Obscure title yes but it'll do for right now.  

Often we go through life wanting to do a lot of things:  we want to be successful in school and our careers, we want to have a loving family, we want to maintain our health and exercise, we want to give back to our communities/religion, etc.  But rarely do we have time for all of them on a consistent basis.  All along, we also have a lot of ideas of different ways we think the world can improve but again lack time and the resources to fulfill the execution needed to bring said ideas to life.

Sometimes we tell these ideas to others to seek external support; sometimes we keep them a secret because we're scared of external judgment.  But for every idea we don't let be known, there exists the possibility that the world never got to benefit from a possible "missed connection" of mutually beneficial or associated other ideas.  

I've never been shy about sharing my thoughts if I think they can help improve things in any way.  Often this information has already been brought up and discussed or dismissed but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be shared.  You either show that you are on the same page as those who you are presenting the topics to or you show that you need to learn more about the topic.  But that shouldn't deter you from potentially sparking another person's interest to continue where you left off.  It's a pretty high risk, low reward process as long as you have vetted the idea internally as well as externally with trusted friends.

So that's why my first idea after introducing my introduction to them is for someone to create said idea-curation-then-creation website; someplace that builds off of the positive purpose behind message boards and serves as a melting pot of associated ideas with simple UI and transparent philosophy.  After allowing for ideas to be connected, the best solutions will bubble to the top through Reddit-esque upvotes/downvotes then a representative can be chosen and the project can be paid for through crowdfunding.

That's got to be a net positive for the world.

I've been using this music streaming service called Hype Machine for a little over 5 years now and my account and all the songs I've hearted ("liked") over the years is easily one of my top 5 online possessions.  It's become a daily part of my life; the process discovering new music throughout the week is enhanced by always having one place where everything can be found.  This is going to make me sound dated to any other hypem users (cue the old grandpa voice) but I remember when top songs on their popular page only had a couple hundred likes, now their #1 songs (such as the Odesza remix of Zhu's "Faded" mentioned below) routinely have 5,000+ likes.

It's free to join and they're not very obtrusive.  You "pay" by having ads pop up all the time when you open your page as well as some tricky border ads; annoying but again, it's totally free, so it's worth it to me.  I'm sure they also get some revenue from referring people to buy concert tickets on songkick.com (which I've done many times over the years).

Soon they'll have an official Android app and it'll only increase my use of the site I'm sure.  They are pretty aware of their product niche but are always rolling out new features with an eye towards the future.  One reason why I originally liked them is because their popular page had a shelf life of 3 days so it always kept recent hot songs coming through.  Recently they rolled out the ability to create "lists" of different styles/energies of music, they are "Up", "Down" and "Weird".  I'm still figuring out the feel of each but this is brilliant on both the customer's and the company's ends; I get to have a quick way to play a similarly styled playlist and Hype Machine gets users to crowdsource genre-definition of all their songs.  Once again the wisdom of the crowds will prove to be very useful.

Check it out particularly if you enjoy electronic/techno/EDM/whatever you call it and indie, as those are primarily the genres I see represented.  I suggest when you begin to regularly use it that you curate a followed list of some blogs that you see playing the specific type of music you enjoy at the moment.  If the blog's new song isn't exactly your flavor, a lot of times there will be another song in the post that you will like.  

I've heard a lot of good music recently but this one really stands out.  Partly due to timing as it's the beginning of summer, it's mostly good because it retains just enough of the original to bring back memories of summers long ago.  That and everything it adds is perfectly placed.  Would make a great song choice if you happen to be cruising down A1A in the bright Miami sun, just saying.

Baby Bash - Suga Suga (Royal Refix)

I was introduced to Dan Ariely when I picked up his book "Predictably Irrational" a couple years back.  I know it wasn't anytime recently because: A.) It's a physical book, not a wireless download & B.) The sticker on the back says it's from Borders.  Anyways, it was one of my first behavioral psychology reads and really sparked by fascination with the subject.  

It's always an exciting discovery when you find something that you quickly become obsessed with.  Learning how and more importantly why we (or at least Westerners that participate in most of the studies) think and act quickly became addictive.  I still find myself buying some of the intriguing and popular new releases even though most of them just recycle the same knowledge, and cite the same studies, but applied to a different scenario.  This isn't rational but it's still something I continue to do.

Back to Dan, he has a great blog that he frequently updates with real world examples of these behavioral psychology principles by taking reader's questions and trying to explain their thinking.  A recent post of his included this wonderful response:

Dear Dan,

Early in my career, I wrote a massive Excel macro for the large bank where I worked. The macro (a set of automated commands) would take a data dump and turn it into a beautiful report. It took about two minutes to run, with an hourglass showing that it was working away. The output was very useful, but everyone complained that it was too slow.

One way to speed up a macro is to make it run in the background, invisibly, with just the hourglass left on-screen. I had done this from the start, but just for fun, I flipped the setting so that people using the macro could see it do its thing. It was like watching a video on fast forward: The macro sliced the data, changed colors, made headers and so on. The only problem: It took about three times as long to finish.

Once I made this change, however, everyone was dazzled by how fast and wonderful the algorithm was. Do you have a rational explanation for this reversal?

—Mike

I’m not sure I have a rational explanation, but I have a logical one. What you describe so nicely is a combination of two forces. First, when we are just waiting aimlessly, we feel that time is being wasted, and we feel worse about its passage. Second, when we feel that someone is working for us, particularly if they are working hard, we feel much better about waiting (and about paying them for their effort). Interestingly, this joy at having someone work hard for us holds true not just of people but of computer algorithms, too.

The life lesson should be clear: Work extra hard at describing how hard you work to those around you.

I love it, so logical and true.  The bold part at the end is my emphasis on the underlying principle; it's partly sad that this is the main point of his answer but it's 100% true.  Many people and services should take his advice if they wish to increase their customer satisfaction levels.

I was scrolling through the Miami Herald's Sports page and a blog on FIU football by David J. Neal caught my eye.  Initially I noticed it because the second half of the title of the post said "Coaching $$$ in Black & White".  I didn't know if Neal was using "Black & White" metaphorically or literally; whether he was talking about the blatant nepotism on FIU's staff or if there was a pay disparity between black and white head coaches.  I assumed he meant literally because he capitalized Black and White, likely referring to the skin colors.  So I decided to look up their bios and compare them.

Here is the table of coaches I compared, it's most of the main assistants for the 2013 and 2014 seasons:

I couldn't find public salary info on their special teams coach from 2013 on the Florida Has a Right to Know Mr. Neal mentioned in his post so he was omitted.  I also left the head coach Ron Turner off the list because his salary would've skewed the averages.  The salaries were average for what info I could find over the last 2 seasons.  The disclaimer with this quick analysis is that the sample size is pretty small so we can't know any conclusions for sure.  But from the numbers we do have sure show an inflated salary if you are either white and/or related to the head coach or one of the coordinators, particularly if you fulfill both categories.

Here is the table of salary info by skin color.  The higher numbers in each column are considered "better" so they're highlighted in green (BTW how many promotions has Excel's "Conditional Formatting" gotten people over the years?  Has to be in the thousands):

It's pretty clear that while the black assistant coaches have 25% more years coaching experience (15.3 vs. 12.2), they are paid 13% less ($101,250 vs. $116,916) in salary.  Also white assistant coaches get more than DOUBLE ($20,046 vs. $9,076) the salary per year of coaching experience and make 1.7 times ($29,537 vs. $17,444) in salary per year of college coaching experience.  Those facts are pretty hard to ignore.  So what I assumed Mr. Neal was referring to, that white assistant coaches at FIU under Ron Turner make more than black assistant coaches, does indeed look to be true.

Here are some really fancy pictures in case you prefer that medium:

Ron Turner's brief but rocky tenure as FIU head football coach has also been controversial in that some people accuse them of favoring hiring direct relatives for assistant jobs and paying them more than people that aren't related to the top coaches.  Both Ron Turner and his offensive coordinator Steve Shankweiler have sons that are prominent assistant coaches.  And both of these sons share something in common when you break down their salaries as well.

Here is a table showing the same numbers as before, but broken down by if when you were a direct relative (in this case a son) hired as an assistant coach at FIU:

Again, it's pretty clear that there is some favoritism going on here.  If you were hired on as an assistant coach and you were NOT a direct relative, even though you had 3 times the coaching experience (12 vs. 4), you were expected to make only 8% more than if you were a relative ($107,722 vs. $99,500).  Even worse, if you were a direct relative, you make 2.7 times the salary per year of coaching experience ($34,166 vs. $12,595)  and make 3.7 times the salary per year of college coaching experience ($62,100 vs. $16,779).  Insane!  How is this allowed to happen?

Again, here are those numbers in graphical form:

Something is fishy at FIU, that's for sure.

//Edited to fix wording