"Healthy Living" - A New Blogging Series

So I was in between sets at the gym a couple weeks ago, looking around at all the people straining to lift weights and zoning out on cardio machines, when I started to wonder: what makes one healthy?

And as I went through the mindless motions of the mundane rowing machine, I couldn't help but come to the conclusion that what I was doing probably was only as "healthy" as I had managed to convince myself it was.

What about pulling on the handle was actually good for me? Sure, maybe it worked out my biceps and upper back muscles. But what did that do? What made those muscles more important than others? I wasn't at the gym for cosmetic reasons, so why was I here?

That, of course, got me to the bigger picture - in our age of corn-fed beef, packaged food, chic yoga classes, and mega gyms, what does it mean to be healthy?

So this new blogging series is going to be my attempt to answer that question while simultaneously making a series of lifestyle changes (which I'll blog about as part of the series). I'm going to spend the next few posts introducing the series by describing my current habits, fleshing out what I believe is healthy (and by all means feel free to disagree), and laying out my plan for the changes I plan to make.

The goal is threefold: mostly, I think writing about this will help hold me to the changes I'm making. Second, I've always believed journal-keeping has enormous self-reflective benefits, and I'm hoping writing about the experience will help me get more out of it. (Sidenote: dream journal keeping really does promote lucid dreaming, or at least it seems like that so far.) Finally, I want to open the process up to feedback/comments/criticism from my many (read: 3 or 4) readers.

Fundamentally, I think this stuff is really important. The modern world introduces quite a bit of stuff (physical and emotional) into our lives, so much so we tend to forget that we're organisms. We just need to eat, drink, and sleep. Health is wealth, and all that.

Enjoy, and try not to come to the conclusion I'm a complete idiot.

Dear Idiots at NBC

I wanted to sincerely thank you for reaching a new low in Olympic coverage. Your recipe of distilling events to the top 5 competitors, Americans, and crashes/wipe outs made for a fantastic viewing experience.

Seriously, how do you suck so much? It's 2010. Stream every event. Live. Archive the video so it's easy to access after the event. You think it's ok to target the mass market by synthesizing, tape delaying, refusing to post any video online until 1-2 days after the event (and even then making it impossible to find), and adding your inane profile pieces. It's not.

Let me let you in on a little not-so-secret. You're pissing off your most loyal customers. The very small percentage of people who actually want to watch the Olympics. No, I don't want your synthesized version of bobsledding. I want to watch every run for the top 20 teams (and every wipe out, of course). I want to watch it live. I'm happy to sit through a minute long ad for every 5-10 minutes of actual event.

Contrast that to what I actually did. DVR the event, skip everything except for the action, and hate your guts for continuing to ruin one of the modern miracles of sport, the Olympics.

And here is the kicker: Most of us don't give a crap about the Olympics. A fraction of that most of us will watch it, maybe. That fraction of your precious mass market is going to watch whether you stream or not.

Get it together, NBC. Not only are you pissing us off, you're leaving considerable money on the table. Oh, and try to make your website and iPhone app navigable next time around.

A Way Forward for the Dems (and why Massachusetts was a good thing)

As a new resident of the Bay State (seriously, don't they know the SF Bay is much more important than the one they have here? :), I was able to get a bit of a closer look at the special election that vaulted Scott Brown to the Senate.

In terms of responses, panic seems to be the norm. I'm not saying that's not justified, but I just don't see it the same way. I'm hugely uneducated when it comes to politics, but I felt like putting my voice out there, so take this post for what it's worth:

Let's start with a bit of history. I'm going to begin with a bold argument - the "60 seat majority" was a bad thing for the Democrats. I think the entire concept is a little misleading. For starters, that 60 is really 58 Dems and 2 Independents (most frustratingly, Joe Lieberman). More importantly, Democrat Senators aren't all alike - the ones from Arkansas and Nebraska hold a somewhat separate set of beliefs from the ones in California, and must respond to vastly different constituencies.

So when it came time to fix health care, the first bill introduced didn't jive with every Senator's vision, and the inter-party negotiating/bickering began. Had some of those more conservative Democratic Senators actually been Republican, the dynamic would have been much different - the Republicans would have had to decide whether they actually wanted to filibuster a popular health care bill (back then, it was polling very well).

Think about how different that would have been - instead of a summer of prolonged debate, an opportunity for Republicans to spread misinformation about the bill far and wide, they would have had to respond, immediately - are we going to filibuster this popular bill, or not?

Side note: The whole "60 seat majority" thing has caused us to forget that filibustering has major public opinion downsides - it's seen as obstructionist and partisan. I think we're going to remember this soon.

We all know what actually happened - the prolonged debate did take place, the forces that be, well organized as they are, managed to convince a relatively uneducated public that the bill was toxic, and nothing got passed until December.

(I'm really not trying to be partisan here - my own thoughts on the health care bill are very mixed. It appeals to my liberal ideals but betrays my libertarian persuasions. That's a conversation for another day. I mean to deal in facts - the Tea Party-ers and insurance companies managed to steer the conversation to inane and fear-inducing things like death panels. Through mostly these tactics - framing of issues rather than the issues themselves - the bill become unpopular. And, let's face it - the public is absolutely uneducated when it comes to the state of health care. No one knows whats going, even people who should. Which is part of the problem, actually.)

In the process, the Democrats, the President, and pretty much anyone in favor of reform took a beating at the polls (and not to mention, the bill got very watered down). A giant, good-for-nothing mess.

But I digress. This post is about the future, not the past. What to do now? Here is the playing field: Health care hasn't yet passed and is still fairly unpopular. The public has lost the forest for the trees - the focus is no longer on the problem, the fact that the status quo will make us more bankrupt than the bill (I think that's true - correct me if I'm wrong), but on rage and anger at government spending and size. The people who the bill will help, the costs it will save, the necessity of the thing - all have been forgotten (even/especially by the beneficiaries of the bill).

But we must not forget the flip side of the coin: there are still issues to be solved, and now the Republicans have to actually exercise the threat of filibuster if and when they please.

So what is the way forward?

Step one is reminding the public what they have forgotten, and then getting health care off their minds. Now, if only there were a publicized stage where a charismatic speaker would have an unfiltered voice to remind the public of the bill's merits. Oh, wait, there is - the State of the Union.

This is the perfect forum for the President to remind us why he's the Man: by sticking to his guns. He needs to go up and acknowledge the criticism and hit back, tactfully. Facts, figures, emotional persuasion. Tell us stories of who it's going to help. Tell us stories of some of the tens of thousands of people who lost their grandmothers, spouses, or kids because of our broken health care system. (Do I have that stat right?) Remind us of the problem, and tell us how the bill will fix it. Shine light on the misinformation spread about the bill and channel anti-corporation rage - not too much, but just enough.

Then pivot to the future - cracking down on the corporations: big insurance, big oil, big whatever else, and...

Step two: Wall Street. I've heard rumors of a special tax on banks that received bailouts. That's a little two baldly popular for my taste, but it's a start. Even better, there has been talk of a sort of reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act (separation of commercial and investment banking, essentially).

This is brilliant. It left my favorite conservative financial/economic blogger dumbfounded and ecstatic. (Seriously, he's great, and he makes a lot of sense. He's also a riot to read and absolutely crazy. I would love to meet the guy.)

It's so brilliant because it does two things simultaneous - tap deeply into populist anger and accomplish something real and necessary. The support for Glass-Steagall-type reinstatement comes from all fronts - liberal and conservative economists, bloggers, and pundits - and it will do much to blunt the growing conservative/Tea Party movement.

With huge majorities, the Democrats will dictate the agenda. At this point, the Republicans will have two alternatives - go along with financial reform (and cede serious momentum) or oppose/filibuster it, allowing the Dems to wear the crown of the populist party.

There are roadblocks - health care and a second stimulus come to mind. But these can be handled. The former needs to be passed, and quickly, to get it off the public's mind. This is essential - get the Senate bill through the House, get it signed, and let the public forget about it. Tack stuff onto it after the 2010 elections.

The latter may be a little trickier. The Tea Party-ers will be out in full force, decrying the era of big government and spending. The President needs to use the State of the Union and the bully pulpit throughout the year to link the recession and debt to Bush while simultaneously reminding the public that he tried to get us out of the recession with as little spending as possible, but that didn't fix unemployment.

It's going to be a tough sell, but that's why Obama is Obama.

From there, it's focusing on popular bills - I'm not up with politics enough to know exactly what they are, but I'm pretty sure they're there, and tempting the filibuster whenever possible.

So, in short, this is how I truly believe the Dems can seriously minimize losses come November (or maybe even break even):

1. Use the SOTU to set the record straight on health care and turn the focus to Wall Street and the economy/unemployment.
2. Pass health care asap, likely through the House (get it together, idiots), and push modifications till later. Get it off the public's mind.
3. Push serious finance reform, focusing on Glass-Steagall.
4. Minimize damage if a second stimulus is necessary by the spectre of Bush and honest attempt to fix the problem with as little money as possible that was the first stimulus.
5. Focus on popular issues and force the Republicans to use the filibuster (often at their own peril).

There you have it - a complete amateur's take on how to navigate 2010. I'm sure I'm wrong for 3120329 reasons, but writing this has been a fun thought exercise. Also, I know "step one" and "step two" that I wrote about above don't line up with the 5 step process laid out a few sentences ago, but whatever. I have to get back to work.

(Basic) CMS Question

Hi there - posting this question for web guys who know a thing or two about the architecture of Content Management Systems.

Here is what we have to do - we're going to be giving a number of videos with a bunch of different tags (male, football, age range, etc.). When a user signs into our site, we have to match that user's demographic (which we will separate out into tags, so that users will also be tagged) to potential videos' tags so that we can display an appropriate video.

On top of that, we want to rotate videos - if a user's tags matches him/her to 10 potential videos, we want to make sure we're showing him/her something new each time - so we have to keep track of which videos have already viewed (or haven't been viewed).

So yeah, any advice for the best way to design/build this sort of CMS would be great. Thanks all.

Global Warming, Climategate, and Sanity

In the couple weeks since the climate emails leaked, the responses have been fast and furious. Skeptics have pointed to the emails as the smoking gun, the proof of the conspiracy behind global warming. And climate change believers have brushed the emails off as merely the manipulation of a few data points.

(Disclaimer - I like to think of myself as neither a skeptic nor a believer, but simply a logical person. Read on and decide for yourself.)

And by all means, I think this sort of distortion of data and corruption of science is wrong. But what's disappointing, to me, is that emails haven't caused anyone of importance to say the obvious: Climate science is not a science.

Climate science is a manufactured concept to motivate the masses to action because the short-sightedness and selfishness of man keeps him (and her) from realizing the following logical progression:

1. Humans have done tangible harm to local environments and continue to do so.
2. We've seen the repercussions of these harms - to name a few: drastically lowered fertility of Midwest soils, mercury poisoning in fish, polluted rivers and ground water supplies, and, most importantly, the fact that our kids will almost certainly never taste the deliciousness of blue fin tuna due to overfishing aka commercial raping of the oceans.
3. These harms eventually directly impact humans by decreasing the Earth's capability to provide for human survival (each of the above do this to some extent).
   
4. There is a link between scale of destruction and magnitude of harms - if the destruction of the environment continues, there will inevitably be global consequences.
   
5. And, most importantly - Keeping these bad things from happening requires a reduction in standard of living and a lowering of economic efficiency.

Climate change/CO2 levels is simply the most global and lowest hanging fruit, so it's getting the most attention. There are many more issues that need attention, of course.

Unfortunately, humans are oftentimes too selfish, passive, and short-term thinking to take pro-active action on environmental issues (see: extinction of the American Buffalo, South American rain forest destruction, etc.) and issues in general (national debt, health care, social security, etc.). So those trying to avoid long term, global environmental damage are forced, by an unmotivated public and an opposition so attached to their creature comforts that they cannot accept "better safe than sorry" as a sufficient reason to take action, to wrap their clause in a cloak of science.

So to those who oppose action on environmental issues: It's going to hurt the economy. It's also the right thing to do. Please grow up.

Supernova Application

Yes, I know this blog has been quiet. And this isn't really even a post. I apologize.

However, one of my favorite Wharton profs, Professor Kevin Werbach, just offered free admission and demo space at Supernova (in SF, Dec 1-3), and I figured I'd throw our name in hat.

Athleague is a web start up aimed at amateur sports league and club organization. Our product allows league organizers to seamlessly administrate their sports league (or leagues), with features including online sign ups and payment, scheduling, ref tracking, and real time communication. It's being used at numerous college intramural programs throughout the country, including the Kansas University (20,000 intramural athletes, all organizing their sports life through Athleague), and Boston College (8,000 intramural athletes).

We're branching out from the college intramural space to attack a number of other verticals in the amateur sports space and are currently working with a Fortune 500 sports apparel company to deliver an integrated web experience for amateur athletes never before seen on the web.

Our investors include Jeff Fluhr (Founder/CEO StubHub), Sanjay Mehrotra (Founder/President SanDisk), Alex Doll (Founder/CFO PGP), and Anu Nigam (Founder Hi5). Our board includes Lee Hower (Partner at Point Judith Capital, early employee at X.com/PayPal, and founding member of LinkedIn). And our engineers are the best of the best - MIT alums, one of whom was a member of the 8 man IdeaLab team that made Picasa.

We're an exciting young start up in a hot space on the internet - using web tools to actively enhance your real, non-web life. Our functionality gives us key insights into the intersection between online and offline user behavior, allowing for new and original marketing opportunities. Hope to see you at SuperNova!

Looking for Web Developers

Athleague is looking for PHP/MySQL developers to add to our team, both in full time or part time capacities. We prefer the Boston area, but most of all we're just looking for quality.

You can email me at rmishra [at] athleague.com - we'll shell out a $500 for a referral that turns into a full time hire. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Iranian Student Quote

Let me tell you something. For about three decades our nation has been humiliated and insulted by this regime. Now Iranians are united again one more time after 1979 Revolution. We are a peaceful nation. We don’t hate anybody. We want to be an active member of the international community. We don’t want to be isolated. Is this much of a demand for a country with more than 2,500 years of civilization? We don’t deny the Holocaust. We do accept Israel’s rights. And actually, we want — we want severe reform on this structure. This structure is not going to be tolerated by the majority of Iranians. We need severe reform, as much as possible.

- Mohammad, an Iranian Student in Tehran. Quote from a CNN interview with him - full article here. Worth a read.

Thoughts on Iran

With the incredible events going on in Iran, I couldn't keep this blog silent. A few thoughts, though I'm woefully incapable of adding anything meaningful (and certainly not unique) to the conversation.

First... incredible, amazing, stunning - words don't do the people of Iran justice. The courage they're showing by stepping out on the streets every day, in the face of arrest, beatings, and death, is truly indescribable. If, by any chance, you've remained out of the loop as to what is going on in Iran, this video will catch you up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1aPejT0izs (WARNING - this is a very graphic clip of a woman who was killed during one of the demonstrations today). Many have lost their lives, and I fear many more will as well.

On the domestic front, the response to the events have been somewhat disheartening. Obama has, in my mind, played it perfectly, minus his comment about the similarity of Ahmadinejad's and Mousavi's policies. His point was accurate - on the question of nuclear development, the two do have similar stances - but his words were too open ended (they should have left no doubt he meant only in regard to nuclear issues), and the setting of expectations that he wanted to achieve was outweighed by the negative impact of his comment.

More importantly, the Republican (specifically, the neocon) response has been absurd and saddening in that we can't stand as one behind our President, who is clearly doing the right thing. Conservatives from John McCain to the folks at the Weekly Standard have lambasted Obama for not supporting the reformers more explicitly. Why they don't see that this is a dumb strategy that plays right into Ahmadinejad's hands (for heaven's sakes, there are reports that Iranian State TV is playing an Obama clip and then translating it as something like "Obama supports the protests") is beyond me. To maximize the legitimacy of the reform movement, the US needs to have as little a role in it as possible. We're not going to give military support (yet), so vocal support will only serve to embolden the Ayatollah and Iran's establishment.

Past that, it's anyone's guess as to how this is going to play out. I certainly have no clue, but I'll offer a guess - basically, if Mousavi and his legions of supporters can keep the military out of the conflict, I think they have a very good chance of prevailing. At that point, it becomes the Basij (the Ayatollah's millitia) against the protesters. Though the movement is nonviolent, that's a numbers game that the Basij will lose, in that public opinion domestically and worldwide will turn against the Ayatollah to the point where the oppression will have to be stopped (hopefully).

The question is how does a nonviolent movement navigate the endgame of a revolution - it's complex indeed, but part of the answer lies with the military, I think. If the hearts of the soldiers can be turned against the Basij to the point where they are willing to protect the defenseless protesters, the regime can be ousted, perhaps without too much bloodshed.

It's a thought, a hope. We'll see what happens. If anything, one glimmer of hope strikes me from all of this - that the Iranians will provide the blueprint for a new kind of Revolution - a nonviolent revolution. Armed not with guns but the teachings of Gandhi and MLK, change-seekers around the world may have a new rallying cry.

Meditations on Meditations

So I came across a great blog post today - a written account of someone's mind while meditating. If you've ever tried, you know the utter frustration/hilarity of meditation. One person's account of his deviating mind during such a session: http://killingthebuddha.com/mag/confession/ways-i-have-been-a-bad-meditator/

Perhaps the funniest sequence of thoughts:

I have missed my old girlfriend.

I have remembered why I broke up with my old girlfriend.

[...] I can’t date anyone who isn’t a meditator.

Good luck killing the Buddha :)