Scott Adams, the creator of the cartoon Dilbert, has been a fascinating and disturbing person to read throughout this election cycle. His posts last year where he picked Trump to win the Republican nomination were interesting to me to see what persuasion techniques he observed Trump using. However, his more recent posts where he is […]
Category: politics
Whistling Vivaldi, by Claude M. Steele
Amazon link Subtitled “How stereotypes affect us and what we can do”, this is one of the most powerful books I’ve read in a while. Diversity issues are everywhere these days, and they seem hopeless to overcome – when looking at a problem like why so few women are in technology, people argue about whether […]
Inequality, Globalization and Technology
There has been a discussion about economic inequality on an email list I’m on. It started with a link to this CNN summary of “must reads” on inequality, and has continued over a few other threads the past couple months. I’ve written a few thoughts in those threads, and thought I would assemble them here […]
Griftopia, by Matt Taibbi
Amazon link Matt Taibbi is angry. He is a Rolling Stone columnist who spent the last several years covering the financial crisis, and as an outside observer, is far more negative about the finance industry than anybody associated with it. Griftopia is a collection of columns and other research put together as a striking condemnation […]
True Enough, by Farhad Manjoo
Amazon link Based on my previous thoughts about the decline of Absolute Truth , it’s not surprising that I wanted to read a book that is subtitled “Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society”. Manjoo observes that we, the body politic, used to agree on what was happening and the problems we were facing, but […]
Political burnout
Over the past couple weeks, politics has come up twice in conversations with folks. This isn’t surprising with the Iowa caucus happening tomorrow and the primary process in full swing. But it is interesting that politics is starting to seep back into the national awareness and into my personal awareness. I burnt myself out on […]
Personal vs. Social Responsibility
I’ve mostly been able to ignore the subprime mortgage mess. I don’t work in finance (although several of my classmates at Columbia are walking on eggshells), and my investments are mostly long term so the volatility in the markets doesn’t really concern me. But then I read the following paragraph in The Economist: The boldest […]
Deconstructing Sweet Home Alabama
I saw the movie Sweet Home Alabama yesterday. It was decently entertaining, but later in the evening, I started thinking about the cultural memes that it is propagating, possibly because I have been reading too many of Jessie’s posts. The rest of this post will involve spoilers so if you have not seen the movie […]
Incomplete realities
Responding to my End Times theory, Brian commented “Can we show that one reality is better than another? I hope so!” I’ve been struggling on and off with this question of what makes one reality “better” than another for at least six years. In that rant (itself a follow-up to these thoughts on morality), I […]
Big Brother is Us
I received an action alert from MoveOn today about fighting the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court: Right now we urgently need more information, and we need your help to get it. In the next few hours the Internet will fill with facts, anecdotes and rumors about Harriet Miers. We need your help […]
