№ 483. Working from Home: Solitude

Teaching Philosophy

Solitude is a competitive advantage. Contemplation is an essential tool for analyzing and synthesizing business intelligence from big data.

"There is no silver bullet to solving the complex problems ushered in by the information age. But there are some good places to start, and one of them is counterintuitive: solitude. Having the discipline to step back from the noise of the world is essential to staying focused. This is even more important in a highly politicized society that constantly incites our emotions, causing the cognitive effects of distractions to linger.

№ 482. Working from Home: Generalists

Brain Pickings

Here an old insight.

My college ed. was steeped in general core subjects on a wide variety of disciplines --- math, science, social sciences, management and other thinking courses like philosophy and theology.

It seems that the debate about specialization and generalization is still alive.

№ 481. Working from Home

№ 480. Pigovian Tax

A Pigovian tax (also spelled Pigouvian tax) is a tax on any market activity that generates negative externalities (costs not included in the market price). The tax is intended to correct an undesirable or inefficient market outcome (a market failure), and does so by being set equal to the external marginal cost of the negative externalities. Social cost include private cost and external cost.

Pigovian Taxes

№ 479. Blue-Eyed Wisdom

Parallels between Chaplin and Adolf Hitler had been widely noted: the pair were born four days apart, both had risen from poverty to world prominence, and Hitler wore the same toothbrush moustache as Chaplin. It was this physical resemblance that supplied the plot for Chaplin's next film, The Great Dictator, which directly satirised Hitler and attacked fascism.




 Bento Box

1. Charlie Chaplin had piercing blue eyes.
2. He entered a Charlie Chaplin look alike contest and lost.
3. Chaplin wrote, directed, produced, edited, starred in, and composed the music for most of his films.

№ 478. Trial and Terror, A Reckoning

China: The Cake of Kings... and of Emperors

Monuments are values made visible, embodying ideals we choose to honour. Unless we choose to celebrate their values, statues of slave owners belong in museums, not public streets. We cannot have a just and decent present as long as we refuse to face our pasts.

№ 477. Lazy Sunday

 

 

№ 476. Open Spaces: Surf & Turf

Time to get out and learn to hunt food.

№ 475. Lost in Translation

The Stranger

For the modern American reader, few lines in French literature are as famous as the opening of Albert Camus’s “L’Étranger”: “Aujourd’hui, maman est morte.” Nitty-gritty tense issues aside, the first sentence of “The Stranger” is so elementary that even a schoolboy with a base knowledge of French could adequately translate it. So why do the pros keep getting it wrong?