Profits Don’t Exist?

This morning, over a morning coffee meeting, a thought struck me. What if profits don’t really exist in startups?

Depression as an Ally

I wrote an article about depression not being a bad thing.  Posted it on Medium here!

What if God’s Intention is for Humanity to Transcend Religion?

The fundamental of any religion is that God is not shallow.

Take the Christian framework.  God is wise and powerful. Yet, if one looks at the religion at face value, a paradox immediately emerges: God is all-powerful, thereby all knowing, thereby any suffering caused is as God intends it.  Yet causing unnecessary suffering is, by definition, petty.  And there is no shortage of suffering either in the Bible or in history.  A God that would force humanity to endure the 20th century, unless one assumes that it might have never existed, would be incredibly petty.  And yet…  God cannot be petty by definition.  And so we are at a liar paradox – can God create a rock He can’t lift? (An entirely new spin on “do you even lift bro”…)

Revelation: Littering vs. ….

I was fuming.  Pissed off at an old can, part of a larger composition of litter scattered along the sidewalk.  As I righteously wallowed humanity-hating, a thought struck me: for every 1 person who throws a can onto the sidewalk, there are at least 100 who walk by and complain about it.  What if…

AthenaHealth Hackathon: OTF / Outcomes Tracking Firm

When I started working on JoMI, my mind was blown by the state of medicine – and not in a good way.  I found particularly troubling that it’s impossible to get the batting average for your physician – for all the talk of outcomes, I expected to be able to ask the question: which physician would offer me the highest probability of the most desirable outcome?

US Legal System: Problems and Solutions

I do not know enough to speak intelligently about legal matters, but, as an entrepreneur who engaged the legal system pro se (here ya go), I’d like to point out some “inefficiencies”, offer some solutions, and begin discussing my future role with respect to the judicial system.

Problems

At the end of the day, I am very happy that the JoVE dispute has happened, for it made me aware that not all is well with our judicial system and the streets are, in fact, not paved with cheese.  How so?

• Inefficient Process – why was I filing paper rather than uploading PDFs?  Why was there no online archive?  Why did I have to do so much printing?  Why couldn’t I reference prior pleadings and had to reprint them?

Burningman: It’s Burning, Man

It’s all in the comma.  A pause.  A self-awareness.  A narcissistic pleasure of inhaling the echo of one’s voice.  Except it’s not – when everything is everywhere and anything is possible; when art, drugs, music, dancing, love, bitterness, crazy costumes, fire – when all of it crescendos into a roaring cacophonous kaleidoscope, then it becomes uniform white noise.  A tabula rasa.  Specs of dust in a dust storm painting your vision.  And then it’s you, in a cloud, alone with your thoughts.  This was my burn.

I’ve had several people ask me “What is Burningman?”  I can’t speak for others, but to me it’s about two things: 1) extreme respect for individuality and 2) self-awareness.

Disturbing: WSJ – “Rise of the Warrior Cop”. Erosion of Our Society.

In line with my previous post, now the Wall Street Journal weighs in (WSJ article)…   and this is disturbing.

It seems that we as a society are gradually moving away from our foundation and principles: respect for individual liberties, innocent until proven guilty, etc.  Heard a thought this weekend (Yuri? dad?) that our government is gradually eroding our rights and liberties in the name of convenience.  And now we’ve ended up with a situation when Manning (Wikipedia) and Snowden (Wikipedia) were able to access incredibly important information (ridiculous in itself if it’s “so secret!”), the government has been able to put Weev (Wikipedia) into prison, and there are numerous other transgressions, which we don’t realize until we’ve come face to face with it.

How I Make Decisions, Goals for JoVE

Let’s talk about making decisions.  Cause I get to phofphelesziz…  (dude next to me at Tosca suggested “proselytize”…  that’s almost the word, though not quite…  Gah!  Where is Fitzpatrick when you need him?!)

First, a very important question: What do I want?

Simple: I want to be happy 1) personally and 2) professionally.  Both must fit within certain constraints.  What are they?

Constraint 1: Regret

When faced with any difficult decision, I ask: “What will I regret in the future?”  That is, wa-a-a-ay out in the future, assuming that I grow old without growing senile.  All minutiae promptly crumbles off the core often clearing the path to a decision.

Soft-Launch of Wiki-Law.com: Our Legal System is Ripe for Disruption

So, as some of you know, I am litigating with my business partners at JoVE, which recently almost lead to my being jailed.  So I think I am going to start writing about my experience in a bit greater detail and how it affected me.

And I am also taking this opportunity to “soft-launch” www.Wiki-Law.com.

So, some things I’ve learned: