Michael Doornbos Just your average evil genius

On reading the important stuff, like say the Constitution

The Oaths of Enlistment and the Oath of Commission in the Armed Forces of the United States both include the line:

I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;

That's a powerful statement. I've repeated those words on enlistment myself. You'll support it, you'll defend it.  Maybe even at the cost of your own life.

Whether or not you've sworn to that line or not:

Have you read the Constitution of the United States?  The whole thing?

Seems like something we should be reading don't you think?

Always be the worst musician in the band

I just finished Chad Fowler's book "The Passionate Programmer".  There are a lot of great concepts in this book and I recommend reading it even if you're not a programmer.

There is a concept in this book that he talks about that really stuck with me: Always be the worst player in the band.

Chad has been a jazz saxophonist for years. His concept is a simple truth about your level of talent relative to the people in the room.  The idea is that if you're the least talented, you can't help but play towards the level of the more talented.  Conversely, the more talented people play more like the less talented people. You can't help in a group setting but to become more like the other people you play with.

I'm an engineer type professionally.  I work in computers and electronics and have extensive experience over a broad range of topics on both related fields.  I'm VERY good at what I do.  Lately, I find that I'm often the best engineer on the projects I'm working on.  According to Chad's concept, the people around me are getting better, but I'm standing still, or worse, maybe even going backwards.

This is a gross oversight on my part.

As a musician, I've NEVER been anything but the least talented in the group. The people I play with a generally VERY good. I'm by no means good these days, but my playing over the last few years has improved dramatically because of it.

Today, I'm going to find something to get involved with where I'm the least talented in the room.  Hopefully I won't break something

Where do I find THAT level of conversation?

There is a movie that you've probably not heard of that I can watch over and over again without tiring of it.

The Man from Earth, a mostly overlooked independent film from 2007 made on a shoestring budget rivets me to the screen. It takes place entirely inside a tiny house and in it's yard.

The premise of the story is that the protagonist, John, is a Cro-Magnon cave man, now some 14,000 years old.  He never ages, gets seriously sick, or dies.  The story weaves in an out of a single afternoon where he reveals this fact to a group of friends as he prepares to leave town before people start to notice he doesn't age. He's clearly been close to this group of friends and this afternoon is the first time in his long life where he's found a group of people he trusts enough to try telling them his crazy truth.

The part of the story that is truly captivating to me isn't so much the ideas explored as it is the manner at which his friends engage in the conversation about it with him.  Some of them are very open to the ideas, and some find some of his ideas sacrilegious.

What's remarkable is that they all stay for the conversation.  They probe him, they listen.

Having this kind of conversation is what really blows my hair back.  It's one of my reasons for doing Evadot.

What blows your hair back?