Charlie Munger was born in 1924. The richest man in the world that year was John D. Rockefeller, whose net worth equaled about 3% of GDP, which would be something like $700 billion in today’s world. Seven hundred billion dollars.
OK. But make a short list of things that did not exist in Rockefeller’s day: Sunscreen. Advil. Tylenol. Antibiotics. Chemotherapy. Flu, tetanus, measles, smallpox, and countless other vaccines. Insulin for diabetes. Blood pressure medication. Fresh produce in the winter. TVs. Microwaves. Overseas phone calls. Jets.
To say nothing of computers, iPhones, or Google Maps. If you’re honest with yourself I don’t think you would trade Rockefeller’s $700 billion in the early 1900s for an average life in 2022.
The Rockefeller theory of time travel
Connect 4 with a 3 year old
Things my 3 year old did while he and I played Connect 4:
- Said “I block you!” after each time he inserted a disc, even when he didn’t block me
- Inserted discs pell-mell with the goal of filling the entire board
- Inserted discs using his toes
Things he didn’t do:
- Attempt to connect 4
Into his great daily unknown
We celebrated Little Man’s third birthday this week (well, fourth if you count his actual day of birth). While looking through my photos of him I noticed a motif of capturing him from behind as he ventures forth at varying speeds.
I like this vantage point for a few reasons. Since we don’t post his name or face on the internet it’s a convenient angle for sharing. But it’s also an accurate representation of me watching him discover his world over and over again.
Most of the above shots are from very familiar places: our backyard, our local park, our regular family getaway spot. For me as a jaded adult visiting them can get monotonous, but there’s really no such thing to a toddler. Everything can be new and adventurous no matter how many times he’s encountered it.
That’s why I consider it a privilege to follow him into his great daily unknown. All I can do is hope to continue capturing these views, fleeting as they are.
Media of the moment
Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer by Steven Johnson. My favorite author does it again, using his signature storytelling savvy to explain how human life expectancy has doubled in the last century. Vaccines, epidemiology, pasteurization, drug regulation, penicillin, and automobile safety sound like dry topics, but how they came to be is anything but.
KIMI. A lean techno-thriller from Steven Soderbergh. It’s like Searching meets Rear Window with a dollop of COVID paranoia.
Station Eleven. The book was on my list of favorite books of the 2010s, so I was cautiously optimistic about this limited series adaptation. Glad to find it totally lived up to the spirit of the book while thriving as its own thing. Special shout-out to episodes 1 and 9 for being exceptional television.
Hud. That Paul Newman was a gosh-darn movie star.
We Had A Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans & Comedy by Kliph Nesteroff. Told in rotating vignettes, this book spotlights Native American performers and comedians who have used comedy to cope and reckon with the shameful abuse of Native Americans throughout history.
The Tender Bar. A likable coming-of-age story, with Ben Affleck as the wise and weathered uncle.
The Last Duel. A stellar cast and interesting premise, telling the story and fallout of a rape in medieval France from multiple perspectives. It’s good but also a tough sit.
No disclaimers
As a drummer in my college’s jazz program, I once got recruited by one of the jazz guitarists for a paying gig he’d gotten at a local restaurant.
I was interested not just because of the money, which was negligible (not that there is such a thing for broke college kids) but because the idea of being paid to perform with an ad hoc ensemble felt very adult and professional. It was a unique feeling for an introverted 20 year old who was still unsure about his abilities and place among his peers.
The night of the gig, I’m getting situated with the guitarist and bassist, another college-aged recruit whom I’d never met. We’re about to start playing.
I’d drummed publicly many times before: high school jazz band, high school garage band, church services, college jazz ensemble. But this time felt different. Suddenly, the allure of being a very adult professional dissipated and, struck by imposter syndrome, my insecurity leaked out.
I said to the bass player, “You know, I’m not really a gigging musician…”
He gave me a kind of wry smirk. “Nice little disclaimer there,” he replied.
The guitarist counted us in and we were off. I pretty quickly settled in and regained confidence in my abilities and right to be there. The gig went fine, and I certainly appreciated the cash.
This memory has stuck with me years later because it gave me a valuable life lesson:
No disclaimers.
Don’t kneecap yourself before you begin whatever it is you think you can’t possibly do. Even if you suck (which you won’t), just do it and then move on. That’s all you can do.
I deserved the bassist’s smirk. How could I not be a gigging musician when I was seconds away from playing music at a gig?
If you think you aren’t ready, you are. If you think you aren’t good enough, you are.
No disclaimers.
Where there’s fire, there’s the genius of Aretha
Magazine mashup of the April 2021 issue of National Geographic. More mashups here.
Draw it, erase it
My wife found a kid-sized easel on post-Christmas super sale that’s whiteboard on one side and chalkboard on the other, and so far it’s been Mr. Almost 3’s go-to activity.
Fortuitously, and perhaps relatedly, his drawing skills have evolved just enough to be able to depict some basic body-like shapes and eyes:
Though they look more like ghosts (or amoebas, or maybe potatoes?) than humans, he’s on the right path and I’m impressed all the same.
It’s been fun drawing alongside him, and trying to keep up. I’ve had to relearn a lesson similar to when he was in his building blocks phase as a baby: no matter how proud I am of what I manage to make, it’ll be gone in a minute or two, tops, because he loves erasing as much as drawing.
“Draw it, erase it” is the new “build it up, knock it down”.
The long and winding genius of the Pauls (McCartney and Simon)
While trolling for something to read on Hoopla, I came upon Malcolm Gladwell’s new book Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon. It’s only available as an audiobook (or “audio biography”), and wisely so since so much of it depends on hearing Simon play his songs amidst his conversations with Gladwell. In that way it’s more like a limited podcast series than a book.
Whatever you call it, Gladwell’s intention was to interrogate the phenomenon of creative genius, and pinpoint how and why it applied to Simon, whose long and wide-ranging musical career set him in contrast to other contemporary artists who may have had higher peaks (The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan) but didn’t produce at the same level of quality over decades as Simon has.
As Gladwell writes:
We tend to be much more caught in the peaks of an artist’s career. But why? The true definition of creative genius—to my mind, at least—is someone who is capable of creating something sublime and then, when that moment passes, capable of reconfiguring their imagination and returning to the table with something wholly different and equally sublime.
Whether Simon meets this criteria is debatable, though Gladwell makes a good case for it.
The other Paul
Regardless, the book found me at a propitious time since I just finished watching and listening to the other famous ’60s singer-songwriter Paul in the documentary The Beatles: Get Back. The film captures McCartney in his first sublime period, which coincided with the transition between The Beatles and his solo work.
His career as a whole is eerily similar to Simon’s: incredible creative and commercial success within a popular group throughout the 1960s, followed by an acrimonious breakup in 1970 and then decades of steady solo output of variable quality.
(Conan O’Brien even had a bit involving Lorne Michaels called “Which Paul is he talking about?” since Lorne is friends with both.)
Per Gladwell’s formulation, both men created something sublime within a relatively condensed cultural moment, then reconfigured their output after that moment passed. Whether those later albums were “wholly different and equally sublime” depends on where you look.
If it’s a choice between The Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel, I choose the Fab Four all the way. (My cheeky Better The Beatles series notwithstanding.)
But solo-wise, I think Simon’s exceptional ‘70s work combined with the highlights of Graceland (1986), The Rhythm of the Saints (1992), and So Beautiful or So What (2011) give him the edge over McCartney, whose early solo work was definitely the best of all the ex-Beatles (though not perfect), but didn’t approach the sublime until Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (2005) and Memory Almost Full (2007).
Seeing Paul McCartney at Wrigley Field just over 10 years ago remains an all-time life highlight. (By seeing I mean standing outside Wrigley listening and singing along and barely catching a glimpse of him on the Jumbotron. But still.) I regret not being able to see Paul Simon live, as I imagine it would have been just as good but delightfully different. Which, perhaps, is what Gladwell would consider it too.
Typewriters are better than Bitcoin
Last week I visited a Salvation Army I’d never tried before for some quick typewriter hunting. Between two late-period electric Smith Coronas I spotted a silver fiberglass case that screamed Olympia. And sure enough, I popped it open and beheld this 1959 SM3 (photo taken post-cleanup):
The combo of gray body and brown keys was not my favorite. And despite the carriage being unlocked and the general appearance of working order, I just couldn’t get the typebars to strike. I try to make sure typewriters I buy at least type decently before I commit, especially since this was going to be a refurbish-and-resell.
But it was $20, and since I couldn’t do an autopsy right there on the shelves between the kitchen appliances and stereos, I decided it was worth the risk knowing I’d make a profit regardless.
I brought it to the checkout. Then, because either the cashier misread the tag or there was a sale I didn’t know about, she rang it up as $10.
Merry Christmas to me, I thought. I could barely hide my smile as I left.
Mr. 2 Years Old was eager to help me clean and fix it, and was especially keen on using the compressed air can to blow out an impressive amount of gunk.
The typing issue, I eventually discovered, was due to the margin release bar blocking the typebars from striking even when it wasn’t activated. I’m guessing it’s due to the mechanism slowly loosening over the years? Regardless, giving it a little bump set the typebars free and made it sellable.
And I did sell it yesterday via Facebook Marketplace for $100, making me a 900% return. Typewriters—better than Bitcoin!
Literacy as a religious act
From the remarkable book How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill:
“Like the Jews before them, the Irish enshrined literacy as their central religious act. In a land where literacy had previously been unknown, in a world where the old literate civilizations were sinking fast beneath successive waves of barbarism, the white Gospel page, shining in all the little oratories of Ireland, acted as a pledge: the lonely darkness had been turned into light, and the lonely virtue of courage, sustained through all the centuries, had been transformed into hope.”