Adam Shand:

The flexibility to manage your own time is invaluable.

Sometimes managing your friends really sucks.

It's possible to get accustomed to anything. Make bloody sure you are aware of what you've become accustomed to.

Curiosity is worth looking for, especially in technical interviews.

Donald Rumsfeld:

Learn to say "I don't know." If used when appropriate, it will be often.

Martin Schwartz:

Science makes me feel stupid too. It's just that I've gotten used to it.

Robert McNamara:

Rationality will not save us.

Colin Powell:

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.

Norm Augustine:

Ninety percent of the time things will turn out worse than you expect. The other 10 percent of the time you had no right to expect so much.

Richard Hamming:

If you do not work on an important problem, it's unlikely you'll do important work.

Lessons Learned from Previous Employment

David Foster Wallace:

If you've never wept and want to, have a child.

Caution.

D. T. Max on DFW:

Wallace was trying to write differently, but the path was not evident to him.

Also:

Thought you’d like this!!!

Incarnations of Burned Children

Drake Bennett:

If you were given the choice, and you wanted to reduce human suffering by as much as possible, would you cure blindness or back pain? It seems a silly question. The thought of losing one's sight is, to most people, as frightening as it is depressing: we would no longer be stirred by sunsets or landscapes or the expressions on the faces of our loved ones. Everyday chores would become more difficult, crossing the street perilous. Many sports and pastimes would simply be off-limits, and we would lose a good deal of our independence.

Back pain, on the other hand, is just back pain.

But in fact, it's back pain that causes more misery.

From the archive:

If you saw two guys named Hambone and Flippy, which one would you think liked dolphins the most? I'd say Flippy, wouldn't you? You'd be wrong, though. It's Hambone.

Perfectly Happy

Craig M. Mullaney:

On September 29, 2003, on a lonely windswept ridge on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border dotted with ancient ruins and scrub pines, my platoon was ambushed. In the opening salvo, four bullets struck Private First Class Evan O’Neill beneath his body armor. He bled to death quickly. Since I was his platoon leader, he was my responsibility. I had vowed to bring him and all of my men home to their parents, children, spouses, and neighbors. When we returned to our mud fort that evening, the first sergeant read the roll call and repeated Evan’s name three times before another sergeant responded, according to custom, “Evan O’Neill is no longer with us.” I returned to my cot, struggled to unlace my boots, and cried myself to sleep.

Mullaney's book is must-read.

On a moonlit night early in Ranger School, my squad collapsed from exhaustion after more than 40 hours of patrolling without sleep. The Ranger instructor infiltrated our unguarded perimeter and woke us up with gunfire. As punishment for our lapse in vigilance, he ordered our squad to hoist our heavy packs and follow behind as he marched mile after mile along the sandy firebreaks of Fort Benning.

Eventually we slowed to a halt and the Ranger instructor asked each of us in turn why we were at Ranger School. Our answers, predictably, ranged from “For the challenge” to “My platoon sergeant made me.” The instructor stared at us silently, unsatisfied, and responded, “You’re not here for any of those reasons.” We looked at him blankly.

“You are here for the troops you’re going to lead. I don’t care if you’re tired, hurt, or lonely. This is for them. And they deserve better. You owe them your Ranger tab.” He paused. “Fuck self-pity,” he added with a hiss. “This isn’t about you.”

This Isn't About You

Joshua Wolf Shenk:

Is there a formula—some mix of love, work, and psychological adaptation—for a good life? For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining this question, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. Here, for the first time, a journalist gains access to the archive of one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies in history. Its contents, as much literature as science, offer profound insight into the human condition—and into the brilliant, complex mind of the study’s longtime director, George Vaillant.

Have you seen Seven Up!?

Happiness Isn't About "Me"

Tom Hayden:

The Pentagon's official Quadrennial Defense Review (2005) commits the United States to a greater emphasis on fighting terrorism and insurgencies in this "arc of instability." The Center for American Progress repeats the formulation in arguing for a troop escalation and ten-year commitment in Afghanistan, saying that the "infrastructure of jihad" must be destroyed in "the center of an 'arc of instability' through South and Central Asia and the greater Middle East."

The implications of this doctrine are staggering. The very notion of a fifty-year war assumes the consent of the American people, who have yet to hear of the plan, for the next six national elections. The weight of a fifty-year burden will surprise and dismay many in the antiwar movement. Most Americans living today will die before the fifty-year war ends, if it does. Youngsters born and raised today will reach middle age. Unborn generations will bear the tax burden or fight and die in this "irregular warfare."

There is a chance, of course, that the Long War can be prevented. It may be unsustainable, a product of imperial hubris. Public opinion may tire of the quagmires and costs--but only if there is a commitment to a fifty-year peace movement.

The Other Donald:

Things will not be necessarily continuous.
The fact that they are something other than perfectly continuous
Ought not to be characterized as a pause.
There will be some things that people will see.
There will be some things that people won't see.
And life goes on.

On January 21, 2000, a year before he would move into the White House, George Bush said:

When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world.

And we knew exactly who the "they" were.

It was us versus them, and it was clear who "them" was.

Today we're not sure who the "they" are but we know they're there.

A dialogue between Dyson and Brand:

Dyson: It's very important that we adapt to the world on the long-time scale as well as the short-time scale. Ethics are the art of doing that. You must have principles that you're willing to die for.

Brand: Do you have a list of these principles?

Dyson: No. You'll never get everybody to agree about any particular code of ethics.

Brand: In some cultures you're supposed to be responsible out to the seventh generation -- that's about 200 years. But it goes right against self-interest.

Understanding the Long War

Yaroslav Trofimov for WSJ:

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood is on the defensive, its struggles reverberating throughout Islamist movements that the secretive organization has spawned world-wide.

The Brotherhood engaged in assassinations and bombings in the past, and one of its ideologues, Sayyid Qutb, developed a radical theology that still motivates jihadi groups such as al Qaeda. Since the 1970s, however, the Egyptian Brotherhood renounced violence and rejected Mr. Qutb's more fiery theories. It has focused instead on building an Islamic society from the bottom up, through proselytizing, social work and political activism.

In such an environment, the Brotherhood's strategy has long been to run heavily publicized parallel social services. But the Brotherhood's social-services pitch doesn't always match reality, in part because of the campaign against its financing. On a recent evening visit to the two Brotherhood clinics, no doctor or patients could be seen. The clinics themselves turned out to be tiny rooms tucked into corners of Brotherhood offices. Behind the flimsy curtains, they contained little more than a cupboard full of pills, rickety furniture and a blood-pressure gauge.

"In the beginning, the Brotherhood had a lot of popularity -- people thought they'd achieve something. But once they got into parliament, they've become just like everyone else."

Decius:

When you put God and the king in the same chair the result must be despotism.

Economist on Obama:

He has to start deciding whom to disappoint.

Muslim Brotherhood Falters as Egypt Outflanks Islamists

Cass Sunstein has a new book.

Why do people become extremists? What makes people become so dismissive of opposing views? Why is political and cultural polarization so pervasive in America? Why do groups of teenagers, investors, and corporations take unnecessary risks? What leads groups to engage in such destructive acts as terrorism and ethic cleansing?

In Going to Extremes, renowned legal scholar and best-selling author Cass Sunstein offers startling insights into why and when people gravitate toward extremism.

From the archive:

I wonder, when was the last time a talk show changed a mind?

Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide

Publishers Weekly Starred Review:

Originally self-published, Daniel Suarez's riveting debut would be a perfect gift for a favorite computer geek or anyone who appreciates thrills, chills and cyber suspense.

Gaming genius Matthew Sobol, the 34-year-old head of CyberStorm Entertainment, has just died of brain cancer, but death doesn't stop him from initiating an all-out Internet war against humanity. When the authorities investigate Sobol's mansion in Thousand Oaks, Calif., they find themselves under attack from his empty house, aided by an unmanned Hummer that tears into the cops with staggering ferocity. Sobol's weapon is a daemon, a kind of computer process that not only has taken over many of the world's computer systems but also enlists the help of superintelligent human henchmen willing to carry out his diabolical plan. Complicated jargon abounds, but most complexities are reasonably explained. A final twist that runs counter to expectations will leave readers anxiously awaiting the promised sequel.

See also, Gold Bug Variations, by Richard Powers:

Despite occasional bewilderment at arid patches of scientific jargon and interminable displays of arcane knowledge for its own sake, a reader persists with The Gold Bug Variations (the title, obviously, is a play on Bach's Goldberg Variations , which have a key role in the book's intellectual structure, and Edgar Allan Poe's The Gold Bug , about the solving of a puzzle). For there is a perpetual air of surprise about the book, of intellectual excitement, a passionate involvement with words that expands into delightfully witty dialogue and profoundly evocative description. Reading it is hard work, but it's also deeply enriching; the decade is not likely to bring another novel half as challenging and original.

Daemon

Toby Segaran and Jeff Hammerbacher:

In this insightful book, you'll learn from the best data practitioners in the field just how wide-ranging -- and beautiful -- working with data can be. Join 39 contributors as they explain how they developed simple and elegant solutions on projects ranging from the Mars lander to a Radiohead video.

With Beautiful Data, you will:

* Explore the opportunities and challenges involved in working with the vast number of datasets made available by the Web
* Learn how to visualize trends in urban crime, using maps and data mashups
* Discover the challenges of designing a data processing system that works within the constraints of space travel
* Learn how crowdsourcing and transparency have combined to advance the state of drug research
* Understand how new data can automatically trigger alerts when it matches or overlaps pre-existing data
* Learn about the massive infrastructure required to create, capture, and process DNA data

That's only small sample of what you'll find in Beautiful Data. For anyone who handles data, this is a truly fascinating book.

Consider the chapter, Beautiful Political Data.

From the recent archive, Peter Norvig:

Invariably, simple models and a lot of data trump more elaborate models based on less data.

So, follow the data.

Beautiful Data: The Stories Behind Elegant Data Solutions