The beautiful grimy buzzing streets of San Francisco

Spending a week in SF, first impression is the beautiful buildings, the busy foot traffic, and the grime.  It feels like a city where everyone is pushing to the limit all the time, with clean airy offices but streets too busy for planters, despite the friendly climate.  And the homeless.

on meritocracy and the estate tax

Of all the flimsy excuses of why children of the rich and powerful should have privileges from birth, meritocracy is perhaps the most blatantly illogical.  Divine right of kings is more rational.

its not so much that the perfect is the enemy of the good, its that the ideal is the enemy of the real

cancer and greedy dictators

to write up properly: very close analogy - pull from GrannyD's speech; and the guy on Trevor Noah this week about data-basd and fact-based agencies having most problem with Trump cancer cells defect in repair = repressing dissent/truth the pathway to cancer is similar to the pathway to

Ayn Rand and Communist Propaganda

Had a really interesting conversation with some long time Russian friends of mine.  My friend Inna told me that because of all the discussions about it she decided to read Ayn Rand's book; she said it was practically unreadable, and really reminded her of communist propaganda pieces. The

Vizzini...

Just finished "Its kind of a Funny Story", great book, looked up the author and found he committed suicide in 2013, 9 years after he wrote the book about depression and real friends and creativity and his 5 days in a psych ward. And tried to find his

The Jazz Fix: a riff-off of solutions to political corruption and gridlock

Fun times and cool stuff at Unrig the System - it was lovely spending days in the company of organizers and activists, and tech innovators working on fixing things. Wrote it up on Medium here: The Jazz Fix: a riff-off of solutions to political corruption and gridlock

What I like best about the Federalist Papers

In the intro, Hamilton wrote "It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and

Superfreakonomics review

Wrote the piece here Here's my take on conservative economic theory: SuperFreakonomics SuperFreakonomics the book is consistently entertaining, sometimes fascinating, genuinely thought-provoking, excessively glib, fundamentally flawed, and viscerally disturbing. Let me explain....

Political/Community Projects I'm Doing or would Like to Do

So I was talking over ideas with my friend John, and he asked me to make a list of all the ones I've been thinking of, or trying to start, recently.  And it was a long list!  Here it is, and should anyone reading this be crazy enough