Sometimes you just want the answer
You know, it’s tough getting attention for yourself these days, with all the influencers and selfie-addicts tripping over themselves to share their innermost desires (and shopping tips), but I’m going to push them all aside on my blog here, for one day only, so that you, loyal readers (or randoms) can appreciate the fact that Continue reading "Happy 57th to me!"
I do not remember how I heard about this 1971 book by Ivan Illich, but it s well known as a critique of modern (ca 1971) schooling. Sadly, his critiques which jump off the pages, crackling with fire are still applicable 55 years later: Schooling is more about administration and certification than learning. The Continue reading "Review: Deschooling"
I got a copy of the complete Sir Arthur Conan Doyle s Sherlock Holmes, which contains both novels and short story collections. In chronological order, they are: A Study in Scarlet (1887) The Sign of the Four (1890) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894) The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) Continue reading "Review: Sherlock Holmes"
Stop keeping score and pay attention to what matters, i.e., how metrics reshape desires, not just behavior. The irrigation district chasing acre-feet delivered rather than crop yield per drop, the university chasing rankings rather than education. Job Hunters Are Using AI to Cheat in Interviews, and Failing at the Office Great substack on the high Continue reading "Interesting stuff"
Terry Pratchett s 17th Discworld book (1994) has artificial intelligence, the Mongol invasion of China, chaos theory, and of course wizards. Here are some quotes because Sir Terry was such a genius: The AI (a neural net): But a lot of it had just accumulated, like the aquarium and wind chimes which now seemed Continue reading "Review: Interesting Times"
I asked Claude.ai what books should I read to prepare for retirement, the second half of life, the End? and got this title in response. It was a good suggestion. Arthur Brooks writes a lot, and this 2022 book was part of his own process of facing not just aging but decline. But he s not Continue reading "Review: From Strength to Strength"
Watch Jenny Joseph reads Warning (when I am old, I shall wear purple ) Listen America is rich on its 250th birthday, but only because it switched from slave labor to fossil fuel labor (one barrel replaced 4.5 years of work). Can Americans step back from such gluttony? Related: How to fix America s broken media ecosystem. Continue reading "Interesting stuff"
Nassim Taleb popularized the idea of black swans rare events with significant costs and (more importantly), that we misunderestimate their rarity. Others would call this the problem of fat tails, i.e., the probability of events in the tails of the distribution is larger (fatter) than we expect (thinner). There are many examples of Continue reading "An average failure to understand"
Watch We need to eat less meat and more veg as a matter of national security. Listen The If books could kill podcast is kinda snarky, but their critiques of Freakonomics (my review) are relevant. More on those failures. A depressing example of guild protectionism in action: How the American Medical Association reduced competition, excluded Continue reading "Interesting stuff"
MF asked me to comment on the Danish system of Flexicurity as it compares to the NL and US. Definition (wikipedia): The Government of Denmark views flexicurity as entailing a golden triangle with a three-sided mix of (1) flexibility in the labour market combined with (2) social security and (3) an active labour market policy Continue reading "Flexicurity and innovation"