Original thoughts — creative, humorous, and otherwise — about life, liberty, and the pursuit of meaning.
The difference between a productive day and a non-productive day is a sense of urgency. Today was a good day.
With all the volatility in the stock market lately it is a good time to remind ourselves that “the market” is not the same as “the economy.” The best that I can tell — at least as of the last few years — “the market” has contracted to a relatively small group of:
This tight-knit circle trades amongst itself with very little relevance to what we think of as “the economy.” In contrast to this closed group, the economy is the vast sum of the creation and delivery of the goods and services we want and need.
It seems to me that the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 bears little connection to these things these days.
Don’t be afraid. Now is the time to be bold. If you don’t like the economy, let’s go out and make one of our own.
The South is a place. East, west, and north are nothing but directions.
— Letter to the editor, Richmond Times Dispatch, 1995
I am reading the delightful book Confederates in the Attic. The quote above opens the second chapter.
When I lived in Colorado I took every opportunity to explore the magnificent hiking trails and striking mountain vistas offered by the Rocky Mountains. When I lived in Albuquerque I breathed deep to absorb the Native American spirit still alive in The Land of Enchantment. And when I lived in Princeton, NJ, I savored Washington’s Crossing and then immersed myself in the local history surrounding the Revolutionary War.
We are in the business of providing the material that prevents the commercials from all slamming together . . . that’s what we are doing here. That’s what we are doing on the West Wing set. We gotta deliver them twelve minutes of stuff to separate the Chevy commercials.
— Lawrence O’Donnell, Jr. Executive Producer of the The West Wing. Quoted in an NPR interview, January 2006.
I counted forty-two ads in last week’s episode of Lost. And that does not include any that aired before the show started or after the credits started to roll. Just forty-two ads in five breaks squeezed between six seven-minute segments of content. There were almost nineteen minutes of ads in a sixty-two minute time slot. That’s almost 30% of the air time dedicated to noise from advertisers.
If it weren’t for the rocks in its bed, the stream would have no song.
— Carl Perkins, Rockabilly pioneer
I have been hesitant to post this quote because of its inclination towards banality. I mean, come on, how corny is “the stream would have no song?” But there is an underlying wisdom to this rockabilly adage. We do not grow if we are not challenged.
Lately I have been intrigued by the idea of what makes people interesting.
What’s happening here, now, isn’t as important to me as what could be happening anywhere else.
— Renny Gleeson
I watched Renny Gleeson in a brilliant, short Ted Talk this morning talk about the sneaky, anti-social behaviors we demonstrate with our smartphones. When I am sitting in a meeting, or at an event, and I can’t resist the urge to pull out my iPhone and check my email or peruse my Twitter updates, I am actually telling those around me that what is happening in the here and now is not as important as literally anything that could come across that tiny screen.