Lao Tzu

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pages: 395 words: 116,675

The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge by Matt Ridley

"World Economic Forum" Davos, adjacent possible, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, AltaVista, altcoin, An Inconvenient Truth, anthropic principle, anti-communist, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, bitcoin, blockchain, Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Broken windows theory, carbon tax, Columbian Exchange, computer age, Corn Laws, cosmological constant, cotton gin, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of DNA, Donald Davies, double helix, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Eben Moglen, Edward Glaeser, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Edward Snowden, endogenous growth, epigenetics, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, facts on the ground, fail fast, falling living standards, Ferguson, Missouri, financial deregulation, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, George Gilder, George Santayana, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, Greenspan put, Gregor Mendel, Gunnar Myrdal, Henri Poincaré, Higgs boson, hydraulic fracturing, imperial preference, income per capita, indoor plumbing, information security, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Japanese asset price bubble, Jeff Bezos, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, knowledge economy, land reform, Lao Tzu, long peace, low interest rates, Lyft, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, mobile money, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, Necker cube, obamacare, out of africa, packet switching, peer-to-peer, phenotype, Pierre-Simon Laplace, precautionary principle, price mechanism, profit motive, RAND corporation, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Feynman, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Satoshi Nakamoto, scientific management, Second Machine Age, sharing economy, smart contracts, South Sea Bubble, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stuart Kauffman, tacit knowledge, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, transaction costs, twin studies, uber lyft, women in the workforce

IEA On liberalism and evolution, Arnhart, Larry 2013. The Evolution of Darwinian Liberalism. Paper to the Mont Pelerin Society June 2013. On the decline of violence, Pinker, Steven 2011. The Better Angels of Our Nature. Penguin. On medieval violence, Tuchman, Barbara 1978. A Distant Mirror. Knopf. On Lao Tzu, Blacksburg, A. 2013. Taoism and Libertarianism – From Lao Tzu to Murray Rothbard. Thehumanecondition.com. On bourgeois values, McCloskey, Deirdre N. 2006. The Bourgeois Virtues. University of Chicago Press. On Pope Francis, Tupy, Marion 2013. Is the Pope Right About the World?. Atlantic Monthly 11 December 2013. On the common law, Hutchinson, Allan C. 2005.

Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Also Robert Higgs, Some basics of state domination and public submission. Blog.independent.org 27 April 2104. On Ferguson, Missouri, Paul, Rand. We must demilitarize the police. Time 14 August 2014. Balko, Radley 2013. Rise of the Warrior Cop. PublicAffairs. On Lao Tzu, Blacksburg, A. 2013. Taoism and Libertarianism – From Lao Tzu to Murray Rothbard. Thehumanecondition.com. Lord Acton’s letter to Mary Gladstone (24 April 1881), published in Letters of Lord Acton to Mary Gladstone (1913) p. 73. Michael Cloud quoted in Frisby, Dominic 2013. Life After the State. Unbound. On the Levellers, see ‘An arrow against all tyrants’ by Richard Overton, 12 October 1646, available at constitution.org.

With increasingly money-based interactions among strangers, people increasingly began to think of neighbours as potential trading partners rather than potential prey. Killing the shopkeeper makes no sense. So empathy, self-control and morality became second nature, though morality was always a double-edged sword, as likely to cause violence as to prevent it through most of history. Lao Tzu saw this twenty-six centuries ago: ‘The more prohibitions you have, the less virtuous people will be.’ Montesquieu’s phrase for the calming effect of trade on human violence, intolerance and enmity was ‘doux commerce’ – sweet commerce. And he has been amply vindicated in the centuries since. The richer and more market-oriented societies have become, the nicer people have behaved.


pages: 1,327 words: 360,897

Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism by Peter Marshall

agricultural Revolution, anti-communist, anti-globalists, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, classic study, clean water, collective bargaining, colonial rule, David Graeber, different worldview, do-ocracy, feminist movement, garden city movement, gentleman farmer, Great Leap Forward, Herbert Marcuse, hive mind, Howard Zinn, intentional community, invisible hand, laissez-faire capitalism, land reform, land tenure, Lao Tzu, Lewis Mumford, liberation theology, Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman, Mahatma Gandhi, means of production, military-industrial complex, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Murray Bookchin, Naomi Klein, open borders, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, plutocrats, post scarcity, profit motive, public intellectual, radical decentralization, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rewilding, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, sexual politics, the market place, union organizing, wage slave, washing machines reduced drudgery

Even so, they are members of the same clan, share the same ancestors and bear resemblances. They also sometimes form creative unions. I have followed in this study the example of Kropotkin who, in his famous article on anarchism for the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1910), traced the anarchist ‘tendency’ as far back as Lao Tzu in the ancient world.11 I am keen to establish the legitimate claims of an anarchist tradition since anarchism did not suddenly appear in the nineteenth century only when someone decided to call himself an anarchist. I would also like to uncover what Murray Bookchin has called a ‘legacy of freedom’ and to reconstruct a strand of libertarian thinking which has been covered or disguised by the dominant authoritarian culture in the past.12 I have primarily restricted myself to thinkers; poets like Shelley and novelists like Franz Kafka, B.

Although it has helped shape Chinese culture as much as Buddhism and Confucianism, Taoism by its very nature never became an official cult. It has remained a permanent strain in Chinese thought. Its roots lay in the popular culture at the dawn of Chinese civilization but it emerged in the sixth century BC as a remarkable combination of philosophy, religion, proto-science and magic. The principal exponent of Taoism is taken to be Lao Tzu, meaning ‘Old Philosopher’. His year of birth was some time between 600 and 300 BC. He was probably of a noble family in Honan province. He rejected his hereditary position as a noble and became a curator of the royal library at Loh. All his life he followed the path of silence – ‘The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao’, he taught.2 According to legend, when he was riding off into the desert to die, he was persuaded by a gatekeeper in northwestern China to write down his teaching for posterity.

All his life he followed the path of silence – ‘The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao’, he taught.2 According to legend, when he was riding off into the desert to die, he was persuaded by a gatekeeper in northwestern China to write down his teaching for posterity. It seems likely that the Tao te ching (The Way and its Power) which is attributed to Lao Tzu, was written in the third century BC. It has been called by the Chinese scholar Joseph Needham ‘without exception the most profound and beautiful work in the Chinese language’.3 The text consists of eighty-one short chapters in poetic form. Although often very obscure and paradoxical, it offers not only the earliest but also the most eloquent exposition of anarchist principles.


pages: 419 words: 124,522

Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron

Ayatollah Khomeini, British Empire, Day of the Dead, dematerialisation, Deng Xiaoping, failed state, government statistician, Great Leap Forward, invention of gunpowder, invention of the telescope, Lao Tzu, Pax Mongolica, South China Sea, trade route

They join the sect to escape the law. They make some kind of living, then disappear again.’ So the vision of Lao-tzu has sunk to this. Around its unworldly philosophy–the Tao was both spiritual path and transcendent knowledge–it had always been rife with magic and outlandish deities, and was obsessed with immortality. Even here a fortune-teller murmurs over an astrological chart, and the monks keep a hexagonal stone–when struck, it sings like metal–which the goddess Nuwa gave to Lao-tzu while she mended the sky. Beneath the temple of the Queen Mother of the West, who keeps the peaches of immortality in the Kun Lun mountains where I was going, I stare up at a giantess in painted plaster.

Worn steps climb and descend through circular moon-gates to grey-walled terraces. The air is awash with incense. There is a whiff of dereliction. The roofs are sloughing their tiles, and rubbish drifts along the paths. Inside the halls preside monstrous fairytale divinities. They repel all thought, all meaning. Lao-tzu himself, ‘Old Sage’–in legend the sixth-century BC founder of Taoism–sits huge and high-coloured behind his altar, a white waterfall of beard forking to his waist. He may have been less a man, in fact, than the name for a compendium of wisdom: a mystic pantheism, the faith of the recluse. But his way became lost.

He starts to wonder aloud what hallmark identifies this religion–in Christianity it is love; in Islam, perhaps, justice–then his brows curdle and he does not guess. What is it, then, to a secular countryman of Confucius? I wonder. The Queen Mother’s neutered gaze fixes us through her curtained canopy. At last he says: ‘Integrity.’ It was for lack of integrity in the world, it seems, that Lao-tzu–if he existed–mounted a black buffalo and prepared to shake the dust of China from his hoofs. The corruption of court life, it is said, had sickened him. Here in the Pass to the West, two and a half millennia ago, a watchman saw him coming–a moon-gate in grey brick enshrines the view–and persuaded him to stop.


pages: 568 words: 151,268

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore

Boeing 747, clean water, Lao Tzu

“Grieve,” Balthasar said, “but consider also the words of the master Lao-tzu: ‘Weapons are instruments of misfortune. Those who are violent do not die naturally.’” “Ahmad,” Joshua said, “what will happen to the guard, the one I…” “He is no good to me anymore,” said Ahmad. “A shame too, he was the best bowman of the lot. I’ll leave him in Kabul. He’s asked me to give his pay to his wife in Antioch and his other wife in Dunhuang. I suppose he will become a beggar.” “Who is Lao-tzu?” I asked. “You will have plenty of time to learn of master Lao-tzu,” said Balthasar. “Tomorrow I will assign you a tutor to teach you qi, the path of the Dragon’s Breath, but for now, eat and rest.”

“Look at this, do you see, Biff? When asked, the master Confucius says, ‘Recompense injury with justice, and kindness with kindness.’ Yet Lao-tzu says, ‘Recompense injury with kindness.’ Don’t you see?” Joshua would dance around, scrolls trailing out behind him, hoping that somehow I would share his enthusiasm for the ancient texts. And I tried. I really did. “No, I don’t see. The Torah says, ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,’ that is justice.” “Exactly,” said Joshua. “I think Lao-tzu is correct. Kindness precedes justice. As long as you seek justice by punishment you can only cause more suffering. How can that be right?

The gatehouses alone were each as big as one of Herod’s palaces, and soldiers rode horses atop the wall, patrolling far into the distance. We were a good league back from the gate and the line didn’t seem to be moving. “This is going to take all day,” I said. “Why would they build such a thing? If you can build a wall like this then you ought to be able to raise an army large enough to defeat any invaders.” “Lao-tzu built this wall,” Joshua said. “The old master who wrote the Tao? I don’t think so.” “What does the Tao value above all else?” “Compassion? Those other two jewel things?” “No, inaction. Contemplation. Steadiness. Conservatism. A wall is the defense of a country that values inaction. But a wall imprisons the people of a country as much as it protects them.


pages: 579 words: 183,063

Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice From the Best in the World by Timothy Ferriss

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, A Pattern Language, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, Bayesian statistics, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, blockchain, Brownian motion, Buckminster Fuller, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, Colonization of Mars, corporate social responsibility, cryptocurrency, David Heinemeier Hansson, decentralized internet, dematerialisation, do well by doing good, do what you love, don't be evil, double helix, driverless car, effective altruism, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, family office, fear of failure, Gary Taubes, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, global macro, Google Hangouts, Gödel, Escher, Bach, haute couture, helicopter parent, high net worth, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, income inequality, index fund, information security, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Kevin Kelly, Lao Tzu, Larry Ellison, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Marshall McLuhan, Max Levchin, Mikhail Gorbachev, minimum viable product, move fast and break things, Mr. Money Mustache, Naomi Klein, Neal Stephenson, Nick Bostrom, non-fiction novel, Peter Thiel, power law, profit motive, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ray Kurzweil, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart contracts, Snapchat, Snow Crash, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, sunk-cost fallacy, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, TED Talk, Tesla Model S, too big to fail, Turing machine, uber lyft, Vitalik Buterin, W. E. B. Du Bois, web application, Whole Earth Catalog, Y Combinator

It’s easy to point fingers at “Wall Street” without realizing our own complicity in the problem or in finding a way to bring it under control. What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the “real world”? What advice should they ignore? “Let life ripen and then fall. Will is not the way at all.”—Lao Tzu, from The Way of Life According to Lao Tzu We equate being smart and being driven as the ways to get ahead. But sometimes, an attitude of alert watchfulness is far wiser and more effective. Learning to follow your nose, pulling on threads of curiosity or interest, may take you places that being driven will never lead you to.

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. He introduces the insights that he learned from surviving imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp. He outlines methods to discover deep meaning and purpose in life. The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu. His 81 Zen teachings are the foundation for the religion of Taoism, aimed at understanding “the way of virtues.” Lao Tzu’s depth of teachings are complicated to decode and provide foundations for wisdom. Mind Gym by Gary Mack is a book that strips down the esoteric nature of applied sport psychology. Gary introduces a variety of mindset training principles and makes them extremely easy to understand and practice.

One book I’ve returned to throughout my life, so much so that it’s now filled with underlining and notes, is The Doctor and the Soul by Viktor E. Frankl. A psychiatrist who emerged alive after six years in a concentration camp, Frankl’s work is based on our search for meaning in life as a very personal task. This book helped me embrace hard choices and keep imagining a better future. The Tao of Power by Lao Tzu [a translation of the Tao Te Ching by R. L. Wing] helped me see the relationship between “enough,” health, and wealth. It sent me on a 30-year journey to find enough food, exercise, and rest; to learn how to live between too much and too little to create a youthful and happier existence. And from Letters from a Stoic by Seneca, I learned self-mastery: to constantly improve myself so I would be ready for any possible disaster.


pages: 669 words: 210,153

Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers by Timothy Ferriss

Abraham Maslow, Adam Curtis, Airbnb, Alexander Shulgin, Alvin Toffler, An Inconvenient Truth, artificial general intelligence, asset allocation, Atul Gawande, augmented reality, back-to-the-land, Ben Horowitz, Bernie Madoff, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Beryl Markham, billion-dollar mistake, Black Swan, Blue Bottle Coffee, Blue Ocean Strategy, blue-collar work, book value, Boris Johnson, Buckminster Fuller, business process, Cal Newport, call centre, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, Carl Icahn, Charles Lindbergh, Checklist Manifesto, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, Colonization of Mars, Columbine, commoditize, correlation does not imply causation, CRISPR, David Brooks, David Graeber, deal flow, digital rights, diversification, diversified portfolio, do what you love, Donald Trump, effective altruism, Elon Musk, fail fast, fake it until you make it, fault tolerance, fear of failure, Firefox, follow your passion, fulfillment center, future of work, Future Shock, Girl Boss, Google X / Alphabet X, growth hacking, Howard Zinn, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Lao Tzu, lateral thinking, life extension, lifelogging, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mason jar, Menlo Park, microdosing, Mikhail Gorbachev, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Neal Stephenson, Nelson Mandela, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, off-the-grid, optical character recognition, PageRank, Paradox of Choice, passive income, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, phenotype, PIHKAL and TIHKAL, post scarcity, post-work, power law, premature optimization, private spaceflight, QWERTY keyboard, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, rent-seeking, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, selection bias, sharing economy, side project, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, Skype, Snapchat, Snow Crash, social graph, software as a service, software is eating the world, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, superintelligent machines, TED Talk, Tesla Model S, The future is already here, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas L Friedman, traumatic brain injury, trolley problem, vertical integration, Wall-E, Washington Consensus, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

This book will help you to develop all three. I created Tools of Titans because it’s the book that I’ve wanted my entire life. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Pura vida, Tim Ferriss Paris, France 1 Healthy “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” —Lao Tzu “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” —J. Krishnamurti “In the end, winning is sleeping better.” —Jodie Foster “I’m not the strongest. I’m not the fastest. But I’m really good at suffering.” Spirit animal: Carp * * * Amelia Boone Amelia Boone (TW: @ameliaboone, ameliabooneracing.com) has been called “the Michael Jordan of obstacle course racing” (OCR) and is widely considered the world’s most decorated obstacle racer.

✸ Most-gifted or recommended books The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran: “I love really condensed, shakti [empowerment]-filled, energy-filled statements—something that you can read in a few minutes or you can read for your whole life.” [TF: This little tome is fewer than 100 pages long. Spend the extra $5 for the version with the author’s illustrations.] Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu: Jason travels with this book. “Oftentimes before meditation, I’ll just open it randomly to a page. I read about something and then just have that be what I steep in as I sit.” (See Rick Rubin, page 502, and Joshua Waitzkin, page 577.) When I asked Jason via text which translation he liked, he joked “Tao de Chinga tu madre” (ah, my friends), and then specified: Stephen Mitchell

He said he put these books out so that the government couldn’t stop people from experimenting. Personally, I prefer the whole-plant sources that have been used for millennia. What Does It Feel Like? “If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.” —Lao Tzu Most of us have had the experience of sitting at a computer with 20 open tabs. How did this happen? Didn’t I just clean this up last week? Then you get a warning of “Startup disk almost full.” So you delete a few videos as damage control, but . . . why is everything still running so damned slowly?


Designing the Mind: The Principles of Psychitecture by Designing the Mind, Ryan A Bush

Abraham Maslow, adjacent possible, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, augmented reality, butterfly effect, carbon footprint, cognitive bias, cognitive load, correlation does not imply causation, data science, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, drug harm reduction, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, fundamental attribution error, hedonic treadmill, hindsight bias, impulse control, Kevin Kelly, Lao Tzu, lifelogging, longitudinal study, loss aversion, meta-analysis, Own Your Own Home, pattern recognition, price anchoring, randomized controlled trial, Silicon Valley, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steven Pinker, systems thinking, Walter Mischel

But my most relevant credential is a lifelong appetite for introspective investigation, ravenous reading, and obsessive self-optimization. I don’t tend to focus on myself in this book because I find the ancient teachers, practical philosophers, and cognitive scientists who have inspired it to be far more interesting. My philosophical mentors have included Lao Tzu, Siddhārtha Gautama, Aristotle, Epicurus, Diogenes, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca, Michel de Montaigne, Rene Descartes, Friedrich Nietzsche, Abraham Maslow, Victor Frankl, Aaron Beck, and many more. My contemporary influences are too many to name here, but you will be introduced to them along the way.

Simply adding the prompt “consider the opposite” to the default algorithm has been found to counter anchoring, overconfidence, and hindsight bias.21 Some biases can be mitigated or eliminated by finding outside factual information, so take every opportunity to distance yourself and put your reasoning and beliefs to objective tests to remove as much human bias from the equation as possible. Not-knowing is true knowledge. Presuming to know is a disease. First realize that you are sick; Then you can move toward health. - Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching Understanding Motivated Bias Humans were not directly selected to process information, nor to store it, learn it, attend to it—nor even, in fact, to think. - Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology People who have learned of these biases and the methods for countering them often refer to themselves as critical thinkers, freethinkers, or rationalists.

But we should not strive to satisfy those which are unnatural or unnecessary, like extravagant foods, sex, power, or Instagram followers (his words, not mine).5 It is less extreme than the Buddha’s suggestion, and may strike us as more realistic, and we see this minimalistic approach to desire in countless other thinkers. The sage desires to have few desires. - Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching [I] try always to master myself rather than fortune, and to change my desires rather than the order of the world. - René Descartes, Discourse on Method Freedom is not achieved by satisfying desire, but by eliminating it. - Epictetus, Discourses The Stoic notion that we should not desire what we cannot control is also relevant here.


pages: 218 words: 44,364

The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman, Rod A. Beckstrom

Atahualpa, barriers to entry, Burning Man, creative destruction, disintermediation, experimental economics, Firefox, Francisco Pizarro, jimmy wales, Kibera, Lao Tzu, Network effects, peer-to-peer, pez dispenser, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Skype, The Wisdom of Crowds, union organizing

Deborah is now busy starting circles, inviting participants from all levels of the company, and empowering them to take on important corporate decisions. Keeping to her catalyst roots, Deborah refuses to be seen as the head. You'd be hard-pressed, in fact, to find her name on Goodwill's Web site. She knows that, in the words of the ancient Chi- THE HIDDEN POWER OF THE CATALYST nese philosopher Lao-tzu, "a leader is best when people barely know that he exists; not so good when people obey and acclaim him; worst when they despise him." Not all catalysts are hidden. Auren Hoffman, in fact, is hard to miss. It's easy enough to find him on his Web site, and Auren isn't shy about getting his name out there.

Instead of being the knowit-all expert, the humanist clinician strove to allow clients to take an active role in their lives and become their own experts. In A Way of Being (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980), Rogers delineates his "person-centered" approach and discusses the importance of being genuine and connecting with others on a deep level. Lao-tzu was a legendary ancient Chinese philosopher who wrote Tao Te Ching. He is credited with being a founder of Taoism. SOURCES CHAPTER 6: Taking On Decentralization Ingrid Newkirk's book about ALF activists is Free the Animals: The Amazing Story of the Animal Liberation Front (New York: Lantern Books, 2000).

., 185-89, 191,201 Geronimo, 20 gift economy, 79, 90, 204 Goodwill Industries, 112, 114-15, 126, 130-31 Google, 17172, 174, 195-96 Gorog, Chris, 24 grandmother cell, theory of, 3-5 Grokster, 12-15, 22, 24, 26, 43 GungHo, 188 H N; Harvard University, 163—64, 166 Hemming, Nikki, 60 Hochschild, Adam, 85 Hoffman, Auren, 109-10, 115-18, 120-21, 122, 123, 129, 206 Hresko, Jamie, 188 hybrid organizations, 161-78, 181-96, 207-8 appreciative inquiry in, 177—78 customer experience decentralized by, 161-74 I IBM, 72, 171, 184 open-source software supported by, 172-74 ideology, 94-96, 102-5, 113, 114, 118, 124, 129,207 of AA, 95, 96, 152,206 of ALF, 139, 140.206 of al Qaeda, 140 of Apaches, 95, 96, 149 backlash against attempted influencing of, 149—51 of eMule, 95-96 of GM, 184 of P2P downloaders, 149-51 strategic alteration of, 144—51, 156, 206 Incas, 17, 18, 19 Internet: browsers for, 69—72 as decentralized platform, 97—98 estimated user numbers of, 12, 51 flexibility of, 50 French investors' demand for president of, 31-34, 35, 45, 46,69, 142, 162,201 survival ability of, 48-49 virtual circles on, 88-89, 91 Intuit, 91, 170-71, 174, 184, 204 iTunes, 193, 194-95 J Jacobi, Leor, 99-100 Jamii Bora Trust, 144-46, 149, 206 Japan, 184-89 Joachim, Joseph, 42-43, 44-45 Kashmir, relief efforts in, 148—49 Katrina, Hurricane, 39 Kazaa, 22-25, 26, 41, 60, 61, 154, 205 Kazaa Lite (K+), 24, 41 Kendall, David, 12 Kenya, 143 al Qaeda in, 140-41, 146, 155 Jamii Bora Trust in, 144-46, 149, 206 Labor Day hurricane of 1935, 37-39,49,52, 155,204 Lao-tzu, 114-15 Lettvin, Jerry, 5 Linckia, 35 Linux, 72, 172-73 Lockley, Walt, 75 McNealy, Scott, 173, 174 Martin, David, 119-20, 126, 206 Mary Poppins, 93 Mendelssohn, Felix, 42 MGM, 11-15, 16, 23, 24, 26, 27, 34, 45, 46, 201 Microsoft, 65, 71-72, 94, 172 Mitchard, Jacquelyn, 169-70 Montezuma II, 16-17, 20, 22, 23 Moody, Glyn, 70-71 movie industry, 149-51 Munro, Ingrid, 145 music industry, 41-45, 60 economies of scale in, 192 performing musicians in, 42—43, 44-45, 19192 progression of, 42—45 sweet spot in, 191-95 see also record industry music piracy, 5—6, 17, 22—27', 192-94 lawsuits against, 11—15, 22, 23-24,26,60, 194 revenues lost by, 13, 25, 26, 45, 192 see also P2P (peer-topeer) services Nant'ans, Apache, 20, 21, 22, 24,35,37,46,47,71, 91,92,99, 151-52, 205 Napster, 6, 13-14, 22, 24, 26, 41, 43,45, 154, 162, 192, 194, 205 Napster II, 24, 26 Nature, 74 Navajos, 151 NCSA Project, 69-72 Netcom, 31-34 Netscape, 69, 71-72, 162 network effect, 166-67, 202-3 Nevins, Tom, 15-21, 34, 35, 37, 110, 151,152 Newkirk, Ingrid, 138-39 Newmark, Craig, 6, 64-69, 92, 94, 202 newspaper industry, 68 New Times Corporation, 68 New United Motors Manufacturing, Inc.


pages: 376 words: 91,192

Hemingway Didn't Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations by Garson O'Toole

Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, Anton Chekhov, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, en.wikipedia.org, Honoré de Balzac, Internet Archive, Lao Tzu, Mahatma Gandhi, New Journalism, ought to be enough for anybody, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, Steve Jobs, Wayback Machine, Yogi Berra

Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. A 1976 public policy book, Africa: From Mystery to Maze, linked a version to Lao-tzu and Mao Tse-tung.13 To paraphrase Lao-tse and Chairman Mao, can the American people understand that it is better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish? Hero’s finding that the American public strongly supports technical assistance to transfer American know-how suggests that they can. In 1986 an article about bodywork in Yoga Journal ascribed the saying to Lao-tzu.14 Lao Tsu said that if you give a hungry man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.

Bbaylarry, “OTP: Joke—If You Love Something,” alt.support.arthritis Usenet newsgroup, August 23, 1999. Accessed in Google Groups, http://goo.gl/naC3L0. PROVERBIAL WISDOM The origin of this thought is highly contested. QI has recorded claims that the adage is Chinese, Native American, Italian, Indian, or biblical. It has been variously linked directly, if falsely, to Lao-tzu, Mao Tse-tung, and Maimonides. The general principle of alleviating poverty by facilitating self-sufficiency has a long history. The twelfth-century philosopher Maimonides wrote about eight degrees in the duty of charity. In 1826 an explication of the eighth degree was published in a journal called the Religious Intelligencer.1 Lastly, the eighth and the most meritorious of all, is to anticipate charity by preventing poverty, namely, to assist the reduced brother, either by a considerable gift or loan of money, or by teaching him a trade, or by putting him in the way of business, so that he may earn an honest livelihood and not be forced to the dreadful alternative of holding up his hand for charity . . .

., 2 Keyes, Ralph, 29, 38, 46, 88, 98, 101, 123, 163, 207, 344 Keynes, John Maynard, 355 Kierkegaard, Søren, 146 Kilfenora, Dean of, 298 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 33, 35–36, 123 Kohn, Jacob, 35 Krivkovich, Peter G., 132 Kronman, Harry, 92 Kuhnemann, Jorg K., 84 Lair, Jess, 92–93, 95 Lamb, William, 243 Lambert-Moore, Janet, 104 Lao-tse, 100, 329–30 Lao-tzu, 97, 100–1 Laundy, Philip, 209 Lee, Stan, 241, 246 Leland, John, 320 Lenin, Vladimir, 332 Lennon, John, 146, 149, 252, 255–66, 272, 274 Lessing, Doris, 304 Limehouse, Ezekiel, 86 Lincoln, Abraham, 202–6, 311, 312, 351–52, 354, 355–56 Loane, M., 98 Locke, John, 292, 293–4 Loevinger, Lee, 346–47 Lowe, Janet, 52 Lumgair, Simeon, 189 Luther, Martin, 294 MacArthur, Arthur, 258 MacDonald, Don, 174 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 172, 174 Mackay, Harvey, 105 Maclaren, Ian, 74–77 Madson, John, 85 Magalaner, Marvin, 20 Maggio, Rosalie, 29 Maimonides, 97 Majors, Lee, 94 Mann, T., 332 Manton, Thomas, 283 Manzarek, Ray, 8, 155–56 Mao Tse-tung, 97, 100–1 Marlowe, Christopher, 126, 128–29 Martin, Steve, 277–79 Marx, Richard, 320 Maslow, Abraham, 346, 347, 349 Mason, M.


pages: 315 words: 99,065

The Virgin Way: Everything I Know About Leadership by Richard Branson

barriers to entry, Boeing 747, call centre, carbon footprint, Celtic Tiger, clean water, collective bargaining, Costa Concordia, do what you love, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, flag carrier, friendly fire, glass ceiling, illegal immigration, index card, inflight wifi, Lao Tzu, legacy carrier, low cost airline, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, Nelson Mandela, Northern Rock, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Tesla Model S, Tony Fadell, trade route, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, work culture , zero-sum game

No 118 Drake, Francis 293 Drolet, Phil 289 Drucker, Peter 127, 227, 240 Duende 48, 259 Duffell, Ian 182 Durex 55 easyJet 36 Ecomagination initiative 354 see also General Electric Econet Wireless Group 360 Edwards, Jamal 280–1 Eisenhower, Dwight D. 155 Elders, The 37–38, 118, 291 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 202 Enron 102 entrepreneurs 127–31 and established businesses 285–6 female 284–5 government help for 281–3 mentoring of 282, 283, 287–91 and ‘next big thing’ 369 nurturing of, early 276–9 and Pioneers programme 280–2 and social enterprises 360–4 and Virgin StartUp 283 VMP survey of 281–2 see also Branson Centres of Entrepreneurship Ertegun, Ahmet 135 Europe in Summer Café 275 ‘Everybody Better Off’ (EBO) 188, 190 see also Virgin Money ex-prisoners 23–4 Exorcist, The 135 Facebook 131 Fadell, Tony 365, 366–7, 368–70 Fair Labor Standards Act 220 Faris, Ron 111–12, 171, 173 Fast Company 350 Financial Times 21 FirstGroup 335–40 Fiver Challenge 277–8 focus groups, informal 54 Food Basket Farm 275 Fortune 285 Founders Forum For Good 363 Fox, Nick 337 Fox, Robyn 275–6 Friedkin, William 135 Frost, David 255 G-Tech 31 Gabriel, Peter 323 Gadhia, Jayne-Anne 186, 188, 257–8, 285 Gandhi, Mohandas (Mahatma) 2 Gardner, Roy 200 Gates, Bill 195 General Dynamics 285 General Electric 353, 354 General Motors 285 Genesis 323 Giving Pledge 195 Global Entrepreneurship Week 279 Global Impact Challenge 361–3 Godfrey, Brett 72, 141, 178, 236, 243–5 GoGo 312 Goizueta, Roberto 60–1 Golden Bull Award 106 Goldman Sachs 330–1 Goodwin, Jonnie 363 Google 130–1, 137, 138, 198–9, 288, 312 April Fool stunts by 268–9 Global Impact Challenge of 361–3 and Nest 369 and Project Oxygen 214 Google Maps 310–11 Griffiths, Martin 338 Hail Merry Seasoned Nut Blend 286 Haji-Ioannou, Stelios 36–7 Happiness Advantage, The (Achor) 259–60 Harvard Business Review 322 Hastings, Reed 56, 57–8 Helen (RB’s assistant) 338 Hemingway, Ernest 86, 104 Herwald, Kurt 231 hiring: bartender who became airport manager 250–1 candidates from straitjacketed environment 210–12 and capability vs expertise 203–4 and character 202–3 cleaner who became station manager 249–50 and CV 203 and first impressions 204–5 as number-one priority 197–200 and promoting from within 205–6, 212 and retaining staff 213–14 HIV 55 HMV 181 Hoare, David 237–8 Hoberman, Brent 363 Holly Baking Company’s Chocolate Chip Cookies 286 home working 221–3 Hope, Allie 62–3 Horton, Willie 301 Howard, Anthony 90–1 HP 312 Huffington, Arianna 357, 358, 359 Huffington Post 357, 359 Hyundai 174–5 I Love Lucy 214 IBM 285 Immelt, Jeffrey 354 ‘Insights into Organization’ 97 Intel 288 iPad 149 iPhone 149, 310, 366, 371 iPod 127, 262, 366, 368, 371 Isaacson, Walter 323 iTunes 126, 169, 182, 262, 315 Jagger, Mick 97 JBL 311–12 jetBlue 222 Jobs 365 Jobs, Steve 3, 68, 126, 130, 137, 148, 191, 262, 288, 365–8, 370 and collaboration 324 on creativity 323–4 movie about 365–6 Jones, Kelly 98 Jones, Kenton ‘Keny’ 208–9 Jones, Leesa 208–9 Junior Achievement (JA) 277, 278 Just In Time (JIT) 327 Kasbah Kamadot 209 Keep it simple, stupid (KISS) 80, 98–9 Kelleher, Herb 229, 231–4, 239 Keller, Helen 180 Kennedy, John F. 32 Kerby, Chuck 350 Kia 174–5 Kiam, Victor 64 King, Lord 42, 301 KISS (Keep it simple, stupid) 80, 98–9 Kodak 124–6 Krave Turkey Jerky 286 Kreeger, Craig 76–7 Laker Airways 200, 297–300 Laker, Freddie 200, 233, 287, 289, 297–300, 305–6 Lao Tzu 117 le Carré, John 5, 30 leadership: and accessibility 47–51 akin to bringing up children 26–7 and culture 228–9; see also culture and decisions, see decisions defined and discussed 117–30 and delegation 124, 195, 198, 199–200 and entrepreneurs 127–31 Lao Tzu’s take on 117 listening as ‘bum rap’ in 31 and ‘next big thing’ 369 and oratory 31–2 and passion, see passion and simplicity 79 and today’s teenagers 276 unexpected provenance of 13 Virgin research to define 43–7, 191 and women 284–5 Leal, Raul 63–4 Leica 125, 311 Lennon, John 5 Leonardo da Vinci 178–9 Liberty Global 162 Light Brigade, Charge of 295 light bulbs, low-energy 349–53 listening: and accessibility 47–51 and anagrams 30 interrupting as opposed to 39–40 and leadership, Virgin companies’ views on 45–6 merely hearing is not 33 notable practitioners of 37–8 and note-taking 5, 30–1, 33–7 and reading between the lines 41–2 and unspoken word 40–1 Lockheed Martin 285, 311 London Marathon 322 Lone Ranger 293 M-Pesa 354 McCall, Patrick 337 McCallum, Gordon 160, 161 McCue, Mike 365 McDonald’s 147 Machel, Graça 117 McKinsey & Co. 96–7 McLaughlin, Patrick 338, 339–40 Magnuss Ltd 355 Malaysia Airlines 342–3 Manchester United FC 258 Mandela, Nelson 37–8 Markkula, Mike 288 Masiyiwa, Strive 360 Masson, Margaret 344 Mates condoms 56 Maxwell, Gavin 85 Mayer, Marissa 107, 222, 285 biography of 307 mentoring 282, 283, 287–91 Microsoft 310, 315 mission statements 101–14 B Team’s 358 brevity of 105–6 Bristol-Myers’s 106–7 Enron’s 102 and Golden Bull Award 106 Virgin Active’s 108 Yahoo!’

Maybe it’s a throwback to my old school motto or something, but I have always thought that if the Virgin Group were ever to adopt such a motto, then something along the lines of ‘Ipsum Sine Timore, Consectetur’ would look incredibly impressive on a scroll right below our familiar red Virgin logo. Loosely translated from the Latin this means ‘Screw It, Let’s Do It’ and, as mission statements go, that’s about as real as it gets! PART TWO Chapter 6 DEFINING LEADERSHIP And its multiple myths ‘Leadership is the ability to hide your panic from others.’ Lao Tzu (sixth-century Chinese philosopher) Based on the above, it seems that some key leadership skills haven’t changed much at all in fifteen centuries. I can definitely relate to this one but in the early days of Virgin, at least, I might have been more specific and tweaked it to read, ‘Leadership is the ability to hide one’s panic from your bank manager!’

I can definitely relate to this one but in the early days of Virgin, at least, I might have been more specific and tweaked it to read, ‘Leadership is the ability to hide one’s panic from your bank manager!’ Something I apparently failed to achieve immediately after the launch of Virgin Atlantic when, fearing we were getting in way over our heads, Coutts Bank pulled the plug on our account. Needless to say we quickly found other sources of more imaginative funding, but Lao Tzu would presumably have been less than impressed with my performance. ‘THE ANSWER’S YES. NOW WHAT WAS THE QUESTION?’ In the early days of Virgin, one of our people nicknamed me ‘Dr Yes’. It was a friendly (I hope) dig at my perpetual eagerness to go along with trying new ideas. Only I knew that in part it might also have something to do with my inherent dislike of confrontation.


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A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William Braxton Irvine

classic study, Columbine, fear of failure, hedonic treadmill, Lao Tzu

Furthermore, we should remember that one person’s being richer than another does not mean that the first person is better than the other.19 Likewise, we should keep in mind Seneca’s comment to Lucilius that “the man who adapts himself to his slender means and makes himself wealthy on a little sum, is the truly rich man.”20 (The Stoics, by the way, are not alone in making this observation. On the other side of the globe, for example, Lao Tzu observed that “he who knows contentment is rich.”)21 Ev e n t h o u g h s h e d o e s n ’ t pursue wealth, a Stoic might nevertheless acquire it. A Stoic will, after all, do what she can to make herself useful to her fellow humans. And thanks to her practice of Stoicism, she will be self-disciplined and single-minded, traits that will help her accomplish the tasks she sets for herself.

Seneca, Ad Lucilium, XC.19. Notes to Pages 178–200 293 14. Musonius, Lectures, 20.5, 20.7. 15. Seneca, Ad Lucilium, XC.16. 16. Seneca, “On Tranquillity,” VIII.9, IX.2–3. 17. Seneca, Ad Lucilium, V.5. 18. Epictetus, Handbook, 33, 39. 19. Epictetus, Handbook, 24, 44. 20. Seneca, Ad Lucilium, CVIII.11. 21. Lao Tzu, XXXIII. 22. Seneca, Ad Lucilium, V.5. 23. Seneca, “On the Happy Life,” XXIII.1, XX.3, XXVI.1. 24. Carus, 72–74. Sixteen 1. Tacitus, 16.21. 2. Epictetus, “Discourses,” I.i.31–32. 3. Seneca, “To Helvia,” V.6, VI.1, VI.4. 4. Seneca, “To Helvia,” VIII.3, XI.5. 5. Musonius, Lectures, 9.10. 6.

McAdam Jr. and George Milne. New York: Pantheon, 1963. Julius Capitolinus. “Marcus Antoninus: The Philosopher.” In Scriptores Historiae Augustae. Vol. 1. Translated by David Magie. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1921. Kekes, John. Moral Wisdom and Good Lives. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995. Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching. Translated by D. C. Lau. New York: Penguin, 1963. Lecky, William Edward Hartpole. History of European Morals: From Augustus to Charlemagne. New York: George Braziller, 1955. Works Cited 299 Long, A. A. Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002.


pages: 789 words: 207,744

The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning by Jeremy Lent

Admiral Zheng, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, Atahualpa, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, complexity theory, conceptual framework, dematerialisation, demographic transition, different worldview, Doomsday Book, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, failed state, Firefox, Ford Model T, Francisco Pizarro, Garrett Hardin, Georg Cantor, Great Leap Forward, Hans Moravec, happiness index / gross national happiness, hedonic treadmill, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invention of gunpowder, invention of writing, Isaac Newton, Jevons paradox, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johannes Kepler, language acquisition, Lao Tzu, Law of Accelerating Returns, mandelbrot fractal, mass immigration, megacity, Metcalfe's law, Mikhail Gorbachev, move 37, Neil Armstrong, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, peak oil, Pierre-Simon Laplace, Plato's cave, QWERTY keyboard, Ray Kurzweil, Robert Solow, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, scientific management, Scientific racism, scientific worldview, seminal paper, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, social intelligence, South China Sea, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, Stuart Kauffman, synthetic biology, systems thinking, technological singularity, the scientific method, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, theory of mind, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Tragedy of the Commons, Turing test, ultimatum game, urban sprawl, Vernor Vinge, wikimedia commons

The Greek transformation was unique, but it can be understood best as a magnificent flowering of branches of thought that in fact sprouted from earlier traditions. It was also not the only foundational system of thought to emerge during the middle of the first millennium BCE. In the few centuries from roughly 750 to 350 BCE, the other great cultural edifices that structure our world were also being formed. In China, Confucius and Lao-Tzu left their legacy. In India, ancient Vedic traditions were crystallizing, while the Buddha offered revolutionary new ways of thinking about one's life. In Israel, Hebrew prophets were compiling the Old Testament. Philosopher Karl Jaspers was so struck by these contemporaneous breakthroughs that he called this period the Axial Age: these systems of thought can be seen as the axis, or pivot, from which modern structures of cognition ultimately derive.

The word tao literally means “way” or “path,” and the idea of the Tao (pronounced “dao” and often spelled like that) is as central to Chinese thought as qi or yin and yang.24 The Taoist school of thought in ancient China was dedicated to understanding this pathway and learning how to live one's life according to it. The Tao Te Ching, second only to the Bible as the most translated book in history, was its foundational text. Legend has it that it was written by Lao-Tzu (whose name literally means “old master”), but it more likely represents the collective wisdom of an ancient tradition dating back into the mists of time, finally captured in written form during the third century BCE.25 In approaching the Tao Te Ching, it's helpful to look more closely at its title.

On the other hand, for those with little capacity they are different. Enlightenment and illusion depends solely on the capacity of man and not on the difference of teaching.” The public shared this eclectic appreciation of religious wisdom. Even today, in a typical Taoist temple, along with a central image of Lao-tzu, you might find images of a Christian saint, a Confucian sage, and the Buddha, among other deities.35 Buddhism gradually spread into China from India, reaching its zenith during the Tang dynasty (618–907), when it became an integral part of the Chinese cultural and political system. Toward the end of the Tang dynasty, a backlash occurred.


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The World of Caffeine: The Science and Culture of the World's Most Popular Drug by Bennett Alan Weinberg, Bonnie K. Bealer

British Empire, clean water, confounding variable, easy for humans, difficult for computers, Edmond Halley, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, gentrification, Haight Ashbury, Honoré de Balzac, Isaac Newton, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Lao Tzu, placebo effect, Plato's cave, spice trade, trade route, traveling salesman

Although the varying components of this potion included botanicals such as ginseng and mushrooms, and elements such as gold and mercury (lethal metals that were also a favored part of humoral treatments through at least the eighteenth century in the West), in every Taoist recipe tea, perhaps because the stimulating effects of caffeine conferred feelings of strength and power, invariably topped the list of ingredients in the brew. The Chinese Tea Ceremony: A Confluence of Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian Streams Lao Tzu and his followers regarded tea as a natural agent that, properly used, could help beneficially transform the individual human organism and, as such, was a tool for the advancement of personal salvation. Confucius, who lived at about the same time as Lao Tzu, saw in the ceremonial use of tea a powerful reinforcement of the conventionalized relationships indispensable to an ethical society. Confucius ennobled the ancient Chinese li, or “ritual etiquette,” into a moral imperative.

Wen was a legendary folk hero and purported author of the Erh Ya, the first Chinese dictionary. However, because the earliest extant source for this tea tribute is the Treatise on the Kingdom of Huayang, by Chang Ju, a history of the era written in A.D. 347,3 the story is not very helpful in establishing that tea was used in China before the first millennium B.C. To Lao Tzu (600–517 B.C.), the founder of Taoism, is ascribed, by a Chinese text of the first century B.C., the notion that tea is an indispensable constituent of the elixir of life. The Taoist alchemists, his followers, who sought the secret of immortality, certainly believed this, dubbing tea “the froth of the liquid jade.”

(Unlike their Western counterparts, who searched for both the secret of eternal life and the power to turn base metal into gold, the Chinese alchemists confined their quest to improving health and extending life.) The custom of offering tea to guests, still honored in China, supposedly began in an encounter that occurred toward the end of Lao Tzu’s life. An embittered and disillusioned man, the spiritual leader, having seen his teachings dishonored in his own land and foreseeing a national decline, drove westward on a buffalo-cart, intending to leave China for the wild wastes of Ta Chin in central Asia, an area that later became part of the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire.


pages: 524 words: 143,596

The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart

bread and circuses, call centre, East Village, fear of failure, impulse control, land reform, Lao Tzu, Socratic dialogue, the medium is the message

From children to men we cage ourselves in patterns to avoid facing new problems and possible failure; after a while men become bored because there are no new problems. Such is life under the fear of failure. Fail! Lose! Be bad! Play, risk, dare. Thus, I exulted that evening of Larry's first diceday. I became determined to make Larry and Evie fearless, frameless, egoless humans. Larry would be the first egoless man since Lao-Tzu. I would let him play the role of father of the household and Evie the mother. I'd let them reverse roles. Sometimes they would play parents as they perceive us to be and at other times as they think parents should be. We could all play television heroes and comic-strip characters. And Lil and I every conscientious parent - would change his personality every other day or week.

Since I have often felt the same way (although not about trucks), I explained that the dice man game should only be played when he felt like it. I emphasized, however, that when he did play he must always follow the dice. Unfortunately, my efforts during the succeeding two days to turn Larry into Lao-Tzu were confounded by his child's good sense; he gave the dice only extremely pleasant alternatives - ice cream, movies, zoos, horsey, trucks, bikes, money. He began to use the dice as a treasure chest. I finally told him that the dice man game always had to provide risk, that slightly bad choices had to be there too.

On the other hand, if the man's buddies approve fidelity one year and infidelity the next, and the man changes from faithful husband to rake, no revolution has occurred. The class tale remains intact; only the policy on a minor matter has been altered. In first becoming the dice man, my audience was changed from my peers in psychiatry to Blake, Nietzsche, Lao-Tzu. My goal was to destroy all sense of an audience; to become without values, evaluators, without desires: to be inhuman, all-inclusive. God. In moving the dice man into sexual research, however, what I aspired to was a piece of ass. Zeus wished to disguise himself as beast and fornicate with a beautiful woman.


pages: 354 words: 93,882

How to Be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson

Albert Einstein, Alexander Shulgin, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, call centre, David Attenborough, David Brooks, deskilling, Easter island, financial independence, full employment, Gordon Gekko, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, Lao Tzu, liberal capitalism, moral panic, New Urbanism, PIHKAL and TIHKAL, spinning jenny, three-martini lunch, Torches of Freedom, trade route, wage slave, work culture

In short: we should celebrate our smoking, and remove the guilt surrounding it. I think we might paradoxically find that if we did so, we would smoke less. Freedom would bring responsibility. 9 p.m. The Idle Home Without stirring abroad One can know the whole world; Without looking out of the window One can see the way of heaven. Lao Tzu, 100 Te Ching ( c. fourth century Be ) And at the doors and windows seem to call, As heav ' n and earth they would together mell; Yet the least entrance find they none at all; Whence sweeter grows our rest secure in massy hall. James Thomson, The Castle of Indolence (1 748) ' Staying in is the new going out' was a joke I made at a meeting once.

Indeed, many of our wisest thinkers have counselled staying in. The lines at the opening of this chapter are from the classic of Chinese philosophy, the Tao Te Ching. Written around the fourth century BC, its authorship is uncertain but many scholars attribute the sayings it contains to a writer called Lao Tzu. The Too Te Ching is the principal text in the Chinese vein of thought known as Taoism. Full of paradox, its central tenet is wu wei, or the philosophy of inaction. Those wild old chuckling Chinese loved the image of the river, which takes the course of least resistance on its path from mountain to sea, and in doing so creates unique and beautiful curves.

You can meditate on an aeroplane; in fact aeroplanes are ideal for contemplating the infinite mysteries of the universe since your head is literally in the clouds. And Taoist wisdom teaches that it is wise to busy oneself with doing nothing: Whoever practises non-action Occupies himself with not being occupied says Lao Tzu. 5 a.m. Sleep We are always hearing people talk about ' loss of sleep ' as a calamity. They had better call it loss of time, vitality, and opportunities. Thomas Edison, ' They Do What They Like to Do ' (192 1) Along with Benjamin Franklin, the other great American enemy of idleness was Thomas Edison, the inventor.


Fresh Off the Boat by Eddie Huang

affirmative action, back-to-the-land, Columbine, cuban missile crisis, East Village, Howard Zinn, Lao Tzu, rent control, Telecommunications Act of 1996, W. E. B. Du Bois, walkable city

Buddhists seemed like a bunch of kale-eating losers accepting defeat to me. They were the soccer moms and dads with kids on the team that never won a game, yet wore Birkenstocks and hemp clothing to every game telling their uncoordinated kids that they were still winners. That’s when I found Taoism and it made a lot of sense, ’cause it made no sense at all. This dude Lao Tzu was the original RZA writing cryptic shit you brought your own meaning to with mad double entendres and metaphysical language. For the same reasons I liked hip-hop, I liked the Tao Te Ching. You didn’t pray to anyone, you didn’t submit to anyone, and it was what you needed it to be. It wasn’t a religion, it was a philosophy.

I had a reason to stop doing things that I knew were self-destructive and sometimes that’s all kids need. A reason to live. Some people have the birds and the bees, others have the cat’s cradle, my epic talk with my Chinese dad was Len Bias. I look back and it’s funny. You think it’s gonna be Confucius, Lao Tzu, or maybe even something Grandpa passed on since he was such a great man, but no. Even as an immigrant who came over in his twenties, when it came time for the talk, my dad found the inspiration in an African-American basketball player. Like father, like son. I REALLY GOT into working at the restaurant after that talk.

I went from a punk kid that fought without a true understanding of the who, what, when, where, and why to a contrarian with a cause. I’m probably the only student on felony probation that won college awards for women’s, African-American, and English studies. I won the Zora Neale Hurston and Barbara Lawrence Alfond Award in 2004. By all accounts, it was the year of the Rotten Banana. I had all them cats quoting Biggie, Lao Tzu, and Nas by the time I was gone. Finally, after three years of learning, I got my degree but not without a hitch. The last lesson came from Professor Papay. At first, I hated Professor Papay. She kept picking on my grammar. I always had a voice, heart, and now a mind to my writing, but no grammar.


pages: 203 words: 58,817

The Fire Starter Sessions: A Soulful + Practical Guide to Creating Success on Your Own Terms by Danielle Laporte

affirmative action, Albert Einstein, David Heinemeier Hansson, delayed gratification, do what you love, emotional labour, fake it until you make it, Frank Gehry, index card, invisible hand, Lao Tzu, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, Ralph Waldo Emerson, solopreneur, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak

If it gives you true joy (not the seemingly happy high that is fleeting, but the reliable, always-there kind of satisfaction) to rock that guitar, to make people laugh, to discover the world, to make things a little more beautiful wherever you go, to feed, to stir it up, to clean it up, to execute the plan, to bank the cash, to be a compassionate citizen, to explore nonstop, or purely to seek pleasure…then, that’s your life purpose! Your life purpose is what you say it is. Who could tell you otherwise? An integral being knows without going, sees without looking, and accomplishes without doing. —Lao-tzu Take a nap Making the mountain water Pound the rice. — Kobayashi Issa What would your life be like if you did only what was easy? Let me repeat the question: It’s almost unsettling to go there, isn’t it? When I try to answer that question for myself, I squirm a bit. Lazy dilettante.

This is the time to establish your healthy boundaries and limits and begin as you wish to proceed. And if you don’t buy it from the Buddha or me, then take it from Maya Angelou, who says, “The first time someone shows themselves to you, believe them.” You know it, babe. FUCK YOUR SO-CALLED PRINCIPLES The way is light and fluid for the man with no preferences. —Lao-tzu Principles can wreak havoc in your life. Take Galileo. It was the 1600s and the Italian physicist had rightly concluded that the sun does not circle the Earth, but rather the Earth circles around the sun. This really pissed off the Catholics in charge. Something about Psalms 104:5, “The Lord set the Earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.”


pages: 202 words: 62,199

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown

90 percent rule, Albert Einstein, Clayton Christensen, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Sedaris, deliberate practice, double helix, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, impact investing, Isaac Newton, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, Lao Tzu, lateral thinking, loss aversion, low cost airline, Mahatma Gandhi, microcredit, minimum viable product, Nelson Mandela, North Sea oil, Peter Thiel, power law, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Thaler, Rosa Parks, Salesforce, Shai Danziger, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, sovereign wealth fund, Stanford prison experiment, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, Vilfredo Pareto

Essentialists accept the reality that we can never fully anticipate or prepare for every scenario or eventuality; the future is simply too unpredictable. Instead, they build in buffers to reduce the friction caused by the unexpected. CHAPTER 16 SUBTRACT Bring Forth More by Removing Obstacles TO ATTAIN KNOWLEDGE ADD THINGS EVERY DAY. TO ATTAIN WISDOM SUBTRACT THINGS EVERY DAY. —Lao-tzu In the business parable The Goal, Alex Rogo is a fictional character who is overwhelmed by the responsibility of turning around a failing production plant within three months.1 At first he does not see how this is possible. Then he is mentored by a professor who tells him he can make incredible progress in a short time if only he can find the plant’s “constraints.”

This technique is easy. He stops for just a moment. He closes his eyes. He breathes in and out once: deeply and slowly. As he exhales, he lets the work issues fall away. This allows him to walk through the front door to his family with more singleness of purpose. It supports the sentiment attributed to Lao Tzu: “In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.” Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk who has been called the “world’s calmest man,” has spent a lifetime exploring how to live in kairos, albeit by a different name. He has taught it as mindfulness or maintaining “beginner’s mind.”


pages: 1,239 words: 163,625

The Joys of Compounding: The Passionate Pursuit of Lifelong Learning, Revised and Updated by Gautam Baid

Abraham Maslow, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, Andrei Shleifer, asset allocation, Atul Gawande, availability heuristic, backtesting, barriers to entry, beat the dealer, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Black Swan, book value, business process, buy and hold, Cal Newport, Cass Sunstein, Checklist Manifesto, Clayton Christensen, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, commoditize, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deep learning, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, discounted cash flows, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, diversification, diversified portfolio, dividend-yielding stocks, do what you love, Dunning–Kruger effect, Edward Thorp, Elon Musk, equity risk premium, Everything should be made as simple as possible, fear index, financial independence, financial innovation, fixed income, follow your passion, framing effect, George Santayana, Hans Rosling, hedonic treadmill, Henry Singleton, hindsight bias, Hyman Minsky, index fund, intangible asset, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, Jeff Bezos, John Bogle, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Lao Tzu, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, Masayoshi Son, mental accounting, Milgram experiment, moral hazard, Nate Silver, Network effects, Nicholas Carr, offshore financial centre, oil shock, passive income, passive investing, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, power law, price anchoring, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ray Kurzweil, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, reserve currency, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Shiller, Savings and loan crisis, search costs, shareholder value, six sigma, software as a service, software is eating the world, South Sea Bubble, special economic zone, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, stocks for the long run, subscription business, sunk-cost fallacy, systems thinking, tail risk, Teledyne, the market place, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Wisdom of Crowds, time value of money, transaction costs, tulip mania, Upton Sinclair, Walter Mischel, wealth creators, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

In effect, they protect the unsophisticated from predatory schemes that regulators and enforcement agencies don’t seem able to prevent.16 Simplicity as a Way of Life It is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple. —Rabindranath Tagore To attain knowledge, add things every day; to obtain wisdom, remove things every day. —Lao Tzu Have you ever considered that there are way too many things that you need to evaluate day after day? Too many news items, too many questions, too many possessions, too many options for everything, too many stocks from which to choose, too many investment products that too many financial advisers want you to buy.

Clearing the clutter from the various aspects of our lives reduces decision fatigue and sharpens our focus on what we really want to achieve. There is no path to peace. Peace is the path. —Mahatma Gandhi Minimalism in life isn’t a destination to reach, it is the path to follow. Practicing and adopting minimalism as a way of life is simple. It’s simple but not easy. You cannot become a minimalist overnight. But, as Lao Tzu said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” The parable of the Mexican fisherman and the American banker is one of my favorite stories and contains an important life lesson. It is habitual for most of us to build incessantly and forget that the endgame should really be happiness and a fulfilling life.

We must always understand what we’re trying to accomplish [emphasis added].”5 Along with checklists, we have another valuable tool to improve our decision-making skills. A journal. CHAPTER 15 JOURNALING IS A POWERFUL TOOL FOR SELF-REFLECTION Observe all men; thy self most. —Benjamin Franklin It is wisdom to know others. It is enlightenment to know one’s self. —Lao Tzu If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion. —Aldous Huxley A significant part of human memories is mostly fiction. We form false memories quite easily. Our subconscious brain tends to distort certain events before storing them in the form of memories.


pages: 426 words: 117,027

Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought by Barbara Tversky

Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Asperger Syndrome, augmented reality, clean water, cognitive load, continuous integration, double helix, en.wikipedia.org, fundamental attribution error, Hans Rosling, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), John Snow's cholera map, Lao Tzu, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, natural language processing, neurotypical, patient HM, Richard Feynman, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, the new new thing, theory of mind, urban planning

Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-archimede/ Shepard, R. N. (1978). Externalization of mental images and the act of creation. Visual Learning, Thinking, and Communication, 133–189. CHAPTER SIX: POINTS, LINES, AND PERSPECTIVE: SPACE IN TALK AND THOUGHT Lao Tzu quote Le but n’est pas seulement le but, mais le chemin qui y conduit. (n.d.). Paul Andreu. Retrieved from http://www.paul-andreu.com/ [Note: This quote has been attributed to Lao-Tzu but may be from Confucius. In French, it is beautiful partly because of the multiple meanings of but: end, goal, destination.] Structure of route descriptions Denis, M. (1997). The description of routes: A cognitive approach to the production of spatial discourse.

CHAPTER SIX Points, Lines, and Perspective: Space in Talk and Thought In which we consider how linear language describes space, using a perspective, either an inside, body-centered perspective or an outside, world-centered perspective. For insider perspectives, we show that surprisingly taking another’s perspective is sometimes easier and more natural than taking your own. The goal is not only the destination but also the path that takes you to it. —PAUL ANDREU, from Lao Tzu TALK AND THOUGHT Talking isn’t thinking. Talking can reveal thinking and talking can change thinking, but it shouldn’t be confused with thinking. Talk is only one way to express thought; there are others. Laughing, gasping, and screaming emerge from the mouth bursting with meaning but are not talk.


pages: 211 words: 69,380

The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman

classic study, Day of the Dead, experimental subject, fear of failure, hedonic treadmill, Kibera, Lao Tzu, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, Paradox of Choice, science of happiness, security theater, selection bias, Steve Jobs, summit fever, Supply of New York City Cabdrivers, traveling salesman, World Values Survey

But it is also a path to a different kind of destination. Or maybe it makes more sense to say that the path is the destination? These things are excruciatingly hard to put into words, and the spirit of negative capability surely dictates that we do not struggle too hard to do so. ‘A good traveller has no fixed plans,’ says the Chinese sage Lao Tzu, ‘and is not intent upon arriving.’ There could be no better way to make the journey. Acknowledgements WRITING THIS BOOK AFFORDED me many opportunities to test its arguments by confronting uncertainty, anxiety, the prospect of failure, and occasionally blind terror. I am grateful that I didn’t have to rely on positive-thinking affirmations to deal with this, but benefited instead from the skills and time of some extraordinary people.

‘He will never come at a truth’: Quoted in Jacob Wigod, ‘Negative Capability and Wise Passiveness’, PMLA 67 (1952): 383-90. ‘openture’: All Paul Pearsall quotations are from Awe: The Delights and Dangers of Our Eleventh Emotion (Deerfield Beach, Florida: Health Communications, 2007). ‘Proficiency and the results of proficiency’ Aldous Huxley, Complete Essays 1939-1956, 225. ‘A good traveller has no fixed plans’: Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching: A New English Version, interpreted by Stephen Mitchell (New York: Harper Collins, 1991), 27.


They Have a Word for It A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words & Phrases-Sarabande Books (2000) by Howard Rheingold

Ayatollah Khomeini, clockwork universe, Easter island, fudge factor, Howard Rheingold, informal economy, junk bonds, Kula ring, Lao Tzu, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Silicon Valley, systems thinking, The Home Computer Revolution, the map is not the territory, the scientific method, Tragedy of the Commons

.), 260 insaf (Geertz, 1965), 220 istiqara (Garfield), 175 kalpa (Campbell, 1986; Zimmer), 256 Katzenjammer (native source), 161 kekau (Echols and Shadily), 180 kolleh (Rosten), llO Korinthenkacker (native source), 124 koro (native source), 75 koyaanisqatsi (native source), 243 kula (Malinowsky; Marett; Lee), 123 Kulikov (native source), 223 kut (native source), 143 kyoikumama (Christopher), 33 lagniappe (native source), 133 land nam (Campbell, 1986), 197 lao (A Mandarin-Romanized Dictionary ... ) , 31 lingam (Danielou), 87 majie (native source) , 56 mamihlapinatapei (native source), 80 Key to Sources • Index mantra (Whorf, 1956; Zimmer), 64 masa bodoa (Geertz, 1965), 222 maya (Capra; Campbell, 1986; Watts, 1957; Zimmer), 152 mbuki-mvuki (Vass), 28 mettere in piazza (Pekelis), 78 mokita (Rosaldo), 48 mu (Watts, 1957), 163 nadi (Geertz, 1973), 158 nakhes (Rosten), 40 narachastra prayoga (Danielou), 85 nemawashi (Christopher), 129 ngaobera (native source), 20 ngarong (Lincoln; Stevenson), 184 Njepi(Geertz, 1966),69 ocurrencia (Gerrard), 259 Ohrwurm (native source), 255 ondinnonk (Barasch), 206 orenda (Marett), 60 ostranenie (Jameson), 107 palatyi (Vass), 151 Papierkrieg (Anderson), 217 piston (Levieux), 229 plunderbund (Grambs), 132 ponte (Glendening), 128 potlatch (Marett), 120 qualunquismo (Glendening), 220 Radfahrer (Anderson), 126 rame (Geertz, 1963), 43 rasa (Campbell, 1986), 103 razbliuto (Bryan), 79 reve a deux (Stoppard), 182 rojong (Echols and Shadily), 30 sabi (native source), 97 sabsung (native source), 140 salogok (Nelson), 263 sanza (Weiner), 54 saper vivere (Pekelis), 27 sbottonarsi (Pekelis), 62 Schadenfreude (native source), 162 Schlimmbesserung (Smith), 244 sentak bangun (Echols and Shadily), 181 shibui (native source), 100 shih (Yutang), 101 Shima (Witherspoon), 241 sitike (Basso), 26 stam (native source), 261 suilk (Grant and Murison), 29 ta (Yutang; A Mandarin-Romanized Dictionary . .. ) , 144 talanoa (Brenneis), 66 talkin (Echols and Shadily), 201 tao (Lao-Tzu), 190 tartle (Grant and Murison), 39 tashinamu (Kindaichi), 226 tikkun olam (native source), 224 tingo (native source), 18 tirare la carreta (Pekelis), 131 tjotjog (Geertz, 1973), 37 Torschlusspanik (Yutang), 73 Treppenwitz (Anderson), 58 tsuris (Rosten), 41 uffda (native source), 262 uovo di Colombo (Pekelis), 258 uspolecnic (native source), 228 wabi (native source), 95 waq'f (native source), 188 THEY HAVE A WORD FOR IT wei-wu-wei (Lao-Tzu; Watts, 1957), 219 Weltschmerz (native source), 148 wistelkiya (Fire/Lame Deer), 81 won (O'Flaherty), 202 Wundersucht (O'Flaherty), 203 yoin (native source), 142 yugen (Watts, 1966), 109 zalatwic (native source), 230 zanshin (Farkas and Corcoran; Harrison; Sakai), 156 Zeitgeist (native source), 23 Zivilcourage (Anderson), 216 Zwischenraum (Bohannan), 251 THE AUTHOR ~ Howard Rheingold has written a number of works exhibiting his interest in the human mind, co-authoring such books as Higher Creativity and The Cognitive Connections.


pages: 290 words: 75,973

The Cloudspotter's Guide by Gavin Pretor-Pinney

Albert Einstein, haute couture, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, Lao Tzu, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Seymour Hersh

It also explains why sunsets are deeper and redder after volcanic eruptions. All the additional particles thrown up into the atmosphere scatter even more of the short and middle wavelengths, leaving a narrower spectrum of red-looking wavelengths. Red clouds were considered particularly favourable signs in Ancient China. Apparently, one emanated from Lao Tzu, the philosopher credited with founding Taoism. Red and yellow were the colours of ‘cosmic differentiation’, and coloured clouds would come down upon the mounds on which acceptable sacrifices had been offered. In fact, Huang-ti, the mythical Yellow Emperor who supposedly ruled in the third millennium BC, was considered to ‘govern all things, thanks to the clouds’.

Hildebrand Hindus Ho Chi Minh Trail Hodgkinson, Neville Howard, Luke Huang-ti humilis: Cumulus clouds Hunks, Jan Van hurricanes Cumulonimbus clouds and ice crystals: columns Cumulonimbus clouds and falling formation growth needles optical effects and ozone layer and precipitation and rime deposits sectored plates stellar dendrites ice fog ice pellets ice spikules icing nuclei India International Center for Lightning Research and Testing International Cloud Atlas International Meteorological Conference International Year of the Cloud Internet intortus: Cirrus clouds inversion: cloud formation and Iran Iranian Space Agency Iris Islam Italy Ixion Jansen, Dave Japan Jelleff, Ken jellyfish Jesus Christ jet streams Jones, Dr Lucy Joseph Judaism Keats, John Kelvin–Helmholtz wave cloud Kenya Kern halo King of Clouds see Cumulonimbus clouds king mackerel Krakatoa Kubera labarum lacunosus: Altocumulus clouds Cirrocumulus clouds Stratocumulus clouds Lake Keepit Soaring Club Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste landspouts Langmuir, Irving Lao Tzu Laos Laputa latent heat lava lamps lenticularis: Altocumulus clouds Cirrocumulus clouds Stratocumulus clouds Licinius, Emperor light wave interference lightning: ball bolts differ cause of cloud-to-air cloud-to-cloud cloud-to-ground Cumulonimbus clouds and fork in-cloud nature of questions about return stroke routes sheet Loogatha, Netta Lowell, James Russell Lowell, Maria White Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus De Rerum Natura Luzhkov, Yuri Lymon, Frankie Lyon Lyons, Walt McCloud, Mrs mackerel mackerel skies see also Cirrocumulus mamma cloud formations Mantegna, Andrea: Minerva Expelling the Vices from the Grove of Virtue St Sebastian ‘mare’s tails’ Marley, Bob Mary, Virgin Masai tribes Maxentius, Emperor mediocris: Cumulus clouds mesosphere meteorologists: cloud committee D-Day landings and work of Meteosat-5 weather satellite Milton, John Mitchell, Joni mock suns see sundogs Mongols monsoon rains Montreal Moon: cloud identification and coronae halo phenomena irisation Morning Glory: formation gliders and length occurrence speed surfing unpredictability Moscow mountains nacreous clouds Nakaya, Fujiko Napoleon I, Emperor Naranachil, Dawn NASA Nature nebulosus: Cirrostratus clouds Stratus clouds Nephelokokkygia Neuchâtel, Lake Newton, Isaac Ngai Nimbostratus clouds: altitude Altostratus and appearance Cumulonimbus clouds and description fame, lack of identifying pannus clouds and precipitation shape species unknown varieties nimbus: meaning of nimbus clouds nimbus haloes Nixon, President Richard noctilucent clouds Noland, Dr Bob Norway oceans: clouds and opacus: Altocumulus clouds Altostratus clouds Stratocumulus clouds Stratus clouds optical effects Osaka’s World Fair Ovid ozone layer paintings pannus clouds parhelia see also sundogs parhelic circle Parianya Parry arc Pascal, Blaise Perkons perlucidus: Altocumulus clouds Stratocumulus clouds Philostratus photography Piero della Francesca: Legend of the True Cross pileus clouds Pittsburg Pliny the Elder Poland polar front polar regions Poole, Paul Popeye Project praecipitatio clouds Pratt, Geoff precipitation: Cumulonimbus clouds forms of Stratus clouds see also hail, rain, snow pyrocumulus radiation radiation fog radiatus: Altocumulus clouds Altostratus clouds Cirrus clouds Cumulus Stratocumulus clouds Raiden rain: Altostratus clouds and Cumulonimbus clouds and Cumulus clouds and drops’ size explanation of freezing low pressure and monsoons Nimbostratus clouds rainbows and Stratocumulus clouds and Stratus clouds see also cloud seeding rainbows raindrops: shape Rankin, Lt.


pages: 301 words: 78,638

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear

Atul Gawande, Cal Newport, Checklist Manifesto, choice architecture, clean water, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, en.wikipedia.org, financial independence, Goodhart's law, invisible hand, Lao Tzu, late fees, meta-analysis, microaggression, Paul Graham, randomized controlled trial, ride hailing / ride sharing, Sam Altman, Saturday Night Live, side hustle, survivorship bias, Walter Mischel, When a measure becomes a target

The following quote from the Tao Te Ching encapsulates the ideas perfectly: Men are born soft and supple; dead, they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail. —LAO TZU Habits deliver numerous benefits, but the downside is that they can lock us into our previous patterns of thinking and acting—even when the world is shifting around us. Everything is impermanent. Life is constantly changing, so you need to periodically check in to see if your old habits and beliefs are still serving you.

See also specific numbered laws four-step process of building a habit 1. cue, 47–48 2. craving, 48 3. response, 48–49 4. reward, 49 habit loop, 49–51 lessons from, 259–64 problem phase and solution phase, 51–53 4th Law of Behavior Change (Make It Satisfying) habit contract, 207–10 habit tracking, 198–99 instant gratification, 188–93 making the cues of bad habits unsatisfying, 205–206 Safeguard soap in Pakistan example, 184–85 Frankl, Victor, 260 Franklin, Benjamin, 196 frequency’s effect on habits, 145–47 friction associated with a behavior, 152–58 garden hose example of reducing, 153 Japanese factory example of eliminating wasted time and effort, 154–55 to prevent unwanted behavior, 157–58 “gateway habit,” 163 genes, 218–21, 226–27 goals effect on happiness, 26 fleeting nature of, 25 shared by winners and losers, 24–25 short-term effects of, 26–27 vs. systems, 23–24 the Goldilocks Rule flow state, 224, 232–33 the Goldilocks Zone, 232 tennis example, 231 good habits creating (table), 96, 136, 178, 212 Two-Minute Rule, 162–67 Goodhart, Charles, 203 Goodhart’s Law, 203 Graham, Paul, 247–48 greylag geese and supernormal stimuli, 102 Guerrouj, Hicham El, 217–18, 225 Guns, Germs, and Steel (Diamond), 149–51 habit contract Bryan Harris weight loss example, 208–209 defined, 208 seat belt law example, 207–208 Thomas Frank alarm example, 210 habit line, 145–47 habit loop, 49–51 habits of avoidance, 191–92 benefits of, 46–47, 239 breaking bad habits (table), 97, 137, 179, 213 in the business world, 265 changing your mind-set about, 130–31 creating good habits (table), 96, 136, 178, 212 downside of, 239–40 effect on the rest of your day, 160, 162 eliminating bad habits, 94–95 as the embodiment of identity, 36–38 formation of, 44–46, 145–47 four-step process of building a habit, 47–53, 259–64 “gateway habit,” 163 identity-based, 31, 39–40 imitation of others’ habits the close, 116–18 the many, 118–21 the powerful, 121–22 importance of, 40–41 outcome-based, 31 and parenting, 267 reframing habits to highlight their benefits, 131–32 short-term and long-term consequences of, 188–90 sticking with, 230–31 suitability for your personality, 221–22 Two-Minute Rule, 162–67 using implementation intention to start, 71–72 Habits Academy, 8 habit shaping, 165–67 Habits Scorecard, 64–66 habit stacking combining temptation bundling with, 110–11 explained, 74–79 habit tracking, 196–200, 202–204 handwashing in Pakistan example of a satisfying behavior change, 184–85 happiness as the absence of desire, 259–60 and goals, 26 relativity of, 263 Harris, Bryan, 208–209 Hebb, Donald, 143 Hebb’s Law, 143 herring gulls and supernormal stimuli, 101–102 hope, 264 Hreha, Jason, 45 Hugo, Victor, 169–70 The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Hugo), 169–70 hyperbolic discounting (time inconsistency), 188–89 identity accepting blanket personal statements as facts, 35 and behavior change, 29–32, 34–36 behavior that is at odds with the self, 32–33 habits as the embodiment of, 36–38, 247–49 identity-based habits, 31, 39–40 letting a single belief define you, 247–49 pride in a particular aspect of one’s identity, 33–34 reinforcing your desired identity by using the Two-Minute Rule, 165 two-step process of changing your identity, 39–40 implementation intention, 69–72 improvements, making small, 231–32, 233, 253 instant gratification, 188–93 Johnson, Magic, 243–44 journaling, 165 Jung, Carl, 62 Kamb, Steve, 117–18 Kubitz, Andrew, 109 Lao Tzu, 249 Tao Te Ching, 249 Latimore, Ed, 132 Lewes, George H., 144 long-term potentiation, 143 Los Angeles Lakers example of reflection and review, 242–44 Luby, Stephen, 183–85 MacMullan, Jackie, 243–44 Martin, Steve, 229–30, 231 Massachusetts General Hospital cafeteria example of environment design change, 81–82 Massimino, Mike, 117 mastery, 240–42 Mate, Gabor, 219 McKeown, Greg, 165 measurements usefulness of, 202–204 visual, 195–96 Mike (Turkish travel guide/ex-smoker), 125–26 Milner, Peter, 105 mind-set shifts from “have to” to “get to,” 130–31 motivation rituals, 132–33 reframing habits to highlight their benefits, 131–32 motion vs. action, 142–43 motivation the Goldilocks Rule, 231–33 maximum motivation, 232 rituals, 132–33 and taking action, 260–61 Murphy, Morgan, 91 negative compounding, 19 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 260 nonconscious activities, 34n nonscale victories, 203–204 novelty, 234 Nuckols, Oswald, 156 observations, 260 obstacles to getting what you want, 152 Olds, James, 105 Olwell, Patty, 93 1 percent changes Career Best Effort program (CBE), 242–44 compounding effect of making changes, 15–16, 17–18 Sorites Paradox, 251–52 operant conditioning, 9–10 opportunities, choosing the right combining your skills to reduce the competition, 225–26 explore/exploit trade-off, 223–25 importance of, 222–23 specialization, 226 outcomes and behavior change, 29–31 outcome-based habits, 31 pain, 206–207 Paper Clip Strategy of visual progress measurements, 195–96 parenting applications of habit strategies, 267 Patterson, John Henry, 171–72 Phelps, Michael, 217–18, 225 photography class example of active practice, 141–42, 144 Plateau of Latent Potential, 21–23 pleasure anticipating vs. experiencing, 106–108 image of, 260 repeating a behavior when it’s a satisfying sensory experience, 184–86, 264 Safeguard soap example, 184–85 Plomin, Robert, 220 Pointing-and-Calling subway safety system, 62–63 positive compounding, 19 The Power of Habit (Duhigg), 9, 47n predictions, making after perceiving cues, 128–29 the human brain as a prediction machine, 60–61 Premack, David, 110 Premack’s Principle, 110 pride manicure example, 33 in a particular aspect of one’s identity, 33–34 priming your environment to make the next action easy, 156–58 problem phase of a habit loop, 51–53 process and behavior change, 30–31 professionals vs. amateurs, 236 progress, 262 proximity’s effect on behavior, 116–18 quitting smoking, 32, 125–26 reading resources Atomic Habits newsletter, 257 business applications of habit strategies, 265 parenting applications of habit strategies, 267 recovering when habits break down, 200–202 reflection and review author’s Annual Review and Integrity Report, 245–46 benefits of, 246–47 Career Best Effort program (CBE) example, 242–44 Chris Rock example, 245 Eliud Kipchoge example, 244–45 flexibility and adaptation, 247–49 importance of, 244–45 Katie Ledecky example, 245 reframing habits to highlight their benefits, 131–32 reinforcement, 191–93 repetition as active practice of a new habit, 144 automaticity, 144–46 to master a habit, 143 photography class example of active practice, 141–42, 144 responding to things based on emotions, 261–62 rewards after sacrifice, 262 immediate vs. delayed, 187–90 purpose of, 49 reinforcement, 191–93 training yourself to delay gratification, 190–93 variable rewards, 235 “wanting” vs.


pages: 291 words: 72,937

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

carbon footprint, glass ceiling, invisible hand, Lao Tzu, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Schrödinger's Cat, Stephen Fry, TED Talk, you are the product

He looked perplexed. ‘Where did that come from? Is that a quote?’ ‘Yeah. Henry David Thoreau. You know, my fave philosopher.’ ‘Since when were you into philosophy?’ Of course. In this life she’d never have done a Philosophy degree. While her root self had been reading the works of Thoreau and Lao Tzu and Sartre in a stinky student flat in Bristol, her current self had been standing on Olympic podiums in Beijing. Weirdly, she felt just as sad for the version of her who had never fallen in love with the simple beauty of Thoreau’s Walden, or the stoical Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, as she had felt sympathy for the version of her who never fulfilled her Olympic potential.

In one life she had no social media accounts. In one life she’d never drunk alcohol. In one life she was a chess champion and currently visiting Ukraine for a tournament. In one life she was married to a minor Royal and hated every minute. In one life her Facebook and Instagram only contained quotes from Rumi and Lao Tzu. In one life she was on to her third husband and already bored. In one life she was a vegan power-lifter. In one life she was travelling around South America and caught up in an earthquake in Chile. In one life she had a friend called Becky, who said ‘Oh what larks!’ whenever anything good was happening.


pages: 466 words: 127,728

The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System by James Rickards

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, Ayatollah Khomeini, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, bitcoin, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Boeing 747, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business climate, business cycle, buy and hold, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, centre right, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, complexity theory, computer age, credit crunch, currency peg, David Graeber, debt deflation, Deng Xiaoping, diversification, Dr. Strangelove, Edward Snowden, eurozone crisis, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial repression, fixed income, Flash crash, floating exchange rates, forward guidance, G4S, George Akerlof, global macro, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Goodhart's law, Growth in a Time of Debt, guns versus butter model, Herman Kahn, high-speed rail, income inequality, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, invisible hand, jitney, John Meriwether, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, Lao Tzu, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, market bubble, market clearing, market design, megaproject, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mutually assured destruction, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, obamacare, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, operational security, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, power law, price stability, public intellectual, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, reserve currency, risk-adjusted returns, Rod Stewart played at Stephen Schwarzman birthday party, Ronald Reagan, Satoshi Nakamoto, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Solyndra, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, Stuxnet, The Market for Lemons, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, trade route, undersea cable, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus, working-age population, yield curve

Recognizing the Chinese history of centralization, disintegration, and reemerging order is indispensible to understanding China today. Western financial analysts often approach China with an exaggerated confidence in market data and not enough historical perspective to understand its cultural dynamics. The Zhou Dynasty philosopher Lao Tzu expressed the Chinese sense of history in the Tao Te Ching—“Things grow and grow, but each goes back to its root.” Appreciating that view is no less important today. The centralized ancient dynasties include the Zhou, from around 1100 B.C.; the Qin, from 221 B.C.; and the Han, which immediately followed the Qin and lasted until A.D. 220.

., 85, 268, 269 Knight Capital computer debacle, 60, 63, 296–97 Knot, Klaas, 233 Korea, 202 Kos, Dino, 272–73 Kosovo, 136 Krugman, Paul, 117–18 on myth of Chinese growth, 94, 95, 96 myth that gold caused market panics and, 224 sticky-wage theory and, 124, 131, 134 Kuroda, Haruhiko, 161 Kuwait, 152, 153 Kyrgyzstan, 151 labor-capital factor input model of economic growth, 94–95 labor-management relations, 123–24 labor mobility, 125 Lagarde, Christine, 144, 148, 191, 192, 194–95, 198, 205, 206 land, as investment, 299 Lao Tzu, 90 Latvia, 136. See also BELLs (Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) lease arrangements, gold, 275, 284 Lehman Brothers, 77, 103, 130 Lenin, V. I., 7 leverage, 250 bank’s use of, 80, 188, 194, 196 of IMF, 201–6 paper gold transactions and, 275 Levitt, Steve, 32–33 Lew, Jack, 195, 196 Lie, David T.

-Iran financial war and, 54, 56 Swiss Army, 59 Swiss Finance Institute, 23 Switzerland, 202, 232–33 Syria, 57 Syrian Electronic Army, 59 system crashes, 296–97 systemic risk, 11–12, 81, 188, 249–50, 251, 259, 270 Taiping Rebellion, 91 Tajikistan, 151 Tang Dynasty, 90 TAO (Office of Tailored Access Operations), 53–54 Tao Te Ching (Lao Tzu), 90 tapering, 249–50 TARP bailout, 62 Tauss, Randy, 28–29, 35, 37, 38, 39 Tavakoli, Janet, 2 taxes corporate rates, 122 deflation, impact of, 9, 259–60 Taylor, John B., 176 Taylor Rule, 176–77 Tea Party conservatives, 172–73, 205 technology, and economic growth, 95–96 Tenet, George, 28, 37 terrorist insider trading MARKINT and, 35–39 9/11 attacks and, 17–28 Project Prophesy and, 28–34 Thailand, 261 Theory of Moral Sentiments, The (Smith), 70 “Theory of Optimum Currency Areas, A” (Mundell), 125 Thirty Years War, 115 threats to U.S. dollar, 5–13 Tiananmen Square demonstrations, 92 Too Big to Fail (film), 3 Toyota, 82 Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, 295 Treasury, U.S.


pages: 287 words: 81,014

The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism by Olivia Fox Cabane

airport security, Boeing 747, cognitive dissonance, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, hedonic treadmill, Jeff Hawkins, Lao Tzu, mirror neurons, Nelson Mandela, nocebo, Parkinson's law, Peter Thiel, placebo effect, Ralph Waldo Emerson, randomized controlled trial, reality distortion field, risk tolerance, social intelligence, Steve Jobs

While charismatic people may report fewer technical skills than their peers, their internal and external skills give them a far greater advantage overall. The internal skills necessary for charisma include both the awareness of your internal state and the tools to effectively manage it. Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu reportedly said: “To know others is knowledge. To know oneself is wisdom.” What Your Mind Believes, Your Body Manifests Knowing your internal world starts with one key insight upon which all charisma is built: your mind can’t tell fact from fiction. This is the one dimension of your internal world that can help you get into the right charismatic mental state at will, and almost instantly.

., 101, 110, 203, 216 business, 100 business success, handling uncertainty and, 34 California, University of, at Berkeley, 11 calls, 96–97 calm, 172 candles, 174 Capone, Al, 169 Carnegie, Dale, 135, 168 Ceci, Stephen, 139 CEOs, 6, 116–17, 218 Chariots of Fire, 71 charisma: as applied science, 6 authority, 98, 104–7, 109–10, 112, 119, 167, 231 as believed innate, 2, 4 benefits of, 2–3 choosing right style of, 98–114, 166 conscious practice of, 11, 12, 14, 15, 34–35, 46, 50–51, 56, 57, 62–63, 64–65, 69–70, 77–79, 81, 83, 87, 88–89, 91–92, 96, 108, 119, 121–22, 140, 141, 152, 155, 159–60, 199, 217, 235–43 creating mental states of, 67–97 in a crisis, 201–5, 234 as critical in business, 3 downsides of, 206–21 experimenting with, 111, 113, 114 fluctuations in level of, 4 focus, 98–101, 103, 107, 109, 110, 112, 166–67, 181, 214, 231 kindness, 98, 102–4, 107, 109, 110, 112, 133, 158, 171, 175, 214, 231 learning of, 2, 4, 22 myths of, 9–12, 229 obstacles to, 27–42, 43–66, 67, 230 as originating in mind, 21–23 putting work into, 6 studies of, 5, 9, 10, 51 styles of, 98–114, 231 visionary, 98, 101–2, 103, 107, 108, 109, 110, 112, 136, 167, 231 warming up for, 93–97, 103, 172 chin, 162, 182 chromatic effects, 191 Chrysler, 137 Churchill, Winston, 10, 50, 112, 201 Clinton, Bill, 2, 6, 80, 109, 134–35, 208–9, 216–17 clothing, 19, 30, 42, 47, 102, 106, 118–19, 127, 159, 230, 233–34 authority status and, 105 cognitive reappraisal, 52–54 cognitive science, 11 Columbia University, 91 comedians, 193 comfort, 152 comfort zones, 64–65, 114, 151, 224 comparison, 37 compassion, 79–82, 83–84, 97, 103, 150, 176, 231, 239 self-, 84–90, 103, 181, 239 compliments, 134–36 confidence, 32, 39–41, 43, 60, 67, 69, 70, 92, 97, 142, 161, 172 authority confidence and, 104–7 kindness charisma and, 102–4 self-, 84, 85–86, 94–95 conscious mirroring, 146–50 consultants, 100 continuous partial attention, 16 conversations, 7, 123–26, 127, 232 exiting, 125–26, 127, 179–80 hostile, 100 cortisol, 38 creativity, 107 critical thinking, 106 criticism, 165, 175–80, 186 self-, 38–39, 40, 42, 50, 86–87, 90 Dalai Lama, 5, 19, 87, 88, 98, 103, 104, 112 Darius, 147–49 Darwin, Charles, 74 Deckers Outdoors, 83 dedramatize, 46, 59, 66, 198, 202 defensiveness, 177 Deloitte, 83 delving into sensations, 61, 62–64, 100, 129 DeNiro, Robert, 68 depersonalization, 176–77, 233 depression, 86, 90 desperation, 75 destigmatizing, 43–46, 47, 51, 58, 59, 65, 66, 198, 202, 236 Deutsche Bank, 124–25 Diana, Princess of Wales, 112 difficult people, 7, 165–72 discomfort, 47, 60–61, 66 delving into, 61, 62–64 destigmatizing, 43–46, 47, 51, 58, 59, 65, 66, 198, 202, 236 mental, 31–41, 43, 44, 65 physical, 28–31, 42, 43, 44, 59, 65, 66 practice with, 62–63, 64–65 Disraeli, Benjamin, 9, 20, 124, 133 dissatisfaction, 37, 40, 42 distractions, 15–16 dramatic pauses, 196–97 Drucker, Peter, 220 Edison, Thomas, 74 Egypt, 120 Ekman, Paul, 111n e-mails, 73, 97, 183, 185, 186 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 74 emotional contagion, 145–46, 164 emotions, 91, 144, 163, 211 empathy, 82, 145, 160, 170, 171, 176, 233 while delivering criticism, 175–76 facial expressions and, 174 energy, 92 engineers, 24 entertainment, 138, 142 enthusiasm, 139, 156, 185 envy, 207–11 equanimity, 201–2, 234 executive presence, 5 executives, 23 external skills, 23 extroverts, 108 eye contact, 111, 122, 153–56, 162, 164 “Eye of the Tiger” (song), 71 eyes, 28–29, 30, 31, 42 facial expressions, 14, 21–22, 38–39, 47, 91, 97, 111, 130–31 apologies and, 181 criticisms and, 179, 182 delayed, 184 empathy and, 174 Fauré, Gabriel, 196 fear, 40–41 feedback, 106, 107 Fehmi, Les, 154 Feuer, Michael, 184 fidgeting, 106, 149, 160, 161, 173 fight or flight, 5, 38, 41, 52, 117, 144, 159, 197 firelight, 174 fireside chats, 194 first impressions, 115–27, 149, 232 “firsts,” 177 Fisher, Helen, 153 “Flying” (song), 71 focus, 183–84, 191 focus charisma, 98–101, 103, 107, 109, 110, 112, 166–67, 181, 214, 231 Franklin, Benjamin, 167–68, 178 French Revolution, 201 frustration, 130 functional MRI scans, 80 funerals, imagining, 78–79, 83 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 115, 169 Gandhi, Mohandas, 112, 201 Gates, Bill, 19, 99, 112 Germer, Christopher, 87, 90 gestures, 139 Gilbert, Daniel, 16 Gilbert, Paul, 82 Gladstone, William, 9, 20 glucose, 29 goals, 107, 110, 113 Goldsmith, Marshall, 215, 220 Goleman, Daniel, 146 good feelings, 138, 142 goodwill, 79–82, 97, 103, 111, 114, 199, 231 criticism and, 182–83, 186 practice of, 81, 83 Google, 119, 135 gorilla exercise, 158, 159, 164, 193, 242 graffiti metaphor, 49, 50, 66 gratitude, 75–79, 97, 103, 231, 238 practice of, 77–79 gravitas, 92 Gross, James, 22n Gruenfeld, Deborah, 158, 159 Gulf War, 203 handshakes, 119–23, 127, 240 Hanson, Rick, 82 happiness, 53n, 81 Haque, Omar Sultan, 201 Harvard Business Review, 144, 146 Harvard Medical School, 55 Harvard University, 73, 91, 116–17 Hayes, Stephen, 49, 51 hedonic adaptation, 76 Hill, Napoleon, 74 Hitler, Adolf, 220 House, Robert, 3, 203 Howard, John Newton, 71 How to Win Friends and Influence People (Carnegie), 168 hugs, 73, 198 human resources, 116–17 hunter-gatherers, 117 Iacocca, Lee, 137 IBM, 99–100, 119 imaginary situations, 24–25, 26, 44, 55 compassion and, 83 funeral, 78–79, 83 immune system, 86 impact, 210 impatience, 63 impostor syndrome, 39–40, 41 income, 2 inferiority, 90 information, 138, 142 insecurity, 160 inspiring, 102 internal critic, 86 interrupting, 129, 130, 182 interviews, 38, 96–97, 113, 116–17, 119, 130, 159 intonation, 10, 106, 139–40, 141, 142, 194–95, 233, 241 introverts, 10, 98, 108 Iowa, University of, 119–20 iPhones, 189 iPod Nano, 136 irritants, 192 irritation, 155 Izuma, Keise, 168 JALIR sequence, 210–11 Joan of Arc, 101, 112 Jobs, Steve, 2, 101, 108, 112, 146, 189–90 increasing charisma of, 4–5 presentations rehearsed by, 192 Jones, Franklin, 175 Jones, Jim, 102 Jordan, Michael, 104, 216 Jungle Book, The (Kipling), 118 justification, 209 Keeler, Jack, 99–100 Kelleher, Herb, 146 Kennedy, John F., 129 Kerry, John, 107–8 Khurana, Rakesh, 215 kindness charisma, 98, 102–4, 107, 109, 110, 112, 133, 158, 171, 175, 214, 231 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 101, 112 Kipling, Rudyard, 118 Kosslyn, Stephen, 68 Krauss, Stephen, 70 Langer, Ellen, 25 language, 20, 136, 144, 186 Lao Tzu, 24 “lasts,” 177 leadership, 2, 3 compassion needed for, 83 Leahy, Robert, 32 lectures, 139–40 left frontal lobes, 88 life, enjoying, 17–18 limbic resonance, 146 Lincoln, Abraham, 74, 136 listening, 14, 17, 26, 100, 128–31, 142, 184, 231, 232, 241 Little Prince, The (Saint-Exupéry), 185 logic, 144, 163 lovable book, 90 love at first sight, 153 Lowndes, Leil, 185 Lurie, Bob, 40 Madonna, 98 Mao Zedong, 112, 220 marketing, 169 Martinez, Angel, 83 meditation, 12, 15, 16, 18, 45 meetings, 72–73, 96–97 memory cards, 189–90 mental discomfort, 31–41, 43, 44, 65 metaphors, 189, 190, 233 Method acting, 12, 68 Metta, 87–90, 239–40 Michelangelo, 27 microexpressions, 22, 182 mindfulness discipline, 15, 45 Mindful Path to Self-Compassion, The (Germer), 87 mindset shift, 15–16, 224 mind wandering, 16 mirror, 155 mirror neurons, 145 Miss Piggy, 92–93 MIT, 73 MIT Media Lab, 20, 126, 140 moms, 3 Monitor Group, 40 Monroe, Marilyn, 1, 4 Multiple Sclerosis Association, 203 Muppet Show, The, 92–93 music, 70–71, 95, 96, 174 Musk, Elon, 98–99 Mussolini, Benito, 104, 220 Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 74, 201, 204 narcissism, 85 neediness, 75 Neff, Kristin, 86 negative associations, 131–34, 142 negativity, 37, 38–39, 40, 42, 46 neutralizing, 47–51, 58, 59, 65, 66, 202, 236 suppressing, 52 negativity bias, 48–49 negotiations, 100, 130 NeuroLeadership Institute, 38 neuronal connections, 68 neuroscience, 11 Newman, Paul, 68 New Scholars, 147–49 New York Times, 188 Ney, Marshal, 204 Nicklaus, Jack, 67 nocebo effect, 25–26 nodding, 10, 106, 149, 160, 161, 162, 164 numbers, 189–90 Obama, Barack, 109 Ochsner, Kevin, 22n OfficeMax, 184 Onassis, Aristotle, 153–54 open-ended questions, 123 Oracle, 119 oscillators, 146 outgoing personalities, 10 owning the stage, 193–94 oxytocin, 73, 170, 198 Paramount Equity, 109, 215 Parkinson’s Law, 55 patience, 100, 103 pauses, 10, 106, 130–31, 141, 234 pausing, 129 in presentations, 196–97 Pavlov, Ivan, 132 PayPal, 98 Penn, Sean, 68 performance, 53, 58 performance review, 174 Perot, Ross, 216 Persia, 132 personality, 10, 107–10, 113 personal magnetism, 6 personal space, 150–53 Peter Pan, 71 phenylethylamine (PEA), 153 phones, 183–85, 186 physical discomfort, 28–31, 42, 43, 59, 65, 66 physicians, 3 pictures, 136–39, 142 pitch, 140 placebo effect, 25, 26, 36, 55, 74 Play-Doh, 173–74 posture, 21, 91, 97, 147, 149, 150, 156–63, 164 authority charisma and, 106 in presentations, 198 Powell, Colin, 5, 104, 112 power, 5, 6, 13, 18–20, 21, 26, 27, 31, 67, 94, 100, 130, 139, 142, 162, 191, 224, 229–30, 231, 234 praise, 207–11 presence, 5–6, 12, 13–18, 26, 27, 31, 63, 129, 142, 154, 224, 229–30, 235 anxiety and, 32 appearance of, 191 body language and, 21 focus charisma and, 100, 231 techniques for, 15 presentations, 7, 72, 187–200, 215, 232, 233–34 charismatic message in, 188–90 colors at, 191 mid-course corrections, 197–99 Q&As at, 190 rehearsals of, 192–93 supporting points in, 189 warmth in, 194–95 Rao, Srikumar, 53n rationalization, 170–71, 186 reality: mind’s view of, 47–49, 50 rewriting, 51, 52–58, 59–60, 65, 66, 202, 236–37 reassurance, 161, 162, 164 resentment, 57, 58, 75, 130, 207–11 resilience, 64–65 responsibility, 210 responsibility transfer, 34–37, 42, 45, 60, 100, 202, 235–36 Rice, Condoleezza, 5 Riggio, Ronald, 143–44 Rock, David, 38 Rocky III, 71 role-playing, 96 romance, 2, 174 Rome, 120 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 136, 194 Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de, 185 sarcasm, 56 satisfaction, 58, 237 Schiro, Tom, 83 Schnabel, Arthur, 130 seating choices, 152–53, 242 Seinfeld, Jerry, 192, 193 self-acceptance, 85 self-compassion, 84–90, 103, 181, 239 self-confidence, 84, 85–86, 94–95 self-consciousness, 199 self-criticism, 38–39, 40, 42, 50, 86–87, 90 self-doubt, 39–41, 42, 43 self-esteem, 84–85, 94–95 self-evaluation, 85 self-warmth, 84 separation distress, 154 shame, 45–46, 50, 90 Sicilienne, The, 196 Sinatra, Frank, 198, 216 situations, 107, 110–13 smiling, 24, 141–42, 184 social comparison, 85 Social Intelligence, 146 social situations, 3 social skills, 23 social smile, 22 soft focus, 155 sounds, 15, 235 Southwest Airlines, 146 space, 158–59 speaking, 131–39, 142, 241 see also presentations Stalin, Joseph, 104, 220 Stanford Business School, 40 Stanford University, 157, 159 statistics, 189–90 status, 134, 160, 232 authority charisma and, 104–7, 231 stories, 189, 190, 233 Streep, Meryl, 68 stress, 2, 38, 41, 52, 53, 154–55 visualization and, 71 stress hormones, 38, 52, 170 stress system, 170, 174, 202 students, 3 suicide, 73 sympathy, 82 Tan, Chade-Meng, 45–46 teachers, 116 technical skills, 23 tempo, 140, 141, 142 tension, 59–60, 61 Teresa, Mother, 88, 112 Tesla Motors, 98–99 Texas, University of, 116 Thatcher, Margaret, 112 Thich Nhat Hanh, 44 threat response, 38 tone, 140 apologies and, 181 criticism and, 179 Tonight Show, The, 192 Top Gun, 71 traffic, 56 true smile, 24 trust, 2, 152 uncertainty, 32–37, 42, 101, 167 Uslan, Michael, 40 Vangelis, 71 vision, 203–5, 231, 234 visionary, 210 visionary charisma, 98, 101–2, 103, 107, 108, 109, 110, 112, 136, 167, 231 visualization, 67–74, 96, 231, 238 body language and, 68, 69, 73, 97 of funeral, 78–79, 83 of goodwill, 81 of historical counselors, 74 of invisible angel wings, 81, 158, 171, 174, 194 kindness charisma and, 103 before meetings, 72–73 of Metta, 88–89 for phone calls and e-mails, 183 practice for, 69 before presentations, 72 voice, 21, 139–42, 182 volume, 140–41, 193–94 vulnerability, 216–18, 221, 243 Walmart, 198 Walton, Sam, 198, 216 warming up, 93–97, 103, 172 warmth, 5, 6, 13, 18–20, 26, 27, 67, 74, 81, 92, 94, 97, 101, 106, 109, 123, 130, 139, 142, 150, 155, 156, 158, 161, 162, 163, 164, 172, 176, 182, 224, 229–30, 231, 232 anxiety and, 32 body language and, 21, 234 criticism and, 179 focus charisma and, 100 handshakes and, 121 kindness charisma and, 102–4, 231 on phone, 185 in presentations, 191, 194–95, 197 self-, 84 vocal, 141–42 Weiss, Alan, 144 white knights, 120 Williams, Redford, 170 willpower, 94 Winfrey, Oprah, 75, 108, 109, 110–11 Wise Brain Bulletin, 73 Wiseman Institute, 80 worst-case scenario, 50, 51 writing, 54, 56, 57


pages: 499 words: 152,156

Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos

conceptual framework, crony capitalism, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Brooks, Deng Xiaoping, East Village, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, financial independence, Gini coefficient, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, income inequality, indoor plumbing, information asymmetry, land reform, Lao Tzu, low skilled workers, market fundamentalism, Mohammed Bouazizi, plutocrats, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, rolodex, scientific worldview, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, transcontinental railway, Washington Consensus, Xiaogang Anhui farmers, young professional

Then I saw that her relatives hoisted her chair while she hobbled up and down each marble stairway, and rolled her in front of the masterpieces. By nightfall, another day of touring Europe’s sights had kindled a sense of appreciation, albeit with a competitive streak. While we waited for tables, at a Chinese restaurant, Zhu brought up the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 B.C.E.), the era that produced Confucius, Lao-tzu, and other pillars of Chinese thought. “Back then, we were damn good!” Zhu told a group of us. His wife, Wang Jianxin, rolled her eyes. “Here we go again,” she said. Her husband was wearing a recently purchased Eiffel Tower baseball cap with blinking battery-powered lights. He turned to me in search of a fresh audience.

He lived alone in a sixth-floor walk-up, a studio of less than seventy-five square feet that could have been mistaken for a library storage room occupied by a fastidious squatter. Books covered every surface, and great mounds listed from the shelves above his desk. His collections encompassed, more or less, the span of human thought: Plato leaned against Lao-tzu, Wittgenstein, Bacon, Fustel de Coulanges, Heidegger, the Koran. When Tang wanted to widen his bed by a few inches, he laid plywood across the frame and propped up the edges with piles of books. Eventually books overflowed the room, and they stood outside his front door in a wall of cardboard boxes.

Justice Ministry, Chinese Kapoor, Anish Kawasaki Heavy Industries Keller, Helen Kennedy, Robert Kent State Khrushchev, Nikita kidney sales Kim Jong-il King, Martin Luther, Jr. Kraft Krugman, Paul Kundera, Milan Kung Fu Panda problem Kweichow Moutai labor unions LaHood, Ray Lake of Great Peace Lam, Desmond Lama Temple Lantos, Tom Lantos Foundation for Human Rights & Justice Lao She Lao-tzu Lasswell, Harold Latest Must-Read for Personnel Going Abroad, The Lau Ming-yee Law Protecting the Disabled, The Lee, Kim Lee Kuan Yew Leibniz, Gottfried Lei Feng Lei Zhengfu Lenin, Vladimir Leung Man-tou Leviathan Lewis, Arthur Lhasa Li, Mr. Liang Qichao Liao Ran Liao Zhenzhu liberalism Liberty Leading the People Li Bing Libya Li Cheng Li Chengpeng Li Datong Li Dehui Li Fan Li Jianli Li Ling Lin Lin, Wang-sung Lin Gu Linguang Wu Lin Huoshu Link, Perry Lin Qingfei Lin Yifu (Lin Zhengyi); China Center for Economic Research founded by; defection of; made chief economist at World Bank; MBA program cofounded by; official file on; Washington Consensus disdained by Lin Yutang Lin Zhijun Lippmann, Walter Li Suqiao literacy rates Li Tiantian Little Red Book Liu, Lydia H.


pages: 606 words: 87,358

The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization by Richard Baldwin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, Admiral Zheng, agricultural Revolution, air freight, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, Branko Milanovic, buy low sell high, call centre, Columbian Exchange, commoditize, commodity super cycle, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, domestication of the camel, Edward Glaeser, endogenous growth, Erik Brynjolfsson, export processing zone, financial intermediation, George Gilder, global supply chain, global value chain, Henri Poincaré, imperial preference, industrial cluster, industrial robot, intangible asset, invention of agriculture, invention of the telegraph, investor state dispute settlement, Isaac Newton, Islamic Golden Age, James Dyson, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Lao Tzu, low skilled workers, market fragmentation, mass immigration, Metcalfe’s law, New Economic Geography, out of africa, paper trading, Paul Samuelson, Pax Mongolica, profit motive, rent-seeking, reshoring, Richard Florida, rising living standards, Robert Metcalfe, Robert Solow, Second Machine Age, Simon Kuznets, Skype, Snapchat, Stephen Hawking, tacit knowledge, telepresence, telerobotics, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, trade route, Washington Consensus

Now, new datasets are emerging to guide more systematic thinking about which of these policies works best . PART V Looking Ahead Despite the best efforts of the smartest humans, no one has found a way to know the future. This ineluctable fact has caused many thinkers to shy away from making predictions. As the Confucian poet Lao Tzu put it: “Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge.” But this is wrongheaded. We have a duty to think hard about what may be so as to better prepare society for the changes that may come. As Henri Poincaré wrote in The Foundations of Science, “It is far better to foresee even without certainty than not to foresee at all.”1 Following his wise words, this book’s closing chapter puts forth some conjectures about how globalization may change in the years to come.

See also innovation; moving ideas knowledge, tacit, 229f, 230 “knowledge arbitrage,” 12 Korea, 72, 87, 94f, 95, 151, 159, 246–250, 248f, 269–271, 274. See also A7; I6; R11 Krugman, Paul, 127, 179, 195, 208–211, 225–226, 243 Kuznets, Simon, 55 Kuznets cycles, 61–62 labor services, 10 land, 120, 124, 138–139 Landes, David, 42 land transport, 211 Lao Tzu, 281 Latin America, 30f, 98, 99–101, 100f, 118f, 243. See also developing nations Leibenstein, Harvey, 256 Levinson, Marc, 76 liberal policies, 55, 56t, 131, 160, 184–185, 218. See also free trade Lindauer, David, 243, 244 livestock, domestication of, 30 local competition, 186–188, 188–189, 191–192 local market size, 184–185 location.


pages: 330 words: 88,445

The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance by Steven Kotler

Abraham Maslow, adjacent possible, Albert Einstein, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Clayton Christensen, data acquisition, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, do what you love, escalation ladder, fear of failure, Google Earth, haute couture, impulse control, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Hawkins, jimmy wales, Kevin Kelly, Lao Tzu, lateral thinking, life extension, lifelogging, low earth orbit, Maui Hawaii, pattern recognition, Ray Kurzweil, risk tolerance, rolodex, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, SimCity, SpaceShipOne, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, time dilation, Virgin Galactic, Walter Mischel, X Prize

It’s cut, dry, and filled with “thou shalt nots.” On a right-hand path, we follow the rules and do what we’re told and no questions asked. This may sound dull, but right-hand paths have a very long history of keeping us safe. A “left-hand path,” meanwhile, is an ecstatic path and mostly gray. It’s little guidance and less security. Lao Tzu, founder of Taoism, warned that a left-hand path is best never begun, and once begun, must absolutely be finished. But how to finish such a path? We have a vast gap in our knowledge. Our society has spent centuries waging war against torment. When we are depressed, we know how to fight for happiness.

See work Jones, Jeremy, 153–57, 158–59, 165–66 Jonsson, Mads “Big Nads,” xvi Jung, Carl, 44 Kalama, Dave, 37–39 Kao Yang (emperor), 59 kayaking records, xiii–xiv, 93–94, 95, 108 skydive-, 143 Stikine, 94–97, 103–4, 106–8 Kelly, Craig, 166 Kerbox, Buzzy, 24 kids, 171–73, 177–79 Kittinger, Joe, 187–88 Knievel, Evel, xiii Krack, Kirk, 110–11 Kramer, Art, 63 Lake Tahoe. See Squaw Valley Landy, John, 174 Lao Tzu, 164 lateralization, 123–26 learning from deathly mistakes, 166–67 flow, in school, 178, 216 growth mindset and, 119, 124–26 Montessori, 178, 221 prediction and “chunking” for, 64–65 shortcuts to, 86–87 speed and longevity, 192–93 Lesser, Rob, 95–96 lifestyle, 77–78, 129 Lillard, Angeline, 178 Limb, Charles, 50, 179 listening, 133 Lopez, Gerry, 37 love, 69 Luks, Allan, 98 macroflow, 31 magnetic resonance imaging.


pages: 800 words: 240,175

Wasps: The Splendors and Miseries of an American Aristocracy by Michael Knox Beran

anti-communist, British Empire, Charles Lindbergh, company town, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, Etonian, fulfillment center, George Santayana, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Joseph Schumpeter, Lao Tzu, Lewis Mumford, old-boy network, phenotype, plutocrats, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Republic of Letters, Steven Pinker, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, W. E. B. Du Bois, éminence grise

Their masters, particularly Plato, Dante, and Shakespeare, have been for me indispensable guides, interpreters of the experience of people whom they never met, but whom they understood—understood as souls frustrated by their failure to do justice to themselves, as though unfaithful to some deeper music. “We are all of us very near to sublimity,” Emerson says. This sublimity, according to him, is within us. It is the logos of Heraclitus, the way (tao) of Lao Tzu, the “depth of the spirit” which, St. François de Sales says, some “call the Kingdom of God.” The eye, Lao Tzu says, “gazes but can catch no glimpse of it”; it perishes in being uttered; we can but call it “the Mystery,” or “rather the ‘Darker than any Mystery,’ ” the “secret of being mated to heaven.” WASPs were not, as a rule, either mystics or philosophers, but they were consumed by the fear that much of their own potential lay dormant within them, in those fathomless depths of being of which the sages speak.

A rationality of the surface, one that fails to tap, as the rationality of the Republic fails to tap, the depths of logos, will never, the Plato of the Laws suggests, produce anything adequately human, let alone really beautiful and noble.III You can’t live wholly in the shallows and expect to see what Dante and Shakespeare and Heraclitus did.IV Veil upon veil conceals the beauty the sages uncovered, that of Beatrice, Diotima, Cordelia, Maryam, the “Mysterious Female” of Lao Tzu,V things hidden from those whom Katágaios calls the spiritually overdressed. Plato, the magus of Enlightenment, was also the first philosopher of counter-Enlightenment. Yet Sir Isaiah was surely right when he pointed out that a number of the counter-Enlightenment divers who followed in his wake found, in their explorations of the depths of logos, some very dark places indeed, even as they preached (as Plato never did) the rejection of conscious reason altogether, doing away with the tools that help us to distinguish between the dark places and the light, the worse and the better.

., 343 Kissinger, Henry, 304, 332, 359 Knickerbocker Club, 284 Kojève, Alexandre, 427, 435 Kubie, Lawrence, 373 L Labor Relations Act, 293 Ladenburg, May, 210 La Farge, John, 186 La Farge, Oliver, 128, 242 Lahey, Frank, 328 Lamennais, Hugues-Felicite Robert de, 109 Lansing, Robert, 220 Lao Tzu, 438 The Last Puritan (Santayana), 86–87 Latini, Brunetto, 370 Lawrence, Abbott, 289 Lawrence, D. H., 239 Lawrence, William, 111 Laws (Plato), 241–243, 414, 439, 441 League of Nations, 219, 225–227, 333 Lears, T.J. Jackson, 89 Lee, Alice Hathaway, 184 Lee, William Henry Fitzhugh, 47, 48 LeHand, Marguerite, 295, 303, 335 leisure, 263, 414–415, 439 Lenin, Vladimir, 223 liberal education, 94–95, 108, 134, 173, 244–247, 403–407, 428 The Liberal Imagination (Trilling), 403, 405, 426 liberalism, 15, 178–179 Lightning on the Sun (Bingham), 398 Lincoln, Abraham, 48, 82, 281, 294 Lindsay, Sir Ronald, 201 Lippmann, Walter, 23, 94, 97, 172–174, 217, 219, 221–222, 230, 265–268, 278–279, 293, 332, 353, 364–365 Lloyd George, David, 225 Lochner v.


pages: 661 words: 169,298

Coming of Age in the Milky Way by Timothy Ferris

Albert Einstein, Albert Michelson, Alfred Russel Wallace, anthropic principle, Arthur Eddington, Atahualpa, Cepheid variable, classic study, Commentariolus, cosmic abundance, cosmic microwave background, cosmological constant, cosmological principle, dark matter, delayed gratification, Eddington experiment, Edmond Halley, Eratosthenes, Ernest Rutherford, Garrett Hardin, Gary Taubes, Gregor Mendel, Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis, Harvard Computers: women astronomers, Henri Poincaré, invention of writing, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, John Harrison: Longitude, Karl Jansky, Lao Tzu, Louis Pasteur, Magellanic Cloud, mandelbrot fractal, Menlo Park, Murray Gell-Mann, music of the spheres, planetary scale, retrograde motion, Richard Feynman, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Searching for Interstellar Communications, source of truth, Stephen Hawking, Thales of Miletus, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, time dilation, Wilhelm Olbers

Darwinian evolution, in indicating that all species of earthly life are related and that all arose from ordinary matter, made it clear that there is no wall dividing us from our fellow creatures on Earth, or from the planet that gave us all life—that we are such stuff as worlds are made of. The conviction that we are in some sense at one with the universe had of course been promulgated many times before, in other spheres of thought. Yahweh fashioned Adam out of dust; Heraclitus the Greek wrote that “all things are one;” Lao-tzu in China depicted man and nature alike as ruled by a single principle (“I call it the Tao”); and a belief in the unity of humankind with the cosmos was widespread among preliterate peoples, as evidenced by the Suquamish Indian chief Seattle, who declared on his deathbed that “all things are connected, like the blood which unites one family.

It’s even possible that an amateur stargazer or a high-school science student will find the first planet beyond Earth that harbors life. We’re living in fascinating times. Stay tuned … Three philosophers came together to taste vinegar, the Chinese symbol for the spirit of life. First Confucius drank of it. “It is sour,” he said. Next, Buddha drank. He pronounced the vinegar bitter. Then Lao-tzu tasted it. He exclaimed, “It is fresh!” —Traditional Chinese tale, repeated by Niels Bohr For all my pains, I only beg this favor, that whenever you see the sun, the heavens, or the stars, you will think of me. —Bernard de Fontenelle GLOSSARY The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.

Time: 1,500 years Noteworthy Events: Sundial invented, in Egypt. Time: 1,000 years Noteworthy Events: Homer declaims the Odyssey. Time: 800 years Noteworthy Events: Olmec culture in Mexico. Time: 700 years Noteworthy Events: Hesiod, Works and Days. Time: 650 years Noteworthy Events: Mayan culture in Guatemala. Time: 600 years Noteworthy Events: Lao-tzu, Confucius, Buddha, Zoroaster; Old Testament in Hebrew. Time: 540 years Noteworthy Events: Pythagoras teaches that “all is number” and that nature is harmonious. Time: 450 years Noteworthy Events: Leucippus and Democritus propose that matter is made of indivisible entities, the atoms. Paradoxes of Zeno raise doubts about the concept of the infinitesimal.


pages: 607 words: 168,497

Sex, Time, and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution by Leonard Shlain

agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Asperger Syndrome, British Empire, Columbine, delayed gratification, double helix, experimental subject, Flynn Effect, George Santayana, Great Leap Forward, invention of writing, Lao Tzu, Marshall McLuhan, open borders, out of africa, sexual politics, social intelligence, Steven Pinker, the medium is the message

Western culture had to wait until the nineteenth century before a prominent male philosopher, John Stuart Mill, was willing to stand up and speak out for women’s equality. The record in non-Western cultures is also dismal. Both Confucius and Buddha were misogynists. Of the few leaders who seemed friendly to women, Jesus, Muhammad, and Lao Tzu stand out, but what they really had to say has been so filtered by subsequent patriarchal commentators that it is difficult now to know exactly what were their true attitudes toward women during their lives. The history of Christianity, Islam, and Taoism darkly demonstrates that the religions that flowed from the teachings of these three influential leaders have been most unkind to women.* In every case, after the death of the founder, men with harsh patriarchal leanings seized the reins of power and revised whatever gentle counsel the originators of these traditions may have had to impart about women.

., 112 Land of the Dead, 279 language, 12, 13, 19, 76, 104, 144, 187–206, 289, 327 auditory constancy in, 196–97 brain and, 196–97 Creative Explosion and, 300–301, 300n culture and, 262–63 development of, 187–88, 187n, 197 element of time and, 197–98 handedness and, 246 in Homo erectus, 187–88, 197 hunting hypothesis and, 189–90, 206 linear sequence in, 262 lying, deceit and, 203–4 male-female relationship and, 191–92 as mutation, 191 in nonhumans, 188–90 respiration adapted to, 194–95 sexual relations and, 197–204, 206 sexual selection and, 189, 192, 205–6 social relations and, 190, 206 theories of, 190–91 vocal tract and, 192–93, 193, 195–96, 300 women and development of, 197–200 Lannon, Richard, 321, 331 Lao Tzu, 209, 340, 340n Laporte, Leo, 103 larynx, 192–93, 195 Last Common Ancestor, 46 laughter, 281–82 Leakey, Richard, 101, 265–66 LeDoux, Joseph, 145n Lee, Richard, 112 left-handedness, 241, 246–48, 253 Leonardo da Vinci, 244 lesbianism, 230, 233, 237, 241, 242n, 254 see also homosexuality Lessing, Doris, 69 LeVay, Simon, 231 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 313n Lewin, Roger, 101, 265–66 Lewis, Thomas, 321, 331 Lewontin, Henry, 17n Lieberman, Philip, 190–91 Lilith, myth of, 24 limbic system, 144 Lind, James, 132n linear sequence, concept of, 262–63 Linguistic Society of Paris, 189 Linnaeus, Carolus, 86 linoleic acid, 125–26 Lion King, The (film), 129 lipoproteins, 125, 125n Loango tribe, 138 lochia, 28 Locke, John, 340 love, 324, 338, 340, 347–48, 358 between mother and son, 340–41, 384n Lovejoy, Owen, 103 Lovelock, James, 167n Low, Bobbi, 137, 223n Lucretius, 276 Lucy (fossil hominid), 107–8 lunar calendars, 182, 183, 271n, 299 lunar cycles, 164, 179n bipedalism and, 175–76 length of pregnancy and, 179–80 menstruation and, 18, 164, 175–81, 177n, 337, 370 moon’s ides in, 178 Lupton, Mary Jane, 57, 67n Luther, Martin, 339 Lysistrata (Aristophanes), 321 McClintock, Barbara, 53 MacLean, Paul, 143–44 McLuhan, Marshall, 368 Maimonides, 92 Malinowski, Bronislaw, 301 Malraux, André, 261 Mandango tribe, 180 Mangaian islanders, 141 “many fathers” theory, 49 Maoris, 102, 180 March, Kathryn, 58n Margulis, Lynn, 167n Markee, J.

The Iroquois concept of governance was one of many strains that went into the United States’ republican model of states’ rights and a federal government.6 *In an ancient Greek myth, the sword of Damocles was a sword hanging over someone’s head suspended by a thin thread. The threat of its falling was ever present. *Male Taoist priests began to venerate Lao Tzu as a god in the tenth century A.D. and banned women from holding any major institutional positions. †For a discussion of how the image of the Madonna and her child has played out in art, see page 384.4 *Lest one assume that these attitudes affect only men who run around in loincloths hefting spears, consider this.


pages: 297 words: 98,506

Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales

business climate, butterfly effect, complexity theory, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, impulse control, Lao Tzu, loose coupling, Louis Pasteur, Neil Armstrong, power law, systems thinking

It can be seen as a type of survival training, for if there is no food, no water, no way, a person has already practiced sitting still and making the best of the situation. He’ll have confidence in his ability to survive it. The survival lessons that apply today are ancient. The Tao Te Ching is broken into two parts, “Integrity,” and “The Way,” which can be thought of as the two halves of surviving anything. Lao-tzu’s book is a handbook for a ruler, but it is also a handbook for the brain. An imbalance of the brain’s functions leads us into trouble, and a triumph of balance gets us out. I’ve found similar lessons in Epictetus, Herodotus, Thucydides, the Bible, the Bhagavad Gītā. “Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new?”

Kiley, Deborah Scaling, and Meg Noonan. Untamed Seas. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994. Kilhstrom, J. F. “The Cognitive Unconscious,” Science, 237 (1987). Krakauer, Jon. Into Thin Air. New York: Villard Books, 1997. Kübler-Ross, Elizabeth. On Death and Dying. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1969. Lao-tzu. Tao Te Ching, trans. Victor H. Mair. New York: Bantam Books, 1990. Leach, John. Survival Psychology. New York: New York University Press, 1994. LeDoux, Joseph. The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. ———. The Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are.


The Pirate's Dilemma by Matt Mason

Albert Einstein, augmented reality, barriers to entry, blood diamond, citizen journalism, creative destruction, digital divide, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, East Village, Firefox, Free Software Foundation, future of work, glass ceiling, global village, Hacker Ethic, haute couture, Howard Rheingold, Internet of things, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, jimmy wales, job satisfaction, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Lao Tzu, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, Naomi Klein, new economy, New Urbanism, patent troll, peer-to-peer, prisoner's dilemma, public intellectual, RAND corporation, RFID, Richard Florida, Richard Stallman, SETI@home, side hustle, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, the long tail, Tim Cook: Apple, urban sprawl, Whole Earth Catalog

If you have an idea, but the infrastructure to get it out there does not exist, you may have an opportunity to create your own. Finding a space to get your idea across is as important as having the idea itself. If the idea is good, growing an audience won’t be difficult. It’s this audience that gives pirates their power. Lao-Tzu, the founder of Taoism, famously said that when leaders lead well, people feel that they did it themselves and that it happened naturally. Pirates are experts at leading communities in this way, bringing people products, services, and sounds they didn’t know they couldn’t live without. Once these new ideas are broadcast, they unavoidably create a Pirate’s Dilemma for others in that market.

, 21 Impressionism, 15 Industrial Revolution, 27, 29, 36, 229 information: availability of, 18–19 digital, 3, 4, 5, 43, 45, 59, 146–47 jamming of, 1–3, 5, 53 share and control of, 6, 143 Information Age, 5, 207 innovation, 3, 5–6, 8, 17, 19, 27–28, 56, 71, 88, 97, 166 Inside Sudan, 23n intellectual property, 64n, 142 copy and remix of, 36–39, 63, 68–102 protection of, see copyrights; patents International Federation of Phonograph Industries (IFPI), 161 international waters, 34–35 broadcasting from, 41, 42–43 Internet, 4, 34, 45, 224 bloggers on, 38–39, 48, 49–53, 55, 58, 66, 163, 169, 198–99 downloading from, 5, 7, 28–29, 54, 55, 68–70, 99–100, 105, 131–32, 154–61, 240 economic and social change through, 58 file-sharing on, 48, 55–57, 60–61, 68–69, 98, 142, 151–52, 154–59 global reach of, 26, 45, 58, 109 neutrality and openness of, 57–59 news sites on, 26, 50–52, 58 origins of, 57–58, 66 piracy on, 5, 7, 28–29, 54–57, 60–61, 68–70 tracker sites on, 55, 57 video and radio podcasts on, 54–55 iPhones, 159–60 iPods, 2, 68, 70–71, 159, 225 Iraq War, 50, 191 iTrip, 2 It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, 99 iTunes, 159 Jackson, Michael, 50, 79, 159 Jackson, Peter, 37 Jay-Z, 97, 98, 101, 172, 174, 189–90, 194 Jazzy Jeff, 155–56, 225 Jenkins, Henry, 92 Jenkins, Mark, 1, 120, 121, 126–27, 130 Jenner, Peter, 160 Jimmy Kimmel Live, 54 Jobs, Steve, 59, 145, 154, 160–61 Johansson, Frans, 19 John, Daymond, 177–80 Johnson, Andrew, 89 Jones, Grace, 77 Jones, Mike, 180n JPEG technology, 59–60 Justin’s Home Page, 49 KaZaA, 68–69 KDKA, 41 Kennedy, John, 161 Kerouac, Jack, 10 “Kilroy was here,” 111 Kiss FM, 44–45, 48, 66 Klein, Calvin, 178 Klein, Naomi, 126 Knox, Steve, 221 Knuckles, Frankie, 93, 140, 146 KOOL HERC, 78–79, 82, 88 Koopa, 160 Kraftwerk, 80, 82 Kraus, Danile, 87 KRS-ONE, 175n Kubrick, Stanley, 85–86, 87 Index | 273 LADY PINK, 113, 114, 116–17, 122–23, 124n Lao-Tzu, 47 Lasn, Kalle, 127–28, 130 Last Night a DJ Saved My Life (Brewster and Broughton), 43, 76 Le, Minh, 91 Leary, Timothy, 138 Lee, Ji, 128–30 Lee, Spike, 85, 108 Lessig, Lawrence, 37, 88 Let It Rock, 16 Levan, Larry, 140, 146 Levi’s, 21, 177 Levy, Alain, 160 Lil Jon, 187, 214 Lines, Ray, 87 Linux, 148, 150–51, 164, 166, 169, 235, 238 LL Cool J, 177, 179, 182, 187, 214 Loft, the, 138–41, 143, 144, 146, 151, 152, 166, 167, 169 Long, Simon, 45 Long Tail, The (Anderson), 149 Lopez, Cesar, 204 Lord of the Rings, 37–38, 87 Love, Courtney, 154–55 Lucas, George, 84, 86 Lulu, 27–28 McCartney, Paul, 100 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 142 McInnes, Gavin, 19–20 McLaren, Malcolm, 11, 16, 25 McLuhan, Marshall, 66 Madonna, 6, 68–70, 161, 223 Man, Beenie, 73n Mancuso, David, 76, 137–41, 143, 145, 149, 151–53, 160, 169 Maney, Kevin, 159 Manhattan Project, 135 Marbury, Stephon, 192–93 Marconi, Guglielmo, 40 markets, 93–94, 142 free, 7, 8, 22, 65, 185, 231 global, 25, 112 looking for gaps in and out of, 66, 235 mass, 239 niche, 8, 53, 67 Markoff, John, 143, 144 Marshall, Duncan, 108–9, 125, 128 Massacre, The, 183, 184 mass culture, 232 co-option of punk by, 21–22, 31–32 rejection of, 12, 13–14, 15, 21, 22, 26, 28, 31 subversion of, 15, 27, 31 mass production, 28, 30, 222, 229 Matlock, Glen, 17, 21 MCs, 6, 54, 72n, 73n, 74, 78, 114, 185–86, 189, 208, 211, 213, 219 Mead, Margaret, 67 media, 6 controversial political issues in, 3, 23, 50 mainstream, 26, 49–50, 52–53 pirate inroads in, 28, 35, 39 Medici Effect, The (Johansson), 19 medicine, 61–65, 236 Medina, Jamie-James, 23 Memoirs of a Geisha, 38 Menino, Thomas M., 124 “Meter Pop” (Jenkins), 1, 3 Metropolitan Museum of Art, 11, 122 Microsoft, 60, 145–46, 147, 148–49, 223, 235, 238 Miller, Ivor L., 113 Milonakis, Andy, 54 Monsanto, 60, 61n Moore, Fred, 144–45 Morley, David, 224 Morse code, 40 Mortal Kombat, 92 Moses, Robert, 78 Motion Picture Association of America, 38n Moulton, Tom, 76–77, 78, 79, 80, 82, 88 Mountain Dew, 181–82 Mozilla, 147 MP3, 30, 60, 68–69, 70, 151, 154, 156, 159–60, 203, 204, 207 MTV, 54, 85, 89, 92, 159, 172, 173, 194, 226 Murder, Inc., 177 Murdoch, Liz, 218 Murdoch, Rupert, 49 Muzimei, 38 Myers, Mike, 88 Myriad, 62 MySpace, 132, 150, 159, 175, 188 Nagao, Tomoaki, 93–94 Napster, 154, 207 Nas, 197 Nature, 149 Nazis, 7, 34, 89 Neon Boys, 10, 15 Netscape, 147, 207 Never Can Say Goodbye, 77 Never Mind the Bollocks, 17 Nevins, Preston, 89–90, 93 Newmark, Craig, 58 Newsweek, 59 New York, 53 New York Daily News, 183 New York Dolls, 11, 15, 16 New York Herald Tribune, 40 New York Reality Check 101, 200 New York Times, 24, 50–51, 64, 94, 106, 107, 121, 190, 212 Nike, 7, 21, 22, 29, 93–94, 123, 192, 210, 213, 222, 223, 225 No Logo (Klein), 126 Norman, Christina, 172 Nova, Lisa, 173–74 Observer Music Monthly, 211 OFCOM, 44n O’Hara, Craig, 229 OhmyNews, 51–52 Oh Yeon Ho, 51, 52 “On the Beach,” 74 open-source culture, 3, 8, 69, 88, 141, 143, 147–71, 231, 235, 240 altruism and inspiration in, 134–36, 167–68, 170 274 | Index open-source culture (cont.) four pillars of community in, 167–69 self-interest and profit in, 168–70, 171 O’Rahilly, Ronan, 42 O’Reilly, Tim, 157 Ousby, John, 68 Outfoxed, 88 Oza, Rohan, 183 Paragons, 74 Patent and Trademarks Office, U.S., 60 patents, 36–37, 40, 56, 142 biotechnical and medical, 60–65 trolling for, 59–61, 98 see also copyrights Paul, Sean, 73n P.


pages: 96 words: 33,963

Decline of the English Murder by George Orwell

British Empire, invisible hand, laissez-faire capitalism, Lao Tzu, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thorstein Veblen, W. E. B. Du Bois

Useless Toil Frederick Jackson Turner The Significance of the Frontier in American History Marcel Proust Days of Reading Leon Trotsky An Appeal to the Toiling, Oppressed and Exhausted Peoples of Europe Sigmund Freud The Future of an Illusion Walter Benjamin The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction George Orwell Books v. Cigarettes Albert Camus The Fastidious Assassins Frantz Fanon Concerning Violence Michel Foucault The Spectacle of the Scaffold Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching Writings from the Zen Masters Thomas More Utopia Michel de Montaigne On Solitude William Shakespeare On Power John Locke Of the Abuse of Words Samuel Johnson Consolation in the Face of Death Immanuel Kant An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’ Joseph de Maistre The Executioner Thomas De Quincey Confessions of an English Opium Eater Arthur Schopenhauer The Horrors and Absurdities of Religion Abraham Lincoln The Gettysburg Address Karl Marx Revolution and War Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Grand Inquisitor William James On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings Robert Louis Stevenson An Apology for Idlers W.


pages: 407 words: 112,767

The Tao of Fully Feeling: Harvesting Forgiveness Out of Blame by Pete Walker

Albert Einstein, Lao Tzu, Lewis Mumford, life extension, Ralph Waldo Emerson, risk tolerance, Saturday Night Live

Far in the pillared dark Thrush music went – Almost like a call to come in To the dark and lament. – Robert Frost FEELING Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself? The Master doesn’t seek fulfillment. Not seeking, not expecting, she is present, and can welcome all things. – Lao Tzu Feeling is the antithesis of pain . . . the more pain one feels, the less pain one suffers. – Arthur Janov Feeling is the process of grieving that allows a survivor to work through childhood pain in a passive way. Feeling is focusing on pain with the intention of relaxing any resistance to it, so that it may pass through and out of the body.

My “prayer” of blasphemy culminated with an epiphany that my deepest grief concerned the loss of the glorious sense of oneness and connectedness that I, like all human beings, resided in before being born into this world. This emotionally-based remembering left me with an unshakeable faith that this Oneness is the ultimate reality to which we all inevitably return. Lao-Tzu wrote about this: Let your heart be at peace. Watch the turmoil of beings, but contemplate their return. Each separate being in the universe returns to the common source. Returning to the source is serenity . . . When you realize where you come from, you naturally become . . . kindhearted as a grandmother, dignified as a king.


The Future of Money by Bernard Lietaer

agricultural Revolution, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, banks create money, barriers to entry, billion-dollar mistake, Bretton Woods, business cycle, clean water, complexity theory, corporate raider, currency risk, dematerialisation, discounted cash flows, diversification, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial innovation, floating exchange rates, full employment, geopolitical risk, George Gilder, German hyperinflation, global reserve currency, Golden Gate Park, Howard Rheingold, informal economy, invention of the telephone, invention of writing, John Perry Barlow, Lao Tzu, Lewis Mumford, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, means of production, microcredit, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Norbert Wiener, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, pattern recognition, post-industrial society, price stability, Recombinant DNA, reserve currency, risk free rate, Ronald Reagan, San Francisco homelessness, seigniorage, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, The Future of Employment, the market place, the payments system, Thomas Davenport, trade route, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, two and twenty, working poor, world market for maybe five computers

It will also automatically determine the scale and nature of the project that becomes possible. If the leadership has credibility only within a small area of town, work at that scale. If it has the capacity to mobilise a whole region complementary currency system of the size of the region becomes possible. To conclude with this aspect, Lao-Tzu's comment is particularly n for grass-root movements: 'The best leadership is when at the end people claim they did it themselves.' VALID COMPLEMENTARY CURRENCIES DESIGN The last critical step is to choose among- the wide variety of complementary currency systems that are available as prototypes today, the one that best fit: your own requirements.

Fly-fishing requires similar 'soft eyes encompassing both the spot where the line is dropped and the entire river, in contrast with the 'hard eyes' used for bait-fishing where the focus remains only on the float. People who are good at bird or whale watching report exactly the same process. In short, Taoists are fly-fishing, while our very language tends to keep us stuck with bait-fishing (see sidebar on Lao- Tzu). For example, how many of you have read correctly the title of this section: 'AU is about balance'. Have you automatically read 'it is all about balance', which has a different meaning? Or did you just decide that it was a typo? If this text were written in Chinese ideograms, its readers would immediately understand what is referred to: the whole exists only because of the balance between the two parts.


pages: 634 words: 185,116

From eternity to here: the quest for the ultimate theory of time by Sean M. Carroll

Albert Einstein, Albert Michelson, anthropic principle, Arthur Eddington, Brownian motion, cellular automata, Claude Shannon: information theory, Columbine, cosmic microwave background, cosmological constant, cosmological principle, dark matter, dematerialisation, double helix, en.wikipedia.org, gravity well, Great Leap Forward, Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis, heat death of the universe, Henri Poincaré, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, John von Neumann, Lao Tzu, Laplace demon, Large Hadron Collider, lone genius, low earth orbit, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, pets.com, Pierre-Simon Laplace, Richard Feynman, Richard Stallman, Schrödinger's Cat, Slavoj Žižek, Stephen Hawking, stochastic process, synthetic biology, the scientific method, time dilation, wikimedia commons

If we take a piece of paper and burn it, letting the photons produced escape along with their energy, the resulting ashes will have a slightly lower mass (no matter how careful we are to capture all of them) than the combination of the original paper plus the oxygen it used to burn. E = mc2 isn’t just about atomic bombs; it’s a profound feature of the dynamics of energy all around us. 5 TIME IS FLEXIBLE The reason why the universe is eternal is that it does not live for itself; it gives life to others as it transforms. —Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching The original impetus behind special relativity was not a puzzling experimental result (although the Michelson-Morley experiment certainly was that); it was an apparent conflict between two preexisting theoretical frameworks.70 On the one hand you had Newtonian mechanics, the gleaming edifice of physics on which all subsequent theories had been based.

See also entropy and arrow of time and baby universes model and black holes and Boltzmann brains and entropy and growth of structure and microscopic level and possibilism and space of states “Is it Possible to Create a Universe in the Laboratory by Quantum Tunneling?” (Farhi) Jackiw, Roman Johnson, George Johnson, Matthew kaons Kasner, Edward Kelvin, William Thomson, Lord Kelvin scale Kepler, Johannes Kerr, Roy kinetic energy kinetic theory Kleban, Matthew Kolmogorov complexity Landauer, Rolf Lao Tzu Laplace, Pierre-Simon Laplace’s Demon Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Lavoisier, Antoine Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory laws of nature laws of physics. See also specific forces and bouncing-universe cosmology and consciousness and entropy definition and irreversibility and memory and multiverse hypothesis and patterns and reversibility Lectures on Physics (Feynman) Lee, Tsung-Dao Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm Lemaître, Georges length contraction Leucippus life and the Boltzmann-Lucretius scenario and complexity definition of and energy budget of Earth and entropy and free energy and memory and multiverse hypothesis light light cones and the Big Bang and black holes and closed timelike curves described and the horizon problem and Newtonian space and the observable universe and time travel and white holes Linde, Andrei Liouville, Joseph Liouville’s Theorem locality location logarithms longitude Look at the Harlequins!

Augustine Stallman, Richard Standard Model Starobinsky, Alexander stars Star Trek stasis state of physical systems statistical mechanics acceptance of and black holes and coarse-graining and entropy and function of time and Loschmidt’s reversibility objection and multiverse model and prediction and Principle of Indifference and recurrence theorem Steady State theory of cosmology steam engines Stockum, Willem Jacob van Stoppard, Tom stopping time strange quarks Strine, Arno (fictional character) string theory Strominger, Andrew strong nuclear force structure formation Sun supercooling supergravity supermassive black holes supernovae superposition and arrow of time and decoherence and entanglement and the EPR paradox and interference and intrinsic quantum indeterminacy and many-world interpretation and Schrödinger’s Cat supersymmetry Susskind, Leonard Swann’s Way (Proust) the swerve (clinamen) symmetry and bouncing-universe cosmology and checkerboard world exercise and determinism and laws of nature and multiverse model and nature and parity and particle decay and special relativity and supersymmetry and time reversal and time-translation invariance synchronized repetition Szilárd, Leó ’t Hooft, Gerard tachyons Tao Te Ching (Lao Tzu) Tegmark, Max temperature and anisotropies and black holes and conservation of information and de Sitter space and energy budget of Earth and entropy and expansion of the universe and the horizon problem and inflationary cosmology and information Kelvin scale and Maxwell’s Demon and mixing of the Sun and thermal equilibrium and thermal fluctuation and useable energy temporal chauvinism tension tensors theology Théorie Analytique des Probabilités (Laplace) Theory of Everything thermal equilibrium thermal fluctuation thermodynamics.


pages: 391 words: 117,984

The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World by Jacqueline Novogratz

access to a mobile phone, Ayatollah Khomeini, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, business process, business process outsourcing, clean water, disinformation, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, half of the world's population has never made a phone call, Hernando de Soto, Kibera, Lao Tzu, low interest rates, market design, microcredit, Nelson Mandela, out of africa, Ronald Reagan, sensible shoes, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, tontine, transaction costs, zero-sum game

And so are we. CHAPTER 14 BUILDING BRICK BY BRICK Go to the people: live with them, learn from them love them start with what they know build with what they have. But of the best leaders, when the job is done, the task accomplished, the people will say: “We have done it ourselves.” —LAO TZU In India it wasn’t a surprise to find entrepreneurs with enormous talent and drive focused on bringing basic services like health care, housing, and water to the poor. With more than a billion people, some of the best universities in the world, a powerful diaspora community, and a highly innovative health care industry, India seems to breed social entrepreneurs.

Sono, 247, 247–51, 277 Kigali (Rwanda) blue sweater in, 2–3 Central Prison in, 182–83 description of, 37–38 dinner party in, 39–40 embassies in, 39 food in, 106–7 Genocide Memorial Center in, 210 HIV in, 113 marketplace in, 58–59 Nairobi (Kenya) versus, 91 Novogratz and arriving, 36–37 broken finger of, 126–27 first flight to, 36 going-away party for, 127 holiday party of, 126 leaving, 113–14, 127–28 rental house in, 106–7 returning (1997), 162–63 robbery of house in, 107–11 postgenocide, 179–80, 199 reconstruction of, 201 smells of, 200 UNICEF office in, 37–39, 49–50, 53 King, Martin Luther Jr., 135, 143, 181 Kinyarwanda, 2, 46, 50, 69, 74, 84, 177, 199 Koinange, Mary, 96–100, 104, 118, 251 Koran, 198 L Labor unions, 161 Lake Kivu (Rwanda), 51, 106, 121 Lamu (island off Kenya), 16–17 Lao Tzu, 235 Leadership, 154–55, 160, 271, 277 Lending agency, manual for building, 64 Leonard (driver), 191–92 Leonel (Zairean musician), 51 Liliane (Rwandan woman) daughter of, 177, 201 with Duterimbere, 57–58, 60–62, 64, 67–69, 113 genocide and, 164–65, 177 gift for children of, 209–10 at holiday party, 126 husband of, 177–79, 201, 210 Indian trip for rural Rwandan women and, 68–69 postgenocide, 153, 177–79, 200–201, 209–10 son of, 177, 201, 209 Lions Club, 269 Listening to Kigali market women, 57–58 leadership and, 155, 271, 277 to markets, 254 need for, 283–84 by Novogratz (Jacqueline), 57–58, 63–64, 86, 175, 279 in philanthropy, 141 poverty solution and, 263, 270 skills, 86 Los Angeles riots (1990s), 154 Lu Xun, 36 M Maathai, Wangari, 213 MacDougall, Ann, 231–32, 281 MacDougall, Charlotte, 281 Madgasy proverb, 72 Maha Ghosananda (Buddhist monk), 144–45, 162 Maize mills project, 130–31 Malaria, 69, 89–90, 113, 255–58, 264 Management skills, need for, 135 Mandela, Nelson, 1, 146 Marcelina (“Maz”) (Kenyan woman), 16–17, 30 Markets, 65–66, 105, 212, 254, 272, 277 Maryam (Kashmiri girl), 275–77 Mary (first woman bank manager in Kenya), 12 Masalawala, Rustom, 220, 226 Meenakshi Temple (India), 283 Microenterprises, 9, 138, 211.


Battling Eight Giants: Basic Income Now by Guy Standing

basic income, Bernie Sanders, carbon tax, centre right, collective bargaining, decarbonisation, degrowth, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Extinction Rebellion, full employment, future of work, Gini coefficient, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), job automation, labour market flexibility, Lao Tzu, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, Martin Wolf, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, open economy, pension reform, precariat, quantitative easing, rent control, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, universal basic income, Y Combinator

To compensate for their time in responding to an oral questionnaire, consideration should also be given to providing a modest payment to all those participating in the pilot, whether as recipients or as part of the control group, with payment being made at the end of the pilot. 82 5 Taking the first steps A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Lao Tzu, c.550 BC In this book, it has been implicit that whatever is paid as a basic income or common dividend should be paid equally to all deemed eligible. There are arguments for paying different groups different amounts. But in the proposed pilots it seems sensible or pragmatic to preserve the strict equality rule.


pages: 405 words: 130,840

The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom by Jonathan Haidt

Abraham Maslow, classic study, coherent worldview, crack epidemic, delayed gratification, do well by doing good, feminist movement, hedonic treadmill, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, invisible hand, job satisfaction, Lao Tzu, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, Paradox of Choice, Peter Singer: altruism, PIHKAL and TIHKAL, placebo effect, prisoner's dilemma, Ralph Waldo Emerson, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), social intelligence, stem cell, tacit knowledge, telemarketer, the scientific method, twin studies, ultimatum game, Walter Mischel, zero-sum game

Meditation done every day for several months can help you reduce substantially the frequency of fearful, negative, and grasping thoughts, thereby improving your affective style. As B u d d h a said: "When a m a n knows the solitude of silence, and feels the joy of quietness, he is then free from fear and sin."35 Cognitive Therapy Meditation is a characteristically Eastern solution to the problems of life. Even before Buddha, the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu had said that the road to wisdom runs through calm inaction, desireless waiting. Western approaches to problems more typically involve pulling out a tool box and trying to fix what's broken. That was Lady Philosophy's approach with her many arguments, and reframing techniques. T h e toolbox was thoroughly modernized in the 1960s by Aaron Beck.

S u p r e m e C o u r t — a body devoted to reason—issued this opinion: "I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived." ( O L I V E R W E N D E L L H O L M E S , J R . , I884)71 Buddha, Lao Tzu, and other sages of the East discovered a path to peace and tranquility, the path of letting go. They told us how to follow the path using meditation and stillness. Millions of people in the West have followed, and although few, if any, have reached Nirvana, many have found s o m e degree of peace, happiness, and spiritual growth.


pages: 241 words: 43,073

Puppet 3 Beginner's Guide by John Arundel

business logic, cloud computing, Debian, DevOps, job automation, job satisfaction, Lao Tzu, Larry Wall, Network effects, SpamAssassin

Files You can have Puppet deploy a copy of a file using the source attribute: file { '/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default': source => 'puppet:///modules/nginx/cat-pictures.conf', } File resources can trigger a service to be restarted using the notify attribute. This is useful for configuration files, for which changes often don't take effect until the relevant service is restarted: notify => Service['nginx'], Chapter 4. Managing Puppet with Git If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading. – Lao-tzu In this chapter you'll learn how to use the Git version control system to manage your Puppet manifests. I'll also show you how to use Git to distribute the manifests to multiple machines, so that you can start managing your whole network with Puppet. If you're already familiar with Git, you can save some reading by skipping ahead to the Time for action – importing your manifests into Git section.


pages: 168 words: 47,972

Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts

dematerialisation, Dennis Tito, Exxon Valdez, financial independence, follow your passion, George Santayana, Lao Tzu, large denomination, personalized medicine, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the map is not the territory

The Essential Koran, translated by Thomas Cleary (Book Sales, 1998) A collection of readings from the Koran, designed to help non-Muslim Westerners appreciate the power and poetry of the Muslim holy book. Tao Te Ching: A New English Version, translated by Stephen Mitchell (Harper Perennial, 1992) A Zen-influenced translation of Lao Tzu’s classic meditations. The Upanishads, translated by Juan Mascaro (Viking Press, 1965) Simple and powerful verses from the ancient mystical tradition of Hinduism. For a fully updated and linkable online version of this resource guide, surf to http://vagabonding.net/ and follow the “Resources” link.


pages: 505 words: 138,917

Open: The Story of Human Progress by Johan Norberg

Abraham Maslow, additive manufacturing, affirmative action, Albert Einstein, anti-globalists, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Bletchley Park, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, business process, California gold rush, carbon tax, citizen journalism, classic study, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crony capitalism, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, digital map, Donald Trump, Edward Jenner, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, Filter Bubble, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Flynn Effect, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, Galaxy Zoo, George Gilder, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global supply chain, global village, green new deal, humanitarian revolution, illegal immigration, income per capita, Indoor air pollution, indoor plumbing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Islamic Golden Age, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John von Neumann, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, labour mobility, Lao Tzu, liberal capitalism, manufacturing employment, mass immigration, negative emissions, Network effects, open borders, open economy, Pax Mongolica, place-making, profit motive, RAND corporation, regulatory arbitrage, rent control, Republic of Letters, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Schrödinger's Cat, sharing economy, side project, Silicon Valley, Solyndra, spice trade, stem cell, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, tacit knowledge, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, Tyler Cowen, Uber for X, ultimatum game, universal basic income, World Values Survey, Xiaogang Anhui farmers, zero-sum game

People began to ask new questions about the world and morality, in an era of growing wealth and increasing contacts between different parts of the world: Greece with Persia and Egypt; China with India and South East Asia; the Middle East at the crossroads of different cultures. Philosophers and prophets tried to come up with systems of morality that were universal and did not just apply to their own group. Buddha in India, Confucius and Lao-Tzu in China and the prophets of the Bible were contemporaries of the early Greek philosophers. Ancient rituals and animal sacrifices were replaced by moral codes. The criticism that Xenophanes of Colophon (in the sixth and fifth centuries bc) levelled against the gods in popular religion is an illustrative example of how the Greeks took their ideas further than everybody else.

(Fukuyama), 362–5 End of Work, The (Rifkin), 312 Engels, Friedrich, 33, 36, 162, 206, 247, 256 English Civil War (1642–1651), 148, 183, 184, 201 Enigma machine, 124–6 Enlightenment, 4, 5, 6, 13, 103, 154–60, 165–6, 195–6 Environmental Performance Index, 327 Ephesus, 45 Epic of Gilgamesh, The, 38 Epicurus, 134–5 Epstein, Richard, 320 equality matching, 262–6, 267 Erasmus, 152 Erdogan, Recep Tayyip, 354 Ethiopia, 72, 130 ethnocentrism, 219, 271 Etruscan civilization (c. 900–27 BC), 43 Eubulus, 47 eugenics, 109 Euphrates river, 37 Euripides, 132 European Organization for Nuclear Research, 306 European Parliament, 325 European Union (EU) Brexit (2016–), 9, 14, 118, 238, 240–41, 349, 354, 379 common currency, 280–81 freedom of movement, 118, 343 migration crisis (2015–), 10, 114, 115, 342–3, 358 subsidies in, 280 trade and, 272 United States, trade with, 19 Evans, Oliver, 203 Evolution of God, The (Wright), 249 evolutionary psychology, 14, 23, 225 exoticism, 84 Expressionism, 198 Facebook, 239, 309 Falwell, Jerry, 113–14 Farage, Nigel, 241 farming, see agriculture Fascist Italy (1922–1943), 105, 219 FedEx, 319 Feifer, Jason, 290–92 Fenway Park, Boston, 223 Ferdinand II, King of Aragon, 97, 98, 106 Ferguson, Charles, 314 Fermi, Enrico, 105 Ferney, France, 153 feudalism, 92, 194, 202, 208 fight-or-flight instinct, 15, 346, 348–9 filter bubbles, 239 financial crisis (2008), 10, 15, 62, 254, 333, 358, 359–60 fire, control of, 32–3, 76 Flanders, 208 fluyts, 100 Flynn effect, 109 Fogel, Robert, 276 folk economics, 258–62 football, 223–4, 245–6 Forbes, 274 Ford, Henry, 203 Fortune 500 companies, 82 Fox News, 82, 302, 354 France, 151 American Revolutionary War (1775–83), 201 automation in, 313 Cathars, 94, 142 Cobden–Chevalier Treaty (1860), 53–4 corruption in, 345 Dutch War (1672–8), 101 Encyclopédie, 154 free zones in, 180–81 Huguenots, persecution of, 97, 99, 101, 158, 193 immigration in, 115 Jews, persecution of, 96, 97, 254 languages in, 289 Minitel, 313 Revolution (1789–99), 201, 292 Royal Academy of Sciences, 156 ruin follies, 287 St Bartholomew’s Day massacre (1572), 97 Thököly Uprising (1678–85), 137 Uber in, 320 University of Paris, 140, 141–2, 143 Francis I, Emperor of Austria-Hungary, 178 Franciscans, 144 Franklin, Benjamin, 107 Franks, 92 free speech, 127, 131–2, 160, 163–5, 343 Chicago principles, 164–5 emigration for, 152–3 university campuses, 163–5 free trade, see under trade Fried, Dan, 289 Friedman, Benjamin, 253 Friedman, David, 284 Friedman, Thomas, 325 Friedrich Wilhelm I, King of Prussia, 153 Fukuyama, Francis, 362–5 Fulda, Germany, 179, 180 Future and Its Enemies, The (Postrel), 300 Future of Nostalgia, The (Boym), 288 Galatia, 90 Galaxy Zoo, 80 Galilei, Galileo, 146, 150 Gallup, 164 game theory, 26 Gandhi, Indira, 326 gas lighting, 297 Gates, William ‘Bill’, 274, 277, 309 Gauls, 90, 91, 92 gay rights, 113, 336 Geary, Patrick, 288–9 gender equality, 113, 114 General Motors, 64 generations baby-boom generation (1946–64), 294, 340 generation X (1965–80), 340 immigration and, 106, 110–11, 113–14 interwar generation (1928–45), 340 millennial generation (1981–96), 340 nostalgia and, 291, 293–4, 296 genetically modified organisms (GMO), 299, 301 Geneva, Switzerland, 152, 153 Genghis Khan, 94–5, 96, 174 Genoa, Republic of (1005–1797), 73, 178 George II, King of Great Britain and Ireland, 193 George III, King of Great Britain and Ireland, 103, 193 George Mason University, 257, 258 Georgia, 365 Georgia, United States, 349 German Conservative Party, 254 Germany automatic looms, 179 Berlin Wall, fall of (1989), 10, 340, 341, 363, 364 Bronze Age migration, 75 budget deficits, 60 COVID-19 pandemic (2019–20), 12 guilds in, 190 immigration in, 114, 115 Jews, persecution of, 99, 104–6, 109, 220, 233 migration crisis (2015–), 342–3 Nazi period (1933–45), 104–6, 109, 124, 220, 233, 353 Neolithic migration, 74 protectionism in, 314 Reichstag fire (1933), 353 Thirty Years War (1618–48), 150 United States, migration to, 104, 107–8, 111 Weimar period (1918–33), 353 al-Ghazali, 139 Gholia, 89 Gibbon, Edward, 90 Gilder, George, 314 Gilgamesh, 38 Gillis, John, 291 Gingrich, Newton, 313 Gini coefficient, 273 Gintis, Herbert, 36 global history, 13 global price crisis (2010–11), 11 global warming, 75, 323, 325, 326–34 globalization, 4, 55, 270 backlashes against, 9, 14, 54, 57 cities and, 35 classical world, 43–50 conspiracy theories on, 323 disease and, 11, 77–9 United States and, 19 Westernization, 4 Glorious Revolution (1688), 101, 185–8, 190, 193 Goa, India, 146–7 golden nugget theory, 5 Golden Rule, 251–2 Golding, William, 219, 243, 244 Goldstone, Jack, 5, 133, 353 Goodness Paradox, The (Wrangham), 227 Google, 309, 311 Gordon, Thomas, 201 Göring, Hermann, 106 gossip, 229 Goths, 92 Gottlieb, Anthony, 135 Great Awakening (1730–55), 102 Great Depression (1929–39), 54–5, 56, 254 Great Enrichment, 167, 204 Great Recession (2007–9), 254–5, 358, 359–60 Great Transformation, The (Polanyi), 37 Great Vanishing, 134–5 Great Wall of China, 178 Greece, ancient, 127–32, 169 Athens, 47, 53, 89, 90, 131–2, 134 Axial Age, 129 cosmopolitanism, 87–8 golden nugget theory, 5 Ionian enlightenment, 127–9 Mycenae, 88 philosophy, 13, 70, 127–32, 134–5, 136 Phoenicians, relations with, 43, 44, 45, 46 science, 127–32, 136 Sparta, 47, 54, 90, 132 trade, attitudes towards, 47, 54 xenophobia in, 90 Green New Deal, 302 Greene, Joshua, 216, 259 Greenland, 51 Gregorian calendar, 137, 152 Gregory IX, Pope, 142 Gregory XIII, Pope, 152 gross domestic product (GDP), 68–9, 257, 278–9 Grotius, Hugo, 147, 152–3 groupthink, 83 Guangzhou, Guangdong, 352 guilds, 190 Gutenberg, Johannes, 146 Haber, Fritz, 105 Habsburg Empire (1282–1918) anti-Semitism in, 254 Austria, 151, 179, 190 refugees, 99 Spain, 98–9, 208 Hadrian, Roman Emperor, 91 Hadrian’s Wall, 47 Hagley Park, West Midlands, 286–7 Haidt, Jonathan, 163, 229, 344, 348, 357 Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, 72 Hamas, 365 Hangzhou, Zhejiang, 173 Hanseatic League (1358–1862), 53 Hanson, Robin, 282 Hanway, Jonas, 298 Happy Days, 294 Harari, Yuval Noah, 38 Harriot, Thomas, 150 Hartsoeker, Nicolaas, 159 Harvard Business Review, 313 Harvard University, 116, 122, 137, 253, 309, 313 Haskell, Thomas, 206 Hässelby, Stockholm, 217–18, 245 Hayashi, Stuart, 370 Hayek, Friedrich, 1, 7, 29, 300, 325 Hebrew Bible, 248–50 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 288, 365 Helm, Dieter, 328, 331 Henrich, Joseph, 36 Hercules, 87 Herodotus, 132 Hewlett-Packard, 304 Higgs, Robert, 337 Hill, Christopher, 182 Hinduism, 136, 149, 354 von Hippel, William, 24, 25, 262, 284 Hippocrates, 128 Hispanic people, 110–11 Hitler, Adolf, 104–5, 353 Hobbes, Thomas, 9, 152, 226 Hofer, Johannes, 288 Holmgren, Pär, 325 Holocaust (1941–5), 109, 220 Holy Roman Empire (800–1806), 155, 181, 288 Homestead Acts, 171 Homo economicus, 34, 36 Homo erectus, 76, 267 Homo sapiens, 3, 21, 23, 30–33, 76, 259–62, 282, 371 homosexuality, 79, 113–14, 336 Homs, Syria, 82 Honeywell, 303 Hong Kong, 53, 235, 316 Hoover, Herbert, 55 horseshoes, 203 House of Wisdom, Baghdad, 136 Household Narrative, The, 297 housing, 375–6 Huguenots, 97, 99, 101, 158, 193 human rights, 87, 147, 213 humanitarianism, 204–7 Hume, David, 151, 154, 194 Hungary, 105, 190, 235, 237, 354, 357 hunkering down, 121, 165 Huns, 93 hunter-gatherer societies death rate, 9 disease and, 78 division of labour and, 29, 32, 40–41, 57 equality matching, 262–3, 265 inbreeding and, 78 isolation and, 52 migration, 73–4, 78–9 physical fallacy, 268 race and, 232 trade, 265 tyranny of cousins, 230 Huntington, Samuel, 110, 362–3, 365–6 Hussein, Saddam, 345 Hussey, Edward, 287 Hutchins, Robert Maynard, 165 Hutus, 230–31 Hypatia, 134 hyper-fast stars, 80 IBM, 305, 307, 319 Ibn al-Haytham, 156 Ibn Hayyan, Jabir, 156 Ibn Rushd, 137–8, 143, 144, 145 ice core drilling, 49 Identity & Violence (Sen), 231 identity politics, 241 al-Idrisi, Muhammad, 137 immigration birth rates and, 115 crime and, 110, 119 culture and, 69–73, 116, 119, 120–23 disgust and, 336, 371 division of labour and, 117 empires and, 84–106 European migration crisis (2015–), 10, 114, 115, 118, 342–3 exoticism, 84 GDP and, 68 innovation and, 81–4 Islam and, 112–14, 255 labour market and, 115, 116–19 opposition to, 69, 70, 114–23, 223, 254–5 productivity and, 68, 81, 117, 204 protectionism and, 66–7 self-selection and, 107, 112 skilled vs unskilled, 66, 82, 102, 116, 117 trade and, 35, 66–7, 234–5 tribalism and, 223, 235–6, 240, 243 urban vs rural areas, 114 welfare and, 118, 281 zero-sum thinking and, 254–5, 259 immigration in United States, 102–14 crime and, 110, 119 innovation and, 81–2, 202 overestimation of, 115, 223 tribalism and, 223, 240 zero-sum thinking and, 254–5, 259 In Defence of Global Capitalism (Norberg), 270 in vitro fertilization, 298–9 inbreeding, 78 India, 42, 45, 46, 56, 75, 129, 136, 140, 146, 270 Arabic numerals, 70, 137 engineering in, 269 Hindu nationalism, 354 industrialization, 207 Maurya Empire (323–184 BC), 53 Mughal Empire (1526–1857), 98, 148, 149, 215 national stereotypes, 235 Pakistan, relations with, 366 pollution in, 326 poverty in, 276, 326 Indo-European language, 75 Indonesia, 41 Industrial Revolution; industrialization, 5, 6, 13, 54, 132, 180, 339 in Britain, 182, 188–99, 202 in China, 169, 172–3, 207 climate change and, 326 in Dutch Republic, 101 in India, 207 in Japan, 71 in United States, 202, 291–2 in Vietnam, 207 inequality, 273, 349 Inglehart, Ronald, 339 ingroups and outgroups, 217–47 fluidity, 230–38 political, 224–5, 238–42 zero-sum relationships and, 252–5 Innocent III, Pope, 233 InnoCentive, 126–7 innovation, 4, 6, 10, 27, 80 ancient world, 32, 42, 44, 46 authoritarianism and, 318 bureaucratic inertia and, 318–21 canon and, 195 cities and, 40, 53, 79 creative destruction, 57, 179, 182, 190 cultural evolution, 28 immigration and 81–4 patent systems, 189–90 population and, 27, 51, 53 Schumpeterian profits, 273–5 resistance to, 10, 179–81 zero-sum thinking and, 266–9 Inquisition, 150 France, 94, 143 Portugal, 100 Spain, 97, 98 intellectual property, 58 Intergalactic Computer Network, 307 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 117 Internet, 57, 275, 278, 306–11, 312, 313 interwar generation (1928–45), 340 Inuit, 22, 51 Ionian enlightenment, 127–9 IQ (intelligence quotient), 109 Iran, 365 Ireland, 104, 108–9, 111, 112, 379 iron, 172 Isabella I, Queen of Castile, 97 Isaiah, 46 Isaura Palaia, Galatia, 90 Isenberg, Daniel, 296 Isis, 89 Islam; Islamic world Arab Spring (2011), 10, 342 clash of civilizations narrative, 237, 365 conflict within, 365 efflorescence, 6, 53, 136–41 fundamentalism, 112, 134, 139, 351 Koran, 137, 250–51 migration from, 112–14 orthodox backlash, 148–9 philosophy, 5, 13 science, 70, 132, 136–41 values in, 112, 113 Islamic State, 351, 365–6 Islamic world, 5, 6, 13, 53, 70 Israel, 111, 365 Italy, 6, 151, 169 anti-Semitism in, 254 Fascist period (1922–1943), 105 Genoa, Republic of (1005–1797), 73, 178 guilds in, 190 Lombard League (1167–1250), 181 Ötzi, 1–2, 8–9, 73, 74 Padua, 144, 146 Papacy in, 155, 181 Renaissance, 6, 150, 153, 169 United States, migration to, 104, 109 Venice, Republic of (697–1797), 53, 144, 152, 174, 181 Jacobs, Jane, 39–40, 79, 264 James II and VII, King of England, Scotland and Ireland, 185–6 Jamestown, Virginia, 200 Japan housing in, 376 kimonos, 73 Meiji Restoration (1868), 53, 70–71 protectionism, 314 Tokugawa Shogunate (1600–1868), 54 United States, migration to, 104, 236, 335 Japanning, 156 JavaScript, 310 jealous emulation, 154–7 jeans, 73 Jefferson, Thomas, 103, 184, 201, 205 Jenner, Edward, 296 Jerusalem, 87, 251 Jesus, 250 Jews in Abbasid Caliphate, 136 anti-Semitism, 254–5, 356 Ashkenazim, 99 Babylonian captivity, 87, 249 Bible, 46, 72, 248–50 Black Death and, 355–6 in Britain, 101, 193 in Dutch Republic, 99, 100, 150 in Germany, 99, 104–6, 109, 111, 254 Inquisition and, 97, 98 in Israel, 111 Mongol invasion and, 95 Muhammed and, 251 Nazirites, 72 in Ottoman Empire, 98 persecution of, 11, 95–7, 109, 220, 233, 251, 355–6 in Poland, 111, 220 in Roman Empire, 90, 93, 94 Sephardim, 99 in Song Empire, 170 in Spain, 97, 98, 99, 140 in United States, 102, 109 Jim Crow laws (1877–1965), 106, 254 Job Buddy, 375 Jobless Future, The (Aronowitz), 312 Jobs, Steven, 82, 304 John Chrysostom, 135 John III Sobieski, King of Poland, 237, 238 Johnson, Samuel, 191, 197 Johnson, Steven, 306 Jones, Rhys, 51 Joule, James Prescott, 196 Judaism, 46, 72, 93, 94, 96, 97 Jupiter, 145 Jurchen people, 172 Justinian I, Byzantine Emperor, 134, 224 Kahn, Robert, 307 Kandinsky, Wassily, 220–21, 289 Kant, Immanuel, 154 Karakorum, Mongol Empire, 96 al-Karaouine, Morocco, 137 Kearney, Denis, 109 keels, 44 Kenya, 21–2 Khayyam, Omar, 137 al-Khwarizmi, 137 Kiesling, Lynne, 328 Kim Jong-il, 314–15 kimonos, 73 King, Martin Luther, 19 King, Steven, 111 Kipling, Rudyard, 70 Klee, Paul, 220–21, 289 Know-Nothings, 108–9 Kodak, 319 Koran, 137, 250–51 Kramer, Samuel Noah, 37, 292 Krastev, Ivan, 342–3 Krugman, Paul, 309 Ku Klux Klan, 254 Kublai Khan, 174 Kurds, 136 Kushim, 37–8 labour mobility, 69, 374–7 lacquerware, 156 lactose, 75 Lao Tzu, 129 lapis lazuli, 70 Late Bronze-Age Collapse (1200–1150 BC), 44, 49, 54 Lebanon, 43, 236 Lee, William, 179 leisure, 199 Lenin, Vladimir, 256 Lesbos, 141 Levellers, 183–4, 186 Leviathan (Hobbes), 152 Levinovitz, Alan Jay, 290 Levy, David, 205 Lewis, David Levering, 140 Libanius, 49 liberalism, 14, 183, 334–40 colonialism and, 214 disgust and, 335, 336 dynamism and, 301 economic, 185, 336 Islam and, 112–14 security and, 334–40, 378 slave trade and, 205 universities and, 163 Libya, 48, 89, 366 Licklider, Joseph Carl Robnett, 307 life expectancy, 4, 169, 339 light bulbs, 297 Lilburne, John, 183 Lincoln, Abraham, 203 Lind, Amanda, 72 Lindsey, Brink, 301 literacy, 15, 57, 168 in Britain, 188, 198 in China, 148 in Dark Ages, 50 empathy and, 246–7 in Greece, 128–9 in Renaissance, 146, 148 Lithuania, 238 Little Ice Age, 148 lobbying, 280, 329 Locke, John, 100, 152, 185, 186, 201 Lombard League, 181 London, England, 190, 193–4, 197 7/7 bombings (2005), 341 London Bridge stabbings (2019), 120 Long Depression (1873–86), 253–4 Lord of the Flies (Golding), 219, 243, 244 Lord’s Resistance Army, 365 Louis IX, King of France, 96 Louis XIV, King of France, 237 Louis XVI, King of France, 201 love, 199 Lucas, Robert, 167 Lucy, 24–5 Lugh, 89 Lul, 111 Luther, Martin, 150, 356 Lutheranism, 99, 356 Lüthi, Max, 351 Lysenko, Trofim, 162 Lyttelton family, 286 Macartney Mission (1793), 176 Macedonian Empire (808–148 BC), 84, 87–9 Madison, James, 337 madrasas, 138 Madrid train bombings (2004), 341 Maduro, Nicolás, 354, 380 Magna Carta (1215), 5 Magris, Claudio, 219 Malacca, 100 Maltesholm School, Hässelby, 217–18, 245 mammoths, 76 Manchester United, 246 Manichaeism, 93 Mann, Thomas, 79 Mansfield, Edward, 271 Mao Zedong, 53, 162, 315, 316, 317, 355 Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor, 91 Marduk, 87 de Mariana, Juan, 147 markets, 37 humanitarianism and, 204, 206 immigration and, 68 tribalism, 247 ultimatum game, 34–5 Marley, Robert ‘Bob’, 72 marriage, 199 Marshall, Thurgood, 335 Marx, Karl, 33, 36, 162, 169, 247, 255–6 Marxism, 33, 36, 162, 182, 256, 268 Mary II, Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland, 186, 193 Maryland, United States, 349 Maslow, Abraham, 339, 341 al-Masudi, 136 mathematics, 70, 134, 135, 137, 156 Maurya Empire (323–184 BC), 53 Mauss, Marcel, 71 McCarthy, Joseph, 335 McCarthy, Kevin, 108 McCloskey, Deirdre, 167, 189, 191–2, 198 McConnell, Addison Mitchell ‘Mitch’, 108 McKinsey, 313 measles, 77 media, 346–9, 370 Medicaid, 119 Medina, 251 Medusa, 88 Meiji Restoration (1868), 53, 70–71 Mencken, Henry Louis, 325, 353 Mercury, 89 Merkel, Angela, 343 Mesopotamia, 37–43, 45, 70, 292–3 Metaphysics (Aristotle), 142 Mexico, 73, 77, 257 United States, migration to, 110, 122, 223, 240, 255 Miami, Florida, 120 Micro-80 computers, 304 Microsoft, 305–6, 309 middle class, 60–61 Migration Advisory Committee, UK, 118 Miletus, 127 militarism, 214 Mill, John Stuart, 124, 160, 164, 176, 319 millennial generation (1981–96), 340 Milton, John, 150 Ming Empire (1368–1644), 54, 148, 175, 177–8, 179, 215 minimal group paradigm, 220–22 Minitel, 313 Mobutu Sese Seko, 187 Mokyr, Joel, 157, 195, 196–7 Molyneux, Stefan, 84 Mongol Empire (1206–1368), 53, 84, 94–7, 138, 139, 173–4, 352–3 monopolies, 182, 189 Monte Testaccio, 48 Montesquieu, 89, 94 Moral Consequences of Growth, The (Friedman), 253 Moral Man and Immoral Society (Niebuhr), 253 Moriscos, 97 mortgages, 375 Moscow Institute of Electronic Engineering, 304 most-favoured-nations clause, 53–4 Mughal Empire (1526–1857), 98, 148, 149, 215 Muhammed, Prophet of Islam, 251 Murray, William Vans, 104 Muslims migration of, 112–14, 170, 255 persecution of, 97, 106, 233, 355 Mutz, Diana, 271 Mycenae, 88 Myth of Nations, The (Geary), 288–9 Myth of the Rational Voter, The (Caplan), 258 Naipaul, Vidiadhar Surajprasad, 167 Napoleonic Wars (1803–15), 288 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 126, 127 National Library of Medicine, US, 12 National Science Foundation, US, 313 National Security Agency, US, 313 national stereotypes, 235 nationalism, 9, 11, 13, 16 civic nationalism, 377–8 clash of civilizations narrative, 237 cultural purity and, 69, 70, 71, 352 immigration and, 69, 70, 82 nostalgia and, 287–8, 351 World War I (1914–18), 214 zero-sum thinking, 253, 254, 259, 272 nativism, 14, 122, 176, 223, 254, 349–51, 358 Natural History Museum, London, 124, 125 Naturalism, 198 Nazi Germany (1933–45), 104–6, 109, 124, 220, 233, 353 Nazirites, 72 Neanderthals, 30–33, 75, 76 Nebuchadnezzar, Babylonian Emperor, 46 neckties, 72 negative income tax, 374–5 Neilson, James Beaumont, 194 Nemeth, Charlan, 83 Neo-Classicism, 198 Neolithic period (c. 10,000–4500 BC), 74 Netflix, 309, 310 Netherlands, 99 von Neumann, John, 105 neurasthenia, 291 New Atlantis (Bacon), 147 New Guinea, 41 New Testament, 250 New York, United States crime in, 246, 334 September 11 attacks (2001), 10, 114, 340–42 New York Times, 291, 297, 325 New York University, 223 New York Yankees, 223 Newcomen, Thomas, 196 Newton, Isaac, 158–9, 201 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle), 131 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 253 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 365 Nîmes, France, 73 Nineteen Eighty-Four (Orwell), 230, 368 Nineveh, Assyria, 248–9 Nixey, Catherine, 134 Nobel Prize, 82, 105, 276 non-market societies, 34, 35 Nordhaus, William, 273–4 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 63, 64 North Carolina, United States, 102 North Korea, 54, 314–15, 366 North Star, 44 nostalgia, 14, 286–95, 313, 351 Not Fit for Our Society (Schrag), 107 novels, 188–9, 246–7 nuclear power, 301, 327, 328, 329, 332 nuclear weapons, 105, 290, 306 O’Rourke, Patrick Jake, 280 Oannes, 267 Obama, Barack, 66, 240, 329 obsidian, 22, 29 occupational licensing, 376–7 Ögedei Khan, 96 Ogilvie, Sheilagh, 179 Oklahoma, United States, 218–19 Old Testament, 46, 72, 248–50 olive oil, 48 Olorgesailie, 21–2 omnivores, 299 On Liberty (Mill), 160 one-year-old children, 26 open society, 6 open-mindedness, 35, 112 Opening of the mouth’ rite, 70 Orbán, Viktor, 354, 380 de Orta, Garcia, 146–7 Orwell, George, 230, 368 Osman II, Ottoman Sultan, 148 Ottoman Empire (1299–1923), 84, 94, 98, 148, 215, 220, 237, 353 Ötzi, 1–2, 8–9, 73, 74 overpopulation, 81, 160 Overton, Richard, 183 Pacific islands, 52 Paine, Thomas, 56, 158, 247 Pakistan, 70, 366 Pallas Athena, 89 Pallavicino, Ferrante, 150 Palmer, Tom Gordon, 15 Panthers and Pythons, 243–4 Papacy, 102, 142, 143, 152, 155, 178 Papin, Denis, 179, 180 Paris, France exiles in, 152, 153 University of Paris, 140, 141–2, 143 parochialism, 216 patent systems, 58, 82, 189–90, 203, 314 in Britain, 179, 189–90, 203, 314 in China, 58 in France, 189 immigrants and, 82 in Netherlands, 189 in United States, 203 PayPal, 310 Peasants’ Revolt (1381), 208 peer review, 127 Pence, Michael, 108 penny universities, 166 Pericles, 131 Permissionless Innovation (Thierer), 299 Perry, Gina, 243 Perseus, 87–8 Persia, ancient, 84, 86–7, 88, 95, 129, 215 Abbasid period (750–1258), 136 Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC), 86–7, 88 Greeks, influence on, 129 Mongols, influence on, 95 Safavid Empire (1501–1736), 149 Sasanian Empire (224–651), 134 personality traits, 7 Pertinax, Roman Emperor, 91 Pessimists Archive, 290, 297, 298 Pessinuntia, 89 Peters, Margaret, 66 Peterson Institute for International Economics, 60 Petty, William, 296 Philip II King of Spain, 98 Phoenicia (2500–539 BC), 43–6, 49, 70, 128–9 Phoenicia dye, 44 Phrygians, 89 physical fallacy, 267–8 Physics (Aristotle), 142 Pietists, 153 Pinker, Steven, 23, 243, 266, 324 Plague of Justinian (541–750), 77 Plato, 130, 131, 132, 134, 352 pluralism, 85, 129, 357 Plutarch, 45–6 Poland Battle of Vienna (1683), 237, 238 Dutch Republic, migration to, 99 Holocaust (1941–5), 220 immigration, 116 Israel, migration to, 111 United Kingdom, migration to, 120 United States, migration to, 108, 109 Polanyi, Karl, 37 polio, 293 pollution, 326, 347 Polo, Marco, 174 Popper, Karl, 6, 26, 127, 129, 130, 182–3, 237, 362 population density, 28 populism, 9, 13, 14, 16, 324, 379–82 authoritarianism and, 325, 350–51 complexity and, 324 nostalgia and, 295, 324, 351 trade and, 19 zero-sum thinking and, 254, 259, 274 pornography, 113, 336 Portugal Empire (1415–1999), 100, 146–7, 178 guilds in, 190 Inquisition, 100 Postrel, Virginia, 300, 312, 326 pound locks, 172 poverty, 4, 168, 213, 270 in Britain, 256 in China, 4, 316 immigration and, 66, 69, 81, 121 in Japan, 71 Jeff Bezos test, 275–9 Preston, Lancashire, 190 priests, 41, 128 printing, 146, 153, 171 Pritchard, James Bennett, 43 productivity cities and, 40 foreign trade and, 57, 59, 63 free goods and, 278 immigration and, 68, 81, 117, 204 programming, 8 Progress (Norberg), 12–13 progressives, 286, 300–302 Proserpina, 89 protectionism, 13, 15, 16, 54–5 Great Depression (1929–39), 54–5 immigration and, 66–7 Internet and, 314 Trump administration (2017–), 19, 57–8 Protestantism, 99, 104, 148, 149, 153, 169, 178, 237 Prussia (1701–1918), 153, 288 Psychological Science, 335 Puerto Rico, 80 Pufendorf, Samuel, 147 purchasing power, 59, 61, 63, 66, 198 Puritanism, 99, 102 Putin, Vladimir, 14, 353–4 Putnam, Robert, 121, 165 Pythagoras, 137 Pythons and Panthers, 243–4 al-Qaeda, 351 Qianlong, Qing Emperor, 153 Qing Empire (1644–1912), 148, 149, 151, 153, 175–7, 179 Quakers, 99, 102, 206 Quarantelli, Enrico, 338 Quarterly Journal of Economics, The, 63 race; racism, 76–7, 206, 231–4, 358–9 railways, 53, 179, 202, 296, 297 Rammstein, 274 RAND Corporation, 307 Raphael, 137 Rastafari, 72 Rattlers and Eagles, 218–19, 236, 243, 252 reactive aggression, 227–8 Reagan, Ronald, 63, 111 Realism, 198 realistic conflict theory, 222 Reconquista (711–1492), 139 Red Genies, 236 Red Sea, 75 Reformation, 148, 155 refugees crime and, 119 European migration crisis (2015–), 10, 114, 115, 281, 342–3 integration of, 117–18 German Jews (1933–45), 104–6, 109 Rembrandt, 99 reminiscence bump, 294 Renaissance, 5, 6, 132, 143, 145–6, 149–50, 215 Republic of Letters, 157–9, 165, 195 Republic, The (Plato), 352 Republican Party, 164, 225, 238, 240, 301 Reynell, Carew, 184 Reynolds, Glenn, 308 Ridley, Matthew, 20–21, 80 right to work laws, 65 Rizzo, Frank, 334 Road to Serfdom, The (Hayek), 325 Robbers Cave experiment (1954), 218–19, 236, 243, 252, 371 Robbins, Caroline, 200–201 Robertson, Marion Gordon ‘Pat’, 114 Robinson, James, 185, 187, 200 rock paper scissors, 26 Rogers, Will, 282 Roman Law, 5 Romanticism, 198, 287, 296–7 Rome, ancient, 47–50, 89–94, 132 Antonine Plague (165–80), 77 assimilation, 91–2 chariot racing, 224 Christianity in, 90, 93–4, 133–4 citizenship, 91 cosmopolitanism, 89–91 fall of, 54, 94 gods in, 89–90 golden nugget theory, 5 globalization, 45–6, 47–50 haircuts, 72 Latin alphabet, 45 philosophy, 70, 136 Phoenicians, relations with, 43, 44 Sabines, relations with, 89 Social War (91–88 BC), 91 trousers, attitudes towards, 92 Romulus, 89, 90 Rotterdam, Holland, 158 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 226 Royal Navy, 205 Royal Society, 156, 157, 158, 196 Rubin, Paul, 258 ruin follies, 286–7 rule of law, 68, 189, 269, 334, 343, 358, 379 Rumbold, Richard, 183–4 Rushdie, Salman, 73 Ruskin, John, 206, 297 Russia Imperial period (1721–1917), 154, 289–90 Israel, migration to, 111 Mongol period (1237–1368), 95, 352 Orthodox Christianity, 155 Putin period (1999–), 14, 15, 347, 353–4, 365, 367 Soviet period (1917–91), 162, 302–5, 315, 317 United States, relations with, 236 Yamnaya people, 74–5 Rust Belt, 58, 62, 64–6, 349 Rwandan Genocide (1994), 230–31 Sabines, 89 Safavid Empire (1501–1736), 149 safety of wings, 374 Saint-Sever, France, 180 Salamanca school, 147, 150 Sanders, Bernard, 302 Santa Fe Institute, 216 SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), 3, 162 Saudi Arabia, 365 Scandinavia Bronze Age migration, 75 Neolithic migration, 74 United States, migration to, 104, 108 see also Sweden scapegoats, 11, 83, 253, 268, 349, 355–61 Black Death (1346–53), 352, 355–6 Great Recession (2007–9), 255 Mongol invasion (1241), 95 Schmandt-Besserat, Denise, 38 School of Athens, The (Raphael), 137 School of Salamanca, 147, 150 Schrag, Peter, 107 Schrödinger, Erwin, 105, 128, 129, 132 Schumpeter, Joseph, 277 Schumpeterian profits, 273–5 science, 127–66 in China, 4, 13, 70, 153, 156, 162–3, 169–73 Christianity and, 133–5, 141–6, 149–50 Enlightenment, 154–9 experiments, 156–7 Great Vanishing, 134–5 in Greece, 127–32 jealous emulation and, 154–7 in Islamic world, 70, 132, 136–41 Renaissance, 145–6 Republic of Letters, 157–9, 165, 195 sclera, 25 Scotland, 101, 194 Scotney Castle, Kent, 287 Sculley, John, 304 sea peoples, 43 sea snails, 44 Seinfeld, Jerry, 224 Seleucid Empire (312–63 BC), 88 self-esteem, 372, 379 Sen, Amartya, 231 Seneca, 49, 91 Sephardic Jews, 99 September 11 attacks (2001), 10, 114, 340–42, 363 Septimius Severus, Roman Emperor, 91 Servius, Publius, 90 Seven Wonders of the World, 45 Seville, Spain, 91, 139 sex bonobos and, 226 encoding and, 233 inbreeding, 78 views on, 113, 336 SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language), 307 Shaftesbury, Lord, see Cooper, Anthony Ashley Sherif, Muzafer, 219, 220, 222, 243, 252 Shia Islam, 149 Shining, The, 335 shirts, 72 Siberia, 76 Sicily, 89 Sierra Leone, 365 Siger of Brabant, 143, 144 Sikhism, 149 Silicon Valley, 311 Silk Road, 171, 174, 352 silver processing, 49 Simler, Kevin, 282 Simmel, Georg, 266 Simon, Julian, 81 Simple Rules for a Complex World (Epstein), 320 Singapore, 53 skilled workers, 36, 45, 66, 95, 97, 101, 117 Slater, Samuel, 202 slavery, 86, 156, 205–6, 232 in British Empire, 182, 199, 200, 205 in Mesopotamia, 40, 41, 43 in Rome, 47, 48 in Sparta, 54 in United States, 103, 106, 205, 232 smallpox, 77, 197, 293, 296 Smith, Adam, 21, 59, 192, 194, 205, 280 Smith, Fred, 319 smoke detectors, 234 Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act (1930), 55 snack boxes, 20 Snow, Charles Percy, 105 social media, 239, 347, 370 social status, 281–5 Social War (91–88 BC), 91 Socrates, 130, 131–2, 330 solar power, 328, 329, 331, 332 Solomon, King of Israel, 38, 45 Solyndra, 329 Song Empire (960–1279), 53, 169–75 Sony, 319 Soros, George, 323 South Korea, 314, 366 South Sudan, 365 Soviet Union (1922–91), 162, 302–5, 315, 317 Sovu, Rwanda, 231 Sowell, Thomas, 267–8 Spain, 97–101, 184, 207 Almohad Caliphate (1121–1269), 137–8 amphorae production, 48 al-Andalus (711–1492), 97, 137–9, 140 Columbus’ voyages (1492–1503), 178 Dutch Revolt (1568–1648), 98–9, 101 Empire (1492–1976), 147, 178, 182 guilds in, 190 Inquisition (1478–1834), 97, 98 Jews, persecution of, 97–8, 106, 140 Madrid train bombings (2004), 341 Muslims, persecution of, 97, 106 Reconquista (711–1492), 97, 138–9, 140 regional authorities, 152 Roman period (c.218 BC–472 AD), 48, 91 Salamanca school, 147, 150 sombreros, 73 Uber in, 320 vaqueros, 73 Spanish flu (1918–19), 77 Sparta, 47, 54, 90, 132 Spencer, Herbert, 165, 214 Spinoza, Baruch, 100, 150, 153 Spitalfields, London, 190 sports, 199, 223–4, 232–3, 245–6 Sri Lanka, 100, 365 St Bartholomew’s Day massacre (1572), 97 St Louis, SS, 109 Standage, Tom, 166 Stanford University, 307, 311 Star Trek, 246, 259 stasists, 301–2 Statute of Labourers (1351), 208 steam engine, 179, 180, 189, 194, 203, 296 steamships, 53, 202 Stenner, Karen, 242, 343, 348, 350, 357 Stockholm, Sweden, 217–18 Stranger Things, 294 Strasbourg, France, 153 strategic tolerance, 86–96 Strindberg, August, 239 Suarez, Francisco, 147 suits, 72 Sumer (4500–1900 BC), 37–43, 45, 55, 292–3 Summers, Larry, 329 Sunni Islam, 148, 149, 238, 365 superpowers, 338–9 supply chains, 11, 62, 66 Sweden DNA in, 73 Green Party, 325 Lind dreadlocks affair (2019), 72 immigration in, 114, 115, 118, 281 manufacturing in, 65 Muslim community, 114 Neolithic migration, 74 refugees in, 118, 281, 342 United States, migration to, 107 Sweden Democrats, 281 swine flu, 3 Switzerland, 152, 153 Sylvester II, Pope, 137 Symbolism, 198 Syria, 42, 82, 342, 365, 366 tabula rasa, 225 Tacitus, 91 Taiwan, 316, 366 Taizu, Song Emperor, 170 Tajfel, Henri, 220, 221–2 Tandy, Geoffrey, 124–6 Tang Empire (618–907), 84, 170, 177, 352 Tanzania, 257 Taoism, 129, 149 tariffs, 15, 56, 373 Anglo–French Treaty (1860), 53–4 Great Depression (1929–39), 54–5 Obama’s tyre tariffs (2009), 66 Trump’s steel tariffs (2018), 272 Tasmania, 50–53, 54 Tatars, 238 taxation in Britain, 72, 187, 188, 189 carbon tax, 330–31 crony capitalism and, 279–80 immigration and, 69 negative income tax, 374–5 in Song Empire, 172 in Spanish Netherlands, 98 Taylor, Robert, 306 TCP/IP protocol, 307 technology, 296–9 automation, 63, 312–13 computers, 302–14 decline, 51–2 Internet, 57, 275, 278, 306–11, 312 nostalgia and, 296–9, 313 technocrats, 299–300, 312, 313–14, 326–9 technological decline, 51–2 telescopes, 145–6 Teller, Edward, 105 Temple of Artemis, Ephesus, 45 Temple of Serapis, Alexandria, 134 Tencent, 311 terrorism, 10, 114, 229, 340–41, 363 Tetlock, Philip, 160 textiles, 172–3 Thales, 127 Thierer, Adam, 299 third-party punishment game, 35 Thirty Years War (1618–48), 72, 97, 148, 150 Thomas Aquinas, Saint, 142–3, 144–5 Thoreau, Henry David, 203 Thracians, 130 Thucydides, 131, 132 Tiangong Kaiwu, 153 Tibetans, 85 Tierra del Fuego, 52–3 Tigris river, 37, 139 Timurid Empire (1370–1507), 139 tin, 42 Tokugawa Shogunate (1600–1868), 54 Toledo, Spain, 140 tolerance, 86–114, 129 Tomasello, Michael, 25 ‘too big to fail’, 280 Tower of Babel, 39 Toynbee, Arnold, 382 trade, 13, 19–23, 28–9, 129, 140, 363, 373 backlashes against, 19, 54–67, 254 benefit–cost ratio, 60, 61, 62 Britain, 181–99 competitive advantage, 28–9 division of labour and, 28, 31, 57 Great Depression (1929–39), 54–5 Greece, ancient, 47 humanitarianism and, 204–7 Mesopotania, 37–43 migration and, 35, 66–7, 234–5 morality of, 33–6 Phoenicia, 43–6 Rome, ancient, 47–50 snack boxes, 20 United States, 19, 57–8, 202–3 zero-sum thinking and, 248, 252–66, 270–72 trade unions, 64, 65, 272, 374 Trajan, Roman Emperor, 91 Trans-Pacific Partnership, 58 Transparency International, 381 Treaty of Trianon (1920), 354 Treaty of Versailles (1919), 353 Trenchard, John, 201 Treschow, Michael, 65 Trevor-Roper, Hugh, 215, 356 tribalism, 14, 217–47, 362, 368–72 fluid, 230–38 political, 224–5, 238–42, 378, 379 media and, 348, 370 threats and, 241, 350, 370 Trollboda School, Hässelby, 218 Trump, Donald, 9, 14, 240, 313, 321, 322, 354, 365, 367, 380 immigration, views on, 223 presidential election (2016), 238, 241, 242, 349, 350 stasism, 301, 302 steel tariffs (2018), 272 trade, views on, 19, 57–8 zero-sum attitude, 248 Tunisia, 45, 48 Turing, Alan, 124 Turkey; Turks, 70, 74, 136, 156, 354, 357, 365 turtle theory, 121–2 Tutsis, 230–31 Twilight Zone, The, 260–61 Twitter, 84, 239, 245 Two Treatises of Government (Locke), 186, 201 tyranny of cousins, 229, 230 tyre tariffs, 66 Tyre, 45 Uber, 319–20 Uganda, 365 Ukraine, 75, 116, 365 ultimatum game, 34–6 umbrellas, 298 uncertainty, 321–6 unemployment, 62, 373–4, 376, 377 ‘unicorns’, 82 United Auto Workers, 64 United Kingdom, see Britain United Nations, 327 United States, 199–203 Afghanistan War (2001–14), 345 America First, 19, 272 automation in, 313 Bureau of Labor Statistics, 65 California Gold Rush (1848–1855), 104 China, trade with, 19, 57, 58–9, 62–3, 64 Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), 254 citizenship, 103 Civil War (1861–5), 109 climate change polices in, 328 Constitution (1789), 102, 202 consumer price index, 277 COVID-19 pandemic (2019–20), 12 crime in, 110, 119, 120, 346 Declaration of Independence (1776), 103, 201, 202 dynamism in, 301–2 Federalist Party, 103 free trade gains, 60, 61 Great Depression (1929–39), 54–5, 254 gross domestic product (GDP), 257 Homestead Acts, 171 housing in, 376 immigration, see immigration in United States Industrial Revolution, 202, 291–2 innovation in, 53, 203, 298–9 intellectual property in, 58 Internet in, 306–14 Iraq War (2003–11), 345 Jim Crow laws (1877–1965), 106, 254 Know-Nothings, 108–9 Ku Klux Klan, 254 labour mobility in, 374, 376–7 lobbying in, 280, 329 Manhattan Project (1942–6), 105 manufacturing, 62–6 McCarthy era (1947–57), 335 Medicaid, 119 middle class, 60–61 NAFTA, 63, 64 National Library of Medicine, 12 national stereotypes, 235, 236 nostalgia in, 290–92, 294 open society, 169, 199–203 patent system, 203 political tribalism in, 224–5, 238, 240 populist movement, 254 presidential election (2016), 238, 241, 242, 349, 350 railways, 202 Revolutionary War (1775–83), 102–3, 200–201 Robbers Cave experiment (1954), 218–19, 236, 243, 252, 371 Rust Belt, 58, 62, 64–6, 349 Saudi Arabia, relations with, 365 Senate, 108 September 11 attacks (2001), 10, 114, 340–42, 363 slavery in, 103, 106, 205 Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act (1930), 55 Supreme Court, 108, 335 tariffs, 66, 272 trade deficits, 60, 270 Trump administration (2017–), see Trump, Donald unemployment in, 373, 376 universities, 163–5, 241 Vietnam War (1955–75), 345 Watergate scandal (1972–4), 345 World War II (1939–45), 56, 64, 335 Yankees, 58 United Steelworkers, 64, 272 universal basic income (UBI), 374, 375 universities, 140 University Bologna, 140 University of California, Berkeley, 311 University of Cambridge, 140 University of Chicago, 165 University of Leeds, 357 University of London, 201 University of Marburg, 153 University of Oxford, 140, 144, 145, 328 University of Padua, 144, 146 University of Paris, 140, 141–2, 143 University of Pennsylvania, 271 University of Salamanca, 140 University of Toulouse, 144 unskilled workers, 36, 66, 102, 117 untranslatable words, 288 Ur, 55 urbanization, see cities Uruk, Sumer, 39 US Steel, 64 Usher, Abbott Payson, 196 Uyghurs, 85, 174 vaccines, 12, 296, 299 Vandals, 92 Vanini, Lucilio, 150 vaqueros, 73 Vargas Llosa, Mario, 213, 261 Vatican Palace, 137 Vavilov, Nikolai, 162 Venezuela, 354 Venice, Republic of (697–1797), 53, 144, 152, 174, 181 Vermeer, Johannes, 99 Vespucci, Amerigo, 146 Vienna, Austria, 95, 237, 238 Vienna Congress (1815), 288 Vietnam, 171, 207, 270, 345 Virgil, 91 Virginia Company, 200 vitamin D, 74 de Vitoria, Francisco, 147 Vladimir’s choice, 221, 252, 271 Voltaire, 153, 193 Walton, Sam, 277 Wang, Nina, 315 War of the Polish Succession (1733–8), 289–90 Ward-Perkins, Bryan, 50 warfare, 216–17, 243 Warren, Elizabeth, 302 washing of hands, 10, 335 Washington, George, 103, 205 Washington, DC, United States, 280 Watergate scandal (1972–4), 345 Watson, John, 291 Watson, Peter, 79 Watt, James, 172, 189, 194, 274 Weatherford, Jack, 95 Web of Science, 159 Weber, Maximilian, 204 WeChat, 311 Weekly Standard, 312 welfare systems, 118, 281, 374 Wengrow, David, 42 West Africa Squadron, 205 Western Roman Empire (395–480), 94, 135 Westernization, 4–5 Wheelan, Charles, 20 Whig Party, 185, 201 White House Science Council, 313 white supremacists, 84, 351, 367 Whitechapel, London, 190 Who Are We?


pages: 167 words: 49,719

Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism by Fumio Sasaki

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, death from overwork, fixed-gear, Lao Tzu, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, mirror neurons, Skype, Steve Jobs

In the past, I was overwhelmed by greed. I was always looking for more. But now I have everything I need. There’s nothing in particular I really want. It may come as a surprise, but it’s really a fantastic feeling. I no longer compare myself with others. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. —LAO TZU How to become instantly unhappy Want to know how to make yourself instantly unhappy? Compare yourself with someone else. I once watched a girl I used to love marry a guy who made a lot of money. I compared myself with him and felt miserable, blaming my income for losing her. But thinking about it now, money wasn’t what I was lacking.


pages: 825 words: 228,141

MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom by Tony Robbins

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, active measures, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, addicted to oil, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, backtesting, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, bitcoin, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, buy and hold, Carl Icahn, clean water, cloud computing, corporate governance, corporate raider, correlation does not imply causation, Credit Default Swap, currency risk, Dean Kamen, declining real wages, diversification, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, estate planning, fear of failure, fiat currency, financial independence, fixed income, forensic accounting, high net worth, index fund, Internet of things, invention of the wheel, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, Jeff Bezos, John Bogle, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, lake wobegon effect, Lao Tzu, London Interbank Offered Rate, low interest rates, Marc Benioff, market bubble, Michael Milken, money market fund, mortgage debt, Neil Armstrong, new economy, obamacare, offshore financial centre, oil shock, optical character recognition, Own Your Own Home, passive investing, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, risk tolerance, riskless arbitrage, Robert Shiller, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, self-driving car, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, sovereign wealth fund, stem cell, Steve Jobs, subscription business, survivorship bias, tail risk, TED Talk, telerobotics, The 4% rule, The future is already here, the rule of 72, thinkpad, tontine, transaction costs, Upton Sinclair, Vanguard fund, World Values Survey, X Prize, Yogi Berra, young professional, zero-sum game

You get the help you need today for no money and HighTower gets a future client. That’s financial synergy. An opportunity to create the elusive win-win that rarely shows up in the world of Wall Street. Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love. —LAO-TZU One of the great gifts of “mastering the game” is not only being able to win but to have enough to make a difference for others. No matter how difficult our situation may be, there are always people who are suffering more. When someone creates wealth, it’s his or her privilege, and, I believe, his or her responsibility, to give back to those who are just beginning the journey or those who have experienced tragedies that have knocked them off the path.

Except for a few “unicorns,” a tiny and exclusive group of “financial wizards” that the general population does not have access to, but I’ll introduce you to in the chapters ahead. 2. Feedingamerica.com CHAPTER 1.2 THE 7 SIMPLE STEPS TO FINANCIAL FREEDOM: CREATE AN INCOME FOR LIFE * * * A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. —LAO-TZU Tell me something: Have you ever had that experience, you know . . . the completely humiliating experience of playing a video game against a child? Who always wins? The child, of course! But how does she do it? Is she smarter, quicker, stronger? Here’s how it works. You’re visiting your niece or nephew, and she or he will say, “Come play it with me, Uncle Tony!”

., 19 Ki-hoon, Kim, 266–67 King, Martin Luther Jr., 586 Kissinger, Henry A., 230 knowledge, as potential power, 65 Kodak, 269, 318 Krom, Erik, 117 Kurzweil, Ray, 47, 410, 421, 551, 557, 563–67, 568–69, 571 Labor Department, U.S. (DOL), 146–47, 152 LaChappelle, Easton, 557–59 Lake Wobegon Effect, 334 Lao-Tzu, 26, 29 Las Vegas Sands Corp., 62 Lauer, Matt, 270, 349–50, 485 Lawrence, T. E., 203 leadership, 501 Leape, Jim, 556 learned helplessness, 180 Lee, Bruce, 42 Lehman Brothers, 378 Lewis, JT, 591–93 Lewis, Michael, 7 LIBOR (London Interbank Offered Rates), 123, 516 lies we tell ourselves, 183–99, 249 and breakthroughs, 184–99 and fear of failure, 183–84 and fear of unknown, 185 life: as adventure, 291 artificial, 566 balance in, 258, 577 decisions in, 244, 246 as information technology, 566 quality of, 37, 292, 538, 576, 577, 580–82, 583 race of, 233 you as creator of, 226, 229, 246 your stage in, 331–32 lifecycle funds, 157 life expectancy, 31–32, 409, 538 life insurance: borrowing from, 446–47 death benefit proceeds from, 447 PPLI, 443–48 in Security/Peace of Mind Bucket, 309 lifestyle, 209–10, 218 changing, 287–92, 612 and Dream Bucket, 341 moving to another place, 288–91 437 Lifetime Income plan, 46, 170–71, 308, 406–18, 613–14 annuities, 416–18, 419–41 income insurance, 415–16 John’s case, 412–14 Susan’s case, 414–16 Lincoln, Abraham, 19 liquidity, 302, 331 Livermore, Jesse, 525 living trust, 448–49 LL Cool J, 15 Lombardi, Vince, 51 longevity insurance, 426–27 “lost decade,” 107, 357, 366, 396 lottery: in retirement, 412 spending money on, 37, 334 love and connection, 77 luck, 228–29, 343, 412 Lynch, Peter, 354, 400 Magellan fund, 400 Maker Revolution, 559–61 Malkiel, Burton, 49–52, 59, 96–97, 326, 354, 356–58 on compounding, 50–52 on diversification, 325 on dollar-cost averaging, 355, 358, 365, 366 and index funds, 49, 97 on rebalancing, 359, 361 on tax-loss harvesting, 362 Mallory, George, 406, 409 Marcus Aurelius, 381 marketing, 85, 97, 102 market timing, 97, 296 Markowitz, Harry, 297, 379, 472 Marley, Bob, 232 mastery: execution as, 65 levels of, 42 Mayweather, Floyd “Money” Jr., 53–54, 210 McCarty, Oseola, 60–61, 62, 63 McDonald’s, 373–74 McGonigal, Kelly, 190–99 meaning, 575, 580–82 Meat Loaf, 52 Medicare/Medicaid, 149 Mellon, Andrew, 315 Merckle, Adolf, 66, 71–72, 73 Metallica, 314 MF Global, 123 Microsoft, 377 millionaires vs. billionaires, 208–10 minimum wage, 263 mob mentality, 348–49 momentum trading, 325 money: as abstract concept, 3–4 compounding, 35–36, 49–52, 58, 60, 62–65, 256, 364 control of, 14 critical mass of, 33, 58, 89, 90, 408 doubling, 283, 284 emergency/protection fund, 216–17, 302 and emotion, 209, 210 and financial freedom, 5–6 and happiness, 588–91 loss of, 336 love of, as root of evil, 195 to make money, 192 mastery of, 6, 71 nest egg, 58, 257 and power, 3 as reflection of creativity, 193 for retirement, 32, 210–11 spending plan, 253–56 as tool, 3 trading time for, 54 what you earn vs. what you keep, 273 where to put, see asset allocation worry about, 190–91 Moneyball, 65 Moneychimp, 119 money machine, 184, 192, 230, 254 savings as, 55–70 money market deposit accounts, 303 money market funds, 303 money masters: advice from, 455–57 author’s interviews with, 453–55 money pass, 333 Money Power Principles, 57, 230 1.


pages: 175 words: 54,497

The Naked Eye: How the Revolution of Laser Surgery Has Unshackled the Human Eye by Gerard Sutton, Michael Lawless

Isaac Newton, John Gilmore, Lao Tzu, Mahatma Gandhi, microplastics / micro fibres, Nelson Mandela

Although I’ve read it from cover to cover I didn’t get it. Maybe the second time around something might click. My fourth choice would be To Kill a Mockingbird for the same reasons that I would take Hemingway. My last book would be one that I read regularly. It’s a strange book called The Book of the Way or Tao Te Ching written in about 500 BC by Lao Tzu, a Chinese scholar. It’s a fabulous book of short verses, beautifully written, that talks about why the world is how it is and how to live your life. Even though it might seem a bit obvious in parts, the fact that it was written two and half thousand years ago makes it quite remarkable. Which living person do you most admire?


pages: 177 words: 54,421

Ego Is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Ben Horowitz, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Burning Man, delayed gratification, Google Glasses, growth hacking, Jeff Bezos, Joan Didion, Lao Tzu, Paul Graham, Ponzi scheme, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Feynman, side project, South Sea Bubble, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, Streisand effect, sunk-cost fallacy, TED Talk, Upton Sinclair

Although we share with many others a vision for greatness, we understand that our path toward it is very different from theirs. Following Sherman and Isocrates, we understand that ego is our enemy on that journey, so that when we do achieve our success, it will not sink us but make us stronger. TALK, TALK, TALK Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know. —LAO TZU In his famous 1934 campaign for the governorship of California, the author and activist Upton Sinclair took an unusual step. Before the election, he published a short book titled I, Governor of California and How I Ended Poverty, in which he outlined, in the past tense, the brilliant policies he had enacted as governor . . . the office he had not yet won.


pages: 523 words: 143,139

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions by Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths

4chan, Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, algorithmic trading, anthropic principle, asset allocation, autonomous vehicles, Bayesian statistics, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, Bill Duvall, bitcoin, Boeing 747, Charles Babbage, cognitive load, Community Supported Agriculture, complexity theory, constrained optimization, cosmological principle, cryptocurrency, Danny Hillis, data science, David Heinemeier Hansson, David Sedaris, delayed gratification, dematerialisation, diversification, Donald Knuth, Donald Shoup, double helix, Dutch auction, Elon Musk, exponential backoff, fault tolerance, Fellow of the Royal Society, Firefox, first-price auction, Flash crash, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, Garrett Hardin, Geoffrey Hinton, George Akerlof, global supply chain, Google Chrome, heat death of the universe, Henri Poincaré, information retrieval, Internet Archive, Jeff Bezos, Johannes Kepler, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Kickstarter, knapsack problem, Lao Tzu, Leonard Kleinrock, level 1 cache, linear programming, martingale, multi-armed bandit, Nash equilibrium, natural language processing, NP-complete, P = NP, packet switching, Pierre-Simon Laplace, power law, prediction markets, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, RFC: Request For Comment, Robert X Cringely, Sam Altman, scientific management, sealed-bid auction, second-price auction, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Skype, sorting algorithm, spectrum auction, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, stochastic process, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Malthus, Tragedy of the Commons, traveling salesman, Turing machine, urban planning, Vickrey auction, Vilfredo Pareto, Walter Mischel, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

In an industrial or bureaucratic context where you can’t simply discard a project, but in which the number—rather than the severity—of late projects is still your biggest concern, Moore’s Algorithm is just as indifferent about how those late tasks are handled. Anything booted from the main portion of your schedule can get done at the very end, in any order; it doesn’t matter, as they’re all already late. Getting Things Done Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. —LAO TZU Sometimes due dates aren’t our primary concern and we just want to get stuff done: as much stuff, as quickly as possible. It turns out that translating this seemingly simple desire into an explicit scheduling metric is harder than it sounds. One approach is to take an outsider’s perspective. We’ve noted that in single-machine scheduling, nothing we do can change how long it will take us to finish all of our tasks—but if each task, for instance, represents a waiting client, then there is a way to take up as little of their collective time as possible.

.; networking; websites fast connections geography of infrastructure of protocols and security and interrupt coalescing interruptions intractable problems defined equilibrium and relaxation and scheduling and Introduction to Relaxation Methods, An (Shaw) intuitive hunches investment strategies invitations involuntary selflessness Jacobson, Van Jain, Kamal James, William Jarvis, Richard Jaws (film) Jay, Francine Jeffreys, Harold Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) jitter Jobs, Steve job search Johnson, Selmer Jones, William Joy of Less, The (Jay) judgment “just play the game” approach just society Kaelbling, Leslie Kahn, Robert “Bob” Kant, Immanuel Karels, Michael Karp, Richard Kaushik, Avinash Kayal, Neeraj Keats, John Keeping Found Things Found (Jones) Kenney, Richard Kepler, Johannes Kerr, Clark Keynes, John Maynard al-Khwārizmī King County Library System (KCLS) king of the hill Kipling, Rudyard Kirkpatrick, Scott Kleinrock, Leonard Kline, Charley knapsack problem Knuth, Donald Koomen, Pete Ladder tournaments Lagrange, Joseph-Louis Lagrangian Relaxation Lai, Tze Leung lancet liver fluke Lange, Rebecca language Lao Tzu Laplace, Pierre-Simon Laplace’s Law Lasso latency lateness, minimizing maximum laundry law enforcement Lawler, Eugene “Gene” “Lawn Tennis Tournaments” (Dodgson) Law of Gross Tonnage Lawrence, Peter A. Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL) lawsuits Lazzarini, Mario Least Recently Used (LRU) Lee, Michael left-side insertion rule Le Guin, Ursula K.


pages: 696 words: 143,736

The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence by Ray Kurzweil

Ada Lovelace, Alan Greenspan, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, backpropagation, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, cellular automata, Charles Babbage, classic study, combinatorial explosion, complexity theory, computer age, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, cosmological constant, cosmological principle, Danny Hillis, double helix, Douglas Hofstadter, Everything should be made as simple as possible, financial engineering, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, flying shuttle, fudge factor, functional programming, George Gilder, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hans Moravec, I think there is a world market for maybe five computers, information retrieval, invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, iterative process, Jacquard loom, John Gilmore, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Lao Tzu, Law of Accelerating Returns, mandelbrot fractal, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, natural language processing, Norbert Wiener, optical character recognition, ought to be enough for anybody, pattern recognition, phenotype, punch-card reader, quantum entanglement, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Feynman, Robert Metcalfe, Schrödinger's Cat, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, speech recognition, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, stochastic process, Stuart Kauffman, technological singularity, Ted Kaczynski, telepresence, the medium is the message, The Soul of a New Machine, There's no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home - Ken Olsen, traveling salesman, Turing machine, Turing test, Whole Earth Review, world market for maybe five computers, Y2K

Nonetheless, it lingers not far below the surface and will come back with a vengeance in the early twenty-first century. THEY HAVE A POINT, DON’T THEY? Sure, but a reflexive opposition to technology is not very fruitful in today’s world. It is important, however, to recognize that technology is power. We have to apply our human values to its use. THAT REMINDS ME OF LAO-TZU’S “KNOWLEDGE IS POWER.” Yes, technology and knowledge are very similar—technology can be expressed as knowledge. And technology clearly constitutes power over otherwise chaotic forces. Since war is a struggle for power, it is not surprising that technology and war are linked. With regard to the value of technology, think about the early technology of fire.

Storrs handwriting Harries, Richard health care, see medicine heat Hesselink, Lambertus Hillis, W Daniel Ho, Chih-Ming Hodgson, Paul Hofstadter, Douglas on self-understanding holograms Homo erectus Homo habilis Homo sapiens Homo sapiens neanderthallensis Homo sapiens sapiens Hübener, Mark human(s): defining of MOSHs Human Genome Project humanoids humor jokes Huxley, Thomas Henry hypothalamus IBM identity: definition of “human” as function of pattern, vs. particles neural implants and and transfer of information following brain scan see also consciousness Iijima, Sumio image processing Improvisor Industrial Revolution Second information innovation insects integrated circuits Moore’s Law on, see Moore’s Law neurons and quantum effects in intelligence body and; see also body consciousness and defining density of duality of emergence of, and entropy of evolution; see also evolution and evolution of technology hardware of human vs. artificial individual vs. group knowledge and, see knowledge pattern recognition in, see pattern recognition relevance to rest of Universe time use as element of Turing Test and, see Turing Test see also artificial intelligence intelligence, paradigms for combining of evolutionary algorithms, see evolutionary algorithms knowledge and neural net, see neural nets recursion, see recursion intelligent assistants intelligent function internal states Internet commerce on computation harvesting proposal see also World Wide Web inventions Isaac, Randy I’ve Got a Secret Japan JAPE (Joke Analysis and Production Engine) Kaczynski, Theodore (Ted) Kasparov, Gary Deep Blue’s match with Kauffman, Stuart Kay, Alan Kazantzakis, Nikos Kelvin, William Thomson, Lord knowledge bases of built-in chunks of common sense computers’ acquisition of context and in evolution of technology human downloading of language and sharing of technology and see also learning Kocher, Paul Koko Koza, John Kroto, Harold Kuno, Susumu Kurzweil, Ray: highlights in life of past predictions made by Kurzweil Applied Intelligence Kurzweil Computer Products Kurzweil Cybernetic Poet Kurzweil Data Entry Machine Kurzweil Educational Systems Kurzweil Music Systems Kurzweil Reading Machine (KRM) Kurzweil Voice Kurzweil VoiceMed (Kurzweil Clinical Reporter) Landauer, Rolf language natural translating of Turing Test and language user interfaces (LUIs) LANs (local area networks) Lao-tzu Larson, Steve Latham, William Law of Accelerating Returns applied to computation applied to evolution brain scans and in flow chart quantum computing and scanning technologies and Universe and Law of Increasing Chaos Law of Increasing Entropy, see second law of thermodynamics Law of Time and Chaos laws of thermodynamics, see thermodynamics, laws of learning curve of in neural nets see also education; knowledge legal system Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm Leonardo da Vinci Lemout & Hauspie (L&H) Lewis.


The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

affirmative action, Columbine, game design, Lao Tzu, Maui Hawaii, music of the spheres, place-making, the scientific method, trade route

Kramer, Samuel Noah. Sumerian Mythology: A Study of Spiritual and Literary Achievement in the Third Millennium, B.C. Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, vol. XXI. Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1944. Lang, Andrew. Custom and Myth. 2d ed. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1885. Lao-tzu. Lao-tzu's Tao and Wu Wei. Translated by Dwight Goddard. New York: Brentano \ 1919. Layard, John. Stone Men of Malekula. London: Chatto & Windus, 1942. Loomis, Gertrude Schoepperle. Tristan and holt: A Study of the Sources of the Romance. Frankfurt a. M.: J. Baer & Co., 1913. Mabinogion. The Mubinogion.


Trend Commandments: Trading for Exceptional Returns by Michael W. Covel

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, business cycle, buy and hold, commodity trading advisor, correlation coefficient, delayed gratification, disinformation, diversified portfolio, en.wikipedia.org, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, family office, full employment, global macro, Jim Simons, Lao Tzu, Long Term Capital Management, managed futures, market bubble, market microstructure, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, Nick Leeson, oil shock, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, random walk, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Sharpe ratio, systematic trading, the scientific method, three-martini lunch, transaction costs, tulip mania, upwardly mobile, Y2K, zero-sum game

Doolittle, Elektra, 1989. 2. Frederic Tomesco, “Obama’s Stimulus Plan Made Crisis Worse Taleb Says.” Bloomberg Businessweek, September 25, 2010. 3. Bill Simmons, “You Can Quote Me on This.” October 11, 2002. See http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/vault/021011. Honest 1. Lao Tzu. 2. Michael Shermer, The Skeptic: Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience. Santa Barbara: ABC-Cleo Inc., 2002. 3. See http://www.cnbc.com/id/42297221. 4. Tim Ferriss, “The Benefits of Pissing People Off.” November 25, 2009. See http://www.fourhourworkweek.com. 5. Ibid. 6. David Turnbull. See http://davidturnbull.com/2009/11/05/a-love-for-criticism. 7.


pages: 194 words: 57,925

The Heartfulness Way: Heart-Based Meditations for Spiritual Transformation by Kamlesh D. Patel, Joshua Pollock

Abraham Maslow, financial independence, Lao Tzu, medical residency, Richard Feynman

As a teenager, I found myself drawn to the subject of spirituality. I was sure that if I searched long enough through my parents’ enormous book collection, I would find some obscure and esoteric text, and from its pages, all the great secrets of the universe would pour out. First, I encountered the Tao Te Ching, penned by the eminent sage Lao Tzu, supposedly at the point of a spear. It mesmerized me with its simplicity and wisdom, and fanned the flames of spiritual craving in my heart. This led me to other books. I poured through the literature of the Buddhists, Taoists, Sufis, Christians, and others. I read Aristotle and Augustine, Emerson and Epicurus.


pages: 207 words: 63,071

My Start-Up Life: What A by Ben Casnocha, Marc Benioff

affirmative action, Albert Einstein, barriers to entry, Bonfire of the Vanities, business process, call centre, coherent worldview, creative destruction, David Brooks, David Sedaris, Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life?, don't be evil, fear of failure, hiring and firing, independent contractor, index fund, informal economy, Jeff Bezos, Joan Didion, Lao Tzu, Larry Ellison, Marc Benioff, Menlo Park, open immigration, Paul Graham, place-making, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, side project, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, superconnector, technology bubble, traffic fines, Tyler Cowen, Year of Magical Thinking

. • People who get stuff done “dream” and “talk” as much as the next guy, but they share these dreams and ideas with others. By sharing your intentions with others, you introduce yet another accountability mechanism. • People who get stuff done begin. Taking that first step can be the hardest. Act now! As Taoism founder Lao-tzu said, “A journey of one thousand miles begins with a single step.” (Continued) 34 MY START-UP LIFE What mindset allows me to be productive? I’m fortunate not to have many onerous projects that I loathe to work on. Loving what you do is key to getting stuff done and not simply talking about it. When I’m focused on work, I take a “let’skick-some-butt” attitude.


pages: 549 words: 160,930

The Book of Not Knowing: Exploring the True Nature of Self, Mind, and Consciousness by Peter Ralston

Albert Einstein, conceptual framework, different worldview, George Santayana, Isaac Newton, Lao Tzu, Ralph Waldo Emerson

You may feel vulnerable or have various reactions to it, but when you look closely you’ll see that the reactions aren’t the state; they are reactions. Not-knowing is simply a lot of nothing, but this can be a very powerful experience. It is the emptiness within the cup that makes it useful. —Lao-tzu 4:33 The fact that the above quotation shows up most often as a philosophical cuteness at a coffeehouse suggests that our culture has difficulty absorbing what’s being said. When it comes to cups, our attention falls to what is there or about to be there. The use and value of the cup is found in filling it.

In fact, consider this a standing invitation to question all your perceptions of self and other. He who knows much about others may be learned, but he who understands himself is more intelligent. He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still. —Lao-tzu 16:23 Because our perceptions work out for the most part and appear consistent and familiar, we imagine that this means they’re accurate and that they truly represent what’s there. This may indicate some sort of commensurate relationship between our perceptions and reality, but it does not mean that they are one and the same. 16:24 What do you suppose an amoeba envisions as the reality behind being poked?


pages: 245 words: 64,288

Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK: How to Survive the Economic Collapse and Be Happy by Pistono, Federico

3D printing, Albert Einstein, autonomous vehicles, bioinformatics, Buckminster Fuller, cloud computing, computer vision, correlation does not imply causation, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, Firefox, future of work, gamification, George Santayana, global village, Google Chrome, happiness index / gross national happiness, hedonic treadmill, illegal immigration, income inequality, information retrieval, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, Jeff Hawkins, jimmy wales, job automation, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, Lao Tzu, Law of Accelerating Returns, life extension, Loebner Prize, longitudinal study, means of production, Narrative Science, natural language processing, new economy, Occupy movement, patent troll, pattern recognition, peak oil, post scarcity, QR code, quantum entanglement, race to the bottom, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, RFID, Rodney Brooks, selection bias, self-driving car, seminal paper, slashdot, smart cities, software as a service, software is eating the world, speech recognition, Steven Pinker, strong AI, synthetic biology, technological singularity, TED Talk, Turing test, Vernor Vinge, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, women in the workforce

http://www.averagesalarysurvey.com/article/average-salary-in-united-states/15200316.aspx 176 National Average Wage Index. The United States Social Security Administration. http://www.ssa.gov/oact/COLA/AWI.html 177 Regrettably, the origin of this quote is unknown, although it is generally cited as being Chinese. Over the years, the quote has been misattributed to Confucius, Lao Tzu, Laozi, and Guan Zhong. This is a Chinese Proverb, which loosely means “It is better to teach someone how to do something than to do it for them”. http://goo.gl/XdvT9 178 Decline in fish stocks, 1999. World Resources Institute. http://www.wri.org/publication/content/8385 179 iPhone 5 announcement: 3 important things to watch, 2012.


pages: 204 words: 66,619

Think Like an Engineer: Use Systematic Thinking to Solve Everyday Challenges & Unlock the Inherent Values in Them by Mushtak Al-Atabi

3D printing, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Barry Marshall: ulcers, Black Swan, Blue Ocean Strategy, business climate, call centre, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cognitive bias, corporate social responsibility, dematerialisation, disruptive innovation, Elon Musk, follow your passion, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, happiness index / gross national happiness, invention of the wheel, iterative process, James Dyson, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Lao Tzu, Lean Startup, mirror neurons, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, remote working, shareholder value, six sigma, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, systems thinking

Clearly, I do not have a way to watch my students 24/7 but creating a physical object (the Opportunity Note) makes the word come to life. As more students report great and enjoyable experiences, the culture takes roots. The opportunity note is shown below and I would like to recommend that you start removing the P-word from your vocabulary and influence your thinking process at the naming stage. The Opportunity Note Lao Tzu once said, “Watch your thoughts they become words. Watch your words, they become actions. Watch your actions, they become habits. Watch your habits, they become character. Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.” It is worth noting that in some languages, like Arabic, there are two different words to represent the English word “problem”, “Mushkilah” is the Arabic word for problem as a source of trouble or worry; and “Masaalah” is the translation of problem as a question raised for intellectual enquiry.


pages: 231 words: 72,656

A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage

Berlin Wall, British Empire, Colonization of Mars, Copley Medal, Edmond Halley, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, Eratosthenes, European colonialism, gentleman farmer, interchangeable parts, invention of agriculture, Isaac Newton, joint-stock company, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, Lao Tzu, multiplanetary species, Neal Stephenson, out of africa, South Sea Bubble, spice trade, spinning jenny, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, transatlantic slave trade

Exactly how and when it spread into China is unclear, but it seems to have been helped along by Buddhist monks, adherents of the religion founded in India in the sixth century BCE by Siddhartha Gautama, known as the Buddha. Both Buddhist and Taoist monks found that drinking tea was an invaluable aid to meditation, since it enhanced concentration and banished fatigue—qualities that are now known to be due to the presence of caffeine. Lao-tzu, the founder of Taoism who lived in the sixth century BCE, believed that tea was an essential ingredient in the elixir of life. The earliest unambiguous Chinese reference to tea is from the first century BCE, some twenty-six centuries after Shen Nung's supposed discovery. Having started out as an obscure medicinal and religious beverage, tea first seems to have become a domestic drink in China around this time; a contemporary book, Working Rules of Servants, describes the proper ways to buy and serve it.


pages: 237 words: 69,985

The Longing for Less: Living With Minimalism by Kyle Chayka

Airbnb, Blue Bottle Coffee, Frank Gehry, gentrification, Guggenheim Bilbao, Jony Ive, Kickstarter, Lao Tzu, Mason jar, offshore financial centre, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Florida, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, technoutopianism, undersea cable, Whole Earth Catalog

Desire, for either extreme, was the cause of suffering. By the first century C.E. Buddhism spread across mainland Asia and its sutras were translated into Chinese. In China it mingled with native Taoism, which dated back to around the birth of the Buddha. In the Tao Te Ching the (possibly mythological) sage Lao Tzu advocated the doctrine of non-action: “Less and less is done / Until non-action is achieved. / When nothing is done, nothing is left undone,”3 chapter forty-eight reads. “The world is ruled by letting things take their course. / It cannot be ruled by interfering.” Chan, or Zen, Buddhism was brought to China in the sixth century by a gruff, bushily bearded Central Asian monk, Bodhidharma, who at first failed to gain acceptance at a Chinese monastery and then spent nine years staring at a cave wall.


pages: 238 words: 67,971

The Minimalist Home: A Room-By-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life by Joshua Becker

Albert Einstein, car-free, collaborative consumption, do what you love, endowment effect, estate planning, Lao Tzu, Mark Zuckerberg, mortgage debt, new economy, Paradox of Choice, side hustle, Steve Jobs

And some Goodwill stores will accept your worn-out clothing and sell it to salvage brokers or make it into industrial wipes. Before we leave the topic of clothing and how much of it we store in our homes, let’s consider one special place some homes have. Minimalist Home Value Being Yourself The ancient philosopher Lao Tzu is credited with saying, “Care about what other people think, and you will always be their prisoner.” Minimizing your clothing collection is not about giving up on looking your best. But it is about not trying to impress others through slavishly following fashion. That’s like chasing the wind.


pages: 233 words: 75,712

In Defense of Global Capitalism by Johan Norberg

anti-globalists, Asian financial crisis, capital controls, clean water, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, Deng Xiaoping, Edward Glaeser, export processing zone, Gini coefficient, Great Leap Forward, half of the world's population has never made a phone call, Hernando de Soto, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, informal economy, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, land reform, Lao Tzu, liberal capitalism, market fundamentalism, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Naomi Klein, new economy, open economy, prediction markets, profit motive, race to the bottom, rising living standards, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, structural adjustment programs, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tobin tax, trade liberalization, trade route, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, Tyler Cowen, union organizing, zero-sum game

Many will be tempted to take shortcuts, and bureaucrats will oblige in return for generous bribes, especially in poor countries where salaries are low and regulatory systems more or less chaotic. The easiest way of corrupting a nation through and through is to demand that citizens get bureaucratic permission for production, for imports, for exports, for investments. As the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu declared more than two and a half millennia ago, ‘‘The more laws are promulgated, the more numerous thieves and bandits become.’’ If the goal is to have impartial rules and incorruptible officials, there is no better means than substantial deregulation. Amartya Sen argues that the struggle against corruption would be a perfectly good reason for developing countries to deregulate their economies even if no other economic benefits would accrue from doing so.2 Growth—a blessing All experience indicates that it is in liberal regimes that wealth is created and development is sustained.


pages: 222 words: 75,778

Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh

call centre, crowdsourcing, drop ship, hiring and firing, independent contractor, Jeff Bezos, Lao Tzu, pre–internet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Saturday Night Live, science of happiness, Silicon Valley, Tony Hsieh, Y2K

—Hugh Macleod • “If you have more than 3 priorities then you don’t have any.” —Jim Collins • “If the person you’re talking to isn’t listening, be patient. Maybe he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.” —Winnie-the-Pooh • “In the pursuit of knowledge, something is added every day. In the pursuit of enlightenment, something is dropped every day.” —Lao-tzu • “Someone broke into my car last night. Nothing worth taking, car is actually less of a mess now. I should schedule this monthly.” SECTION III PROFITS, PASSION, AND PURPOSE 6 Taking It to the Next Level PR and Public Speaking In the two years leading up to the announcement of the Amazon acquisition, Zappos started getting more and more media coverage.


pages: 255 words: 76,834

Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda

1960s counterculture, anti-pattern, Apple Newton, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, bash_history, Bill Atkinson, Charles Lindbergh, conceptual framework, Donald Knuth, en.wikipedia.org, Free Software Foundation, HyperCard, Kickstarter, Lao Tzu, lock screen, premature optimization, profit motive, proprietary trading, QWERTY keyboard, reality distortion field, Richard Feynman, Richard Stallman, Robert X Cringely, Silicon Valley, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, The Soul of a New Machine, Tony Fadell, work culture , zero-sum game

I can use Kant, but only if I know about him, and only to the extent that I’ve internalized what he said and what it means to me. The same goes for the whole scope of creative achievement, from the paintings of Frida Kahlo, the blues music of the Reverend Gary Davis, the theories of Charles Darwin, the philosophy of Lao Tzu, the software optimization ideas of Donald Knuth, or the beliefs and practices of the ancient Greek visitors to the Delphic Oracle. When I study the past, I make a point of deciding what I like, and sometimes this built-up catalog of refined-like responses about past works finds a suitable outlet and a natural expression in my present-day work.


pages: 292 words: 76,185

Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One by Jenny Blake

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Cal Newport, cloud computing, content marketing, data is the new oil, diversified portfolio, do what you love, East Village, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, fear of failure, future of work, high net worth, Jeff Bezos, job-hopping, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, knowledge worker, Lao Tzu, Lean Startup, minimum viable product, Nate Silver, passive income, Ralph Waldo Emerson, risk tolerance, Second Machine Age, sharing economy, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, software as a service, solopreneur, Startup school, stem cell, TED Talk, too big to fail, Tyler Cowen, white picket fence, young professional, zero-sum game

The journey of a thousand miles starts from beneath your feet. Rushing into action, you fail. Trying to grasp things, you lose them. Forcing a project to completion, You ruin what was almost ripe. Therefore the Master takes action by letting things take their course. He remains as calm at the end as at the beginning. —Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Every book . . . has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens. —Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind First and foremost, to you, dear reader: thank you for investing your time and energy with me.


pages: 245 words: 78,125

Happy Inside: How to Harness the Power of Home for Health and Happiness by Michelle Ogundehin

clean water, fake it until you make it, financial independence, Indoor air pollution, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Lao Tzu, McMansion, microplastics / micro fibres, Own Your Own Home, placebo effect, sharing economy

Even if you live alone, make it a habit to lay the table. Honour thyself by exercising, cooking and eating well, and keep the faith that, day by day, you will begin to feel better. • ‘WHEN I LET GO OF WHAT I AM, I BECOME WHAT I MIGHT BE. WHEN I LET GO OF WHAT I HAVE, I RECEIVE WHAT I NEED.’ LAO-TZU ANCIENT CHINESE PHILOSOPHER (BORN 601 BC) AUTHOR OF THE TAO TE CHING With room to breathe and room to think, we can live a more meaningful life. And we now know that this type of ‘room’ is not necessarily physical space; rather, it is the absence of all that is extraneous alongside the sweet feeling of liberation that comes with realising that you have enough, and that you are enough, just as you are.


pages: 291 words: 75,110

Marriage and Lasting Relationships With Asperger's Syndrome: Successful Strategies for Couples or Counselors by Eva A. Mendes

airport security, Asperger Syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, deliberate practice, index card, job satisfaction, Lao Tzu, neurotypical, theory of mind

Individuals with ASD can be good at thinking outside the box and there’s no reason why this skill cannot be employed in the bedroom! A couple’s sex life can therefore be as interesting and dynamic as they both want it to be. CHAPTER 9 BRIDGING PARALLEL PLAY Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step. LAO TZU ♥ NICO AND ZOEY’S STORY ♥ Nico, an electrician and Zoey, an art-school professor had been married for 11 months. When they came to see me, Zoey said, “The moment we got married, everything changed! Nico used to write me poems and plan these wonderful romantic dates for us. Practically the day after we got married, he stopped everything.


pages: 271 words: 83,944

The Sellout: A Novel by Paul Beatty

affirmative action, Apollo 13, cognitive dissonance, conceptual framework, cotton gin, desegregation, El Camino Real, Gregor Mendel, haute couture, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, Lao Tzu, late fees, mass incarceration, military-industrial complex, Neil Armstrong, p-value, publish or perish, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Skinner box, telemarketer, theory of mind, War on Poverty, white flight, yellow journalism

I wonder if they looked at the Scottsboro Boys and Al Gore, Jr., with the same disdain. Only Confucius looks chill. The sporty Chinese satin robe with the big sleeves, kung fu shoes, Shaolin sifu beard and mustache. I hold the pipe high overhead and offer him a hit; the longest journey starts with a single puff … “That ‘longest journey’ shit is Lao-tzu,” he says. “All you motherfucking philosopher-poets sound alike to me,” I say. It’s a trip being the latest in the long line of landmark race-related cases. I suppose the constitutional scholars and cultural paleontologists will argue over my place on the historical timeline. Carbon-date my pipe and determine whether I’m a direct descendant of Dred Scott, that colored conundrum who, as a slave living in a free state, was man enough for his wife and kids, man enough to sue his master for his freedom, but not man enough for the Constitution, because in the eyes of the Court he was simply property: a black biped “with no rights the white man was bound to respect.”


pages: 287 words: 81,970

The Dollar Meltdown: Surviving the Coming Currency Crisis With Gold, Oil, and Other Unconventional Investments by Charles Goyette

Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, business cycle, buy and hold, California gold rush, currency manipulation / currency intervention, Deng Xiaoping, diversified portfolio, Elliott wave, fiat currency, fixed income, Fractional reserve banking, housing crisis, If something cannot go on forever, it will stop - Herbert Stein's Law, index fund, junk bonds, Lao Tzu, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, McMansion, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mortgage debt, National Debt Clock, oil shock, peak oil, pushing on a string, reserve currency, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, short selling, Silicon Valley, transaction costs

. . . if we face a monopolist we are at his mercy. And an authority directing the whole economic system would be the most powerful monopolist conceivable. —F. A. Hayek The more prohibitions there are, the poorer the people become. . . . The greater the number of statutes, the greater the number of thieves and brigands. —Lao-tzu The Command Economy America is transforming itself, without forethought, debate, or pause, into a command economy. A command economy is a top-down, state-controlled economy directed by planners and bureaucrats, boards and bodies, administrators and authorities. A command economy is not characterized by mutuality of interest and agreement between parties.


pages: 254 words: 81,009

Busy by Tony Crabbe

airport security, Bluma Zeigarnik, British Empire, business process, classic study, cognitive dissonance, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, death from overwork, fear of failure, Frederick Winslow Taylor, gamification, haute cuisine, informal economy, inventory management, Isaac Newton, job satisfaction, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, knowledge worker, Lao Tzu, Larry Ellison, loss aversion, low cost airline, machine readable, Marc Benioff, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, Paradox of Choice, placebo effect, Richard Feynman, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, science of happiness, scientific management, Shai Danziger, Stuart Kauffman, TED Talk, the long tail, Thorstein Veblen, Tim Cook: Apple

Finally, mastery happens when we are able to move from a sense of drowning to one of deep immersion; when we are able to manage and focus our attention, rather than allowing it to be scattered and split. Letting Go By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning. —Lao Tzu Laird Hamilton’s ride didn’t start, it couldn’t start, until he let go. It was the simplest thing to do: all he did was open his fingers. Yet, it wasn’t a natural act to let go of the relative safety of a motorized tow to drop into the abyss; it took bravery. Letting go in a world of too much is essential and it is simple, but it takes courage.


Know Thyself by Stephen M Fleming

Abraham Wald, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, AlphaGo, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, availability heuristic, backpropagation, citation needed, computer vision, confounding variable, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, Douglas Hofstadter, Dunning–Kruger effect, Elon Musk, Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science, fake news, global pandemic, higher-order functions, index card, Jeff Bezos, l'esprit de l'escalier, Lao Tzu, lifelogging, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, mutually assured destruction, Network effects, patient HM, Pierre-Simon Laplace, power law, prediction markets, QWERTY keyboard, recommendation engine, replication crisis, self-driving car, side project, Skype, Stanislav Petrov, statistical model, theory of mind, Thomas Bayes, traumatic brain injury

They believed that only by participating in concerted self-reflection could they ascend toward the image of God.11 A similar notion of striving toward self-awareness is seen in Eastern traditions such as Buddhism. The spiritual goal of enlightenment is to dissolve the ego, allowing more transparent and direct knowledge of our minds acting in the here and now. The founder of Chinese Taoism, Lao Tzu, captured this idea that gaining self-awareness is one of the highest pursuits when he wrote, “To know that one does not know is best; Not to know but to believe that one knows is a disease.”12 Today, there is a plethora of websites, blogs, and self-help books that encourage us to “find ourselves” and become more self-aware.


pages: 253 words: 79,595

The Joy of Less, A Minimalist Living Guide: How to Declutter, Organize, and Simplify Your Life by Francine Jay

big-box store, book scanning, carbon footprint, dumpster diving, Ford Model T, indoor plumbing, Lao Tzu, Mahatma Gandhi, pez dispenser, place-making, young professional

For when we hang out in parks, museums, movie houses, and coffee shops—instead of trying to create similar experiences in our own homes—we become significantly more socially active and civically engaged. By breaking down the walls of stuff around us, we’re able to get out into the world and enjoy fresher, more direct, and more rewarding experiences. PHILOSOPHY 9 The joy of enough Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, author of the Tao Te Ching, wrote, “He who knows he has enough is rich.” Enough—it’s a slippery concept. What’s enough for one is too little for the next guy and too much for another. Most of us would agree we have enough food, enough water, enough clothing, and enough shelter to meet our basic needs.


pages: 298 words: 95,668

Milton Friedman: A Biography by Lanny Ebenstein

Abraham Wald, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, business cycle, classic study, Deng Xiaoping, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, floating exchange rates, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Hernando de Soto, hiring and firing, inflation targeting, invisible hand, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Lao Tzu, liquidity trap, means of production, Modern Monetary Theory, Mont Pelerin Society, Myron Scholes, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Phillips curve, Ponzi scheme, price stability, public intellectual, rent control, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Sam Peltzman, school choice, school vouchers, secular stagnation, Simon Kuznets, stem cell, The Chicago School, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, zero-sum game

.: Edward Elgar, 1998), writes that, on reading Capitalism and Freedom, “one is struck by the sense of optimism about the ultimate power of ideas—a faith that closely reasoned argument, an accumulation of evidence, and a leavening of wit will persuade most people and that our governmental processes will be responsive to their preferences” (p. 307). Also see Boaz (ed.), The Libertarian Reader: Classic and Contemporary Writings from Lao-tzu to Milton Friedman (New York: Free Press, 1997). Anna Jacobson Schwartz has written on Friedman on several occasions, including a September 1998 review of Two Lucky People in the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis periodical The Region. She observes that Friedman has changed the popular mind-set with respect to government’s appropriate role in the economy: “He did so by radically altering the popular understanding of the Great Depression.


pages: 420 words: 98,309

Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris, Elliot Aronson

Ayatollah Khomeini, classic study, climate anxiety, cognitive dissonance, cuban missile crisis, desegregation, Donald Trump, false memory syndrome, fear of failure, Lao Tzu, longitudinal study, medical malpractice, medical residency, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, moral panic, Nelson Mandela, placebo effect, psychological pricing, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, social intelligence, sugar pill, telemarketer, the scientific method, trade route, transcontinental railway, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!

Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield. —George Orwell (1946) A great nation is like a great man: When he makes a mistake, he realizes it. Having realized it, he admits it. Having admitted it, he corrects it. He considers those who point out his faults as his most benevolent teachers. —Lao Tzu * * * Contents INTRODUCTION Knaves, Fools, Villains, and Hypocrites: How Do They Live with Themselves? 1 CHAPTER 1 Cognitive Dissonance: The Engine of Self-justification 11 CHAPTER 2 Pride and Prejudice ... and Other Blind Spots 40 CHAPTER 3 Memory, the Self-justifying Historian 68 CHAPTER 4 Good Intentions, Bad Science: The Closed Loop of Clinical Judgment 97 CHAPTER 5 Law and Disorder 127 CHAPTER 6 Love's Assassin: Self-justification in Marriage 158 CHAPTER 7 Wounds, Rifts, and Wars 185 CHAPTER 8 Letting Go and Owning Up 213 AFTERWORD 237 ENDNOTES 239 INDEX 277 * * * Introduction Knaves, Fools, Villains, and Hypocrites: How Do They Live with Themselves?


pages: 276 words: 91,719

Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges, Donald A. Yates, James E. Irby, William Gibson, André Maurois

Commentariolus, Georg Cantor, Lao Tzu, Thorstein Veblen

Walling in an orchard or a garden is ordinary, but not walling in an empire. Nor is it banal to pretend that the most traditional of races renounce the memory of its past, mythical or real. The Chinese had three thousand years of chronology (and during those years, the Yellow Emperor and Chuang Tsu and Confucius and Lao Tzu) when Shih Huang Ti ordered that history begin with him. Shih Huang Ti had banished his mother for being a libertine; in his stern justice the orthodox saw nothing but an impiety; Shih Huang Ti, perhaps, wanted to obliterate the canonical books because they accused him; Shih Huang Ti, perhaps, tried to abolish the entire past in order to abolish one single memory: his mother’s infamy.


pages: 284 words: 92,387

The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement by David Graeber

Bretton Woods, British Empire, company town, corporate personhood, David Graeber, deindustrialization, dumpster diving, East Village, feminist movement, financial innovation, George Gilder, John Markoff, Kim Stanley Robinson, land bank, Lao Tzu, late fees, Money creation, Murray Bookchin, Occupy movement, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, payday loans, planetary scale, plutocrats, radical decentralization, Ralph Nader, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, seigniorage, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, unpaid internship, We are the 99%, working poor

And in the cities, anarchist ideas gave rise to notions that the individual should not be bound by any social conventions and that all technology should be rejected in order to return to an imagined primitive utopia—a pattern that was to repeat itself many times through world history. Those individualist and primitivist ideas, in turn, had an enormous influence on the Taoist philosophy of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu.23 How many similar movements have there been throughout human history? We cannot know. (We only happen to know about the Tillers because they also compiled manuals of agricultural technology so good they were read and recopied for thousands of years.) But really all the Tillers were doing was an intellectually self-conscious version of what, as James Scott has recently shown in his “anarchist history of Southeast Asia,” millions of people in that part of the world have been doing for centuries: flee from the control of nearby kingdoms and try to set up societies based on a rejection of everything those states represent; then try to convince others to do the same.24 There are likely to have been many such movements winning free spaces of one sort or another from different states.


pages: 422 words: 89,770

Death of the Liberal Class by Chris Hedges

1960s counterculture, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Berlin Wall, call centre, clean water, collective bargaining, Columbine, corporate governance, deindustrialization, desegregation, disinformation, Donald Trump, Fall of the Berlin Wall, food desert, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, hive mind, housing crisis, Howard Zinn, Ida Tarbell, illegal immigration, independent contractor, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Lao Tzu, Lewis Mumford, military-industrial complex, Murray Bookchin, Pearl River Delta, Plato's cave, post scarcity, power law, profit motive, public intellectual, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, strikebreaker, the long tail, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tobin tax, union organizing, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, W. E. B. Du Bois, WikiLeaks, working poor, Works Progress Administration

But once you claim to exalt the Wisdom Tradition—as the Jesus Seminar also did—then there’s no reason to stop with Christianity. All wisdom (and alleged wisdom) is on the table. Then it’s easy to see and say things that are almost impossible to say from within Christianity. “Jesus was so young. It’s a pity he didn’t live to 70-80, as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Buddha, Lao Tzu and Confucius had, and grow into a less idealistic and more realistic vision.” Questions like this, I think, take the discussion outside of Christianity (or any single religion) and into a field that might be called the best sort of humanism (à la Shakespeare and Montaigne). But it’s hard for professors and preachers paid to be Christians to make that move, for lots of reasons.


pages: 299 words: 98,943

Immortality: The Quest to Live Forever and How It Drives Civilization by Stephen Cave

Albert Einstein, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, back-to-the-land, clean water, double helix, George Santayana, Hans Moravec, heat death of the universe, invention of the printing press, Isaac Newton, Lao Tzu, life extension, planetary scale, radical life extension, Ray Kurzweil, stem cell, technoutopianism, the scientific method

A particularly charming one is Taoism: The Quest for Immortality by John Blofeld (Unwin, 1979), though it is a little old-fashioned. There are also many Taoist texts on immortality available in English translation, such as The Jade Emperor’s Mind Seal Classic: The Taoist Guide to Health, Longevity, and Immortality, compiled by Stuart Alve Olson (Inner Traditions, 2003). The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu is also widely available in translation. The Japanese fairy tale about Xu Fu and Sentaro is usually known as “The Story of the Man Who Did Not Wish to Die” and can be found in numerous collections, including for example Japanese Fairy Tales by Yei Theodora Ozaki (1908). Another entertaining, if old-fashioned, source of Chinese and Japanese folklore is Donald MacKenzie’s China and Japan: Myths and Legends (Senate, 1923), which includes many of the tales of elixirs and immortal islands.


pages: 469 words: 97,582

QI: The Second Book of General Ignorance by Lloyd, John, Mitchinson, John

"Margaret Hamilton" Apollo, Ada Lovelace, Apple Newton, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, Charles Babbage, Charles Lindbergh, clean water, disinformation, double helix, Etonian, George Santayana, ghettoisation, Great Leap Forward, Isaac Newton, Lao Tzu, Louis Pasteur, Mikhail Gorbachev, Murano, Venice glass, Neil Armstrong, out of africa, Stephen Fry, the built environment, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, traveling salesman, US Airways Flight 1549

He lives by the motto of the German mystic Henry Suso (1300–66): ‘By ignorance the truth is known.’ John Mitchinson is from the world of books. The original Marketing Director of Waterstone’s, he became Managing Director of Cassell, where he published The Beatles, Michael Palin and Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. He’s with the Chinese philosopher Lao-Tzu: ‘To know that you do not know is the best. To pretend to know when you do not know is disease.’ By the Same Authors THE BOOK OF GENERAL IGNORANCE THE BOOK OF ANIMAL IGNORANCE ADVANCED BANTER: THE QI BOOK OF QUOTATIONS THE QI BOOK OF THE DEAD THE QI ‘E’ ANNUAL THE QI ‘F’ ANNUAL THE QI ‘G’ ANNUAL THE QI ‘H’ ANNUAL also by John Lloyd (with Douglas Adams) THE MEANING OF LIFF THE DEEPER MEANING OF LIFF Copyright First published in 2010 by Faber and Faber Ltd Bloomsbury House 74–77 Great Russell Street London WC1B 3DA This ebook edition first published in 2010 All rights reserved © QI Ltd, 2010 Illustrations © Mr Bingo, 2010 The right of QI Ltd to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law.


pages: 317 words: 97,824

Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes by Maria Konnikova

Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, availability heuristic, Bluma Zeigarnik, classic study, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, delayed gratification, fear of failure, feminist movement, functional fixedness, Lao Tzu, pre–internet, Richard Feynman, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, the scientific method, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Walter Mischel

To him, jumping backward seemed like the way to go. All through high school, he’d been developing a backward-facing style, and now, in college, it was taking him higher than it ever had. He wasn’t sure why he did it, but if he thought about it, he would say that his inspiration came from the East: from Confucius and Lao Tzu. He didn’t care what anyone else was doing. He just jumped with the feeling of the thing. People joked and laughed. Fosbury looked just as ridiculous as they thought he would (and his inspirations sounded a bit ridiculous, too. When asked about his approach, he told Sports Illustrated, “I don’t even think about the high jump.


pages: 325 words: 97,162

The 5 AM Club: Own Your Morning. Elevate Your Life. by Robin Sharma

Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, dematerialisation, epigenetics, fake news, Grace Hopper, hedonic treadmill, impulse control, index card, invisible hand, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Kickstarter, Lao Tzu, large denomination, Mahatma Gandhi, Menlo Park, mirror neurons, Nelson Mandela, New Journalism, Rosa Parks, telemarketer, white picket fence

And kissed her on the forehead. Chapter 9 A Framework for the Expression of Greatness “The men who are great live with that which is substantial, they do not stay with that which is superficial; they abide with realities, they remain not with what is showy. The one they discard, the other they hold.” —Lao Tzu “Hey, cats,” boomed the billionaire. “You’re right on time, as usual. Nice work!” It was 5 AM and, while the retreating outline of the moon remained in the sky, the rays of a new dawn greeted the three human beings standing on the perfect beach. The perfumed ocean breeze swirled with notes of red hibiscus, clove and tuberose.


pages: 482 words: 117,962

Exceptional People: How Migration Shaped Our World and Will Define Our Future by Ian Goldin, Geoffrey Cameron, Meera Balarajan

Admiral Zheng, agricultural Revolution, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, conceptual framework, creative destruction, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, endogenous growth, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global supply chain, guest worker program, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, labour mobility, language acquisition, Lao Tzu, life extension, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, machine readable, Malacca Straits, mass immigration, microcredit, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, old age dependency ratio, open borders, out of africa, price mechanism, purchasing power parity, Richard Florida, selection bias, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social distancing, spice trade, trade route, transaction costs, transatlantic slave trade, women in the workforce, working-age population

The migration of religious missionaries, secular teachers, and medical experts spread great spiritual and ethical traditions that, among other things, addressed new social and moral problems associated with the large-scale organization of society.66 The period between 800 BCE and 200 BCE is now widely known as the “Axial Age,” so named by Karl Jaspers, who described the simultaneous emergence of universal religions within the great agrarian civilizations of Mesopotamia, Persia, China, and India. In urban and imperial societies, new religions promoted social order with abstract moral principles and codes. Religion and society developed through dynamic interaction. During this historical window, Socrates and Plato emerged in Greece, Buddha appeared in India, Confucius and Lao Tzu in China, Zoroaster in Persia, and the Hebrew Prophets in Palestine. Jaspers remarks on the similarity in the thought of these religions and in the lives of their founders. As he famously argued, “the spiritual foundations of humanity were laid simultaneously and independently…. And these are the foundations upon which humanity still subsists today.”67 The emergence of these faiths also gave rise to a new class of religious scholars, many of whom traveled to teach and study.


pages: 386 words: 116,233

The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime by Mj Demarco

8-hour work day, Albert Einstein, AltaVista, back-to-the-land, Bernie Madoff, bounce rate, business logic, business process, butterfly effect, buy and hold, cloud computing, commoditize, dark matter, delayed gratification, demand response, do what you love, Donald Trump, drop ship, fear of failure, financial engineering, financial independence, fixed income, housing crisis, Jeff Bezos, job-hopping, Lao Tzu, Larry Ellison, low interest rates, Mark Zuckerberg, multilevel marketing, passive income, passive investing, payday loans, planned obsolescence, Ponzi scheme, price anchoring, Ronald Reagan, subscription business, upwardly mobile, wealth creators, white picket fence, World Values Survey, zero day

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions Fame or physical talent is not a prerequisite to wealth. Fast wealth is created exponentially, not linearly. Change can happen in an instant. * * * PART 2: Wealth is Not a Road, But a Road Trip * * * CHAPTER 3: THE ROAD TRIP TO WEALTH The journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step. ~ Lao Tzu Wealth Is a Road Trip, Not Just a Road! While in college, my friends and I embarked on a spring break road trip from Chicago to South Florida. Naturally, as young men, we were gushing with anticipation and enamored with the destination: a sunny, crowded Florida beach of scantily clad, well-tanned, boozed-up college coeds.


pages: 370 words: 112,809

The Equality Machine: Harnessing Digital Technology for a Brighter, More Inclusive Future by Orly Lobel

2021 United States Capitol attack, 23andMe, Ada Lovelace, affirmative action, Airbnb, airport security, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, Amazon Mechanical Turk, augmented reality, barriers to entry, basic income, Big Tech, bioinformatics, Black Lives Matter, Boston Dynamics, Charles Babbage, choice architecture, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, contact tracing, coronavirus, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, data science, David Attenborough, David Heinemeier Hansson, deep learning, deepfake, digital divide, digital map, Elon Musk, emotional labour, equal pay for equal work, feminist movement, Filter Bubble, game design, gender pay gap, George Floyd, gig economy, glass ceiling, global pandemic, Google Chrome, Grace Hopper, income inequality, index fund, information asymmetry, Internet of things, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, iterative process, job automation, Lao Tzu, large language model, lockdown, machine readable, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, microaggression, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, Network effects, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, occupational segregation, old-boy network, OpenAI, openstreetmap, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, performance metric, personalized medicine, price discrimination, publish or perish, QR code, randomized controlled trial, remote working, risk tolerance, robot derives from the Czech word robota Czech, meaning slave, Ronald Coase, Salesforce, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, social distancing, social intelligence, speech recognition, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, surveillance capitalism, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, The Future of Employment, TikTok, Turing test, universal basic income, Wall-E, warehouse automation, women in the workforce, work culture , you are the product

As Ishiguro felt he was aging while his geminoid remained eternally young, Ishiguro-the-human underwent cosmetic surgery and stem cell treatments so that he would continue to look like Ishiguro-the-robot. He envisions sending his geminoid to deliver his lectures, travel the world, and generally expand his physical and temporal footprint in this world. Lao Tzu said, “He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened.” Ishiguro asks, “Who is more me, the body I was born with or a replica robot that embodies my cognition and emotional self alongside the physical?”2 He believes it is the robot that embodies his full identity—perhaps fuller than himself—because the robot is his ultimate creation, his unchanging and more impactful essence and presence in the world.


pages: 663 words: 119,916

The Big Book of Words You Should Know: Over 3,000 Words Every Person Should Be Able to Use (And a Few That You Probably Shouldn't) by David Olsen, Michelle Bevilacqua, Justin Cord Hayes

Abraham Maslow, Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, deliberate practice, gentrification, haute couture, haute cuisine, jitney, Lao Tzu, place-making, placebo effect, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, Rosa Parks, Upton Sinclair

tangelo (TAN-juh-lo), noun A kind of citrus fruit; hybrid of a tangerine and a grapefruit. The corner fruit market specialized in stocking the more exotic fruits and vegetables, and for most of the year was the only place in town where one could regularly purchase TANGELOS. Taoism (DOW-is-um), noun A system of philosophy identified with the sage Lao-Tzu, and embodied most notably in his work Tao-te-ching, that holds that life lived simply and in accordance with natural laws and events is most in keeping with the Tao, or way, that underlies all existence. Scholars may debate the fine points of a rational understanding of TAOISM, but a true practitioner probably expresses it best when she gracefully and thankfully accepts a proffered cup of tea.


pages: 376 words: 121,254

Cocaine Nation: How the White Trade Took Over the World by Thomas Feiling

anti-communist, barriers to entry, Caribbean Basin Initiative, crack epidemic, deindustrialization, drug harm reduction, gentrification, illegal immigration, informal economy, inventory management, Kickstarter, land reform, Lao Tzu, mandatory minimum, moral panic, offshore financial centre, RAND corporation, Right to Buy, Ronald Reagan, Stanford prison experiment, trade route, upwardly mobile, yellow journalism

The pastor’s words carry the same staunch morality and duty of care as those of the most hard-line prohibitionist, but he made no mention of banning anything. The closest he came to censure was in his parting words. ‘But crack cocaine? I ain’t seen nothing good come from it.’ 11 Prospects The more prohibitions you have, the less virtuous people will be. Try to make people moral, and you lay the groundwork for vice. Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching One of the few legal buyers of coca leaves outside the Andes is the Coca-Cola Company.1 The world’s most popular soft drink is the last vestige of an age in which coca-infused tonics were both legal and popular. When first marketed, ‘the pause that refreshes’ owed its potency to the 60 mg of cocaine in every eight-ounce bottle.2 These days, coca is used only as flavouring.


pages: 451 words: 125,201

What We Owe the Future: A Million-Year View by William MacAskill

Ada Lovelace, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Alignment Problem, AlphaGo, artificial general intelligence, Bartolomé de las Casas, Bletchley Park, British Empire, Brownian motion, carbon footprint, carbon tax, charter city, clean tech, coronavirus, COVID-19, cuban missile crisis, decarbonisation, deep learning, DeepMind, Deng Xiaoping, different worldview, effective altruism, endogenous growth, European colonialism, experimental subject, feminist movement, framing effect, friendly AI, global pandemic, GPT-3, hedonic treadmill, Higgs boson, income inequality, income per capita, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, Islamic Golden Age, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, lab leak, Lao Tzu, Large Hadron Collider, life extension, lockdown, long peace, low skilled workers, machine translation, Mars Rover, negative emissions, Nick Bostrom, nuclear winter, OpenAI, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, QWERTY keyboard, Robert Gordon, Rutger Bregman, Sam Altman, seminal paper, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, speech recognition, Stanislav Petrov, stem cell, Steven Pinker, strong AI, synthetic biology, total factor productivity, transatlantic slave trade, Tyler Cowen, William MacAskill, women in the workforce, working-age population, World Values Survey, Y Combinator

One robust account of the concept of “sageliness” in Chinese philosophy can be found in Feng (1997, 6–9). 5. D. Wong 2021. 6. Csikszentmihalyi 2020. 7. Note that Legalists were not a self-aware and organized intellectual current; rather, the name was coined as a post-factum categorization of certain thinkers and texts. See other concerns with this naming convention in Goldin (2011). 8. Lao Tzu 2003. For modern views on the history of Daoism, see whatweowethefuture .com/notes. 9. Mengzi 3B9.9; quoted in Van Norden 2007, 185. 10. The Mòzıˇ principle of jiān ài is sometimes translated as “universal love” (Van Norden 2019). 11. These principles show up in the ten Mohist doctrines, namely “moderation in use” (Fraser 2020). 12.


pages: 931 words: 79,142

Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming by Peter Van-Roy, Seif Haridi

computer age, Debian, discrete time, Donald Knuth, Eratosthenes, fault tolerance, functional programming, G4S, general-purpose programming language, George Santayana, John von Neumann, Lao Tzu, Menlo Park, natural language processing, NP-complete, Paul Graham, premature optimization, sorting algorithm, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, Therac-25, Turing complete, Turing machine, type inference

Barrier can be the basis of a linguistic abstraction, the conc statement: conc stmt1 [] stmt2 [] ... [] stmtn end defined as {Barrier [proc {$} stmt1 end proc {$} stmt2 end ... proc {$} stmtn end]} Barrier is more general than the conc statement since the number of statements does not have to be known at compile time. 4.5 Lazy execution All things spring up without a word spoken, and grow without a claim for their production. – Tao-te Ching, Lao-tzu (6th century B.C.) “Necessity is the mother of invention.” “But who is the father?” “Laziness!” – Freely adapted from a traditional proverb. Up to now, we have always executed statements in order, from left to right. In a statement sequence, we start by executing the first statement. When it is finished we continue to the next.10 This fact may seem too obvious to require mentioning.

., 406 Kurzweil, Raymond, 176 KWIC (keyword in context) index, 666 Label operation, 54, 826 label (record identification), 19, 52 λ calculus, xvii, 41, 97, 331, 344, 792, 805, 811, 846 LAN (local area network), 353, 717, 739 language AKL, xxvi, 661, 809 Absys, 406, 621 Ada, 432, 619 Algol, 406, 432, 489 declarative concurrent, 337 nondeterministic, 622 Alice, 106 C++, 43, 48, 75, 180, 334, 445, 486, 489, 504, 508–510, 535, 540, 545, 551, 663, 761 C-Linda, 586 CLOS (Common Lisp Object System), 516 CLU, 420 CSP (Communicating Sequential Processes), 619 Clean, 313 Cobol, 544 Common Lisp, 59, 190 Concurrent Haskell, xx Concurrent ML, xx, 851 Concurrent Prolog, 397 C, 75, 179, 661 Eiffel, 519, 521, 850 Erlang, 75, 98, 326, 345, 386–394, 429, 456, 545, 563, 582, 807, 851 E, 208 FCP (Flat Concurrent Prolog), 397, 807 FP, 329 Flat GHC, 397 Fortran, 406, 642 parsing problem, 642 GHC (Guarded Horn Clauses), 397 Haskell, xiv, xvi, 43, 75, 98, 116, 880 Index 137, 194, 272, 279, 286, 308– 313, 329, 331, 334, 337, 342, 457, 545, 679, 807 IC-Prolog, 397 Id, 337, 811 Java, xiv, xvi, 41, 43, 48, 75, 180, 334, 356, 428, 430, 445, 462, 486, 489, 504, 508–510, 535, 540, 543–545, 551–556, 567, 581, 592, 615–617, 679, 807, 850 monitor, 592 Leda, xvii Linda extension, 586, 619, 808 Lisp, xiv, 5, 39, 59, 75, 76, 129, 406, 544, 650, 664, 828 ML, see Standard ML, Concurrent ML, Objective Caml Mercury, xiv, 116, 313, 663, 807 Miranda, 279, 342 Multilisp, 336, 811 Objective Caml, 543 Obliq, 722 Oz 1, Oz 2, Oz 3, 809 Oz, xix, xxvi, 313, 507, 545, 663, 807, 844, 851 PL/I, 642 parsing problem, 642 Parlog, 397 Pascal, 161, 179, 430, 807 Prolog, xiv, xvi, xxi, 5, 29, 48, 75, 116, 140, 142, 272, 287, 329, 334, 388, 397, 406, 545, 621– 623, 635, 640, 642, 649, 654, 656–660, 660–671, 807, 851 pure, 640 SICStus, 190, 663 Scheme, xiv, xvi, xvii, xx, 29, 43, 59, 97, 98, 286, 545, 807 Simula, 406, 489 Smalltalk, xiv, 43, 75, 334, 489, 507, 509, 510, 516, 540, 543, 544, 850 Standard ML, xiv, xx, 29, 43, 97, 98, 116, 137, 194, 286, 313, 330, 807 Visual Basic, 461 pH (parallel Haskell), 337, 811 tcl/tk, 679, 680, 703 assembly, 209, 313, 406, 551, 622 coordination, 586 first-order, 177 formal, 33 higher-order, 177 multiparadigm, xvii natural, xiii, 31, 38, 641 nonstrict, 331 popular computation models, 807 practical, 31 secure, 208 specification, 116 symbolic, 53, 545 language design abstraction life cycle, 40 declarative, 329 golden age, 406 layered, 850 lazy execution, 329 object properties, 543 trade-offs, 811 Lao-tzu, 278 last call optimization, 72 latch (digital logic), 270 late error detection (at run time), 503 latency, 263 tolerance, 335 LATEX 2ε typesetting system, 459 Latin-1, 458 law Clarke’s second, 104 Clarke’s third, 314 contrapositive, 632 De Morgan’s, 632 Moore’s, 176, 622 stack ADT, 195 layered language design, 850 lazy evaluation, 98 coroutining, 574 Index 881 explicit, 183 Haskell, 310 relation to call by need, 433, 485 relation to nonstrict evaluation, 331 schedule, 343 strictness analysis, 289, 310, 342 lazy execution, 278 bounded buffer, 263 flow control, 261 Hamming problem, 293 higher-order programming, 193 incremental, 295 introduction, 11 monolithic, 296, 342 needs finalization, 481 relation to synchronization, 334 lazy failure detection, 739 Lea, Doug, 581 legal program, 31 Length operation, 829 lex/yacc parsing, 642 lexical analyzer, 32 lexical scope, see scope, lexical lexical syntax (of Oz), 839 lexically scoped closure, see procedure value lexicographic order (of atoms), 55, 824 Ley, Willy, 621 library, 229 MOGUL (Mozart Global User Library), 222 Mozart Base and System modules, 229 Mozart Standard Library, 214, 225, 685, 690 universal, 621 life cycle abstraction, 40 memory block, 75 LIFO (last-in, first-out), 491 lift control system, 365 lifting booleans to streams, 271 serializability, 600 synchronization, 358 lightweight transaction, 601 Linda (tuple space), 586 linguistic abstraction, 38–39, 124 case (pattern matching), 790 class, 548 conc (concurrent composition), 278 delegation, 514 for loop, 188, 447 fun (function), 84 functor (software component), 223 gate (logic gate), 271 local vs. global translation, 844 macro (in Lisp), 39 monitor, 593 parameter passing, 434 protected scope (Java), 567 while loop, 447 linking, 211, 222, 224, 229, 455, 817 component, 223, 459 dynamic, 284 failure detection in Erlang, 387 Linux operating system, xxvi, 201, 471, 499 Liskov, Barbara, 420 list, 52, 128, 828 circular, 829 complete, 53, 829 difference, 141 advantage, 145 flattening, 143 incomplete, 440 introduction, 4 nested, 135 partial, 440, 829 usage trade-offs, 439 list comprehension, 301 list pair, 52, 828 literal, 824 liveness, 602 882 Index local statement, 56, 63, 786 lock, 579, 582–583 distributed, 721 get-release, 598 implementation, 590 introduction, 21 Java, 616 read, 620 simple, 591 thread-reentrant, 591 transaction, 602 write, 620 lock statement, 22, 583 locus of control, 274 logic combinational, 267 gate, 267 predicate calculus, 633 propositional, 632 sequential, 269 temporal, 603 logic program, 634 logic programming, 44, 406, 632 difference list, 142 process model, 395, 807 unification, 101 logical equivalence, 243, 785 configuration, 805 logical formula, 633 logical semantics, 38, 631–641 logical sentence, 633 assertion, 441 invariant, 441 Louis XIV, 405, 410 Loyd, Sam, 774 Lully, Raymond (Llull, Ramón), 621 Lynch, Nancy, 353 Mac OS X operating system, xxiv, xxvi, 254 Macintosh computer, xxvi MacQueen, David, 337 macro alias (in QTk), 680 Lisp, 39, 544 loop (in Common Lisp), 190 Maher, Michael, 662, 808 mailbox, 456 Erlang, 386 implementation, 391 maintainability, 458 inheritance, 492 polymorphism, 425 MakeRecord operation, 165, 549, 695, 826 MakeTuple operation, 373, 827 Manchester Mark I, 36 Manna, Zohar, 441 many-to-one communication, 351 Map operation, 190, 466, 829 Mariner I (software error), 643 marshaling, 709 master-slave, 732 mathematical induction, 9 matrix graph representation, 464 list of lists implementation, 232 Max operation, 194 McCloud, Scott, 482 Member operation, 829 memoization, 417, 457 calendar example, 694 call by need, 434 declarative programming, 315 explicit state, 25, 694 unification, 102 memory address in abstract machine, 56 consumption, 172 content-addressable, 587 leak, 75 choice point, 668 Prolog, 668 life cycle, 75 memory management, 72–78, 480– 482 C, 180 garbage collection, 75 Index 883 Pascal, 180 Merge operation, 771 message, 499 message-passing concurrency, see object, active, see object, port meta-interpreter, 654, 676 meta-object protocol, see protocol, meta-object method object, 19, 497 wrapping, 516 methodology, see software development Meyer, Bertrand, 450, 491, 521, 527 Microsoft Corporation, 462, 679 middle-out software development, 451 mind of programmer capabilities (atoms vs. names), 510 difference list, 145 enforcing encapsulation, 420 language design trade-offs, 811 order-determining concurrency, 273 state (implicit vs. explicit), 408 use of constraints, 274 minus sign (use of tilde ˜), 820 Mnesia (Erlang database), 387 mod (integer modulo) operation, 54, 821 model computation, 29, see computation model dialog (in GUI), 695 domain (in GUI), 695 GUI formalism, 695 logical semantics, 633 presentation (in GUI), 695 programming, 29 model-based GUI design, 695 modularity, xxi, 315, 409, 458 encapsulated search, 625 inadequacy of declarative model, 315 reengineering, 522 relation to concurrency, 239, 252, 319 relation to explicit state, 315 relational model, 660 system decomposition, 457 module, 183, 220, 454 Array, 436 Atom, 824 Browser, 224 Char, 821, 823 Compiler, 690, 815 Connection, 715, 732 Dictionary, 437 Distribution (supplement), 718 FD, 775 Fault, 739, 743 File (supplement), 211, 292, 564 Finalize, 481 Float, 821 Int, 821 List, 258, 385, 829 Module, 224, 413, 455, 730, 817 MyList (example), 222 Number, 14, 54, 182, 821 OS, 371, 609, 692, 699, 730 ObjectSupport, 517 Open, 564, 729 Pickle, 216, 223, 717 Port, 673 Property, 93, 253, 255 QTk, 213, 680, 729 interactive use, 214, 684 use in application, 225 Record, 826 Remote, 255, 732 Search, 776 Space, 654, 763 String, 824 Thread, 255, 276 Time, 304 Tk, 703 Tuple, 827 Value, 328, 830 884 Index Base, 222, 229, 729 compilation unit, 454 dynamic linking, 285 failure, 329 dynamic typing, 105 Erlang, 389 importing, 224 interface, 455 library, 229 resource, 729, 746 specification, 221 System, 222, 229, 729 MOGUL (Mozart Global User Library), 222 monad, xxi, 309, 332 monitor, 579, 592–600 condition variable, 598 guarded method, 595 implementation, 597 Java language, 616 Java semantics, 592 monolithic function, 296 stateful programming, 471 monotonicity, 849 constraint programming, 766 dataflow variable, 336, 570 need(x) predicate, 796 need property, 283 store, 781 thread reduction, 239, 781, 782 Moore’s law, 176, 622 Moore, Gordon, 176 Morrison, J.


pages: 624 words: 127,987

The Personal MBA: A World-Class Business Education in a Single Volume by Josh Kaufman

Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, Atul Gawande, Black Swan, Blue Ocean Strategy, business cycle, business process, buy low sell high, capital asset pricing model, Checklist Manifesto, cognitive bias, correlation does not imply causation, Credit Default Swap, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Heinemeier Hansson, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Dean Kamen, delayed gratification, discounted cash flows, Donald Knuth, double entry bookkeeping, Douglas Hofstadter, Dunning–Kruger effect, en.wikipedia.org, Frederick Winslow Taylor, George Santayana, Gödel, Escher, Bach, high net worth, hindsight bias, index card, inventory management, iterative process, job satisfaction, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Lao Tzu, lateral thinking, loose coupling, loss aversion, Marc Andreessen, market bubble, Network effects, Parkinson's law, Paul Buchheit, Paul Graham, place-making, premature optimization, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rent control, scientific management, side project, statistical model, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, subscription business, systems thinking, telemarketer, the scientific method, time value of money, Toyota Production System, tulip mania, Upton Sinclair, Vilfredo Pareto, Walter Mischel, Y Combinator, Yogi Berra

Create as much value as you possibly can, then capture enough of that value to make it worthwhile to keep operating. SHARE THIS CONCEPT: http://book.personalmba.com/value-capture/ Sufficiency Know contentment and you will suffer no disgrace; know when to stop and you will meet with no danger. You can then endure. —LAO TZU, ANCIENT CHINESE PHILOSOPHER Once, a powerful executive went on vacation—his first in fifteen years. As he was exploring a pier in a small coastal fishing village, a tuna fisherman docked his boat. As the Fisherman lashed his boat to the pier, the Executive complimented him on the size and quality of his fish.


Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values by Robert M. Pirsig

Albert Einstein, always be closing, Henri Poincaré, Isaac Newton, Lao Tzu, Parkinson's law, the scientific method

Its indefinability freed it from the rules of metaphysics. Then, on impulse, Phćdrus went over to his bookshelf and picked out a small, blue, cardboard-bound book. He’d hand-copied this book and bound it himself years before, when he couldn’t find a copy for sale anywhere. It was the 2,400-year-old Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu. He began to read through the lines he had read many times before, but this time he studied it to see if a certain substitution would work. He began to read and interpret it at the same time. He read: The quality that can be defined is not the Absolute Quality. That was what he had said. The names that can be given it are not Absolute names.


pages: 476 words: 132,042

What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly

Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Apollo 13, Boeing 747, Buckminster Fuller, c2.com, carbon-based life, Cass Sunstein, charter city, classic study, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, computer vision, cotton gin, Danny Hillis, dematerialisation, demographic transition, digital divide, double entry bookkeeping, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Jenner, en.wikipedia.org, Exxon Valdez, Fairchild Semiconductor, Ford Model T, George Gilder, gravity well, Great Leap Forward, Gregor Mendel, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, interchangeable parts, invention of air conditioning, invention of writing, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Joan Didion, John Conway, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, Lao Tzu, life extension, Louis Daguerre, Marshall McLuhan, megacity, meta-analysis, new economy, off grid, off-the-grid, out of africa, Paradox of Choice, performance metric, personalized medicine, phenotype, Picturephone, planetary scale, precautionary principle, quantum entanglement, RAND corporation, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, refrigerator car, rewilding, Richard Florida, Rubik’s Cube, Silicon Valley, silicon-based life, skeuomorphism, Skype, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, Stuart Kauffman, technological determinism, Ted Kaczynski, the built environment, the long tail, the scientific method, Thomas Malthus, Vernor Vinge, wealth creators, Whole Earth Catalog, Y2K, yottabyte

The universe is mostly empty because it is waiting to be filled with the products of life and the technium, with questions and problems and the thickening relations between bits that we call con scientia—shared knowledge—or consciousness. And whether we like it or not, we stand at the fulcrum of the future. We are in part responsible for the evolution of this planet proceeding onward. About 2,500 years ago most of humanity’s major religions were set in motion in a relatively compact period. Confucius, Lao-tzu, Buddha, Zoroaster, the authors of the Upanishads, and the Jewish patriarchs all lived within a span of 20 generations. Only a few major religions have been born since then. Historians call that planetary fluttering the Axial Age. It was as if everyone alive awoke simultaneously and, in one breath, set out in search of their mysterious origins.


pages: 404 words: 131,034

Cosmos by Carl Sagan

Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Apollo 11, Arthur Eddington, clockwork universe, dark pattern, dematerialisation, double helix, Drosophila, Edmond Halley, Eratosthenes, Ernest Rutherford, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, invention of movable type, invention of the telescope, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Lao Tzu, Louis Pasteur, luminiferous ether, Magellanic Cloud, Mars Rover, Menlo Park, music of the spheres, pattern recognition, planetary scale, Plato's cave, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, spice trade, Suez canal 1869, Thales and the olive presses, Thales of Miletus, time dilation, Tunguska event

Zaehner (Clarendon Press—1955). Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press. Penguin Books, Ltd.: One line from Enuma Elish, Sumer, in Poems of Heaven and Hell from Ancient Mesopotamia, translated by N. K. Sandars (Penguin Classics, 1971). Copyright © N. K. Sandars, 1971. Twelve lines from Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, translated by D. C. Lau (Penguin Classics, 1963). Copyright © D. C. Lau, 1963. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Books, Ltd. Pergamon Press, Ltd.: Excerpts from Giant Meteorites by E. L. Krinov are reprinted by permission of Pergamon Press, Ltd. Simon & Schuster, Inc.: Quote from the Bhagavad Gita from Lawrence and Oppenheimer by Nuel Pharr Davis (1968, page 239), and excerpt from The Sand Reckoner by Archimedes taken from The World of Mathematics by James Newman (1956, volume 1, page 420).


pages: 448 words: 142,946

Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition by Charles Eisenstein

Albert Einstein, back-to-the-land, bank run, Bernie Madoff, big-box store, bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, capital controls, carbon credits, carbon tax, clean water, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, corporate raider, credit crunch, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, degrowth, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, disintermediation, diversification, do well by doing good, fiat currency, financial independence, financial intermediation, fixed income, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, global supply chain, God and Mammon, happiness index / gross national happiness, hydraulic fracturing, informal economy, intentional community, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, land tenure, land value tax, Lao Tzu, Lewis Mumford, liquidity trap, low interest rates, McMansion, means of production, megaproject, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, mortgage debt, multilevel marketing, new economy, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, Own Your Own Home, Paul Samuelson, peak oil, phenotype, planned obsolescence, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Scramble for Africa, special drawing rights, spinning jenny, technoutopianism, the built environment, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons

In both cases, I think that the object of the pursuit is a spurious substitute for a diversity of things that people really want.14 In a fully monetized society, in which nearly everything is a good or a service, money converts the multiplicity of the world into a unity, a “single thing that is the measure of, and exchangeable with, almost anything else.”15 The apeiron, the logos, and similar conceptions were all versions of an underlying unity that gives birth to all things. It is that from which all things arise and to which all things return. As such it is nearly identical with the ancient Chinese conception of the Tao, which gives birth to yin and yang, and then to the ten thousand things. Interestingly, the semilegendary preceptor of Taoism, Lao Tzu, lived at approximately the same time as the pre-Socratic philosophers—which is also more or less the time of the first Chinese coinage. In any event, today it is still money that gives birth to the ten thousand things. Whatever you want to build in this world, you start with an investment, with money.


pages: 573 words: 142,376

Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand by John Markoff

A Pattern Language, air freight, Anthropocene, Apple II, back-to-the-land, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bernie Madoff, Beryl Markham, Big Tech, Bill Atkinson, Biosphere 2, Brewster Kahle, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, butterfly effect, Claude Shannon: information theory, cloud computing, complexity theory, computer age, Computer Lib, computer vision, Danny Hillis, decarbonisation, demographic transition, disinformation, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dynabook, El Camino Real, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, en.wikipedia.org, experimental subject, feminist movement, Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, Filter Bubble, game design, gentrification, global village, Golden Gate Park, Hacker Conference 1984, Hacker Ethic, Haight Ashbury, Herman Kahn, housing crisis, Howard Rheingold, HyperCard, intentional community, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, John Gilmore, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Lao Tzu, Lewis Mumford, Loma Prieta earthquake, Marshall McLuhan, megacity, Menlo Park, Michael Shellenberger, microdosing, Mitch Kapor, Morris worm, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, New Urbanism, Norbert Wiener, Norman Mailer, North Sea oil, off grid, off-the-grid, paypal mafia, Peter Calthorpe, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, public intellectual, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Stallman, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, South of Market, San Francisco, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, technoutopianism, Ted Nelson, Ted Nordhaus, TED Talk, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Hackers Conference, Thorstein Veblen, traveling salesman, Turing test, upwardly mobile, Vernor Vinge, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, young professional

This was the first time that someone he was close to faced death, and it put Brand in a more serious frame of mind. It would be almost two years before his father died. Brand was close to three men, Jack Loeffler, Steve Durkee, and Ken Kesey, who each seemed like a potential model for how he might live his life. He thought of them as Lao-tzu, Buddha, and Nietzsche, respectively. Loeffler had chosen a rural life, Durkee a communal one, and Kesey was basically urban. Loeffler’s approach to life would be best for personal advance, Durkee’s for creativity. Oddly, despite Kesey’s rejection of activism, Brand viewed him as leading a life that would have the biggest impact on society.


pages: 570 words: 151,259

Broken Angels by Richard Morgan

friendly fire, gravity well, Lao Tzu, the High Line, urban sprawl

The founder-heroes of human antiquity are exposed for the pig-ignorant mall bullies they probably always were, as decoding of the first Martian data systems brings in evidence of a starfaring culture at least as old as the whole human race. The millennial knowledge out of Egypt and China starts to look like a ten-year-old child’s bedroom datastack. The wisdom of the ages shredded at a stroke into the pipe-cooked musings of a bunch of canal-dive barflies. Lao Tzu, Confucius, Jesus Christ, Muhammed—what did these guys know? Parochial locals, never even been off the planet. Where were they when the Martians were crossing interstellar space. Of course—a sour grin out of one corner of Wardani’s mouth—established religion lashed back. The usual strategies. Incorporate the Martians into the scheme of things, scour the scriptures or make up some new ones, reinterpret.


pages: 485 words: 148,662

Farewell by Sergei Kostin, Eric Raynaud

active measures, car-free, cuban missile crisis, disinformation, Dr. Strangelove, index card, invisible hand, kremlinology, Lao Tzu, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Ronald Reagan, Strategic Defense Initiative, Vladimir Vetrov: Farewell Dossier

One was perfectly adapted to the never-ending discussions with Ferrant, and the other was at odds with his profession as an intelligence officer and with his mole status: he talked too much, and he drank too much. Vetrov had no inhibition discussing his private life, particularly his difficulties with Svetlana and Ludmila. From his taste for dirty jokes, his colleagues had guessed the sexual issues he confided to Ferrant. “Those who do don’t talk, those who talk don’t do,” would have said Lao Tzu. Vladimir could be especially indiscreet when he indulged his favorite pastime—drinking. He got into the habit of visiting Galina Rogatina, not so much to share a drink or two, but to simply chat because Galina was an intelligent and perceptive woman. She had gone through ups and downs in her life.


pages: 524 words: 155,947

More: The 10,000-Year Rise of the World Economy by Philip Coggan

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Ada Lovelace, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, anti-communist, Apollo 11, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, basic income, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Bletchley Park, Bob Noyce, Boeing 747, bond market vigilante , Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, Carmen Reinhart, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, Charles Babbage, Charles Lindbergh, clean water, collective bargaining, Columbian Exchange, Columbine, Corn Laws, cotton gin, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, cross-border payments, currency peg, currency risk, debt deflation, DeepMind, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of the americas, Donald Trump, driverless car, Easter island, Erik Brynjolfsson, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, Fairchild Semiconductor, falling living standards, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, Fractional reserve banking, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, general purpose technology, germ theory of disease, German hyperinflation, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, global value chain, Gordon Gekko, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, Greenspan put, guns versus butter model, Haber-Bosch Process, Hans Rosling, Hernando de Soto, hydraulic fracturing, hydroponic farming, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, income inequality, income per capita, independent contractor, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, inflation targeting, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, job automation, John Snow's cholera map, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Jon Ronson, Kenneth Arrow, Kula ring, labour market flexibility, land reform, land tenure, Lao Tzu, large denomination, Les Trente Glorieuses, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Blériot, low cost airline, low interest rates, low skilled workers, lump of labour, M-Pesa, Malcom McLean invented shipping containers, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, McJob, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, mittelstand, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, Murano, Venice glass, Myron Scholes, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, Northern Rock, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, Phillips curve, popular capitalism, popular electronics, price stability, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, railway mania, Ralph Nader, regulatory arbitrage, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, scientific management, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, special drawing rights, spice trade, spinning jenny, Steven Pinker, Suez canal 1869, TaskRabbit, techlash, Thales and the olive presses, Thales of Miletus, The Great Moderation, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, universal basic income, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, V2 rocket, Veblen good, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, women in the workforce, world market for maybe five computers, Yom Kippur War, you are the product, zero-sum game

From stone axes to silk clothes Mankind’s move from hunter-gathering eventually delivered the sophisticated societies of the Mesopotamians, Greeks, Romans and Han Chinese. Writing may have initially only been used for recording the details of transactions and the records of grain stores, but it gave rise to the stories of Homer and the histories of Herodotus. Some of the great thinkers in human history emerged in the first millennium BCE: the Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tzu, as well as the Old Testament prophets and the Greek philosophers. These societies were not primarily “market economies”. Most people, for most of the time, met most of their needs from their own resources. To the extent that they used the market, they may have brought some surplus food to exchange for things they could not make themselves, such as tools or pots.


pages: 561 words: 157,589

WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us by Tim O'Reilly

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", 4chan, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, AlphaGo, Alvin Roth, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Bill Joy: nanobots, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, blockchain, book value, Bretton Woods, Brewster Kahle, British Empire, business process, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, computer vision, congestion pricing, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, data acquisition, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, Dennis Ritchie, deskilling, DevOps, Didi Chuxing, digital capitalism, disinformation, do well by doing good, Donald Davies, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Flash crash, Free Software Foundation, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, George Akerlof, gig economy, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Goodhart's law, Google Glasses, Gordon Gekko, gravity well, greed is good, Greyball, Guido van Rossum, High speed trading, hiring and firing, Home mortgage interest deduction, Hyperloop, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, informal economy, information asymmetry, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invention of movable type, invisible hand, iterative process, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jitney, job automation, job satisfaction, John Bogle, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kaizen: continuous improvement, Ken Thompson, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, Lao Tzu, Larry Ellison, Larry Wall, Lean Startup, Leonard Kleinrock, Lyft, machine readable, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, McMansion, microbiome, microservices, minimum viable product, mortgage tax deduction, move fast and break things, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, obamacare, Oculus Rift, OpenAI, OSI model, Overton Window, packet switching, PageRank, pattern recognition, Paul Buchheit, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer model, Ponzi scheme, post-truth, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, randomized controlled trial, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Feynman, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Coase, Rutger Bregman, Salesforce, Sam Altman, school choice, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, SETI@home, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, Skype, smart contracts, Snapchat, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, social web, software as a service, software patent, spectrum auction, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, strong AI, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, telepresence, the built environment, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, the map is not the territory, The Nature of the Firm, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Davenport, Tony Fadell, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, transcontinental railway, transportation-network company, Travis Kalanick, trickle-down economics, two-pizza team, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, universal basic income, US Airways Flight 1549, VA Linux, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We are the 99%, web application, Whole Earth Catalog, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, yellow journalism, zero-sum game, Zipcar

This is the secret power of WTF? technologies. They not only allow for, they reward deep rethinking of the way things work. There are many possible futures. The world as it is is not a given. We can reinvent it. PART II PLATFORM THINKING When the best leader leads, the people say “We did it ourselves.” —Lao-tzu 5 NETWORKS AND THE NATURE OF THE FIRM WHEN DALE AND I LAUNCHED GNN IN 1993, OUR MODEL WAS shaped by our experience as publishers. We curated a catalog that highlighted “the best of” the Web, we took over the NCSA “What’s New” page to announce new sites, and we did other things that made sense in the publishing world we’d grown up in, one of whose key functions was curation.


pages: 645 words: 184,311

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

airport security, book scanning, Brownian motion, company town, Golden Gate Park, Lao Tzu

It was massive, and scalpel blades jutted from its face and its fingers. Its face was cancerous. "It will be a mighty battle," it told him, in a glutinous voice. "It's not going to be a battle," said the fat kid. "All we're facing here is a fucking paradigm shift. It's a shakedown. Modalities like battle are so fucking Lao Tzu." The cancerous thing blinked at him. "Waiting," is all it said in reply. "Whatever," said the fat kid. Then, "I'm looking for Mister World. You seen him?" The thing scratched itself with a scalpel blade, a tumorous lower lip pushed out in concentration. Then it nodded. "Over there," it said. The fat kid walked away, without a thank you, in the direction indicated.


pages: 651 words: 180,162

Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Air France Flight 447, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, anti-fragile, banking crisis, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, Black Swan, business cycle, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, commoditize, creative destruction, credit crunch, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, discrete time, double entry bookkeeping, Emanuel Derman, epigenetics, fail fast, financial engineering, financial independence, Flash crash, flying shuttle, Gary Taubes, George Santayana, Gini coefficient, Helicobacter pylori, Henri Poincaré, Higgs boson, high net worth, hygiene hypothesis, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, informal economy, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Hargreaves, Jane Jacobs, Jim Simons, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, language acquisition, Lao Tzu, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, mandelbrot fractal, Marc Andreessen, Mark Spitznagel, meta-analysis, microbiome, money market fund, moral hazard, mouse model, Myron Scholes, Norbert Wiener, pattern recognition, Paul Samuelson, placebo effect, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, power law, principal–agent problem, purchasing power parity, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Nader, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, rent control, Republic of Letters, Ronald Reagan, Rory Sutherland, Rupert Read, selection bias, Silicon Valley, six sigma, spinning jenny, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, stochastic process, stochastic volatility, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, tail risk, Thales and the olive presses, Thales of Miletus, The Great Moderation, the new new thing, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, transaction costs, urban planning, Vilfredo Pareto, Yogi Berra, Zipf's Law

Procrastination turned out to be a way to let events take their course and give the activists the chance to change their minds before committing to irreversible policies. And of course members did change their minds after seeing the failures and horrors of Stalinism and similar regimes. There is a Latin expression festina lente, “make haste slowly.” The Romans were not the only ancients to respect the act of voluntary omission. The Chinese thinker Lao Tzu coined the doctrine of wu-wei, “passive achievement.” Few understand that procrastination is our natural defense, letting things take care of themselves and exercise their antifragility; it results from some ecological or naturalistic wisdom, and is not always bad—at an existential level, it is my body rebelling against its entrapment.


pages: 708 words: 196,859

Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, bank run, banking crisis, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, central bank independence, centre right, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, Etonian, Ford Model T, full employment, gentleman farmer, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, index card, invisible hand, Lao Tzu, large denomination, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, mobile money, money market fund, moral hazard, new economy, open economy, plutocrats, price stability, purchasing power parity, pushing on a string, rolodex, scientific management, the market place

Because he also took a certain mischievous pleasure in twitting people with his more unconventional notions, it was always difficult to know how seriously to take him. It was perhaps not surprising that Norman should have acquired a reputation as an oddity and an eccentric. He was viewed by his City acquaintances as a strange and lonely man who spent his evenings alone in his grand house immersed in Brahms, and who frequently quoted the Chinese sage Lao Tzu. He certainly made no attempt to fit into the clubby atmosphere of the City. His interests were primarily aesthetic and philosophical, and though he counted a few bankers among his close friends, he generally preferred to mix in a more eclectic circle of artists and designers. By THURSDAY, July 30, it had become apparent that what had initially appeared to be just a remote Balkan affair between a fading empire and one of its minor states was escalating toward a general European war.


pages: 716 words: 192,143

The Enlightened Capitalists by James O'Toole

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, benefit corporation, Bernie Madoff, Bletchley Park, book value, British Empire, business cycle, business logic, business process, California gold rush, carbon footprint, City Beautiful movement, collective bargaining, company town, compensation consultant, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, desegregation, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, end world poverty, equal pay for equal work, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, garden city movement, germ theory of disease, glass ceiling, God and Mammon, greed is good, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, income inequality, indoor plumbing, inventory management, invisible hand, James Hargreaves, job satisfaction, joint-stock company, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Lao Tzu, Larry Ellison, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, Lyft, Marc Benioff, means of production, Menlo Park, North Sea oil, passive investing, Ponzi scheme, profit maximization, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, scientific management, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Socratic dialogue, sovereign wealth fund, spinning jenny, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, stock buybacks, stocks for the long run, stocks for the long term, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, traveling salesman, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, Vanguard fund, white flight, women in the workforce, young professional

But where Datini put his emphasis squarely on profit, Chappell says he emerged from his spiritual ordeal focused on “the common good.” That outcome would not have surprised anyone who knew Chappell. Unlike Penney and Eagan, he is a modern mainstream Christian more at home quoting Martin Buber, Immanuel Kant, T. S. Eliot, and Lao-Tzu than citing holy scriptures as inspiration for his good works. Moreover, he is very much a secular child of the 1970s, proudly active in social movements calling for greater equality for women and minorities, world peace, and a healthy planet. Of course, he also came to own a yacht and a big pad in Kennebunkport!


pages: 864 words: 222,565

Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller by Alec Nevala-Lee

Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, American energy revolution, Apple II, basic income, Biosphere 2, blockchain, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, Charles Lindbergh, cloud computing, Columbine, complexity theory, Computer Lib, coronavirus, cotton gin, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, declining real wages, digital nomad, double helix, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, East Village, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Elon Musk, Evgeny Morozov, Frank Gehry, gentrification, gig economy, global village, Golden Gate Park, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, hydraulic fracturing, index card, information retrieval, James Dyson, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Kitchen Debate, Lao Tzu, lateral thinking, Lean Startup, Lewis Mumford, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, megastructure, Menlo Park, minimum viable product, Mother of all demos, Neil Armstrong, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, Norman Mailer, Own Your Own Home, Paul Graham, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, reality distortion field, remote working, Ronald Reagan, side project, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Ted Nelson, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the medium is the message, Thomas Malthus, universal basic income, urban planning, urban renewal, We are as Gods, WeWork, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks

At his facility in Tomales Bay, California, Dederich oversaw the Game, a form of group therapy based on verbal abuse, and punished members for infractions by ordering them to shave their heads. Dederich also used tensegrity models to represent a perfect society built on “vectors and valences,” as the residents spent hours “gluing their fingers into tortured geometrical configurations,” and Fuller himself was praised as a great thinker on the level of Lao-tzu and Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1968 a writer named David Cole Gordon had urged Fuller to pay a visit to Synanon. “Chuck has installed a hobby-size workshop on one end of the large table he uses for a desk,” Gordon wrote, “and is building tensegrity systems and coming to grips with your geometry.” Fuller agreed to tour the center, where he was impressed by how its use of dance “allowed for individual expression while cultivating a group consciousness.”


pages: 706 words: 237,378

Full Catastrophe Living (Revised Edition): Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness by Jon Kabat-Zinn

airport security, Albert Einstein, carbon footprint, classic study, clean water, Columbine, digital rights, epigenetics, fear of failure, Higgs boson, impulse control, Lao Tzu, Mahatma Gandhi, Mars Rover, medical residency, mirror neurons, New Journalism, placebo effect, randomized controlled trial, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, Stewart Brand, sugar pill, traumatic brain injury, Whole Earth Catalog, Yogi Berra

That does not mean that “approach” is always healthy and “avoidance” unhealthy, especially when they take the form of greed and hatred, rather than when both impulses are held in a discerning awareness that can differentiate what is wholesome from what is unwholesome—in other words, wisdom. § For more on the mountain meditation, see Wherever You Go, There You Are, and the guided mountain meditation in the Series 2 Guided Mindfulness Meditation Practice CDs. 26 Time and Time Stress Practice not-doing and everything will fall into place. —LAO-TZU, Tao Te Ching In our society, time has become one of our biggest stressors—and then some. With the advent of the digital age, the Internet, wireless devices, and social networking, we have entered an amazing world of 24/7 connectivity. It was supposed to make our lives much easier—and in so many ways it has.


The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist

Albert Einstein, Asperger Syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, classic study, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, computer age, Donald Trump, double helix, Douglas Hofstadter, epigenetics, experimental subject, Fellow of the Royal Society, Georg Cantor, hedonic treadmill, Henri Poincaré, language acquisition, Lao Tzu, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, mandelbrot fractal, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, music of the spheres, Necker cube, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pattern recognition, randomized controlled trial, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, Schrödinger's Cat, social intelligence, social web, source of truth, stem cell, Steven Pinker, the scientific method, theory of mind, traumatic brain injury

He called this a pivotal period, or Achsenzeit (sometimes translated ‘axial age’), in world history, and in his The Origin and Goal of History identified common characteristics between some of the greatest thinkers of the period, including Plato, Buddha and Confucius.2 This was also the period of Heraclitus, Lao Tzu, the Upanishads, and the Hebrew prophets. Similarly, some of the developments in the West have parallels elsewhere: with regard to the Reformation, one could point to other times and places in which the visual image was proscribed, and where there was a text-based, black-and-white, intolerant fundamentalism, at odds with any richer understanding of myth and metaphor: such tendencies form an important part of the history of some other religions, including Islam.