The Silicon Valley Suicides by Hanna Rosin

"In these days of assumed meritocracy, where children can be turned into anything, we admire them as displays of remarkable engineering, to be tweaked and fine-tuned into bilingual perfection." - Hanna Rosin, from the article

Children are not products of engineering. Success cannot be manufactured, or future-proofed by tweaking and fine-tuning. Assumed meritocracy is the right characterization, the functional word is 'assumed'. - my response, from this post

Read a powerful feature article in The Atlantic magazine about over-competitive stress in affluent community high schools. Kids driven to suicide by their parents stupid, pointless, all-encompassing expectation to ALL be better than EVERYONE else.

Perpetuate the Problem

"I'd like to go through the door. Would you mind turning off the spinning blade?"

"No... those are the gears of Capitalism. Got to stay turning or the whole place will fall down."

 

People Pretend Not to Notice Unconventional Behavior

some guy honked as he drove by and yelled. 'WOW you jump really high!' I thought to myself, why did that guy yell to me, what a weirdo. LOL.

Personality Test Result

INTP Personality (“The Logician”) 

INTPs pride themselves on their inventiveness and creativity, their unique perspective and vigorous intellect. Usually known as the philosopher, the architect, or the dreamy professor, INTPs have been responsible for many scientific discoveries throughout history. 

Source: 16personalities.com

Morning Anxiety

When I feel like I have to do a job that I can't tolerate, and there's no way for me to change the situation, it's like my brain refuses to cooperate. I don't sleep the night before work or class. That produces a feeling like I'm on a buzz that carries me through the day and makes me feel okay.

Dizzy and Rico Reunion - 15 Year Anniversary of Starship Troopers

"I thought they wanted to be my friend..."

"They did!"

Reason for Leaving Past Employment

"Why did you leave so many jobs?"

"You, as an employer, can find someone to replace me if I leave. Someone else will take my place.

But if I don't look out there for what I need, nothing will come to me to take its place."

A Frank Entrepeneur

"Sorry it's against company policy to allow coworkers to date."

"Well, I'll leave the company in that case."

"You don't need to do that, before you two became close we had already planned reorganization of Jane's division, and unfortunately she was one of the people we had to let go."

"That's bullshit. You're firing her because you want me to keep working. "

Small Wins

"The answer, it turned it, was simply progress. A sense of forward motion. Regardless of how small.

Conservatism

Somebody else wrote this comment:
jhudson2 Thursday, Dec 20, 2012 12:04 PM EDT

"conservatism is, and always will be, nothing but a failure; it is a fantasy based on lies, an irrational belief that exists only for it's soothing emotional appeal to lazy and stupid people and as a tool to be used to manipulate them."

http://www.salon.com/2012/12/20/pentagon_cia_likely_approved_zero_dark_thirty_torture_scenes/

A Lie Often Repeated

External quote: "
Joseph Goebbels, one of Hitler’s closest aids and the Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. It is the idea of the big lie, variously stated as:

If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.
"

Who are the rich spoiled non-celebrities who sit courtside at basketball games?

Who are the rich spoiled non-celebrities who sit courtside at basketball games?

"I was not a basketball fan before it. When I was offerred to sit courtside for the first time, I had not been to any basketball games previously.

A Critique of the Milgram Experiment

I have a few issues with the conceptual basis for what the Milgram experiment trying to accomplish.

Unit 731 Memorial Site

"Zhang Bo, a 40-year-old driver, says he sometimes brings a surprising kind of visitor down from central Harbin. “Japanese tourists often come here. The old people fall down on their knees and pray. The young people — judging by their faces afterward, they think it’s funny.” 

In WW2, Unit 731 was a secret complex created by the Japanese government in Harbin, China for the sole purpose of conducting inhumane torture on civilians.

Really Who is Paying Attention?

This essay (?) was an email I sent to Alonzo Boden, http://www.alonzobodden.com/, a comedian who runs a podcast titled "Who's Paying Attention". I enjoy his sense of humor about his political and social views.

"Having no choice" is a Choice

I don't value keeping myself alive more than making my life worthwhile.

Living The Dream

Chapter 1: This is how my job interview will go down

Mr. Sherman, there's a brilliant individual I'd like you to meet. The contact speaks my full name then nervously backs out of the room.

Sherman is a portly red-cheeked man. Always looks reclined back in his chair, even when he's leaning forward. Mild bald spot on his head. Fat stubby fingers and preferential to cheap cigars.

Of course he is prejudiced man. Anything foreign or unconventional makes him uneasy and an enemy.

The Taxi Guru

How do ideas spread? One person at a time.
I can't always make reality carry out my ideas. But I can make stories.

The Taxi Guru

"most people are sheep. and there's nothing wrong with that on its own. their role is to stabilize society. they fall in the middle of the statistical distribution.

but some people are on the outskirts of that distribution. their role is to move society towards something different than what it currently is.

Writing 101

I was always bothered with the assessment of "good writing" as separate from the body of thought behind writing. It seems perfectly acceptable to test-graders that the author has nothing meaningful to say, if he conveys his words with elegance and style.

On the other hand, I always attributed the merit of writing with the conveyance of thought. You are trying to explain a (hopefully original) idea. The meaning you are trying to express sets the maximum score, and the clarity and efficiency of your translation turning a brain process into a representation in language determines how much of that potential you reach. Or perhaps multiplies its value?