Michael On
Michael On
southern band athens
So, we went from being an Athens band to being a Georgia band to being a Southern band to being an American band from the East Coast to being an American band and now we're kind of an international phenomenon.
ethos rocks heaven
The punk-rock ethos was "Do it yourself. Anyone can do this. We're not sent from the heavens."
ukulele band maps
When we first started, we were a band from Athens and that was so off the map.
mistake looks done
I started lip-synching with "Losing My Religion." There were a few horrendous mistakes we made, but I own those mistakes. I'm embarrassed by them. I always say when I look back at anything I've ever done, it's with equal dollops of humiliation and triumphant glory.
integrity thinking two
When we signed with Warner Bros., they knew what they were getting. They knew they weren't going to get some easily manipulated prepackaged pop group. That was not going to happen. What they wanted, I think, was the integrity that we had to offer. What they wanted was the kind of street cred or cache that R.E.M. could bring to them and the chance that we would give them a hit or two. What happened was we gave them a bunch of hits. And we became huge.
agents principles moral
To be a fully functioning moral agent, one cannot passively accept moral principles handed down by fiat. Moral principles require moral reasoning.
flukes evolution quirks
We are a fluke of nature, a quirk of evolution, a glorious contingency.
effectiveness skeptical supplements
One, I am skeptical of the effectiveness of nutritional supplements.
nonlinear unpredictable humans
Human history is highly nonlinear and unpredictable.
numbers crowds problem
For solving a surprisingly large and varied number of problems, crowds are smarter than individuals.
numbers google algorithms
In comparison, Google is brilliant because it uses an algorithm that ranks Web pages by the number of links to them, with those links themselves valued by the number of links to their page of origin.
thumbs want
My rule of thumb is that I want to do things I'd like to go and see myself.
helping failing process
I find increasingly that the more extreme are the things going on in your life, the more cultural reference points fail you. More mythical reference points actually help, and you realise that's what myths are for. It's for human beings to process their experience in extremis.
rebuilding destroyed
Everybodys constantly being destroyed and rebuilding themselves, some more drastically than others.