School is back in session and I’m listening to one of my colleagues say that his son started junior high school this year and had 6 hours of homework last night. It’s a way of bragging: My kid’s school is more academically oriented than your kid’s school. Maybe your kid is just slow. Maybe other people’s kids are finishing the homework in an hour. Or maybe your kid finished his homework 6 hours after he said he was starting his homework because he worked for an hour and spent 5 hours surfing the net for pornography. It doesn’t make sense to say the school assigned X hours of homework . . . Read more →
Author Archive: Paul Epps
Poll: Most Black Americans Don’t Want Confederate Statues Removed
NPR and PBS News Hour conducted a poll asking whether statues “honoring leaders of the Confederacy” should “remain as a historical symbol” or “be removed because they are offensive to some people.” Results by race: White: 65 percent of respondents said the statues should stay, 25 percent said they should be taken down and 8 percent were unsure. (I know these numbers don’t sum to 100 percent but I’m taking them directly from the link above.) Black: 44 percent stay, 40 percent remove, 11 percent unsure. (Same comment as previous.) Latino: 65 percent stay, 24 percent remove, 11 percent unsure. The media, which according to a Harvard University study are very biased against Donald Trump, have been flogging him with this issue for the past week and a half, the thinking being that anyone who doesn’t support the removal of Confederate statues is a white supremacist, in which case 75… Read more →
No Political Violence on the Left?
I’m still shaking my head on this one: Even left-wing stalwarts like The Atlantic know that the Post’s “no violence on the left” premise is bogus: Look how peaceful and non-violent everyone is in the Post photo. Contrast that with, for example, these protesters at Berkeley earlier this year: I’m drawn to Berkeley examples because our son went to Berkeley and still lives in the area, because I know some current Berkeley students, and because Berkeley, ironically, used to be synonymous with the Free Speech Movement. The photos above show the protesters who showed up to violently shut down a scheduled talk by Milo Yiannopoulos, but the same thing seems to happen whenever any university schedules a conservative speaker. Here are a couple more left-wing protests, in Chicago and Charlottesville: We could go on and on with this . . . we’ve all seen this before so I don’t know… Read more →
USC Village Opens
The Reign of Troy continues . . . Read more →
Wandering Boy
I hope he’s warm and I hope he’s dry And that a strangers eye is a friendly eye And I hope he has someone close by his side And I hope that he’ll come home Where is my wandering boy tonight? Where is my wandering boy? If you see him, tell him everything is alright Push him towards the light Where is my wandering boy? — Randy Newman, “Wandering Boy” Read more →
American Workplace: Grueling, Stressful and Surprisingly Hostile?
Washington (AP) — The American workplace is grueling, stressful and surprisingly hostile. So concludes an in-depth study of 3,066 U.S. workers by the Rand Corp., Harvard Medical School and the University of California, Los Angeles. Among the findings: — Nearly one in five workers — a share the study calls “disturbingly high” — say they face a hostile or threatening environment at work . . . — “One-Fifth of Americans Find Workplace Hostile or Threatening” If nearly one in five US workers finds their workplace hostile or threatening, that means more than 4 in 5 workers do not find their workplace hostile or threatening. Assuming these two groups are not in completely separate workplaces, does this finding say something about the workplace or about the people who perceive a hostility that a large majority of their colleagues do not perceive? Another finding: — Telecommuting is rare: 78 percent say they… Read more →
10 Reasons That NY Times Chart Might Not Mean What You Think It Means
From the New York Times: Money is not the only metric for measuring life outcomes. Charts and articles like this seem to reflect an inappropriate obsession with narrowly materialist values. If you do want to measure your life with money, it looks like the 99th percentile is where you want to be. Why aren’t you there? Why aren’t you a CEO? Why aren’t you making a million a year? If you can’t figure out how to get there, don’t begrudge the people who did figure it out. If you don’t have the education, motivation, intelligence or skills to get there, don’t begrudge those who do. The amount of wealth is not a fixed amount. It’s not a zero-sum game. If it were, it would be concerning that a few people are very wealthy. But it isn’t. The distribution of income has to be skewed to the right because income is… Read more →
Pug Photos on Flickr
Identity Politics = Liberal Suicide?
Mark Lilla is professor of the humanities at Columbia University. He’s got a book coming out, The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics. As you might have surmised from his job title, Lilla is a liberal himself. His concern is “the divisive, zero-sum world of identity politics” and its negative effect on liberalism in America. Here’s an excerpt of an excerpt published in the Wall Street Journal: As a teacher, I am increasingly struck by a difference between my conservative and progressive students. Contrary to the stereotype, the conservatives are far more likely to connect their engagements to a set of political ideas and principles. Young people on the left are much more inclined to say that they are engaged in politics as an X, concerned about other Xs and those issues touching on X-ness. And they are less and less comfortable with debate. Over the past decade a… Read more →
Silver and Gold
I’m gonna go out dancin’ every night I’m gonna see all the city lights I’ll do everything silver and gold I got to hurry up before I grow too old I’m gonna take a trip around the world I’m gonna kiss all the pretty girls I’ll do everything silver and gold And I got to hurry up before I grow too old Oh, I do a lotta things, I know is wrong Hope I’m forgiven before I’m gone It’ll take a lotta prayers to save my soul And I got to hurry up before I grow too old Read more →
EppsNet at the Movies: The Matrix
The Matrix is 75 percent juvenile philosophizing and 25 percent sci-fi action. Someone must have told the Wachowski brothers (now the Wachowski sisters) that they’re a lot smarter than they really are because the movie would have been much better with 25 percent juvenile philosophizing and 75 percent sci-fi action. Rating: The Matrix Director: Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski Cast: Keanu Reeves NeoLaurence Fishburne MorpheusCarrie-Anne Moss TrinityHugo Weaving Agent Smith IMDb rating: ( votes) Read more →
We Know We Have to Improve
Saw this on a tech company blog (not Google) : We know we have to improve the diversity of our teams and the balance of representation amongst our colleagues. We do not want to miss out on the contribution of a potential colleague merely because they are in some way different from the rest of our people. Yes, that seems obvious. Do you want to miss out on the contribution of a potential colleague merely because they don’t improve the diversity of your teams? Read more →
EppsNet at the Movies: Superbad
This inexplicably gets a good rating on IMDb. I couldn’t sit through 10 minutes of it. If your age and/or IQ is somewhere in the teens, you might enjoy it. My rating would be lower but there was one funny joke. Rating: Superbad Director: Greg Mottola Cast: Michael Cera EvanJonah Hill SethChristopher Mintz-Plasse FogellBill Hader Officer Slater IMDb rating: ( votes) Read more →
More Words and Phrases I’m Sick Unto Death Of
“Hacks” — when used as a synonym for “advice,” “tips” or “recommendations.” Health hacks, productivity hacks, work-life balance hacks, time management hacks, stress management hacks, creativity hacks, memory hacks, etc. . . . Read more →
Paul Epps, Real Hard-Working American
World Series Ring
Our boy went to Chicago on a business trip . . . I was talking to him on the phone when he texted this picture from a Cubs game. “That’s a nice ring,” I said. “It’s a World Series ring.” “Where’d you get it?” “One of the ushers let me wear it for the picture.” “Ushers get World Series rings?” “Everybody in the organization got a ring.” I guess if you only win a World Series every hundred years or so, you can afford rings for the entire organization. Although I suspect the rings for the actual players have a little extra bling . . . Read more →
EppsNet Book Reviews: The Sleepwalkers by Hermann Broch
The Sleepwalkers is one of the most remarkable books I’ve ever read, very close to the edge of what can be accomplished with the written word. I had never heard of either the book or the author — neither seems to have any following here in the States — but Amazon for some reason started recommending me post-WWI Austrian modernists. (I also read Robert Musil’s A Man Without Qualities, which was extremely tedious.) I don’t know who to compare Broch with, in terms of language, wit, psychological and historical insight — maybe Nietzsche, if Nietzsche had decided to write historical fiction. The book chronicles, via multiple overlapping narratives, the moral history of Germany in the late 19th and early 20th century, and the disintegration of values that led to fascism. And in his fear of the voice of judgment that threatens to issue from the darkness, there awakens within him… Read more →
Remote Work on the Decline
According to LinkedIn: IBM, Aetna, Reddit, and Bank of America are among a growing list of companies slashing remote work policies. It’s not because employees working from home are less productive; rather, many companies think in-person collaboration just can’t be beat. I get that. It’s easier to work with people in the same room than with people at some distant point in time and space. But I can’t help noticing that there are more companies willing to hire hordes of itinerant trainees in a foreign land to write important software (i.e., “outsourcing”), than to let employees write software 15 minutes from the office in their own home. Read more →
Like Virgil
Like Virgil, I recognize that I may have falsified reality in my attempt to create beauty . . . Read more →
Aside
Bravery, not perfection.