Ramblings & ephemera
From Sam Anderson’s “A History of Hooch“, a review of Iain Gately’s Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol (6 July 2008):
Aztecs liked fermented sap, but had a legal drinking age (52) higher than their average life expectancy - although every four years they’d hold a New Year’s festival called “Drunkenness of Children,” at [...]
Posted on August 11th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history | No Comments »
From Evelyn Nieves’s “Slab City Journal; For Thousands, a Town of Concrete Slabs Is a Winter Retreat” (The New York Times: 18 February 2001):
Every winter, when the Winnebagos and pickups shake the desert off Beal Road like a small earthquake, Ben Morofsky gets wistful for the 120-degree days of summer, and the peace of living [...]
Posted on October 1st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Fiction | Comments Off
From Charlie LeDuff’s “Parked in a Desert, Waiting Out the Winter of Life” (The New York Times: 17 December 2004):
Directions to purgatory are as follows: from Los Angeles drive east past Palm Springs into the bowels of the Mojave Desert. Turn south at the stench of the Salton Sea. Proceed down Highway 111 to the [...]
Posted on October 1st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Thomas Babington Macaulay’s “A Speech Delivered In The Committee of the House Of Commons On The 6th Of April 1842” (Prime Palaver #4: 1 September 2001):
It is the law of our nature that the mind shall attain its full power by slow degrees; and this is especially true of the most vigorous minds. Young [...]
Posted on July 29th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: On Writing, art | Comments Off
From Paul Graham’s “Hiring is Obsolete” (May 2005):
The math is brutal. While perhaps 9 out of 10 startups fail, the one that succeeds will pay the founders more than 10 times what they would have made in an ordinary job. That’s the sense in which startups pay better “on average.”
Remember that. If you start a [...]
Posted on July 7th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, business | Comments Off
From Paul Graham’s “Hiring is Obsolete” (May 2005):
It’s hard to judge the young because (a) they change rapidly, (b) there is great variation between them, and (c) they’re individually inconsistent. That last one is a big problem. When you’re young, you occasionally say and do stupid things even when you’re smart. So if the algorithm [...]
Posted on July 7th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, business | Comments Off