Fantastic Four

A dissapointment. Not terrible, but not great, either -- kinda like Pizza 73. Effects were ok but the plot didnt really make sense and the characters just werent interesting. Plus Dr. Doom was a weenie. 5/10.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120667/

Why Going To The Theatre Sucks

"I love seeing a movie with a big crowd," he says. "But I had no idea how many obnoxious ads Id have to endure ? it really drove me crazy. After sitting through about 15 minutes of ads, I turned to my wife and said, Maybe we shouldve gone to Jim Carreys house after all. "When DreamWorks marketing chief Terry Press took her young twins to see "Robots" this year, she said, "My own children turned to me and said, Mommy, there are too many commercials! Now, when the lights go halfway down, Im filled with dread. The whole uniqueness of the moviegoing experience is being eroded by all the endless ads."
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2005/07/declining_movie.html

Doom 3

Doom 3 is a fun but essentially vapid game. Its a technically beautiful acheivement, with real-time lighting and shadows, amazingly rendered textures, and realistic blood and guts. Compared to a game like Half-life 2, however, Doom 3 essentially feels like you are walking through a big carnival fun-house with creatures popping up at you with no AI. Not a dissapointment, but not revolutionary, either. 7/10 for effort.
http://www.doom3.com/

Minds May Affect Machines

There is very little that the researchers understand about the phenomenon, but they do know that results arent affected by distance or time. Participants, for example, can have the same effect on a machine from outside the room or across the country. They can also have the same effect if they have the intention before the REG is turned on or even if they read a book or listen to music while the machine is running.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68216,00.html

If Nominated, You Dont Have to Serve

"Often, becoming a team leader doesnt feel like a promotion," says Learning Points Mark Christensen. "The rewards dont feel commensurate with the responsibility you feel. But you need to stay with it. The rewards wont come immediately, but they will come.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/09/promo6.html

Membership Has its Privileges - And Limits

Yes, participation inspires motivation. But who should participate in what? And for how long? One of the toughest calls for a new leader is deciding when enough participation is enough. Those calls are especially tough for leaders whove risen through the ranks. How can you go from cutting up with your buddies after work on Wednesday to cutting off debate on Friday?
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/09/promo5.html

Lead Individuals, Not the Group

Team leaders dont lead teams. They lead a collection of individuals who together make up a team. Its a small clarification with big implications. Each team member has different strengths and weaknesses, workstyle preferences, blind spots, and hot buttons. Theres no way a leader can get a team to work together, experts say, without first learning how to work with each person as an individual. Leadership is a one-on-one sport.

Reminds me of the martial arts quote that escapes me, which Ill paraphrase as "Lead the one as if it were many and lead the many as if they were one."
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/09/promo4.html

Nobody Likes a Know-It-All

Good leaders exude limitless confidence. They also understand their limitations. Indeed, the best leaders recognize a fact of life that too many leaders ignore: the people youre working with know more than you do. Even as their teams look to them for guidance, leaders must look to their teams for knowledge.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/09/promo3.html

Dont Forget What Got You There

Becoming a leader is a major job change. That doesnt mean you should change who you are. Plenty of new leaders force themselves to undergo an instant transformation from "one of the gang" to commander in chief. Thats a mistake, warns Ascher. "Dont try to become some kind of presidential persona," he says. "People want you to be yourself. You have to lighten up. You have to get to know people on a personal level, make the job enjoyable. You shouldnt change who you are."
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/09/promo2.html

Never Do What You Can Delegate

Your job as a team leader is to provide the tools, motivation, and direction the team needs to do the work itself.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/09/promo1.html

Gibson on Remixing Content

Our culture no longer bothers to use words like appropriation or borrowing to describe those very activities. Todays audience isnt listening at all - its participating. Indeed, audience is as antique a term as record, the one archaically passive, the other archaically physical. The record, not the remix, is the anomaly today. The remix is the very nature of the digital. Today, an endless, recombinant, and fundamentally social process generates countless hours of creative product (another antique term?). To say that this poses a threat to the record industry is simply comic. The record industry, though it may not know it yet, has gone the way of the record. Instead, the recombinant (the bootleg, the remix, the mash-up) has become the characteristic pivot at the turn of our two centuries.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.07/gibson.html

Do You Have The Will To Lead?

Theres a terrible defect at the core of how we think about people and organizations today. There is little or no tolerance for the kinds of character-building conversations that pave the way for meaningful change. The average person is stuck, lost, riveted by the objective domain. Thats where our metrics are; thats where we look for solutions. Its the come-on of the consulting industry and the domain of all the books, magazines, and training programs out there. And thats why books and magazines that have numbers in their titles sell so well. Well do anything to avoid facing the basic, underlying questions: How do we make truly difficult choices? How do we act when the risks seem overwhelming? How can we muster the guts to burn our bridges and to create a condition of no return?
http://pf.fastcompany.com/magazine/32/koestenbaum.html

War Of The Worlds

This movie has plot holes big enough to drive a martian war machine through. Why have the machines been buried underground since before man was here? Why do they suck peoples blood? Why are kids so stupid in this movie?
Well, it doesnt matter. This is one hell of a scary movie. Spielburg does a fabulous job of showing us one common mans view of the martian invasion. Very spooky without being too jumpy. 7/10.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0407304/