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The Makeup of Stuck America – The Atlantic Cities

~ Mark

Richard Florida follows up on The Geography of Stuck that I tumbled a few days ago, talking about religion, poverty, human capital, diversity, health, and most interesting to me, the Big Five personality traits:

States with higher levels of agreeable, extroverted and neurotic personality types are much more likely to have a higher percentage of residents born in that state (with correlations of .46, .49 and .4 respectively). Conversely, the percentage of residents born in a state is negatively associated with openness-to-experience personality types (-.32).

I should add: considering all of the above, it seems statistically unlikely that I will remain in Atlanta.

The Makeup of Stuck America – The Atlantic Cities

Does cheater deserve a second chance? – Carolyn Hax – The Washington Post

~ Mark

Carolyn Hax tumbles are going to become a regular feature here. On the dangers of storytelling:

My advice is to discard whatever narrative you’re tempted to superimpose on yourself, your boyfriend, your relationship and whatever else, and just live by the reality you have in hand. That means recognizing that your partner is a temptation-wrestler or birthday-forgetter or stress-eater or emotion-bottler or whatever other trait just isn’t going away, no matter how much better life would be if it did. And it means choosing to stay with someone only if you can see these things as the price of a life that suits you well, not as temporary obstacles to some imaginary better life.

Does cheater deserve a second chance? – Carolyn Hax – The Washington Post

What makes music boring? | Music | The Big Questions | The A.V. Club

~ Mark

The reason you’re not connecting might very well be you. Your boredom could indicate an inability to appreciate a particular kind of music at this moment in time. You should regret that—or take it as a (here’s that word again) “challenge”—not wear it like a badge of honor. What good is there in not being able to like a song, something that might bring you pleasure?

Amen. This reminds me of Edmund Burke’s On Taste:

Almost the only pleasure that men have in judging better than others, consists in a sort of conscious pride and superiority, which arises from thinking rightly; but then, this is an indirect pleasure, a pleasure which does not immediately result from the object which is under contemplation.

What makes music boring? | Music | The Big Questions | The A.V. Club

Composers As Gardeners – Brian Eno – Edge

~ Mark

The reason I have an a cappella group is because it gives me every Tuesday evening the chance to do some surrendering. Which is, by the way, the reason people go to church, I think, as well. And to art galleries. What you want from those experiences is to be reminded of what it’s like to be taken along by something. To be taken. To be lifted up, to be whatever the other words for transcendence are. And I think we find those experiences in at least four areas. Religion, sex, art, and drugs. […] Essentially they’re all experiments with ourselves in trying to remind ourselves that the controlling talent that we have must be balanced by the surrendering talent that we also have. And so my idea about art as gardening.

More from Brian Eno. (via)

Composers As Gardeners – Brian Eno – Edge

Hypomnema – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

~ Mark

…a Greek word with several translations into English including a reminder, a note, a public record, a commentary, a draft, a copy, and other variations on those terms.

The context was Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, but it sounds like a good description of Tumblr, Twitter, and a number of wonderful things on the internet. I first came across hypomnemata (sleep + thread…) in The Present Alone is Our Happiness (recommended in Ryan Holiday’s super awesome reading list email archive).

Reading the Wikipedia entry, it made me realize what I often (mostly?) use this Tumblr for: to make notes to myself, shaping and re-shaping my perspective. Many of my favorite posts (tagged, e.g., work, opinions, empathy, arguments, happiness, death, travel, thinking, philosophy, stoicism, psychology) function as a sort of admonishment that I really do re-read every now and then. It’s an attempt to refresh and re-calibrate, internalize. This journaling/commonplacing thing isn’t new, but there’s something satisfying about knowing that one strand of the tradition goes back to an old Greek word. See also commentarii, commonplace, memoranda.

Hypomnema – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

WhoSampled.com

~ Mark

We’re building the ultimate
database of sampled music, remixes and cover songs. Dig deeper into music by discovering direct links among over 116,000 songs and 44,000 artists, from Hip-Hop and R&B via Electronic Music through to Rock, Pop, Funk, Soul, Jazz and beyond.

I wish I’d known about this site a long, long time ago.

WhoSampled.com

Interview with Andrew Potter: Travel and the Search for Authenticity – World Hum

~ Mark

I think we need to keep in mind that the backpackers you’re talking about, who go to new areas and beat new paths by living close to the people and close to the earth and so on, they are in a sense—and this isn’t my line, this is from an old book I came across—the shock troops of the mass tourism industry. They’re the ones who go into a place that has no infrastructure for tourism and basically create the market for other people to come in behind them. And that may or may not be a bad thing. But we need to be aware that that’s actually what’s going on.

Interview with Andrew Potter: Travel and the Search for Authenticity – World Hum

Idler Q&A (3) | HiLobrow

~ Mark

Mark Kingwell and Joshua Glenn discuss their sequel to The Idler’s Glossary, The Wage Slave’s Glossary. Kingwell:

The idler/slacker distinction is a powerful lever. It makes clear that idling, unlike slacking, is not about work at all: it’s not avoiding work, or resenting work, or hiding from parents or spouses who think you should be working more. Idling offers an independent value which, in being independent, constructs an implicit (sometimes explicit) critique of the work-world’s norms. […] The idler says, don’t grow (if growth just means bigger markets). Instead, play! We are trustees of our time here, not owners of it. When it comes to selfhood and our time here, there is no property; there is only care.

I loved Mark Kingwell’s book In Pursuit of Happiness.
Idler Q&A (3) | HiLobrow

Baseball Umpires Aren’t Perfect, OK? – NPR

~ Mark

Corresponding to the umpire-as-instrument idea is External Realism. According to External Realism, there are umpiring-independent facts of the game — balls are really fair or foul, runners are either safe or out — and the questions we face are merely epistemological, how best to determine the facts, how to find out.

Corresponding to the umpire-as-player idea is Internal Anti-Realism. According to Internal Anti-Realism, umpires don’t call them as they see them; umpires, through their calls, make it the case that a pitch is a strike or a ball, a runner safe or out. There are no umpire-independent facts in baseball.

Baseball Umpires Aren’t Perfect, OK? – NPR

Man’s Search for Meaning

~ Mark

I got curious about this one after seeing Austin’s post. Good read. Author Viktor Frankl says:

What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life–daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

This reminds me of a favorite blog post I came across several years ago: You don’t need a plan, you need skills and a problem (original blog now defunct?).

Screw your plans. Work on your skills. Apply them to a problem that is biting you. Flush and repeat until people believe you had a plan.

I love the sense of *action* that Frankl gets at. Meaning doesn’t happen to you or arrive through talk or navel-gazing, it’s something you do. You have to scratch around a bit. It’s part of a process, which itself is part of the fun, if you’re doing it right: Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing. Doesn’t mean it’s easy. Opportunity comes dressed in overalls, as they say. You’ll have to spend some time groping, listening, testing, accepting, discarding. And if you’re doing it right, it won’t feel good a lot of time: you can tell if it’s your own plan by how lost you feel.

Doesn’t mean you have to be super-choosy (although Family. Friends. Health. Work. Pick any three is helpful to keep in mind). Be careful what parts of yourself you give up on: “You can cut off a couple passions and only focus on one, but after a while, you’ll start to feel phantom limb pain.” And you have to keep in mind that, if you do ever succeed, having found your life’s purpose/calling/vocation/mission, it’s not going to extend your life and not necessarily make you *happy*. One year’s answer might not do for another. And by the way, “Don’t let yo’ happiness make somebody sad!”

Man’s Search for Meaning

Misinformation in TV Drama Gains Credibility Over Time – Miller-McCune

~ Mark

New research finds we’re more likely to believe a piece of false information conveyed in a television drama after two weeks have passed.

Okay yeah yeah yeah you can find any number of things “a recent study” will tell you. But I like this because it makes me think of Tyler Cowen’s talk on being suspicious of stories, which I have listened to probably 6 or 7 times and will do so again starting… now. (via)

Misinformation in TV Drama Gains Credibility Over Time – Miller-McCune

Overcoming Bias : ‘Never Settle’ Is A Brag

~ Mark

Robin Hanson on Steve Jobs’ commencement speech:

Now notice: doing what you love, and never settling until you find it, is a costly signal of your career prospects. Since following this advice tends to go better for really capable people, they pay a smaller price for following it. So endorsing this strategy in a way that makes you more likely to follow it is a way to signal your status.

It sure feels good to tell people that you think it is important to “do what you love”; and doing so signals your status. You are in effect bragging. Don’t you think there might be some relation between these two facts?

Megan McArdle’s follow-up:

The problem is, the people who give these sorts of speeches are the outliers: the folks who have made a name for themselves in some very challenging, competitive, and high-status field. No one ever brings in the regional sales manager for a medical supplies firm to say, “Yeah, I didn’t get to be CEO. But I wake up happy most mornings, my kids are great, and my golf game gets better every year.”

She continues, talking about talking about her own awesome job with aspiring young folk:

Usually, what I tell them next is that it’s not a tragedy if they don’t do what they thought they wanted to do at 22; that they have more time than they think to figure out “what they want to do with the rest of their lives”; and that the world outside of school and words is more interesting than they probably suspect.

Similarly, Will Wilkinson on commencement advice:

“Find what you love and never settle for less” is an excellent recipe for frustration and poverty. “Reconcile yourself to the limits of your talent and temperament and find the most satisfactory compromise between what you love to do and what you need to do to feed your children” is rather less stirring, but it’s much better advice.

Overcoming Bias : ‘Never Settle’ Is A Brag

The Code Duello: Rules of Dueling

~ Mark

The Code Duello, covering the practice of dueling and points of honor, was drawn up and settled at Clonmel Summer Assizes, 1777, by gentlemen-delegates of Tipperary, Galway, Sligo, Mayo and Roscommon, and prescribed for general adoption throughout Ireland. The Code was generally also followed in England and on the Continent with some slight variations. In America, the principal rules were followed, although occasionally there were some glaring deviations.

Rule 15. Challenges are never to be delivered at night, unless the party to be challenged intend leaving the place of offense before morning; for it is desirable to avoid all hot-headed proceedings.

The Code Duello: Rules of Dueling

The New Atlantis » History as Wall Art

~ Mark

Excerpt from the Annals of St. Gall, a yearly chronicle from an early-medieval Frankish monastery:

709. Hard winter. Duke Gottfried died.
710. Hard year and deficient in crops.
711.
712. Flood everywhere.
713.
714. Pippin, mayor of the palace, died.
715.
716.
717.
718. Charles devastated the Saxon with great destruction.
719.
720. Charles fought against the Saxons.
721. Theudo drove the Saracens out of Aquitaine.
722. Great crops.
723.

The New Atlantis » History as Wall Art

Leveling the field: What I learned from for-profit education—By Christopher R. Beha (Harper’s Magazine)

~ Mark

This is a fascinating funny/sad inside look at for-profit education. [$]

The first chapter of our textbook, Your College Experience, was entitled “Exploring Your Purpose for Attending College,” and that’s where we would begin. It seemed strange to me that a credit-bearing college course should be dedicated to telling students why they should go to college, but the entire first-year sequence turns out to be an almost surreal riff on the socialization process of higher education, where secondary characteristics of college graduates become the actual subjects of the courses.

Leveling the field: What I learned from for-profit education—By Christopher R. Beha (Harper’s Magazine)