Hummingbirds Are Cool

Hummingbirds are cool

Hummingbirds are the coolest birds ever. Because they can hover. There. End of argument. Hovering wins against any other attribute.

There are lots of cool birds. Condors are cool, just because they're big in a wow-that's-really-massive way. Cormorants are cool. They can be trained to dive for fish and bring them to you. Who doesn't like a bird you can train to bring food? What if you could train a condor to bring you a steak? I bet they could bring the whole cow.

Parrots and cockateels and the whole parrot extended family certainly deserve consideration. Because they can talk. But it's not real conversation. Not like they're going to go on Jay Leno and yuck it up. Of course a parrot has probably already yucked it up with Jay Leno, beating me by a lifetime.

I heard that in Australia so many parrots have been released into the wild by owners who taught them curse words - and didn't realize they live for fifty years, because why would you set free your cursing parrot? - that now the released parrots are teaching the wild parrots to curse out in the jungle. With an Aussie accent.

Penguins get cool points for being cute and classy at the same time. I can't resist saying "no pun intended." For "cool" points. Never mind. All day long they get to play on a slip-and-slide made of ice. I got so sunburned and so scraped up on my slip-and-slide as a kid. Probably because we were under water restrictions at the time. I'm surprised there's no slip-and-slide app. Dibs.

And the waddle is completely endearing. If my co-workers at my last job waddled, I might have liked them better. But probably not. I wouldn't have minded if they had fins that kept them from typing pointless, long-winded, angry, accusatory, emails full of typos and sending me IMs to ask when I was going to be done with what I was working on when they IM'ed me. But if they had interrupted me to beg for fish, that would've been OK.

Other birds just can't come close. Pigeons are about as cool as rats with wings. Homing pigeons get a bit of a break, but not much. They're mailmen. And obsessive-compulsive. Vultures are a marvel because they eat stuff I can't, but the gross factor cancels out the cool. They would totally win Fear Factor. Crows and grackles are just plain annoying, although they possibly serve some function in the every-animal-adds-value earthly ecosystem. I just don't know what that is.

Ducks and geese? Average. Swans and peacocks? Classy, even beautiful, but not nifty. Not hovering.

Hummingbirds hover. They beat their wings so fast you can only see a blur! And it makes a low-pitched light-saber-esque whoosh when they fly by. "The Force is strong in this...bird." Other times it's a high pitch tsk-tsk-tsk sound. I think that means they're scolding someone. Might even be me. I was staring after all.

Based on messiness alone, the hummingbird feeder on our balcony is a total win vs the chickadee/sparrow bowl or the finch mesh sock. Those were a complete pain to clean up after. Although I do miss the chickadees. They're so cute, I just want to hug them and squeeze them and call them George. But not any cuter than hummingbirds. Who hover.

Yeah, sugar water - even with the time it takes to prepare it - wins against bird seed that has to be swept up all the time. No need to sweep up sugar water. Worst case you might need a mop. That would be a lot of sugar water.

Hummingbirds live on sugar water and tiny bugs they catch as they fly. Sort of like bikers. Except it would be beer and chicken wings and tiny bugs they catch as they fly. Down the road.

I suppose I can't give them coolness points for the iridescent heads, or peacocks would be back in contention. Except peacocks don't hover. That's definitely the trump card.

The other trump card is that I can stand out on my balcony three feet from the feeder and they still come for food! They don't mind me at all. No condors landing on my balcony. Or penguins. No condors landing on penguins either. Or even the other way around. Occasionally the hummers come towards me with the tsk-tsk-tsk sound. It's either a threat display, or they don't like the striped shirt I'm wearing with my plaid pants. Everyone's a critic.

Being enthralled by the whole hover ability means I'm even more impressed when I see one perch. That's when they look plain adorable. And then they hover again. Cool.

Leverage and Wealth Disparity

Lately I've been thinking about the role of leverage in wealth disparity. America is a land of amazing freedoms, allowing anyone to earn income with few boundaries, such as class or location. Meanwhile, I've seen repeated reports on the increased disparity between the wealthiest and the poorest in our nation over the past fifty years. I'm curious about three things: the role that leverage plays in increased wealth disparity, the minimum wealth that a society should deem as livable, and whether there is a need to limit the difference between the wealthiest and poorest individuals. Today I'll share some thoughts on the first of these. (Note - I'm using the term "wealth disparity" to talk about variance in wealth without passing judgment.)

Leverage is the ability to use resources to gain more resources. On a small scale, you leverage your savings by depositing it in a savings account. Your bank or credit union loans it out to others and pays you interest. You thereby leverage your savings into greater wealth. Greater leverage can come from borrowing money to invest (like using it to buy raw goods or inventory for sale, or to buy stocks on margin). Leverage is the basis of the adage "it takes money to make money."

I started thinking about the connection between leverage and wealth disparity on my last trip to the airport. I recently qualified for elite status with my airline. This means my employer and I spent a certain amount on travel for work and pleasure last year - approximately $3000. Now when I fly, I no longer have to pay a fee to check a bag, because I have elite status. The money I have spent is now earning me greater returns - leverage. I'm spending the same amount on the flights as other passengers, but I save a hundred dollars or so not paying those fees.

Flying is not a need in life. But I could argue that in today's economy, having a bank account for the safe-keeping of savings constitutes a minimum standard of protection. Leverage comes into play here as well. If you have a certain amount to deposit, you don't pay checking fees. (If you have a higher amount, you won't pay for checks. Higher still, and you get better interest rates on your savings.) If you don't have the minimum to deposit, you will see your balance eroded each month, meaning you have to earn more just to keep in place. Or you will avoid the banking system and use alternatives - like check cashing services - with their own fees.


There is a similar leverage effect from having health insurance generally provided by employers. I view low-cost access to preventive medicine as a minimum standard of health protection. With the current system, you need a certain set of skills to qualify for a job that offers affordable health insurance. Maybe you need additional skills to have health insurance that comes with preventive care fully covered.


As a side note, the perversity of these leverage effects is that they provide an obstacle to flexibility. If you want to try working for yourself, you have to contend with a lack of affordable health insurance along with the gap in income. Similarly, but less severely, if you want to fly a different airline with better routes, you have to build your frequent flyer status from zero.


What examples do you have of leverage that contributes to wealth disparity?

In Search of Team USA

Occupy Wall Street: Day 14 -
 Some rights reserved
by Long Island Rose

Occupy Wall Street. The Tea Party. The Jobs bill. Job-killing regulation. The flat tax. The millionaire tax.

At work I'm part of a team of about a dozen people. We're a true team. Sometimes a team is just a group of people who sit near each other and have the same manager. My team isn't like that. We share a purpose and core values. And we look out for each other.

Because we're a real team, we want each other to succeed—up, down, and sideways. All of us want to see our manager get promoted, and we tackle our projects knowing that our results reflect on him. For his part, he gives us more responsibility each time we prove ourselves; he rewards us with bonuses; and he spreads the word about our accomplishments and capabilities.

Those of us who are managers do the same for our employees. We build their skills through trainings and increasingly complex activities. We assign projects to match their interests. And we give them credit for the work they do, making sure other teams know what they're capable of.

It works sideways as well. We work together to complete projects for the good of the team and our business partners. We warn each other if a business partner is unhappy with someone's work. And we tell each other—and our business partners—when someone on the team has done a great job.

All of this leaves me wondering—what happened to team USA?

My manager gets paid a lot more than I do, but I want him to succeed anyway. It's not a zero-sum game. Why can't Occupy Wall Street or the Democrats or whomever be in favor of the top 1% being successful at their business endeavors?

The temporary employee who works for me gets paid much less than I do, but I want her to be successful anyway. It's not a zero-sum game. Why can't the Tea Party or the Republicans or whomever be in favor of those on the bottom rungs being successful at finding work and supporting their families?

Maybe it comes down to vision. My manager, his VP, and our CEO have set a vision of growing a company, helping our customers succeed, and doing the right thing for employees. Building a team of 12 takes work, creating a team from a company of 70,000 takes a lot of work, so turning a country of 300 million into a team is...hard. Really hard. But not impossible.

Team USA can solve the unemployment catastrophe and the debt crisis. We need leaders with vision. Leaders who focus on our country's common purpose and core values, not petty differences. I'd like to see our President and leaders of Congress come together as a team that wants each other to succeed. For the good of the Nation. Only through vision, trust, and common purpose—starting at the top—will we see a true Team USA.

Language Hacking Success - Brazil

I'm back from Brazil now, and I have to say that Language Hacking really worked well for me. Kudos to Benny the Irish Polyglot. After two months of studying, I was able to have simple conversations and get complimented on how good my Portuguese was. In particular I was able to:

• Order and pay at restaurants - including asking about an incorrect bill
• Buy baked goods and other items at grocery stores
• Ask for directions
• Check into a hotel
• Get help shopping for gifts
• Ask people about themselves and their families
• Ask to have my flight changed to the same itinerary as my wife's
• Joke around

Brazilians make it very easy to practice Portuguese. They aren't uptight about the language and they love it if you smile and joke around. When I went into stores, very few people spoke English, which is really helpful. It avoids the situations where they feel the need to put you out of your language misery by speaking your native tongue. Instead, we would just smile and laugh while I used filler comments called connectors until I figured out another way to say what I wanted.

I was amused by the number of people who asked me if I used Rosetta Stone to learn Portuguese. They're definitely doing their marketing well - I even saw a kiosk in the airport.

Here are the learning techniques I used to prepare before the trip - mostly taken from Fluent in Three Months:

• Studied a Lonely Planet phrasebook for Brazilian Portuguese
• Found a co-worker who speaks Portuguese and had three conversation sessions with him
• Practiced greetings and pronunciations with a Brazilian vendor at the local farmers market
• Learned numbers, colors, food, phrases, and pronunciation from a language CD by Euro Talk Now
• Watched Brazilian movies from Netflix, first with English subtitles, then with Portuguese subtitles
• Used Anki Spaced Repetition Software (SRS) flashcard program and iPhone app to study connectors, phrasebook vocabulary, and finance-specific terms
• Wrote emails in Portuguese to co-workers in Brazil using Google Translate as a supplement
• Changed my iPhone, iTunes, and Facebook language settings to Portuguese

Once I arrived, I just kept in mind that I had to go out and speak in order to improve. And I had to replace the anxious look I get when I can't find the words or understand everything. Instead I focused on smiling, nodding, and using filler comments.

As an aside, some of my favorite words are "otimo" (o-chimo), meaning "great"; "legal" (lay-gow), meaning "cool", and "moleza" (mo-lay-zah), meaning "piece of cake". I also like that futebol (soccer) is pronounced "fu-tchy-bol" and PowerPoint is "powerpoin-tchy".

I can't write about a trip without a section on food, so here goes. I had amazing pizza there (who knew there was such a huge Italian influence?). I ate delicious cuts of meat at the Fogo de Chao churrascaria (Brazilian barbecue). Every lunch buffet was full of deliciously savory sauces and spreads. We went to a great sushi restaurant (who knew there was such a huge Japanese influence?).

The draft beers ("choppe") were heavenly smooth - with Devassa's Negra as my favorite. But the best was the Pao de Queijo - cheese bread. Not just lower-case cheese bread. More like a glorious merger of light francese rolls and melted longhorn cheddar cheese at perfect nacho consistency so that it pulls away in a long string and falls all the way down past your chin when it finally snaps. Good thing I have a ten-year visa, because I may have to buy another ticket soon.

I thoroughly enjoyed learning Portuguese, but it was even more fun to learn so many tips to learn any language. I plan to shift my focus from Portuguese, which means it will join my ever-fading traveler's knowledge of Italian. We're traveling to Zambia in two months, so I'm going to apply all the techniques I just learned to my study of Bemba. I want to see if I can accelerate my learning pace. At the same time, I'm going to start brushing up on Spanish, with a goal of being conversational by next summer.

What language would you like to learn?

Update on Brazil and Portuguese

Full disclosure - I wouldn't be writing this post if Benny the Irish Polyglot hadn't told me to. I'm reading his Language Hacking Guide and I reached the section where he said I had to start a log of my language journey. I resisted for about four hours. Since I paid money for the book, I might as well try what it says.

This morning I asked a few questions in Portuguese while taking to the guy working the hummus stand at the farmers market. His name is Gilbert ("Zhilbayr"), he's really friendly, and he's from Brazil. Those last two comments seem to always go together. Brazilians have a reputation as being very friendly. My extensive data sample of three supports this generalization. Gilbert loved the questions I had and completely ignored my mistakes. The whole interaction was a lot of fun and very encouraging.

The part I'm struggling with is around Benny's advice to have a few main goals, some mini-goals that will get me there, and a plan for how to do it. Articulating my main goals specifically is not turning out to be so easy. I'm just going to have to jot something down and refine it as I go. Vaguely, I want to be able to get around Sao Paulo on as little English as possible. That's three weeks from now. I'll have some business meetings with a few people who speak no English, so I want to be able to talk about accounting and processes as much as possible with them. Also - I want to know enough to win over the visa officer at the Brazil consulate in San Francisco next week so I can get our visas issued as quickly as possible. (Otherwise I can't even go on the trip.)

I like Benny's book and the advice on his blog. (I even wish I had thought of it years ago.) Finding the discipline and the time to follow his recommendations isn't easy. But the easy way - not having goals or a plan - won't result in any language progress at all. So I'll keep reading the book, resisting his advice because it requires effort, and then caving in and following it after all.

How to Learn a Language in a Month (I Hope)

I’m headed to Brazil on a business trip next month. I love to travel, so I’m totally stoked. Most of all, I love going to countries with foreign languages. Every time, I dream of being fluent in the language. But it’s not that easy, is it?

Failure of Spanish Classes

I took Spanish in the eighth grade, and loved it. My suburban Houston neighborhood was not what you would call diverse. My Spanish class opened my eyes to the reality of a different culture and language. I had never realized how surreal it would be to express the same thought in two different languages. Doing so was like solving a cryptogram puzzle. And every day, every lesson, brought an exciting new technique for solving them. Every homework was a new set of cryptograms that we had just learned how to crack.

There’s a problem, though. After four years of classes, I couldn’t carry a conversation. I was – and am – intimidated by the awkwardness of trying the first clumsy sentence. So it’s easier to speak English, even around family members who are native Spanish speakers. Twenty years ago I had – or should have had – the keys to the language. But I could never get the lock to turn.

Now I want to learn Portuguese. I only have about three weeks. Four years of classes aren’t an option, even if I thought they would work this time. Should I spend a four hundred bucks on Rosetta Stone? Practice all 300 words and 20 phrases on the EuroTalk CD that came as part of a 33-disc set? Subscribe to a Portuguese podcast? I know, buy an app! Hmmm.

How I became fluent in French

I started learning French in the eleventh grade. I actually walked around the corner from my sixth-period Spanish III class directly to my seventh-period French I class. I spoke a lot of Spanish to my French teacher, much to her annoyance. Every lesson was just as revelatory and every homework just as much of a delightful puzzle as Spanish was. And after finishing French IV, I was…not fluent. Barely even conversational. I got college credit, read some cool stories by existential French authors, and was too intimidated to speak to French foreign exchange students. Same approach, same outcome.

But I am fluent now. I got there, but how? I know it happened in the Peace Corps, but why?. During training, they made us follow “immersion”. We couldn’t speak any English to anyone while we were on the campus. Only French. It was not fun. We hated it and complained. Of course, we were also hot, homesick, feverish from the vaccines, and cramping from intestinal revolts. So Mr. Immersion did not come along while we were at our best.

But we did speak French. We didn’t feel ready, and we weren’t. We still had more lessons to take, more grammar to learn, more vocabulary to remember. But we spoke it anyway. And everyone we spoke to would only speak French back to us. They didn’t even know English. (Or rather, they lied and said they didn’t.)
Immersion certainly worked. It succeeded at the task that an hour a day of exposure in a high-school classroom failed to achieve.

For the next three years I refused to speak English to my Beninese co-workers. I told them it would hinder the language mastery I needed in order to educate the students we shared. Every night I wrote out lesson plans in French. I read French translations of novels I enjoyed, like Jurassic Park. And I let my students correct my mistakes. Until by the end of the school year I was correcting their mistakes. (The class applauded the first time I did so.)

So how does this help me with Portuguese? My co-workers at the office certainly aren’t going to switch to speaking only Portuguese with me. Even if they did, I need something to study, and I need more time – at least six months.

A Different Approach

Right after I downloaded a few iPhone apps with Portuguese vocabulary – they were free – I ran across something useful on Twitter. (Yes – it happens. You don’t think the Library of Congress is archiving the whole thing for nothing, do you?) It was titled “The Learning Secrets of Polyglots and Savants.” It described someone who learned enough Icelandic to hold a conversation after just one week - with an interview to prove it. OK, it turns out the guy is a savant who memorized pi to a gajillion places. (Which I’m totally jealous of, by the way.) But the next guy mentioned was just a regular Irish guy who learned enough Dutch to hold a conversation after only two months - with an interview to prove it. That’s twice as much time as I have, but still gives me hope.

The article described some memory techniques I’ve read about in the last few years. Our brains are wired to be really, really good at recalling places and images, especially when they involve action. Spend an extra 60 seconds coming up with an action image that represents what you want to memorize, and it will stick with you for hours and days, not just a few minutes. Another technique is graduated-interval recall, which involves reviewing the material at ever-longer intervals in order to lock it into the next level of memory, with the least amount of repetition.

Even with these optimization techniques, I’m going to have to prioritize. That’s a dilemma on its own. What do I focus on? Vocabulary covers a lot of ground. Should it be verbs? Travel phrases? Food? Numbers?Days?Colors?Animals?Shopping?VerbTensesPronounsPrepositionsPartsofspeech?????

I googled the-Irish-guy-who-learned-Dutch-in-two-months. He calls himself the Irish Polyglot (a more concise title), and has a website titled Fluent in Three Months. He travels to a new country every three months to learn a new language. I’m even more jealous of him than of the gajillion-places-of-pi guy.

His website gave me one validation and two clues to resolving my dilemma. The validation is that you simply have to start speaking the language. From Day One. No waiting until you’re “ready.” The first clue is to memorize phrases and vocabulary from a phrasebook like the ones by Lonely Planet. The other clue will cause raucous laughter from friends who’ve heard me try karaoke: put the phrases to music, and sing them. For the good of society, I’ll just try that in my head, not out loud. Much.

Implementation

So I’m totally stoked. I bought the Lonely Planet Brazilian Portuguese phrasebook. It totally reminded me of the LP Bengali phrasebook that some friends brought on a mission trip, from which we learned the phrase “Careful. The monkey is stealing your food.” I’m going to create action images, and set them to music (in my head). I’m even going to write my own dialogs and memorize them, the way I prepared my lessons in the Peace Corps. And I’m going to be mentally prepared to just start speaking the language. First with the hummus vendor at the farmer’s market; then with everyone I meet when I get off the plane in Sao Paulo. The only problem is that I’m much better at creating a plan than following through. And I need plane tickets.

Any ideas for how I can make a living by traveling and learning languages?

Favorite Apps

I've probably already mentioned that I'm pretty amazed at all the things a smartphone can do. We may not have transporters or warp drive yet, but we're darn close to tricorders. (I'm sure the iPhone 15 will come out with the ability to detect radiation and bone fractures.) In the meantime, here are some of the things of my favorite apps. (I've tried to note the ones that are iPhone only. And no, I'm not paid by Apple. Yet.)


Games: The Heist (iPhone only)
This puzzle game has been so much fun, I’m going to miss it when I’m done with the last 8 puzzles. It has 60 puzzles in four categories. The first type involves sliding Lincoln Logs out of the way to get a vacuum tube across a square to a connector. The second type is a colorful twist on Sudoku, with icons instead of numbers, and a grid that isn’t evenly arranged. These were my favorite. The next set involves a robot that you use to push diodes over to their connection slots. But you’re in a narrow maze and the robot can only push from behind, so you have to stay away from walls. The last group basically consists of picture puzzles, where you have to rearrange the tiles to put them in the correct order. Instead of pictures, the tiles contain snippets of wire that have to line up in the right way to complete one or more circuits. 


Runners up: 

• Star Wars Arcade: Falcon Gunner – it uses your phone’s camera to provide the backdrop that you play against 
• Civilization Revolution – a fun (and shorter) version of Civilization, but cramped on the iPhone 
• Risk – A quick way to dominate the world (on easy level) 
• Tetris – The old standby 

Social Media: Instagram (iPhone only for now, Android in the works)
I think this is a pretty cool concept. It’s Twitter, but instead of 140-character status updates, you upload photos from your phone. If someone is following you on Instagram, they see your photos in their feed. You can “like” photos (by clicking on a heart) and add comments. When you load a photo, you can share it via Twitter or Facebook. You can pull up your photos on any browser at Web.stagram.com, and you can check out statistics at statigr.am. Oh yeah, you can also apply one of 15 different artsy filters. I almost never do; they pretty much all look terrible to me. 


Runners up: 

• Tweetdeck – So I can post to both Twitter and Facebook at the same time 
• Twitter – I follow Steve Martin, Paula Poundstone, Stephen Colbert, Kiva, Biz Stone, and The Energy Project. 
• Facebook – To check the news feed, and respond to notifications 
• LinkedIn – Good for responding to notifications 

News: CNN Money
CNN Money does not have the best writing – that has to go to the runners up, New York Times and The Economist. However, the writing is catchy. And it’s light enough that I can read it in between sets when I’m doing bench press or squat workouts at the gym. That’s right, instead of listening to music when I work out, I read. Maybe if someone wrote songs about the news each day – that’s music I’d work out to. 


Runners up: 

• NYTimes – especially since the speeded up the load time 
• The Economist – best writing, ever. 

Reference: Google Maps
Seems like I’m always driving someplace new out here, so being able to call up a map at any time is a lot of help. The traffic feature is nice too, since I don’t know the traffic patterns out here either. I am a bit concerned that one day – when the machines decide to get rid of us pesky humans – Google maps is going to give me directions to drive off a cliff, and I’ll just do it. So I occasionally go a different route than the one it recommends. Of course, I always regret it and vow never to doubt Google again. 


Runners up: 

• Wikipedia – Great for shutting down a conversation debating any fact 
• Google Translate – I’m working on my Spanish vocabulary 
• Stocks – To look at the markets more often than a long-term investor should. 

Productivity: Evernote
I’m a total note taker. I have several notebooks of notes I’ll never refer back to. Now I’m saving the trees and keeping that info in someone’s datacenter, where it can be tagged, indexed, and searched. Am I worried that someone is going to hack in and get my data? Only if there is a market for old rental car reservations, Christmas gift lists, and topics I’ve already written about, or no one would want to write about. Hmm…maybe I should be worried after all. 


Runners up: 

• Notes – I keep my gym workouts on here, instead of carrying around a notebook 
• Reminders – coming with iOS 5, I’m hoping this to-do list is as good as Apple says.

Those are the apps I like the best and use the most. I'm eager to see what will come out next, as well as anything good out there that I've missed. Let me 

What's your favorite smartphone app?