I've never understood public suicide.  Suicide in itself is immensely selfish, but to involve others in the taking of your own life seems to be the ultimate act of terminal nihlism. 

Yes, you took your own life, but you also permanently scarred innocent people who were just out enjoying the day, in this particular case at a national monument. [Warning: disturbing video.  Not graphic, but not pleasant.]

This sort of thing makes me equal parts sad and angry.

Derek Sivers shares a fable that I find particularly interesting.  I am reading Garth Stein's excellent The Art of Racing in the Rain right now, and I find parallels to the book in this fable.  I think both illustrate a piece of wisdom about life that is far too easy to ignore -- if you ever notice it at all.  Allow me to try to intermesh the two.

But first, the fable:

A farmer had only one horse.  One day, his horse ran away.

All the neighbors came by saying, “I'm so sorry. This is such bad news. You must be so upset.”   The man just said, “We'll see.”

A few days later, his horse came back with twenty wild horses.  The man and his son corraled all 21 horses.

All the neighbors came by saying, “Congratulations! This is such good news. You must be so happy!”   The man just said, “We'll see.”

One of the wild horses kicked the man's only son, breaking both his legs.

All the neighbors came by saying, “I'm so sorry. This is such bad news. You must be so upset.”   The man just said, “We'll see.”

The country went to war, and every able-bodied young man was drafted to fight. The war was terrible and killed every young man, but the farmer's son was spared, since his broken legs prevented him from being drafted.

All the neighbors came by saying, “Congratulations! This is such good news. You must be so happy!”   The man just said, “We'll see.”

In personal and professional pursuits, it's all to easy to overthink and lose yourself in the drama of the moment.  It's equally easy to look around you and make external things wholly responsible for whatever you're going through.

Next time, ask yourself: what have I done to put myself in this position?  How do I prepare for what's next?

Stein notes that a good race driver executes on his immediate situation, and then instantly looks down-track to the next turn, realizing that he needs to work towards a favorable outcome there, too.  Be in the moment, but always realize another moment is coming.

Don't go nuts with every victory, and don't beat yourself up for every loss.  Do what you can to stay centered.  It's hard as hell, but a fight worth fighting.

And for those moments when life seems out of control due to circumstances beyond your control?  What do you?  Do you fight, flee, celebrate or mourn?

We'll see.

Errol Morris’s new piece in the NYTimes is interesting to me, as I’ve always noodled the Dunning-Kruger effect around in my mind ever since learning about it. And I’ve long held the belief that we act in a social system governed by confirmation bias; that is, we tend towards what we believe or want to believe, both in our learning and actions.

(The beauty -- and irony -- of Dunning-Kruger is that it is difficult to truly know on which end of the continuum you reside.)

Morris, in his piece, really gets into the holes in our knowledge and how they effect our behavior. This fascinates me, because I’ve been on both sides of conversations that were heated and full of energy only to find one of us was entirely ignorant of an adjunct area of knowledge that played heavily in the rounder conversation.

In Morris’s piece, David Dunning writes:

If I were given carte blanche to write about any topic I could, it would be about how much our ignorance, in general, shapes our lives in ways we do not know about. Put simply, people tend to do what they know and fail to do that which they have no conception of. In that way, ignorance profoundly channels the course we take in life.

Today’s bit in the NYTimes if part one of five. Can’t wait for the rest.

(Via kottke)

An Asker won't think it's rude to request two weeks in your spare room, but a Guess culture person will hear it as presumptuous and resent the agony involved in saying no. Your boss, asking for a project to be finished early, may be an overdemanding boor -- or just an Asker, who's assuming you might decline. If you're a Guesser, you'll hear it as an expectation. This is a spectrum, not a dichotomy, and it explains cross-cultural awkwardnesses, too: Brits and Americans get discombobulated doing business in Japan, because it's a Guess culture, yet experience Russians as rude, because they're diehard Askers.

Probably the best categorization of this personality spectrum I’ve seen anywhere; sure goes beyond the now-(in)famous Type A/Type B dichotomy.

As you might expect, when the extremes of these types are forced to interact, it probably won’t be pretty.

(Via Kottke)

Flat-out one of the best talks I've ever seen.  And the presentation style, while fantastic, is ironic given some of the subject matter.

Worth 10 mins of your time.  Promise.

It's easy to admire our military personnel for the things they do in combat zones and hostile missions.  These are what we see on TV and read about in magazines.  They're what Hollywood turns into movies.

What many of us don't understand, including yours truly, is the risks our military men and women take every day, doing their equivalents of going to the office, filing reports and attending meetings.  In some cases, their 'routine' tasks and training can become more dangerous than being on actual missions.

Each of the two videos below is 10 minutes long, depicting what it's like for Naval aviators to try and land a fighter on a pitching aircraft carrier.  Seas that toss a carrier 30+ feet are incredibly dangerous, making pitch and yaw measurement insanely difficult.  The only thing that's more difficult is doing it at night, which also is a reality for these pilots.

You won't find a more gripping 20 minutes of video.  They're from 2008, but they never lose their punch.

Here's the scariest part: the Navy forces its pilots out in rough seas to practice this skill.  It's dangerous to the point where it even steels even the most experienced pilots, but it's necessary: one day, when the situation is real and there's no real chance of air support, pilots will live or die based upon whether they can pull this off or not. It's contingency training taken to the nth degree.

My 2-year-old daughter surprised me recently with two words: “Daddy’s book.” She was holding my Kindle electronic reader.

Here is a child only beginning to talk, revealing that the seeds of the next generation gap have already been planted. She has identified the Kindle as a substitute for words printed on physical pages. I own the device and am still not completely sold on the idea.

My daughter’s worldview and life will be shaped in very deliberate ways by technologies like the Kindle and the new magical high-tech gadgets coming out this year — Google’s Nexus One phone and Apple’s impending tablet among them. She’ll know nothing other than a world with digital books, Skype video chats with faraway relatives, and toddler-friendly video games on the iPhone. She’ll see the world a lot differently from her parents.

Fascinating article from Brad Stone stating that, quite simply, the unflagging rate of tech advancement is creating mini generation gaps whereby these mini-generations can be identified and grouped by what technology they grow up with during formative years.  Makes perfect sense, because more than once I've observed that young kids today are familiar with an iPhone in a way that kids of eight years ago are not.  My son, now 5, tries to touch, swipe and pinch the screen of every mobile phone he comes across.  Eight years ago, kids would have been introduced to a BlackBerry or Windows Mobile phone or something from Nokia and then introduced to an iPhone.

Another thing I think about: what will tech look like when my son is 16?  How many disruptive technologies will come down and displace the things that, by today's standards, are considered contemporary?

And perhaps the biggest question of all: speaking from psychological, cognitive, sociological and developmental perspectives, what long-term effect will all this technology, replete with its 'information anywhere' capability, have on people?  Today, we see all sorts of psychopharmaceutical drugs aimed at what we now consider mainstream psychological conditions: anxiety, ADHD, depression.  It's interesting -- and not just a little scary -- to consider what we'll be 'treating' 15 years from now as a result of people being overstimulated, forced to multitask beyond what the human mind can reasonably do (some argue we're there already) and rely on technology for everything: information, answers, directions, social consensus, morality.

Even as a tech geek, I reel sometimes.  As a guy who used to read a book a week but now struggles to get through one a month (most of my reading is web reading, which, arguably, is more convenient due to its more fragmented nature), I wonder where this is all going.

I know -- I think I'll check out a Kindle.  If, of course, the Apple tablet disappoints.  Then -- yes, then -- I'll get back to reading at a tyrannosaurid rate.  Right?