“In an interview with CBS News, the president of the United States was asked if the nation’s dire unemployment problem was likely to improve soon. ‘There’s no magic solution,’ he replied. ‘To even stand still we have to move very fast.’ By this, he meant that the economy needs to create tens of thousands of […]
“‘You see, Princess Nell, you have conquered this world today, and now that you have conquered it, you’ll find it a rather boring place. Now it’s your responsibility to make new worlds for other people to explore and conquer.’ King Coyote waved his hand out the window into the vast, empty white space where once […]
Having worked my way through almost all of Neal Stephenson’s novels, I’ve come to recognize a phenomenon I call The Stephenson Guarantee: You don’t know what any Stephenson book will be like before you crack it open, but you can be assured it won’t be like anything else. The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady’s […]
“Some people come here because they are on a quest of some sort––trying to find a lost lover, or to understand why something terrible happened in their lives, or why there is cruelty in the world, or why they aren’t satisfied with their career. Society has never been good at answering these questions––the sorts of […]
“Princess Nell’s recent travels through the lands of King Coyote, and the various castles with their increasingly sophisticated computers that were, in the end, nothing more than Turing machines, had caught her up in a bewildering logical circle. In Castle Turing she had learned that a Turing machine could not really understand a human being. […]
“‘There are only two industries. This has always been true,’ said Madame Ping, enfolding a lovely porcelain teacup in her withered fingers, the two-inch fingernails interleaving neatly like the pinions of a raptor folding its wings after a long hard day of cruising the thermals. ‘There is the industry of things, and the industry of […]
“The difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent. The difference between stupid and intelligent people––and this is true whether or not they are well-educated––is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambiguous […]
Since well before the 2008 financial crisis, the practice of economic austerity has beleaguered American and European politics. Praised by the right as a panacea of renewed financial responsibility, and decried by the left as a mechanism for dismantling the West’s already struggling middle classes, austerity signifies a critical juncture where battered economies face radically […]
“A book is different––it is not just a material possession but the pathway to an enlightened mind, and thence to a well-ordered society, as the Master stated many times.” ––The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, by Neal Stephenson, loc. 2709-16 “This view of the current crisis and its necessary remedy is […]
As mentioned in previous journals, I spent January-March building with Dan, Sean, and Matt. I thought I’d share a picture of the project we completed in March. We built this deck for two lovely women in Jacoby Creek. This project had special meaning for me. Our clients are getting married this month, and their ceremony […]