I was listening to the Smashmouth song, Walking on the Sun, on my MP3 player on my way back from BART this afternoon. A former acquaintance of mine once dissed the song to me by pointing out that the initial lyrics were ripping off the Coke ad “I’d like to teach the world to sing […]
Category: people
Enlightened Selfishness
Picking up on yesterday’s anarchy post, I was thinking about what it takes for anarchy (or even capitalism) to work as a society. I was talking with some other friends last week about the concept of enlightened selfishness, and I think that is one of the keys. What do I mean by enlightened selfishness? It’s […]
Anarchy is Progress!
A friend of mine pointed me at this email, where a reader of Gizmodo criticizes them for having the temerity to insult the Queen of England. In particular, he says: Some institutions in the world, like the church, must stay intact or it causes a breakdown in civilization. There must be a counterbalance that allows […]
Cubicle Zen
A little while ago, a friend of mine was complaining over IM about their stupid coworkers. In a moment of levity, I replied “Welcome to the world, young grasshopper. You must bend with the stupidity as the reeds bend with the wind. Stupidity is an unstoppable force – it can only be diverted, not ignored […]
Identification and context
I just had an amusing incident. I was on BART on my way to work, and was lounging in a seat reading my Economist with my music playing. Somebody taps my leg as they’re walking by. I look up, see a guy smiling at me, and I know I recognize him, but I have no […]
Filtered world views
This is the next post in the Latour series so feel free to skip it if you found the other posts boring. I’d actually started writing this post several weeks ago, when I noticed that while I was reading Latour, certain points resonated very strongly with me, and others I was just kind of skimming […]
Politics of Nature part 3
Okay, I said yesterday that part 2 would end my book review, but I lied. There is one crucial aspect of Latour’s book that I didn’t cover yet. To review, part 1 essentially covered chapters 1 and 2, part 2 covered chapters 3 and 4, and today we’ll cover chapter 5, which covers how to […]
Politics of Nature part 2
Continuing yesterday’s summary of Politics of Nature, by Bruno Latour. Today’s subject: Latour’s proposal for a “Constitution” on how we construct reality in a democratic fashion via due process, one that cuts across science and politics and multiculturalists and facts and values. I’m going to sketch out the process first, and then go back and […]
Crime pays, or why people suck
Two days ago, a woman was mugged at 6pm about 50 yards from my front door. My friend and I were walking up the hill from dinner when we heard a commotion up ahead – about half a block up, two black men ran across the street and jumped in a car, chased by a […]
Being all I can be, whatever that may be
Question of the day – where’s the balance between accepting who you are and pursuing paths that leverage that identity, and striving to be a different person? I was writing email to a friend last night and made the claim that a lack of self-acceptance drives American culture, from our dieting crazes to our willingness […]
