Jeremy Lin Is No Fluke

Jeremy Lin Is No Fluke:

It’s also worth watching to see whether Lin can extend the streak tonight against Minnesota. Only 17 of the 41 players had streaks that lasted for longer than four games, with many of the more marginal players dropping off the list.

[Er, um, done:]

Lin LIfts Knicks past Timberwolves:

But he still became the first player in N.B.A. history to post at least 20 points and 7 assists in his first four starts, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, while outplaying the flashy Minnesota rookie point guard Ricky Rubio. And he burnished his growing legacy at the finish, making the second of two free throws for the go-ahead point with 4.9 seconds to play as the Knicks, who trailed most of the second half, eked out the victory. 

[And next…]

Only five players had such a streak that lasted for six games or longer. Four of them are Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Isiah Thomas and Dwyane Wade. The other was less illustrious: Lafayette “Fat” Lever.

[Now, on the bigger picture…]

Bryant had this to say:

…in hushed tones for gravitas: “When a player is playing that well, he doesn’t come out of nowhere. It seems like he comes out of nowhere. Go back and take a look, and the skill level was probably there from the beginning, it’s just that we didn’t notice it.”

[This is something I’ve been teaching people for years. No one comes out of nowhere. No actor, no musician, no business. It just doesn’t work that way. Yes, you can win the lotto of life at times, but the odds are just that long. Almost 100% of the time there’s years of effort behind an “overnight sensation”.]

Stuff like this has network effects:

For me, as an Asian-American, the chants of “M.V.P.!” raining down on Lin at the Garden embody a surreal, Jackie Robinson-like moment. Just as meaningful to me as a Christian, however, is the way the broadcasters have hailed Lin as not just the “Harvard hero” but the “humble Harvard grad.” His teammates appear just as overjoyed at his success as he was. Both seem to be testaments to his character.

In the midst of his stellar run last week, I couldn’t help but reflect on Lin’s journey. A Bible verse that he has cited as a favorite came to mind, encouraging believers that “suffering produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us.”

[Linsanity? Best thing to happen to the Knicks in a long time. And maybe to a lot of folks who needed to believe.]

collin’s gist: But what about the cheaters?

collin’s gist: But what about the cheaters?:

I would design a system that lets players play. And then I would design an identity system that reduces complete anonymity and records all the action of the game. Nobody wants to play with a cheater and a cheater will be on record.

[I like this idea a lot. It plays into my sense of simplicity and the natural world. I’ve repeatedly used this pattern in my life, writing music for the players rather than the other way around. In the end, rules must be embraced as a willful limitation and ultimately cannot be enforced.]

Bread elevates your sense of “home”

Fresh!

If you want make any abode feel like a home you should bake bread. I don’t know why it makes this seem truer than preparing other food stuffs. But it does. Never done it before? Think you lack the equipment? Here’s what to do. Go to your local pizza place. Ask for one of the uncooked rounds of dough they make into a pizza. Take it home, shape to suit, pop into the oven until it looks done to you. Wonder at how you’ve just elevated the sense of home in your house, apartment, hovel, what have you…

Now, start looking at recipes…

Don’t Reinvent The Wheel, Steal It: An Urban Planning Award for Cities That Copy

Don’t Reinvent The Wheel, Steal It: An Urban Planning Award for Cities That Copy:

Cities around the world may all be struggling with the same problems, from building affordable housing to boosting internet access, but a lack of dialogue means that local governments rarely copy each other’s successful ideas.  The world’s “567,000 mayors are reinventing the wheel, every single one of them with everything” they do, says Sascha Havemeyer, general director of Living Labs Global, a Copenhagen-based non-profit that encourages collaboration among the world’s cities.

Part of the problem is political pressure to contract with local businesses only, which makes it hard for city governments to look to outsiders for advice and solutions. “The logic behind that is it helps local companies grow,” says Havemeyer, but it can cost up to fifty times as much to recreate a product or service instead of importing it from elsewhere.

[I’m sure there are patterns books for cities considering software development borrowed the concept from architecture. The rest should be locally adjusted and built. atmo]

I have a bad feeling about this

I have a bad feeling about this – raganwald’s posterous:

Now in the next century, what does a somewhat battered and out-of-date protocol droid observe? That everything old is new again. The “intellectual property cartels” act like the hardware giants of old, buying politics by the pound and telling everyone who will listen that they need more protection for their patent portfolio, more protection for their cartoon characters, more protection for even the depiction of sporting events.

They tell us that only a “managed economy” for intellectual “property” will preserve jobs, and that ifthe serfs have more “freedom,” this will actually lead to slavery. The warn us that roving bands of pirates are living it up like drug barons on movie downloads. They explain how they need the senate to grant them special, temporary powers to download the contents of your phone or laptop when you cross the border, they explain why they need to send violent special forces police to arrest and extradite the owners of a file downloading business, they explain why they need to monitor the entire world’s tweets looking for jokes in poor taste.

And that’s just how they run politics. If you want to create the future, the possibility of successfully navigating a patent minefield is approximately 3,720 to 1. And I noticed earlier, the electoral motivator has been damaged. It’s impossible to go to political innovation speed.

We are, I think, at the beginning of Act III. Some of you will agree with me that surrender is a perfectly acceptable alternative in extreme circumstances. But others will climb into their trusty ships and continue the fight, harassing and wounding the entrenched interests until the whole thing collapses under the weight of its own corruption. The future of our economy really does depend on the rebels succeeding. At every point in the last forty years, wealth, health, and happiness in our economy have been built on the freedom to disrupt the entrenched powers, not the preservation of their rent-seeking monopolies.
More jobs and businesses have been created by VCRs than destroyed by them. More jobs and businesses have been created by the breakup of AT&T than destroyed by it. More jobs and businesses have been created by the decline of IBM than lost in Armonk. More jobs and businesses have been created by the stagnation of Microsoft than lost in Redmond. And it will be the same with the RIAA, the MPAA, Intellectual Ventures, and everyone else scheming to enthral the people with digital “rights” management and criminal prosecution of “file sharing.” In the destruction of the monopolization of ideas, lie the seeds of a new revolution, one that will bring wealth, freedom, and jobs.

Rebels, the force will be with you. Always.

[Insightful.]

A Proposal for Penn Station and Madison Square Garden

A Proposal for Penn Station and Madison Square Garden:

The 1912 Post Office facade — also by McKim, Mead & White, with the “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom” inscription — will then become the face of Amtrak. That will restore a superficial measure of the dignity to railway travel that was lost in 1963 when the old Pennsylvania Station was torn down. But the experience for most people using the building will not be like the glory of moving through Grand Central or the old Penn Station. Aesthetically, a top-ranking state official confided to me in all seriousness, the Moynihan project aspires to be more like the Frank R. Lautenberg Rail Station in Secaucus, N.J.

Years ago the critic Ada Louise Huxtable noted that at the turn of the last century the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Alexander Cassatt, wanted to build a hotel atop Penn Station to exploit valuable air rights. But his architect, McKim, talked him out of it. The railroad owed the city a “thoroughly and distinctly monumental gateway,” McKim argued. Idealism temporarily triumphed over commerce, until McKim’s great building, across several troubled decades, became an increasingly rundown emblem of urban glory and gave way to an architecture of gloomy pragmatism and moneyed interests.

There is historic justice in trying to rectify a crime committed a half-century ago that galvanized the architectural preservation movement. “One entered the city like a god; one scuttles in now like a rat,” is the familiar lament from Vincent J. Scully Jr., the Yale architectural historian, about the difference between the former and present Penn Stations.

[the Rail Station in Secaucus is horrendous. A strange hard to navigate, joyless, gateway to NJ. Fitting since until recently that state has lacked any sort of integrity. But horrendous. If I have a vote… I’d move the Garden.]

All or something

All or something:

This is of course nothing new. We’ve been playing this bongo drum for years. But every time I see people crumble and quit from the crunch-mode pressure cooker, I think what a shame, it didn’t have to be like that. It’s the same when I read yet another story about someone who won the startup lottery, and the stereotypical startup role model is glorified and cemented again.

It’s almost like we need another word. Startup is a great one, but I feel like it’s been forever hijacked for this narrow style, and “starting a business” just doesn’t have the sex appeal. Any suggestions?

[I don’t have a suggestion, but I agree that it isn’t all or nothing.]

Apple’s iTunes Match: The First Royalties Are In

Apple’s iTunes Match (aka iMatch): The First Royalties Are In | TuneCorner Music Blog:

The music industry needs innovation. Services like iMatch, Spotify, Simfy, Deezer and others are bringing that innovation—it will take some time to learn which are the ones consumers want.  But in the interim, seeing an additional $10,000+ appear out of the thin air for TuneCore Artists by people just listening to songs they already own is amazing!

[Hmmm.]

23 and 1/2 hours: What is the single best thing we can do for our health?

23 and 1/2 hours: What is the single best thing we can do for our health? – YouTube:

A Doctor-Professor answers the old question “What is the single best thing we can do for our health” in a completely new way.
Dr. Mike Evans is founder of the Health Design Lab at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, an Associate Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of Toronto, and a staff physician at St. Michael’s Hospital.

[Brilliantly executed. “Can you limit your sitting & sleeping to just 23 and ½ hours a day?”]

Source: Jim Roepcke