die once

Master Planned Obsolesence

choose one: crisis or opporunity.

Fail 7 out 10 times and you are truly extraordinary.
I am not a big baseball fan primarily because it requires a large time commitment to really follow any given team. A regular season schedule is 162 games played from April through October. That is 5-7 games per week over a 7 month period. If you are a starting player, you are going to bat on average about 3.5 times per game which corresponds to 500+ “at bats” over the course of a season. A batting average or relationship of hits to at bats is one of the defining benchmarks in the sport.  The absolute best lifetime batting average belongs to Ty Cobb at .367 while

getting punched and getting insight.
Due to illness, this was my first full week of sparring in the last 3. Early in the week, I was out of sync: my body was shaking off the ring rust and my mind was less focused, less in the moment than is required to both punch and avoid being punched. So as my mind was wandering and body was being beaten, I had a few of insights that I believe have a wider application than exclusively to boxing. The first is the distinction between chasing and pursuing. When I found myself chasing, I inevitably lost my balance,  relaxed my stance and loosened my guard. And before I could reposition myself, my opponent would see the opening, hit me and knock me further o

Oil drilling and seismic activity -just a coincidence?
First and foremost, my thoughts along with millions of others are with the people of Samoa, American Samoa and Indonesia who have been affected by the 2 earthquakes which occurred in the last 12 hours. Hopefully a fast response by international relief agencies will minimize the effects of these tragedies along with the devastation from the recent typhoon in the Philippines. Current scientific consensus holds that in our solar system, only the Earth is geologically unstable. As far as I know, it is also the only planet where oil is actively being pumped out of the ground in ever increasing quantities from ever increasing depths. Earthquakes occur when opposing plates that make up t

An opportunity to be like God.
I have a few thoughts after the culmination of the Jewish New Year and the practice of asking God for forgiveness. In a perfect life, one would be so completely in the moment that all acts and thoughts of ill, greed and other assorted malevolent behaviors would be caught and neutralized before any damage was done. That is certainly something to aspire to, but in the interim honest objective self-reflection and acknowledgment of our thoughts and actions is all that we have. So digging deeply, feeling the empathy and truly asking for forgiveness is a very positive process. But it is only half of our responsibility. The second part is the absolute necessity for us to for

Consensual Delusion called “close to profound” on NY Times Blog
Frankly I was amazed to see a post by Tina Kelley on the very excellent NY Times Local blog linking to my August 17 post about my oldest son’s birth and how it changed my perceptions. She gets my vote for the Pulitzer -thanks Tina!!