I rarely have patience to read through a very long Times article, but I actually did read these two long and fascinating NYT Magazine articles in the last couple of weeks. I highly recommend them to anyone interested in sociology, politcs, psychology, or any mix of the three.

Is Obama the End of Black Politics? is about how the concept of “Black Politics” - that is, the relevance and meaning of blacks in politics - may change forever if Obama gets elected. Fascinating points of view in this article.

The Trolls Among Us is an anthropological study of Internet subculture and its evils. What is the effect of anonymity on morality? Very fascinating.

What the…? [bison grunting] You guys okay? We’re trapped, and there’s seven of us. There’s no way we’ll fit in there. There’s room for eight. Oh, forget it, we have too many beverages. There’s, like, 12 cup holders in here. But what about this bison? [bison grunts] That thing got my blood a-boilin’. It’s probably just the seat warmer. (male announcer) seating for eight. only from honda…

Read this out loud and try not to smile. How do they come up with this stuff???

Lots of people ask me what it’s like growing up in New York city. This NY Times article about billboards that use video cameras to see who is looking at them gave me a thought that adds some color to what it’s like in New York. People interviewed in the article characterized these cameras as an invasion of privacy. It’s odd, but walking on the street with thousands of people around you actually feels more “private” than walking around in your apartment building! It seems weird but I can definitely relate to the feeling of freedom and anonymity when I’m walking around the city.

Woo hoo! 1 year down, 1 to go. I truly feel like a different person than I was just 9 months ago. I’ll be back in NYC in mid-late May and I’ll be living in midtown west. I’m very excited for this summer.

I heard a story about this on the radio Saturday and it cracked me up. Talk about taking “fear in the media” to the extreme… I’ve heard about murders and robberies, floods, tornados, etc. But when was the last time you heard about the end of the universe? This NYT article does a great job of explaining the story from both sides, keeping a bit of tongue-in-cheek but also a bit of genuine concern. An excerpt:

…Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.”

I pretty much went into hiding since January because I was devoting 99% of my free time to finding a summer internship. I applied to 18 companies, and I had seven interviews (some were two-part interviews). I decided this week to accept my offer from Unilever to assist their marketing efforts this summer in their Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey office.

If you aren’t familiar with the company, they are the firm behind personal care brands such as: All, Axe, Caress, Dove, Degree, Q-Tips, Slim-Fast, Snuggle, Suave, and Vaseline… and they are also behind food brands such as: Ben & Jerry’s, Bertolli, Breyer’s, Country Crock, Good Humor, Hellman’s, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, Klondike, Lipton, Popsicle, Skippy, and Wishbone. I do not yet know which brand I will be working on, but I’m excited just to have the chance.

Frankly, I’m amazed that they gave me the offer. As a former software developer, it is not easy to convince an interviewer that I want to go into consumer packaged goods (CPG) marketing. Thanks in part to the conversational format of the Unilever interview, I think I was able to get across my genuine interest in working for them, so I’m extremely glad it worked out. I will not disappoint them this summer!

Your view of what’s right or wrong is entirely based upon what you already believe. Therefore, changing your perspective requires a leap of faith or discovery of some unconscious belief.

I just read my alumni note in the newly-published Dalton Alumni magazine. If you came here after reading it… hi! Long time no see! How are you?

Also… I feel obligated to mention that I never actually wanted my Web address in the magazine but it’s not a big deal. Just don’t expect anything great!

One of my professors had a funny comment regarding antitrust and politics:

“The Democrats think that every move a big corporation makes is anticompetitive, and the Republicans think that if a big corporation does it, it must be good for America! Neither view is correct.”

What a great idea: a Web site where you get to learn vocab and donate food to the hungry for free. Check it out: http://www.freerice.com/

I swear this is too funny to be real, but it was in the NY Times! I felt like I was reading an Onion article. Here is the article, and here are my favorite quotes:

Tim (12 years old) explained the game’s allure: “It’s just fun blowing people up.”

“We want to make it hard for teenagers to go to hell,” Mr. Barbour (Minister) wrote in a letter to parents at the church.

… Mr. Barbour (also) wrote that God calls ministers to be “fishers of men.” … “Teens are our ‘fish,” he wrote. “So we’ve become creative in baiting our hooks.”

Playing Halo is “no different than going on a camping trip,” said Kedrick Kenerly, founder of Christian Gamers Online, an Internet site whose central themes are video games and religion. “It’s a way to fellowship.”

“If you want to connect with young teenage boys and drag them into church, free alcohol and pornographic movies would do it,” said James Tonkowich, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a nonprofit group that assesses denominational policies. “My own take is you can do better than that.”

Hundreds of churches use Halo games to connect with young people, said Lane Palmer, the youth ministry specialist at the Dare 2 Share Ministry… The organization recently sent e-mail messages to 50,000 young people about how to share their faith using Halo 3. Among the tips: use the game’s themes as the basis for a discussion about good and evil.

In rural Minnesota, Mr. Drexler said, the church needs something powerful to compete against the lure of less healthy behaviors. “We have to find something that these kids are interested in doing that doesn’t involve drugs or alcohol or premarital sex.” His congregation plans to double to eight its number of TVs, which would allow 32 players to compete at one time.

India, now an expert on outsourcing, has figured out that it makes sense for it to outsource work that has been outsourced to itself! Here is the NY Times article.

It makes perfect sense since the data/work is already in the perfect form to be outsourced from the target firm… what’s the difference where it’s actually made? So Indian firms have it done in even cheaper places than India.

Sometimes the most difficult aspect of perfecting a skill is unlearning all those bad habits we unconsciously developed along the way.

I was innocently doing my laundry when one of these bad boys flies onto the door of the dryer I was loading up:

This thing was about 2 inches long!!! I have never in my life seen anything remotely like it! It did not take much for me to realize what I had to do: I slammed the door shut on the monster… It doesn’t take an MBA to figure that one out. Meanwhile, my friend Scott was confronted with a raccoon when he was carrying his laundry upstairs from his basement. This kind of stuff would not happen in New York!

Warren Buffett gave a great speech at U Florida in the recent past (not sure exactly when). His advice is solid common sense and well worth listening to. You might want to grab a soda, this is a long video: