Category Archives: History

When Was the Last Time You Listened to the Radio?

This evening I spent a little time at a friend’s house, looking in on her cat. As an aside here, cats are great! In amidst the playing with the cat, the radio was on. The radio was on when I got there and I left it on when I left (as instructed). After playing with the cat for a while, I sat down on the couch and listened to the radio for a little bit.

While usually not an experience worth noting, this one was. NPR was playing and because it was the weekend, it wasn’t the usual NPR-programming I was used to hearing during the week when I have NPR on in the car. In fact, listening the radio inside the house is an altogether different experience than listening to NPR in the car. In fact, outside of this evening, I can’t remember the last time I listened to the radio inside the house (and wasn’t doing something else at simultaneously).

Anyway, NPR was talking to bright young musicians. When I say young, these folks were still in high school, but they had some incredible stories. The thing I want to point out: I was forced to imagine the conversation between the host and the guest… and imagine the audience, too (as they were in front of an audience). This is something that I rarely have to do (because I don’t listen to the radio unless I’m in the car).

Two things I want to note about this experience:

1) It made listening the radio a much richer experience. That is, I was forced to use my imagination to fill in the holes as to the facial reactions by the guest and the host and fill in the space of what the audience might be doing, too. As I said, this is something I don’t have to do very often.

2) It made me think about what it might have been like for people before there was TV. Huddling around the radio together used to be a common family activity. It’d be hard to conduct this study, but I wonder what the data would show based on those folks who had to do more imagining (before there was TV) vs. those folks who don’t have to do imagining (because there is TV). I wonder if the “before there was TV” group might have more developed imaginations.

Do You Know Why a Stop Sign Has 8 Sides?

No? Me either, but I did come across a cool post about the cross-cultural history of the stop sign. For instance, did you know that for the past 2,000 years, stop signs — regardless of the country of origin — have been octagonal? Or, did you know that the origin of the stop sign has nothing to do with traffic!? From Mitch Ditkoff:

Apparently, each side of this iconic 8-sided, cross-cultural symbol of hoped-for stillness, has been imbued with a secret teaching of great import:

1. Slow down
2. Pay attention
3. Look around
4. Pause
5. Look within
6. Breathe deeply
7. Appreciate
8. Move consciously

After reading his post, I will most certainly not look at a stop sign the same way. In fact, it reminds me of 21-day meditation challenge I wrote about the other day. There’s still time to join me! If you think you don’t want to catch up and do 4 meditations in one day, then I suggest you at least read about the positives to taking a moment for stillness.

 

The World — as we know it — is in its Infancy

After watching this week’s Crash Course: World History on decolonization and nationalism, I have a newfound understanding (respect?) for the current state of the world. I used to think, ‘my goodness, humans have existed for so long, why are we still fighting?’ This presupposes that the makeup of the world had stayed relatively the same. And this, of course, is wrong.

According to modern scientific thought, humans have been around for 200,000 years. I always thought that with our being around for so long, we would have ‘figured it out’ by now and would be “nice” to each other. After reading Wilber and delving into Integral Theory, it adds a unique lens on why some groups of people are different from other groups of people, with regard to their development. Still, that wasn’t enough for me to “get it.” I still thought that development should have “happened” such that we treat each other better.

It wasn’t until I watched “Decolonization and Nationalism Triumphant” yesterday afternoon that I realized how young the world is in its current form. At most, we’ve existed in this way for about 70 years. Crazy, huh? When it’s put in those terms, that’s less than a lifetime! It starts to make more sense that certain conflicts haven’t yet settled and that there is still a desire for guns.

How The Heck Does The Economy Work, Anyway?

A few months ago, I wrote a post about an online video series I’ve been following by John Green on world history. A few days ago, I learned that two economics professors at George Mason University were starting an online course in the same vein as Stanford. As they’re economics professors, naturally, you’d expect that the course is on economics (it is). In fact, the two professors (Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen) describe the course as:

This course covers theory and empirics and history for the economic growth of developing nations.

I have to say, I’m really excited for this course and I think you should be, too. Similar to my comment about our need to understand the implications of history and the past, I believe we also should have an understanding some of the basic underlying theory of the economy.

There are a few differences between John Green’s crash course and the course being offered by Prof. Tabarrok and Prof. Cowen. First, as I referred to earlier, the economics course is more in the same vein of MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). Second, there aren’t any fun animations from the Thought Bubble (at least I haven’t seen any, yet). Third, there are multiple videos per lesson. With John Green’s course, there was only one video per week on a given topic. With this course from Marginal Revolution University, there are usually multiple videos for a given lesson. For instance, for the lesson on People (as in, leading thinkers on the economy), there are over 30 videos. Finally, there are practice questions. Practice questions? Yes, practice questions. Meaning, the professors have included practice questions along with the videos to help the viewer interact with the material.

I’ve included the introduction video below.

Why We Lie, Cheat, and Steal: The Truth About Dishonesty

I’ve just finished the 5th week of my 4th year of graduate school. For folks that have been in graduate school this long, there’s usually a development of research interests. Because of the nature of my time in graduate school (1 year in a PhD program, 1 year completing my first Master’s, and now into year two of an MBA), I never really had to declare my research interests or choose a dissertation topic. Though, for my first master’s, I did have to write a final paper. That final paper was on a topic that, if I were asked, would probably appear on a list of my “research interests.” It was on intuition and decision-making. Ironically, I’m working with a professor at George Mason University to test whether or not one can improve the conditions for one’s intuition (in the context of decision-making).

If I were to list another research interest, I’d have to say that it’d be on the topic of ethics or morals. Ironically, during my time as an undergrad, I worked on a research project with a psychology professor where we were examining (among other things) people’s moral judgments. I’ve had an RSA Animate talk bookmarked for about two weeks and I just finished watching it — I think you’ll enjoy it.

It was given by Dan Ariely on the content of his new book: The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone—Especially Ourselves. Ariely is also the researcher I referenced a few months ago when I was talking about the research on American’s perceptions and misperceptions of wealth inequality. I’ve pulled a few important quotes from the video:

“The magnitude of dishonesty we see in society is by good people who think they’re doing good, but in fact cheating just a little bit, but because there’s so many of them — of us — it has a tremendous economic impact.”

“You can’t go and say to yourselves, chef really want their food to be eaten. And it’s really owned by a conglomerate that is really not that good. Some things lend themselves to a much higher degree of rationalization.”

“At some point, many people switch and start cheating all the time. And we call this switching point the ‘what the hell’ effect. It turns out we don’t have to be 100% good to think of ourselves as good. But if at some point you don’t think of yourself as good, you might as well enjoy. And many people, by the way, report this same thing with diets.”

“Your motivation influences how you see reality.”

More Lessons from “The Art of War”

A litte less than a week ago, I detailing some of the lessons (or quotes) that I pulled from The Art of War. At that point, I had only read through a little more than half of the 13 chapters. Today, I’ve only got about 3 more chapters to go, but I thought I’d add a post with some of the other lessons I thought were worth repeating.

From pages 126, 127 and 128 of Samuel Griffith’s translation (in 1963):

“When troops are strong and officers weak the army is insubordinate.”

“When the officers are valiant and the troops ineffective the army is in distress.”

“When the general is morally weak and his discipline not strict, when his instructions and guidance are not enlightened when there are no consistent rules to guide the officers and men when the formations are slovenly the army is in disorder.”

“When a commander is unable to estimate his enemy uses a small force to engage a large one, or weak troops to strike the strong, or when he fails to select shock troops for the van, the result is rout.”

“Conformation of the ground is of the greatest assistance in battle. Therefore, to estimate the enemy situation and to calculate distances and the degree of difficulty of the terrain so as to control victory are virtues of the superior general. He who fights with full knowledge of these factors is certain to win; he who does not will surely be defeated.”

Lessons from “The Art of War”

At the end of August, I thought I was going to be going on a road trip from DC to Newfoundland. In preparation for said road trip, I borrowed 9 books from the library. I’ll be talking about one of those books () when I write about The Stockdale Paradox, (which I teased in a post ).

One of the other books that I borrowed: “.”

It’s a book that has been around for ages and from what I understand, is often revered as scripture for some in the business world. As a result, I thought it would be good to read through it. Of course, to really savor its contents, it’ll be necessary to read it more than once.

I’m about two-thirds through it and I made a note of some interesting quotes that I thought would be worth sharing.

From page 73 of Samuel Griffith’s translation (in 1963):

“Thus, while we have heard of blundering swiftness in war, we have not yet seen a clever operation that was prolonged.”

“For there has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited.”

From page 74:

“Where the army is, prices are high; when prices rise the wealth of the people is exhausted. When wealth is exhausted the peasantry will be afflicted with urgent exactions.”

“With strength thus depleted and wealth consumed the households in the central plains will be utterly impoverished and seven-tenths of their wealth dissipated.”

“As to government expenditures, those due to broken-down chariots, worn-out horses, armour and helmets, arrows and crossbows, lances, hand and body shields, draft animals and supply wagons will amount to sixty per cent. of the total.”

I could most certainly attempt to draw comparisons between the US and quotes from page 74, but I don’t think that level of detail is necessary for the point I’m trying to make. I will say this, though: it is most certainly “” to consider the shape of war in 2012 in the context of these 5 quotes, which come from writings that are over 2000 years old.

Twitter: Who I’m Following, Part 8

It’s been quite awhile since I last did a post in my series of “”Who I’’m Following”” on Twitter. In fact, it’s been 6 months! That’s almost half as long as I’ve been participating on Twitter. In looking at the some of these old posts (see below) of who I’m following, I seemed to have unfollowed a number of folks. I wish I had kept a list of the people I’ve unfollowed, so I could offer reasons as to why I decided to unfollow some folks. Briefly, I can say that sometimes the reason is because the person isn’t very active on Twitter. Other times, it’s because I became frustrated with the amount of negativity (sometimes in the form of the person retweeting “trolls” or people being unnecessarily negative in the form of ad hominem attacks). I most certainly won’t be able to get to all the new people I’m following on Twitter (it’s approximately doubled!), so look for a few of these posts in the coming weeks (or months).

If you missed any of the earlier posts in this series, here they are:







Part 7

Here we go!

Big Think@bigthink: Big Think aims to, “help you move above and beyond random information, toward real knowledge, offering big ideas from fields outside your own that you can apply toward the questions and challenges in your own life.”

Wired@wired: Wired is the digital home of Wired Magazine and it acts as a daily technology site.

Austan Goolsbee@Austan_Goolsbee: Goolsbee is a Professor of economics and Economics at the Booth School of Business (University of Chicago). He is also the former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.

Richard H Thaler@R_Thaler: Thaler is a Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics at the Booth School of Business (University of Chicago) and the co-author of Nudge.

Maria Popova@brainpicker: “Brain Pickings is a human-powered discovery engine for interestingness, culling and curating cross-disciplinary curiosity-quenchers, and separating the signal from the noise to bring you things you didn’t know you were interested in until you are.”

Ashoka Changemakers@changemakers: “The latest in innovation, social entrepreneurship, and how you can make a difference. Why? Everyone Can Be a Changemaker.”

Ashoka@Ashoka: “Ashoka is an international citizen-sector organization that is leading the way to an Everyone a Changemaker World.”

Rick Mercer@rickmercer: Mercer is a Canadian comedian and political satirist. He’s an alumnus of This Hour Has 22 Minutes and is currently the host of the Rick Mercer Report.

Josh Barro@jbarro: “I write on fiscal and economic policy issues at all levels of government. Areas of particular interest for me include tax policy, entitlements and public employee compensation.”

Matt Yglesias@mattyglesias: “Matthew Yglesias is Slate‘s business and economics correspondent. Before joining the magazine he worked for ThinkProgress, the Atlantic, TPM Media, and the American Prospect.”

Lifehacker@lifehacker: “Lifehacker curates tips, tricks, and technology for living better in the digital age.”

Timothy P Carney@TPCarney: “Timothy P. Carney is the Washington Examiner‘s senior political columnist.” Carney is also a prominent conservative voice.

Joseph Weisenthal@TheStalwart:  Joe Weisenthal is the Deputy Editor Of Business Insider. “He previously was a writer and analyst for Techdirt.com, and before that worked as an analyst for money management firm Prentiss Smith & Co.”

Bob Rae@bobraeMP: Bob Rae is the current (interim) Leader of the Liberal Party (of Canada). He was previously the leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party.

Mediaite@mediaite: “The site for news, info and smart opinions about print, online and broadcast media.”

Susan Rice@AmbassadorRice: Susan Rice is the US Ambassador to the United Nations. According to Wikipedia, she is not related to Condoleezza Rice.

Josh Rogin@joshrogin: “Josh Rogin reports on national security and foreign policy from the Pentagon to Foggy Bottom, the White House to Embassy Row, for The Cable.”

Andrew Exum@abumuqawama: “Andrew Exum is a Senior Fellow with the Center for a New American Security,” and “Abu Muqawama is a blog that focuses on small wars and insurgencies in addition to regional issues in the Middle East.”

Anne-Marie Slaughter@SlaughterAM: “Princeton Professor. Director of Policy Planning, U.S. State Dept 2009-2011. Foreign policy curator.”

Library of Congress@librarycongress: “We are the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, maps and manuscripts in our collections.”

Bill Nye@TheScienceGuy: “‘Bill Nye the Science Guy’ is an American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, mechanical engineer, and scientist.”

Bill Cosby@BillCosby: “Bill Cosby is an American comedian, actor, author, television producer, educator, musician and activist.”

Jeffrey Levy, EPA@levyj413: “Jeffrey Levy is the EPA Director of Web Communications, Co-Chair of the Federal Web Managers Council, and Gov’t 2.0er.”

Ed Husain@Ed_Husain: “Ed Husain is a Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of ‘The Islamist.'”

Daniel Drezner@dandrezner: “Daniel W. Drezner is professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.”

John Green@realjohngreen: I just wrote a post about John Green’s Crash Course in World History. Check it out!

Amazing Photography@AmazingPics: This Twitter feed regularly posts some of the best photographs. You’ll want to see these.

kelly oxford@kellyoxford: Kelly Oxford’s current Twitter Bio: “Writer. Designed to make you feel like everything is going well. I am your Perestroika.”

Joe Randazzo@Randazzoj: “Joe Randazzo is currently the editor of the satirical newspaper, The Onion.” As you might think, his tweets are often sarcastic (and funny).

Ken Jennings@KenJennings: Of Jeopardy! fame. He’s written a bunch of books, including Maphead. His tweets are often intended to be funny.

Seth Meyers@sethmeyers21: “Seth Meyers currently serves as the head writer for Saturday Night Live and hosts its news parody program segment Weekend Update.”

Anjeanette Carter@anjeanette: I found Anjeanette’s twitter feed as a result of this article. “The aspiring actress isn’t afraid to let the sarcasm fly – and sometimes that’s just the sort of thing you need to pop up on your screen.”

Andy Carvin@acarvin: “Senior strategist at NPR. Online community organizer since 1994. Former director of the Digital Divide Network. Writer. Photographer. Dad.”

AJELive@AJELive: “Breaking news alerts and updates from Al Jazeera English, a 24-hour news and current affairs channel.” By now, you should all know that I’m a big fan of different perspectives (here or here).

Brian Stelter@brianstetler: A really good person to follow if you enjoy things in “meta.” Stetler reports on TV & Media for the New York Times.

johnmaeda@johmaeda: “President, Rhode Island School of Design, RISD, College, Museum, USA, 1877, Laws of Simplicity, MIT, Design, Art, Business, Technology, Life.”

OMG Facts @OMGFacts: As you might expect, this Twitter feed specializes in tweets that are facts that might “knock your socks off.”

BuzzFeed@BuzzFeed: “BuzzFeed is a website that combines a technology platform for detecting viral content with an editorial selection process to provide a snapshot of “the viral web in realtime.”

Tim O'Reilly@timoreilly: “Founder and CEO, O’Reilly Media. Watching the alpha geeks, sharing their stories, helping the future unfold.”

Jay Rosen @jayrosen_nyu: “I teach journalism at NYU, direct the Studio 20 program there, critique the press and study new media. I don’t do lifecasting but mindcasting on Twitter.”

daveweigel@daveweigel: Dave Weigel is a political reporter for Slate. While his main focus is politics, his tweets are often laced with humor.

Mark Knoller@markknoller: Mark Knoller is a CBS News White House Correspondent. Similar to Stetler, he sometimes comments on what other networks are reporting.

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I’m well past my self-imposed 1000 word limit, but I wanted to begin to squeeze a bunch more feeds into one post (because I have a lot to make up in this series). As always, I welcome your suggestions in the comments or tweet me!

John Green’s Crash Course in World History

If it wasn’t clear from my series of “,” I would think that one of on the course would lead one to believe that I enjoy learning. (One might also point to my bachelor’s degree and two master’s degrees!) In addition to Prof. Sandel’s course, I’ve also been watching another course online: .

is an author (; ) and one half of the . John and his brother Hank post YouTube videos couched in the form of a conversation to each other. It’s very accessible. Hank has a . There are a number of other dedicated YouTube channels to different things that John & Hank talk about: , , and .

Back to Crash Course World History: , I really think that people should have a basic understanding of world history. If that’s too much to ask, I think that I would like to have a basic understanding of world history. Especially because of my inclination to take a ‘systems perspective to things,’ (look for a post on this soon!) I think that having an understanding of the macrolevel events that led to today can help us (me?) gain a better understanding of where we might be headed in the future. If nothing else, it serves as ‘trial and error’ of what’s happened in the past, so as to avoid (or at least attempt to avoid) doing in the future.

The crash course in World History is not yet complete. John Green posts a new one each week. He intends to post 40 episodes and as of this post, he’s posted only 19. That means, there’s still a lot of world history to get to! Each video is approximately 10 minutes long and there tends to be a lot of information crammed in. One is often encouraged to watch the videos more than once and I must say, I’ve definitely done this.

For those interested, here’s the first episode:

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Tying up Loose Ends: Or, a Mishmash of Ideas in one Post

It’s been awhile since I wrote a post () and even longer since I wrote consecutive posts ( and ). Obviously, I’d like to have written more, but that’s just not how things have worked out. Regardless, I thought it might be a good idea to write a “post of posts” of sorts. That is, I’ve had a list of “ideas to write about” for over a year. Some of the things on the list are recent (thought of in the last few months) and some have been there for at least 9 months. As a way to inject some fresh energy into that list, I thought I’d write a post where I spent some time talking about a number of things on the list — rather than writing a post about just one of those ideas. Hope you enjoy!

It’s Kind of a Funny Story () – I saw this movie awhile back and thought it was rather good. The premise is that a teenager checks himself into an adult psychiatric ward. Some very serious issues are addressed and I think they were done so in an appropriate manner.

Justin Bieber: Never Say Never () – This whole list won’t be of movies, but I thought I’d group the two. I saw the “Justin Bieber Movie” sometime this past summer. I didn’t really know too much about Justin Bieber, just that he was pretty famous with the younger age groups. While this movie wasn’t necessarily an unbiased biography, it definitely did showcase how much hard work Justin invested in himself. Hard work (by itself) will not get you where you want to go all the time (for example: ), but it will go a long way to getting you where you want to be.

What if the car (automobile) were invented today? – I wonder if the car were invented today, would we accept it as is? Meaning, given everything that goes into making the car and everything that is affected because of the car (read: environment), I wonder if consumers would accept it as a product.

Nordic spas – This past summer, just before moving to DC, I spent some time at in Quebec. It was the first time that I’d seen the idea of (hot, cold, hot) in an establishment. Growing up in Canada, it was a common thing — in the winter — to sit in the hot tub for awhile, jump in the pool for a minute (or the snow!) and then get back into the hot tub. I remember trying to find some scientific evidence to back this up as a (positive) thing for the human body, but I couldn’t find anything. That’s not to say that there isn’t any out there.

Blowing in a dog’s face – I find it interesting that dog’s don’t like it when someone blows in their face — but — they can’t wait to stick their head out the window when you’re driving down the road. I wonder if this has something to do with carbon dioxide (on the exhale of someone blowing in their face) vs. oxygen (from the car ride).

Jaywalking – Intuitively, I would think that laws against jaywalking would have been written with a focus on keeping pedestrians safe. Believe it or not — this was not the case. I forgot where I heard it (maybe NPR?), but did you know that jaywalking was — in a way — instituted because of the automobile associations lobbying legislators? In doing some research for this (part) of this post, I found from three days ago talking about this very thing.

Visioning for a job? – Have you ever noticed how couples plan for a baby? Even before they’ve conceived, (sometimes) they’ve bought the crib, painted the room, and are in a sense, planning for this new part of their lives. I wonder why this is normalized, but doing the same thing for a job is viewed with some disdain. Why shouldn’t someone wake up and get dressed as if they’re going to work (even though they may not be)? They could even go to the “office” (library?) and prepare themselves for work.

Secret to happiness – Short and sweet. The secret to happiness is not wishing things were different from they currently are.

Evolution of the electric car – I wonder if there’s a special (or one in the works?) on the evolution of the electric car. I remember reading that the electric car was first invented in the 19th century, but fell out of favor when the internal combustion engine was invented (see: ).

People’s relationships to their body – It’s interesting to see how people relate to their body (in general) in comparison to how they relate to their body at a place where the body can sometimes be more prominent (at the gym or the beach).

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That’s narrowed down my list to four! Three of those are “recurring posts” (, , and personality tests). There is one post that I do want to dedicate some time to, so I didn’t want to shorten it here. Look for it in the next little while.