Cleaning House

A few months ago Richard sent me an email linking to an article in the New York Times where some guy claimed that today's television is more intelligent than it was in the past and in fact is making us smarter. I've always wanted to link to that article and never got around to it. Then today I'm in the car and there is this piece on NPR's Fresh Air about a guy writing a book on the same subject. Turns out it's the same guy. I think the idea is brilliant and I am going to try to read the book.

As I documented a while back, last summer I took golf lessons from GolfTEC. The package I purchased was for ten lessons and I took most of the lessons last year. I saved a few for the beginning of this year to sort of get a refresher when I started playing again in the spring. Of course we never really started playing golf this year. Oh sure we have played a few times but nothing like last year. Anyway, the lessons I had this year were mostly about trying to stay on plane and actually rolling over my arms at impact. Practicing these two things has lead to much better success off the tee as I think Taylor and Jerry can attest to. It has somewhat messed up my iron play as I am now a little inconsistent but I think with practice that will work itself out. Now I just need to play more. I will likely go back in the future whenever my game needs some work but it's unlikely that I will ever do the ten lesson deal again. Golf lessons just cost too much.

We watched Frida last night. I really had no idea what to expect and it's kinda fun going into a movie like that. Selma Hayek did a marvelous job portraying the lead character and all the other actors did an excellent job. I particularly enjoyed the cinematography. There were a number of shots that were made to look like her paintings and that really worked. The only downside for me was the general pacing of the movie and the time frame of events, but I think that's just a side effect of a biography. It's just hard to sum up in entire life in two hours. Now I really want to travel to Mexico so it seems like it worked for a tourism point of view.

I always knew Google had some funny way of letting their people work on side projects but I never knew the exact details. Then I read this:

He outlined Google's unique division of labor, in which engineers spend 70 percent of time on core functionality, such as ads and search; 20 percent on adjacent businesses, like Google News, and 10 percent on whatever they find interesting.

Can this idea work for other companies?

Read an article a while back that labeled the current young workers the Entitlement Generation. Since most of the readers of this site fit into that category, what do you think? Are we spoiled and feel like we are owed the good life just 'cause or is the current system of give you life up for the company flawed and we are just fighting back?