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The greatest juggler alive quit to open a construction business

grantland.com

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Re: The greatest juggler alive quit to open a construction business

#41

Post by gcv »

pud wrote: post #29

Great article but it makes no mention of Michael Moschen, who many (including me) consider the best & most creative juggler in the world. 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=8OTb8tga-yg

I saw him perform a few years ago. It was off-putting: he spent a bunch of time during the show complaining about other people "stealing" his tricks, specifically contact juggling itself.

Re: The greatest juggler alive quit to open a construction business

#42

Post by dmckeon »

gcv wrote: post #40

Speaking as a juggler: I've seen Gatto in performance (in Kooza in 2008); he's every bit as good as the article says. I've also seen (and met) many other top jugglers. 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 t…

A performing juggler once told me (an amateur), after he showed me a technically challenging bit: There are bits you do for an audience, and there are bits you do for other jugglers. It sounds like Gatto liked the doing the technical bits more than he liked working for an audience.

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.

Re: The greatest juggler alive quit to open a construction business

#43

Post by qq66 »

ZoF wrote: post #26
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably the most insightful view going - I was simply thinking of him as yet another construction guy. But add that to his story / marketing / brand and ... I will pay extra for the proof of a guy willing to be painstaking to achieve excellence. Given my current troubles with builders, this is a 2x pricing opportunity for him - quite seriously

The company site has zero reference to his past and is registered under his birth name(different from his stage name), so I don't think that's a card he plans on playing. 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…

There are definitely consumers who are willing to pay 2x the market price for a job exceptionally well done. However, they're not going to assume that because someone juggled exceptionally well that they'd do an equally good job at construction. He'll have to build his reputation in the industry independently, and given that he's not using his juggling persona to market his construction company, it seems like he's OK with that.

Re: The greatest juggler alive quit to open a construction business

#44

Post by nagrom »

zardeh wrote: post #31
zizee wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious to hear your thoughts on which sportsperson is a more appropriate analogy?

Wayne Gretzky?

Cricket has a much, much bigger audience globally than Ice Hockey - there's a lot of Europeans, Australians, South Africans and Indians on HN who have likely never seen a hockey game :-)

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 :-)

Re: The greatest juggler alive quit to open a construction business

#45

Post by Untit1ed »

clarky07 wrote: post #37
zizee wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious to hear your thoughts on which sportsperson is a more appropriate analogy?

Someone that a higher percentage of people would be familiar with. While his feat is impressive, it is I'm guessing widely unknown. Perhaps Jordan, Ali, Gretzky, Babe Ruth would seem more appropriate. 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 be…

Babe Ruth? So by "a higher percentage of people" you mean "Americans and few others"

Re: The greatest juggler alive quit to open a construction business

#46

Post by glenra »

> The usual strategies of sportswriting depend on the writer and reader sharing a set of passions and references [...] but you almost certainly don’t know as much about juggling as you do about football or baseball.

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.

Re: The greatest juggler alive quit to open a construction business

#47

Post by ghshephard »

dmckeon wrote: post #42
gcv wrote: post #40

Speaking as a juggler: I've seen Gatto in performance (in Kooza in 2008); he's every bit as good as the article says. I've also seen (and met) many other top jugglers. 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 t…

A performing juggler once told me (an amateur), after he showed me a technically challenging bit: There are bits you do for an audience, and there are bits you do for other jugglers. It sounds like Gatto liked the doing the technical bits more than he liked working for an audience. 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 mai…

Interesting - I would say it's the inverse. The complex, challenging, and spectacular code that gets blasted out is for the audience (user/customer) - but the most beautiful, simple, and maintainable code can only be written by those with the greatest skill, and are mostly appreciated by other developers of likewise experience.

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.

Re: The greatest juggler alive quit to open a construction business

#48

Post by kamaal »

virtualwhys wrote: post #28
zem wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is pretty much no one who has dominated a sport the way bradman dominated cricket, i think. consider - he has the highest lifetime test batting average of all time, at 99.94. which doesn't perhaps sound that impressive, out of context, until you see that the next three people in the record books have averages of 60.97, 60.83 and 60.73. he was more than 50% better than the second-best test batsman around.

Not sure how cricket compares to baseball, but in the 20s and 30s the overall talent level was nowhere near what it's become in modern times. 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…

What an average of 99.94 means is every time he went to play he scored an average ~100 runs. Which is just too remarkable. And that too in test cricket.

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.

Re: The greatest juggler alive quit to open a construction business

#49

Post by zem »

clarky07 wrote: post #37
zizee wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious to hear your thoughts on which sportsperson is a more appropriate analogy?

Someone that a higher percentage of people would be familiar with. While his feat is impressive, it is I'm guessing widely unknown. Perhaps Jordan, Ali, Gretzky, Babe Ruth would seem more appropriate. 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 be…

that's pretty american-centric. as an indian i'd say ali was truly world-famous, jordan is well known to my generation due to nba catching on in the 80s but i'm betting a large chunk of my parent's generation wouldn't know him, i only knew about babe ruth from reading american fiction, and i'd pretty much never heard of gretzky until last year.

Re: The greatest juggler alive quit to open a construction business

#50

Post by davidw »

zizee wrote: post #24
clarky07 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not ashamed to admit I had to look up Donald Bradman. Cricket? That's the analogy you went with? :-)

I am curious to hear your thoughts on which sportsperson is a more appropriate analogy?

Eddy Merckx?
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