> A fruit salad tree…bears up to six different fruits of the same family on the one plant. All fruits retain their own individuality, with staggered ripening times. – [The Fruit Salad Tree Company](http://www.fruitsaladtrees.com/)
> With enough minds, all tomorrows are visible – [Jamais Cascio](http://futuryst.blogspot.com/2012/09/design-is-team-sport.html)
> If they were just like us, then they had to work very hard to do what they did. And that’s one reason we like to believe in genius. It gives us an excuse for being lazy. If these guys were able to do what they did only because of some magic Shakespeareness or Einsteinness, then it’s not our fault if we can’t do something as good.
> I’m not saying there’s no such thing as genius. But if you’re trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right. – [Paul Graham](http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html)
To which I’d add that if you think you’re a genius, you’re probably just being lazy and [too impatient](http://bob.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=5060) to do things the right way.
Here’s a good alternative:
(How to change cars forever – Dodge Dart)
> “Obama structures meetings so that they’re not debates,” says one participant. “They’re mini-speeches. He likes to make decisions by having his mind occupying the various positions. He likes to imagine holding the view.” Says another person at the meeting, “He seems very much to want to hear from people. Even when he’s made up his mind he wants to cherry-pick the best arguments to justify what he wants to do.”…
> “The intelligence was very abstract,” says one witness. “Obama started asking questions about it. ‘What happens to the people in these cities when the cities fall? When you say Qaddafi takes a town, what happens?’”…Obama then proceeded to call on every single person for his views, including the most junior people. “What was a little unusual,” Obama admits, “is that I went to people who were not at the table. Because I am trying to get an argument that is not being made.”…
> His desire to hear the case raises the obvious question: Why didn’t he just make it himself? “It’s the Heisenberg principle,” he says. “Me asking the question changes the answer. And it also protects my decision-making.”
[Michael Lewis: Obama’s Way | Vanity Fair](http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/10/michael-lewis-profile-barack-obama)
> Nothing comes to my desk that is perfectly solvable…Otherwise, someone else would have solved it. So you wind up dealing with probabilities. Any given decision you make you’ll wind up with a 30 to 40 percent chance that it isn’t going to work. You have to own that and feel comfortable with the way you made the decision. You can’t be paralyzed by the fact that it might not work out. – [Barack Obama](http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/10/michael-lewis-profile-barack-obama)
> You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits,” he said. “I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.” He mentioned research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one’s ability to make further decisions. It’s why shopping is so exhausting. “You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.” – [Barack Obama, via Michael Lewis](http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/10/michael-lewis-profile-barack-obama)
> To be a futurist, in pursuit of improving reality, is not to have your face continually turned upstream, waiting for the future to come. To improve reality is to clearly see where you are, and then wonder how to make that better. – [Warren Ellis](http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=14314)
> The leader of the past knew how to tell, the leader of the future will know how to ask. – Peter Drucker
[Live webcam of brown bears catching salmon in Alaska](http://explore.org/#!/live-cams/player/brown-bear-salmon-cam-brooks-falls). Awesome!
> Fiction is the study of the human condition through the medium of interesting lies. – [Charlie Stross](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/05/spoilers.html)