Ok, so its not a Mustang, but now some of our characters (and soon all) will have probs.   Check out his little convertible.  Vroom!

Send this to your dads for this Sunday... hilarious!

I've been reading the Moral Animal and it had a really fascinating observation about self-deception.

It turns out that self-deception is likely to be a natural evolutionary advantage, developed as our perception about our outside world improved.  As you would expect, humans with better sensory perception had an advantage over rivals--they could sense danger, forage better for food, size up opponents, etc. 

Our increased sensory perception also allowed us to read body language, facial expression--look past a bad poker face, essentially. 

The self-deception comes in when it becomes and advantage not to give away a lie with your body language.  And, as we all know from George Costanza, "It's not a lie if you believe it."  To an extent, deceiving yourself first is an effective way to decieve others, and, for better or worse, the ability to deceive others is an evolutionary advantage.  Perfect example: standing up to a bully twice your size.  Perfectly translated observation to cognition to observation should tell you that you're going to get your ass handed to you.  However, if you can delude yourself enough that you actually have what it takes to win, you might get the other guy to think twice, versus smelling blood.

Of course, in this case, the combination of speed and self delusion turns out to be the best advantage.

I wonder if self delusion isn't a natural advantage of entrepreneurs?  You have to admit, attempting to knock off Google or Microsoft or whoever must come with some kind of evolutionary kool aid consumption.

Ok, nix Greenpoint of my list of places in NYC I'd like to move to....

Link: Exploring the Massive, Viscous Oil Blob That Lies Just Beneath the Streets of Greenpoint -- New York Magazine.

News at 11...

Check out my Voki take on "salad"...

Get a Voki now!

You should definitely check this out...  If nothing else, to hear the cameo by my grandmother, who recorded her scene totally ad libbed and on the fly. 

I went to go move my car last night and I happened upon a really unfortunate sight:

Some poor shlub got his car buried by a bunch of fallen branches.  At first, I pitied the owner of the little black car, until I went around for a closer inspection:

Turns out it wasn't the black car that got the brunt of the damage, and it was, in fact, the whole damn tree that game down.   Actually, what I didn't show here is that the tree actually completely missed the little black car, other than a few light branches here and there... by inches!

The whole damn thing got yanked right out of the ground at the roots:

Man, if I would have come out to discover my car like this, I'm pretty sure I would have cried.

I'll be there right under the bridge with my kayak to smack him on the head with my paddle on the off chance he actually pops back up alive from under the water.

I think it's just a trick to get rid of this idiot once and for all.  We'll let him jump, and then he'll realize there are no boats in the water to pick him up...  no rescue divers.  Hopefully, we'll just get swept out to see and we'll never have to hear about his next idiotic stunt.

"I don't see any boats under there..."

"Trust me, they're under the bridge... they just don' t want to get in the way."

If you live in Somerville, MA, you know Petsi's Pies.  I've never had the pleasure of having a piece myself *hint, hint* , but everyone in the area raves about them. 

Well, I happen to know a couple of Harvard Law students busy studying for their exams that live right down the street.  Only problem is, I'm in NYC and Petsi's doesn't deliver...not usually anyway.

But I called the shop and asked if they would be willing to hand deliever a blueberry pie down the street, which they happily obliged.  A lot of places might not have bothered, but Petsi's went the extra 344 feet (according to Google Maps) to close the deal.  Apparently the owner delivered the pie herself, "in her pie-making outfit".   Thanks!

No, not mine... this place belongs to a friend.  Tell him I sent you...

Seriously, he does...

Hmm...  maybe he is King Felix after all.   12 k's in 8 scoreless... not half bad.  Better than Curt Shilling, who is not only on my fantasy team, the Jesuit Ultimatum, but he's blogging, too.   Here's his pitch by pitch blog account of his subpar KC performance.

Gotta love the one comment:

"Hey Curt, you really bogged down my fantasy team man. Let’s get a better performance out there next week, maybe get some more K’s too. Atta kid."

I'm sure that's what drives Curt Shilling...  fantasy stat lines.

So, yesterday, I confirmed the existence of  secret Jamba Juice flavors.  I leaned over the counter and quietly asked for a White Gummy Bear.  They quickly jumped over to my side, throw a black bag over my head, hit me in the knees with a pipe and dragged me downstairs to a dimly lit room.  After several hours of painful interrogation, they finally gave me the yummiest smoothie I've ever had there, until this morning.  This morning, I noticed two new flavors in the Fruit only menu... peach and pomegranate.   The pomegranate is fantastic.

Oh, and by the way...   hey Gmail... when I click "report spam", that means I never ever want to get mail from that sender...ever.   And shouldn't it get smarter the more I click "Report Spam".  I get a bunch of Euromillions spam and "Dear Sir, please send me your bank account number" scams.

This is just a really great post about conversation  by Eric Nehrlich:

When I’m talking to friends, I’m not just reciting the events of my life. I’m struggling to put them into context, figuring out the narrative that ties them together, making sense of the chain of events so that I can understand what happened. In other words, I’m constructing my self-story. By telling it to somebody else, I’m explaining it to myself, but at the same time, the feedback that I get may encourage me to modify my understanding. For instance, if I’m talking about an interaction I had with a coworker, and I explain what they did and why I thought they did it, my friends will offer alternative explanations that may better explain the events. And I modify and retcon my story to incorporate that new interpretation...

...I should also mention that such conversations aren’t entirely selfish on my part. By using my friends to help me make sense of the world, I’m promoting our ability to make sense of each other. Because they’re helping me interpret the events of my life, they gain a better understanding of how I think about the world. And their interpretations help me better understand how they make sense of the world. Plus, i can contribute my viewpoint to help them make sense of events in their world. It’s a two-way process that builds community and trust, and also increases our ability to function in a world that doesn’t always behave in an expected fashion.

I've met someone interesting recently and gotten to know them through a ton of e-mail conversation... so much so that it has us both interested in the nature of how people get to know each other and how information and story exchange works in the process of building up friendships and relationships.   I really like how the second paragraph puts that function in perspective.

Confidence is a funny thing.  People say it's contagious, and I totally agree with that, particularly on sports teams.  I've been on some great baseball teams when I was younger and we walked onto the field thinking, or knowing, rather, that we were going to pound out 10 or 15 runs a game.  It's tough to beat that.  Similarly, when things weren't going well, we had innings that we felt like we'd never get an out.

But what's also interesting about confidence is that not only does it spread, but it often has a powerful causality that may not be initially obvious.

For example...   When you delegate, and someone doesn't carry out a task exactly as you would, your reaction can have some unintended results down the line.  Let's say you correct them in ways that aren't qualitative, but just more along the lines of style choice.  Then, the next time, they come to you for every little thing because they know you'll wind up changing it.  Eventually, you'll be creating a bunch of people that can't execute, or that you don't allow to execute.   

Even worse, when you don't get behind your staff and their decisions, eventually, people start going around them and checking with you on every little thing.  Before you know it, all roads lead to you and you become the bottleneck.

This happened to me when I was in college.  I had started a business newspaper that ran for two years, but being the perfectionist, I always wound up doing things myself if I wasn't happy with the work of the people around me.  I wouldn't settle for any kind of quality dropoff when we started.  What happened was that the people under me never really learned how to edit, do layout, etc...   and so the paper folded when I graduated.   

Plus, it's really unmotivating to a staff when they know that whatever they turn in isn't going to make the final cut anyway... that no matter what new ideas they come up with, they don't also have the power to execute them and be responsible.  They fall back on their heels because they can't move forward without you.

The dominos start falling down outside of your organization as well.  You send your staff out into the wild of business development and conferences, and it becomes obvious to others that you are not an empowered decision maker.  You get taken less seriously and your organization gets the reputation as a slow mover. 

Don't get me wrong... relying on people who don't do everything exactly the way you do or who might not be the perfectionist that you were is difficult... but sometimes, you need to let your people show you and the world what they've got, support them, and live with whatever they put out there.  Otherwise, they'll never grow up and you'll find yourself the last man standing, and your college newspaper will fold.  :)

There isn't much more to be said about the nasty comments and threats Kathy Sierra has been receiving.

Idiots.  That's what they are...   

But I do want to add one thing, though, that hasn't really been discussed...and that's the fact that Kathy Sierra isn't the first person to go through these kind of cyber attacks... she's just the most prominent, and I hope that creates a larger conversation about this kind of stuff.

There are many teens that go through this kind of thing everyday....  Cyberbullying is a major problem...  and its roots are so deep in or society that its hard to see how something like this will ever go away.

Why do people do these kinds of things?

Because it's easy.... it's easier than aspiring and succeeding to become something great.

That's really what our culture is about, isn't it?  Instead of focusing on some celebrity's positive contribution to society... or everyday people, we point and laugh at the ones who slip up, or criticize the ones we disagree with.   It's all about taking down the people who make it to the top.

It's the reason why people who aspire to elected office are pretty much an adversely selected group and all the really great, qualified people succeed quietly in the private sector.

It's the reason why no one wants to be the first one to raise their hand in our classrooms.... and why all the students rush to sit in the back.  Our best minds keep their mouths shut in fear of being brought down by idiots.

I think the worst thing anyone could do is let them win.   Of course, that's easy for me to say... I've never received a death threat. 

But, if inner city NYC public school teachers stayed home everytime they got threatened, they'd probably never show to work...    and they prob don't make half the money or get half the support of most prominent folks who receive threats.

At the end of the day, everyone's got to make their own decision on their own safety, but if you're considering holding back your thoughts and public conversation, please don't.  I don't want to see the best voices drowned out by idiots.

Enjoy, folks...  for the next 24 hours, you can listen to my (my avatar's) rendition of my favorite song, Depeche Mode's Enjoy the Silence.

I think when Voki comes out in a few weeks, I'm going to start a seperate blog with just avatar song after avatar song, everyday...   

Now that we're close to the Voki launch, I've decided I need to go back to being creative with my avatars and not just working on putting together a new platform for them.

So, without further ado, for the rest of the week, I'll be singing along to some of my favorite tunes.

If you click through today, all day Tuesday, I'll be reprising Iron Butterfly's In-a-Gadda-Da-Vita...

Seriously, click through.  It's probably the worst rendition ever...  but it's worth a listen.  I even did the instruments... click animated me.

Often times, I find myself coming up short when it comes to being involved in other people's stuff.

I involve a lot of people in my own stuff...  650+ people have joined nextNY, but the number of nextNYers whose groups and efforts I can get involved in... well... it always makes me feel like I'm coming up a bit short.   I find myself saying, "Wow... ok, I knew you were doing something, but I didn't really have the time to see what it was."

So, today, I'm playing catch up...   My "late to the party" entry for today is on noneck Noel Hidalgo's "Luck of Seven" journey.

In his words:

"for seven months, he will traverse the seven continents, dive into the seven oceans, and attempt to visit the seven ancient wonders of the world. Using a wiki, noneck will harness the collective knowledge of the globe, and report weekly on seven topics of freedom."

Ok, if there's anyone I've ever met that I could say is a "character", Noel is definitely, one of them... but the thing that makes me have enormous respect for him about is that he strives to learn.... to learn from those who have very diverse perspectives. 

So, whatever Noel learns on his trek, I think we're all going to benefit a lot from that.  He is a connector of ideas.  I've noticed lately that a lot of people I've really enjoyed getting to know are in some way connected to him, even loosely... and so I'm wondering if maybe he's onto something.

He's raising money for his trip...  $11.11 from 700 people.  Get it now?  It's all about the 7's.   He's also leaving on 7/7/07.   

He's trying to get 200 people by March 29th... and to me, spending $11.11 to send someone off to learn from people outside of our little NYC bubble and blog and wiki and vlog it for the world seems like $11.11 well spent.   I encourage you to help him out.