Category: Writing

Passover in the Air

Pre-COVID onboard Kosher meal, Passover:

  • Steak and salmon: excellent.
  • Couscous and matzah: good.
  • Veggies: doable.

Needless to say, the cake went undisturbed.

While I feel bad about wasting food, I’d feel worse about “waisting” it.

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History is back

A great problem with too many of us is that, subconsciously or otherwise, we bought into this idea that the tectonic political changes of 1989 had brought about a world where the rules had changed. This is the essence of Francis Fukuyama’s treatise “The End of History,” but the problem went even further. We began to believe that the normal rules that applied to business, to markets, and to nations no longer applied.

In the end, we will find that history does not end, even if sometimes it seems to take a sabbatical. Despite a flirtation with the contrary, the past decade has proven that the world is not on a path to liberal democracy and global markets: Russia is still the rapacious yet insecure bear; that China is still the nation and culture of Confucius, Mencius, Sunzi, and Mao; that businesses must still make money; nationalism still trumps globalism; and that markets cannot soar forever purely based on exuberance and a near-term lack of better investment alternatives.

History is back, and if you don’t watch out, it will maul you. It’s a great time to be an historian.

 

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Mugology: The Cherry of Seattle

Not far from Pioneer Square in Seattle is the Cherry Street Coffee House, a hidden oasis of superb coffee and healthy eats.

Sure, there are plenty of little joints scattered around Seattle, but I keep finding myself going back to this one. Cherry Street also boasts one of those bohemian dining areas that beg you to sit down, pull out your laptop or your Moleskine, and start creating.

That it’s a block from my company’s Seattle office, a block from my preferred hotel, and a block from the LINK light rail line to Sea-Tac make it one of the best-located writer’s nooks on my list anywhere.

I think it’s time to cook up a reason for a deductible junket…

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Foxconn

Watching what is happening at the Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou, I am left wondering how many bosses of state-owned enterprises are secretly delighted to watch Foxconn take this hit. Whatever Foxconn’s faults may be, they are one of the largest private enterprises in China, and this could well be the beginning of the end for their business in the PRC.

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Kevin Smith is the only man over the age of 19 who is allowed to wear a ballcap backward. He makes it look good. The rest of us are just pretenders. (Kevin looks great, by the way. He looks like a man, not a moon.)

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Here is the big question about Disney: how long until Iger is forced to take a big writedown on the company’s investment in its two China theme parks?

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Field Notes Unbox

I continue to collect/stockpile notebooks, especially Field Notes, and this was my Chinese New Year gift to myself last year, a total of 33 notebooks.

I was an early convert from analog to digital note-taking, and as early as 1984 I was keeping all of my notes on one application or another on my hard drive. But a series of catastrophic crashes and minor incidents of data loss or file misplacement has convinced me to return to analog form to augment my digital archiving, or at least a hybrid of analog with digital archiving.

What I did not expect when I started my first tentative steps back to the handwritten world in 2006 was all of the other cognitive benefits that come with just writing stuff down.

Notebooks are now a key part of all of my workflows, whether for writing, Scouting, travel, reading, or any of my projects that require more than a simple list.

I’ll be sharing some of the ways I use notebooks in the coming weeks. Some are proven, some more experimental, but each reminds me how underrated and versatile these simple tools can be.

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You have to feel bad for companies like GotJunk.com.
A clever company name can turn into an adult movie come-on without warning, sucking the value out of a brand all at no fault of a company.
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