Internet Todo List for Enthusiastic Thinkers, S1E18
The essence of being a nerd has changed quite a bit in my lifetime. What was once a shorthand for varying degrees of unhip and outcast now means some kind of dedication to an area of interest, be it popular or frivolous.
The thing that most interests me is what is nerd-worthy and what isn’t? For me, it’s about depth and optimization. Drinking and making coffee is a fun optimization game. Improv is fun because every time on stage adds more ideas about how to ad-lib a good story. Economics is fun (bear with me) because there’s so much to know and so many connections to other topics.
Despite reality TV, manufactured pop, and the endless parade of Hollywood sequels, it’s never been a better time to choose a few topics and dive deep into every aspect of them.
What’s a derivative? This here is a derivative:
The dealer will agree to give you money if the price of oil goes up. In exchange, you will give the dealer money now, or maybe instead you’ll just agree to give him money in the future if the price of oil goes down. You enter into an agreement that just changes your graph directly, without the intervention of things that already exist in the world.
In short, it’s a way to bet on things happening related to commodities and stocks. Or other things. It’s complicated! But this is the best explanation I’ve read so far. NPR’s Planet Money is fantastic, and this “Ask a Banker” series is too.
So you want to learn hand lettering? Well yeah, I kinda do!
I’ve been really into lettering most of my life. For some reason I’ve always been drawn to letter forms. Many people don’t really notice letters. Letters make words, and most people see words and derive meaning from the words and hardly even notice the letters themselves. I tend to be captivated by the little-noticed details in life…I was overjoyed to discover, as I got older, the world of typography—which to my delight was everything I ever loved and was fascinated by, all packaged into one nice classification.
I’ve found studying typography and, lately, lettering very rewarding. I can’t draw at all, but I can doodle with letters and only feel largely incompetent. Complimentary reading: Web Design is 95% Typography.
Corporate Bureaucracy is Anti-Capitalist. Well when you put it that way, it kinda makes sense:
Corporate bureaucracy is a malignant tumor on capitalism’s vital organ: incentive. The cruel irony is that corporate bureaucracy is a byproduct of a sloppy capitalist implementation. It’s the method by which privately owned companies govern themselves in pursuit of competition with one another.
The privately-run company, the hero of the free market ideology, is often a banana republic as viewed from the inside. Weird, huh?
My new favorite musical thing is brass bands, like you might hear on the streets of New Orleans. To wit, “Cissy Strut”, performed by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2V12KvOQKg
Love it.
Your pal, ~akk