Alabama vs Notre Dame

Notre Dame has a really good defense, which is an asset in the quest for a National Championship.  This ND team is different than ones of past years and BCS defeats because it is grounded primarily on a good defense and an average offense.  All good offenses can be stopped by a physical defense.  In fact, when a good offense meets a good defense, the defense usually wins.  In this case I would expect the game to be close.  Alabama is a ten point favorite, which seems quite high.  Regardless of who is #1 vs #2, that is a big point spread for a football game, and probably reflects more of Alabama's past accomplishments and success, and Notre Dame's recent failures than anything else.  But this is a new team, removed from the Brady Quinn era and the Charlie Weis era.

Who will win?  We can never know with certainty.

Should 'Bama be a 10 point favorite?  No.

Learning is such a difficult task, one that is made to appear so simple but is really a true challenge to anyone that wants to experience growth.  In grade school we are taught to crack open the book and take notes.  Ordered notes are even better.  Then we do a few practice problems after class, known as homework, and then its on to the next task.  Learning something complex is even harder.  Part of our brain is used for doing new, focused tasks, and part of it is for doing routine work that we can push on to the periphery of our mind, like driving a car.  We don't focus on the actions of driving, we just "do" it, and get to where we are going, accident free.

Learning new tasks requires handwritten note taking, in order to force the brain to concentrate on something for longer than a few seconds.  When reading something, the brain skims over it so fast that the concept is introduced, but hardly is it internalized.  Highlight is good, as it allows a person to turn to a page in the book and see what was first viewed as important.  Next is book marking the book, kind of like highlighting the entire page from a larger view.  The view of the whole book.  With handwritten notes, highlighting and underlining can be done.  More importantly, the book and the notes must be re-read.  This is a weakness for me.  In fact, my ritual for success should be to re-read the notes for what ever skills I'm currently studying and investing in.

Re-reading notes is a weakness of mine.  Rote memorization can be used to remember important facts, numbers, and equations.

Lastly the skills can be moved in to unconscious competence, where you don't even have to think or direct the actions of your mind, because the skill is known and internalized, and your brain will do it for you, allowing you to spend your precious focus energy on other, more important things.

Unconscious Incompetence
Conscious Incompetence
Conscious Competence
Unconscious Competence

I was reading a blog post by Ki'une, whom I learned about by watching YouTube.  He has a goal list of 208 personal goals that range over topics from travel, art, photography, sports, music, adventure & miscellaneous goals.  Very, very impressive.  I have goals, but I have only hand written goals that I developed during a Tony Robbins or Jim Rohn goal setting workshop.  The miscellaneous goals involve learning languages, flying in to space on a commercial flight, to winning a photo contest, to all sorts of amazing things.  Its so impressive to me because he has articulated his goal list, published it online, and it really trying to thrive with it.  What the fuck am I doing with my life?  Sweating out business school so I can become a drone?  LOL.

What are my rituals?  Remember, peak state doesn't just happen.  What are my rituals and what am I doing with my day?  Bullshitting around probably.  I want to get more disciplined.  First thing is I'm going to type up my goal list on Google Drive, and maintain that list online for many years so that I can access it and gauge my progress.  My growth.  Progress = happiness.  Remember that.

Six human needs:

Certainty
Uncertainty
Growth
Significance
Connection/Love
Contribution.

My #1 is growth.  After that, possibly uncertainty.  My significance is pretty low and pretty easily satisfied.  My Connection/Love is shaky right now, important to feel and have but I'm not where I want to be.  Contribution is  low on my list right now.  I honestly feel like later in life, after I've satisfied other needs, contribution can come to the fore front in the form of my dream:  The Skills Acquisition Academy.  Where we take a person and teach them any skill they want to learn.  Starting with Math.

What would be awesome would be to go to a terrible school, struggling inner city in a large metropolis, and get a group of students with poor math skills, limiting beliefs, but a strong desire to get better, and really take them to a higher level with math, with me as the coach and teacher.  Ideally it would be like a one year experiment, or a two year experiment, and get them great math scores and set them on a new path that they wouldn't have achieved otherwise.  That would be a blast.  Tutoring for money, to create some shitty little tutoring company and going around hustling people, would suck.  Its selling people.  Taking on a real challenge like this would be freaking awesome.  And I absolutely know that I would get results.

Hakeem the dream....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7tPZ-KljR0

Amazing footwork, I watch this video at least once a week, helps my game immensely

The four levels:

Unconscious incompetence
Conscious incompetence
Conscious competence
Unconscious competence

These are the four levels.

Also, constructive, focused practice with a plan with timelines on how to achieve goals.  What's my timeline?

I've been reading about Paul Ekman and his creation: the FACS.  FACS was created to taxonomize the variety of human facial expressions, and it is really interesting.  I think that it could aid me in my sports betting, and prediction market in general, plus it would just be super interesting.  I'll admit I've been paying close attention to people's facial expressions for a long time, and the results are quite revealing.  This stuff will make a great addition to my library of knowledge.

The study of facial expressions is fascinating.  I played some poker over the week at a casino, and finished up $38 on a $60 max buy in table.  My two biggest plays were off of tells, basically just observing this players actions and being aggressive when I saw weakness.  It was a BLAST.  I've been paying more and more attention to people's facial expressions, including those of the people I am talking to, and it results in seeing a lot more of their true beliefs and personalities.  For example, I was talking to someone over this last weekend about what they implemented in to their business and how much of it was from reading things, and they made a curious facial expression.  I'm not sure what it meant.  Other times I saw expressions come up when talking to person B, and the results were interesting.  

Also I noted that Carmelo Anthony did not really like the whole Jeremy Lin/Linsanity phenomenon when this was happening.  

There is tension there on that team.  It won't end well. 

Been a long time since I've posted!

Sports betting has the chance to become a part of my life again.  I'm single :/ , have some free time, and Tahoe is only four hours away from Los Gatos.  A couple of theories I'm going to work on are the NBA Martingale system (although the season is almost over), make a few playoff plays, and of course prep for the Football season.  I'll be posting videos on Youtube and trying to connect with people on there; I'm getting a new computer that will hopefully allow me to easily create and edit videos and then post them online.  I may or may not be blogging consistently, but as always, I love this blog and will hang on to it.

A couple of key concepts

A couple of concepts that have been rattling around in my head is the idea of a "non-working owner".  How can a person who has never worked for a company and never invested any money be entitled to a portion of the profits?

That is the definition of a non-working owner or "NWO".

The "stockholders" as these are known, then pressure to the CEO to increase revenue and depress expenses (read: wages) to maximize their dividend and stock price (unworked for profit).

Steve Jobs has died, but will Apple live forever?

Steve Jobs passed away on October 5th, 2011.  His passing deeply affected many people, myself among them. But many years before this, Steve Jobs said that Death is a natural part of Life and should not be feared; nay, we should contemplate it every day and live our lives in harmony with the knowledge that we will one day die.

He concludes that Death is just and proper, as it clears out the old to make room for the new and that every young person eventually becomes old, and is then moved aside to make room for the "new" new people.  Although Steve Jobs passed away, the company he founded is thriving robustly and is by some measures the largest company in the world with a brand positioning at the forefront of technology and communication.

Apple, with a market capitalization of over $400 Billion  dollars and thousands of patents, will surely survive for a while.  One year?  Ten years? 100 years? If it lives 100 years from today, it will live longer than me.  Even if it eventually goes bankrupt, some portion of its assets/patents/human talent will be bought up by another company, consumed and assimilated.

It is likely that Apple, Steve Jobs creation, will be functionally immortal.  It will never die.

It defies the natural cycle of life and death that Steve Jobs embraced psychologically.  And that is not a good thing.

Allen Iverson vs. Kobe Bryant

There is a great video on Youtube of Allen Iverson saying he doesn't understand how he could make his teammates better by practice.  What matters is games.  His presence on practice doesn't effect what his teammates work on or develop.

Contrast that with Kobe Bryant, who said he thinks the only reason they didn't win the championship in the 2010-2011 NBA season was that he wasn't able to practice with the team and keep the intensity level high.  He wasn't able to "crack heads together" to get people up to the level they need to be at.

Allen Iverson:  0 Championships
Kobe Bryant:  5 Championships

NFL Draft Remix by DJ Steve Porter

I've been listening to an awesome draft remix by DJ Steve Porter, which you can find here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i624aWIIwI

On of my favorite parts is 0:43 part, where everyone is chanting  J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS, and then when repeated, the JETS chorus is replaced by a bullhorn timed to sound just like JETS.  It adds a nice feeling of chaos to the chant, similar to the Matrix theme song.

Amazing Bears Trick Play

I watched an amazing trick punt return by the Bears, where Devin Hester ran left to return a punt, when actually the ball was kicked to his right, and another Bears player was running back and caught it over his shoulder, then started returning it for the touchdown.  It worked brilliantly.  I also saw that Hester (the Decoy) ran left towards his own sideline, and the punt was towards the Packers sideline.  This was because if Devin Hester was faking towards the Packers side, the players on the Packers sideline would clearly see what was happening and yell to their teammates on the field.  Instead, all the Packers players were fifty yards away from their teammates on the other side of the field.

Amazing.

Chris Bosh is already over the NBA finals...and thats a bad thing

Chris Bosh said in a recent interview that he was over the NBA Finals loss and was ready to move on.  That is the response of an emotionally mature person with a large world view and a good perspective.  After all, its just sports and his self-actualization as a player.

But its bad news for the Miami Heat.  It means they'll be getting the same Chris Bosh they had last year, except a year older and a year closer to retirement.  He won't have been lifting all summer, upset over the way things ended like a Michael Jordan or Larry Bird type would have been.  He hasn't been pushed all summer by the humiliating defeat he experienced.

After all, it is emotion which separates people out.  I get the feel that if Chris Bosh were 6'2" instead of 6'10", he wouldn't even be in the NBA.  A guy like Kevin Garnett or Chris Paul would be in the NBA no matter what height they are.

The Romney Campaign

I just read a very interesting article on the Romney campaign and their recent attacks on Governor Perry from Texas.  It was a very interesting and well written article on the Huffington Post.  The impression I got was that Romney was running a very disciplined, well thought out campaign that was planned in advance with much thought and historical knowledge going in to it.  They planned things out based not on what they wanted to happen, but on historically what happens, and they are ready for many occassions. 

Will Romney ultimately win the Republican nomination and the Presidency?  I don't know.  I can't see the future. 

But its very interesting to read about a campaign that is essentially the opposite of McCain's campaign.

Romney is a very, very intelligent and educated person.  That doesn't mean he's a great politician or can get people "riled up" and to the voting booths, or that he will make a great leaeder, but it means he would do an amazing job as a high level administrator like Secretary of State at the very least. 

I'll continue to follow his campaign now that I know more about him. 

Ultimately, it comes down to fundraising.  Romney has to be very thorough and well-planned to compete with Obama's thorough and well-planned campaign.

Remembering someone's face but not one's name

I used to know a man who professed that he couldn't remember people's names well, but he always remembered someone's face.  And he was so proud of this accomplishment, like he had a supernatural ability to remember them.  And being young, I believed him and was impressed.

After reading Moonwalking With Einstein, I understand that humans have evolved to remember people's faces with great clarity, and to be able to detect even the slightest change in expression.  Everyone can remember faces, because as humans we've been doing that for thousands and thousands of years.  Even before language and names existed, people had to remember faces.  It would be critical to early humans survival to know as they approached another human if they had seen them before and what their relationship was.  To think you recognize someone, only to have never seen them before, could be deadly.  Strangers can be brutal to eachother, but friendships are valued.

My old mentor bragged about his ability, but it was reality an innate gift passed to him by our common ancestors over the millenia preceding us.  He no more worked on his ability to remember faces than I worked on my ability to breathe oxygen through the air.  We are just born with it.

Its like a fish bragging about how well he can swim through water.  Of course he can swim, he's a fish!

Don't Worry About Tiger

I read that Tiger Woods recently switched putters...in the middle of a tournament. Blaming the putter and not himself is a sign of weakness, something the old Tiger would never do. Prior to the tournament he said that his "goal was to win, as always" and he wouldn't be playing if he didn't think he could win.

That doesn't sound like the Tiger we know and love.

The Problem With Memory

I picked up a copy of Ender's Game recently at the book store and read the first page again.  I couldn't remember any of it, which is a surprise to me because I have read the book previously and have a great memory.  I flipped through a few more pages and was reading it again like the first time.  Same great author.  Same excellent plot.  I know the ending, but I could easily re-read the book again and enjoy it just as much, maybe even more so because I will be able to pay closer attention to the plot development and less time surprised by every twist and turn of the plot. 

Why is that?  Why can I remember the basic outcome and emotions I felt but nothing else from a book I read when I was 16?

The mechanics of the human memory system mean that I don't have a photographic or absolute memory of anything, and memories slowly erode over time, so that a once sharply contoured design becomes a smooth surfaced rock after enough washings. 

In many respects, that is what mars the entire human experience.  We simply don't have a perfect memory, and memories get distorted over time.  Eventually, only the general facts are remembered, or an emotional impression.  Nothing else. 

The problem of predicting the future is most possible through a keen understanding of human nature.  The details of history are soon forgotten even by those who experienced them.  Those who did not experience them, how could they possibly be expected to understand the future if they can't even understand the past.

As regards to the financial crisis, I think that an accurate prediction could have been easily made by people with a strong understanding of human nature and human history.  Those two are equally intertwined. 

Another problem is that human history has no beginning.  It is a continuum, with each action echoing down through eternity.  The root causes of major actions are never discreetly definable because each of those causes has its own separate causes, which could be said to have made the major action inevitable. 

It is a very Tolstoy perspective on human history to believe that everything is virtually inevitable and all the talking heads and political leaders are no more guiders of history as they are the victims of it, the illusion of control something we all share because to admit that we have no control over our environment is a solipsist perspective, which we all (hopefully) grew out of. 

Setting Goals

Goalsetting is an individual activity, a family activity, a group activity, a corporate activity, and a national activity.

The problem is goals often produce undesired, unexpected, and unanticipated results. Look at the mess and cheating scandal in the Washington D.C. school system, where it has been discovered that teachers systematically improved their students standardized test scores by erasing incorrect answers and writing in correct ones. They were threatened with being fired if their students underperformed and not surprisingly, when they discovered they could not raise the test scores fast enough, resorted to cheating.

This shouldn't be a surprise. Anyone who has lived through enough challenges in life knows that people will resort to nearly anything when threatened with the loss of their lives, their possessions, or even their jobs. In fact for many people, those three things are wound up like the Gordian Knot.

So don't be surprised when you set goals for another person and then pressure them to do it, that quality goes down or is faked to get the desired results.

Sometimes pressure doesn't make diamonds, it just gives you crushed coal.

Achieving a hole in one in golf

I've been golfing for about four years now, and am still waiting on my first hole in one. 

A hole in one is dependent on the following number of factors:

1) Total number of par-3 holes played
2) Total number of greens landed
3) Distance that each ball rolls on the green (six inches of roll versus 13 feet of roll)
4) Ability to select the right club (for distance (controlling the y axis))
5) Ability to hit the ball straight and at the pin (controlling the x axis).

Therefore, to increase my chances of getting a hole in one, I need to work on all five factors, although factor two is related to factors 4 and 5 for obvious reasons. 

I need to play more short courses, and increase the number of par-3 holes played per round.  For example, at Pruneridge it is a nine hole course and six of the holes are par-3s.  That is a ratio of 6:3, or 6:9, depending on the metrics. 

The shorter the hole, the better chance I have of landing the green.

The more pure the swing I have, (high shot with back swing) the more roll I will get.

The more I can accurately judge the wind and distance of each hole (accounting for pin placement) the better chance I have of landing the green.

And the more I work on my technique, the more I can shoot the ball straight at the pin.

Rah!