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I am reading Helen Vendler's introductory text "Poems, Poets, Poetry" . It is my belief that every poet needs an anthology, and this one has the added benefit of having Helen's clear instruction woven throughout. The opening chapter includes several poems exploring the relationship between child and father and I was struck by the difference between two of them. The first is by Robert Hayden  entitled "Those Winter Sundays ": Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.    I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he'd call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house,    Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love's austere and lonely offi...

I left the cities far behind, up road of twisting tight parameters. 'round hills until I found at Horse-Shoe Lake, a still and quiet place - a lookout, high and oaked. There, cradled soft in warming wind, with gold bespeckled fingers sunlight soothed my aches, unknotted worried thoughts. Now I awake to nature's sights - and blinking eyes behold: The ant forages through valley and mountain, A Spider raises lofty scaffold heights, and bumble bee each flower makes accounting. A mallard convoy sails from harbor sites, The thrushes keep their relay stations sounding, and water waves glimmer like Hong Kong lights.

I owe credit to New Zealand entrepreneur Michael Moore-Jones  for creating and introducing me to the concept of the time value of experience . It's a riff off the economic concept of the time value of money, which asserts that a dollar that I receive today is more valuable than a dollar that I receive at some day in the future. This is true because I could put the dollar to work in the meantime - at the very least I can earn interest on it! That's why people have to pay for the privilege of borrowing your dollars even if they promise to give back the same amount of dollars in the future. Future dollars are less valuable than present dollars. The time value of experience says that wisdom gained today is more valuable than wisdom gained at some point in the future. I can use that wisdom in the meantime to make better decisions; in a sense it pays me interest. This suggests a heuristic method for making life decisions that is very risk-seeking - gain as many experiences as y...

A life philosophy is useless if it doesn't have a training regimen. Habits and desires are powerful. They nearly always win in a battle with will-power. That is why New Year Resolutions are notorious for petering out after a month or so. Inertia is the default condition of the human race. Professional athletes need to put themselves through a brutal training regimen. None of them could do it on their own in their rookie season. So they have coaches and camaraderie to push them through it. But over the years, the hard training becomes habit. Veterans like Kevin Garnett practice in the off-season automatically, without questioning it or thinking about it. It's part of who they are. If you want to successfully adopt new principles and behaviors into your life, you need to get them into you deeper than the brain level - down into your guts, your instincts. You need practice to train your  habits and your emotions. The first step towards being 100 pounds thinner or a mar...

What I've read so far this year. I rated each book according to the standards of its own genre. 5/5 means that everyone who enjoys the genre should read this. 3/5 has flaws, balanced by virtues. 1s and 2s aren't worth your time, but 2s have some redeeming qualities. Confidence Men - Ron Suskind (4/5). A behind the scenes look at the first two years of the Obama White House. Caused major revision of my idea of the working of a presidential administration.  A Game of Thrones - George R.R. Martin (5/5). The best fantasy novel I can remember. Martin creates a dense, dark, compelling world drawing heavy inspiration from historical sources.  A Clash of Kings - George R.R. Martin (4/5) A Storm of Swords - George R.R. Martin (4/5) The Great Divorce - C.S. Lewis (4/5). A man travels to the after life, and C.S. Lewis uses the story to highlight some of the more beautiful concepts of Christian theology.  The Abolition of Man - C.S. Lewis (3/5). Some good points and nice phrases, but...

"Confession" is a strange word. It has two distinct meanings: 1) An admission of personal guilt for some evil act. 2) A humble, even self-effacing, but resolute and implacable declaration of belief. Often used in a religious setting, i.e. "to confess one's faith in God". The second definition borrows the feeling from the first one - the deflated spirit of the guilty admitting his guilt, his shamefulness in the eyes of the world. But the two definitions have very different substance. In the second meaning, personal humility cloaks immense pride in some other thing. It is an irony contained in a single word. English is a tricky language.

Do not think of yourself as a warrior or imagine that the world is filled with enemies. It is too easy for the young soldier to declare war on the wrong target - it is surprisingly difficult to choose the right ones. Many intelligent and honest people find themselves on opposite sides of pitched battles. Frequently they even switch sides as they grow older, fighting ferociously for the position which their younger selves abhored.   Even if you win your war, you may find that the evils caused by the excess of some thing give way to new problems caused by its deficit.  Furthermore, the warrior is not an effective agent of change. The very nature of war is to divide people into allies and foes. An attack generates its own enemies, polarizing neutral bystanders into opposing camps.  Rather than be a warrior, be a builder. Tell a story that appeals to the universal values cherished by human hearts. Synthesize opposing viewpoints into a new worldview that unites former enemies....

The government industry is stagnant. There are few new service providers. When a new provider of government services comes into existence, it is almost always carefully constructed by existing government entities such as the United States government or the United Nations (see Iraq and Afghanistan).  In other industries, technological progress is made when entrepreneurs with ideas for beneficial innovation try them out. They either succeed and see their ideas have a large impact on their industry or they fail and their failed ideas dissapear. In government, there is no chance for this Darwinian process to play out. That is why structuralists support more entry into the government industry through vehicles like Seasteading and Charter cities.  Paul Romer is pioneering the effort to make charter cities a reality. A descriptive motto for this movement would be "Let a thousand Hong Kongs bloom". Honduras has already amended their constitution to allow for land grants for the es...