We fail when we get distracted by tasks we don’t have the guts to quit

All our successes are the same. All our failures too; We succeed when we do something remarkable; We fail when we give up too soon; We succeed when we are the best in the world at what we do; We fail when we get distracted by tasks we don’t have the guts to quit. — Seth Godin, in The Dip.

The Dip is a little book that I found the other day by chance in a nice bookstore in the Dupont area. The book basically teaches you when to quit or to stick to a project, mainly professional, but you can apply it to anything in life.

The idea is very simple, you should identify what really matters (and he tells you how) and then focus. Quit otherwise and ignore the rest. Personally I found the book pretty inspiring although I disagree with the author in some of the examples he gives; you can even say the little book is too long at times.

The 2010 Earthquake in Haiti

More photos here, in the gallery we set up with the material our colleagues have been sending daily from Haiti and the Dominican Republic border. We are also publishing some (hopefully) interesting stuff in our brand new twitter account.

Importance of communicating

Sorry, I had to share this with the world and I didn’t know where to put it.

–

The importance of communicating in English is illustrated by this joke.

Three men, an Italian, a French and a Spanish went for a job interview in England. Before the interview, they were told that they had to compose a sentence in English with three main words:

Green, pink and yellow.

The Italian was first:

“I wake up in the morning. I see the yellow sun. I see the green grass and I think to myself, I hope it will be a pink day.”

The Spanish was next:

“I wake up in the morning, I eat a yellow banana, a green pepper and in the evening I watch the pink panther on TV.”

Last was the French:

“I wake up in the morning, I hear the phone: “green… green…”, I pink up the phone and I say: “yellooow?”.

Holy books

Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo (Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems), by Galileo Galilei.

Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), by Isaac Newton.

De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), by Nicolas Copernico.

And another one from Tycho Brahe for which I unfortunately don’t have a proper picture.

We saw them all yesterday at the James Melville Gilliss Library, as part of a tour to the United States Naval Observatory (USNO)–the institution in charge of providing precise time (the “Master Clock”) to the GPS system.

If there’s such a thing as a holy book, now I know what’s to be before a few of them.

Napoleon and Laplace

Today I got a comment from RRRG mentioning a classic story about Laplace and Napoleon that I posted in an old version of this blog in 2006. Unfortunately that blog is no longer available—I need to do something about it—so I looked for the original text (which is in Wikipedia with numerous sources) and I’m reposting it now, for your reading pleasure:

Laplace went in state to Napoleon to accept a copy of his work, and the following account of the interview is well authenticated, and so characteristic of all the parties concerned that I quote it in full.

Someone had told Napoleon that the book contained no mention of the name of God; Napoleon, who was fond of putting embarrassing questions, received it with the remark, ‘M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator.’

Laplace, who, though the most supple of politicians, was as stiff as a martyr on every point of his philosophy, drew himself up and answered bluntly, ‘Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là.’ (“I had no need of that hypothesis.”)

Thanks RRRG!

I tried. And I made it.

Don’t miss it, it’s less that 5 min:

2009 in short

• I moved from the gorgeous Brussels to the splendid Washington DC. I lost the francophone touch, but I gained sun and squirrels.
• I started a new job, which was the dream of my life. It let me work firsthand in the scientific event of the year and get interviewed rather informally by my favorite blogger.
• Last year my sentimental life was a good mess, now it’s in perfect karma.
• Family and friends crossed the ocean to visit the new place, more are on it. I guess swimming.
• We enjoyed three (and a half) Tapas Days™ despite something broke each time someone was coming over. Hotel Zeta lost a star, but still remains open, and the price is the same, free!
• I visited Guatemala and Mexico for the first time; and Boston, Cambridge, Baltimore, Cleveland, Philadelphia and San Diego. I enjoyed a snowstorm and the beach in the same week, 4,000+ km away.
• I met a few new friends and I tried to keep the old ones. I answered almost all my emails. I met Conchita.
• I got again formal training at the University, but I didn’t read as much as I wanted.
• I enjoyed Billy Joel performing Piano Man live. And Achmed, the dead terrorist.
• I ran more, I rode a Segway for the first time. I met my sister in three different countries, we both got new cameras.
• I got two flu shots, and I remained healthy. I drank more wine and less beer; I ate more avocados and less fries.
• I published 42 posts, 547 photos and 571 tweets, an average of 3+ items per day. One of my photos was used by my favorite popularizer of science.

Thank you guys for 2009, can’t wait to keep conspiring with you during 2010!

Snowstorm

And next week, California :-)

Update: A few night pics.

1 hour brain spa session

With only a two months delay (cough, cough) here we go with the due top three selection from TEDx MidAtlantic (the best possible entertainment for holidays!):

1. Will Noel (20:20 min), saving Archimedes from the inquisition.
He is a curator of manuscripts and rare books at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.

2. Peter Agre (19:18 min), watch a Nobel Prize doing a Nobel Prize joke.
He is a molecular biologist who leads the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute, serves as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Nobel Prize.

3. Joel Salatin (15:34 min), on chickenness.
He is a farmer.

Good news is that these guys are so brilliant that their stories are timeless :)

By the way, Dave, we can’t wait for the next edition!

Bonus: You may want to hear some tunes from the musicians we had that night, John Forté (rapper) and Ana Vidović (guitarist), both are extremely talented.

What does it mean to be neutral? Really.

Yesterday I attended the premiere of the documentary Living in Emergency, which portrays stories of four Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) doctors who struggle to provide emergency medical care under extreme conditions with limited resources. As it seems, MSF gave the documentary crew uncensored access to its field operations.

Personally I can only recommend watching it. It’s a high quality piece that superbly presents the toughness and need of humanitarian aid.

However, there’s something I’d like to have seen yesterday. Perhaps because it’s so focused on MSF, they neglect the bigger picture (except for a few good jokes!) of how their work is connected to other institutions like the Red Cross or the United Nations.

Especially because there’s an interesting (usually unknown) story behind the formation of MSF, which was supposedly set up to fix the work the Red Cross was failing to do.

Everything started during the Nigerian civil war at the end of the 1960s when the Red Cross was granted access to the country and a group of French doctors volunteered to work in hospitals in the city of Biafra (under siege). However:

After entering the country, the volunteers, in addition to Biafran health workers and hospitals, were subjected to attacks by the Nigerian army, and witnessed civilians being murdered and starved by the blockading forces. The doctors publicly criticized the Nigerian government and the Red Cross for their seemingly complicit behavior.

Because of this event, and as a result of the merge of existing smaller organizations, MSF was born to “ignore political/religious boundaries and prioritize the welfare of victims.”

You may wonder why Red Cross acted this way and did not take part. The reason is that its mandate to protect the victims of international and internal armed conflicts is established by the Geneva Conventions, and therefore they should observe the highest neutrality during conflicts:

The Red Cross prefers to engage states directly and relies on low-key and confidential negotiations to lobby for access to prisoners of war and improvement in their treatment. Its findings are not available to the general public but are shared only with the relevant government. This is in contrast to related organizations like Médecins Sans Frontières and Amnesty International who are more willing to expose abuses and apply public pressure to governments.

Red Cross believes that “this approach allows greater access and cooperation from governments in the long run” helping reach people that otherwise would have been abandoned:

In the era of apartheid South Africa, [Red Cross] was granted access to prisoners like Nelson Mandela serving sentences, but not to those under interrogation and awaiting trial. After his release, Mandela publicly praised the Red Cross.

Which organization is getting it right? Which political neutrality maximizes the welfare of the victims? Well, the match so far is as follows, the Red Cross has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1917, 1944, and 1963. Amnesty International got it in 1977, and Médecins Sans Frontières in 1999.