Blogs that you should start reading...

So, I'd say my two favorite bloggers are Megan Mcardle and Penelope Trunk. Both have a way of writing about complex things in a very simple and straightforward way with no bullshit. As a sidenote, I find smart women to be incredibly attractive. Anyway, a week ago when I made a note to myself to blog about both of these posts, I remember having a really coherent set of comments I wanted to make. I'm not sure if I still have them.

Mcardle discusses how she doesn't really see "villains" in the economic meltdown. I've had several conversations about this with my father. I tend to agree with her that there are not many people who really went out and tried to "hurt" other people. There were loads of overconfident bankers/regulators/homebuyers/congressmen/presidents/fed reserve chairmen...the list goes on and on. Mcardle says it best with "Once you have tens of thousands . . . or tens of millions . . . of people in the dock, you don't have villains. You have a system that has gone badly wrong." While it's not as satisfying as blaming a small group of readily identifiable people, most truths in life seem to be messy, complex, and not easily changed.

Trunk, for her part, delves into what I consider to be a much more trivial issue that received far more interest than what Mcardle wrote about - Sarah Palin resigning her position as governor of Alaska. Trunk reasons that Palin is actually employing some very new career management ideas into her own career. The reasons, in order as listed, are:

1. Get out of a job when you're done doing it
2. Ideas matter, not your resume
3. Careers are built on teams and networks
4. No one controls your career except you

I didn't really pay attention to any of the original Palin coverage and this was the only article I recall reading about it. What I found striking about my thoughts after reading the article was this - it actually makes a ton of sense. For example, replace the name Palin with say, Barack Obama. Every single one of the points still makes perfect sense. When Obama ran for President, everyone said that he hadn't been in the Senate long enough to do anything, didn't have a resume worth a damn, had no political backing, and should bow down to Hillary. He obviously didn't listen, had an idea of what would be politically successful, built an impressive team/network, and controlled his image to perfection. Whatever you think about Palin, the post is a very interesting way of looking at a topic that I couldn't find more inane.

Aside from these two articles, I highly recommend Trunk's blog. I don't really know what I think about my career, but her writing is absolutely amazing for its clarity. This post about public disclosure of personal issues is probably the best piece of writing I've read all year. Click on the link to the 9/11 post. It is fantastic as well.