http://www.suryasays.com a blog on current events, marketing, technology, politics, and life. Mon, 22 Jun 2009 04:21:30 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Con't... 6) Dream on a shelf -- ESPN.com OTL. Interesting read on the insides of big money sport. More interesting as a human interest story than financial sports. 7) What makes us happy? The Atlantic. A look at a study that's been going on for *72* years of 268 men at Harvard ... http://www.suryasays.com/2009/06/08/good-articles-to-read-take-two/ I'm gathering up some of the more interesting articles I've found across the web over the past month. I'm not actually sure if it adds up to 2 hours of reading, but it sounded good to me. Why pain? Because reading some of these made my blood boil and my ... http://www.suryasays.com/2009/06/01/2-hours-of-pain-and-bliss/ Duty. In Mullaley's thoughts on the Ramayana, he focuses on the notion of duty. Growing up with parents who are apart from the culture you find yourself in presents all kinds of interesting and unique experiences. One of them was being surrounded by the notion of duty to family. When I ... http://www.suryasays.com/2009/05/09/duty-and-skill-and-will/ In The Unforgiving Minute, Craig Mullaney talks about his Rhodes Scholar experience a bit. In introducing it, he speaks of one of the criteria for selection being 'a demonstrated passion for "fighting the world's fight."' I was immediately struck when I saw this phrase. What did it mean to fight ... http://www.suryasays.com/2009/05/09/fighting-the-worlds-fight/ I read Joker One and The Unforgiving Minute back-to-back (thanks, Amazon recommendations). I expected both books to be very similar given they are about a veteran's experience in Iraq and Afghanistan respectively. This turned out to not be the case at all. While Minute was very readable, I found that ... http://www.suryasays.com/2009/05/09/reading-the-unforgiving-minute/ At one point in 2004-2005 I was tearing through a book or two a week. In retrospect, it was a phenomenal time. I'd stay in for hours at a time on a weeknight or weekend and just read. Since my earliest memories, reading has been one of my favorite experiences. ... http://www.suryasays.com/2009/05/02/reading-joker-one/ There was an article in Wired last month about a woman who seems to remember everything. You could literally name a date from her life and she could tick off hundreds of events from that date. She got a ton of publicity which eventually attracted the Wired mag writer. The ... http://www.suryasays.com/2009/04/26/does-twitter-improve-memory/ "...the future of business lay in its ability to manufacture customers as well as products." That's a quote from an advertising trade publication from the early 1900's in referencing mass production and the shift from scarcity to abundance. But it struck me as what's often missed about advertising. Marketing and advertising has ... http://www.suryasays.com/2009/04/03/manufacturing-customers/ Lacking the clarity to focus on any specific topics, I'll blog the randoms in my head: 1) When I moved to SF, one of the things that I was most stoked about was being able to be surrounded by ridiculously smart, ambitious people. One of those people is Ramit. To compound ... http://www.suryasays.com/2009/03/28/random-end-of-march-thoughts/ Back in the day, around age 10, I went door-to-door selling greeting cards, candies, and other random things out of a catalog. We're talking big money here: I think I made $2 for every item I sold. Things went well until the day I went out to canvas my neighborhood ... http://www.suryasays.com/2009/03/13/facebook-twitter-and-corners/