Some thing I’ve been thinking about lately: Is it better to be the best at something or to be the first at something? In 1891, Dr. James Naismith nailed a peach basket to a gymnasium wall and made his phys. ed. students lob a ball through it. One hundred years later, Michael Jordan lead the Chicago Bulls to victory in the NBA Championships, and did so again in ’92 and ’93.

Johann Zahn built the first portable practical camera in 1685. In 1927 Ansel Adams snapped his famous “Monolith” photo.

Japanese noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu put “The Tale of Genji” to paper in the early 11th century. In 1884 “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” was published by Mark Twain.

In 1956 George C. Devol and Joseph F. Engelberger developed a robotic arm called the “Unimate.” In 2005, Honda unveiled this:

If you’re the first, people may not remember you, but you’ve definitely changed the world. If you’re the best you get both sides of the pie.

My question is this: If you succeed in doing something different, something no one has ever done before, would you be able to live with the fact that you might never be remembered for it? Or is simply doing it satisfaction enough? Or do you gain satisfaction from knowing that you paved the way for others like yourself? Are you capable of having no ego?

Are you lying?

If you’ve submitted to the mag in the past month and haven’t got a response yet, there’s an explanation over at the mag site.

And for the non-submitters, the explanation is followed by a juicy rant wherein I write something I later regret.

I know this absolute gem came out almost a year ago, but I’m still kind of reeling over how dope it was. Buy it, check it out of your library, read the shit out of it two times, love it.

Here’s a kinda cool interview with the man himself c/o Google. I don’t know if it’s bad sound or something but you kind of get the sense that the Google minions don’t really give a shit about having a Pulitzer Prize winner in their midst. I guess only nerds like myself care about that sort of thing. Anywhatsit…can’t embed, must click link.