The town I used to live near was famous for its coldness. The locals were proud of this. Then, someone (government?) decided that the “official temperature” should be recorded at the airport instead of at the radio station just outside of town (about halfway between town and my house). So, instead of being in a pasture, the “official” thermometer was now located around buildings and a large expanse of concrete.
Tag: reading
Banfield on the Hyperbole of Urban Bankruptcy
“When a mayor says that his city is on the verge of bankruptcy, he means that when the time comes to run for reelection he wants to be able to claim credit for straightening out a mess that was left to him by his predecessor.”
The Historian and His Times
Historians are often rightly accused of carrying contemporary ideas and values back into the past and using them inappropriately to evaluate actors and institutions of bygone days. The presumption in this accusation is that historians know a lot about their own times and relatively little about former times. But such need not be the case.
Incarnation: the Forgotten Second Step of Reading a Book
After going out on my own as a young man, I’ve stumbled on, chased down, or survived a range of adventures in human consciousness and action. Those things in books have actually come into my real, non-library life. I’ve learned something from all of this: you haven’t really finished reading a book until you lived it.
The Simple Guide to Creating Habits for a Great Year
It’s a new year, and many of us are looking to make positive changes in our lives. The best way to do that is not by making resolutions, but by creating habits that will stick for the long term. If you want to run a marathon, form the habit of running. If you want to write a novel, form the writing habit. If you want to be more mindful, form the habit of meditation.
The Novikov Experiment
About a year ago, educator and start-up engineer Lev Novikov bought a dozen copies of The Case Against Education and let them circulate around his school. Last week, he let me know what happened. Reprinted with Lev’s permission.
Training in Uncertainty
I’ve been training in uncertainty for a few years now. I realized that the people I coach and teach are just like me: we feel shaky, scared, anxious, uncomfortable when we are faced with massive uncertainty, when the ground is pulled out from under our feet.
Simplify Technology with Limits
The problem comes when we try to figure out how to get a grip on it all, to tame technology to do what we need and then let it go so we can be more present, go outside more, move more, be connected to each other in real life more. Wrangling the chaos into something that we use consciously isn’t always easy.
War Over Ukraine?
Who wants to go to war against Russia in defense of Ukraine over the Kerch Strait, which lies between the Black and Azov seas and between Russia’s Taman Peninsula and Russian-annexed Crimea?
A show of hands, please.
Harvard Study Shows the Dangers of Early School Enrollment
Parents don’t need Harvard researchers to tell them that a child who just turned five is quite different developmentally from a child who is about to turn six. Instead, parents need to be empowered to challenge government schooling motives and mandates, and to opt-out.