EZ Reads 4/12/11

Today was a good, busy day, with some exciting possibilities. This is opposed to my fantasy baseball team, which currently has a 1 in every hitting category, 5 guys on the DL (and another couple hurt), and is barely above the Mendoza line. Ugh.

• Scott Adams has a great piece in the Wall Street Journal on how to get a real education, with some fantastic, funny stories. Excerpt: (not the stories, read the whole article for those)
  

  Attract Luck. You can't manage luck directly, but you can manage your career in a way that makes it easier for luck to find you. To succeed, first you must do something. And if that doesn't work, which can be 90% of the time, do something else. Luck finds the doers. Readers of the Journal will find this point obvious. It's not obvious to a teenager.
  Conquer Fear. I took classes in public speaking in college and a few more during my corporate days. That training was marginally useful for learning how to mask nervousness in public. Then I took the Dale Carnegie course. It was life-changing. The Dale Carnegie method ignores speaking technique entirely and trains you instead to enjoy the experience of speaking to a crowd. Once you become relaxed in front of people, technique comes automatically. Over the years, I've given speeches to hundreds of audiences and enjoyed every minute on stage. But this isn't a plug for Dale Carnegie. The point is that people can be trained to replace fear and shyness with enthusiasm. Every entrepreneur can use that skill.
  Write Simply. I took a two-day class in business writing that taught me how to write direct sentences and to avoid extra words. Simplicity makes ideas powerful.

• On a related note, Lifehacker's piece on what lucky people do differently is entertaining and spot on. Ironically, despite being a rather large proponent of themes in both pieces, I've been rather unlucky in many ways, but I think those can be attributed to some really bad flukes (and people).
• Bad4Shidduchim on singles events dynamics.
• Interesting piece on Freakonomics discussing how fixing the typos and errors in online reviews boosts sales.
• A funny, clever video on Cross Currents called "Kiruv with Sechel" but which also is a great Pesach kashering primer.