As I think about trying to raise my child(ren) in an effective way, I’ve struggled with thinking of ways to make sure that my child(ren) grow(s) up to be kind to others, because I feel that kindness is one of the most important virtues one can have.

During the toddler childhood stages, kids seem to have a very strong sense of fairness, so I’ve thought that it might be effective to explain to kids that they should treat others the way they would want to be treated. It’s sometimes difficult to get kids to put themselves in others’ situations, but it’s a good exercise.

Much later on, as adults, the need for kindness is a little more apparent, and many of the social pressures to be mean don’t exist to the same extent.

But there’s that gap in between childhood and adulthood–adolescence–when people don’t have the reason of adulthood, but have more capacity for meanness than in childhood. I’ve struggled with trying to think of ways to help children be kind during that period, and a book I’ve been reading has offered a possible solution.

The book is “Never Eat Alone” by Keith Ferrazzi. It’s a book about how to build effective relationships that people can use to accomplish their goals. Although Ferrazzi has an MBA from the Harvard Business School, his analysis isn’t purely Machiavellian. In a chapter preface, Ferrazzi includes a Geroge Burton Adams quote in what seems to be a theme of the book:

There is no such thing as a self-made man. We are made up of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts, as well as our success.”

Ferrazzi goes on to explain how people should look for opportunities to use others as keys to accomplishing goals, but that an individual should also look for opportunities to help others with their goals. He paints an inspiring picture of how people can build powerful networks to help each other, with those networks being based on the principal of service, really.

In addition to inspiring me to look for opportunities to help old acquaintances, I think that Ferrazzi’s vision is something that a 16-year-old might be able to understand, and it might motivate the good-hearted teen to look for opportunities to be kind to others.

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Posted by Cole on November 16th, 2010 :: Filed under Books,Family

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Well, BYU held its press conference yesterday to announce that it will be going independent of conference affiliation in football and joining the WCC in most other sports. While I’m excited about some of the prospects of football independence, overall, I’m pretty disappointed in the move.

The main thing that I dislike about the move is that it severs ties with many regional schools. And it doesn’t just cut the bonds that tie those other institutions to BYU, it pretty much chops off the other instutions’ arms to free BYU. Not only will we lose much of the importance of those games with regional foes, but BYU deeply offended those schools, and they have good reason not to want to associate with BYU in the future. That’s especially rough on me because I have some good memories of my dad and I sharing Wyoming sporting events. There will definitely be fewer BYU/Wyo events in the future, and where Cowboy fans used to give me a hard time when they found out I went to BYU, they’ll probably want to murder me now.

Not only does BYU’s move hurt the schools in the MWC; the posturings and power plays leading up to the move effectively killed the WAC. So BYU did some damage to about 20 schools in the western U.S. with its move. Schools like San Jose State will possibly even have to cancel their football programs. Ouch.

The move wouldn’t have been so painful if the timing would have been different. If the move would have happened before the MWC added TCU it wouldn’t have mattered as much, because BCS inclusion wasn’t so near and attainable. Likewise, if the move would have happened two years down the road, the MWC would have known its standing in the BCS and the move could have had less effect.

I am excited about some parts of the move. First of all, I’m excited about BYU’s deal with ESPN. It looks like ESPN brokered BYU’s deal with Notre Dame, and that the Worldwide Leader was also a major force in setting up BYU’s games with Texas. I’m hoping that BYU and the Mothership (ESPN) will really be good business partners; that is, that ESPN will help put together good matchups for BYU, and that BYU will draw good numbers for those matches. This is a pretty big deal in football, but it may be an even bigger deal for basketball, where BYU may be able to get better games to come to the Marriott Center with ESPN’s influence.

I’m also excited that BYU will have some more control over its distribution. While signing a deal with iron-fisted ESPN doesn’t usually mean having more control, ESPN will allow BYU to do same-day rebroadcasts on BYUtv, as well as allowing some other concessions. It’s somewhat ironic that Comcast/CBS/theMTN were willing to give those same concessions to BYU, since ESPN is generally considered to be the evil power monger in college sports.

A couple additional points I’d like to make:
I understand why the MWC schools would be upset with BYU on this move, but Tom Holmoe indicated in the press conference yesterday that the only school BYU has loyalty toward is the University of Utah. I think that’s fair. Although from my standpoint it would have been cool if BYU would have stuck with its situation in order to help teams like Wyoming, I can’t really blame the admins for not considering and bowing toward Wyoming’s best interests in their decision. (obviously, I use Wyoming as a surrogate for all other MWC teams) The move sucks, but I don’t think you can call it evil or hypocritical.

Many MWC fans think that this is a bad money move for BYU. I personally am drinking the kool aid that it is a very good financial move. I can’t imagine that BYU will be earning less money under its new program than it was in the MWC. It was the highest drawing program in the conference, but it had to share TV revenues evenly. It will certainly get more money now from its TV deal. While it could lose out on shared bowl revenues from the conference, it will get to keep all the bowl money it earns, which should mitigate those losses.

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Posted by Cole on September 2nd, 2010 :: Filed under Sports

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I went and saw The Last Airbender with Kerri a couple of weeks ago, and boy, was it lousy.

I really like the Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon series on Nickelodeon. I hadn’t seen very much of it until this summer, but I always liked the snippets I caught here and there while I channel surfed. Thanks to Kerri’s parents having a DVR, I started watching the episodes more regularly this summer. Since we knew that I’d be living alone in San Francisco for the summer, Kerri got me the DVD sets of the cartoon’s first two seasons so I could have something to do in my downtime. I watched both seasons, found the third, watched it too, and considered myself a fan of the series.

I was pretty excited that a live-action movie for Avatar (…The Last Airbender) was coming out, but I don’t believe I was overly optimistic. I recognized that animation was a very good medium for the show, but I was curious to see what Hollywood could put out in a live-action version. So, when Kerri came out to visit me the weekend that the Last Airbender launched, I recommended that we catch a matinee. She accepted, and we went to the cool theaters inside the Westfield mall, only two or three blocks from my apartment in downtown SF.

I’ll be honest. The movie sucked from the beginning, but I remained optimistic that it could be redeemed. But it never was. It just got suckier and suckier. I’m really not sure what Shyamalan was going for in the movie. As an Avatar fan, I felt that the movie didn’t really appeal to me because Shyamalan changed so much, down to the roles of the characters themselves. However, I’m not enough of a zealot to claim that changing the characters is unforgivable, especially when the director is trying to make the movie appeal to a larger audience. But I really don’t see how Shyamalan’s changes could make the story appeal to a broader audience. I could imagine that those unfamiliar with the cartoon would really be confused by the movie.

Here’s a breakdown of different parts of the movie that contributed to the overall suckiness:

Actors: I actually liked the character that played Aang. He did a good job of capturing the playfulness and innocence of Aang. I also like the actor that played Iroh. That was about it. I really didn’t think that the actor portraying Zuko did a very good job; he seemed very one-dimensional to me. I would expect Zuko to have enough pride to avoid constantly clinching his fist and talking through gritted teeth. I was pretty indifferent about Katara and Sokka; the poor characters got in the way for me to even see the acting (more on that below). Somewhat ironically, most of the reviews I’ve read are pretty brutal on the actor that played Aang, and a few said that Dev Patel’s (Zuko) performance was the only redeeming factor of the movie.

Storyline: Wow. So bad. I can understand that a director (or somebody in movie production) would likely have to cut out a lot of material when moving from one medium to another–he might even have to cut out some pieces that are near and dear to fans. I get that. But Shyamalan included a lot of material that didn’t add to the story–material from later seasons or new material that he had written. In doing so, he had to cut out a lot more material than he would have had to otherwise. Additionally, the film was quite short, so some more material was left out. However, the combination of cutting out a lot of storyline from the series and including other material made the film feel really choppy, and the storyline never really got going. Quickly into the movie, after one public appearance of the Avatar, he apparently started inspiring the world to fight back against the Fire Nation, or so we’re told. But then nothing ever developed from that. Among all the suckiness, the storyline sucked the worst.

(Oh, and why would Shyamalan want the firebenders not to be able to create fire? It seems like it would be very difficult to advance your army if they needed to have live fire with them at all times…ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY’RE FIGHTING WATER AND EARTH BENDERS! Since the other nations are basically immersed in their own element, wouldn’t the fire nation have a HUGE disadvantage? Did Shyamalan just want them to have a little-man’s syndrome or something? I don’t get it.)

Characters: What made the cartoon series so great was the characters. They were all very real, somewhat deep, and very likable. Another huge whiff by Shyamalan. Sokka is constantly worried and speaking through a grimace. He really could have simply been left out of the movie since he contributes nothing. Katara was very weak. The cartoon Katara had a very strong personality and used it to drive the story much of the time. Movie Katara could also have been left out. I’ve already mentioned that Zuko was too one-dimensional. Iroh was less awful than the rest, but he wasn’t nearly as powerful of a personality as he should have been. One of the reasons that cartoon Iroh was such a great character is that he was a great military leader and powerful warrior on one hand, deeply philosophical and wise on another hand, but on yet a third hand, he was willing to be uncomfortably cheerful in order to try to support Zuko and show compassion. The storyline made the show unpleasant, but the characters should have still been able to carry the show, and Shyamalan failed again in that department.

Effects: Very early on, perhaps the first image the movie shows, is a sphere of water floating in the air. It reminded me of 1980s special effects. Is it Labyrinth that has a floating ball of viscous liquid? I don’t remember, but suffice it to say that the effects in Airbender were bad. Not only were they visually unimpressive, but they were very distracting. They were very poorly edited into the action sequences. The cartoon did a good job of making the elements seem like an extension of a person’s movements, but the movie made it seem like people had to do a cool dance, and then the element would do something special. Another fail.

Action: For what should is largely a martial-arts movie, the action and fight scenes were terrible. I often watch the background actors in movies and see them sort of fighting in a turn-based fight (“Ok, I did a kick, and now I’ll stand here while you punch me.”) but Airbender had the main subjects waiting to get hit in the same way. The bending seemed too staged, also. What I mean is that whenever a bender would attack, he would be the main focus of the action for the moment. It’s like time stopped for everybody else. It was almost laughable at parts because the characters had to do pretty elaborate martial-arts sequences in order to summon their bending, so their opponents would just stand and watch for several seconds while they waited to get hit.

So there it is. I really didn’t find anything redeemable about the movie. Like I indicated above, the movie didn’t have to be a live-action copy of the cartoon for me to enjoy it, but there were a lot of elements that could have translated well across the media. Basic items like characters and relationships should have been able to replicate on the big screen, right? For whatever reason, M. Night Shyamalan didn’t think so, or couldn’t do it.

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Posted by Cole on July 18th, 2010 :: Filed under Tomfoolery

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Good salsa sure is a wonderful thing. I’m living in San Francisco now, and eating out is kind of pricey. I didn’t want to avoid eating out altogether, because eating out is a good opportunity to network with co-workers, and San Francisco offers some really good food. So I decided to eat as frugally as possible when I eat in, in order to compensate for eating out from time to time. I decided to eat a can of kidney beans in the morning, in order to get some good proteins and carbs, and then to eat whole-wheat pasta with tomato sauce for dinner. I tried to get my variety of vegetables in at lunch.

The concept was working pretty well, but I felt that the meals weren’t healthy enough–that I wasn’t getting enough variety of vegetables with my meals. While I was at Costco a couple of days ago, I found the solution: salsa. Adding some salsa to my beans in the morning gives me some extra veggies for breakfast, and replacing my tomato sauce with salsa definitely makes the meal more appetizing (and I would assume that organic salsa is healthier than tomato sauce).

So three cheers for Salsa. And may it always reign as the #1 condiment in the world (and not only because people like saying the word “salsa”).

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Posted by Cole on July 11th, 2010 :: Filed under Uncategorized

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I’ve been living in San Francisco for the past few weeks as part of a summer internship with a public accounting firm. I was excited to move to the area and get to know the renowned San Francisco a little better. I’m still trying to form my overall opinion of the city, but here are a few things that stood out to me:

• The crosswalks make the “Million-Dollar Man” sound when the signal is to walk. Even after several weeks of experiencing the sound, I still want to broad jump the street in slow motion when I hear it. (Both my wife Kerri and my friend Kyle B. think the sound is more like a slow-firing machine gun, encouraging sight-impaired individuals to run across the street.)
• In the financial district, it seems like most places close down at around 6:00. I feel like I can barely get out of work in time to do any shopping, and even then, only for a few minutes. For how much retail real estate likely costs, I would think that it would be a good idea to stay open for another hour or two and catch businesspeople as they leave the office.
• Walgreen’s seems to average at least one store on every block downtown. I’m surprised that there’s enough pharmacy business to distribute among the stores, especially to cover fixed costs.
• This isn’t a San-Francisco thought, but something I noticed since I’ve been here: Apple’s sleek and minimal style is maybe starting to go a little overboard. They’re getting very close to looking like a soulless, big-brother-type of an organization, very contrary to their famous “1984” campaign (see photo below). It’s kind of funny how close cool and independent are to soulless and authoritarian.

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Posted by Cole on July 11th, 2010 :: Filed under Uncategorized

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For some reason, I enjoy daydreaming of end-of-the-world scenarios. This propensity seems pretty common, what with all the zombie and post-apocalypse books and movies. In my reverie, I’ve often thought that when y2k comes and society collapses, people will likely band together in small groups of families or tribes. When that happens, I’ll be looking for people with complementary skills to join my tribe. Here are a few skills for which I’ll be recruiting, in order of descending importance.

1. Agronomy. I’ll need a person with combined academic study and practical knowledge of growing plants. We’ll not only need plants for food, but also for clothing and perhaps fuel.
2. Electrical Engineering. Engineers are generally tinkerers and inventors. Having somebody to come up with and build devices to improve our tribe’s productivity would be useful. At a minimum, having an electrical engineer would be useful for communications.
3. Trauma Medicine. The loss of a life would not only be a great emotional loss, but a notable economic loss for the tribe. A trauma medic would help us treat people with injuries from accidents and conflict. I don’t think preventative medicine would be a necessary skill, other than the common sense held by members of the tribe.
4. Biotechnical Engineering. If I was taught correctly in high school (and I likely wasn’t), gene splicing bacteria doesn’t require too much equipment, just a little know-how. If that truly is the case, I’m hoping that a biotechnical engineer would be able to create bacteria for synthesizing insulin, and that he might also be able to manufacture penicillin. Those would likely be very valuable items in trading with other tribes.
5. Mechanical Engineering. This skill might overlap too much with electronic engineering, but, based on my understanding of engineering disciplines, mechanical engineers would be more involved with larger machines than would be electrical engineers. A mechanical engineer would likely be able to maintain work machinery, and possibly build new machinery for us.
6. Martial Arts. Many desperate tribes would likely be wandering the region, so each individual in my tribe would need to be able to defend himself or herself.
7. Military Tactics. Since our tribe would be self-sufficient, our military strategy would simply be to defend our assets. However, having someone to implement that strategy with tactics might be useful
8. Cryptanalysis. Having somebody that could encrypt our communications and decode communications of potential enemies might come in handy.

Do you have any other suggestions? Would you like to enlist?

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Posted by Cole on May 25th, 2010 :: Filed under Tomfoolery

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Here’s the first blog entry that I’ve ever written.

I’ve been quietly critical of blogs, mainly because I thought that they gave people an over-inflated sense of self importance (that sounds awfully jaded; I didn’t really spend that much energy being critical of bloggers–I was just a little condescending toward them).  However, since I wisely kept my blog criticism internal (until now), I can join the blog ranks without considering myself too much of a hypocrite.  Here are a few reasons that I decided to make a blog, ranked in descending order of importance.

1. To improve my writing. I feel that the ability to write well is a fine skill to have, and to become a good writer, one must practice. I don’t pretend to be a great writer now, but I would like to improve my writing. To that end, if readers have any criticism of grammar, I invite them to post their recommendations. While I welcome criticism on grammar, I’ll likely be less open to criticisms on content. I’m just sayin’.
2. To leave a more accurate record of myself. This is where I manifest my over-inflated sense of self importance. I feel that journals, books of remembrance, etc. often don’t paint a comprehensive picture of an individual because they are focused on narrative or spiritual matters. I’d like to leave something that gives a little more of my personality, so I’ll try to write lots of blog entries that reflect my personality.
3. Because I’m jealous of others’ blogs. I envy that bloggers get so much attention for their mundane ramblings. This is probably a more reprehensible reason than my over-inflated sense self importance.
4. To be a reference. This is very likely a pipe dream, but if I discover something fascinating and record it here, maybe it will show up on a Google search at some point and be of use to somebody.

If anybody out there decides to read my blog, I hope that my entries are entertaining, at a minimum.  Perhaps they’ll even be insightful or educational too. If you are an experienced blogger, a critical observer of blogs, or a person that has some other insight into blogging, feel free to post any blog advice as comments to this entry.

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Posted by Cole on May 18th, 2010 :: Filed under boilerplate

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