24th
I am 27, live in Tribeca, and am the founder, with Amit Gupta, of Jelly Desk, a new project from Jelly. I also work with New Work City, and co-started CommandShift3.
In November, 2008, I invested in Frogmetrics, the customer feedback and analytics startup.
I used to work for a quantitative strategies hedge fund in New York City until resigning in August, 2008.
I take photos, say things, and occasionally use Facebook
Also, I like email
I guess I’m on the fence about what to think of the symbolic role Obama has given “Pastor Rick” in his inauguration ceremony. Rick Warren doesn’t differentiate between gay marriage, polygamy, incest and pedophilia when it comes to marriage. But he’s vaguely amenable to equal rights for everyone, presumably as long as we use different language. From a recent interview with Warren:
The issue to me, I’m not opposed to [partnership benefits or hospital visitation rights] as much as I’m opposed to redefinition of a 5,000 year definition of marriage. I’m opposed to having a brother and sister being together and calling that marriage. I’m opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that marriage. I’m opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.
Do you think those are equivalent to gays getting married?
Oh , I do. For 5,000 years, marriage has been defined by every single culture and every single religion – this is not a Christian issue. Buddhist, Muslims, Jews – historically, marriage is a man and a woman.
Some form of his argument seems to me the most pragmatic solution to current gay rights infringements. Instead of focusing on the legal definition of the word “marriage”, we should use whatever vocabulary necessary to make sure that we do not discriminate. Wouldn’t this accomplish the equality we’re really looking for?
But I hesitate to give up on “marriage” in favor of different language for exactly the reasons Rick Warren lays out. That marriage has had a consistent definition across many religions does not seem to me a reason it should receive special treatment in our laws. The religious history and underpinnings of marriage are exactly the reason why our government shouldn’t be involved in defining its scope and meaning. For government, gay rights needs to be seen as a subset of civil rights. If it is defined as a subset of religious rights, both will suffer. Government should have no role in defining my religion, nor should it restrain me based on my identity.
When I returned from San Francisco in September to focus on Jelly Desk, I was amazed at how tiny changes in my habits resulted in hours more productivity each day. An article in the WSJ this morning writes it up too:
Mr. Mann has moved away from being a purveyor of tips, and has become an advocate for a more comprehensive approach to productivity. He argues that inefficiencies are the result of bad habits, not because of something so superficial as the layout for computers monitors.
Article here.
I am searching for a way to express my fanboy-ness for New Yorker writer Nick Paumgarten. From The Pits, discussing NY’s building boom:
Keep an eye on the construction pits that developers dug to make way for the foundations of new buildings. The town is pocked with them.
…
What will become of the pits? Can we turn them into half-wild swimming holes, like the granite quarries of New England? Ring them with barbed wire and convert them into debtors’ prisons or internment camps for the culprits who structured synthetic C.D.O.s? They’d make excellent ha-has, for livery horses or livestock. Corn mazes. Extreme-cockfighting arenas. Or perhaps they could serve, over time, as urban tar pits, entrapping and preserving in garbage and white brick dust the occasional unlucky passerby for the scientific edification of future generations, if there turn out to be any. Or they could become parking lots.
He is also the author of another of my favorite articles, Up and Then Down.
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I was sure Mark Zandi was the most honest one in today’s “Big Three” bailout hearings, until I come across this little tidbit from his written testimony via Paul Kedrosky. Every assembly line job lost means almost another one lost in auto repair? Don’t people still have to drive their existing cars, especially if we’re not buying new ones? And the biggest category in a breakdown like this shouldn’t be “other”.