A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein
You can’t teach a pig to sing. It’s a waste of time and it annoys the pig.
Use it up,
Wear it out,
Make do,
Or do without.
Retired Vice Admiral James Stockdale passed away yesterday, July 5, 2005. He was 81 years old. Most people know of Stockdale as Ross Perot’s running mate in the 1992 presidential election and his flubbed debate participation against Al Gore and Dan Quayle. I remember watching this debate, head in hands, upset that not only was Stockdale completely unprepared for the televised event, but that people would walk away not knowing anything of who this man was.
Vice Admiral Stockdale was an American hero of the finest order. Shot down over Vietnam in 1965, he was captured by the North Vietnamese, severely beaten, and placed in a POW prison for seven years. Most of that time he was in solitary confinement. He was routinely tortured. While a prisoner he devised a way to communicate with other prisoners of war by a series of taps on the wall. As the most senior officer in the camp he did his best to keep moral up among the others and to keep them from going insane from the torture. He drew upon the philosophy of the Stoics, which he had studied in graduate school at Stanford, to keep himself sane.
In Freakonomics, authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner turn a spotlight on to some touchy areas – abortion, crack dealers, parenting, the KKK, cheating by school teachers, guns in homes. They present a view that if you remove the lens of morality and how things “should be”, many phenomena can be explained through basic economic principles. I couldn’t agree more. Yet the book is in a word, lightweight. A little over 200 hundred pages and presented in large, easy-to-read print, Freakonomics can be read in a couple of hours. And if you understand anything about economics that you could pick up in a college survey class, you won’t be that surprised by their analysis. I can only think that the reason this book has been on the NYT best seller list is because most people don’t understand the basic tenets of economics.
If you like rolicking, picaresque novels, you will love Handling Sin. Written in the ’80s(?), it remains one of my favorites.
A mild mannered insurance agent is sedately approaching middle age, living out his comfortable life in a small No. Carolina town. He receives news that his vagabond father has passed away, but to receive his inheritance he has to track down his father’s trumpet, last seen in the possession of a young, attractive black woman who may or may not have been his father’s mistress.
The hero rounds up his S. Panza-like sidekick and off they go on a madcap quest across the South. After many hilarious adventures they also absorb a few life lessons. Can’t really describe many details without giving away a few surprises. So give it a try.