Tag: General

Top *6* Books Read in 2019

pile of books beside white printer paper and black ballpoint pen
Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

In the waning days of 2018, I gave a preview of the books I read for the year by listing my top five books.  I doubt my current list of books will grow before the new year chimes in tomorrow night, but I will save the 2019 list for next week, and instead present you with my top books I read this year.

My overall volume of reading this year was less than half of what I read last year.  Since 2016, I’ve intentionally set about to increase my reading and I was able to keep the pace for three years.  However, for some reason my reading slowed down a bit.  I’ll reflect on this over the coming week and share some thoughts with my 2019 reading list post.  Given the relatively short list this year, I will instead highlight all of my favourite books since it seems that these were the books that stuck with me.

In chronological order of when I finished them, here are my top books I read in 2019.

 

The Graveyard Book – Neil Gaiman

A delightful fictional story about a boy who grows up in a graveyard among ghosts and other creatures of the night.  Rather than a horror story as you might expect from the premise, instead this is a charming and whimsical coming of age story that gripped me from start to finish.  Like all good stories, I was sad when the book was over and missed the characters dearly.

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-/10 – "The Graveyard Book" by @neilhimself. I finally caved after repeated promotions by @timferriss. I loved reading American Gods, and recently Neil appeared on Tim's podcast, so I decided to pick up this and Good Omens with a couple extra audible credits I have lying around. Tim did not oversell this book – it's so good! The story has so much charm and heart, and I felt sad to close if off. A bildungsroman, the story is about a child who grows up in a graveyard, raised by ghosts. While it's a creepy sounding premise, the macabre story is actually incredibly touching and morally inspiring, and one I plan to read to my own kids one day. #reading #selfimprovement #books #fiction #neilgaiman #childrensstory #bildungsroman #growingup

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Bad Blood – John Carreyrou

The story of the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos company.  Not only is this book a journalistic account of the deceptive “science” and events surrounding the failed tech venture, but it also explores the toxic achievement culture at the company’s top and the lengths the journalists and ex-employees had to go to in order to bring the company down.  It’s a riveting story to experience, and I was happy to hear of the Ethics in Entrepreneurship initiative founded by two of the whistle blowers.

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-/11 – Bad Blood by John Carreyrou. I've been listening mostly to podcasts and haven't finished a book in a month. This became available through the library, so I jumped on it. It details the rise, fall, and demise of Theranos and its wunderkind darling founder, Elizabeth Holmes. I was broadly aware of the story of how she lied about their product to consumers and investors, but I didn't know the details and depths to the fabrications. You hear of bad behaviour from the tech industry, or people overinflating the power of tech innovation, but rarely do you see this level of fraud. Thanks to Holmes' charisma, her gender, an all star board of directors, and a culture that expects secrecy and legal protection, I was astonished how long she was able to keep up the lies, and the amount of courage needed by whistleblowers to eventually bring them down. #reading #selfimprovement #books #nonfiction #learning #education #audiobook #tech #siliconvalley #techvalley #theranos #badblood

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Becoming Superman – J. Michael Straczynski

This memoir took me to the highest highs and the lowest lows.  While Straczynski is known for his ability to craft human stories in the most magical and alien of settings, none of his work of fiction can come close to matching his own personal story of growing up in an abusive home and how that shadow followed him throughout his life.  Running in parallel with his own story, he also tells a mystery story about his family’s origins that spans three generations.  I mostly started this book to learn about his craft and the origins of some of my favourite projects he’s worked on, but in the end I witnessed a masterclass in writing and reflection.

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-/19 – Becoming Superman by J Michael Straczynski. This is easily my favourite read for the year. I first encountered his work through Wizard magazine's coverage of comics industry news in the early 2000s, but never really had a chance to read his words firsthand until this memoir. His story is one of the saddest I've ever read. The abuse, trauma, and abject poverty he experienced is gut wrenching. And yet, the story is incredible and full of hope. It was a gripping read; I couldn't put it down. And I will gladly listen to it again. For those interested in reading it, be warned that he talks about domestic abuse, sexual abuse, and violence. #reading #selfimprovement #books #nonfiction #learning #education #audiobook #memoir #comics #superman #jms #straczynski

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A Game of Thrones – George R.R. Martin

With the end of the show this year, I felt like it was time for me to crack into the books that kicked-off the phenomenon.  I am grateful that I watched the series first as it really helped me keep track of all of the characters in this massive tale.  Also, reading a large fictional story was a welcomed relief.  Over the last three years, my primary genre to read is at the intersections of business, productivity, and personal development.  I think one thing that has lead to me reading less is feeling burnt out of that kind of content, so it was great to read something for pleasure.  I am still proud of going through 500-pages while up at the cottage; there is nothing quite like reading by the lake.

 

The Threat – Andrew G. McCabe

Thanks to the Libby app and the library, I was able to check out books I otherwise wouldn’t have encountered if I had to purchase them.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but this memoir was fascinating.  I’m drawn to books where people look over their life and career to draw lessons when connecting their experiences.  Whatever the political climate we find ourselves in, I find it somewhat reassuring to know there are people in the deep state who work to put the mission above party, though as more evidence comes to light, that faith is beginning to crumble.

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-/23 – "The Threat" by Andrew G McCabe. I didn't know what to expect with this one. I saw it in the new releases through the library, so I requested it. I didn't know who McCabe is and thought it wouldn't be very interesting. Thankfully I was wrong and I thoroughly enjoyed this book. McCabe's two decades in the FBI lead to many stories and a lot of context behind many the the major events since 2001. This book, along with Comey's and Clinton's books, paints a fascinating picture of the last few years. Now, I just need a really good biography of Robert Muller, which I doubt will, ever happen. #reading #selfimprovement #books #nonfiction #learning #education #audiobook #politics #law #history #FBI #currentevents

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Permanent Record – Edward Snowden

Despite the subject matter, there is no other word I can think of to describe this book than “awesome.”  And I mean “awesome” in both senses of the word.  The book inspires “awe” at the sheer scope of things, but also a riveting tale of Snowden’s life to date, full of creativity, ingenuity, and technological espionage.  I marveled at the fact that he is only a few years older than me, but what he has gone through is likely to dwarf any contributions I’ll ever make.  I hope he can come home one day, but for the present I hope he remains safe while the effects of his actions continue to simmer in the current political climate.

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-/25 – "Permanent Record" by Edward Snowden. Well, by posting this I'm surely going into a government database somewhere, but such is our modern life, I suppose. I've been on a kick recently with wanting to learn more about the history and intersections of tech and government. From books on surveillance capitalism, the FBI, and now on the US government's expansion of bulk data collection, I've been fascinated to read about how much of our lives and control we are giving up to tech for mere convenience. I know as I listened to this book that I'm getting Snowden's narrative, which he controls and chooses what to reveal. This could be a distortion to make him more sympathetic, and yet it is a compelling story that I enjoyed listening to. If what he says is false, then at least we are more aware of what we might be giving up in terms of our liberties. And if what he says is true, then we have a lot to reflect on when we cede this level of control to the government, and we need to decide what we want to do about it. #reading #selfimprovement #books #nonfiction #learning #education #audiobook #memoir #technology

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In looking over my top books for the year, we see three genres stand out – fantasy, current events journalism, and memoirs.  I would have also included biography in this list, however one book is missing that I unfortunately couldn’t finish before it was checked back in to the library: Hamilton by Ron Chernow.  It’ll get added to my 2020 list when the library finally releases it back to me.

As I said above, I think I’m starting to burn out of the business and productivity genres of books.  When I reviewed the list for the year, I had almost no recollection of the content for nearly all of the books.  It would seem I’ve hit a bit of a block, where I’ve consumed so much content in a short amount of time that I’m failing to hold on to it (or, as a corollary, the content is so superficial that it doesn’t stick…).

I still have a number of books on the go that I hope to finish early next year (such as the first Witcher book that the game and Netflix series was based on, Robert Greene’s Laws of Human Nature, and Working by Robert A. Caro, to name a few).  Once I clear some of the current backlog, I plan to start selecting my reading a bit more intentionally so that I can reflect on the lessons the books have to offer.  Overall, the main themes that stick out in the books that speak to me personally are good moral stories, cautionary tales, and the reflections of/about people over a long period of time to draw connections and lessons from their life and work.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

 

Measuring Health and Fitness New Year’s Goals (2019)

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Photo by Jennifer Burk on Unsplash

As the year is winding down, I (like many others) am beginning the process of looking over the year that was and weighing in on how things went.  While I ideally would have set goals for myself for 2019, truthfully I am terrible on the follow-through and I ended up setting something more akin to an “intention.”  For instance, over the last two years, I had set as a New Year’s resolution to 1.) stop being late for things, 2.) keep exercising, and 3.) start making better eye contact when talking to people.

In reality, I’m still late for everything (but at least I track it), I stopped exercising a while ago (I’m disheartened no one called me out about it on social media), and I still feel my eye contact at work is spotty at best.

Last year though, instead of creating a quarterly goal for myself, I set a grand focus or theme for the year.  I had tried setting quarterly themes for myself a few years ago, but I found that I wasn’t making progress during the quarter through poor goal management on my part, so I simplified and decided to work on one thing for the year.

At the start of 2019, I decided I would place greater emphasis on my health.  I kept it fairly broad in its application, but I did brainstorm a number of concrete areas I could work on, such as weight loss, lowering my blood pressure, regularly attending the gym, better nutrition.

I think the fact that I kept things open-ended was a main reason why I feel like I didn’t accomplish this focus as well as I had wanted to.  Had I set specific goals with realistic action items, I might have made better progress.

That’s not to say I haven’t “lived healthier.”  For instance, I have:

  • experimented with intermittent fasting all throughout the year which did help to keep my overall weight regulated.
  • finally got a family doctor after having been dropped from my doctor when she closed her practice a decade ago.
  • went in for my first physical in a long time and had blood work done to check-in on how my body is doing.
  • been weighing myself and measuring blood pressure more frequently, though still haphazardly.
  • experimented with app-based meditation; I found the experience interesting and meriting further exploration, but I haven’t carved out the time to dedicate to it.
  • while on my honeymoon I hiked up Mt. Vesuvio and did a roundtrip on the Path of the God hike (nearly 20km and 200 flights of stairs registered on my Fitbit for the day).
  • began tracking things like my down/depressed days, headaches, and time with family and friends in addition to my sleep tracker.
  • visited my optometrist for a check-up.
  • two regular visits to the dentist.
  • cut down on the amount of junk food I take in my lunches at work to essentially zero.

While these aren’t quantified victories, there are worthwhile achievements to celebrate.  As I look to the new year, one lesson I can draw is that limiting my one thing for the year is a good way to focus my attention, but if I want to make any tangible progress (e.g. weight loss on the scale), I would still need to set proper SMART goals and create an action plan that requires me to carve out time intentionally.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Being Comfortable with Pain

I’ve been thinking about endurance recently, specifically in two areas of my life.  First, I’ve been experimenting with intermittent fasting since January of this year and I’ll be sharing some reflections on it soon.  By fasting each day, it requires a certain amount of endurance to push through on cognitively and physically demanding tasks while your body deals with the exertion in a fasted state.

Second, as the winter weather hits us, I have to endure colder temperatures while working at the bar.  I’ve managed to push myself over the last two years and use a sufficient number of clothing layers to eschew wearing a coat while on the door position.  I have the coat on hand, but I like the challenge of working without it and standing outdoors for long stretches of time exposed to the elements.

It might seem silly or pointless to put myself in these positions when I don’t have to – I make enough money so that I never need to worry about food scarcity or not owning enough proper clothing to protect myself.  On some level, it’s stupid machismo to willfully deprive myself in this way.  Yet, I like the challenge and the sense of satisfaction that I can achieve some level of control or mastery over myself and my situation.

While recently listening to Oprah’s book The Path Made Clear, I came across a really interesting way of framing this tendency I have.  The specific section runs from 4:53-5:52 of the clip below, where Oprah is chatting with Alanis Morissette about the yearning to seek out a time in the future where all your present problems are solved and you are finally happy.  They discuss that this forward-orientated hope for the future never manifests itself as peace; that money and fame doesn’t bring you happiness or contentment.  Instead, you are always chasing that future where you are free from whatever pain you feel in the present.

 

“One of the big lessons I’ve learned over the last little while has been that if I can be comfortable with pain, which is different than suffering, if I can be comfortable with pain, as just an indication, and it’s potentially a daily thing (in my case it often is) then there won’t be my living in the future all the time; that one day if and when I will be happy.

“And even if I’m not comfortable doing that, I’m very uncomfortable in pain – I hate it – we run from it with all kinds of addictive, fun things (temporarily fun things).  But at least knowing it’s a portal, and that on the other side is this great sense of peace that goes beyond this ego development.”

~Alanis Morissette (lightly edited for readability)

This sentiment spoke to me.  I have an affinity towards stoicism and the idea that one should re-frame their relationship with the external.  To me, I like knowing that I can endure, even when I don’t have to.  It becomes practice for those moments when I need to dig in deep to perform, because life isn’t always easy.  Through this practice, I can also appreciate my comforts all the more.  And, it also doesn’t need to run in opposition of my goal to remove discomfort from my life so long as I remember that I’m not entitled to a life of comfort and ease and instead have to intentionally earn it.

I acknowledge that I’m fortunate not to live with serious pain or suffering.  I have a comfortable life and I wouldn’t exchange it for machismo points.  I don’t think the point of life is to suffer, but instead my goal is to learn to suffer well when life brings me pain.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

To-Do Kanban

Kanban

Back in January, I discussed how I set up my monthly notebook.  I’ve since updated the system and added a new process that I thought I should share.

Previously, at the start of the notebook I would collect a running series of to-do items.  Most of the items at the top of the list would be things that had been carried-over for multiple months, with a few small items at the bottom that likely were first jotted-down in the previous month.  I found that I was continuously copying out the same items month-over-month and the list was growing.  On the one hand, if the thing isn’t important enough for me to complete in a reasonable amount of time, it could be the case that it’s not important enough for me to carry-forward and that I should just drop the task all together.

Yet, I felt that some of the tasks were things I’d want to complete “one day” in the undefined future, but that I had lots of other pressing things that needed my attention first.  Or, some tasks would require a fair amount of planning or coordination, and so I would tackle it after an adequate amount of lead time.

Some time ago, I created an account on Trello, but it was sitting unused as I didn’t know what kind of boards I would find useful.  This seemed like the perfect experiment to help me remain flexible.

I set up several columns (buckets) of items.  In the far left, I labelled the list “Pool” and dump in all to do items.  Within each of the cards I can make notes or sub-lists to help keep me on track of things.  At the start of each month, if there is something I don’t want to carry forward into the new book, I put the item into the bucket.

example
An example where I grouped a bunch of items under a single heading – in this case, splurge purchases I want to make but at a time when I have the discretionary funds.

Next, is the “Planning Phase” bucket.  The beauty of Trello is I can drag cards from one column to the next, so when I’m ready to move stuff from the Pool to another phase of activity, I can easy drag-and-drop.  Items in the Planning Phase might require me to do research or make purchases in preparation to work on the project.

If no further planning is required, I move it into the “Active” column.  When a task is active, it’s something that I’m placing priority on and is meant to remind me to carve out space in my schedule to address.

ants
An example of something that requires research and ongoing monitoring, I had ants in my yard last year and I wanted to deal with them without harming the grass or affecting my dog.  Now that it’s Winter, I can’t deal with this again until Spring.

Sometimes, a project needs to be put on hold.  I created a bucket to put tasks that are underway but I’m not making active progress on.  Items in this bucket might require someone to get back to me on some action of detail, or maybe I need to wait until a future date to complete the tasks.  Whatever it is, if I don’t want to move a task back into the pool column, I place it here and make a note of why the tasks is in limbo.

“Completed” is my win column – it gives me a chance to see what I’ve crossed of my list and as the column grows, I can take satisfaction in my accomplishments.

I created an “Abandoned” column because sometimes I will choose not to complete a task but I don’t want to delete it outright.  Maybe it’s something that’s still important, or maybe I missed a window but I want to be reminded of it.

Finally, for tasks that occur regularly but infrequently, I have a column so that I can see when the last time was that I finished a task, and remind myself that it will need to go back into the active column (e.g. changing my tires, changing the furnace filter, etc.).

I’ve been using this revised system for a few months and it seems to be satisfying my immediate needs.  It both cuts down on the number of items I need to manually copy from book to book while allowing me to indefinitely store things in a user-friendly format – effectively marrying my love of analogue with the convenience of digital.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

 

 

History Snippets – Demagoguery

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Image by John Hain from Pixabay 

It is sometimes amazing how cyclical social and political problems can be.  While I am not pessimistic in our ability to move forward in something that can be recognized as “progress,” I do have some cynical attitudes towards our collective habit to backslide.  I realized some time ago that while we espouse enlightened positions, such as “never again,” people as a whole tend to by historically myopic and prone to letting fear get the best of them – or to quote Agent Kay “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.”

As of writing, I’m working my way through Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton.  Around ten-hours into the audiobook, Chernow is discussing the political maneuvering between Hamilton and New York Governor George Clinton over trying to get the newly-drafted Constitution ratified in 10 States in order to bring it into force.  The two sat on opposite sides of the federal government question, with Hamilton believing a strong central federal government was the key to sustaining the American experiment, while Clinton was distrustful of a central government superseding the power of the States.  Hamilton had a poor opinion of Clinton, believing Clinton to be only concerned with consolidating his own wealth and power, and only pandering to the populace when elections rolled around.

Chernow gives a striking description of what Hamilton feared, and in a single line spells out a looming threat we are seeing anew in our own modern political discourse.  Hamilton worried that “American democracy would be spoiled by demagogues who would mouth populace shibboleths to conceal their despotism.”

Chernow penned those words some fifteen years ago.  Whether it’s 1788, 2004, or the dawning of the neo-20’s, the fears expressed in those words caution us that we must remain vigilant against those who seek to exploit our fears to manifest their vision in reality.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Kindness and Picking Fights Online

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Image by reneebigelow from Pixabay

Recently, a lot of things circulating through social media and my podcast feeds have been enraging me.  I try to mitigate these things through a number of strategies – limiting my time on social media, intentionally targeting positive messages, not reading comments, not engaging, reminding myself that it is ok to disagree about things, etc.  The hardest things for me to let go are cases where my thought-processes seem to wildly diverge from others about the framing of the same set of facts.

Initially, I wanted this blog post to be my master rebuttal.  I wanted to lay out my case for why the conclusions others are drawing from this or that event are wrong and why.  I wanted to emphasize what the important, salient points are that we should keep in mind.

But I know in my heart that would be an exercise in futility.  A blog post is easy to skip; easy to ignore.  I won’t change hearts and minds by arguing against a strawman average of the viewpoints expressed in my network of known-people.  It would be antagonistic, hostile, and unproductive towards my goals.  In all likelihood, it would backfire and entrench or alienate friends.

Instead, I will offer a different approach that I want to continuously remind myself of.  When I feel compelled to dig in my heels for an argument, I should remind myself of the following.

First, remember what Aristotle (via Will Durant) tells us about virtue and excellence.  It doesn’t matter what others say or share/post online; we are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Second, turning to fiction, remember why The Doctor helps people.

“Winning; is that what you think it’s about?  I’m not trying to win.  I’m not doing this because I want to beat someone or ‘cause I hate someone, or because I want to blame someone.  It’s not because it’s fun.  God knows it’s not because it’s easy.  It’s not even because it works because it hardly ever does.  I do what I do because it’s right!  Because it’s decent.  And above all, it’s kind.  It’s just that.  Just kind.”

Series 10, Episode 12: “The Doctor Falls”

Ultimately, it’s not about what I will say, or argue.  Arguing with other people doesn’t make me a decent person; picking fights online doesn’t put me on the high road.  If I want to bring about change in people I care about, it’s important to remember to be kind.  Always be kind and help people, because it’s the right thing to do.

I recognize that being kind doesn’t give a lot of direction and can seem cowardly when meeting the systems that do real harm to the vulnerable and oppressed.  In fact, espousing kindness can easily slip into inaction or forced neutrality.  It’s hard to be prescriptive in this case at a granular level.

However, if I start with the core values of kindness and action, that what is important is doing things that are kind to others, then you can use your values as a filter for determining what you will choose to do.

Instead of arguing online, I choose to try and lead by being kind.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Citing Your Sources

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Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay 

While reading a post from A Learning A Day, I thought I’d keep the irony train rolling by linking to Rohan’s linked post from Derek Sivers about the perceived need to quote an idea’s source.  Specifically, I wanted to respond to this point:

2. School teaches us to reference. But we’re not trying to impress a teacher anymore. And every unnecessary fact dilutes our point.

I often reflect on the learning objectives I expect to achieve in a course lesson while teaching.  I try to parse out the meaningful things I want students to learn from rote procedural tasks that don’t serve a purpose.  The last thing I want to do is to reinforce the wrong lesson or derive the wrong conclusion from a student’s performance (e.g. did a student do well on a test because they understood the material, or because they are good at taking tests?).

Derek’s point above about references is well-taken and got me thinking: why do I want students to cite their sources?  I brainstormed a few reasons and listed them below with comments.

Reason

Thoughts
I want a student to be mindful of their research process (procedure). Having gone through writing my master’s thesis, it’s easy to lose track of references and citations if you don’t stay on top of it.  This isn’t super relevant to most assignment learning objectives, but it’s a good practice to have before launching into a bigger endeavor or capstone project.
2. I want a student to critically examine their own knowledge (what do they believe to be true facts, where did that fact come from, and why do they think it’s true). I’m not sure if making students cite their sources achieves this aim on its own, but I suppose I could use citation requirements to help guide them through this process.
3. I want a student to be mindful of idea ownership and give credit to people who have done work.

 

 I’ve used this mostly in plagiarism cases where students copied work and submitted it as their own.  I try to distinguish between sloppy citing and outright theft, and I remind students that they shouldn’t get marks for work they didn’t do.  I’m still undecided if this is a rule of the academy or a legitimate thing to prevent fraudulently passing work off as your own in the future.  This point, though, is mostly relevant in academic contexts as opposed to Derek’s notes about doing this during conversations.
4. I want an easy way to see if the student did the work. This is a trick I’ve developed to see whether a student giving me their opinion is right by chance, or if they have informed their opinion by doing the course reading.  The same result could be gained if students inserted relevant information without citations, but the citations help to highlight this when I’m reading through their submission.  In other words, it makes my job easier.
5. I want to reinforce good academic writing habits. Using references is part of what it means to write academically, and is used as part of the integrity process.  This is only a good reason if my objective is to teach/reinforce academic writing for students.
6. This is the way it has always been done.

 

 More cynically, requiring citations is part of the tradition, and who am I to question it?  It’s not a good reason to require it, but it is what it is.  I won’t included in the list to the left, but a more sadistic version of this is “I had to do it, so you have to (go through this rite of passage) too!”
7. I want to remain consistent with departmental policies and culture. Whether written or unstated, most departments adhere to some level of standards.  This was less the case for me in undergrad and it depended largely on the preferences of the prof.  By the time of my thesis, I ended up developing a hybrid referencing system that did not strictly follow any of the major citation methods.  I received no comments from anyone who reviewed my thesis on my citation practices.
8. It’s important to trace an idea’s lineage as much as possible to spot fabrication. If you are going to insert facts or conclusions into your work, it’s important to point to where you found them.  Without a citation or an adequate way of accounting for how you know what you purport to know, it’s possible that the information is made up.  Being able to trace these things helps, albeit this is more useful from a scholarship point of view, as I suspect a lay-reader isn’t concerned with checking a text for factual accuracy and instead takes it on authorial authority.

9.

 Related – to see if a student is able to either properly reference work, or at the very least charitably restate ideas without dropping important content from the idea. This perhaps falls under sloppy citation practices, but on occasion students will misunderstand a piece of text and paraphrase or summarize information incorrectly.  Knowing where the student is drawing their source from can have pedagogical merit if you take the time to compare the student’s work with the source and discuss the divergence.

10.

 Related – when an author cites their sources, a reader can use the bibliography of sources for further reading.

 

 This is perhaps more for book nerds, but I love having references to be able to learn more for things that pique my interest.  This is, however, not the context Derek is referencing when he discusses giving citations during a normal conversation.  If Derek’s conversation partner was interested and want to know more, I’m sure they would ask Derek for more information.

11.

 More abstractly, knowledge and academics is a web of mutually reinforcing facts, so academic writing is an extension of that reality. This one is a bit of a stretch as to why a student who is not adding to a body of knowledge is required to rigorously cite their sources in a pedagogical exercise, but I include this more epistemological point to try and be exhaustive.

12.

 It’s a symbolic representation that the student (in most contexts) is not generating new or novel work/insights that creates new knowledge, but instead is remixing ideas from other sources. I think this is a good reminder of what the goal of the assignment should be (students are often far too ambitious in what they think they can reasonably achieve in x-number of pages), but I wouldn’t consider this to be an adequate reason to insist on proper citations.

13.

 Like other skills, the act of referencing needs to be practiced. I’m sympathetic to this, but as Derek is implying, you should be practicing skills that transfer into other domains or that you will need.  In most instances, outside of school you don’t need to cite sources.

14.

 Citing references is part of the argumentation process.  In order to build a successful argument, you must clearly express and state your premises, which includes any premises taken from the work of others (either their premises or their conclusions). I’m also sympathetic to this as I think everyone should keep in mind that arguments need to be made to help convey ideas.  It shows the logical chain from premise to conclusion and seeks to make the implicit explicit, and the unstated stated.

Other than a subset of the reasons above, a strict requirement for citations is often unnecessarily enforced in the classroom, and is almost never required outside of the academic setting.  I think there are some good pedagogical reasons to have students go through the effort  to cite their sources, but you should be intentional when teaching as to when those cases apply.  For instance, I am less strict about my students citing sources and instead I look for them to directly apply material from the course in their assignments (instead of giving me their opinions).

I enjoyed Derek’s point about how citing sources is a common trope in pop non-fiction, which sounds like a convergence on my ideas concerning animated bibliographies, or Ryan Holiday’s “15 academic studies” comment from a few weeks back.  Maybe Derek’s right – we should have more courage to integrate knowledge into our existing schema and be prepared to state things as facts instead of citing our sources.  I’m not sure I’m prepared to abandon the practice wholesale, but it has given me something to chew on.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

“The Same Fifteen Academic Studies”

Despite my rant a few weeks back on the podcast-book marketing relationship, there are a few authors I will check out when they appear on podcasts I’m subscribed to.  For instance, Ryan Holiday just released his new book and is out promoting it to various podcast audiences.

He appeared on Rolf Pott’s podcast, Deviate, and had a conversation about what it’s like to write a big idea book.  Towards the end of the episode, he makes an off-hand remark on getting ideas from recently published books, and how he chooses not to do this because it tends to result in recycling the same academic studies.  Given how much I rant about animated bibliographies and short term content bias, I was happy to see some convergence in our ideas – that my amateur attempt on commenting on culture is shared by people I admire and hold in regard.

I’ve transcribed his remarks below, but you can go here to listen to the episode yourself.  Holiday’s comments begin at the 50:37 mark:

Potts: And that’s why you should feel blessed not to be an academic, right, because that’s such a useful model from which to write a book.  The academic world has these different hoops to jump through that often aren’t as useful.  And I would think that, sometimes, there’s types of research, like, do you do much Google or Wikipedia research, or is it mostly books?

Holiday: Yeah, I mean, you have to be careful, obviously, relying on Wikipedia, but yeah you do wanna go get facts here and there, and you gotta check stuff out.  I like to use obituaries.  Let’s say I’m writing about a modern person and they’ve died.  New York Times obituaries, Washington Post obituaries often have lots of really interesting stuff.   Then you can be really confident that dates and places and names are all correct because they’ve been properly fact-checked.  So I like to do stuff like that.  I watch documentaries from time to time.  In this book, there wasn’t really a great book about Marina Abramović, but there was some really great New York Times reporting about her Artist is Present exhibit, and there’s also a documentary with the same name.  So I’m willing to get stuff from anywhere provided I believe it’s verified or accurate, but you can’t be choosy about where your stuff comes from.  And in fact, if you’re only drawing from the best selling books of the last couple of years, just as an aside, an example, I find when I read a lot of big idea business books, it feels like they’re all relying on the same fifteen academic studies.  It’s “the will power” experiment, and “the paradox of choice” experiment, and the “Stanford Prison” experiment!  They think it’s new because it’s new to them, but if they’d read a little bit more widely in their own space, they’d realize that they’d be better off going a bit deeper or treading on some newer ground.

*****
(Note: I’ve lightly edited the transcript to remove filler words and some idiolects).

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Going Out Of Our Way To Vote

A few weeks back, my wife and I were preparing for a then-upcoming vacation.  Our voting cards had recently come by mail and I was listing off the voting information (location, date, etc.) when she realized that election day was happening while we were out of the country.  This was the first time I would be physically unable to vote on the day, so we started looking into what one does when this happens.  I had heard in the past about early voting, though never needed it.

Turns out, the early voting days would start the day after we departed for our trip (of course).

In cases like this, you need to contact your local elections office to request a special voting kit that would allow you to send in your votes early.  Thankfully the elections offices are open during the week until 9pm, so we were able to go in person to fill out the paperwork to pick up our kits and vote.  It required us to write out our candidate of choice on a blank ballot, then seal those votes in an envelope, which was then sealed in a separate envelope to track that we had voted but not track who received our votes.

I’m glad these kinds of provisions are in place to allow us to exercise our civic duties.  While we know our votes would not be missed if we had skipped this election, and even though we had to go out of our way to vote, my wife and I nevertheless feel it’s important that we do our part to show up and participate in the process.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan