Scree

noun : an accumulation of loose stones or rocky debris lying on a slope or at the base of a hill or cliff.

The distress of the privileged

Published January 25, 2015  ·  All posts on Jan 25  ·  

If you are one of the newly-visible others, this all sounds whiny compared to the problems you face every day. It’s tempting to blast through such privileged resistance with anger and insult.

Tempting, but also, I think, a mistake. The privileged are still privileged enough to foment a counter-revolution, if their frustrated sense of entitlement hardens.

So I think it’s worthwhile to spend a minute or two looking at the world from George Parker’s point of view: He’s a good 1950s TV father. He never set out to be the bad guy. He never meant to stifle his wife’s humanity or enforce a dull conformity on his kids. Nobody ever asked him whether the world should be black-and-white; it just was.

~ Doug Muder, from The Distress of the Privileged

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What’s lost as handwriting fades

Published January 21, 2015  ·  All posts on Jan 21

Cursive or not, the benefits of writing by hand extend beyond childhood. For adults, typing may be a fast and efficient alternative to longhand, but that very efficiency may diminish our ability to process new information. Not only do we learn letters better when we commit them to memory through writing, memory and learning ability in general may benefit.

~ Maria Konnikova from, What’s Lost as Handwriting Fades

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The real American discipline problem

Published January 20, 2015  ·  All posts on Jan 20  ·  

I agree that America faces a major discipline problem, but I see the lack of discipline at the top: the bankers, the billionaires, the CEOs. Like Mike Rice, they’re out of control and need to face the consequences of their actions.

The Rice video was seen by Rutgers officials months ago, and their response was a wrist-slap: Rice was suspended for three games and told not to do it again. Isn’t that typical of how things go in America?

~ Doug Muder, from Mike Rice, Sean Hannity, and the Real American Discipline Problem

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How to be polite

Published January 19, 2015  ·  All posts on Jan 19  ·  

The practice of politeness is a collection of habits of mind and expression you do on a daily basis. You learn to say “thank you” because you are honestly grateful and “I’m sorry” because you honestly don’t want to contribute to the pain of the world. You learn to say “it’s ok” because you’re honestly forgiving and letting go of small things other people do wrong. This practice makes the rate of unproductive and acrimonious conversations go down, and the enemies you make are usually only the unavoidably unpleasant.

~ Quinn Norton, from How to be Polite… for Geeks

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What if secretaries became programmers

Published January 17, 2015  ·  All posts on Jan 17

But why do women make less? Is it for reasons we can all live with, or is the pay gap an injustice that needs fixing? Several reasons are frequently offered, together with explanations why we can live with those reasons. (Never forget that those are two separate conversations. Even if the whole pay gap could be boiled down to something as simple as “Girls don’t like math”, we’d still need to discuss whether that’s a problem we can or should fix.)

~ Doug Muder, from 77 cents, part II

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VERY interesting gender/salary math.

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Debt: This time is different

Published January 16, 2015  ·  All posts on Jan 16

Many seem to believe that if we worked our way out of debt problems in the past, we can do the same thing again. The same assets may have new owners, but everything will work together in the long run. Businesses will continue operating, and people will continue to have jobs. We may have to adjust monetary policy, or perhaps regulation of financial institutions, but that is about all.

I think this is where the story goes wrong. The situation we have now is very different, and far worse, than what happened in the past.

~ Gail Tverberg, from Debt

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It remembers for keeps

Published January 15, 2015  ·  All posts on Jan 15  ·  

Anyone who works with computers learns to fear their capacity to forget. Like so many things with computers, memory is strictly binary. There is either perfect recall or total oblivion, with nothing in between. It doesn’t matter how important or trivial the information is. The computer can forget anything in an instant. If it remembers, it remembers for keeps.

~ Maciej Cegłowski, from The Internet With A Human Face

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…from his talk at Beyond Tellerrand

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True friendship

Published January 14, 2015  ·  All posts on Jan 14  ·  

True friendship develops not as a result of money or power, but on the basis of genuine human affection.

~ Dalai Lama

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This tweet appeared the day I returned from training at the Académie Québécoise d’Art du Déplacement. Clearly I’m becoming a softie in my middling years, but I felt a real connection to the many people I had the privilege of training with. They were strong, humble, joyful, welcoming, and so much more.

On commence ensemble; On finit ensemble.
Art du Deplacement – Force, Dignite, Partage

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Student debt

Published January 14, 2015  ·  All posts on Jan 14

Put it all together, and even a student who works part-time and attends a second-rate state university can easily graduate owing over $100,000.

Welcome to the professional class, kid. Just don’t expect to keep any of the money you make. And I almost forgot to mention: We’ve let public transportation go to hell, so you’ll need to buy a car. (Here’s another loan.) We’re letting public schools fail, so if you have kids and want them to stay in the professional class, you’ll need to send them to private schools (Here’s another loan.) And we’re going to toss that national-health-care idea out on its ear, but don’t worry, if you get sick you can put it on your Visa.

~ Doug Muder, from Student Debt

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What’s the constant?

Published January 13, 2015  ·  All posts on Jan 13  ·  

This entry is part 10 of 72 in the series My Journey

This change really seperates people. It’s not going to be like it used to be. You can’t ‘go back to training’ as you once did. That one Jam that you remember is a small part of your whole experience that you remember fondly. It’s one highlight in a long journey, which isn’t just highlights. What’s the constant in these memories?

It’s Parkour.

~ Chris Grant, from Change

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You don’t have a job, you have a hobby

Published January 11, 2015  ·  All posts on Jan 11  ·  

That’s the only test that counts. It’s not how hard you work, it’s what happens if you stop. If quitting means real hardship for you or your family, you have a job. If you keep at it even though you could spend the rest of your life skipping rocks at your house by the lake, you have a hobby.

I’ve got nothing against hobbies. The Weekly Sift is a hobby. One way to describe the Marxist vision of Utopia is that we’d all be hobbyists, and the world’s work would get done by people who just wanted the satisfaction of doing it. (That vision even works sometimes: Wikipedia, open source software, and so on.)

~ Doug Muder from, Rich People Don’t Have Jobs

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Overcoming instant gratification

Published January 10, 2015  ·  All posts on Jan 10  ·  

The second way of living is the opposite: eat simple food in moderation, enjoy the Internet but with limits so that we can focus on important work, get away from TV and computers once in awhile to enjoy nature and being active and exercising, shopping less and having less possessions, finding focus and being mindful. It’s not that we don’t indulge in the treats of the first way, but we do it with a little restraint, and consciousness.

~ Leo Babauta from, A Brief Guide to Overcoming Instant Gratification

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The republic of babel

Published January 8, 2015  ·  All posts on Jan 8

But democracies need to be able to talk. I have to know more than just what you want to do or want me to do. I need to understand why you want what you want, and I need to be able to explain why I want something different. We have to be able to discuss the nuances of our hopes and fears and plans — what’s absolutely essential and what isn’t — so that we can cobble together a solution that we can all live with.

~ Doug Muder, from The Republic of Babel

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Quebec on Thursday!

Published January 5, 2015  ·  All posts on Jan 5  ·  

Is there a word for: “excited to meet new people, train in a new place, and freeze to death, all at the same time.” That’s how I feel.

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Where the jobs are

Published January 5, 2015  ·  All posts on Jan 5

While America continues to create market-dominating companies like Apple or Google, the number of American jobs they provide doesn’t compare with market-dominating American companies of the past like General Electric or Ford.

The reason why is simple: While much of the design and management happens in America, most of the physical products are manufactured in low-wage economies like China. Those factories that remain in America are highly automated, so that our manufacturing employment plummets even as our manufacturing output continues to rise. America still makes a lot of stuff, it’s just not made by people.

~ Doug Muder, from Where the Jobs Are and Why

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Photo gallery for this series

This post presents a gallery of ALL images in this series. You can click on any to enlarge; you can even click on the first, sit back, and it’ll run them all as a slide show. The gallery is dynamic so it will automatically grow…

Oil limits and the economy

Published January 4, 2015  ·  All posts on Jan 4

While the press treats these issues as separate stories, they are in fact very closely connected, related to the fact that we are reaching limits in many different directions simultaneously. The economy is the coordinating system that ties together all available resources, as well as the users of these resources. It does this almost magically, by figuring out what prices are needed to keep the system in balance—how much materials of which types are needed, given what consumers can afford to pay.

~ Gail Tverberg, from Oil Limits and the Economy: One Story, Not Two

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