Science enhances our experience with the world, rather than diminishes it.
For example, by understanding genes, we better understand that all of us are a kind of palimpest, messages layered up ones before us. This is the beginning thrust of Book of The Dead, written by eminent science thinker Richard Dawkins last year.
I didn’t finish this. It didn’t capture me but I respect Dawkins. Below some notes for my future reference.
Continue reading Book of The Dead by Richard DawkinsWe must separate “a good people with a bad state.”
The defining representation of this is Alexi Navalny, the Russian lawyer turned good-government advocate that stood, and died, as the world’s most prominent anti-authoritarian activist — and foil to Russian despot Vladimir Putin.
In Patriot, his posthumous memoir that was published last fall, Navalny’s charm and commitment shone through. I admire him greatly. The book is rich with anecdotes about growing up under late-stage Soviet Communism, some of his tactics and his hopeful worldview.
“My family had a deep love of our country and was exceedingly patriotic,” he wrote. “Nobody however had any time for the state, which was regarded as a kind of annoying mistake — one we ourselves had made, but a mistake nevertheless.”
More broadly, as the book cover itself aptly puts it:: “Life works in such a way that social progress and a better future can only be achieved if a certain number of people are willing to pay the price for their right to have their own beliefs. The more of them there are, the less everyone has to pay.”
Below my notes for future reference.
Continue reading Patriot by Alexi NavalnyA former journalist-coworker of mine emailed me a couple weeks back: Is Musk attempting a coup?
An op-editor at a metro newspaper, she was referring to the bombastic and destructive collusion of the world’s richest man Elon Musk into the Donald Trump-led shock to the federal bureaucracy under the guise of the irreverently named DOGE, or Department of Government Efficiency — a boyish reference to a memecoin.
I suppose it’s possible, I wrote her. Instead, what I see in Elon Musk is a kind of arrogance I’ve found in other entrepreneurs. Brilliant in one domain and successful in others, I’ve seen plenty of them storm into some situation truly and genuinely oblivious to how over their head they really are.
Continue reading No, Elon Musk isn’t attempting a coup. He just really thinks he’s that much smarter than everyone else.Any given musical note gets its meaning from those before and after it, as French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941) introduced: “the invisible progress of the past gnawing into the future,” which he called “duree.”
That insight from a book review reminded me of the role storytelling plays in the human experience. As universal as storytelling is, it is often overlooked.
“The antagonism toward storytelling may have reached a peak in the twentieth century with the determined effort to reduce all knowledge to analytical propositions and ultimately physics or mathematics,” as one academic put it in in 2001. “I found that the resistance to rethinking the role of storytelling was considerable,”
That reference is from Kendall Haven’s 2007 book “Story Proof: The Science Behind the Startling Power of Story,” which I recently completed. It’s part of my long-love of understanding the science of story, which coincided with my own contribution to the cause. Haven’s short book boasts 120 credible studies and references to more than 800 to argue it plainly: information structured in story form are received and retained more effectively. Haven was a science researcher in oceanography in the 1990s before leaving to argue science and story are compatible.
Many of these books don’t make a clear line between whether the story is from real life or fabricated because our brains make no such distinction. Nonfiction gives a truth; fiction creates a truth, goes the thinking. Elsewhere though I’ve seen it’s less about the category than the approach. Still, we do open our minds wider in a fictional landscape.
My notes below for future reference.
Continue reading The science behind storytellingThe trouble is that the attention knowledge workers spend isn’t on “the execution of discrete tasks, but instead interactions with others about these tasks.”
Knowledge workers also are granted more independence than those working a more traditional factory line. This means it’s up to knowledge workers to improve their effectiveness to keep up.
A whole genre of books, blogs and podcasts are dedicated to this. Last year, writer Cal Newport contributed Slow Productivity. To sum it all up: Do fewer things, work at a natural pace and obsess over quality.
But don’t confuse “do fewer things” with “accomplish fewer things,” he writes. Instead, we need to avoid “task engines,” like hosting events — which spin off many overlooked tasks — unless we mean it. He recommends no more than three missions at a time.
(My three missions at the moment: To be a committed parent and husband; To run a profitable and impactful news orgs; To be an active journalist who encourages people to appreciate a complex world. That means I should limit everything outside of those) .
To get there, he recommends setting 5-year goals, doubling initial timelines when estimating any given project and using as many recurring systems as possible (morning meetings; afternoon calls; limited 1:1s; no-meeting Fridays)
Below I share my notes for future reference.
Continue reading Slow Productivity by Cal NewportIn 1998, the Women’s Health and Cancer Rights Act (WHCRA) was passed in the United States.
This federal law mandated that most group health plans covering mastectomies must also cover breast reconstruction surgery and related benefits, including prostheses. No such protections have come, for example, to public breastfeeding.
In this way, American women got the right to fake tits but not a fundamental human act.
That’s from “Tits Up: The Top Half of Women’s Liberation”, a new book from sociologist Sarah Thornton. Using an array of settings where women’s breasts are on display (from a strip club to milk banks to a plastic surgeon), the writer gives an approachable journey through the cultural invention of the “erotic breast” and the especially American complex relationship with women’s breasts: We love them but must control them.
It’s the patriarchy’s fault, she argues, but mistakes have been made too. As she wrote: “American feminism has foregrounded the right not to have children, rather than the rights of women once they’ve had them.”
Below I share my notes for future reference.
Continue reading Tits Up: notes on women’s liberationOut of more than 100,000 American pharmaceutical prescribers, just 2,500 or so are responsible for the opioid addiction crisis that killed a million or more. All told, then, most in the medical community acted responsibly. Unfortunately systems commonly have such “superspreaders” and “small-area variation” is common.
That’s the close of Revenge of the Tipping Point, celebrity intellectual-journalist Malcolm Gladwell’s book marking the 25th anniversary of his first bestseller with a new approach. Gladwell is a victim of his own popularity. But I respect him for developing, popularizing and mastering the form of narrative reporting that makes light-reading of seemingly dense subject matter.
Though the opioid crisis is his grand finale, the book’s theme is actually about how narrative shapes our understanding of ourselves, and of a place. He calls these “overstories,” or broad geographic identifiers that shape behaviors and culture.
“Overstories matter. You can create them. They can spread. They are powerful,” he wrote. “And they can endure for decades.”
Below my notes for future reference.
Continue reading Revenge of the Tipping PointRonald Regan said economists can give 3,000 answers to 100 questions.
The social sciences are so tricky because people are so gosh darn peculiar. That’s why I’m so drawn to when economics nears a consensus. That work can improve public policy, and helpfully the work has lessons for those across the political spectrum.
One long-central wellspring of debates: The role of government. As Australian economist Andrew Leigh writes in his short, snappy 2024 book How Economics Explains the World: “Capitalism doesn’t guarantee the well-being of those who lack capital.”
Elsewhere though, his breezy look through the discipline reminds there are times to avoid intervention. Below I share my notes for future reference.
Continue reading How Economics Explains The WorldThe pervading myth of gender differences encourages men and women to vote against a stronger social safety net, thereby requiring women to fill that gap — and leave less competition for jobs with men.
That’s a big argument from Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net, a 2024 book by research Jessica Calarco. In her acknowledgements, she said her publisher reached out because she had been quoted as saying “Other countries have social safety nets. The US has women.”
It’s a piercing look, and one I deeply valued — both for broad cultural criticism and for my own discovery. At all income levels, women are more likely to offer childcare, domestic work and eldercare. The book features many anonymized anecdotes to demonstrate the research. At times these feel especially uncharitable to the male characters, but then that just might be the point.
In rich households, women are far more likely to opt out of the most demanding work, and support high-earning men earn more. In poor households, couples are much less likely to be married, and so women are more likely to also be primary income earners alongside their domestic work.
Calarco also summons research on middle-earning households. Today’s husbands often feel more progressive than their fathers. Yet, as the researcher writes: “these egalitarian narratives serve as a shield, allowing men to dismiss inequalities that emerge in their romantic relationships as the result of individual preferences so that gendered outcomes are allowed to go unquestioned, thereby leaving gender inequalities intact.”
The book is unsparing, both of the system and, perhaps more concretely, of men. I’m less convinced that’s effective in securing political power, but it’s certainly important. As Calarco reminds more poignantly: “Care is noticing someone else’s needs even if they don’t ask and being there or listen when they do.”
Below my notes for future reference.
Continue reading “Other countries have social safety nets. The US has women.”
