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I rather enjoyed CINEMA SPECULATION! I didn't always agree with Tarantino's thoughts, but he is always so rich with stories and history that it made for a really enlightening read.
I just finished a book called "Outliers" which my sister gave to me. It's about the paths that people take to become competent and sometimes even exceptional at a complex skill.
One of the things it showed is that timing is everything: that for example all the pioneers in the computing revolution were born within maybe a three year period. Much before that, the technology hadn't appeared while the person was preparing for their professional future, much after, the industry was already on the rise and a lot of the foundational developments were already established. They had to be there at the right moment, in the right place and with the right skills too. Only after that did things like work ethic, creativity and even luck have a chance.
The book begins with the rather astounding statement that most of the Canadian Hockey greats have birthdays from January until April, and heavily skewed early in the year. The answer is actually simple: little kids are inducted into hockey camp with others born in the same year. The January kids are on average bigger, stronger and faster than the kids born every month after that and the biggest strongest and fastest in their birth year, so they (also on average) do best at hockey camp, get chosen for and do better in youth hockey leagues, etc, etc, High School and College Hockey, Winter Olympics and finally the National Hockey League. The kids born in the bottom half of the year don't really have the same shot at it! (There are exceptions of course!)
-but:
Wayne Gretztky, born January 26, 1961.
Gordy Howe, born March 31, 1928
Bobby Orr, born March 20, 1948
Mark Messier, born January 18, 1961
Once Again: Timing!
Something in there that was kind of discouraging to me is this magic number of 10,000 Hours to really master a skill. It pops up again and again in diverse places including professions, the Arts, and in sports: for example Steve Jobs messed with computers for 10,000 hours and the Beatles played mostly other-people's music in Hamburg for 10,000 hours before they all got big. The book even said that Mozart (as talented as he obviously was) was 10,000 hours into composing before he wrote the pieces that set him apart.
Then there's me: Seven years of studying German, 1.5 hours of class and maybe 1.5 hours of homework per week for about 40 weeks per year: that's about 840 hours!
Good thing my family over there all speak English: fluency is a long way off! (Probably TOO long!)
That's the joy of being a native speaker: you get your 10,000 hours in before you're a six year old.
Last edited by Steve Klare; July 01, 2023, 11:01 PM.
I'm not a big reader, but take "Projections" magazine every couple of months or so when it is published. A good read.
I am also in the middle of a book called "The Making of The African Queen" written retrospectively in 1987 by Katherine Hepburn. The subtitle of the book is........ "Or.....How I Went To Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind."
Although interesting, it has been on two holidays in two different countries with me, and I have still not finished it! A very well travelled book!
May I also recommend a book I DID read and finish fairly recently. "Buster Keaton - Cut To The Chase." A biography by Marion Meade.
The Bible. No matter how many times I read it, I am amazed as to how a book, over two thousand years old, can still be so relevant in this modern world, and that, not a statement of faith or religion, but just in a literary sense, as well as the level of reasoning. I mean, as an example, while we were a bunch of knuckle dragging idiots, thinking the world was flat, the Bible stated that this world was and is a sphere, and that's just touching the mere surface. Yes, I am a religious person, but I am a lover a literature, period, and from a mere literature level, there's nothing that touches it.
That's the joy of being an Engineer: I can believe the world is BOTH flat and round, it's just a matter of the scale flatness or curvature is measured on. From a set of eyes 6 feet off the ground, it is at least flat enough. From the surface of the moon, it is undoubtedly spherical...enough.
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