About My Spare Brain

I spend much time searching for things - books, films, stories, quotes, songs, jokes, pictures, poems, prayers, anything really - that helps me see and think differently. Some of the ideas I've come across are presented in my book, See New Now. Others are fleshed out in my other blog. The rest are stored here for use in future books, articles, blog posts, speeches, and workshops. There is little rhyme or reason for what I post here. I do this to encourage visitors to come here as treasure hunters looking for new ways of seeing and thinking vs. researchers looking for new or better answers to questions they already know how to ask.

PLEASE VISIT MY OTHER BLOG

My other blog is Conversation Kindling. Its purpose is to pass along stories, metaphors, quotes, songs, humor, etc. in hopes they'll be used to spark authentic and rewarding conversations about working and living fruitfully. There are at least three things you can gain by getting involved in these conversations. First, you can discover new and important things about yourself through the process of thinking out loud. Second, you can deepen your relationships with others who join you by swapping thoughts, feelings, and stories with them. Finally, you'll learn that robust dialogue centered on stories and experiences is the best way to build trust, create new knowledge, and generate innovative answers to the questions that both life and work ask.

February 15, 2010

FOCUS: Tips for Working and Living Fruitfully

"Yes, a Jedi's strength flows from the Force. But beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression; the dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan’s apprentice." - Yoda

"Daniel-san, must talk. Man walk on road. Walk left side, safe. Walk right side, safe. Walk down middle, sooner or later, get squished just like grape. Same here. You do karate ‘yes,’ or do karate ‘no.’ You do karate ‘guess so,’ you get squished. Understand?" - Mr. Miyagi, The Karate Kid

"It does not do you good to leave a dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - J.R.R. Tolkien

"The man who carries a cat by the tail learns something that can be learned in no other way." - Mark Twain

"There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go." - Tennessee Williams

"Go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both yes and no." - J.R.R. Tolkien

"Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don't want it. What appears bad manners, an ill temper or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone." - Miller Williams.

"He who promotes his own honor at the expense of his neighbor's has no portion in the World to Come." - Rabbi Yehudah ben- Chanina, Jewish World Review, 5/28/09

"For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." - 1 Corinthians 13:12

"Remember the scene in Cat Ballou where a very drunk Lee Marvin goes from unconscious to ranting to triumphant to roaring to weeping defeat and then finally passes out? One of the men watching him says, with real awe, 'I never seen a man get through a day so fast.' Don't let this be you." - Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

"If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones." - John Steinbeck


Matt Weinstein,
What Bernie Madoff Couldn't Steal From Me


Jacob Needleman, What Is God?



From FORA TV
On Life, Cheerfulness and Aging by Garrison Keillor (Audio)

From MiamiHerald.com
A Journey into My Colon . . . and Yours by Dave Barry

From Psychology Today Online
Recipe for Maintaining Inspiration: Conversations, Random People, and Big Ideas by David Rock

February 10, 2010

FOCUS: The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

Speaking in Public
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want. Everything else is secondary." - Steve Jobs, commencement address, Stanford, June, 2005

“Almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” - Steve Jobs

On Speaking in Public
"It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance. It's the dream afraid of waking that never takes the chance." - Bette Midler, The Rose

"I try to follow the advice that a university president once gave to a prospective commencement speaker. 'Think of yourself as the body at an Irish wake,' he said. 'They need you in order to have the party, but nobody expects you to say much.'" - Anthony Lake

"In seeking wisdom the first step is silence, the second: listening, the third: remembering, the fourth: practicing, the fifth: teaching others." - Rabbi Shlomo ibn-Gavirol

"Speech is the mother, not the handmaid, of thought." - Karl Kraus

"The louder he talks of honor, the faster we count our spoons." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I learn by comparing the speech I was going to give with the one I gave, and then comparing that to the one I'd give if I could do it again." - Larry Wilson

Carmine Gallo, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs at Macworld 2008


Steve Jobs, Commencement Address, Stanford University, 2005


From CIO Magazine
Q & A with the Author of "The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs"

February 5, 2010

ODDS & ENDS: Criminal Minds Quotes, What Makes Us Moral?, Jeffrey Dahmer, Criminal Profiling

Criminal Minds - Season 1
"All secrets are deep. All secrets become dark. That’s in the nature of secrets." - Cory Doctorow

"The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary. Men alone are quite capable of every wickedness." - Joseph Conrad

"When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself." - William Faulkner

"There are certain clues at a crime scene which by their very nature do not lend themselves to being collected or examined. How's one collect love, rage, hatred, fear...? These are things that we're trained to look for." - James Reese

"Don't forget that I cannot see myself -- that my role is limited to being the one who looks in the mirror." - Jacques Rigaut

"The irrationality of a thing is not an argument of its existence, rather, a condition of it." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"With foxes, we must play the fox." - Thomas Fuller

"There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough, and liked it, never really care for anything else." - Ernest Hemingway

"A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses. It is an idea that possesses the mind." - Robert Oxton Bolton

"Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together." - Eugene Ionesco

"The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone." - Harriet Beecher Stowe

"Evil is always unspectacular and alway human. And shares our bed...and eats at our table." - W.H. Auden

"Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves." - Confucius

"What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world, remains and is immortal." - Albert Pine

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"It is better to be violent if there is violence in our hearts than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence." - Mahatma Gandhi

"A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know." - Diane Arbus

"Other things may change us, but we start and end with family." - Anthony Brandt

"The house does not rest on the ground, but upon a woman." - Mexican proverb

"There are some that only employ words for the purpose of disguising their thoughts." - Voltaire

"We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end, we become disguised to ourselves." - Francois de la Roche Foucald

"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods." - Albert Einstein

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell

Elie Wiesel, What Makes Us Moral?


Stone Phillips, Jeffrey Dahmer Interview: Segment 1 - Part 1


Stone Phillips, Jeffrey Dahmer Interview: Segment 1 - Part 2 (Video)
Stone Phillips, Jeffrey Dahmer Interview: Segment 1 - Part 3 (Video)
Stone Phillips, Jeffrey Dahmer Interview: Segment 1 - Part 4 (Video)
Stone Phillips, Jeffrey Dahmer Interview: Segment 1 - Part 5 (Video)
Stone Phillips, Jeffrey Dahmer Interview: Segment 1 - Part 6 (Video)

From The New Yorker
Dangerous Minds: Criminal Profiling Made Easy by Malcolm Gladwell