Weekly I/O #26

Coach’s Function, Søren Kierkegaard, Leap of Faith, Same DNA Different Cells, Collision Course

Weekly I/O is a project where I share my learning Input/Output. Every Sunday, I write an email newsletter with five things I discovered and learned that week.

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The below is extracted from the email sent on Jun 06, 2021

Here’s a list of what I’m exploring and pondering this week.

1. A coach’s primary function should be not to make better players but to make better people.

Book: Coach Wooden and Me: Our 50-Year Friendship On and Off the Court

Coach Wooden and Me is a book by the NBA’s all-time leading scorer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar writing about his priceless friendship with the legendary UCLA coach John Wooden. In the first chapter of this book, he mentioned that the coach should focus on making his player a better person, not just a better basketball player.

This reminds me of the book Trillion Dollar Coach about Bill Campbell whose mentoring some of the most well-known entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt. The book is also talking about how Bill Campbell fostered the personal growth of those business executives as better people.

2. “Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards.” — Søren Kierkegaard

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This line is so simple but rich, especially when we know a little bit more about Kierkegaard’s thinking.

3. “To have faith is to lose your mind and to win God” — Søren Kierkegaard

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Not trying to justify his faith in Christianity through rational means, Kierkegaard explained with “the leap” for the attachment. It reminds me of how Thomas Aquinas from 600 years ago explains the compatibility of religious belief and rational thoughts. He used natural law (things that could be explained from our own experience of the world) and eternal law (things that reason could not arrive at on its own) to classify what operates the universe and all its dynamics.

It is also worth noting that the phrase “leap of faith” does not occur in Kierkegaard’s work. He actually referred it to “the leap” or “a qualitative leap” as he asked rhetorically: “Can there be a transition from quantitative qualification to a qualitative one without a leap?”

4. If almost all the cells in one’s body have the same DNA, then why don’t all cells look the same?

Article: DNA Basics

When talking with my friend about fasting and autophagy, I just came up with this question that may have appeared in my middle school (or high school) biology exam.

DNA is what genes are made of. Genes store all the information needed for creating us. And approximately, we humans have between 20,000 and 25,000 genes in almost all our cells.

A gene must be turned on (expressed) to utilize the information, and the information will be turned into useful proteins. For a cell to work, a certain amount of proteins must be produced. Therefore, our eyes and lungs are different since different sets of proteins are made in the various eye and lung cells.

5. Linkin Park feat. Jay-Z — Collision Course: Live 2004 (Full DVD Special)

Music: Linkin Park feat. Jay-Z — Collision Course: Live 2004 (Full DVD Special)

I got back to listened to the album from Linkin Park and Jay-Z a lot these days. Hybrid Theory and The Blueprint 3 are gold, and their collaborative album Collision Course are just beautiful.

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