My friend Richard Stallman is the founder of the free software movement . His ideas have spawned not only the GNU/Linux operating system , but Wikipedia , Creative Commons the anti-DRM Defective by Design campaign, and other important social movements. He is a MacArthur “genius,” and arguably the world’s most successful activist, and I was honored to have the opportunity to interview him.
Q: What is free software?
This article reports on a German study in which 2 groups of students were asked to fill out a questionnaire. The questionnaires were all on the same topics – simple stuff like opening a bank account – but the questions were phrased either concretely or abstractly. Turns out the students who were given the abstract questions procrastinated much more.
This is no surprise. As I write in my book, The Lifelong Activist, “vagueness opens the door for procrastination.” Procrastination is a response to fear – fear of failure or success, usually – and it is a wily and insidious habit/reflex. It looks for the slightest uncertainty or doubt or ambivalence and feeds on it and amplifies it. Abstract instructions by their nature are less defined than concrete ones, and so if you’re prone to procrastination they’ll often catalyze it.
Thank you to Barack, those who worked on his behalf, and those who came before us and built the foundation, often at the cost of their freedom or lives.
Along with the triumph of Obama, yesterday’s election was also a triumph for the animals, as Americans voted for more compassion.
California’s Proposition 2 passed with 62% of the vote, ensuring much more humane confinement and compassionate treatment for 20 million chickens, pigs, cows and other farmed animals in that state each year. This was a huge victory, and is expected to catalyze change throughout the U.S. Proposition 2’s success also sends a strong signal to the meat industries that Americans will no longer tolerate extreme cruelty in the name of profit.
A while back, the New York Times ran a interesting interview with Jim McCann, founder and CEO of 1-800Flowers.com . A lot of it was about the mistakes he made along the way, and how he rebounded. His conclusion:
“If you look at highly successful people, they make the same number of mistakes as others, but they recover quickly. They don’t sit around moaning about what they’ve done wrong.”
Sad to note George Carlin’s death. The thing I found interesting in his New York Times obit was how, back in the late 1960s, when he was already at the top of his profession, with guest spots on Ed Sullivan, bookings at top Las Vegas casinos, etc., Carlin bravely chucked it all to follow what he considered a truer path:
“That early success and celebrity, however, was as dinky and hollow as a gratuitous pratfall to Mr. Carlin. ‘I was entertaining the fathers and the mothers of the people I sympathized with, and in some cases associated with, and whose point of view I shared,’ he recalled later, as quoted in the book Going Too Far by Tony Hendra, which was published in 1987. ‘I was a traitor, in so many words. I was living a lie.’
Via Cute Overload (where else?), we present the antics of Shming the hedgehog and his adoring female entourage:
I get asked all the time how to cut back on meat gradually. I always recommend swapping one or two ingredients or meals at a time, and then, when you’ve succeeded at those, swapping some more. So:
Use vegan spread in place of unhealthy butter
Use soymilk in place of cow’s milk in coffee (lots of non-vegans do this, since many people believe soymilk tastes better and blends better with coffee – after you get used to the soy, cow’s milk tastes strong and feels greasy in coffee)
Eat salad for lunch one day a week (Bacos are vegan!)
This New York Times article by “Miniminalist” cookbook author Mark Bittman offers more great tips:
I’ve been saving these up for just the right Friday:
Hell’s iPod
A collection of entertainingly awful music videos, most of which seem to date from my youth (and, hence, don’t sound all that awful to me). The classics are all in here: Muskrat Love, Billy Don’t be a Hero, Honey, You Light Up My Life, etc. Lots more earwigs linked to in the comments.
And a photo gallery of eight of the world’s fugliest plants
The Marvelous Mentor Mindset and How It Can Help You Succeed
How important are mentors? Let’s just say that everyone I’ve ever met who was stuck in their life or career was severely under-mentored. In olden days, mentoring was probably more of an automatic process: you grew up working alongside your parents on the farm, or apprenticed with a craftsperson or local business owner. These days, you often have to work a little harder to find mentors.
Mentoring is generally a more expansive, less-structured form of teaching in which you gain not just knowledge, but wisdom and perspective. Mentors are particularly useful for life and career planning, and for guiding you through complex projects that would be hard to learn solely through books: for instance, art, science and entrepreneurship. Mentors are also often well connected, and use their connections to help their mentees. A single phone call from a mentor may be all it takes to get you a new job or a new customer for your business. Small wonder that proper mentoring can take years or even decades off the time it takes you to succeed at your goals – or spell the difference between success and failure.
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