The last time I saw Steve Jobs

The last time I saw Steve Jobs

I wrote this little anecdote shortly after Steve Jobs passed away. Despite it happening more than 7 years ago, it still is imprinted on my brain and does a great job of illustrating the person I felt he was.

I was leaving the main building on the Apple campus. Just ahead of me was Steve. This was not an uncommon sight despite being such a large company. He was often seen walking in the halls or in the courtyard in the center of all the buildings. He always seemed to have a spring in his step, like he was walking on his toes.… Read the rest

New tennis face for 2018

New tennis face for 2018

Not since my 2016 pick of Alexander Zverev (now in the top 10!) have I been this excited by a new player. This year it’s Alex de Minaur. Currently ranked 208 in the world, this is definitely my biggest longshot of a pick ever.

He has a long list of things going for him:

  • He’s got a great attitude. Gets fired up regularly and generally doesn’t have negative outbursts. They always tell you to play one point at a time and Alex does this. Terrible point? Reset, then try again.
  • He’s fast as almost anyone out there
  • He’s patient, which is rare in young players.
… Read the rest
New tennis face for 2017

New tennis face for 2017

Denis Shapavalov is my pick for promising new player of the year. A very aggressive lefty, scrappy, and an excellent volleyer. Lots of positive energy although a bit too much temper.

Someone to watch in 2017. Currently ranked over 100 in the world.

… Read the rest
Just eat real food

Just eat real food

I still hear most people demonize fat (especially saturated fat), salt, and cholesterol (especially eggs) despite a significant amount of research that says otherwise. Perhaps many decades of having it pounded into everyone will take some undoing.

I thought I’d collect some references to recent research that covers these maligned nutrients. There’s much more out there, but these are the most signicant ones from trusted sources.

Salt

This week a meta-analysis of seven studies involving a total of 6,250 subjects in the American Journal of Hypertension found no strong evidence that cutting salt intake reduces the risk for heart attacks, strokes or death in people with normal or high blood pressure.

… Read the rest
New tennis face for 2016

New tennis face for 2016

I did this for 2011 but I thought it would be fun to put my pick or picks for the next hot player in writing and see how I do.

I was watching a match on Court 5 at the US Open in 2015, which shares seating with Court 4 so you can watch two matches at once. On Court 4 was an unknown player, Alexander Zverev, playing veteran Philip Kohlshreiber. As time went on, I started watching that match instead. It was 95 degrees, humid, and the match went 5 sets. Zverev succumbed to cramps and lost the match.… Read the rest

10 things I learned by visiting Costa Rica

10 things I learned by visiting Costa Rica

  1. Hanging things on a clothes line is not for drying them; it’s for conducting mildew and mold growing experiments. 
  2. Wearing seat belts while driving on rough gravel roads can cause more injury than not wearing them.
  3. Too warm? Underwear is optional.
  4. Stop signs are for aesthetic purposes only. Who doesn’t love a splash of red?
  5. Being driven through heavily trafficked areas by a native driver is as exciting as any ride at Great America.
  6. It’s not bugs crawling on you, it’s just sweat dripping on your skin.
  7. I lied. It’s probably bugs crawling on you.
  8. Dead Toucans sometimes drop from the sky.
… Read the rest
How homeopathy “works”

How homeopathy “works”

(Note that in 2018 an article was published that supports what I’m saying here)

What if the placebo effect isn’t a trick?

For a long time, I put homeopathy in the same category as organized religion. I felt both were based primarily on faith with little science to back them up. I believed that both were the refuge of the weak or less intelligent among us.

The problem is that even among smart people, homeopathy is very popular and many people swear by it. Heck, in much of Europe and Asia, homeopathy is practically mainstream. Is this a pervasive mass delusion?… Read the rest

21st century philanthropy

21st century philanthropy

I babbled about philanthropy in an earlier posting called “Wealth now, philanthropy later”, so I was thrilled to see this blog posting on the Harvard Business Review website:

Steve Jobs, World’s Greatest Philanthropist

Try to ignore the hyperbolic title of the article and just absorb the content.

Making the world a better place means making decisions your whole life that either incrementally or substantially make people’s lives better. People dislike hearing that investing in a promising new company could potentially have more of an impact on the world that the more common charitable action of, say, donating food to starving children.… Read the rest