“Perhaps the best illustration of the current misconceptions of the individualism of Adam Smith and his group is the common belief that they have invented the bogey of the “economic man” and that their conclusions are vitiated by their assumption of a strictly rational behavior or generally by a false rationalistic psychology. They were, of […]
The Best 99 Cents I’ve Spent Recently
The best 99 cents I’ve spent recently? iPhone Monopoly. It’s a great way to relax, the kids seem to like it, and it’s virtually identical to the original. It’s also a lot quicker than playing on the board because all the math is done automatically. If you want to spend a dollar learning some economics, […]
Identify the Marching Band Geeks at the Gym With This One Weird Trick
From 1997-1999 I played trombone in the University of Alabama Million Dollar Band. I’ve noticed from my own behavior that there’s basically one thing you need to know in order to identify a band geek at the gym–or in any public place, for that matter. It’s not “are they moving in time with the music?” […]
Navigating With My Apple Watch
I have a truly awful sense of direction, which means it’s extremely easy for me to get lost when I go places. This is especially troublesome until we got our first GPS device, a Garmin, in 2007 or so. The Garmin wasn’t of much help, though, when I was walking. I became sold on smartphones […]
New On the Shelf, New on the Kindle
Calestous Juma, Innovation and its Enemies. After flipping through it and reading the section headings I can already tell this is going to be very interesting. If you don’t follow the author on Twitter, you should: @calestous. Robert Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth. I read the first few dozen pages on my Kindle […]
Review: The Art Of Less Doing
If you’ve already read books like Getting Things Done by David Allen, Essentialism by Greg McKeown, or The Four-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, or Jason Womack’s books, Your Best Just Got Better and Get Momentum, you won’t find much in The Art Of Less Doing by Ari Meisel that’s really new. That said, it’s very interesting […]
Not As Much I Like Fried Chicken: Present Vs. Future Satisfaction
Episode number 39 of season three of Teen Titans Go! (titled “Think About Your Future”) poses an interesting question: is high time preference a way of redistributing from our rich future selves to our poor present selves? Moreover, are we saving too much or too little? At first glance, the Titans actions look absurd. However, […]
Stock Your Shelves, Economically
I gave a ton of books to the university library a few months ago, but I’m generally a very big fan of having a lot of books around. In response to an article saying students should keep their textbooks, I offer the following advice: Be on the lookout for textbooks at thrift stores. I’ve gotten […]
Don’t Listen to Music with Lyrics While You’re Trying to Work
About ten years ago, I read a piece of advice that has definitely increased my productivity: don’t listen to music with lyrics. It’s fun to rock out sometimes when I’m doing something that doesn’t require serious concentration (like checking email), but I find that if I listen to music with lyrics I end up getting […]
My First (But Not Last) Experience With Airbnb
I spent part of the second week of August in an apartment in Brooklyn that my wife and I had rented with Airbnb. We were in town to celebrate her birthday, and we had a great time visiting the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the Brooklyn Museum, and some of the great restaurants Brooklyn and Manhattan have […]