reading: the unforgiving minute.

I read Joker One and The Unforgiving Minute back-to-back (thanks, Amazon recommendations!) I expected similar books since they are first-person tales from Iraq and Afghanistan. While true, I found them to be of very different quality. While readable, I found that Unforgiving Minute lacked the power and voice of Joker One. Fair or not, I can’t […]

reading joker one.

At one point in 2004-2005 I read a book or two a week. In retrospect, it was a phenomenal time. Some of my earliest memories are of reading soo much. At one point, I remember that my brother and I were so engrossed that our father took our books away from us when we had […]

does twitter improve memory?

Last month I read an article in Wired about a woman who remembers everything. You name a date and she’ll tick off hundreds of events that have happened to her on this date. The publicity eventually attracted  Wired. The article reached the new conclusion that the reason she remembers so much is because she has […]

attention & value.

One of the reasons I love writing is that it makes me form coherent thoughts. This process sometimes ends up changing how I view a topic. My previous post on what we value has ended up being one of those times. We live in a world of insane inattention. For me it started with AIM back […]

what do we value?

What is it that we value? As a society at large, I’ve heard a lot of candidates: We value our environment. We value our children, Education, Progress, Peace, Health, Knowledge, Kindness. All kinds of stuff. I’ve never thought long and hard about this question. Now that I am thinking about it, these are the kind […]

could vs should.

For the past few years the one thought that has never been far from mind is my “could vs should” debate. Essentially, I think we’ve become a society that has stopped asking if we “should” do something and instead default to if we “could” do it. “Can we get away with it?” has become our […]

religion vs spirituality.

I’ve long monitored the discussion between being “religious” or “spiritual.” Of late, I’ve heard some fatigue with people classifying themselves as “spiritual.” I suspect this has to do with how nebulous a term “spiritual” is and with how very many people are now identifying as such. This is a great article in TIME magazine (actually […]

that feeling is despair.

There’s that thing going around. It’s a feeling. It’s being transmitted by the TV, the newspaper headlines, magazine covers, etc. In fact, thanks to our new digital connectedness, it’s transmitted by those who matter to us via Facebook, LinkedIn, twitter, IM updates, blogs, etc. What’s being transmitted is bad news and what makes even more […]

detroit, empathy, and stories.

Detroit. Mitch Albom is a terrific writer. Think Tuesdays with Morrie and The Five People You’ll Meet in Heaven. Albom has a great way to make characters real, settings come to life, and emotions feel at home within you. He’s a storyteller in the truest sense. Today, I read his latest in Sports Illustrated called […]

the wrestler.

Have you seen The Wrestler yet? It’s funny that half the people I talk to about the movie barely know who Mickey Rourke is. And the other half of the people speak of him almost reverentially. Like a sports fan might speak of what might have been if Bo hadn’t gotten hurt. Anyway, in The […]