“It’s not so much that American public life is more idiotic,” Jill Lepore said, referring to both press coverage and the public discussion it spawns. “It’s that so much more of American life is public. I think that goes a long way to explaining what seems to be a ‘decline.’ Everything is documented, and little of it is edited. Editing is one of the great inventions of civilization.”
He has said his aim in writing a poem is “to construct a verbal device that would preserve an experience indefinitely by reproducing it in whoever read the poem.”
Before Archimboldi left, after they’d had a cup of tea, the man who rented him the typewriter said: “Jesus is the masterpiece. The thieves are minor works. Why are they there? Not to frame the crucifixion, as some innocent souls believe, but to hide it.”
The finding: People who are prone to guilt tend to work harder and perform better than people who are not guilt-prone, and are perceived to be more capable leaders.
The research: Francis Flynn gave a standard psychological test, which measured the tendency to feel guilt, to about 150 workers in the finance department of a Fortune 500 firm and then compared their test results with their performance reviews. People who were more prone to guilt, he found, received higher performance ratings from their bosses. Related studies showed that they also were more committed to their organizations and were seen as stronger leaders by their peers.
…rain at once made them look messy, trickling down their fur coats like so much dirty gravy. Their umbrellas were soon blown inside out, and some were broken, by a fierce gust of wind that blew across the graves…
The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.
We had no luck with the weather and the guests at our table were repellent in every respect. They even spoiled Nietzsche for us. Even after they had had a fatal car accident and had been laid out in the church in Sils, we still hated them.
technological progress that increases the efficiency with which a resource is used tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of that resource
On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.
‘in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence.’
‘in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out their duties’ and ‘work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.’
