JerseySmarts.com – Joe Palazzolo's Blog

Start the Weekend Right Link Series – Volume #5, Edition #5

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Joe

This week, I have some links that relate to much of what is going on in the world including how you can build a great home office for these working from home times. I continue to recommend using Feedly as an RSS reader (and, again, I am not getting any payment for recommending this product – I just really like it as a replacement for the old Google Reader). If you already have a Feedly account, then you can follow my blog by clicking here.

Build the Perfect Home Office, Men’s Health
This very quick read was published way back in 2014 and gives five great tips for improving your home office. I agree with – and follow – all of these but one. They recommend painting the home office red because that color helps you focus more on your work. I just couldn’t imagine my workspace being red (my entire home office is shades of gray and black). Also, they suggest not having a television in your home office. Though I have a small television mounted to one of the corners of my home office, I do not keep it on unless there is a major, historic event going on (incredibly rare these days).

Civic Engagement: Teaching Students to Be Partisan Activists, Minding the Campus
This is another old link, from 2013, where a professor of political science indicates his concern about the enthusiasm around civic engagement education. Before he passed away, Dr. Lawler was a professor at Berry College and, in addition to writing about political science, he would occasionally write about higher education (one of my favorite topics to study). Reading about his perspective on how earning credit for civic engagement should be avoided.

Higher ed faces pressure from students to cut tuition, Axios
Just a quick aside, these days I use Axios as my primary news source. They are a low-glitz, web-based platform that is designed to give you a story quickly and efficiently without embedding an opinion. In this story, they talk about how some colleges are cutting tuition due to the COVID-19 pandemic and others are actually raising their costs. I know some of the colleges here in New Jersey are upping their tuition… and I know that their students are angry about it.

Brian Fargo on a Pending Golden Age for RPGs, Tides of Numenera Dev Blog
Years ago, I used to scour sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo looking for new and exciting projects to support. I typically supported projects related to writing (new pencil styles, notebooks, pens, etc.) and those related to classic Japanese Role Playing Game (RPG) video games. With hindsight being 20/20, I now know that I got infinitely more use out of the writing projects (I write in a journal every day) versus the video game projects (I rarely play video games and have not played them regularly in 20+ years). With that out of the way, this link takes you to a very short developer blog entry where one of the folks behind the Tides of Numenera game suggest that we may have been entering a golden age for RPGs. This was posted 7 years ago and while I do not know if the video game industry entered a new golden age, I do know that video games seem to be as popular as ever.

Seven Surprising Truths About the World, Reason
Seven years ago, the folks at Reason put together a great little article about seven surprisingly good things going on in the world… at the time. Among the surprising “good news” stories: cancer rates were on the decline, average IQs were increasing, and local biodiversity was increasing. I wonder how those stories hold up 7 years later, especially with everything going on in the world today.

A random note before I end this one, folks. As I went through my old links for this entry, I noticed that a lot of them from what used to be bodybuilding-styled websites were gone and that those websites had all closed up. In fact, some of those now-former writers have become born again Christians because they suggest that they led horrendous, sinful lives for far too long. That, in itself, is an interesting development and if someone ever writes about it, then that story may find itself as a link on a future edition of this series. Anyway, though I would share that commonality since it was so, well, uncommon in my experience.

Have you come across any great articles lately? If so, then please share those links in the comments below. And one more time for those of you who love reading online articles, I strongly recommend using Feedly as an RSS reader. You can follow JerseySmarts.com on Feedly or you can add us to your existing RSS aggregator. Enjoy!

Book Review: Gorilla Mindset

Posted on July 29, 2020 by Joe

For those of you who pay attention to the crazy media landscape that we find ourselves stuck with, you might recognize the author of one of the latest books that I read – Mike Cernovich. Mike has been at the forefront of calling out all types of untrue news on all sides of the political and social spectrum and he does a great job at it (check out his Twitter account if you want to see what I am referring to here).

I first came across Mike’s writing years ago when he was focusing more on helping people break out of their bad habits and become better versions of themselves. That mindset is carried into this book and Mike does a great job of trying to make the strategies and tactics that he uses work for the reader. Here are some of the lines in the book that stood out to me, so I thought I would share them here.

“To get more out of life, you must get more out of yourself. You must take personal responsibility for your thoughts and emotions. You must stop blaming the system. The days of looking outside of yourself for answers are gone!”
These are words that everyone should live by – stop looking to others to provide answers to your problems. Stop thinking that the system is out to get you – it is not out to get you or to get anyone else. Those who are the most successful in life are the ones who take the bull by the horns and make the world around them work for them. Everyone thinks that is some crazy, highly complex thing to do it, but it really is not that hard. Sure, circumstances may not be in your favor today, but that is probably a momentary disruption. Much of this begins to feel like political posturing, but it really is not. It only feels that way because people are so, unfortunately, preconditioned these days to feel like every comment is a political comment. We have to do better, folks.

One of the great parts of this book was Mike’s comments about how people often talk to themselves in the silence of their minds or, sometimes, out loud in the privacy of their homes. People often attack themselves with a level of brutality that is unwarranted. He writes, “If you talked to your friends like you talk to yourself, you wouldn’t have any friends.” How true is that? How many times do you wind up saying to yourself, “Come on, you idiot! Why can’t you get this done, moron?!” Why talk to yourself that way?

He also suggests that people should start living in the moment more than worrying about the future, which is advice that folks have been offering for decades. Mike suggests, “You don’t know what’s going to happen in the next minute, much less at a point further in the future, so why are you worrying about it? When you start living in the moment, you stop worrying about the future.” When I work with my students, I often find that they are concerned about things in the future that they really do not have to worry about today. For example, I cannot tell you how many students have come to me after getting a bad grade on an exam or a paper and they are all distraught over how that bad grade on that assignment is going to ruin their chance at a future career. Aside from exposing those students who likely have a serious condition that needs to be addressed by a qualified medical doctor, I try to explain to these individuals that their futures are not based on today’s tests, but rather how they respond to them. When you perform poorly on an exam, then study harder for the next one and achieve better, but in all circumstances do not panic over the future!

Perhaps one of the best bits of advice that Mike offers comes at a great time when many of us are ultra-connected to the internet and technology. He writes, “Being plugged in and connected does not signal importance. It shows that you are a slave to others.” Amen! Over the last few months, I have talked to many of the students that I mentor in Generation Z who are actively disconnecting from social media and from being always turned on. That is great! Now, though, I think one of the biggest issues that our population has (in America, at least) is the addiction to the immediate gratification (or anger) that posting on social media provides. Admittedly, while we find this quite a bit in the youngest ages, it really has taken hold in the retirement age community. People are just addicted to being always turned on and it is not, in any way, healthy. In fact, with some retirement age folks, their addiction to always being connected is becoming scary.

On this note, I appreciate Mike’s comments about saying “no” to requests for your time. Over the last year or so, I have definitely found myself telling people no more often and it has been a very healthy development in my life. He writes, “By saying no, I am not compelling anyone to do anything. I am not imposing my will on anyone. I am simply asking to be left alone.”

The Gorilla Mindset, to me, is an active, productive mix of stoicism and personal responsibility with a bit of taking action. Mike presents this mindset in an easy to read, clear manner. If you are looking for a bit of a different self-help book, then give this one a shot.

Just a final bit from this book. Mike shares some great advice on being happier and being more enthusiastic about life: “Mood and posture are linked, and it’s been proven that engaging in the physical act of smiling can actually make you feel happier.”

Smile more, folks!

Start the Weekend Right Link Series – Volume #5, Edition #4

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Joe

Back, once again, with another Start the Weekend Right Link Series. I hope that the links in this week’s offering give you some fun articles to read to get your weekend started right. And I know that there are more people out there reading these updates today than a few weeks ago and I have heard your feedback, so I am going to try to include some more contemporary links each week, too. I continue to recommend using Feedly as an RSS reader (and, again, I am not getting any payment for recommending this product – I just really like it as a replacement for the old Google Reader). If you already have a Feedly account, then you can follow my blog by clicking here.

5 Reasons You Can’t Quit Sugar, Mark’s Daily Apple
And we can start this week with a link to an article posted just a few days ago! Mark’s Daily Apple is a great resource for those individuals looking to learn more about the paleo lifestyle, what it means to eat like a caveman, and what it means to be healthy for life. Some 9 years ago, I read and loved this website’s book called The Primal Blueprint. This article is an expansion of some of the great ideas that are in that book.

Why I Stopped Journaling, Art of Manliness
This is one of the articles where I might not completely align to the takeaway points. Last month, the author wrote a great entry talking about how they stopped journaling because they did not have any big decisions to make, they got better at managing their emotions, and they have friends now. For some, journaling helps in all of those aspects of someone’s life. For me, daily journaling is a stress reliever and a way to get my thoughts out of my head with a paper and pencil.

Why Ed Schools Are Useless, Minding the Campus
I have a doctorate from an education school where I loved the experience, and before I obtained that doctorate, I earned a post-master’s certificate from another educational school where I loved the experience. The argument in this article from 2013 says that education schools have “very little rigor and no incentives to excel academically” and they use some data to back that perspective. My instinct tells me that this is probably a case-by-case basis.

Joe Biden’s student-loan forgiveness…, Condemned to DEBT
Back in April, the very good Condemned to DEBT blog provided a brief analysis of Vice President Joe Biden’s student loan plan. If you are a student loan wonk like I am (I mean, I have been one of their bigger individual customers), then this is something that you want to read. However, based on what I read at this link, I was not that impressed with the plan. Admittedly, I’m usually not impressed with anyone’s plan for student loans.

The 10 Best Top 100 Books Lists, Book Riot
There’s nothing newsworthy in this link – it is being included here purely for entertainment purposes! This link will take you to a list of the top 10, top 100 books of the year lists. Again, the top 10 lists of the top 100 books… for the year 2013. This is one of the outcomes from keeping so many links bookmarked for so long of a period of time – I wind up with 7 year old links to lists of lists! I’m probably entertaining myself far more writing this than you are reading it!

Second Thoughts: On High School and College Football

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Joe

Back in 2013, I created a spreadsheet of different topics that I might write about on this blog. One of the categories was called “Second Thoughts” and the idea was to capture some of my “hindsight being 20/20” style thoughts on different elements in life. For example, today I am going to write about playing football in high school and how I wound up not playing football in college. It would have been hard for me to write about those two things objectively when I was still so close to them (and I am sure that what I write below is not objective anyway), but with so much time between my playing days and today I think that I am able to look back and offer a reasonable, only marginally-biased opinion.

My first comments about playing football in high school is that I am glad for the experience, I am thankful for the lifelong friendships that being on my football team provided, and… I would never, ever want my nephews or young cousins to play football. That perspective might seem counterintuitive or hypocritical – it is not, I assure you. I began playing football during my freshman year of high school, which was 1995. Back in 1995, the research and science around the lasting impact of the intense head trauma that one experiences when playing football was not mature yet. That research had not evolved to where we are today, which is the firm understanding that the repeated head trauma that football players endure leads to diminished mental capacities over the course of their lives.

To football’s credit, they have worked to improve the equipment that is used and to enforce new rules to protect players’ heads. I appreciate those improvements and hope that they are the first in many more changes to the game to protect its players. However, I cannot imagine a world where I would endorse the young ones in my family actively engaging in that type of brutality when the function of their brains is what is at risk. No thank you. By the way, both of my brothers were football players (one was a championship football player and the other was the captain of his team) and my cousin was on my football team (we were championship players then and, now, hall of fame players at our high school) and we all completely agree on this point. We all also agree that if one of the next generation of the family wants to play football, then we would talk to them about it and let them make their own decision, but we would discourage them from joining the team.

As for my experience playing high school football, I loved it. I was able to play for one year with my older brother as a senior on the team when I was a sophomore and I got to play all four years with my cousin. In my hometown, I came from a smaller, feeder grade school that fed into a larger high school, so being on the football team was a way for me to meet new friends, integrate into the larger high school, and build a feeling of attachment to the larger community. All of that worked out very well for me and I think it worked out well because I was a good football player (not a great player, but good enough to start on a championship team my senior year). I can never speak ill of the amazing connections that I built from playing football and, ultimately, from wrestling and being on the spring track team (the weight throwing team, not the runners!).

The one area where I have a constructive criticism for high school football and all high school sports is the constant pressing for more reps, practicing longer hours, and doing something “one more time.” In hindsight and across all of the sports that I played, I do not think that there was much benefit to the “one more rep” mentality. In fact, there is a growing chorus of folks who are saying that the “one more rep” mentality is dangerous. I leave that contemporary argument to those who are making it today. In my experience, though, staying a little bit later, pushing to press up a little bit more weight, and spending additional time preparing for an opponent seems like it was a bit much – at least for the high school level of competition.

At some point during my senior year, I started receiving letters from local, small colleges (Division III) to play football for them. I received a few letters about wrestling, too. I did not pursue any of them in a significant way. One day, one of my buddies who was a running back on the team and I were called into a special meeting to meet with a recruiter from a local university that played in what was then-known as Division IAA (today called Division I FCS). To make what could be a long story short, both my buddy and I opted not to play for that college, but both wound up going to school there anyway. I talked to the football coaches at the university at the time and told them that I wanted to get acclimated to college before playing football. They weren’t interested in that, but said if I wanted to, then I could attempt to walk-on to the team after my freshman year and to come and talk to them after the spring semester ended.

As it turned out, I became friends with several of the football players at my college and I even shared a dorm suite with two of them who I became good friends with that year. I also became friends with some of the college freshmen football players that lived in other parts of the campus and they were all really nice guys. At some point, I started lifting weights while in college and at that time the weight room for the students was shared with the athletes. Without gassing myself up too much, I lifted as much or more than the guys who would have been my contemporaries on the college football team. I’m not so arrogant to think that this was purely because I was stronger than some of those guys, but rather I recognized that they were engaged in a specific type of weightlifting where I was just lifting weights for fun. When you become more specific in your training routine, you can naturally reduce the amount of weight that you might lift in certain standard lifts. I think that is what was going on.

After my freshman year, I went and talked to the football coaches and told them I was ready to walk on to the team. I remember talking to one of the coaches and the look of complete disinterest that he had in me and my story (the same guy who was excited about me potentially joining his team 18 months earlier). I think the conversation turned when I mentioned that during my freshman year, I did really well (a 3.9 GPA after my second semester, which he liked) and that I met a bunch of new friends when I joined my fraternity – that went over like a lead balloon. That coach somewhat reluctantly gave me the paperwork that I needed to get filled out from my doctor and told me that once I got him the completed paperwork, he would get me the dates of the walk-on practices.

Well, I got a physical, had the paperwork completed, and sent it in to the coach… and that’s the end of the story. The coach never got back in touch with me, never let me know about when I could try to walk-on, and never initiated contact again. I did not follow-up with him because I believed then, as now, that some things are not worth chasing. After seeing the utter look of disdain on that coach’s face when I mentioned that I lived a great freshman year and a big part of that was joining my fraternity, I knew that this was not going to be a good interaction and that I probably would not want to pursue a long-term connection with that guy. This is another marked difference between the high school and college settings, for me at least – I genuinely liked each of my high school coaches no matter how hard or aggressive they got with me and my teammates. For the college coach to be jumping up and down enthusiastic about me and my buddy joining his team while we were in high school and then completely uninterested 18 months later, it just did not sit right with me.

Overall, I am glad that I did not play football in college. A few months after that awkward interaction with the football coach, a friend and former teammate of mine from high school began playing football at the college. An old injury of his was aggravated during one of the early practices and he may have been encouraged to play through it (common in both high school and college sports). He opted not to play through it and, instead, protect his body (smart move). And I have heard similar stories like that not just locally, but all over the country and not just with football, but all sports.

What I gained by playing football in high school was provided to me by my fraternity. While I have several friends who had excellent college football experiences, I do not think that I would have had a similar experience playing football at my college. And that’s completely okay for me, especially when considering the brain trauma research I mentioned earlier and the wonderful experience provided to me by joining my fraternity and growing a new group of lifelong friends.

Start the Weekend Right Link Series – Volume #5, Edition #3

Posted on July 17, 2020 by Joe

Back again with another Start the Weekend Right Link Series after last week’s successful offering. Just a note before we get started, I continue to recommend using Feedly as an RSS reader (and, again, I am not getting any payment for recommending this product – I just really like it as a replacement for the old Google Reader). If you already have a Feedly account, then you can follow my blog by clicking here.

Resignation Letter, Bari Weiss
Well, this is a complete and total destruction of the New York Times and their editorial page. Ms. Weiss is the now-former opinion editor at the New York Times and in this scathing resignation letter she tears apart what many of us have grown to begrudgingly accept about the newspaper – that its opinion page is more than far-left, it’s off the left side of the charts. As someone who is an avid New York Times reader, I know that they have a broken editorial page that, as Ms. Weiss says, operated by an “enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.” Yuck. If you enjoy reading about the behind the scenes in today’s media scene, then you want to read this resignation letter.

To Ask or Not to Ask: Experiments in Charitable Giving, Freakonomics
As you may know at this point, one of my favorite topics in the volunteering world is the business of philanthropic giving. In this 2011 post from the Freakonomics blog, they offer some commentary on a then-recent study of philanthropic giving related to the Salvation Army bell-ringers at the front of stores during the holiday season. One of their big takeaways is that giving increases 75% when you just ask someone to donate. Shocking, right?

Students Say No to Healthful School Fare, The NY Times Well Blog
This is another blog post from later in 2011 where the NY Times’s Well Blog wrote about how students in the LA Unified School District were rejecting the new, healthier food options. You might remember that about 10 years ago in this country, there was a push to make school breakfasts and lunches healthier (great idea, in my view). Well, this blog entry tells you how that played out some 9 years ago: “Students have been throwing away meals and bringing their own junk food to school, forcing the district to bring back some of the foods it worked so hard to replace.”

Higher Education is Still a Very Good Investment-Becker, The Becker-Posner Blog
The Becker-Posner Blog was a great read for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the two authors were renowned intellectuals who put their minds to work in the judicial and economic spheres. When Gary Becker passed away in 2014, Richard Posner cited that the blog would also be ending. Luckily, this blog entry is from 2013 and gives the authors’ take on why going to college is still a good investment, even in the face of increasing tuition costs.

The Four Lessons I Learned By Taking a MOOC, AIR
Even though this link is some 7 years old already, it has particular relevance to me as I am planning on taking a MOOC this summer. I saw that one of the students I mentor (at a different school and in a different state) completed a MOOC earlier this summer and that got the ball rolling in my mind about whether or not I should take one of these. For those who are unfamiliar, a MOOC is a massive open online course where enrollment is usually free. These days, many institutions of higher education have MOOC offerings from their premier schools and you can purchase a low cost certificate after completing the course showing your efficacy in that subject matter. Again, I plan on taking a MOOC this summer so I will likely report back on my experience. Stay tuned!

The Paleo Diet Debunked?, Nerd Fitness
Nerd Fitness is one of the most entertaining websites when it comes to fitness tips and health information. The author writes from a nerdy world view (I love it!) and takes on big issues in the health and fitness field. In this entry, he writes about the popular Paleo diet (in short, eat like a caveman) and the common criticisms of that approach to consuming food. If you are looking for a really good defense of the Paleo diet and all of the reasons why it could potentially work for you, then this is the page to read. And I also recommend clicking around the website a little bit to learn about the Nerd Fitness approach to health (I use an old Nerd Fitness weightlifting program when I’m at the gym… during non-coronavirus times).

As an aside, the more I go through these old links that I have bookmarked or saved in Feedly, the more I realize many of them lead to content that no longer exists or has been taken down. When and where possible, I will try to replace that content with duplicate versions of the material as is the case above with the article from AIR (originally posted to a blog that I follow that has since taken down the old post).

Have you come across any great articles lately? If so, then please share those links in the comments below. All subjects count from money to volunteering to higher education to sports and more! And one more time for those of you who love reading online articles, I strongly recommend using Feedly as an RSS reader. You can follow JerseySmarts.com on Feedly or you can add us to your existing RSS aggregator. Enjoy!