Friluftsliv: Log Blog Connections

2009-11-14T00:58:00.001-09:00

The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression." -- W. E. B. DuBois
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Birthdays

2009-11-12T00:56:00.013-09:00

Birthdays are good for you - the more you have the longer you live.
@mike2977 on Twitter

I'm about to turn 60. Normally, I ignore birthdays, but I'm excited about 60, as much as I was about 20. It's a good time to reflect on the differences between the two. At 60, I appreciate life more. I appreciate my wonderful wife of 30 years. Cathy, more than anyone else, has made me a better, more complete person. I wouldn't be anywhere without her. I appreciate other things, that I didn't at 20.

I appreciate being alive and healthy. I just completed my 25th marathon in October. I've lost count of the Nordic ski marathons and other races. Cathy and I have climbed and hiked mountains all over the world, including all 48 of the 4,000 footers in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. At 20, I was excited about moving up to an age bracket where I could vote and drink. At 60, I'm excited about moving up to an age bracket where I can compete in the Senior Games.

At 60, I appreciate my parents and family more than I did at 20. I'm so grateful for growing up in Nebraska with a Nebraska State Trooper for a father. I was given opportunities that I could have gotten nowhere else.My father constantly challenged me to do better in life. I didn't appreciate his discipline when I was young, but I do now.

At 60, I appreciate the challenges life has to offer. Who knows what the future will bring, but I look forward to the challenge.

Marine Corps Birthday

2009-11-10T04:57:00.007-09:00

Today is the 234th birthday of the United States Marine Corps. Semper Fi! I still remember the name of my recruiter at the recruiting station in Nashville, Tennessee: SSGt. Burkeen. In 1972 while I was being processed into the Marines, SSgt. Burkeen needed a copy of my birth certificate. He called my home in Nebraska and identified himself. Unfortunately, I had neglected to tell my mother that I had just enlisted in the Marines. She went through the roof on him. The Vietnam War was still on.

I still remember the SSgt coming into the recruiting room white as a ghost. "Did you tell your mother you were joining the Marines?" he said. He then escorted me to a telephone and directed me to call home and talk to my parents.

Joining the Marines was the smartest thing I ever did. I met my wonderful wife of 30 years while stationed on Parris Island.

Parachute

2009-11-08T01:37:00.003-09:00

You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.

from Twitter @mike2977

Love Reagan

2009-11-06T15:58:00.003-09:00

"Heroes may not be braver than anyone else. They're just braver five minutes longer."

Ronald Reagan

Halloween in Nebraska

2009-11-04T04:50:00.002-09:00

This is how Nebraska kids celebrate Halloween. Hope this helps against Oklahoma this week. The Cornhuskers will need all the help they can get.

Ben Franklin

2009-10-31T17:31:00.002-08:00

"Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones."

Ben Franklin

Ignorance

2009-10-30T01:02:00.004-08:00

"To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant." Bronson Alcott

"Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities." George Eliot

My greatest struggle is with my own ignorance. I admire the Buddhist philosophy that lack of enlightenment causes most of the problems in world. Certainly we can see that in political leadership throughout the world; however it's our own ignorance that we must deal with first.

Ronald Reagan quote

2009-10-28T23:01:00.003-08:00

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Ronald Reagan

Oliver Wendell Holmes

2009-10-27T23:15:00.001-08:00

"Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions."

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Quote

2009-10-27T13:34:00.001-08:00

Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.

From @TimOwensby on Twitter

Marine Corps Marathon

2009-10-27T04:09:00.008-08:00

It wasn't the best and it wasn't the worst, but I finished the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C. on Sunday. This was my 25th marathon since 1978. My time was 5:45:54. Half Marathon time 2:27:59. I had better training runs this year, but got a cramp in my left quadriceps at 17 miles. Ran through to 20 miles, but slowed to a walk after that. Once you start walking in a marathon, you're done. The legs tighten.

At my age (60) and ability (slow), I judge a marathon on how I finish the last 6 miles. Last year I accelerated through the last six miles of the course and finished at a very strong run. A good marathon goal is to run the first half and the second half at around the same time. In my case, that usually equates to around five hours.

Another good way to judge a marathon is how you recover. The guy who took this photo for us was lying flat on his back at the finish area-- the worst thing you can do. He couldn't get up. I find that walking a mile or two immediately AFTER the marathon helps. I also take an ice bath. Then the next few days I do a lot of walking and light stretching. I feel pretty good after this one.
Fortunately, my wife Cathy is very supportive of my marathon running. She was there at the finish again this year, cheering everyone on. Also received a very nice phone call of support from Charlton Machado, who ran the marathon with me last year. Charlton and his wife have a new baby, so he's taking a year off from marathons.

Twitter

2009-10-23T00:24:00.002-08:00

"I forgot it's casual Friday in this office. 2000 people in jeans and me in a suit. Great."

from Twitter by @Sn1per

Noam Chomsky

2009-10-23T00:08:00.004-08:00

"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." -Noam Chomsky

I listened to Obama last night. He described Fox News as nothing more than "talk radio." I notice that news is only news, when it is slanted the way the Administration wants it. Their goal is to get their supporters and the majority of American voters to watch only the news they want us to hear. Everything else is just "talk radio." I couldn't disagree more. I hope that outspoken liberals such as Noam Chomsky will stand up to this.

Richard Nixon

2009-10-22T04:17:00.005-08:00

No president in history has been more vilified or was more vilified during the time he was President than Lincoln. Those who knew him, his secretaries, have written that he was deeply hurt by what was said about him and drawn about him, but on the other hand, Lincoln had the great strength of character never to display it, always able to stand tall and strong and firm no matter how harsh or unfair the criticism might be. These elements of greatness, of course, inspire us all today. Richard Nixon

How we handle criticism says a lot about us. The Marine Corps taught me how to deal with stress and criticism. It's not easy. Sometimes we let ourselves down and over-react to criticism. Certainly Presidents such as Lincoln, Nixon, and Bush had to deal with extreme personal criticism. You can see the strain in their portraits throughout their Presidencies. President Obama's ability to handle criticism in a graceful manner will tell more about his character and leadership than anything else. It will be interesting to see how he grows into the office.

Paul Harvey

2009-10-20T17:29:00.002-08:00

I've never seen a monument erected to a pessimist. --Paul Harvey

I remember Paul Harvey when I was a kid. I used to work on road crews in the Sandhills of Western Nebraska. At lunch, the men would sit with their lunch pails and a portable radio. We would all listen to the news from Paul Harvey. It wasn't always good news in the 1960's, but he always ended with a very positive and inspiring example of some ordinary person who was doing something special in life. Then we would all go back to work.

Tribute to the Green Revolution

2009-10-19T23:10:00.014-08:00

He who has lost FREEDOM has nothing left to lose. " -- Unknown.

We admire and pay tribute to the brave Iranian people, who have made such sacrifices for freedom. The haunting picture of the young victim Neda has become the symbol of so many brave, young people in Iran who stand up to the "basij" thugs, who control the country.

Social networking has kept the Green Revolution alive, while the mainstream media has failed miserably to cover this important event. Twitter provides me with daily accounts of the struggle. Dissident leaders use Facebook to convey their message. Proof of the resistance continues to be posted on YouTube by brave Iranians. Without this social media, the Green Revolution would have been lost months ago.

Recently TED and Reddit interviewed Evgeny Morozov, an Internet scientist specializing on the effects of social media on society. Unfortunately, he is not positive about the ability of individuals using technology to stay ahead of oppressive governments such as Iran.

He states that "Digital activism is only possible because creative and tech-savvy activists are usually one step ahead of authorities. Part of my thesis has been that authorities are getting more and more sophisticated, which makes the lives of digital activists much more difficult (and much less secure). "

Sadly, Morozov has been proven correct in Iran. The Western company Nokia recently sold advanced technology to the Iranian government that allows tracking of digital phones, resulting in the arrest and torture of many students who were posting photos on YouTube. Still the youth of Iran continues to revolt and stand against this terrible regime. They need our continued support.

Hotel Thayer with Friends

2009-10-19T04:51:00.002-08:00

We spent the most wonderful evening with friends at the Hotel Thayer at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, N.Y. This is one of the most beautiful hotels in North America and the company that evening made it even better. In the foreground are our Argentine tango instructors, Walter and MariLynne Kane.

Michael Padlipsky

2009-10-16T22:58:00.019-08:00

In America everyone is entitled to an opinion. However you are not entitled to a professional opinion. Michael Padlipsky

What makes an opinion a "professional opinion?" It's not the qualifications of the person, that's for sure. We've seen too much junk come from so-called professionals.

I look at the form of the opinion as much as its content. Form and design tell a lot about the "professionalism" of a person. How often have you had to sit through "Death by PowerPoint" in recent years? How often do ideas fail due to poor design?

Michael Padlipsky is one of the original designers of what became the Internet. The Internet is hardware, the physical network of computers first developed in the early 70's. Padlipsky has written some interesting and humorous accounts of it's design and development. When the Internet was first designed the problem of different operating systems was huge. Padlipsky wrote of this problem in a 1985 paper "All Victims Together."

Tim Berners-Lee solved this design problem by inventing a common language-- the World Wide Web in 1989. He made the Internet functional and accessible to all of us through the common language of HTML. Yet even HTML has its design flaws: Berners-Lee recently apologized for creating the slashes that appear in every http://www/ URL. He admits the // were not necessary. It just seemed like a good idea at the time.

How often have we done that in our own presentations: Put in things that seem like a good idea, but are not necessary. The "professional opinion" is one that presents only the essentials in a good and interesting format. Here are three resources I use to improve my own "professional opinions."

Garr Reynolds has written a whole system for improving presentations in Presentation Zen. This should be required reading of all school administrators.
Daniel Pink is more than a little Left of me politically, but his ideas in A Whole New Mind are great.
Twitter is a great discipline for writing. It's like the Haiku of blogging. You must state your message in 140 characters. It's a good daily activity for posting ideas in a simple format.

More on Aristotle

2009-10-16T04:13:00.016-08:00

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle

When my wife and I were beginners in the study of Argentine Tango, we attended a retreat in New Jersey. I knew nothing about the dance, and on the opening night they had a milonga with a very crowded dance floor. In the United States, a crowded tango floor looks like bumper cars with dancers constantly encroaching on each other. I was too intimidated to step out on the dance floor, so my wife and I watched the dancers.

One older gentleman who looked like Peter Lorre was gracefully dancing around the floor leading his partner in very simple, but well controlled steps. The more we watched him, the more we noticed that he was so good that he and his partner never touched another dancer, and no matter how out of control another dancer was-- no one could ever touch him. He was just amazing to watch, because he never missed a step, never tried anything fancy, he just maneuvered the dance floor with an expertise I can only imagine. He did this throughout the evening with several partners.

This is another example of the difference between excellence and perfection. For Aristotle excellence is a process, where one focuses on mastering the simple elements of life. In Buenos Aires they laugh at North American tourist-dancers who take the dance floor and attempt stage moves such as kicks and spins. In Argentina, you are expected to be able to negotiate a crowded dance floor without bumping into other dancers. You are expected to know the basics with expertise. It takes years of practice to learn these basic steps and do them with excellence. This is what Aristotle was talking about when he spoke of excellence as a habit. Perfection is the professional dancer doing beautiful moves on a stage. Excellence is the average person who practices tango for years in the salons and dance halls, learning to do basic steps well on a crowded dance floor.

Quote

2009-10-14T16:25:00.001-08:00

A library is an arsenal of liberty.

--Unknown

Aristotle

2009-10-13T01:08:00.016-08:00

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle

Aristotle, Plato and Socrates are old friends from my college days. I wrote my senior thesis for my philosophy major on Plato. It's interesting to compare them, because I find myself more and more aligned with Aristotle in my life.

Socrates was this old Athenian war hero who loved to discourse with anyone who would talk to him. He could break down anyone's ideas with challenging questions, but he believed that there was always this ultimate Truth that could be attained. Law school was built around this Socratic method. The problem with Socrates is that you had to uncover this "Truth."

Plato was a student of Socrates, and he took this so-called "Truth" and turned it into perfectionism. For Plato, there was a perfect form of everything. Your goal in life was to find that perfection.

Aristotle was a student of Plato. I never understood where Aristotle was coming from, because he seemed more interested in understanding the world around him--- classifying plants and animals, that sort of thing. Now, in my old age, I understand and identify with Aristotle. It's the process, not the result. The quote above says it all: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit."

Excellence is a habit. What's the difference? "Excellence" is 32,000 people finishing a marathon, because they trained for it to the best of their abilities. "Perfection" is the world record marathoner, who stops running when he or she is no longer competitive. Of course, there is something to be said and admired in both, but it's the repetition of 32,000 people crossing the finish line that creates the beauty of the event for me.

My friend Mike Madden recently sent me a set of discus training equipment for my 60th birthday. I've never thrown a discus in my life, but I made the mistake of telling him that it was something I always thought I could do. Mike participates in the Senior Games around the country. He understands the meaning of Aristotle's statement: "Excellence is a habit." As long as I have known Mike he is always taking on a new challenge for himself, whether it be law school, dancing, drama, or the triple jump. Two years ago, He was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. His response was to take up the triple jump. Mike inspires me.

These past few weeks, I've altered my training "habits" to take up the discus. It's a skilled event that will be a challenge. Fortunately with the power of the Web, I am able to obtain a lot of information about the training and skill required to throw it. I no longer think of perfection in life; however, I hope to obtain a form of excellence through proper training habits.

da Vinci

2009-10-09T10:16:00.001-08:00

Realize that everything connects to everything else.

Leonardo da Vinci

Epictetus

2009-10-07T15:55:00.002-08:00

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.

Epictetus

Stokowski

2009-10-06T17:20:00.004-08:00

A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.

~Leopold Stokowski