The greatest juggler alive quit to open a construction business
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I had a similar discussion with my office colleagues a few weeks back. When there was a call for a 'Hacknight' at our workplace to drive revenues up, when a SVP panicked he was going to miss his target. And the people where asked to contribute and magically rescue the whole situation out of nowhere. Nearly every one agreed that they would not contribute a minute to that 'Hacknight'
When people just give up, start giving damn about things. Its generally because they've been taken for a ride, before. Once hard working night owl hackers stop doing things because they watch some jack ass four levels above them doing 1/100th the work but taking nearly everything that is right fully theirs.
The Hack night was a big flop, ofcourse the SVP called for a meeting next day and lectured about motivation and lack of passion in the team(Meaning, people not ready sacrifice a great deal and give away their work for free). And how despite all the help from the leadership(Meaning, Arranging for biscuits and tea, and then going to home to get sleep) people were not ready to contribute to the company(Meaning, Help the VP make an additional million in yearly bonus).
Ultimately you get what you pay for.
The most rewarding. Not necessarily very rewarding in absolute terms.
Until a vp decided to join. Then hacks had to be about creating products and ideas had to be documented, and someone had to "win".
Now the occasional hack that benefited the company as a side effect of almost free motivation and team building disappeared. Only the most suck Ups juniors appears. And all ideas pitch how much money the company could make but are not really fun or challenging to implement.
Completely agree. Once this comes in team mates stop working for each other, instead begin working against each other.
Certainly he was frustrated by newcomers filming 100 takes and showing just one (something I'm guilty of too!). But without being a juggler yourself it's hard to express just how much better than everyone else he really was. If being able to do a trick with N balls is unit difficulty, adding N+2 balls is a factor of 10-100 harder. Being able to perform it is another 10-100 times again.
Gatto regularly performed things the next best jugglers could barely do at all. He was the Donald Bradman of juggling, and I'm very sad we now have to say "was".
Saying that, Bradman's batting average is absurdly high, does 99.94 mean that nearly everytime he went to bat he was able to put the ball in play without the opposing team being able to get him out?
If so, the equivalent in baseball would be almost always getting a hit (closest in modern era was, I believe, .424 by Ted Williams), something that would require the hand/eye coordination of superman, basically.
In cricket you (and a second batter who is with you) stay at bat until you are dismissed. There are a number of ways to be dismissed, such as being caught on the full or run out, but you don't need to put every ball into play. In order to score runs you generally must play the ball, but trying to score runs increases your risk of being dismissed.
The best batsman are able to both score runs and minimise their risk of being dismissed, and so are able to stay in bat for longer and score higher totals.
Bradman was, on average, able to score almost 100 runs every time he went out to bat, and that is just ridiculous.
Test cricket is just what it is, its a test of patience and concentration. You are supposed to play unreasonably long amounts of time(the whole day) in scorching heat. There fore to go in and play that, it just means one thing. Not only where his batting skills top notch in the history of the game, his ability to focus, concentrate has not been matched ever since. Please note bowlers are always on the look out to get your out. And there are literally many way in which you can get out.
This isn't just sport. This is meditation.
It's also not so much of a team game - cricket statistics are much more likely to reveal an outlier than hockey, football, rugby or handball. It's possible to separate to a much greater extent a player from the quality of their team - if you put me and three other random guys on a basketball team with Michael Jordan, he would look a lot less impressive than he did with one of the greatest teams ever assembled! The same goes for Messi, Maradona, Gretzky, etc. Their talents need, and encourage to some extent, wonderful performances from their teammates to make passes, runs, tackles, interceptions, etc.
The only effect that a similar substitution would have on Bradman would be that he'd need to concentrate on 4s and 6s and keeping the rest of us 'in' long enough. If you wanted to sub in a North American sportsman as an outlier, it would need to be a baseball player, I guess :-)
For those not too familiar with cricket, that "average" isn't like a batting average in baseball. While incredibly impressive, it is not equivalent to getting a hit 100% of the time.
As for impressive feats above and beyond, Babe Ruth comes to mind. He hit more home runs in a season than many entire teams did at the time.
Let's not forget we have an international readership here :-)
Ali and Jordan on the other hand are pretty much known by everyone. Pele would be another good example.
Jordan was widely regarded as one of the most famous people on earth for 15 or 20 years. His name is even more famous than his picture. I don't think there's much debate to be had about his global fame frankly. As basketball globalized rapidly in the late 80's / early 90's, it was his image intertwined with it, and it perfectly coincided with the rise of global media.
Actually, given India's huge population, I think it is more likely than not that more people are familiar with cricket than are familiar with baseball.
For example - http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2011/04/04/cricket-wor...
The guy's still going strong.
http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/the-most-remarkable-graph-in-...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spDWaeBE2AY
Our Don Bradman - And I ask you is he any good?
Our Don Bradman - As a bastman he can sure lay on the wood.
For when he goes in to bat
He knocks ev'ry record flat,
For there isn't any thing he cannot do,
Our Don Bradman - Ev'ry Aussie "dips his lid" to you.A quick search revealed this http://sportsanddrugs.procon.org/view.timeline.php?timelineI... review of the use of performance enhancing drugs (from the original Greek Olympics on to modern times) which I found diverting.
I want to see a version of the Olymipcs where all the contestants are off their faces on opium.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/bradmans-last-innings...
As far as putting on a show and performing with poise, Gatto easily wins. In at least some specific areas like clubs, Vova seems to rival him though. He is really consistent and has demonstrated he can perform pretty well too. Here's a direct link to Vova's video [0]. This is probably one of my favorite juggling videos to watch.
Incidentally, I believe Vova has moved on as well- he got a degree in Computer Science and is doing software development these days. His sister Olga has also gone on into engineering.
He is a man that has pursued excellence, understands quality, likes to work for himself (performer, landscape gardener, etc), seems to have a competitive edge but also seems wise to it, and has demonstrated keenness to carefully coach others or explain how to do things.
It should be quite a successful business.
Given my current troubles with builders, this is a 2x pricing opportunity for him - quite seriously
Do you think he could really have an opportunity to receive 2x pricing? I think there might be a certain opportunity in illustrating the novelty of his past somewhere on the site, but I honestly don't believe most consumers(even for something large like a resurfacing) would take to time to realize the extent to which he excelled at juggling, nor do I think they would translate that to an increased value in his current abilities(at least not a 100% increase). In reality I think that consumer is more often willing to settle for cheap inadequacy than expensive competence, but I might be completely off with that assumption in this industry(or in general).
What do you think? If he could really stand the chance for a significant increase in revenue for something as simple as publicly touting past accomplishments, perhaps he should; he was that good after all.
That's because construction work is a very large field and honestly resurfacing cement doesn't translate very well to juggling.
Now find a construction job that requires working under stress, lots of attention on you, attention to detail, focus on quality, able to repeatedly meet goals and deadlines, maybe a popular analogy with juggling...
How about general contractor? A guy like him has the brain to be a legendary GC, no marketing BS required. If he can twist his brain into using his eyes and mouth to keep 20 subs on track out of each others way, working multiple subprojects and tasks in the correct complicated order and on time instead of using his arms to throw things, I'd pay him a multiple of a typical GC because he would net save me time and money. On a big job, he could be extremely financially valuable, which could be very rewarding to him.
Or if he's not set up financially / people skills wise to be a GC then his legendary coordination and planning skills would make him an awesome heavy equipment operator. I've seen what a truly good crane op can do, and he could be one of the best. One of those guys who works the machine at full speed yet perfectly smooth and 1/4 inch accurate.
Not seeing how troweling cement makes best use of his unusual skills. Then again, if he likes what he's doing, he wins.
Here are some mind-blowing physics that I think the HN community, in particular, would enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjHoedoSUXY
He's also well-known for "contact juggling," where the balls don't leave the hands:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB_I2YILI2o
You might enjoy too :)
The invention of photography basically gutted that kind of painting. People wonder why painting went to modernism and post-modernism; part of the story is that the entire skillset of "faithfully rendering the real" had been rendered economically obsolete by cameras, so an artist who didn't want to starve had to render something else. Similarly, it matters little how much discipline, effort, and grit it takes to perfect an on-stage juggling routine if the audience doesn't bother to come to the stage.
Moschen and Kennedy's style brings people something they know they've never seen before, even though they don't know juggling. It's postmodern juggling. ;)
I believe Moschen is the only juggler to have won a MacArthur "genius grant"[0]
(He has also worked with David Bowie[1], which makes him not just a genius but a badass in my books, but I digress....)
I think it's akin to free jazz, or car shows, or other weird passions where eventually the experts can only be understood by other experts.
I did find it weird that they made no mention of Vova's sister Olga. Did she leave juggling?
And yet, to be honest, while I appreciate the talent and skill required to do the kinds of numbers and moves Gatto does, and even though I understand the difficulty of pulling off, e.g., 7 clubs or 7-ball 5-up 360s or 6-club backcrosses — I find this type of juggling fairly boring to watch. No matter how much showmanship you put into it, every performing juggler eventually realizes that technical skill means very little and audiences get bored after about 3 minutes. Most good jugglers with long shows do comedy and variety routines. Gatto clearly didn't want to go down that road. I respect that.
My favorite juggler to watch is Falco Scheffler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CmnaICnMiw — no high numbers here, just 3 and 4 balls. And way more fun to watch than endless runs of 5 club backcrosses.
Now, years later, I find that programming has a similar pattern: there is code that one writes for an audience (and that thus is more maintainable) and there is code that one writes that may show great technical skill - but that is more ... challenging to enjoy.
In a way, it's a bit like juggling - that non-flash, simple routine, which concisely and clearly expresses intent, with little room for error, may not look impressive - but other developers will recognize the raw skill that was required to create it.
"I need that button greyed out unless the value in that box is greater than zero."
OTOH, there are world-class jugglers who go in different directions and do feel inspiring. I remember when I was starting out, this group with Jay Gilligan, Ville Walo and some other Finnish guy I forgot the name of had a VHS you could order over the 'net which was just unlike anything we'd seen. They were good technically, e.g. no problem with 5 clubs, but they also kept inventing new tricks and new ways of using objects instead of just going for more objects. I can't find any clips from that video[1], but there's some newer stuff from Jay and Ville on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w-WsyPeLEg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQJ4Q0SdJDo
[1] which started out with them pouring a bunch of meat and such into a jar and slurping it down, probably a joke at the large percentage of vegetarians at juggling conventions
I would say the Walo/Gilligan stuff is a third kind, where creativity the main value.
I could watch technicians practicing 8 balls, 10 rings, crazy site swaps, endless 5 club back crosses, etc. in a gym for hours. I have certainly enjoyed and appreciated the Jay Gilligan and Michael Moschen's of the world, but the overwhelming majority of "artsy" juggling just doesn't work, at least for me. For every Gilligan/Moschen/etc routine that I've seen that I've thought was well done, I feel like I've seen 4-5 that just fall totally flat for me.
At the other end of the spectrum, the "entertainer" jugglers that are aiming for a non-juggling audience I find almost impossible to watch. They are technically uninteresting, and I just can't get into the endless stream of lame jokes and winking at the crowd. Just awful. I would actually much prefer to watch Gatto practice than do one of his Vegas performances. The performances are impressive technically, but I find absolutely nothing about the presentation entertaining.
I think the reason that I feel this way is that I've always enjoyed the process of juggling (figuring how to do something, figuring out techniques for how to break down a trick into pieces, mastering each piece, etc) more than the end result (a polished, performable trick).
Back when I was juggling a lot, once I felt like I mastered a trick, it didn't really hold much interest for me anymore. When actually juggling, I would much rather spend my time trying to eke out a few more catches of 7 than toss 5 around more or less indefinitely.
But like I said, I've often felt like my preferences here are not all that common.
I think the benefit of less balls is that one can actually follow the patterns whilst with more balls/clubs/objects it's all a bit of a blur and one is respecting the skill but not really getting much out of the visual appearance. Like listening to music written/performed for the listener versus written/performed as a technical demonstration of the skill of the musician.
As a hobbyist juggler, his performance is really fun to watch on two levels. At its simplest, it's just a beautiful, flowing routine. It's really cool seeing one pattern become the next and the abrupt transitions between some are almost giggle-inducingly delightful.
At the same time, I can watch it with a juggler's eye and go, Rubenstein's Revenge, Windmill, Take-outs, Columns, The Machine, ....
It's exciting seeing a performance that is magical in total but that contains a bunch of pieces I can recognize and do myself.
The sleights are top-notch, but the real "magic" is in the language and presentation.
The guy was a juggler, who probably didn't make tons of money and who was injured & discouraged, or even just going through some regular life struggles (we all have them). He's doing something different for now and harassing him won't change a thing. I feel like he just wanted to be left alone.
Nope, I knew more about juggling! The author only lost me at the end when it got into analogies with various names in basketball/tennis/golf that I was at most barely familiar with. But other than that, this is a great article. I realized midway through that I've actually seen Gatto's cirque act and didn't realize it was him at the time.
Resuming:
If you are at the top in one hierarchy that doesn't reward you according to your position, what should you do?
a) Stay and struggle (even with some niceties ex:social status).
b) Move to the bottom of another hierarchy where there's plenty to everybody (but where you don't have the skill or the passion to move up).
I tried during last years (I'm also dealing with this problem) to be somewhere in the middle of this 2 solutions but doesn't work. To be in the top of one hierarchy (and get the niceties) you need focus. Nowadays to that continuum of possibilities I would call indecision.
I was very disappointed when it turns out this was the only entry.
This makes me think of classical music. Live performances have certainly been on the downward trend for many years. Glenn Gould devoted himself to just recording instead of live performances seeing this as the future of music (see http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/06/06/050606crat_atlar...). I think there's room for both live and recorded. Seeing only perfect performances can create unrealistic expectations in people's minds.
The comparison with live and recorded performances is spot on. There's probably a reason the major "live" performances of popular musicians are pre-recorded.
There may be a lesson here for those who are spending years perfecting technical skills when your competition are taking three-month bootcamps.
"In the future, the truest sign of human existential crises came not from plague, wars, or conspiracy, but ineffable journalism."
It also comes with a self-esteem hedge in the opening just in case you don't read. What might be an interesting story would the the meta-article on the set of these types of stories.
"Why did the greatest juggler alive quit to open a concrete business?... Because juggling is insubstantial!"