There’s a story ([apocryphal, it turns out](http:\/\/www.snopes.com\/language\/acronyms\/tip.asp)) that “tipping” at restaurants first emerged as a way of making sure you’d get good treatment, hence the word “tips” itself–“to insure prompt service”. A friend uses this strategy at hotels, tipping on the first day so that he will benefit while he’s there.<\/p>\n
Today [President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize](http:\/\/nobelprize.org\/nobel_prizes\/peace\/laureates\/2009\/), and while there is certainly celebration among his supporters, the predominant reaction is “for what?” He is just a few months into his time as president, and has yet to finish any of his ambitious goals.<\/p>\n
It’s interesting to think about how this will affect Obama’s remaining time in office (and afterward). It is a validation of what he’s done so far, but he now has even greater expectations to live up to, and risks more disappointment if he fails.<\/p>\n
My wife had a fascinating reaction to the news: “I think everyone should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize early in their careers.” Receiving such a large, historic, and public honor forces you to raise your ambitions. Whatever plans you had before the prize, you must now take to a higher level of morality and effectiveness.<\/p>\n
In Kurt Vonnegut’s [Player Piano](http:\/\/www.ryskamp.org\/brain\/?p=159), a character named Alfie shares a powerful philosophy of work:<\/p>\n
Pick out something impossible and do it, or be a bum the rest of your life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
If you were [woken at 4am](http:\/\/nobelprize.org\/prize_announcements\/magic_call.html) by the words “Congratulations, you have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize”, what impossible things would you start doing?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There’s a story ([apocryphal, it turns out](http:\/\/www.snopes.com\/language\/acronyms\/tip.asp)) that “tipping” at restaurants first emerged as a way of making sure you’d get good treatment, hence the word “tips” itself–“to insure prompt service”. A friend uses this strategy at hotels, tipping on the first day so that he will benefit while he’s there. Today [President Obama was…more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-philosophy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9wjHJ-UF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3513\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}