Author Archives: Steve Mays

You don’t want to be typical

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It took me a long time to learn that typical is no good. There’s no reason to regard it as the “good enough” line. Typical health is pretty bad. A typical career is draining and unrelated to the worker’s real interests. Typical credit card debt is in the thousands. The typical level of fulfillment in a person’s life is far below where it could be with some self-examination and habit overhauls.

Nobody dreams of being typical. You do not want a typical job. You do not want typical credit card debt. You do not want typical health. You do not want to retire at the typical age. You do not want typical results. You do not want a typical level of fulfillment. Nobody does. Stop pretending.

From another inspiring post by David Cain »

Contrition

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I’m not clear what Lance Armstrong hoped to accomplish with his highly publicized interview with Oprah. I watched only a few minutes and — based on lots of news items — gather it wasn’t well received.

I’m not a sports fan so when Mark McGwire, Roger Clemons, Tiger Woods or Lance Armstrong get caught lying/doping/gambling/etc, I’m not shocked or disappointed.

But Armstrong’s high-profile apology get me thinking about what I might have said and how I might have said it. Obviously one can’t really know this until they’re in such a situation, but just for fun…

Oprah, before you ask your first question, let me set the record straight on some things.

I’m a liar. I’ve lied about doping from the beginning and there’s no reason for anyone to believe anything I say today.

I used my power and money and influence to attack and destroy those who told the truth about what I was doing. I’m going to try to apologize to each of these people personally. I don’t expect forgivness, it just seems like something I should do. Many of them proably won’t want to see my face and I can’t say that I blame them.

While I can’t undo all the harm I’ve done, there are some things I need to do to try to make amends.

I’ve made a lot of money from product endorsements and other ventures and I’m giving every penny to those I’ve harmed. I’ve asked (insert name of someone with some integrity) to oversee this process which I want to be completed within 90 days. He will make the determination of how to distribut my assets, including my homes, cars, everything. I’m keeping nothing.

As for my future, I will never compete professionally again. I wil do no endorsements (in the unlikely event someone should ask). I’m going to get a regular job to support my family and try to live as anonymously as possible for the rest of my life.

My actions did imeasurable harm to the sport I loved. Cycling should never have been about fame and glory and money. If there is any positive legacy for me, maybe it’s to remind people of that.

What’s your first question, Oprah?

Larry Page Interview

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“If you’re not doing some things that are crazy, then you’re doing the wrong things.”

“Companies fail because they do the wrong things or they aren’t ambitious, not because of litigation or competition.”

“Governments are now afraid of the Internet because of the Middle East stuff, and so they’re a little more willing to listen to what I see as a lot of commercial interests that just want to make money by restricting people’s freedoms.”

Larry Page

Soldier of Fortune Tour: David Brazeal

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SOF-tour1

I’ve started dropping pins on my Soldier of Fortune Tour map. I drove down to Springfield, MO yesterday to have lunch with David Brazeal. We worked together for many years and he’s self-employed now so he was generous with his time. We talked for 3 hours. As much as I enjoy digital communication, there is no substitute for sitting across a table from a friend. Looking forward to doing more of this.

“Your hands are not made to type memos”

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“Technology, outsourcing, a growing temp staffing industry, productivity efficiencies, have all replaced the middle class. The working class. Most jobs that existed 20 years ago aren’t needed now. Maybe they never were needed. The entire first decade of this century was spent with CEOs in their Park Avenue clubs crying through their cigars, “how are we going to fire all this dead weight?” 2008 finally gave them the chance.”

“Your hands are not made to type out memos. Or put paper through fax machines. Or hold a phone up while you talk to people you dislike. A hundred years from now your hands will rot like dust in your grave. You have to make wonderful use of those hands now.”

From an article on TechCrunch

The Underpopulation Bomb

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Kevin Kelly on what we should be worried about:

The picture for the latter half of this century will look like this: Increasing technology, cool stuff that extends human life; more older people who live longer, millions of robots, but few young people. Another way to look at the human population in 100 years from now is that we’ll have the same number of over-60-year olds, but several billion fewer youth.

Here is the challenge: this is a world where every year there is a smaller audience than the year before, a smaller market for your goods or services, fewer workers to choose from, and a ballooning elder population that must be cared for. We’ve never seen this in modern times; our progress has always paralleled rising populations, bigger audiences, larger markets and bigger pools of workers. It is hard to see how a declining yet aging population functions as an engine for increasing the standard of living every year. To do so would require a completely different economic system, one that we are not prepared for at all right now.

Consciousness

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Conscious book cover“The idea that humans are special, that they are singled out by the gift of consciousness above all other creatures, stems from the deeply held Judeo-Christian belief that we occupy a privileged place in the order of things, a belief with a biblical but no empirical basis. We are not special. We are just one species among uncountable others.”

“Imagine a construction set of a thousand different types of LEGO bricks of distinct colors, shapes, and sizes. The human cerebral cortex has sixteen billion bricks chosen from these types, assembled according to fantastically elaborate rules, such as a red 2×4 brick is linked to a blue 2×4 but only if it is near a yellow 2×2 roof tile and a green 2×6 piece. From this is born the vast interconnectedness of the brain.”

“It is not the nature of the stuff that the brain is made out of that matters for mind, it is rather the organization of that stuff – the way the parts of the system are hooked up , their causal interactions.”

— Consciousness by Christof Koch

Django Unchained

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From Bob Cesca’s review of Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained:

“The abomination of slavery in the United States and especially the psychopathy of slave owners is what will lastingly stick with me about the movie, and I’m strangely grateful for it. I’m grateful to have been reminded of the shocking truth that half of this nation as recently as 150 years ago treated African Americans as livestock to be abused and exploited however they pleased, and why, until 1861, the other half did nothing to stop it. In the end, perhaps Tarantino sought to make us all want to be Django and Dr. Schultz — to inflict justice and retribution upon the purveyors of that loathsome, nightmarish endeavor.”

I felt like I was watching something more than a gory western but would not have been able to explain why. Mr. Cesca’s review captures what I was thinking and feeling about this movie.

Twitter Radio

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Twitter is my first source for breaking news. If anything big (that I care about) happens, it will show up first in my Twitter feed. I guess a cable news channel might come close or a good all-news radio station (do those still exist?) but my Twitter stream is non-stop in my pocket. Smart news organization (NPR and Reuters, for example) know they need to have their stories where I am, rather than try to get me to come to where they are.
twitter-radio