Threadless Founders on How to Create Awesomeness

On the “awesome way” to make money on the Internet:

In our estimation, there’s two ways to make money on the Internet… there is the Awesome way, and there is the Not Awesome way…The awesome way is using technology to create something innovative that people want, and that people will use, and that makes your day easier, and makes your life easier, and really does something good for the people involved in this project.

On perfectionism and competition:

Your project is not good enough. [This] is something that everyone should keep in mind. Our projects, as far as we’re concerned, are never good enough..It’s not about “Oh, there’s not a million people there” or “Oh, our traffic isn’t up” or whatever, it’s..if we do something that people like, then somebody else is gonna do it. And then their aim will be to be better than you, so your aim must also be to be better than you…We always have to keep in mind that no matter what we do, it’s never been done… If you’re not always trying to make everything better, then there’s really no point in working on it.

- Jeff and Jacob, founders of Threadless (entire presentation on video at Google)

Little Miss Sunshine is an Awesome Movie

If you haven’t seen it, be sure to. This is by far one of the funniest movies I have seen in a long time. An endearing picture of a hilarious dysfunctional family, every character and dialogue is brilliantly crafted.

“Do what you love. Fuck the rest.” -Dwayne

Blessings in Disguise

The Ririan Project is a personal development blog that had a post a couple weeks ago titled 10 Timeless Lessons from the Dalai Lama. I skimmed through it quickly but one thing that has really stuck in my mind lately was the following:

8. Dalai Lama said: “Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.”

As I near the end of my college career I look back on the choices I have made and it’s easy to dwell on what could have been done differently. Senior year brings with it the excitement of finally being done but also many disappointments that make you wonder what you could have done to yield a more desirable outcome. I’ve come to realize though that disappointments are often blessings in disguise because they open doors to opportunities that would have never been possible had everything gone the way you originally planned.

Never lose faith in the opportunities and possibilities that are yet to come. Our failures to make things go the way we want them to can surely lead us to incomparably greater successes, so long as we keep our sights on the now rather than the past.

“South of the Border” Party at Santa Clara University.. WTF?

At first, the “South of the Border Party” thrown by Santa Clara University students didn’t strike freshman Nadine Rasch as offensive.But students came dressed as Latino janitors, gardeners, gangbangers and pregnant homegirls.

“I realized they’re making fun of me, because my dad worked so hard so I could have these opportunities, and they’re making fun of people for that,” said Rasch, 18, a finance major from Guatemala, who did not attend the party.

Photographs taken at the private, off-campus party and splashed on Internet sites reveal a crude and narrow portrayal of Latino life. One student hammed it up before the camera with a stuffed balloon on her belly, under her blouse. Another posed for a close-up shot of her puckered mouth, thickly lipsticked and lined in black. One student wore a janitorial costume complete with the long rubber gloves commonly used to clean bathrooms.

Student leaders organized a protest march that was joined by 250 people. The campus has held meetings and plans a forum next week.

Unofficially, students have jumped on the blogosphere to trade everything from thoughtful comments on race relations to arguments and insults.

Santa Clara isn’t alone in witnessing this vein of partying with negative, racial overtones. Parties mocking African-Americans have been reported at Macalester College in Minnesota, Clemson University in South Carolina, Trinity College in Connecticut, Whitman College in Washington and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

-San Jose Mercury News

I don’t even know where to begin.

It isn’t hard for me to imagine this party being planned with harmless intentions. Mexican themed PROBABLY just meant sombreros, salsa music, tequila and Coronas for all. Even so, the fact that this party turned into a blatant mockery of Latino janitors and gardeners comes as a huge shame to me, especially coming from Silicon Valley.

I am not so nieve to believe that we all don’t have private stereotypes or occasionally spout off a racist joke. I even recognize that that sadly, most stereotypes about are rooted, to a degree, in truth. But under no circumstance is it cool to publicly make fun of people for what they do to make a living and support their families. This is ESPECIALLY true if you are some well off white kid whose parents are putting you through private school. These kids have likely known worlds more privilege than Latino immigrants and have no right to bag on any ethnicities, especially if they couldn’t possibly have the slightest clue of discriminatory experience. (Yes I realize that in itself is a generalization..but I stand by it.)

When I was taking DOC at UCSD (required GE’s on race, history, and society), I know there were many white kids that couldn’t stand sitting through lecture and doing the readings. They’d roll their eyes at a class that basically told them all the fucked up things that WASP’s have done to every other ethnic group in the relatively short history of the United States.

Similarly, I’m sure that NOT ALL, but a good number of indifferent white students at SCU are probably rolling their eyes and yawning at the reaction this incident has stirred from the campus and community. Once again, another example of the media making a huge deal out of nothing and demonizing the racist white man when most of the students had nothing to do with it. “It’s not like people never make fun of whites.” “No one would be making a big deal out of this if Hispanic kids threw a party with negative white stereotypes.”

They would be right to feel indignant if we lived in a vacuum, unaffected by history. The fact is, white people have never and will never have to deal with the same difficulties or stigmas as ethnic minorities. No white stereotype could possibly have nearly the same sting, given their societal and economic standing, as one that targets a black or Latino or Asian.

Santa Clara University is a Catholic private school whose student body is comprised largely of white upper class students. According to an NBC News Video, the party was attended by 5 members of the women’s volleyball team, and at least one member of the men’s basketball team. To me this incident is very revealing about society and higher education, as the very people who exhibited such racist behavior are likely going to be excused and go on to very successful positions in life.

Is the Fate of Rome America’s Future?

The United States remains, for the moment, the most powerful nation in history, but it faces a violent contradiction between its long republican tradition and its more recent imperial ambitions.The fate of previous democratic empires suggests that such a conflict is unsustainable and will be resolved in one of two ways. Rome attempted to keep its empire and lost its democracy. Britain chose to remain democratic and in the process let go its empire. Intentionally or not, the people of the United States already are well embarked upon the course of non-democratic empire.

The above is from Republic or Empire (full article), a pseudo National Intelligence Estimate recently published in Harper’s Magazine by Chalmers Johnson. A man who worked for the CIA for many years, Johnson argues compellingly that any democratic empire, as the Ancient Roman Republic was before and the United States has now become, cannot possibly sustain itself as both a republican democracy and an imperialistic empire.

The end of the Roman Republic, I am beginning to learn in my HIEU 102 lecture, began when orderly debate and legal due process was trumped by authoritarian power—power that was exercised, interestingly enough, by men who claimed to be saving the republic rather than destroying it. Knowingly or not the Bush administration is taking us down a strikingly parallel path. I agree that we are being pushed toward a crucial point in our history by the blatant, oil driven imperialism running our foreign policy, the countless subversions of Constitutional rights taking place in the name of national security, the ridiculous amounts of money that continue to feed the right wing military industrial complex. Eventually we will be forced to realize that republican democracy and American empire cannot genuinely coexist. We can either restore democracy and retain the legal processes established by the Constitution or we can continue down the path laid before us by the Bush administration towards non-democratic empire.

What’s scary about Johnson’s assessment is that if we do pursue Empire over Republic, we’ll presumably share the fate of Rome in the relatively near future. The eventual demise of the American empire would play out as a consequence of these main factors:

Military Keynesianism: The imperial project is expensive. The flow of the nation’s wealth—from taxpayers and (increasingly) foreign lenders through the government to military contractors and (decreasingly) back to the taxpayers—has created a form of “military Keynesianism,” in which the domestic economy requires sustained military ambition in order to avoid recession or collapse.

The Unitary Presidency: Sustained military ambition is inherently anti-republican, in that it tends to concentrate power in the executive branch. In the United States, President George W. Bush subscribes to an esoteric interpretation of the Constitution called the theory of the unitary executive, which holds, in effect, that the president has the authority to ignore the separation of powers written into the Constitution, creating a feedback loop in which permanent war and the unitary presidency are mutually reinforcing.

Failed Checks on Executive Ambition: The U.S. legislature and judiciary appear to be incapable of restraining the president and therefore restraining imperial ambition. Direct opposition from the people, in the form of democratic action or violent uprising, is unlikely because the television and print media have by and large found it unprofitable to inform the public about the actions of the country’s leaders. Nor is it likely that the military will attempt to take over the executive branch by way of a coup.

Bankruptcy and Collapse: Confronted by the limits of its own vast but nonetheless finite financial resources and lacking the political check on spending provided by a functioning democracy, the United States will within a very short time face financial or even political collapse at home and a significantly diminished ability to project force abroad.

This is only one man’s perspective, but the authority of his opinion, the compelling logic of his analysis, and the grave implications he describes definitely warrant a deeper attention paid to the self-destructive behavior of our government. Cliche as it is, neglecting history may very well doom us to repeat it.

Whoever planned the 49th Grammys should be fired.

The Grammy’s was not an award show, it was a gratuitous celebration of Mary J. Blige and the Dixie Chicks, who I suppose are decent musicians but surely did not deserve that kind of recognition.

My jaw almost dropped as I watched James Blunt play “You’re Beautiful” and Shakira sing “Hips Don’t Lie.” Why in the world would I possibly want to hear the two most annoying songs of 2006?

Here is the one and only thing that was done right: an unlikely medley of Corinne Bailey Rae, John Legend, and John Mayer–3 singer-songwriters that are just barely keeping the mainstream music industry afloat with the rarity and quality of their talents.

A Brief Intermission

Recent events in my life threw me off track but have left me with renewed determination and sharpened focus. There are several random topics I want to blog about, but I’ve been grossly occupied with god-awful recruiting processes as well as having to deal with unexpected Photorgy issues.

Oh and for those of you wondering why Photorgy is down, it’s because we are moving all 40,000 or so photos onto a better, faster, buffer server.

Be back soon.

Zugunruhe

Episode 5 of the show Heroes opens with the narrator talking about Zugunruhe.

According to Wikipedia,

In ethology, zugunruhe is anxious behavior in migratory animals that are prevented from migrating, especially in birds. When these animals are enclosed, they exhibit this behaviour during the seasons which they normally be migrating. Behaviourists have been able to study the endocrine controls and navigational mechanisms associated with migration from studying zugunruhe.

This term is German in origin and is a compound of Zug (move, migration) and Unruhe (anxiety, restlessness).

I don’t think I could possibly better describe the sensation that fills the depths of my soul, when I am walking around the UCSD campus.

You do learn some things from television after all.

Darth Kobe and My Return To Watching Basketball

A few weeks ago I read two life changing articles by Robert Littal on his site BlackSportsOnline.com.

Darth Kobe: The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Kobe Bryant and Jack Bauer: The Evolution of Darth Kobe chronicle the profoundly interesting progression of Kobe Bryant, my childhood NBA hero, through three distinct stages: Kobe Skywalker, Darth Kobe, and Jack Bauer. I’ll paraphrase each Kobe as succinctly as I can:

Kobe Skywalker – The young prodigy I watched with wide eyed admiration as a youngster. Entered the NBA at 18 years old and was immediate pitched by the media, the fans, and Commissioner Stern as the model athlete and future Jordan. Contrasted against the hip hop image of cornrowed Allen Iverson, Kobe was the clean cut, uncontroversial, well spoken and well mannered poster boy that NBA Inc. and Corporate America had been looking for. Like Anakin as a young Jedi, Kobe was immediately thrust onto a pedestal of lofty expectations and strict moral standards, although various signs of the “dark side” surfaced from time to time (these are all detailed in the article). Then it happened. Like Anakin, it was a female that drove Kobe Skywalker to the other side.

Darth Kobe - When it was revealed that Kobe had cheated on his smokin hot wife, Kobe was abruptly “knocked off his pedestal” and shunned by everyone who had placed him on the platform of pristine morality. I myself, given my naive understanding of the celebrity world (and how cheating is the norm, not the exception), was in shock when I heard that my favorite player had been unfaithful to his wife. For Kobe however, the entire world that once expected perfection now slammed him relentlessly.

…after being criticized by every media outlet, after being replaced as the poster boy of the NBA (see: Lebron James), after being on the losing end of a verbal battle with Shaq, after being dropped by his major sponsors, after being dogged by Phil Jackson in his book, after being ridiculed for his lack of team play, after being accused of running Shaq out of town, after being made a national joke for the 6 million ring he bought Vanessa to save the marriage and after failing to lead the Lakers to the playoffs as a solo star Bryant eyes finally opened.

Long story short, Bryant fell from a world of praise to a world of criticsim and ridicule from all directions…his teammates, his fans, the media, and everyone who had elevated him to the hope of being Jordan’s successor. The mere accusation of rape, coming from a white woman, had stained his reputation irreparably. He went from hero to villain, but when he finally embraced who he was rather than living up to the image of perfection he had been unwillingly assigned, he harnessed the energy of the dark side to become DARTH KOBE.

Darth Kobe still gives the standard [predictable, Jordan-esque] answers when talking to the media, but everyone including Kobe knows he is lying. You can see it in his eyes, that “I don’t give a f*ck” look. You have to be a little crazy to score 81 points in an NBA game. You have to be a little crazy to go through what he has went through and still act like it didn’t phase you. The Kobe you see now is choking opponents by just using the force.

Kobe took the hate and jealousy that flowed towards him and use it to fuel his strength on the court. After Phil Jackson came back, after Shaq buried the beef, and after his wife stayed with him to have another kid, the stage was set for the next evolutionary stage of Kobe “Jack Bauer” Bryant, the man who sports 24 as his number and just doesn’t give a damn what you think about his methods.

Jack Bauer: Kobe Bryant today, like the biggest badass of our time Jack Bauer, walks the line between being a good guy and a bad guy. Because of his unique ability to balance being a hero and a maniac, he is the most talked about player in the NBA. Under Phil Jackson’s return, Kobe has come to be seen as an unselfish leader who is leading his inexperienced young team to an unexpectedly successful season (now 28-18).

In brilliant marketing strategy, Bean changed his number from #8 to #24. While Internet message boards across the country tried to decipher the hidden meaning behind the change from the Jack Bauer reference to the I’m-one-better-than-Jordan (my personal favorite) the real reason unfortunately is as sexy. Simply put #8 is associated with a dry humping, bad teammate, and egomaniacal player. While #24 is a leader, a family man who is capable of dropping a “T.O.” on any team in the league….

The reason that people or so attached to the character of Jack Bauer is because of the duality of his personalities. You want to like him but then you see him choking out his girlfriend’s ex husband and it makes you wonder. Kobe has gained that duality. You never know if he is going to kiss Phil Jackson or call Kwame Brown a Flaming (well you know the rest) for dropping another easy pass under the basket.

That, my friends, is the story of Darth Kobe. And that is why basketball is exciting to me once again.