Fire and Knowledge

If a phrase comes to you easily, look at it with deep suspicion; it’s probably one of the countless clichés that have woven their way so tightly into the fabric of travel writing that you have to make a special effort not to use them…. Strive for fresh words and images.

—William Zinsser, On Writing Well, p. 118.

The thing about a weekly column, I discovered, is that it comes up weekly. Now this may seem a self-evident fact, but in two years there never came a week when it did not strike me as both profound an startling. Another column? Already? But I just did one.

—Bill Bryson, I’m a Stranger Here Myself (Broadway Books: 1999), p. xii.

When I was a child I used to watch politics on C-SPAN and CNN with my grandmother. For fun, I’d guess who were the Democrats and Republicans. I could do it pretty well. I had a rigorous test: I would look at their faces and decide if they looked mean or nice. The nice ones were Republicans, and the mean ones were Democrats. It never worked out perfectly, but I was right more than wrong.

I’m sure that doesn’t give any hints about the political affiliation of my family. I assure you, I was very objective and unbiased and remain so to this day.

What happens if I apply my old philosophy to the 2008 campaign? Huckabee has the most real smile and I would inevitably thought him a Republican. He’s sort of the funny Uncle in the race, someone you like and respect but think he’d be better at running a tractor than the country. McCain I might have mistaken for a democrat, though. His smile is more grim, yet there is kindness there. Obama I would have mistaken for a Republican for sure. If you didn’t already know, he’s going to win. Hillary, however, would have been unmistakably Democrat. I would have been afraid of that smile.

Among two million Americans earning at or near the minimum wage in the early twenty-first century, just over half were from 16 to 24 years of age. Just over half worked part time. Yet political campaigns to increase the minimum wage often talk in terms of providing “a living wage” sufficient to support a family of four—such families as most minimum workers do not have and would be ill-advised to have before they reach the point where they can feed and clothe their children. Nevertheless, a number of American cities have passed “living wage” laws, which are essentially local minimum wage laws specifying a higher minimum than the national minimum wage law. Their effects have been similar to the effects of national minimum wage laws in the United States and other countries—that is, the poorest people have been the ones who have most often lost jobs.

—Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics (3rd Edition, Basic Books, 2007), p. 213.

Ever wanted to create a planner out of a blank notebook? Then PlannerHack.com is for you. I did this for a while then transitioned to Moleskine’s real planner. Fun at first, but tedious after a while.

When we traded homemaking for careers, we were implicitly promised economic independence and worldly influence. But a devil of a bargain it has turned out to be in terms of daily life. We gave up the aroma of warm bread rising, the measured pace of nurturing routines, we received in exchange the minivan and the Lunchable. (Or worse, convenience-mart hot dogs and latchkey kids.) I consider it the great hoodwink of my generation.

—Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (HarperCollins: 2007), pp. 126-127.

What happens when you turn a square 45 degrees? A new product! Introducing Diamond Shreddies.

Is a person really free to believe a proposition for which he has no evidence? No. Evidence (whether sensory of logical) is the only thing that suggests that a given belief is really about the world in the first place. We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common we call them “religious”; otherwise, they are likely to be called “mad,” “psychotic,” or “delusional.”

—Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (W. W. Norton, 2004), pp. 71-72.