Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4

Month: February 2015

  • Review: The Age of American Unreason

    The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby My rating: 2 of 5 stars Back in 2007, I went to Thanksgiving with Mom to the home of a Philosophy professor. The professor’s father discoursed on why United States presidents should only be intellectuals. His arguments made sense. Someone able to understand the options, determine risk, and plan…

  • Half-Blood

    As I have previously written here, I am biracial. One parent is European descent while the other is of African descent. When I was born, I was the first biracial child many had ever seen. Thankfully, it was just the start of a trend, so these days plenty are around for people to notice us.…

  • Difficult To Use Is Good

    I enjoyed reading Why We Should Design Some Things to Be Difficult to Use by Brian Millar for WIRED. It caught my attention and held it by referencing Dan Pink’s book Drive. I posted his TED Talk on Drive back in 2009. The sections of the piece: The Pleasures of Mastery Difficulty Makes Things Exclusive Danger May…

  • Better Mindset

    A while ago I posted a review about the book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck. The message of the book, I think, is critically important, but the book wasted my time with too many anecdotes and testimonials which are a taboo in science writing. The good parts remain where Dweck wrote about her own and…

  • Five Years On

    About five years ago earlier this month, I went on Bahá’í pilgrimage to Haifa. It is funny how in that post I wrote about the experience my expectation of some significant change. Even that post stated, “Something like serving at the Bahá’í World Center would be the kind of change I foresee,” which clearly states where my head…