This week’s highlights: The Class of 2020 Will Be Ok, Concerts, and The Future of Sports Broadcasting?
The Blue Angels flew over Nashville yesterday – super cool. Note this picture was not from that flyover.
Issue 377
by David Wells – Nashville TN
Happy Friday –
This week ended up busier than planned, so while I outlined a blog post, I did not ultimately put ‘pen to paper.’ But no worries, instead, I want to highlight and recommend a book written by a regular Fifteen on Friday reader called How to Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education by Scott Newstok, a professor at Rhodes College in Memphis.
I’ve been reading this book (full disclosure – I was kindly sent a copy) over the last 10 days or so, and can’t say enough good things about it. While the title mentions Shakespeare, in my view, this book is ultimately about how to think and reason well. It uses Shakespeare and his peers as conduits to reflect on the process of educating a “thought-full” mind. Newstok is a lively and engaging writer, and the quotes he weaves into the text are worth the read alone.
All the best,
This week ended up busier than planned, so while I outlined a blog post, I did not ultimately put ‘pen to paper.’ But no worries, instead, I want to highlight and recommend a book written by a regular Fifteen on Friday reader called How to Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education by Scott Newstok, a professor at Rhodes College in Memphis.
I’ve been reading this book (full disclosure – I was kindly sent a copy) over the last 10 days or so, and can’t say enough good things about it. While the title mentions Shakespeare, in my view, this book is ultimately about how to think and reason well. It uses Shakespeare and his peers as conduits to reflect on the process of educating a “thought-full” mind. Newstok is a lively and engaging writer, and the quotes he weaves into the text are worth the read alone.
All the best,
David
Food for Thought
- SBP – Dear Mom: A Class of 2020 High School Senior Weighs In and It’s Going to Be Okay A local Nashville senior thoughtfully weighs in on Corona’s impact during one of life’s great transitional periods.
- TheAtlantic – The Day the Live Concert Returns Great piece from Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters – “I don’t know when it will be safe to sing arm in arm at the top of our lungs. But we will do it again, because we have to.”
- NewYorker – The Man Who Thought Too Fast Frank Ramsey—a philosopher, economist, and mathematician—was one of the greatest minds of the last century. Have we caught up with him yet?
- New Yorker – Amid the Coronavirus Crisis, a Regimen for Reentry – Credit CW – Atul Gawande’s most recent – “Health-care workers have been on the job throughout the pandemic. What can they teach us about the safest way to lift a lockdown?”
Business
- NYT – The Pandemic Helped Topple Two Retailers. So Did Private Equity. The first sector I covered as a young Wall Street analyst was retail, so it’s always held a spot near and dear to my heart. There are many factors at play in this spate of bankruptcies but excessive financial leverage has proved to be the straw that broke many a camel…
- INC – Mark Cuban: Want Your Business to Survive? Make Employees Owners This is a favorite soapbox of mine, spreading equity deep into your organization changes behavior, encourages loyalty, and lowers attrition. There are great case studies proving the point – Home Depot to name one. When HD went public, there were many a cashier who became millionaires. If we want to address income inequality – this is an easy place to start.
- NYT – ‘I Could Solve Most of Your Problems’: Eric Schmidt’s Pentagon Offensive The former Google C.E.O. has reinvented himself as the prime liaison between Silicon Valley and the military-industrial complex.
- TBP – Random Lockdown Observations
Culture/Tech/Science:
- FastCo – L.A. Clippers owner Steve Ballmer wants to save sports by reinventing the way we watch them How a partnership between the former Microsoft CEO and the basketball-obsessed data scientists of Second Spectrum gave rise to a groundbreaking new broadcasting technology.
- Esquire – There Are Still Pockets of Sanity Left In This World. My Weekly Poker Game Is One of Them. I knew this game was something I needed, but I don’t think I anticipated how fully my friends needed it too.
- WashPo – With colleges shuttered, more students consider gap years. But those may be disrupted, too.
- Wired – The Confessions of Marcus Hutchins, the Hacker Who Saved the Internet At 22, he single-handedly put a stop to the worst cyberattack the world had ever seen. Then he was arrested by the FBI. This is his untold story.
- VanityFair – For Cable Pundits Turning Their Homes Into Makeshift Studios, Only One Opinion Matters Claude Taylor and Jessie Bahrey, who run the @ratemyskyperoom account, have captivated the D.C. analyst circuit with tough-but-fair rulings on lighting, bookshelf accents, and perfectly striped wallpaper.