Tag Archives: work

From the Neuron to the Coffee House to the Internet: Steven Johnson’s TED Talk on How Ideas Have Sex

Great, great TED talk. From the neuronal network in your skull to the coffee house to the Internet, the idea world is rhizomatic.

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“Republicans make you work for your money, and try to let you keep it.”

This was in The New York Times this past week: “Democrats are for a bunch of freeloaders in this world as far as I’m concerned,” said Gari Day, 63, an Avis bus driver from suburban Detroit. “Republicans make you work … Continue reading

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David Foster Wallace’s “This is Water” 2005 Kenyon College Commencement Address

Wallace is totally the Buddha in this speech, preaching attentional choice, vigilance in looking, and imaginative awareness. It’s a shame he hit bottom in 2008 and, in the grip of a severe depression (a recurrent scourge that plagued his life), … Continue reading

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Assert Yourself

The below video is a nice introduction to existentialism. And so is this brief passage written by historian Carlin Barton in her great book, Roman Honor: The Fire in the Bones (University of California Press 2001, 31-32): On the morning of … Continue reading

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What You Earn Correlates With What Your Children Will Earn

On income inequality in America, this comes from Scott Winship: Only 13 percent of children starting in the bottom fifth [of income] will end up in the top two-fifths in adulthood (compared with 63 percent of children who start out … Continue reading

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Measure Twice, Saw Once

This is in the business section of the Los Angeles Times today: Managers spend nearly 17% of their working hours dealing with poor performers, according to a report from staffing firm Robert Half International. That’s basically a full day a week that could … Continue reading

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Follow Your Heart (Maybe)

In the below video, Alan Watts makes a provocative point: do what you really want. If you fail at it, then you can money grub and settle later, or you can even starve to death. Better to live a short life going … Continue reading

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You Don’t Know What Work Is

John Churchill has a contrarian take on work: Is there no intrinsic value ─ no good in itself ─ in the work of a life that does not rise, in its own span, above the level of the mop and … Continue reading

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Tim Tebow’s Work Ethic

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I Still Like Obama

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Free Speech vs. Career Building: Are They Incompatable?

There are lots of pressures to conformity in the world, but three examples really jumped out at me recently. The first comes in the form of some young scientists, concerned for their career prospects, scattering away from a video camera to avoid … Continue reading

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Thinking about Entropy

One way to think about entropy is as a measure of disorder in a system: where disorder is high, entropy is high; where disorder is low, entropy is low. I don’t have the exact quote in front of me, but the … Continue reading

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Image of a Working Mother

Marc Chagall:

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Fight or Flight? Two Ways to Read Matthew Arnold’s Poem, “Requiescat” (1849)

If you’re a temperamentally anxious and emotionally tumultuous person, as I have been all of my life, the Matthew Arnold poem below might give you a bit of life perspective. But it also depends on how you read it. One of … Continue reading

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Halloween is Coming

And this is very, very scary. This is how I feel about my blogging sometimes.

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A Reminder That Doorknobs, School Desktops, Shopping Cart Handlebars, and Buttons Are Vectors for the Spread of Swine Flu

This today in the New York Times: In Hong Kong, where health checks are being conducted on passengers arriving at the city’s airport, janitors put up fresh sheets of plastic film over elevator buttons so that any sick people pressing … Continue reading

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