New Year's Resolutions

Number one New Year's resolution in America right now?

Stop Smoking

Where does confidence come from?

It seems to me that confidence is a tool that offers a huge return for anyone possessing it. If you've got it, you can leverage it in every way possible. A few examples:

1. The confident person seizes big opportunities (or rather creates them) and sees them through to fruition. This could be a business venture, a political opportunity, or something as simple as writing music and playing it live for others to hear. No one wants to take big risks except confident people.
   
   
2. The confident person responds to criticism by converting it to energy and using that energy to further his goals.
   
   
3. The confident person responds to outright failure with an intense review of why he failed. Then he takes this newly acquired knowledge and leverages it to the hilt in his future plans. His failure becomes his asset.
   

But all of this begs the question: where does confidence come from? Genes? Parents? Past success? Good teachers?

Does confidence engender success, or does success engender confidence?

Whirlwind of Questions

Sometimes questions drive me insane. Especially when I can't arrive at any conclusions because the string of questions only continues.

At the same time, I think that it's questions that keep things interesting, even though they make people uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable to ask where Ellen and I will be in two years, but it brings joy to think about all of the possible outcomes as well. New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Nashville? It drives me insane to consider all of the different career opportunities that come with a law degree and question which one is right for me, but it's exciting at the same time.

Sometimes I wish I could turn my brain off so I wouldn't have to hear all the questions that fly through there every day, but that wouldn't be any fun would it?

Making Things Work

"Clinton and Magaziner did not know Congress, and so they did not build legislation that worked in Congress. They saw the policy problem more clearly than the political problem. Arguably, they solved the former. But in failing to solve the political problem, their policy was stillborn."

-from an article written by Ezra Klien in the American Prospect

This got me thinking about how Obama will use Tom Daschle to push through whatever healthcare reforms they come up with. You can't just be an expert on policy. You can't just be a hard nosed senator. No, to implement great legislation that really makes things better for everyone, you've got to be great at both.

This probably produces a big bottleneck effect. Lots of people in think tanks with great ideas but no ability to push the ideas through congress. Lots of senators and representatives (or ex-politicans) with the political agility to do great things but utterly lacking great ideas. Then, a few people who are really great at both.

Seems like a bad deal for the rest of us who have to live with congress' decisions. Let's hope Obama picked the right man in Daschle.

Hitler and Nietzche

Hilarious.

Democracy

"Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear." -Alan Corenk

Good Days

Today has been a great day. The only thing I've done all day is sit around with people I love watching college football. Bama played at 11:30 this morning, and Ellen and I met Cara and Blake at Blake's apartment at 10:45. We made pancakes, bacon, eggs, sausage balls, and biscuits. All was ready just in time to enjoy it as the game began. Bama won. We cheered. We laughed. We enjoyed each other.

Those are my kind of days.