Money quote from the article:
Can a novelist who produces only three works of fiction in 32 years be considered great? Can an essayist whose primary concerns—the compatibility of Christian dogma with science, the liberal origins of Calvinism—are far outside mainstream American thought be considered great?
This was a helpful article on how the placement of the word “only” can affect the meaning of a sentence—but also how those rules may be bent to fit the structure and syntax of a sentence.
The author of this book lives near me in Northern Virginia and maintains a website called “Tyler Cowen’s Ethnic Dining Guide.”
I want my kids to have well-traveled palates, and (of course) I want the food to be cheap. Mr. Cowen’s reviews will be a good way to make that happen.
Recently read Power: Why Some People Have it—And Others Don’t and found it highly interesting and useful. In this video interview the author summarizes why being effective at your job doesn’t mean you’ll gain power in your organization.
Not the most profound piece I’ve ever read, but still, some useful guidelines drawn largely from Stephen Covey.
“No, what makes him [Petraeus] a thinker—and a leader—is precisely that he is able to think things through for himself. And because he can, he has the confidence, thecourage, to argue for his ideas even when they aren’t popular. Even when they don’t please his superiors. Courage: there is physical courage, which you all possess in abundance, and then there is another kind of courage, moral courage, the courage to stand up for what you believe.”
“Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it.”
“So it’s perfectly natural to have doubts, or questions, or even just difficulties. The question is, what do you do with them? Do you suppress them, do you distract yourself from them, do you pretend they don’t exist? Or do you confront them directly, honestly, courageously? If you decide to do so, you will find that the answers to these dilemmas are not to be found on Twitter or Comedy Central or even in The New York Times. They can only be found within—without distractions, without peer pressure, in solitude.”
“Here’s the other problem with Facebook and Twitter and even The New York Times. When you expose yourself to those things, especially in the constant way that people do now—older people as well as younger people—you are continuously bombarding yourself with a stream of other people’s thoughts. You are marinating yourself in the conventional wisdom. In other people’s reality: for others, not for yourself. You are creating a cacophony in which it is impossible to hear your own voice, whether it’s yourself you’re thinking about or anything else.”
