Taxes Send MA Millionaires Running

This article and the following excerpt came from the WSJ today:

Maryland couldn't balance its budget last year, so the state tried to close the shortfall by fleecing the wealthy. Politicians in Annapolis created a millionaire tax bracket, raising the top marginal income-tax rate to 6.25%. And because cities such as Baltimore and Bethesda also impose income taxes, the state-local tax rate can go as high as 9.45%. Governor Martin O'Malley, a dedicated class warrior, declared that these richest 0.3% of filers were "willing and able to pay their fair share." The Baltimore Sun predicted the rich would "grin and bear it."

One year later, nobody's grinning. One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller's office concedes is a "substantial decline." On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year -- even at higher rates.

HT: Carpe Diem

Kicks For Nick

I was watching Sportscenter this morning just hoping to catch some more highlights and commentary on the NBA playoffs and then this story came on. My feelings have been especially close to the surface the last several days as I really couldn't hold back the tears as I watched this story.

It really amazes me what some people can do. It's so heart-wrenching to think of the pain that family has gone through, but also this story is such a testament to the greatness that can come from people.

If you're interested in making a donation to the program, you can visit the website here.

God bless America, our troops in Iraq, and all the people who continue to struggle for freedom. Happy Memorial Day, everyone.

Glad To Be Back

I had a really vivid dream last night. So vivid, in fact, that I felt like I had to write it down in the Chris Only Journal Blog, which led to me reading some of my past entries. What a difference a couple of months, or even a few days make, right?

As I was reading some of the entries from only a few months ago, I was surprised at my excitement and enthusiasm about so many different things. I feel like the last month or two I've been in this stuck phase where I couldn't really move in any direction, but didn't really want to either. Then last week something in me clicked that has allowed me to feel like I can finally move forward again and resume feeling optimistic, and it's so nice to feel unrestrained.

Sometimes there is a lot of trepidation with closing certain doors. I'm not entirely sure why that is. Maybe it's just not knowing whether or not another one will open up. There is a lot of security in that, even when that security doesn't come from the healthiest of places.

What's really nice is that the feeling that was communicated to me in the dream I had last night was just how cared for I really am. There are people both seen and unseen who I know are there, who ache for my success and happiness as much as I do, if not more. It's nice to go home to California and realize how many people there are that truly love me, that I know I can rely upon for their support. And it's so nice to be here in Utah and realize how much that is true for people that are here too. I'm so incredibly blessed in that respect, and I feel like every day I meet more and more people that continue to open my eyes in new and really exciting ways.

This is a little side note, but it will tie back in...my mom has been involved with this multi-level marketing thing that has actually been working out quite well for. To the point where she's been able to make up the difference in the decreased revenue she's been getting from the store. At first I kept on trying to temper her excitement, but in the last couple of weeks I've been basking in how nice it has been to see my mom optimistic and excited again about life. It has been a really rough couple of years for her, and I feel like I have my mom back in a sense.

In my own right, I've felt a similar surge in my own enthusiasm and hopefulness. It's not that things have been that bad for me, but after reading those previous journal entries, I finally feel like I'm getting back to myself again. And it's just a nice feeling to be comfortable in my own skin again.

Cavs Win! Cavs Win!

Did you see this shot on Friday night?

Okay...so did you see this reaction to that shot from a Cleveland area news broadcast team? So awesome.

My Favorite Fart Stories

I love that it's a beeper commercial, and then also the look of the guy's face in the back of the car when it pans back to him the first time.

Okay...so this post is inspired by Mike Reid posting a comment on my Facebook wall. I wanted to really just tell one story, but I'll proceed that with two others as a warm-up to the crescendo...

1. Late one Saturday night, Mike and I decide to go catch The Dark Knight at the Irvine Spectrum at like midnight. We had both already seen it, and we had originally planned on trying to catch it in the IMAX, but it was sold-out. We went anyway. During the previews, in between movie trailers, Mike tries to sneak out a fart just as the theater gets silent, only it turned out to be monstrous. The best part, however, was that he didn't even realize how loud it was until I burst out laughing upon hearing it.
2. Over the last President's Day weekend, Dave and Caitlin had come out to visit Utah to get some time away and for Dave to go snowboarding. We meet up at Smokehouse (which has the best pulled pork sandwich in the world). Sitting in the dining area was just us three, plus a pair of other girls. It was about closing time and the restaurant is never busy anyway, so it was a pretty quiet atmosphere, that is, until Dave also thought he could sneak one out. Maybe it was the altitude adjustment combined with sitting on a solid, metal chair that compounded the strength of his downward outburst, but we all died laughing out how much rumbling there was from his bass box. What made it even better was overhearing one of the girls ask her friend, "omigosh...did you hear that?"
3. Okay...this is my all-time favorite fart story, and hopefully I remember the details well enough. This one comes courtesy of my buddy Greg, who is probably the gassiest person I have ever met. Seriously. It's almost always coming out both ends with this guy.
   
   The MTC cafeteria is notorious for helping to create an incredible gas pressure system within one's bowels, and that includes everyone. You're spending upwards of 12 hours a day in a classroom with Elders and Sisters, so at some point or another someone is going to push one out and everyone has a good laugh about it. In addition to a lot of class time, there are a ton of meetings, and one frequent meeting is the large group meeting where you meet with multiple districts. There are probably about 200 or so people that attend these meetings that occur usually on a weekly basis. So on top of feeling gassy all the time, as a missionary, you're tired all the time too. That's just always the case. It's a very demanding schedule that requires a ton of energy and it can be pretty overwhelming, so falling asleep in these kinds of meetings is not an uncommon occurrence.
   
   While attending one of these meetings, Elder Greg gets into a relaxed state and dozes off. So relaxed, in fact, that his sphincter loosens up enough that he lets some of the pressure escape from his bowels. The resulting fart was so loud that it woke him up, and while he realized that a fart was what had disturbed his slumber, he wasn't quite aware enough that it was he who was the culprit. So he whispers to his companion, "was that me?" At which point, dozens of shoulders suit coats begin to convulse up and down after hearing the fart and follow-up inquiry as they try and contain their laughter and maintain some semblance of reverence in the meeting.

I'm either 8 years old or farts are just inherently funny. I'll never stop laughing at that story.

Doesn't Lady Justice Wear a Blindfold?

I thought this was an article well worth reading. Williams takes some time to talk about what it is that President Obama really should be looking for when it comes to trying to replace Justice Souter.

From the article:

President Obama's articulated criteria for his nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court is: "We need somebody who's got the heart to recognize -- the empathy to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges."

What is the role of a U.S. Supreme Court justice? A reasonable start for an answer is the recognition that our Constitution represents the rules of the game. A Supreme Court justice has one job and one job only namely; he is a referee. There is nothing complicated about this. A referee's job, whether he is a football referee or a Supreme Court justice, is to know the rules of the game and make sure that they are evenly applied without bias. Do we want referees to allow empathy to influence their decisions? Let's look at it using this year's Super Bowl as an example.

The Pittsburgh Steelers have won six Super Bowl titles, seven AFC championships and hosted 10 conference games. No other AFC or NFC team can match this record. By contrast, the Arizona Cardinals' last championship victory was in 1947 when they were based in Chicago. In anyone's book, this is a gross disparity. Should the referees have the empathy to understand what it's like to be a perennial loser and what would you think of a referee whose decisions were guided by his empathy? Suppose a referee, in the name of compensatory justice, stringently applied pass interference or roughing the passer violations against the Steelers and less stringently against the Cardinals. Or, would you support a referee who refused to make offensive pass interference calls because he thought it was a silly rule? You'd probably remind him that the league makes the rules, not referees.

The comparison is a little bit too colloquial, but the point is very valid - justice requires objectivity. I guess there are two philosophies at play here: some are in the camp that fairness means favoring certain people over others because of disadvantages inherit within the system, while others feel that fairness necessitates consistent application of the law. It's hard for me to be impartial here, but does it feel completely crazy to anyone else that the President of the United States of America, whose original trade is in legal practice and teaching, would consider that justice is anything but a stable and blind administration of the law? Sigh.

Anyway, the article isn't long, but worth reading.

Tax the Rich, Lose the Rich

Arthur Laffer might be one of the smartest men in America, if for no other reason than just stating the obvious fact that taxing heavily the most productive members of our society can lead to a net decrease in tax revenues. In this article posted Monday in the Wall Street Journal, Laffer and Moore point to the fact that as the tax disparity rises between states, the rich will flee high tax states for states that tax less heavily.

Here's the problem for states that want to pry more money out of the wallets of rich people. It never works because people, investment capital and businesses are mobile: They can leave tax-unfriendly states and move to tax-friendly states.

Updating some research from Richard Vedder of Ohio University, we found that from 1998 to 2007, more than 1,100 people every day including Sundays and holidays moved from the nine highest income-tax states such as California, New Jersey, New York and Ohio and relocated mostly to the nine tax-haven states with no income tax, including Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire and Texas. We also found that over these same years the no-income tax states created 89% more jobs and had 32% faster personal income growth than their high-tax counterparts.

Did the greater prosperity in low-tax states happen by chance? Is it coincidence that the two highest tax-rate states in the nation, California and New York, have the biggest fiscal holes to repair? No. Dozens of academic studies -- old and new -- have found clear and irrefutable statistical evidence that high state and local taxes repel jobs and businesses.

What's really interesting is how states with low taxes are still able to mete out the needs of the various social services that they offer because of the fact that people are actually willing to stick around when tax rates are reasonable. And not only can they meet the needs, they can exceed the standards set by other states that are drawing heavily from rich wallets. The best example is New Hampshire:

Those who disapprove of tax competition complain that lower state taxes only create a zero-sum competition where states "race to the bottom" and cut services to the poor as taxes fall to zero. They say that tax cutting inevitably means lower quality schools and police protection as lower tax rates mean starvation of public services.

They're wrong, and New Hampshire is our favorite illustration. The Live Free or Die State has no income or sales tax, yet it has high-quality schools and excellent public services. Students in New Hampshire public schools achieve the fourth-highest test scores in the nation -- even though the state spends about $1,000 a year less per resident on state and local government than the average state and, incredibly, $5,000 less per person than New York. And on the other side of the ledger, California in 2007 had the highest-paid classroom teachers in the nation, and yet the Golden State had the second-lowest test scores.

One example of the rich fleeing for a tax haven is billionaire Buffalo Sabres owner Tom Golisano. He estimates that by moving his residence from New York to Florida, where there is no state income tax, he will be able to say $14,000 a day, which turns out to be more than $5 million a year. Crazy, right? Maybe it's crazier that it took him so long to change residences.

Salt put together a great post recently about how California is the window into the future should our country continue to lurch leftward in its politics. Yesterday, voters handed down a referendum by voting down all ballot initiatives to raise taxes, forcing legislators to reign in their spending and reconfigure the budget. Early in his stint as governor, Arnold was touted as fiscally conservative and was voted in during a special election because the previous governor had lost all control over budgetary issues. I wonder how much of the real problem lies with the governor versus how much of the blame falls on the hyper-liberal legislators that dot the state and overly powerful special interests groups that back them. Was Arnold simply to weak and inept at garnering the support he needed to stay true to his fiscally conservative roots? The last two governors have failed so I guess we'll see in the next election if the next governor will have more success combating the state legislature.

Here are a couple of other relevant points from the WSJ article:

Did the greater prosperity in low-tax states happen by chance? Is it coincidence that the two highest tax-rate states in the nation, California and New York, have the biggest fiscal holes to repair? No. Dozens of academic studies -- old and new -- have found clear and irrefutable statistical evidence that high state and local taxes repel jobs and businesses.

Martin Feldstein, Harvard economist and former president of the National Bureau of Economic Research, co-authored a famous study in 1998 called "Can State Taxes Redistribute Income?" This should be required reading for today's state legislators. It concludes: "Since individuals can avoid unfavorable taxes by migrating to jurisdictions that offer more favorable tax conditions, a relatively unfavorable tax will cause gross wages to adjust. . . . A more progressive tax thus induces firms to hire fewer high skilled employees and to hire more low skilled employees."

More recently, Barry W. Poulson of the University of Colorado last year examined many factors that explain why some states grew richer than others from 1964 to 2004 and found "a significant negative impact of higher marginal tax rates on state economic growth." In other words, soaking the rich doesn't work. To the contrary, middle-class workers end up taking the hit.

Finally, there is the issue of whether high-income people move away from states that have high income-tax rates. Examining IRS tax return data by state, E.J. McMahon, a fiscal expert at the Manhattan Institute, measured the impact of large income-tax rate increases on the rich ($200,000 income or more) in Connecticut, which raised its tax rate in 2003 to 5% from 4.5%; in New Jersey, which raised its rate in 2004 to 8.97% from 6.35%; and in New York, which raised its tax rate in 2003 to 7.7% from 6.85%. Over the period 2002-2005, in each of these states the "soak the rich" tax hike was followed by a significant reduction in the number of rich people paying taxes in these states relative to the national average. Amazingly, these three states ranked 46th, 49th and 50th among all states in the percentage increase in wealthy tax filers in the years after they tried to soak the rich.

Maybe it's time we all move to Florida.

My Girlfriend's Dead

The song taps into a different sentiment than I am going for here, but I think the thought is on the right track. I was talking to a friend some time ago about break ups and she had said that when they happen, the other person dies to you in a sense, at least if you are actually trying to move on and not going for the state of dating limbo where you're not committing to one side or the other.

Ironically, breaking up takes commitment. It takes time and there are no short cuts to it. You have to be determined to move on or it just doesn't work. It's been a little while since I've gotten over someone. In the time since it last happened I had kind of forgotten that breaking up and moving on really does involve a mourning period. There is a very necessary time for grieving that is demanded if you are really serious about a full and healthy recovery. There is a psychological component to it, where if it does not occur, you just can't seem to get a good foot forward, personally. Your feelings for the ex linger and you start to entertain thoughts of a reunion, in spite of how much you know in your mind that breaking up actually was the right thing to do, even if you weren't the one who initiated it. In the end, it really doesn't matter how right one person feels about it, because if there's just one dissenting party then it's never going to work anyway.

There are a lot of break up rituals that people have - eating, not eating, smoking, sleeping, writing, hanging out with friends, retail therapy, etc. Some break ups are of the sort where it just involves deleting her phone number, and some involve disposing of the body, fleeing the country, getting plastic surgery, and assuming a new identity. Or at least you'd like to carry that one out. I'll bet there would be a market for people going through break ups who would indulge in all sorts of crazy, off-the-wall kinds of things just to tap into the cathartic element. My rituals tend to involve watching movies, watching Scrubs episodes, exercising a lot, calling Dave, and just being around people. I don't do alone well at all, and I have trouble sleeping and eating when I'm down.

There are a few things that I always have to tell myself when I'm moving on:

• There is someone out there with a similar sense of humor that will laugh at the same kinds of inappropriate and clever things that you think are funny
• There is someone out there who can be affectionate in the ways that you appreciate
• There is someone out there who can understand you
• There is someone out there that you can be playful with
• There is someone out there that you can talk with and open up to about everything under the sun
• It's just not her, but that someone is out there and will probably fulfill your needs in a greater measure than you ever thought possible.
• Or maybe there is someone out there just attractive and funny enough that can get distract you for at least a little while.
  

Presidential Gaffes

In Jay's most recent Impromptus column he points out these recent fumblings:

Almost every day, we could have an item that says, “If George W. Bush had said that,” or, “If Sarah Palin had said that,” or, “If Dan Quayle had said that,” etc. Barack Obama says 57 states, he says “I don’t know what the term is in Austrian,” etc. And now we have “Happy Cuatro de Cinco!”

When I was coming of age, politically, there was a hot book called Reagan’s Reign of Error. Everyone laughed over it and rejoiced in it, because it was supposed to show what a dunce Reagan was. I believe there were similar books about GWB. Will there be a collection of Obama’s goofs and gaffes?

I wouldn’t wait up nights — and this will not be for lack of material. And the vice president could fill a library.

Speaking of vice presidents: Remember when Al Gore said, “A leopard never changes his stripes”? Remember when he translated our national motto — E pluribus unum — “Out of one, many,” which is bassackwards? Remember when, at Monticello, he looked at busts of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, et al., and said, “Who are these people?”

Dan Quayle’s “potatoe” episode was far more famous than any of this. Everybody makes mistakes — it’s only human. It’s just that mistakes by conservatives are . . . what? Amplified? Publicized and mocked to death, making them part of our collective memory, entering them into the national lore?

An old, frustrating story . . .

Isn't that funny and so annoying? I was between 8-12 years old when Dan Quayle's "potatoe" episode occurred, but in spite of being so young, I can vividly recall it happening. If it weren't for these conservative publications I read, I would never know anything about how often it occurs among liberal politicians as it does among conservative ones.

This American Life, Live

Last week I was able to catch the encore showing of the live taping of This American Life. It was just as awesome as I was hoping it would be. They had some old favorites come back, including Starlee Kine who was featured on a segment from August about Break-Ups. That particular episode is really great because she talks about how while going through her break-up, she concludes that what would help her most would be to write a love song. And who better to help than Phil Collins himself. So she actually writes a song about her break-up and they have her interviewing Phil getting his perspective on the song and her break-up.

The theme of the live show was Returning to the Scene. My favorite story was about a guy who had been hit by a drunk driver, but because of a clerical error by the officer was forced to pay for the damages done in the wreck. The story is just so well told and I don't want to give any spoilers even though I'm pretty sure nobody reading this will bother listening to the episode.

One of the other segments that I really enjoyed featured Joss Whedon's musical Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog. You can see the whole thing for free on Hulu by visiting this link. It's about 43 minutes. Below is one of the songs that comes from it. Whedon is the creator of such shows as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Apparently the guy didn't even know how to read music, but a couple of years ago decided that he wanted to try some different projects so he bought a piano and taught himself how to play. And now the guy is writing funny musicals. Know what else is awesome? In producing the DVD and while having to come up with a DVD commentary, he decided to do the whole thing in musical form as well, and that's what he ended up playing in the live show. Anyway, here's one of the songs from the musical, featuring Neil Patrick Harris:




And I thought this story from The Onion was pretty funny about the radio show. And it's pretty right on. So there you go. It's funny how much I love the show now.

Goodbye, Scrubs

I fully recognize that the show had dipped in quality the last few seasons, but that doesn't change the fact that there were still some treasures here and there, and I can never get enough of Turk and JD's friendship. There were a lot of moments throughout the series that really hit home for me, and a lot of times when I've laughed as hard as I've ever laughed while watching anything.

Scrubs has been with me through some tough times in the last few years when all I wanted was an escape to a TV reality that wasn't my own. Maybe that's part of why I love the show so much. In any case, I'll miss you Scrubs, at least until I can scrape together enough money to buy all the DVDs.

This is one of my favorite scenes from the last episode:

Steadying the Ark

Sometimes I amaze myself with how much I read. Today I was especially on fire, and I'm not really sure why that was the case. I've been working on this book about receiving personal revelation for some time now, Hearing the Voice of the Lord, by Gerald Lund. It is really awesome. In the book he began to relate the Old Testament story of Uzzah found in 2 Samuel 6.

Admittedly, I think not until recently did I ever begin to understand this Bible story, which goes basically like this:

The Phillistines had captured the Ark of the Covenant, and when David had become king, he was determined to retrieve it. The Ark is the most revered object in all of Israel and was to be kept in the Holy of Holies within the Tabernacle, and later the Temple. Not even the priests who were charged with taking care of it were allowed to touch it. So while delivering the Ark back to Jerusalem, it passed through a rough piece of ground and Uzzah, not a priest, reached out to steady the Ark. In verse seven it says, "And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah; and God smote him there for his error; and there he died by the ark of God."

Harsh, right? At first glance, yes. If you're like me, even at tenth glance, it still feels a little extreme. This was Elder Lund's reaction to the story as mentioned in his book:

To some this may seem to be a harsh response. Were not Uzzah's motivations good? Wasn't he just trying to protect something very sacred? Why then would he be punished so severely? The account is very brief and thre may be other factors that are not given, but some things are clear. Uzzah was not a priest. Therefore he knew he had no right to even be close to the Ark, let alone touch it. These restrictions surrounding the Ark were well known to all Israel. What was Uzzah thinking? The Ark was the symbol of the power and glory of God. Did he think that somehow Jehovah was not capable of preventing the Ark from being damaged? Did Uzzah think that God depended on him and him alone to save it?

Emphasis is mine, but I think those questions he asks are insightful. It was very presumptuous for Uzzah to react the way he did, and that he did so instinctively was an indicator of his lack of faith in the Lord's ability to take care of His own work. Pertaining to this story, Elder Bruce R. McConkie said:

I think there is no occassion for any person in this Church to fear for the destiny of the kingdom. We do not need to steady the ark, but we do need to have in our hearts a fear that we may not make ourselves worthy, that we may not hew to the line of righteousness and keep the commandments of God with that degree of valiance which will give us our exaltation in the eternal worlds.

Anyway, it just got me thinking about the various ways in which we presume to know more than God, or that we feel that somehow we are ahead of the curve in being able to anticipate what it is that He will bring about and that we must do it for Him. There are so many minor and major ways in which this tendency reveals itself - when we presume to know better than our local priesthood leaders, or when we fail to accept direction from the Prophet himself.

Rather than react as Nephi who pondered, prayed, and then was caught away in his own vision when he had questions about his father's had revealed, we react as Laman and Lemuel, who stupidly confess that they could not understand the words their father had spoken. Nephi asks them if they bothered to ask the Lord, and they reply that the Lord made no such things known to them. And I love Nephi's reaction because you can almost hear the tone of his voice in this response (1 Ne 15:10-11):

How is it that ye do not keep the commandments of the Lord? How is it that ye will perish, because of the hardness of your hearts? Do ye not remember the things which the Lord hath said? - If ye will not harden your hearts, and ask me in faith, believeing that ye shall receive, with diligence in keeping my commandments, surely these things shall be made known unto you.

It's almost like he's saying, I can't believe you guys even made it this far with the attitude that you have. How do you keep any of the commandments when you don't even understand this one basic concept?

One of the most glaring examples I can think of is how members of the church respond to the same-sex marriage debate when the leaders of the church have clearly outlined our position. I know that it's hard doctrine, but do we just react like Laman and Lemuel and hear the words and assume that because the Lord doesn't declare with a big, booming voice why it's so that he doesn't want to tell us? I wonder in how many other ways we make these same mistakes because we fail to apply our hearts to understanding.

I just wonder how many attempts I make to steady the ark because my own faith and understanding isn't up to snuff.

Welcome Baby Mason!

As most of you know, my best friend and wife have been waiting on this little guy for awhile now. He finally decided to show up - May 5, 2009 at about 8pm - about 8 days after the due date. As much as I was just hoping for him to pop out anytime while I was down in California, I'm really just glad that both he and his mother are as healthy as they seem to be.

Dave put up these pictures on Facebook yesterday and I actually started getting emotional just looking at them. It's kind of ridiculous how much I feel invested in this child, and I haven't even seen him yet. I wanted to limit the pictures to one or two, but I couldn't hold back so there are a few more:

I just love his face in this one.

I think this is my favorite picture of him so far. Not sure why. It just feels so serene and sweet.

The very proud, happy, and relieved parents.


Don't worry. I won't gush about him constantly, but there will be some controlled outbursts here and there.

I can't wait to you meet you next week, Mason. I love you guys so dearly.

Just Thought These Were Funny

A friend of mine linked to a blog that had these photos and I just thought they were really funny. They're not photoshopped at all. Apparently the guy just gains the confidence of squirrels with almonds and then takes pictures of them with Star Wars action figures. For more, go here.


This photo came via another blog I subscribe to. Let's call this image True Friendship.

Why?

Why do I insist on making things as difficult on myself as I possibly can? Why do I have no motivation to do what I'm supposed to do until the last possible second? This is the second time this week, but tonight is the worst of the two instances. Tonight means no sleep. Blurg.

Have you seen this commercial by Heineken? Not as funny as the other, but I am loving whoever they've got doing their advertising right now. Their stuff is very original and memorable. Great stuff.


Here is the original just in case you were aching for it.


Anyway, hearing that song inspired me to put together an 80s rap cd. Yup. It's awesome. I've got some old skool LL, NWA, De La Soul, Tone Loc, and A Tribe Called Quest. Is your mouth-watering yet?

I just found out over the weekend that SingStar will be releasing another game in its line of best video game series ever. What's the theme?

QUEEN!!!

And now you're probably thinking to yourself, what kind of idiot would get so excited about that game and actually preorder it 3 months early when it's not even going to sell out in the first place?

This kind of idiot:

No emails, please. Okay...now I'm off to prepare two lectures that I have to give, read three chapters, and write a reaction paper before 12pm tomorrow. Am I really 29 years old?

Thank You, 2nd Amendment

I caught this story earlier about some college students who were saved by one of their own. Here's an excerpt:

Bailey said he thought it was the end of his life and the lives of the 10 people inside his apartment for a birthday party after two masked men with guns burst in through a patio door.

“They just came in and separated the men from the women and said, ‘Give me your wallets and cell phones,’” said George Williams of the College Park Police Department.

Bailey said the gunmen started counting bullets. “The other guy asked how many (bullets) he had. He said he had enough,” said Bailey.

That’s when one student grabbed a gun out of a backpack and shot at the invader who was watching the men. The gunman ran out of the apartment.

The student then ran to the room where the second gunman, identified by police as 23-year-old Calvin Lavant, was holding the women.

“Apparently the guy was getting ready to rape his girlfriend. So he told the girls to get down and he started shooting. The guy jumped out of the window,” said Bailey.

You know what my last thought was before going to bed last night? As I'm falling asleep I started thinking, "what if someone entered my house right now trying to rob me, or worse? I have my bat that's in my car, but I'd be forced to look for some heavy, blunt object if I couldn't get to it. I need to buy a gun. If I had any money right now, that's what I'd get."

Some people are just evil. I mean straight-up, bad intentions, pure evil. I would sooner kill that kind of person than run the risk of him harming myself or any of my loved ones. I'd rather have that on my conscience than run the risk of feeling like I should have done more to protect those around me. No question.

This Is Just To Say

Last week I was catching up on the podcasts of This American Life that I had missed the last couple of weeks and one of the episodes contained this segment about the poem This Is Just To Say by William Carlos Williams:

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

And the guy who is on the show with the host, Ira Glass, hates this poem because it's one of those non-apology/apologies. In a sense, he commands forgiveness from his wife and shows no contrition. I just loved how much the poem stirred up that guy. You could really tell it bothered him. What was really great, however, was when they began to read listener submissions of their own "This Is Just To Say" poems. The one I have listed below is my favorite, not just because it's inappropriate, but the guy who did the reading of this poem does it to perfection. I mean, it's perfect perfect. Just so detached and so blasé about it (two great things about using blasé there - that's the first time I've used that word in my life and it's perfect for what I mean, and I had to do the html code for the accent mark).

What Can I Say?

At our wedding
I disappeared briefly
to have sex
with your sister
up against
the back of the porto-sands

What can I say?
the chardonnay
was so fresh and cold,

And, I,
so full of love
and a sense of family...

And I said
I'm sure one day
we'll laugh about this;

Well by one day,
I meant that day;
And by we,
I meant me;

And by laugh,
I meant laugh.

Poetry itself is awesome because it's so precise, but until I heard this guy do the reading I had kind of forgotten how important it is for it to be read aloud. That is just as much a part of what delivers the message and feeling. That's why poetry is so cool.

Practice Makes Perfect, Not Talent

Back when I was serving in Chile, my mission president really emphasized practicing our teaching craft. Having played basketball all his life, he was a sports enthusiast and often shared with us quotes by legendary college coach John Wooden, winner of 10 consecutive NCAA men's basketball championships. One of my favorites was this one:

Sportswriters often asked Coach Wooden how he had the good fortune of recruiting so many "born shooters" and "born ball handlers."

He said:

I recruit good players who love the game! When they come to my team they know that they can become great. And then we go to work and we practice, practice, practice. "Great shooters" are born after 2000 hours of shooting practice. "Great ball handlers" are born after 3000 hours of ball-handling practice. My players become great because they are disciplined, good players, who practice, practice, and practice.

This morning I came across this article by David Brooks wherein he talks about how Genius is tied more to perseverance than talent. He says:

We, of course, live in a scientific age, and modern research pierces hocus-pocus. In the view that is now dominant, even Mozart’s early abilities were not the product of some innate spiritual gift. His early compositions were nothing special. They were pastiches of other people’s work. Mozart was a good musician at an early age, but he would not stand out among today’s top child-performers.

What Mozart had, we now believe, was the same thing Tiger Woods had — the ability to focus for long periods of time and a father intent on improving his skills. Mozart played a lot of piano at a very young age, so he got his 10,000 hours of practice in early and then he built from there.

The latest research suggests a more prosaic, democratic, even puritanical view of the world. The key factor separating geniuses from the merely accomplished is not a divine spark. It’s not I.Q., a generally bad predictor of success, even in realms like chess. Instead, it’s deliberate practice. Top performers spend more hours (many more hours) rigorously practicing their craft.

I guess there's something to be said for having a genetic disposition to be able to focus and work at a craft so meticulously, but in the end it really comes down to a person's dedication. Sure, there is a certain amount of natural talent involved with anything, but you'll find a lot more superstars who are successful because they work at it more than just having a natural inclination toward the subject.

A few months ago a guy I blog-stalk wrote about this same topic. He does not have permalinks set up for his individual blog posts so you'll have to go to December 2008 and scroll down about halfway to the post called Best. He mentions:

I have re-reshaped the message even further to hew closer to how one Nobel chemist explained his success. I forget his name. He freely admits that he is not the brightest mind in his field. His colleagues think he is a jerk. So far we seem to have a lot in common, well, besides that Nobel thing. He explains how he competes with more gifted colleagues by noting that while his "best" is not better than their "best," most people don't do their best. Invariably, your "best" will be better than the half-hearted attempt of someone brilliant.

In that post he cites another article from Fortune that talks about how the secret to greatness is practice and hardwork. I might even like that Fortune article more than the first one by Brooks, just because it lists more examples and is a little more thorough. The article says:

All this scholarly research is simply evidence for what great performers have been showing us for years. To take a handful of examples: Winston Churchill, one of the 20th century's greatest orators, practiced his speeches compulsively. Vladimir Horowitz supposedly said, "If I don't practice for a day, I know it. If I don't practice for two days, my wife knows it. If I don't practice for three days, the world knows it." He was certainly a demon practicer, but the same quote has been attributed to world-class musicians like Ignace Paderewski and Luciano Pavarotti.

Many great athletes are legendary for the brutal discipline of their practice routines. In basketball, Michael Jordan practiced intensely beyond the already punishing team practices. (Had Jordan possessed some mammoth natural gift specifically for basketball, it seems unlikely he'd have been cut from his high school team.)

In football, all-time-great receiver Jerry Rice - passed up by 15 teams because they considered him too slow - practiced so hard that other players would get sick trying to keep up.

Tiger Woods is a textbook example of what the research shows. Because his father introduced him to golf at an extremely early age - 18 months - and encouraged him to practice intensively, Woods had racked up at least 15 years of practice by the time he became the youngest-ever winner of the U.S. Amateur Championship, at age 18. Also in line with the findings, he has never stopped trying to improve, devoting many hours a day to conditioning and practice, even remaking his swing twice because that's what it took to get even better.

I think all this ties nicely into one of the quotes that I had included in a post I wrote last week about James Rogan. People achieve greatness by persevering. My mission president also to used to say (he probably still does) that you can't achieve great things when you are constantly thinking petty thoughts. It takes the steady dedication of a lifetime, which for many, is more rare than finding the actual talent. But like Rogan notes, while people may inherit money or talents, they don't inherit greatness. That's left up to you and me.