5SF - 4/16/26
This is a really quick one, as I'm on the road.
Latest
5SF - 4/10/26
I spend a lot of time on my feet. I don't know why, but I don't think as well without going for at least a few miles a day. Unfortunately, most of modern life isn't centered on mobility. Kinda hard to make a living from walking.
5SF for 04/02/26
I finished rereading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance this week, and it remains a mandatory read over fifty years after it was published. There is very little Zen, very little motorcycle maintenance. What stands out is the discussion of Quality.
5SF for 3/27/26
Yesterday was Opening Day, and I am struck by the profound beauty of this occasion. Each year, just after the days surpass the nights, we begin this ritual anew...
5SF - 3/20/26
Five Songs! Friday!
5 Song Friday - 3/13/26
This week, I've been thinking a lot about self-interest. In any system containing entities with distinct, personalized needs or drive, an inherent tension arises between the efficiency of the overall system and the needs of each individual within it.
Five Songs
A new habit: Five Song Fridays. It's exactly what it sounds like. I'll try to share five songs. On Fridays!
Two Comparisons
Comparing some budgets and some books.
Neptune Problems vs. Vulcan Problems
This isn't about astrology, I promise.
My 2025 Reading Year in Review!
I managed to read 65 books this year. As an end-of-year victory lap, here's a few highlights, and a couple of suggested personal curricula. My full reading list for the year is all the way at the bottom, if you're here for that for some reason.
What values do you value?
On value collapse and the balance between metrics and gestalt.
Gregor Mendel's Fascinating Life
Here are a couple of interesting things about Gregor Mendel that I did not know, even though I got my B.S. in a building named after him!
Social Impact
Pastry, Hope, and Social Responsibility
Some takeaways from ChangeNOW 2025.
Academics
Encountering Fate as Viking Men and Women
Fate sits at the heart of the Nordic sagas, lurking beneath the surface of the text like the ships intentionally sunk at Roskilde. Unseen but absolutely essential to those in the know. Detractors of these works (perhaps students in their initial exposure to this category of literature), will complain that
Literature
What Genre is Utopia?
As the new management of Idiosyncrasy Booksellers, I must be cutthroat in my shelving schemes...
Literature
Dante and the Relational Nature of the Soul
The multidimensional audacity of Divina Commedia is well established. A Christo-classical epic, written in the vernacular, chockablock with timely political commentary woven into theological exploration. Dante does not leave a single color untouched on his palette...
Social Impact
What if your hose doesn't fit the hydrant?
A little before eleven in the morning on February 7th, 1904, fire alarms began to sound across Baltimore. For the next thirty hours, the Great Baltimore Fire scorched the city...
Literature
The Everyman’s Epic
History is written by the victors, but the literary canon is written by the audacious...
Literature
Conrad's Romanticism
Lord Jim is not just a rollicking adventure story. Underneath the majestic prose of rich nautical fiction, the book is a philosophical parable about the merits and pitfalls of living a romantic life...
Nonfiction
Baseball Tranquility
Baseball is a contradictory game. It inspires fervent devotion in some and a shockingly potent vitriol in others. As I began immersing myself in the game, many people asked why? Why follow such an old, slow, boring sport? Perception makes all the difference.
Literature
The Shift of the Cultural Battlefield and its Heroes
Leopold Bloom is a man struggling with the burdens of his time, just as his Homeric parallel fought the challenges of his own. As society developed from pre-Hellenic Greece through to turn-of-the-century Dublin, the burdens facing men evolved dramatically...
Literature
A Goddess of Two Sorts
Because Stephen is both protagonist and self-insert for Joyce himself, he must be considered as both poet and warrior, Homer and Telemachus...
Nonfiction
Cave-Dweller Construction
There are two types of cave dweller. There are the sages, the Bodhisattvas and hermits. Great masters with a tendency to run for the hills and remain underneath them, forcing their pupils to spelunk for wisdom...
Nonfiction
The Journey North But Also West
Oh, Canada. The second stage of this northwestern adventure required voyaging first north then west then south in an inverted fish-hook of a journey ending on an island in another country altogether. Destination: Vancouver Island...