From Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens:A Brief History of Humankind:

“This is one of the distinguishing marks of history as an academic discipline—the better you know a particular historical period, the harder it becomes to explain why things happened one way and not another. Those who have only a superficial knowledge of a certain period tend to focus only on the possibility that was eventually realized. They offer a just-so story to explain with hindsight why that outcome was inevitable. Those more deeply informed about the period are much more cognizant of the roads not taken.”

Sometimes, for all our idle speculation, there is no why.

“In fact, the people who knew the period best—those alive at the time—were the most clueless of all.”

I’ve given myself a mean homework assignment. I bought a 12 week subscription to ‘The Economist’ for $12 and am annotating every issue. I have a feeling that for all of these the main topic will be Donald Trump and if there’s one thing our new president has taught me it’s to always get your money’s worth!

This week was especially easy because I was on vacation all week. Still, no WAY did I have time to delve into all that’s covered. 1 of 12.

 

Donald Trump being elected president must be one of the most all-consuming news story since Kurt Cobain committed suicide. There’s no doubt that 9/11 was more consequential, but I say that because I remember reading a yellowed old issue of TIME from 1994 as a teen in the early 2000’s and was amazed that every other article throughout the magazine seemed to reference Cobain’s death, regardless of what the article was ostensibly about. Reading on a decade removed from the events being written about I was amazed that one person could saturate headlines so thoroughly. The Economist is just as preoccupied with our 45th president. Uneasiness with the red tide of nationalism blowing through the western world permeates this issue.

“The problem with certain populist politicians is not that they mislabel an x-axis here or fail to specify a control group there. Rather they deliberately promulgate blatant lies which play to voters’ irrationalities and insecurities.”

—Book review for A Field Guide to Lies and Statistics by Daniel Levitin

I love the nod to Banksy in the cover. Where is that man? We need him now more than ever.

Inside, my favorite articles had to do with youth voting, and the proposition of lowering the voting age to 16 as a relatively harmless way to instill good voting habits in increasingly disenfranchised youth. The biggest surprise I learned was that Mars candy is investing heavily in the dog food and veterinary-care business because while chocolate sales stagnate they are second only to Nestle in pet food manufacturing. And this op-ed about Silicon Valley’s negligent and ruinous social irresponsibility got me plenty fired up.

There is a fascinating online history exhibit: Project 1917, which documents the daily goings-on of the Russian Revolution:

“To watch this all transpire in real time is to experience people’s inability to grasp the history they are living. The tsar records banal details of his daily routine—breakfasts, meetings, walks—like a 17th century monarch trying to inhabit the modernist age. Lenin plots revolution from Zurich, while doubting he will live to see it. Many can sense that change is coming, and want to hasten it along. But none imagines the enormity of what actually unfolded.”

 

My favorite random facts:

“People take in five times as much information each day as they did in the mid-1980s.”

“For every dollar of cash the tech industry makes, it reinvests 24 cents; that compares with 50 cents for other non-financial firms.“

“The 12 deadly acts of terrorism committed on American soil since September 11th 2001 have been by American citizens or legal residents, according to New America, a think-tank. The September 11th murderers were from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Lebanon, none of which were subject to the ban.”

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The ability of its citizens to lose focus so quickly and be distracted by everything from Lebronamania to the immigration debate is part of what makes America so ripe for this particular type of corporate crime. We have voters who don’t pay attention, a news media that either ignores key subjects or willfully misunderstands them, and a regulatory environment that bends easily to lobbying and campaign financing efforts. And we’ve got a superpower’s worth of accumulated wealth that is still there for the taking. You put all that together, and what you get is a thieves’ paradise—a Griftopia.

This book should be read in conjunction with Michael Lewis’ The Big Short. Griftopia examines the culture that created the 2008 financial crisis from a bird’s-eye-view. From the Ayn Randian Objectivist sense of self-entitlement emboldening Alan Greenspan and bankers on Wall Street to pursue profit and self-interest at the expense of everyone else to how our political system divides us and kicks the proverbial can down the road without solving anything. The subject is upsetting, but Taibbi approaches the subject with wicked humor and a far-reaching perspective.

There were so many quotes in this book that shocked and amused me. Here are a couple of the most flabbergasting:

Here’s the real punch line. After playing an intimate role in three historic bubble catastrophes, after helping $5 trillion in wealth disappear from the NASDAQ in the early part of the 2000s, after pawning off thousands of toxic mortgages on pensioners and cities, after helping drive the price of gas up above $4.60 a gallon for half a year, and helping 100 million new people around the world join the ranks of the hungry, and securing tens of billions of taxpayer dollars through a series of bailouts, what did Goldman Sachs give back to the people of the United States in 2008?
Fourteen million dollars.
That is what the firm paid in taxes in 2008: an effective tax rate of exactly 1, read it, one percent.

 

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Thanks to our completely fucked corporate tax system, companies like Goldman can ship their revenues offshore and defer taxes on those revenues indefinitely, even while they claim deductions up front on that same untaxed income. This is why any corporation with an at least occasionally sober accountant can usually find a way to pay no taxes at all. A Government Accountability Office report, in fact, found that between 1998 and 2005,two-thirds of all corporations operating in the United States paid no taxes at all.

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A common sense definition from Garry Kasparov’s Winter is Coming:

“Each victory pulls the victor down slightly and makes it harder to put in maximum effort to improve further. Meanwhile, the loser knows that he made a mistake, that something went wrong, and he will work hard to improve for next time. The happy winner often assumes he won simply because he is great. Typically, however, the winner is just the player who made the next-to-last mistake. It takes tremendous discipline to overcome this tendency and to learn lessons from a victory.”

 

I’ve been bad about updating this blog lately but have started to up the ante with my freelance writing by approaching magazines with stories. Here is my first article, scheduled to be published in the November issue of Austin Fit Magazine:

 

Until I wrote this article, I’d never thought to ask my dad how he’d found out he had Parkinson’s disease. Turns out he didn’t know long before the family did. In late 2011, his left foot developed a persistent tap and then his left arm developed a tremor. An MRI ruled out all other explanations.

At the time, it didn’t interfere with his work or playing guitar in church, but walking soon became problematic. He couldn’t walk without dragging his left foot. Still, he didn’t require medication and his condition seemed stable. Two years later, he went on medication and family members noticed a definite improvement.

For all of 2016, he’s been going to a boxing class specifically designed to help people who have Parkinson’s manage their physical symptoms. I know that having a place to exercise and mingle with other people who share his condition has been enormously beneficial for him.

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The motto on the entrance to North Austin’s Ultimate MMA Fitness gym asks all who enter to “fight to be fit.” However, it’s quickly apparent that the people who arrive on Monday morning for the Rock Steady Boxing classes aren’t fighting for a sleekly muscled physique. They’re fighting to maintain the freedom of movement that most of us take for granted.

They have Parkinson’s Disease, which is a neurologically degenerative process that slowly robs a person of their cognitive and physical abilities. The depletion of dopamine in their brains make even routine movements require a Herculean effort. Although the disease tends to set in later in life, the defining symptoms have been seen in every age group. The youngest Rock Steady fighter is 46, the oldest is 85.

Along with proper medical management with help from trained professionals, forced anaerobic exercise has shown to be an effective therapy for Parkinson’s treatment. Robert Izor, M.D., the Medical Director at Neurology Solutions Consultants, says that because the standard drug treatment has its own constellation of undesirable side-effects, he tries to keep his patients off medication as long as possible. “The disease not only affects dopamine, but also other neurotransmitters. Your motivation, your interest in doing things, suffers. Trying to get Parkinson’s patients to do vigorous exercise is a challenge, and I think that’s where Rock Steady has some advantages—because it has that group feeling, and a coach that pushes you,” Izor says.

Rock Steady boxer Dave Streilein described the disease as “a personal process where the individual disappears,” and that without having a program that pushes him to extend his physical abilities and relate with other patients in an active, focused environment, he’d feel left to fend for himself. The disease can have an isolating effect on those afflicted since their diagnosis doesn’t extend to their co-workers, friends and spouses. More than just a workout, the Rock Steady classes provide a place where fellow Parkinson’s sufferers can go to find support in a community of people going through similar physical deterioration.

This is the first and only program of its kind. The nonprofit organization was founded in 2006 by a former Indianapolis District Attorney who found a high-intensity boxing regimen to dramatically improve the symptoms of his Parkinson’s. The program has since spread to 5 countries and 43 states and has increased membership in Austin from 3 to 90 people since opening in November 2015. There are three locations in Austin, one in Georgetown, and one opening in Lakeway on Nov. 1 of this year.

Owner and head coach Kristi Richards came to Rock Steady by way of senior fitness, a demographic she fell in love with while taking the classes during a pregnancy. She was drawn to this group because of their penchant for wisdom and humor. After the birth of her third child, she taught a senior fitness program called Silver Sneakers for five years before finding out about the Rock Steady program from a client. The video she saw of two tenacious Parkinson’s sufferers sparring with each other delighted her with its absurdity. “The idea of Parkinson’s patients hitting each other was just crazy to me. I mean, isn’t that what causes Parkinson’s?” was her initial reaction. Muhammad Ali was undoubtedly not far from her mind.

In the 1,276 square-foot training room, Kristi first leads the group through a series of stretches. While they’re seated she walks around the room asking them questions about their opinions and personal lives.

“What has changed most in your lifetime?” is the question of the day. The most obvious answer is technology. Another man muses that getting old is the biggest change he’s experienced. The observation that is felt most disheartening to the group is the animosity and lack of cooperation in politics these days. In all, their thoughts are humorous and honest—there’s a serene wisdom you can feel while standing in a room full of people asked to examine the quirks of their era.

After an obstacle course to practice walking and balancing, the fighters partner up and switch off at intervals at stations for exercises that work on balance, core strength, boxing, and jump rope. After 45 minutes, everyone is sweaty and energized.

Camaraderie and friendly competition in a high non-contact intensity group workout is healthy for anyone, at any age. The success of Rock Steady Boxing can serve as a reminder that exercise has a neuroprotective benefit. At the end of each class, the fighters get into a group huddle and encourage each other to “Rock Steady!” as in, go out and face the world without succumbing to the debilitating symptoms of Parkinson’s.

(If interested in finding out about volunteer opportunities or have Parkinson’s and would like to enroll, please e-mail Kristi Richards at fightback@rocksteadyatx.com)

“What we are trying to achieve with this book is this: to provide a deeper understanding of Steve Jobs’s ever-evolving arsenal of entrepreneurial skills and capabilities, and the deepening of his almost messianic drive to have an impact on his world. We want to show how it was fueled to an unusual degree by his unique gift for being an autodidact, and by genuine idealism as well as his occasionally scary obsessions, his rigid and austere yet consistently well-thought-out aesthetic standards, his often pompous sense of mission. All along, he held a genuine compassion for the anxieties and needs of ordinary people who want to find new tools to empower and improve themselves in a world that grows more complex, cacophonous, and confounding every day.”

By any measure, the authors of this book accomplished their goals. Much has been written about Steve Jobs over the years but this biography feels the most complete. The authors are business journalists who both knew Jobs well, both personally and professionally. The question that fascinates them the most about Steve is how a brash young entrepreneur who was so arrogant that the company he founded fired him but manage to come back a decade later, having tempered his youthful recklessness with age and experience, and turn Apple around into the most successful companies of all time? 

As awestruck as they are by the man, the portrait they paint of him not always flattering. Even so, they knew him well enough to explain why he was the was he was. Steve Jobs has never seemed so human.  Continue reading →

I’ve been too busy to write lately but the world has kept turning; spinning out of control if you listen to the news. Here’s a thoughtful letter from E.B. White, author best known for Charlotte’s Web, that provides some helpful perspective for troubled times:

North Brooklin, Maine

30 March 1973

Dear Mr. Nadeau:

As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness.

Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society—things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly. It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.

Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.

Sincerely,

(Signed, ‘E. B. White’)

via Marginal Revolution, which in turn excepted it from Letters of Note.

At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work—as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for—the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”

—But it’s nicer here…

So you were born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?

—But we have to sleep sometime…

Agreed. But nature set a limit on that—as it did on eating and drinking. And you’re over the limit. You’ve had more than enough of that. But not of working. There you’re still below your quota.

You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you. People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it, they even forget to wash or eat. Do you have less respect for your own nature than the engraver does for engraving, the dancer for the dance, the miser for money or the social climber for status? When they’re really possessed by what they do, they’d rather stop eating and sleeping than give up practicing their arts.

Meditations is a 2,000 year old private diary written by the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. He was the most powerful man of his time, and his journal entries were mostly reminders not to let that go to his head, that time waits for no one, and that everything is temporary. These reminders are still potent and humbling today. These are truly words to live by and I count myself fortunate to be able to meditate on them every now and then.

I carried this book around Europe with me in the Summer of 2011 and  re-read it last month. Seeing my aged and faded highlights were a fascinating reminder of the time past and how I’ve changed: my priorities are different now and I ended up highlighting completely different passages this time around.

 

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