Steve announced today that he is retiring from competitive running. After setting PRs , earning 10s of dollars worth of gift certificates as prizes, and generally having the best year of his 4-year running career in 2004, Steve was sidelined by a knee injury that was later diagnosed as arthritis. This caused him to miss the Chicago 2004 Marathon, causing more disappointment than Bob Kennedy's aborted New York Marathon 2004 attempt, at least for all of Steve's family, friends and acquaintances who are not that into running, and thus have no idea who the hell Bob Kennedy is.
"I have no regrets," Steve said in an emotional farewell address on his blog, Words Of Advice For Young People. "I had some great moments last year, including coming in 3rd in that race where it was hot and nobody seemed to be able to deal with it, and the trophy I got for coming in second in my age group at that 10K that was made by some elementary school kids in their art class is in a place of honor on the bookshelf in my office. Of course I have to give thanks to my support network: my wife, parents and of course my baby girl. I will continue to run and even run in the occasional race, but if you pass me, it won't count, because I won't be racing."
Steve later added that he was not necessarily ruling out a return to running in the future, especially if advances in nano-technology provide us with microscopic machines that can re-build joints damaged by the ravages of arthritis, but at that point he really started rambling, and as a courtesy to Steve, we will not re-print the full transcript of his comments here.
Friday, February 18, 2005
Friday, February 11, 2005
Quick on-line comic big up
I can't believe I never heard of achewood until yesterday. I can believe I didn't know until today that Charles Mingus wrote a pamphlet on how to get a cat to use the toilet. Oh, definitely a link to a page showing a picture and text from said pamphlet is in order.
Sunday, January 30, 2005
'Rich Dad Poor Dad's' author disses dad for dollars
‘What the Rich Teach Their Kids about Money – That the Poor and Middle Class do Not!’ exclaims the blurb on the front cover of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and this drew me in. I have had a gut-level suspicion for years that rich people just aren’t like the rest of us. It’s reinforced when I hear about things like Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco and his $6,000 shower curtain. You have to really think highly of yourself to believe you need a $6,000 shower curtain, to not cheat yourself by settling for a piece of crap that costs $600. So I was pre-disposed to like what Mr. Kiyosaki had to say. At the very least I was curious. While I am not rich, I have enough disposable income for impulse buys on Amazon.com, so the book was in my mailbox a few days later.
The central story (some would call it mythology) of ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ goes like this: Kiyosaki’s real father, the superintendent of education for the public school system of Hawaii (not exactly a piddly job), was ‘poor Dad’, who embraced middle class values (specifically: working hard at a job your whole life and saving along the way). Kiyosaki’s friend Mike’s dad was ‘rich Dad’, a sort of undifferentiated entrepreneurial type who represented the value system and way of thinking of the wealthy (in a nutshell: take risks, make money ‘work for you’, ‘pay yourself first’ to give yourself greater motivation to make money to pay your creditors). Young Kiyosaki and Mike became Daniel-san type apprentices to ‘Rich Dad’, who taught them lessons like ‘working a day job is for suckers’ by making them work in a little store he owned. Kiyosaki embraces the lessons taught to him by ‘Rich Dad’, and refers to them throughout the book. His real father, ‘Poor Dad’, gets the consolation prize of being ‘not an example to others, but rather a warning’.
My attitude toward Kiyosaki soured as I read the book. What kind of jackass puts down his Dad in order to sell books? Why would Kiyosaki need to do this, especially if, as he claims, he has ‘escaped the Rat Race’ and doesn’t really need the money? Further, why is Kiyosaki running all over the world hustling his books and games (Cashflow! - the Prologue is kind of an infomercial for it) if he's independently wealthy? These and other questions along those lines were raised during the course of reading the book. It took a while to read it, as it was gradually demoted from primary reading material to bathroom reading.
I tried to look past Kiyosaki’s shameful disrespect for his own father (another question, perhaps not a politically correct one: isn't respect for one's family typically highly encouraged and valued in Asian cultures?) in order to learn things that might make me a better father for my little girl, at least where money management was concerned. She may yet grow up to write a book maligning me or a thinly veiled fictionalization of me, but I don’t want that to be due to laziness or negligence on my part.
Kiyosaki seems to have made most of his money through real-estate transactions and management of rental properties. The book is full of little anecdotes about his clever deals. The book gets to be like listening to some rich guy tell you about himself while you drive him to the airport.
At one point, Kiyosaki sheds the burden of credibility completely, saying he encourages people to get involved in multi-level marketing. At this point the bull-shit detector could no longer be ignored. After some further investigation, I found that Kiyosaki does have an affiliation with Amway, and supposedly was unable to get his book published until he hooked up with the MLM crowd. For further info, see this email to John T. Reed on his website.
John T. Reed also has a pretty thorough analysis of Kiyosaki’s book, including interesting investigation into whether or not Kiyosaki really is who he says he is (what he finds out about Kiyosaki suggests that rather than having some master plan for life, Kiyosaki kind of drifted from one thing to another until he found something that worked for him, which would make him just like every other schlub out there trying to get by).
The Reed analysis makes for more interesting reading than Kiyosaki’s book. FWIW, Kiyosaki replied to Reed's criticisms, although his response mostly seems to be a defensive effort to scrape together support for his thesis that 'most rich people have sub-exceptional intelligence'.
If you're interested in learning more about money and investing, there’s no need to give up hope. There are some good books and resources out there about investing and money. I’ll talk about other stuff I’ve read or am reading in the future.
The central story (some would call it mythology) of ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ goes like this: Kiyosaki’s real father, the superintendent of education for the public school system of Hawaii (not exactly a piddly job), was ‘poor Dad’, who embraced middle class values (specifically: working hard at a job your whole life and saving along the way). Kiyosaki’s friend Mike’s dad was ‘rich Dad’, a sort of undifferentiated entrepreneurial type who represented the value system and way of thinking of the wealthy (in a nutshell: take risks, make money ‘work for you’, ‘pay yourself first’ to give yourself greater motivation to make money to pay your creditors). Young Kiyosaki and Mike became Daniel-san type apprentices to ‘Rich Dad’, who taught them lessons like ‘working a day job is for suckers’ by making them work in a little store he owned. Kiyosaki embraces the lessons taught to him by ‘Rich Dad’, and refers to them throughout the book. His real father, ‘Poor Dad’, gets the consolation prize of being ‘not an example to others, but rather a warning’.
My attitude toward Kiyosaki soured as I read the book. What kind of jackass puts down his Dad in order to sell books? Why would Kiyosaki need to do this, especially if, as he claims, he has ‘escaped the Rat Race’ and doesn’t really need the money? Further, why is Kiyosaki running all over the world hustling his books and games (Cashflow! - the Prologue is kind of an infomercial for it) if he's independently wealthy? These and other questions along those lines were raised during the course of reading the book. It took a while to read it, as it was gradually demoted from primary reading material to bathroom reading.
I tried to look past Kiyosaki’s shameful disrespect for his own father (another question, perhaps not a politically correct one: isn't respect for one's family typically highly encouraged and valued in Asian cultures?) in order to learn things that might make me a better father for my little girl, at least where money management was concerned. She may yet grow up to write a book maligning me or a thinly veiled fictionalization of me, but I don’t want that to be due to laziness or negligence on my part.
Kiyosaki seems to have made most of his money through real-estate transactions and management of rental properties. The book is full of little anecdotes about his clever deals. The book gets to be like listening to some rich guy tell you about himself while you drive him to the airport.
At one point, Kiyosaki sheds the burden of credibility completely, saying he encourages people to get involved in multi-level marketing. At this point the bull-shit detector could no longer be ignored. After some further investigation, I found that Kiyosaki does have an affiliation with Amway, and supposedly was unable to get his book published until he hooked up with the MLM crowd. For further info, see this email to John T. Reed on his website.
John T. Reed also has a pretty thorough analysis of Kiyosaki’s book, including interesting investigation into whether or not Kiyosaki really is who he says he is (what he finds out about Kiyosaki suggests that rather than having some master plan for life, Kiyosaki kind of drifted from one thing to another until he found something that worked for him, which would make him just like every other schlub out there trying to get by).
The Reed analysis makes for more interesting reading than Kiyosaki’s book. FWIW, Kiyosaki replied to Reed's criticisms, although his response mostly seems to be a defensive effort to scrape together support for his thesis that 'most rich people have sub-exceptional intelligence'.
If you're interested in learning more about money and investing, there’s no need to give up hope. There are some good books and resources out there about investing and money. I’ll talk about other stuff I’ve read or am reading in the future.
Saturday, January 15, 2005
Vitamin World Tried to Kill Me!
They didn't use a bomb or gun!
V-dub tried to kill me!
Home Boys watch out for this one!
(shamelessly ripped off from Ice T's 'The Girl Tried To Kill Me')
A couple years ago I read some scary article about how athletes were dropping dead left and right because they weren't properly replenishing the minerals they lost through their dangerously non-sedentary lifestyles. I was and still am a runner and decidedly non-sedentary, and I was influenced by this article more than I like to admit. I ran out and bought some 'Colloidal Mineral Source' at Vitamin World. Then I took it home and read the label (and you can, too). I noticed it contained:
I'm sure Vitamin World's other products are great. Just be careful is all I'm saying. There's Cadmium in cigarette smoke, and those are sold in drug stores all over the country, so how bad can it be?
V-dub tried to kill me!
Home Boys watch out for this one!
(shamelessly ripped off from Ice T's 'The Girl Tried To Kill Me')
A couple years ago I read some scary article about how athletes were dropping dead left and right because they weren't properly replenishing the minerals they lost through their dangerously non-sedentary lifestyles. I was and still am a runner and decidedly non-sedentary, and I was influenced by this article more than I like to admit. I ran out and bought some 'Colloidal Mineral Source' at Vitamin World. Then I took it home and read the label (and you can, too). I noticed it contained:
- Cadmium - I knew this was bad from the old Superchunk song of the same name.
- Thallium- I knew this was bad from one of the Discovery Channel 'real life detective' shows where the super-genius guy tried to kill his neighbors.
I'm sure Vitamin World's other products are great. Just be careful is all I'm saying. There's Cadmium in cigarette smoke, and those are sold in drug stores all over the country, so how bad can it be?
Friday, December 10, 2004
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, 2004 Edition
44% of American adults are on drugs.
The 7 habits are now:
The 7 habits are now:
- Prozac - www.prozac.com
- Strattera - www.strattera.com
- Lexapro - www.lexapro.com
- Viagra - www.viagra.com
- Xanax - www.drugs.com/xanax.html
- Ritalin - www.drugs.com/ritalin.html
- Lorazepam - www.psyweb.com/Drughtm/ativan.html
Sunday, November 28, 2004
Reading Playboy For the Articles
My wife and I were having dinner with another couple a few weekends ago, and the topic of the election came up. We told them we were 'Anybody but Bush' people, and they admitted, kind of sheepishly, that they had voted for Bush. He described his decision making process: 'I watched the debates, and made a decision based on that'. At this point my wife and I had to be careful to not make eye contact for a bit for fear we'd start laughing.
Plenty of fairly intelligent people voted for Bush, sure. Using the TV debates as a justification, though, is kind of like saying 'Oh yeah, I bought the Milli Vanilli album back in the early 90's, but I did it because the lyrics really spoke to me'.
Plenty of fairly intelligent people voted for Bush, sure. Using the TV debates as a justification, though, is kind of like saying 'Oh yeah, I bought the Milli Vanilli album back in the early 90's, but I did it because the lyrics really spoke to me'.
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
100 worst pop records
Channel 4's 100 Worst Pop Records
This one comes to us from Channel 4 in England, where they take their pop music a lot more seriously than we do in the US (the notable exception being rap, where people shoot each other over it and stuff).
It's not a bad list, but a lot of the records weren't big here in the US, and there are definitely some records that should be listed, but aren't:
- Puff Daddy and The Family - 'I'll be missing you' (I might get shot for that one)
- Rupert Holmes - 'Pina Colada (The Escape Song)'
- America - 'Horse With No Name'
- R Kelly - 'I believe I can fly'
- That 'Y'all Ready For This?' song from the 'Air Bud' movies
Here's a fun experiment: take this list and pick 100 songs from Rolling Stone's List of the 500 best songs of all time, give somebody both lists, and see if he/she can identify which is which.
Monday, November 15, 2004
I tunes - yet another web site allowing us to make furtive purchases
Thanks to the anonymity of the web, people can buy all kinds of things they'd be embarassed to go into a store and purchase in person.
ITunes, for example, allows me to buy all kinds of chee-zee 70's Hits that are guilty pleasures for me. See, for example, this recent purchase:
Robert Palmer - Looking for Clues
Bill Withers - Lovely Day
Boz Scaggs (Boz f*&*in Scaggs) - Lowdown
Marvin Gaye - Got to Give It Up
Marvin Gaye wouldn't fall in this category, but when they used that song for the 'everybody get funky and bust a move' scene in 'Barbershop', they pretty much raped Gaye's carcass and cheesified that song beyond repair.
It's still a good song, though.
ITunes, for example, allows me to buy all kinds of chee-zee 70's Hits that are guilty pleasures for me. See, for example, this recent purchase:
Robert Palmer - Looking for Clues
Bill Withers - Lovely Day
Boz Scaggs (Boz f*&*in Scaggs) - Lowdown
Marvin Gaye - Got to Give It Up
Marvin Gaye wouldn't fall in this category, but when they used that song for the 'everybody get funky and bust a move' scene in 'Barbershop', they pretty much raped Gaye's carcass and cheesified that song beyond repair.
It's still a good song, though.
Friday, November 12, 2004
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