As I re-engage with social media more in my personal life, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how much of my life I want to share. I understand how useful it can be to attract people’s attention with […]
“Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.” – G.K. Chesterton At 23, I’ve been longer at my company than most people. I have a memory of five […]
Last night I was walking by a bar with some friends when I noticed that the Miss Universe contest was on a TV. Miss Vietnam was standing next to the show’s emcee, and I wondered out loud how anticlimactic it […]
Wondering how to start traveling to more places? If you’re like me, you probably find it a bit overwhelming to look at a globe and start tallying up all the places you’d like to see. You probably also find it […]
I’m one of those few people who think pleasure (real pleasure) can make human beings better rather than worse. So every party I host or attend is a kind of philosophical test. I want my guests (and fellow guests, when […]
Have you ever traded sports cards? When I was young, I briefly owned a collection of baseball cards. Even though, I didn’t follow professional baseball at all, I still enjoyed owning cards for talented players, players on cool-sounds teams, etc. […]
Mere forgetfulness is underrated as a killer of dreams. As I get older, time seems to get faster. And as time gets faster, it’s all too easy for me to drop into my routine and do exactly what I’m used […]
I really wish I had known more about the practical costs of living when I was much younger. I had the great blessing of having parents who had enough to take care of me, and enough to shelter me from […]
I’m insecure about not measuring up at work. It especially bothers me to think that I might ultimately fail despite all my efforts – that I might discover that I am a failure. As I measure and consider the work […]
I started out my adult life not knowing the cost of most things. Rent? Nope. Utilities? Didn’t know that. Taxes? Not so much. I didn’t know the cost of education, the cost of even the cost of airline tickets. I […]
It’s a dangerous thing to have too many convictions and too few actions to support those convictions. It’s dangerous for all the obvious reasons: you tend to become a hypocrite, you tend not to actually help, etc. But it’s also […]
There are few things we young people like more than competing for status. Unfortunately, we’re often tempted in the direction of acquiring status by buying stuff we can’t afford so we can fool people into thinking we have wealth we […]
Just rewatched this film (on Disney+) with my brother. It’s probably one of the best comedies produced in the 1990s, but it’s timeless in a way that makes me think even Shakespeare could have staged it. If you haven’t seen […]
Old farm trucks, typewriters, guns from several wars ago, clothes handed down across three generations, silverware and dishes, old houses – all of us have some pieces of history which blend into our lives in some way. Of course, we […]
A new phenomenon in the Internet age is that of “deplatforming” in which a person, organization, or movement gets booted off of an online platform. Sometimes de-platforming happens for good reasons (a bank refusing to serve a drug cartel). Sometimes […]
Between tossing waves Spirit hovers o’er still deeps Room for creator
Tonight I rewatched an old war movie classic with my Dad: 1976’s Midway, starring Charlton Heston, Henry Fonda, and a who’s who of 60s and 70s stars, with a score (very much like the same year’s Star Wars) by John […]
What do you see when you visit a new city, state, or country? Restaurants, monuments, shows, museums, and parks are all worthy places for your time. But what about the nature? Most of the time our idea of tourism keeps […]
“You’re only twenty-something once.” I respect the advice for what it is. It’s true that we’ll only ever have our 20s once. The idea here is that we might look back in regret later if we don’t do enough to […]
The old gods have a lot to teach us. Sure, we all know that the Greek pantheon – Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, Hades, Ares, Athena, Artemis, Demeter, Dionysus, and the rest – don’t *really* exist. But there is a reason people […]
Ever feel underestimated or misunderstood? Think that other people are clearly wrong about something, or clearly planning something you don’t agree with? When I’m in these situations, I’m strongly tempted to set things right then and there. I’m a decently […]
And they were astonished at his teaching: for he taught them as having authority, and not as the scribes. – Mark 1:22 I can’t listen to most religious preachers teach. It’s not just that I question the religious premises of […]
Do books even work well at transmitting facts? I recently read an interesting essay making the case that they don’t. After all, how many individual lessons or facts do you really remember from the history book in your senior year […]
Most of the best things in my life have come because of leaps of faith. I took the leap of faith to skip college because I took the leap of faith to follow my philosophical convictions. I found Praxis because […]
“. . . ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them . . .” – Luke 21 Today I passed a smiling dirty man holding a side on the side of the road.His […]
There are few things that give me more confidence than insane physical exertion. There are few things that *require* more confidence in me than approaching an attractive girl and asking for her number. Today I learned that it helps to […]
“Don’t reinvent the wheel.” As a naive and inexperienced marketer, I’ve hard this many times. The implication? Follow the ways of doing things that have been laid down before you. Often this is fine advice. The reason we have giants […]
Any kind of distance running is a psychological game, and music is one of the great mental hacks. So as I’ve gotten deeper into running – and now trail running – music has been an important ally. Given that our […]
In the 20th century, the story of European imperial holdings was a story (mostly) of communism. Do you think Winston Churchill anticipated this? Rudyard Kipling? Any of the other enthusiastic imperialists of the 19th century? They may have seen themselves […]
I wonder whether scientists like Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer had any inkling in their youth that their work in physics would one day be used to produce nuclear weapons. Yet by cooperating with the government that produced these weapons, […]