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Be More Like Phil Mickelson

Phil Mickelson had never won a British Open. High pressure, I guess. Five strokes back entering the final round, and history shows that he is really good at finishing second in majors. Yet, he smiles while out on the course. He gives his golf ball to a kid in the gallery while walking from 17 to 18. Phil’s reservedly high-fives and fist bumps everyone he can on that walk to 18. It’s the final hole of the final round of a major, and he was two strokes up. Phil stood on the tee box at 18, still with the biggest tee shot of his life ahead of him, and smiled. He showed a little humility and appreciation for the moment.

Tiger yells fuck and goddammit and all other sorts of words after poor shots (knowing there are microphones everywhere), and very rarely smiles. And this comes after his marital troubles, confession, and 2010 news conference where he said, “Character and decency are what really count.” He has 14 majors (which is admittedly no small feat). Phil had four, and now he has five.

I’d rather be Phil.

And, of course, there’s this

Bertrand Russell – Love is Wise, Hatred is Foolish

Listen to the man! Love is wise, and hatred is foolish.

“In this world which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other. We have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way.”

The Reality of Your Life is Always Now

What you truly have, without a doubt, is now. The reality of your life is always now. Do not continually hope to become happy in the future. Make your future arrive now.

Racism Still Exists – ESPN Magazine Article

Well, this article was hard to get through. Italy’s racist soccer thugs are downright cruel to people of color. They hurl both insults and bananas at black players (even the ones that play for their home team). Yes, they throw bananas on the field. Racism is apparently alive and well. Kudos to Wright Thompson for a brilliant piece.

Funny, Balotelli scored a decisive goal for Italy yesterday. I wonder how the thugs feel about this.

Click here to read the (very long) ESPN article.

Love, No Matter What – Wonderful TED Talk by Andrew Solomon

This is a beautifully delivered message from author Andrew Solomon. Like him, I’d like to see everyone treated fairly, the same, without respect to how different the majority might deem them to be. When we discriminate against people because of their race, sex, age or sexual orientation, we are actually stunting the growth of our society. Great people are marginalized, left to wonder where they fit into a world that thinks they’re too different. Are such people even allowed to contribute everything they have to offer to society? When the answer is no, I just think that’s crazy.

Besides the many wars we’ll likely continue to be engaged in (the ones where we use UAVs and tanks and soldiers), I believe this is the greatest fight we as a species have before us.

First Post on Medium: “Listen For Your Birds”

Have a look at my new post over on Medium: “Listen For Your Birds

Larry Conners and His Facebook Problem

I’ll spare you the details, as they’re available here, here, here, here, here and here. The summary is that local St. Louis TV anchor Larry Conners, who had been on the air for 34 years, was fired after alleging on his work Facebook page that a 2012 interview he did with President Obama drew the ire of the IRS. As the IRS is currently in some hot water for allegedly targeting right-leaning groups, this charge is not as crazy as it sounds.

It turns out that the IRS had started working Larry over several years previous to the Obama interview. This made his Facebook post look a little funny, and after some deliberation, KMOV terminated him. I joined Mark Reardon to discuss the situation, including a very important distinction to make: did Larry run into a Facebook problem, or a personal judgement problem that just so happened to play out on Facebook?

As always, thanks Mark for having me on your show.

CLICK HERE TO HAVE A LISTEN

And here’s a link to my friend Aaron Perlut’s piece on Forbes.com.

Boston National Anthem That You Won’t Forget

When humanity works together as one, we’re undefeated.

We Used To

We used to sacrifice humans to appease the gods.
We used to think the Earth was flat.
We used to have witch hunts and we’d burn the ones we caught.
We used to practice bloodletting, extracting tiny quantities of blood from a patient in order to cure disease.
We used to often lobotomize crazy people, and shock them with electricity too.
We used to enslave Africans.
We used to take some of those slaves as concubines.
We used to allow children to work long hours in factories.
We used to prevent women from voting.
We used to involuntarily sterilize people for eugenic purposes.
We used to have teachers that would hit the backsides of unruly students with rulers.
We used to throw people in internment camps.
We used to tell consumers smoking was cool.
We used to make black people drink out of a different drinking fountain and give up their bus seats to white people.
We used to ban interracial marriage.
We used to do all of these things, and more.

Why don’t we do these things anymore? Why not?
Why were these things so right, until they were wrong?
Does the human race just get progressively smarter as it moves along?
We thought we were just in our beliefs, and some kicked and screamed as these practices were changed or abolished.

What are we doing today to marginalize our fellow human being?