paleo vs. vegan blog battles is entertaining, but frustrating. Each side likes to make well-reasoned arguments against positions the other side isn’t really taking. The proponents of veganism like to pretend that paleo-eaters only eat meat and cheese (in other words, paleo = zero-carb = extreme Atkins), while some paleo advocates lump vegans and fruitarians together, or imagine that vegans eat soy products every single meal.

For example, Dan Pardi of Dan’s Plan recently forwarded me this series of videos from Don Matesz of the Primal Wisdom blog. Don, a formerly enthusiastic proponent of the paleolithic diet, has switched to veganism and is now condemning the paleolithic way of eating. I’ve watched about half the series so far and I haven’t found it very convincing. Most of it seems to be an attack on low-carb, high saturated fat, low fiber diets, which is not necessarily the same as a paleo diet. Most variations of the paleo diet are medium-to-high fiber (from vegetables and fruits), medium carb (from fresh fruit and starchy tubers), and some “seafood only” variations of the paleo diet are extremely low in saturated fats.

The truth is, there is a great deal of consensus on many health topic among paleo-eaters and vegans. Both sides agree that:

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Posted in Culture Rant, Health/Body-hacking

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Letting Your Motivation Find You

Posted on December 31, 2011 | 2 Comments

Intrinsic motivation flows from the subconscious.

All good things must come to an end.

In my case, it’s a two week vacation during which I did not travel, but instead watched Portlandia, played Skyrim, finished the Song of Fire and Ice series, visited friends, ate and drank too much, got along well with my family, and let my brain totally uncoil.

Intrinsic motivation fascinates me. I was curious to see what work (if any) would pull me back, engage my mind, and get me up early and ready to go. It’s not that I don’t have certain tasks I have to do (everyone does — even the 1%), but at least 60% of my working hours are consumed with tasks that I pull out of thin air (writing, making music, etc.).

Why spend all this time and energy trying to create stuff?

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Posted in Creative Work/Career, Metaprogramming

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Engineering Success vs. Attracting Success

Posted on December 19, 2011 | 3 Comments

Rihanna channels Deadmau5, or something.

This is not the kind of blog post where we look at two things and conclude that one is better than the other.

Instead, let’s check out one side of a coin, then flip it over and look at the other side.

The coin is success. While there are many ways to define success, for now let’s think about success as more sales, more attention, more attendees, more customers, more wins, etc. Not success in life, but rather success of a thing, a product/service/event/team, etc.

When we work very hard on something and then present it to the world, we’re hoping for success. More often than not, we get a flop, or a break-even-ish kind of semi-success. This is true even of the most talented, experienced people with every resource at their fingertips. Here’s a great post about a group of extremely talented, well-paid songwriters, producers, and marketers creating a flop for Rihanna.

Why is it so hard?

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Posted in Creative Work/Career

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