May 2013
7 posts
“The professors say they believe that high homeownership in an area leads to...”
– Homeownership May Actually Cause Unemployment - NYTimes.com
“We know that most of us, in this country, all the time, over-consume. We buy...”
– over-consumption | Organic Clothing, Organic Lingerie - Brook There
“Without the participation of that generally healthy young population, insurance...”
– Republicans Readying New Offensive Over Health Law - NYTimes.com
I currently pay $1900 / year for insurance with a $15k deductible. I’ll happily trade that for a $500/ year fine and the right to buy insurance anytime.
I don’t see how this can work in economic terms if ANYONE does...
April '13 Reading Report
Anger by Thich Nhat Hanh
Enchantment by Guy Kawasaki - a bit fluff, I’ve read better books by Kawasaki
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Covey - it took me to the end of this book to realize this guy is a Morman! But- his premise, that our contemporary personal development literature is conceived around the false idea of of “personality ethic” - as contrasted to...
Q1 '13 Reading Report
Albeit a bit late.
Pocket Neighborhoods (Chapin) - I like tiny houses.
The Language Instinct (Pinker) - I love reading about language. Can’t really say much more than that, except that everything Pinker writes resonates with how I already view the world. So it’s easy reading.
The Blank Slate (Pinker) -This book, dense and deeply readable, can be summarized as a rebuttal of the...
A continuum of values: freedom to equality.
I think most of our big cultural questions can really be really addressed between those two primary values.
But there’s a third factor, and it’s power.
Some people value freedom more. Some people value equality more. Some people value power.
The first two values are easily manipulated by those who value power.
And the easiest side of...
“First, if the benefit of health insurance is mostly or exclusively financial,...”
– What Health Insurance Doesn’t Do - NYTimes.com
January 2013
5 posts
““Translation” of Ecclesiastes
To give an example of what he...”
– Politics and the English Language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
We seem to have become a nation of the easily offended.
“Euphemism treadmill
Euphemisms often evolve over time into taboo words...”
– Euphemism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“Well, I think that was a bad choice of words on my part … that word has an...”
– Whole Foods Founder John Mackey On Fascism And ‘Conscious Capitalism’ : The Salt : NPR
liberals = language police
November 2012
6 posts
time-spending
I’ve given myself two rules this holiday season: no more newspaper reading (except for the style section or other fluff) and only 8 hour workdays, and not seven of them a week. These rules came into being after a couple of mini-tantrums/breakdowns.
Sometimes when I look back over this blog, I’m reminded a little of the classic film character, the obsessive one who gathers all...
money & choice
Point #3 in this project:
The Discipline of Passion is about a responsible and realistic relationship with money
As an aside: one night over dinner last week Daniel and I were at the Petite Jacqueline bar and this book was sitting there. (The Secret Language of Birthdays) We both read our birthdate descriptors- mine was dreadfully accurate, and went something like this (paraphrased) “you...
“What motivates college administrators to act so viciously? “It’s...”
– The Weekend Interview with Greg Lukianoff: How Free Speech Died on Campus - WSJ.com
October 2012
5 posts
care & consideration
Point # 2 in my project:
The Discipline of Passion is about approaching the bigger world and external relationships with consideration and critical thinking.
Have you noticed that the new way of referring to what doctors provide is “care’? Our heath care system either provides “too much or too little care”, or the “care” is too expensive.
This word choice...
titles & such.
Where have we left off?
I’ve basically been sewing for the past month, interspersed with travel, and this research project has been stalled. I’ll bring it back as soon as I’m done with the spring collection linesheet. :)
As it’s now october, “This Summer’s Project” seems like a no-longer-accurate name. We’re switching to The Discipline of...
“Consider a thought experiment: Divide $1 trillion by 46 million and you get...”
– America’s Ineffective Antipoverty Effort - NYTimes.com
Of course, there would then be another few million of newly poor persons who formerly worked in government aid agencies.
September 2012
5 posts
One can tell a lot about an author’s readership by the quality of the highlights. I’m reading a couple Chomsky books on foreign policy right now on kindle. I can see the highlights made by other readers. They are soundbitish at best, and taken as a whole present an image of readers who don’t think, only regurgitate.
August 2012
15 posts
victims of intellectuals.
I read an old article called The Responsibility of Intellectuals the other day. It’s an article about foreign policy, but it got me thinking about intellectualism in general.
I can start from values: I know that the value I hold primary is personal responsibility and individual growth. This focus on the individual is more than average, I realize, because unlike the majority of the...
I’m just now getting to reading last weekend’s paper.
Interesting article on poverty in which it’s actually acknowledged that the problems facing americans in deep poverty are more social than material. The excerpts below are from the end of the article, where the romance of the story is dropped in order to discuss the problem.
“Looking back on the lives and prospects of...
Little pictures
I’m a fan of occam’s razor as a means for making determinations regarding complex outcome potentials or probabilities. However, I believe there must be a significant failure of understanding amongst large swaths of our educated population regarding complexity.
Willingness to understand or attempt to understand complexity is replaced by emotion. We can all agree, I’d hope,...
“In Interventionism, An Economic Analysis (1940), Ludwig von Mises wrote:
The...”
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises
“In 1931 Keynes went on to write the following on Marxism:
“How can I...”
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynes
Current research
July 2012
48 posts
intelligence without agency
sounds like some kind of new government entity, right?
I think the current means of measuring intelligence are extremely limited. We have IQ tests- well known and documented. Semi-culturally biased according to some researchers. But generally, based on doing logic, spatial reasoning, math, and other abstract/ not-too-linguistic problems.
and then there is EQ- emotional intelligence- i.e....
happy, well-fed, healthy
Out of a desire to have at least read the literature/philosophy presented by the fathers of socialism, I downloaded the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital the other day.
Surprise #1 is the style of writing of the Communist Manifesto. It really is a manifesto, written in a sensationalistic style.
#2 - that it quite literally promotes class warfare
#3 - that there is no acknowledgment of the...
