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The greatest juggler alive quit to open a construction business

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

#61

Post by adventured »

zem wrote: post #49
clarky07 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's obviously American centric because American media has been dominate at a global level for decades. That's the reason so many people know who eg Tiger Woods and Jordan are: American media made them famous to a degree far exceeding their accomplishments. The same holds true in music, movies, tv shows, and so on.

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.

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

#62

Post by praptak »

ryandrake wrote: post #16
kamaal wrote: post #9

>> Will it get me another job? ... If you can’t understand why I don’t waste my energy on doing seven balls overhead for a minute to make a youtube video for people to watch, then you haven’t entered the real world yet. 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 targe…

Hey, wait, I don't know about you, but I've always thought one of the most rewarding parts of working in tech was being lectured about motivation by someone with 10X my salary, 100X my bonus and 1000X my equity stake :-)

No, no - the most rewarding part is proving to them they're an incompetent idiot.

The most rewarding. Not necessarily very rewarding in absolute terms.

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

#63

Post by [deleted] »

kamaal wrote: post #9

>> Will it get me another job? ... If you can’t understand why I don’t waste my energy on doing seven balls overhead for a minute to make a youtube video for people to watch, then you haven’t entered the real world yet. 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 targe…

[deleted]

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

#64

Post by galfarragem »

>>Will it get me another job? ... If you can’t understand why I don’t waste my energy on doing seven balls overhead for a minute to make a youtube video for people to watch, then you haven’t entered the real world yet.

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).

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

#65

Post by hessenwolf »

galfarragem wrote: post #64

>>Will it get me another job? ... If you can’t understand why I don’t waste my energy on doing seven balls overhead for a minute to make a youtube video for people to watch, then you haven’t entered the real world yet. 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…

There exists a continuum of possibilities between those extremes.

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

#66

Post by femto »

avalaunch wrote: post #30
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 had to look him up to, but once I found this, I understood why he went with Donald Bradman over Pele or Jordan or Ali. http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/the-most-remarkable-graph-in-...

The amazing ending to the story is that in his last innings, "The Don" required 4 runs to reach an average of 100, but got out for a duck (zero) on the second ball. Apparently the ovation he got on entering the ground rattled him. The article below gives a description and makes the case that it was a fitting ending for a great, more memorable than if he had got the runs.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/bradmans-last-innings...

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

#67

Post by hessenwolf »

jay-anderson wrote: post #22
hoodoof wrote: post #2

Because there's no money in juggling?

There certainly is some money in juggling. The article mentioned 50k starting salary at cirque du soleil. But maybe working in concrete lets him spend more time with his family for roughly the same amount of money (or more).

In my youth, as a devastatingly mediocre musician, I got the opportunity to spend some time with a band. The sex and drinking looked fun, but the nighttime hours, and never being able to settle down with a nice girl and start a family, blow.

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

#68

Post by fixermark »

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

When I look at Moschen (and my personal favorite, Greg Kennedy), I'm reminded of the history of visual art (painting in particular). There was a time when being a great painter meant being able to capture a scene or a moment with verisimilitude or with emotion, and a painter could make a healthy living (possibly not opulent or luxurious, but not necessarily starve-in-the-gutter poor) by capturing portraits for clients who could afford that kind of opulence. It took a particular refined set of skills to translate the world of sensory data coming in through the eye to paint on canvas.

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. ;)

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

#69

Post by pbhjpbhj »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #59
avalaunch wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to look him up to, but once I found this, I understood why he went with Donald Bradman over Pele or Jordan or Ali. http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/the-most-remarkable-graph-in-...

That graph is something else. Interestingly if you saw that for an athlete today, how many people wouldn't automatically assume drug use?

Bradman could presumably have used drugs. But then so could others.

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.

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

#70

Post by zodiac »

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…

> Someone that a higher percentage of people would be familiar with.

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...

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