Phillip Seymour Hoffman

I was really shocked and sad when I saw the news that one of my favorite actors died at his home in the West Village on Super Bowl Sunday. He was a phenomenal talent and it's really sad to see him go well before his time. I was thinking about the movies he's made and I looked back at the Top 20 movies list I made a while back and realized that he was in 3 of them -- Scent of a Woman, The Big Lebowski and Capote. Most people would probably argue that Capote, in which he won an Oscar for best actor, was his best performance. He was incredible in that film. But I would argue that his best performance was actually in a much lesser known movie titled, Doubt. It's a somewhat disturbing story about a nun (played by Meryl Streep) that accuses her school's priest (played by Hoffman) of inappropriate behavior with a troubled young student. The acting in this movie is absolutely amazing. I highly recommend the film.

With all of Hoffman's success and talent and brilliance, it's hard to imagine that he would die of a drug overdose. He had so much to live for. As I much as I hate to say it, you can't help but wonder if his talent and troubles were connected. The New Yorker summed up that thought really well in a blog post a couple of days after his death.

The controversy over “The Wolf of Wall Street” also involves the allure of drugs; though the movie makes it pretty clear that the character Jordan Belfort acts monstrously under their influence, it also leaves little doubt regarding the pleasures and powers that they provide him and his cohorts. It also suggests the poison pill of imagination, the diabolical—even self-destructive—power of theatrical rhetoric, its eruption from the depths of a soul that hardly dares to consider itself. Hoffman, with his seemingly infinite range of possibilities and self-transformations, was at the diametrically opposite end of the spectrum: he couldn’t help but look at himself, from angles he had never anticipated and in aspects he might not otherwise have fathomed. Genius, whether at its most constructive or destructive, its most sublime or its most repugnant, is unnatural; Hoffman lived for great art, and it’s impossible to escape the idea that he died for it. The complete price of his nearly superhuman ability has yet to be reckoned.

RIP, PSH.

5 Great Apps You Probably Don't Use

The other day I was talking with a few colleagues about some of the less conventional apps we use on a day-to-day basis. Here are five that I've begun using regularly that you may not have heard of but are definitely worth checking out:

  1. SoundGecko reads to you. If you ever come across a long article online that you want to read but never have time to get to, copy and paste the link into this app and SoundGecko will read it to you. This is great for long Atlantic or New Yorker pieces that I know I'll never get to -- you can listen while driving or walking around town. I've used it quite a bit over the last several weeks. Thanks to Michael Katz for the recommendation on this one.
  2. Lift helps you create good habits. There's lots of research that suggests that habits are the secret to high performance -- it's just too hard to motivate yourself to do the hard stuff every day. You have to create good habits. Exercise has to be a habit like brushing your teeth is a habit. The Lift app helps you do that by allowing you to track and share your habits. Spark Capital invested in these guys a while back and Bijan Sabet wrote a good post on them that gives a good summary of how people use the product.
  3. Amazon Instant Video is a no-brainer. If you're an Amazon Prime subscriber (if you're not, you should be) you get free access to Amazon Instant Video. Download the app -- it's comparable to Netflix, can be streamed to your television and is included with your Prime Subscription.
  4. Cal is the best calendar app I've ever come across. The challenge I've always had with calendar apps is that they typically have terrible usability. They never seem to work nearly as well as desktop calendars. Cal has a fantastic look and feel and is super easy to navigate. It instantly syncs with your work and personal calendars. It even syncs your Facebook calendar and TripIt itineraries so everything is one place.
  5. Refresh gives you the 411 on people that you meet. This one was recommended to me by a colleague and I have to caveat this in that I've only been using it for a few days. But so far I like what I see. Refresh integrates your calendar and social networks to create a quick snapshot of the people that you're meeting with. When you open that app you'll see a snapshot of your upcoming meetings and the people that will be attending those meetings. Refresh then aggregates a ton of information (mostly from social networks) into a "dossier" for each individual --where they've worked, where they went to school, what they Tweet about, what their interests are, etc. It's basically a more accessible and beefed up LinkedIn profile. I haven't been using it long enough to speak to its utility but it works well and has a slick design. If you have lots of external meetings with people you don't know a lot about it's worth checking out.

The UP By Jawbone

UpThe other day I bought a Jawbone UP, the popular health monitoring device that tracks steps, sleep and sleep quality. I’ve only been using it for a few days but so far so good. I mostly bought it for the sleep monitoring feature, and because I've been generally a bit anxious to test out a health monitoring device.

I’m slightly obsessed about the amount of sleep I get. Often there are nights where I get a good night’s sleep, but I don’t think I did so I worry about it. UP has begun to put my mind at ease – I’m actually getting more sleep than I had thought. The sleep part of the app monitors how long it took me to get to sleep, how long I slept and even deciphers periods of deep sleep versus light sleep.

I measure my daily workouts fairly closely and I use the MapMyRun app for my outdoor runs so the step measuring feature isn’t all that useful to me. Though I think over time it’ll be interesting to look back at the data to see how much I’m moving, and how I'm moving more or less during different periods. I also like being able to view my general activity levels in contrast to my rest.

The wristband itself is good. It looks decent on my wrist, seems durable, the controls are really responsive and it's easy to sync. The iPhone app is fabulous. It’s easy to use and has a seemingly endless number of ways to slice the data it collects.

There are a few more features I haven't used yet that I'll try out in the coming weeks. Lots of people believe that this kind of self-monitoring is the future of healthcare (particularly to help monitor various physiological statistics and behavior change for people with acute illness and/or high risk factors).

I'll write another post on my experience with the UP in a few months after I've compiled a bunch of data.

Top 20 Movies

I had a debate with some friends a couple weeks ago about the best movies ever made. Here's my list. It's impossible to rank them from 1 through 20...so I created two lists: the top 10, and the next 10.

Top 10

  • Shawshank Redemption
  • Scent of a Woman
  • A Time to Kill
  • Michael Clayton
  • The Big Lebowski
  • A Few Good Men
  • Fargo
  • Good Will Hunting
  • Bourne Identity
  • Juno

Next 10

  • Capote
  • Little Miss Sunshine
  • Field of Dreams
  • Traffic
  • Silence of the Lambs
  • Driving Miss Daisy
  • Saving Private Ryan
  • Forrest Gump
  • The Fugitive
  • The Natural

Honorable Mentions: ET, Margin Call, Man on Fire

My iPhone's Home Screen

I had a conversation the other day about the apps I have on my iPhone's home screen. I thought I'd capture the list here. Here's a screenshot. photo

Foursquare. I like 'checking in' because it keeps a record of the places I've been. I don't interact with people on it but the 'explore' function is good for finding new bars, restaurants and coffee shops. It's better than Yelp in many ways.

Twitter. I don't Tweet all that frequently but I check my feed multiple times a day.

Reeder. This is where I read the blogs that I follow. I check it multiple times a day.

Facebook. I'm trying to move away from using Facebook. I hardly ever post though I check it a couple times a day.

Google Maps. The best mapping app I've ever used. I use it constantly when I'm on the road.

LinkedIn. I interact with people through LinkedIn almost every day. I also check it sporadically for news and other updates.

WEEI. This is an app for my favorite Boston sports talk radio station. I listen to it pretty much every morning.

TripIt. This app keeps me organized when I travel. I wrote a post about it a while back.

Instagram. I don't use it that much but I have it on my home screen as a reminder to take more photos.

Podcasts. I listen to multiple podcasts a day.

Weather. Very simple app. I've preset the cities I travel to most frequently so I can easily find out what to expect.

Kindle. I don't use this app all that often as I prefer to do long form reading on a larger device. But I try to crack it open while I'm on the subway.

Music. I have lots of music apps (screenshot below). I'm still trying to determine the app(s) that work best for me. I probably use Pandora the most these days. I'm going to write a post on this in the coming weeks.

photo (2)

Settings. I have this on my home screen so I can easily manage wi-fi connections. I wish there was an easier way to manage these on the iPhone.

Clock. I use the alarm clock app daily.

WordPress. I've actually never written a blog post on the app but I use it often to capture new ideas.

So that's my home screen. It'll be interesting to see how this changes over time.

Margin Call

Margin Call Over the holidays I watched the movie Margin Call (for the second time).

The movie is a fictional depiction of an investment bank crumbling during the 2008 financial crisis (it was likely inspired by the real life Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers). The story revolves around a brilliant, young analyst in the company's risk management group. One night he discovers that the company has over-leveraged itself through an over-investment in synthetic CDOs and MBSs. Throughout the night and into the early morning the analyst's discovery makes its way to the highest levels of the company. The movie is a depiction of how the company handles the crisis.

Margin Call is a phenomenal movie. It's brilliantly acted by some excellent actors (Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Stanley Tucci, Zachary Quinto, Simon Baker and Demi Moore to name a few). And the suspense around watching management learn what has happened and how they handle it elegantly depicts what were probably real events inside many investment banks at the time. The more senior you were, the less likely you were to understand the financial mechanics behind the crisis.

In what is probably the best scene of the movie, the young analyst (played by Zachary Quinto) is asked to explain what he has discovered to the CEO of the company (played powerfully by Jeremy Irons). Irons' character says to him:

Maybe you could tell me what is going on. And please, speak as you might to a young child. Or a golden retriever. It wasn't brains that brought me here; I assure you that.

That line just about sums up much of the cause of the financial crisis of the late 2000s. The people on the ground were packaging and selling a product that management at our largest and most reputable financial institutions did not -- and could not -- understand.

If you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend renting Margin Call.

New Year, New Design

You may have noticed that I’ve redesigned my website. I decided to move to this new theme (the Ari theme) for a few reasons.

  • Much cleaner look (lots of white space and fewer widgets).
  • Larger font size for easier reading.
  • Wider main reading column allows for less scrolling.
  • Brighter, more conspicuous hyperlinks.
  • Clearer navigation – it allowed me to put the monthly and category archives on the same page.

I’m pretty happy with the change, I hope you like it.

5 Years Of Blogging

Last month marked the fifth year that I've been writing on this blog. As I did last year, I thought I'd post a graph showing the number of posts I've written each month. I wrote 77 blog posts in 2012 (6.4 per month), the most since I started writing -- and the trendline shows that I'm definitely writing more over time, which is a good thing.

One of the challenges I've had with writing more frequently is that I'm always concerned that the quality of the posts will suffer. I'm going to try to worry a little less about that this year and plan to commit to writing 15 posts per month. That's a big increase over last year -- we'll see how I do.

Post per Month Graph

Looking Back at 2012

2012 was a super busy year for me that included lots of big changes. I thought I'd take a few minutes to capture some of the more notable events of the year. January was moving month. After five years of living on 22nd street in NYC, I moved one block up and two blocks over to the Flatiron neighborhood. I'm glad I made the move; I'm in a much nicer building with a doorman, a concierge, a couple of game rooms and -- most important -- a great roof-deck.

My Roofdeck

February was a difficult month. In the afternoon, on Wednesday the 8th, my father passed away.  It was a very difficult time for my entire family. But the funeral was a wonderful tribute to his life and I'm proud to say that we sent him out in style. There was a great obituary chronicling much of his life in all the local papers and the funeral drew a large group of family, friends and former colleagues. It included a military funeral ceremony followed by a wonderful reception where we laughed, cried and remembered his life and accomplishments. I know it was exactly what he would have wanted.

February was also the month that I made the difficult decision to resign from Next Jump (after being there for there for more than five great years) to pursue an awesome opportunity with a healthcare technology start-up.

Dad

March brought some free time as I took a few weeks off before starting with the new company. Early in the month, I took a trip out west. I flew to California and stayed with a friend in Hermosa Beach for a couple of days, then drove to Carmel, Big Sur, San Francisco and ended the trip with three great days of snowboarding in Lake Tahoe before flying back to New York. It was an awesome trip and just what I needed to recharge before starting the new job. Towards the end of the month, I also caught a Celtics game with my Mom and made a quick trip down to Fort Lauderdale for work.

Tahoe

April was a complete blur with the start of my softball season, a bunch of work travel, a bachelor party in Las Vegas and a wedding in Miami.

Miami Wedding

May included a busy streak of client meetings – I spent nights in Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC and Chicago. I also closed my first big strategic partnership at work. And along the way I found some time to catch a great Reckless Kelly concert at the 9:30 Club in DC.

Reckless Kelly Concert

June was a fun summer month. I played a bunch of softball, caught a Red Sox game at Fenway, saw a Felice Brothers concert in Brooklyn and took my first trip to Coney Island.

Fenway

July was pretty busy. I made a three day trip out to Minneapolis for work. I got to explore the town quite a bit and catch a Twins game. Though the highlight of July was my friend's wedding in Los Angeles. They picked a great spot in Redondo Beach overlooking the Pacific. Here's a shot of some friends and I before the fun started.

LA Wedding

August was another busy month with lots of travel. But the highlight was my brother bringing my sister-in-law and my niece up to Boston to celebrate his birthday. We spent a couple days showing my niece some of the Boston landmarks. And we took this shot at Samba Steak & Sushi House, a great Japanese Steakhouse just west of Boston.

Family Boston

September brought my first overnight sailing trip out on the Long Island Sound.  I took this shot as the sun was setting. Great trip.

Long Island Sound

October brought hurricane Sandy to New York City. I captured some of my thoughts on the tragedy here. I made my first trip down to Nashville to accept my company's Best Place to Work  award.  And I made a trip back up to Boston to get away from the flooding and to catch an awesome Ryan Bingham concert at the Royale Nightclub. I took this shot of the Flatiron building in NYC the day the hurricane started. The streets were empty at rush hour that day, but nobody knew the devastation that was coming to the area at that point.

Flat Iron Building Sandy

November was a crazy month. One of my writings was published on a popular healthcare blog. I caught a Patriots game and the Celtics home opener. I also made a trip out to Chicago for work. My Mom came down to NYC for Thanksgiving. I took a couple days off and we kept busy; we saw Lincoln and The Lion King musical, went to the top of the Empire State Building, had some great meals and visited the World Trade Center Memorial. Here's a photo of one of the waterfalls at the exhibit. Someone laid a rose over their friend's name.

WTC Memorial

December brought me back to Chicago for work and back to Boston to watch a miserable Patriots game in the pouring rain. The month was full of holiday parties. And I was recognized as the top performer on my team at my company's annual meeting. Though the highlight, of course, was spending a week down in Virginia with my family for Christmas.

Katie

I'm sure there's lots of good stuff that I'm leaving out, but I'll leave it there for now. 2012 was a good year...but I'm ready for 2013. Happy New Year everyone.

Some Thoughts On Sandy

I wanted to take a moment to thank my family, friends, employer, colleagues and staff in my building for their concern and offers of support in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. I was very lucky in that I live in the Flatiron neighborhood of Manhattan and was far away from the flooding; though I lost power, running water and sanitation in my apartment and office. I was able to get out of the city on one of the few buses leaving town yesterday afternoon and am now safe and sound in Boston.

Having no power and being forced to conserve my cell phone battery gave me lots of time to reflect on the events of the last few days. I thought I’d post some of my thoughts here:

  1. Serious weather events really are local. You don’t truly appreciate the carnage and impact on those affected until you see it up close.
  2. It really, really troubled me that NYC’s 911 system was receiving 10,000 calls every 30 minutes following the power outage: 1.) because there are so many morons calling 911 for non-emergencies and 2.) because there isn't any effective way to triage those 911 calls so people with life and death emergencies had to wait on hold. I've been thinking about ways that those calls could be triaged and I think there’s a good startup opportunity here – given the vast amount of information that our cell phone and email providers have on us there should be some intelligent (and profitable) ways to solve this problem.
  3. Just after the power went out in New York, police cars turned on their blue flashing lights and slowly circled around the impacted streets. I saw a police car go by my apartment literally every three or four minutes. This was a smart move to give people a safe feeling and I’m sure it reduced any potential looting or other crime.
  4. Twitter is incredibly useful during a crisis.
  5. For the most part, people don’t need to evacuate their homes to avoid the hurricane itself, they need to evacuate to avoid the miserable days following the hurricane when they’re stuck in their wet home with no power, running water, sanitation or cell phone coverage. I think a lot of people miss that point.
  6. Mayor Bloomberg did the right thing by asking President Obama not to come into New York City. The police resources that would've been required to facilitate his visit had much more important things to do.
  7. Mayor Bloomberg sent the wrong message by ringing the opening bell at the NYSE that the city was up and running and open for business. People from all over the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut areas hopped in their cars and drove into a city that was just at the beginning stages of a recovery and caused massive gridlock.  New York City should not be open for business when the entire subway system is down.
  8. Walking around Manhattan at night when the lights are out is really surreal.
  9. It’ll be interesting to see the impact Sandy has on the Presidential election. If people see the federal government making a positive impact it should help President Obama but if things still look bad on Tuesday it might help Governor Romney.
  10. Weather events like this are likely going to be much more commonplace going forward. I’ll save the climate change discussion and the role of government for another post. But citizens should use Sandy as an example of the importance of being ready when a disaster hits. Having an escape plan and an ample supply of non-perishable food, water, rain gear, flashlights, battery-powered radios and back up cell phone batteries is critical for everyone. Because even in a city of eight million people with all the conveniences that could be imagined, you just might find yourself on your own.

Finally, here are some helpful tips from FEMA on how to help the victims of the storm.

Image via Nameen.

You're Not Special

Here's my favorite excerpt from David McCullough Jr.'s highly publicized commencement address at this year's Wellesley High School graduation.  It's about time educators starting sending this message...read the entire speech if you get a chance.

Contrary to what your u9 soccer trophy suggests, your glowing seventh grade report card, despite every assurance of a certain corpulent purple dinosaur, that nice Mister Rogers and your batty Aunt Sylvia, no matter how often your maternal caped crusader has swooped in to save you… you’re nothing special.

Yes, you've been pampered, cosseted, doted upon, helmeted, bubble-wrapped. Yes, capable adults with other things to do have held you, kissed you, fed you, wiped your mouth, wiped your bottom, trained you, taught you, tutored you, coached you, listened to you, counseled you, encouraged you, consoled you and encouraged you again. You’ve been nudged, cajoled, wheedled and implored. You’ve been feted and fawned over and called sweetie pie. Yes, you have. And, certainly, we’ve been to your games, your plays, your recitals, your science fairs.  Absolutely, smiles ignite when you walk into a room, and hundreds gasp with delight at your every tweet. Why, maybe you’ve even had your picture in the Townsman! And now you’ve conquered high school… and, indisputably, here we all have gathered for you, the pride and joy of this fine community, the first to emerge from that magnificent new building…

But do not get the idea you’re anything special.  Because you’re not.

Where I Get My News - 2012

Growing up my parents were news junkies. As a result, I sort of pride myself on knowing what’s going on in the world. The other day I was asked where I get my news and it took me a while to answer the question. So I thought I’d think about it and lay out the answer in a blog post. I’ll try to order these sources from most consumption to least consumption. Here goes. Blogs. Currently I follow 52 blogs and I read them daily. The topics include business, technology, sports, current events and healthcare. Most of the blogs are written by individuals, but I do follow the What’s News section of the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker and Techmeme which aggregate posts from a wide variety of writers and sources. I use Google Reader to manage the blog feeds on my desktop and the Reeder App to view them on my iPhone and iPad.

Twitter. I follow about 200 people on Twitter. I get a ton of news from individual Tweets as well as links to other content that I’m interested in that gets Tweeted. I follow a variety of news outlets, bloggers, traditional writers, businesspeople, athletes and musicians.

Podcasts. I follow 14 podcasts. My most listened to podcasts in order are a variety of shows on WEEI (Boston’s sports radio station), the Adam Carolla Show, This American Life (NPR) and the B.S. Report (Bill Simmons).

Television. I watch far less TV than I used to. I watch Meet the Press and 60 Minutes every week without fail. And I sporadically and somewhat infrequently catch parts of the local broadcast news and national cable news.

Newspapers. Because I'm from Boston I read the online version of the Boston Globe virtually every single day. Living in New York, on a rare, rare occasion I will pick up a copy of the Times, the Post or the Daily News.

Magazines. I subscribe to hard copies of Men’s Health and Outside Magazine. With some regularity I’ll download the New Yorker, the Atlantic or the Economist onto my iPad.

Other Social Media. Occasionally I’ll find a link to an article posted by a friend or connection on Facebook or LinkedIn.

Kindle. I got my first Kindle back in March. I love it. But so far I haven’t used it for anything other than reading books, though I plan to use it to read newspapers and magazines when I get around to it. Currently I’m reading Great by Choice by Jim Collins and Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote. Both are great.

So there’s my somewhat organized list of where I get my news. It’ll be interesting to see how this changes over the next few years.

The Facebook IPO

Facebook is set to go public today at a $100 billion dollar valuation.  For context, General Electric is worth about $199 billion.

GE was founded by Thomas Edison in 1890, has more than 300,000 employees and is a market leader in appliances, aviation, consumer electronics, electrical distribution, energy, finance, healthcare, lighting, oil & gas, rail, software & services and water treatment.

Facebook was founded in 2003, has about 4,000 employees and is a market leader in, well, display advertisting.  

It's official.  The world has changed. 

Two Posts Worth Reading

Seth Godin had two great posts last week with two simple lessons worth remembering.  Both posts are super short, I recommend checking them out.

The first points out that success comes not just from working hard, but from working on the right things.  Often, knowing what not to do is harder than knowing what to do.

The second discusses the balance between knowing a lot about one little thing but also knowing a little about a lot.  Both are crucial.

Random Insights

Here are some somewhat random insights that I picked up this week...

There’s no such thing as the “Internet Bubble”.  Yes, the stock market went way up and way down.  But if you look at internet traffic over the last 20 years, you’d have no idea when the bubble occurred.  Internet traffic has increased steadily.

Large companies that are working with small companies prefer that any disputes that arise go to arbitration, as opposed to the courts.  Reason: the general public is far more sympathetic to the underdog than a third party arbitrator.  The arbitrator must go by the book and has a reputation of fairness to build and uphold.  Big companies will push to have arbitration in their agreements with startups.

When betting on a startup, there are 3 things that matter: 1.) people 2.) a huge commitment to be successful from the management team and 3.) a large market opportunity.  If those things are in place, nothing else matters -- the plan, the product, the pitch, the competition, all of that will change pretty quickly anyway.

25% of Groupon’s revenue comes from health care related daily deals.

Sleep

Bill Maher made a great point the other night on his show.  He pointed out that that it seems that when relatively young celebrity deaths are drug related, it's most often partially caused by some kind of "downer", i.e. sleeping pills.  Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Anna Nicole Smith, Heath Ledger; all of them died from complications related to sleeping pills.  I looked back a few years.  Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Jimi Hendrix -- same thing.  The list goes on and on.

Celebrities with lots of fame and fortune are able to control nearly everything in their lives; what they eat, where they live, when they work, who they spend time with.  They control everything.  Except one thing: sleep.  

So it's not hard to understand why celebrities turn to pharmaceuticals to put themselves in control of the one thing in their lives that can't be controlled.

This is a scary reality, particularly as sleep aids such as Ambien and Lunesta are becoming more and more popular and readily available.  And it's not just celebrities that are trying to control their sleep.  These drugs are becoming a normal part of lots of people's lives.  The Today Show recently reported that 30% of women use some kind of artificial sleep aid.

One major danger associated with these "downers" is that users build up a tolerance and quickly need more and more of the drug to experience the same effect.  So even if the drug isn't technically addictive, the users become addicted anyway and have to ingest more and more to get to sleep.  So the use of these drugs can turn a minor sleep problem into a serious sleep problem.  Combine the use of these drugs with more common sleep aids -- alcohol or over the counter products -- and they can cause serious health problems.  They can quickly depress brain function and the central nervous system leading to unconsciousness, respiratory failure and death.  

I'm obviously not a physician.  And I recognize that when used properly sleep aids can impact people very positively, and they're probably very appropriate for patients with more serious sleep issues.  But sleeplessness is not caused by a lack of Ambien or any other drug.  It's caused by other factors.  Treating those factors, rather than covering them up with pharmaceuticals seems like the best bet to me. 

The best advice I've ever been given to cure sleeplessness is to simply stop trying to sleep.  Get up, read a book, write something, clean your kitchen.  Distract yourself from the thought of sleep and your body will most often get you back to bed when it's ready.  In the short term, this approach may lead to some sleepless nights and yes you'll have to give up some control.  But it's far safer than the artificial approach that seems to be taking so many celebrities before their time.

Thanksgiving

You-More-Fortunate-3-Billion-People-infographic It's very difficult to keep perspective on how lucky we truly are on a day to day basis.  But Thanksgiving is a good day to stop and take a step back and consider all that we have to be thankful for.

If you have access to clean drinking water, an income of more than $4,000 per year and a college degree, you're better off -- much better off -- than 94% of the world's population.

I came cross this infographic that gives a bit more perspective.  Lots and lots to be thankful for this year.

Happy Thanksgiving.