Wednesday, May 10, 2006

The Care and Feeding of Genius, II

This week's New Yorker has two articles that are relevant: One is on Ivan Lendl's golf-playing daughters. Just teenagers they're doing well and Lendl seems to follow the pattern of Earl Woods. He says that kid athletes need a parental push early, but the parent needs to step back at some point. (What's different in sports these days is the early specialization. When I grew up, the 3 or 4 letter athlete was common (football, basketball, baseball, and maybe track). These days teens specialize early. )

The other article is on an ex-Harvard undergrad who developed Facebook, sort of a MySpace site tweaked for college. The point here is the familiar story of the computer whiz who spends lots of time and effort developing an application (similar to Napster and innumerable other applications). It's a combination of talent, effort, and the environment.

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