Time to End Daylight Savings Time

"Alchemy of Laughter"

As if improv company Alchemy Comedy performing at TEDx Greenville wasn't two worlds colliding enough, here's a TED talk about comedy that actually uses the phrase the "alchemy of laughter". Like me, what the comedian Chris Bliss wanted most in life was to influence people. But people don't like to be changed. Comedy, he found, was a way to speak truth into people's mouths while their open from laughter:



Hat tip to fellow comedian Ben Burris.

Big Government to Prevent Bigger Government

I recently posted Tyler Cowen's thoughts on income inequality, but the article linked was originally sent to me by Justin because of Cowen's positive thoughts on the bailouts (which I don't support):

How about a world with no bailouts? Why don’t we simply eliminate the safety net for clueless or unlucky risk-takers so that losses equal gains overall? That’s a good idea in principle, but it is hard to put into practice. Once a financial crisis arrives, politicians will seek to limit the damage, and that means they will bail out major financial institutions. Had we not passed TARP and related policies, the United States probably would have faced unemployment rates of 25 percent of higher, as in the Great Depression. The political consequences would not have been pretty. Bank bailouts may sound quite interventionist, and indeed they are, but in relative terms they probably were the most libertarian policy we had on tap. It meant big one-time expenses, but, for the most part, it kept government out of the real economy (the General Motors bailout aside).

I actually agree. In fact, in my history classes I describe the intervention of FDR's New Deal as effective. Not because it fixed the Great Depression, but because it was the moderate choice in a time of extreme global chaos. Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco were taking over nations as the extreme right. Stalin and the communists were taking over as the extreme left. Even in America leftist critics like Governor Huey Long were writing books like Share Our Wealth. In fact, 1930's socialist Norman Thomas wrote that the "Mr. Roosevelt did not carry out the Socialist platform, unless he carried it out on a stretcher". Perhaps FDR's huge expansion of the government was the least government could do without forcing a revolution.

Income Doesn't Mean Inequality of Life

From Tyler Cowen:, who wrote a whole book about how income inequality is real, but wrote an article recently about how the implications are not that bad:

First, the inequality of personal well-being is sharply down over the past hundred years and perhaps over the past twenty years as well. Bill Gates is much, much richer than I am, yet it is not obvious that he is much happier if, indeed, he is happier at all. I have access to penicillin, air travel, good cheap food, the Internet and virtually all of the technical innovations that Gates does.

[...]

Compare these circumstances to those of 1911, a century ago. Even in the wealthier countries, the average person had little formal education, worked six days a week or more, often at hard physical labor, never took vacations, and could not access most of the world’s culture. The living standards of Carnegie and Rockefeller towered above those of typical Americans, not just in terms of money but also in terms of comfort. 

Worthwhile Sentences on Writing

From Hugh Hollowell: "The thing about founding a nonprofit is that, eventually, all your dreams turn into paperwork."

From Justin Landwehr: "Words are the waste products of our experiences."

From David Foster Wallace: "Writers have a queer blend of shyness and exhibitionism."

From Brene Brown: "Maybe stories are just data with a soul."

From Mark Twain: “A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.”

Improv Comedy Meets TED Talks

My intention wasn't for my 1000th post to be my last, but I'm it sure looked that way. I've been extra busy with some great opportunities that have come my way and I just couldn't make my way to the top of the pyramid to blog. One of the most exciting things is that Alchemy Comedy, which has just ended out first and sold out our second Improv 101 class, has been asked to close out Greenville TEDx. You know I love TED and improv, so I'm excited to put them together. On March 30th, we will be watching all the TED Talks and using them to inspire a series of improvised comedy scenes to conclude the day. So if you're in the area get your tickets soon, apparently they sold out the last few years. And if you're out of town, you're in luck, I hear they are going to stream it!

Emptying the Bottle: Late January '12 Links

Here is the best of what I've shared on Twitter recently:

• How to properly reheat a pizza [video].
• The important non-policy requirements for the president.
• Thoughts from someone with a lot of thoughts.
• Pascal's Wager: Why you should believe in God.
• I just created @TraciBrookie to update it with cute things she says.
• A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing [audio].
• Waterworld-urine-drinking is here!
• Maybe we don't become more conservative as we age (earlier).
• Rube Goldberg machine with a purpose, kind of [video].
• Maybe the best story I've heard about 9/11 (via Justin).

As always, feel free to email me anything interesting you come across.

Last Post!

1000 posts and over 4 years ago, on January 16th, 2008, I did my first post. Today I write my last post. Not the last post I'll ever write, but the post I'd like to have put up last. Let me clarify. I got the idea from a blogger, who asked his family and friends to publish one last pre-wrtitten post for him when he died. I figured, why wait until you are actually on your death bed? So here are my final thoughts, that I expect to update annually and would like to be reposted after I die.

1) I am doing this to ensure I get to a say in what is written about me when I die. Knowing me in person is the best way to get a grasp for who I am. Sharing stories about me is the second best. Reading this blog is probably the third best. Although my recently deceased grandfather's obituary was fine, it wasn't what I would like mine to say.

2) This is also a chance for me to finally get a legal will and updated life insurance. Your death will already be hard for your loved ones. Any future planning that can make their grieving better should be done.

3) I'd like to die how doctors die. Please spare me any "futile care". Life isn't about surviving.

4) This post isn't about being morbid. It's about facing reality. I will die. And like most of life, it will probably be unexpected. I doubt we think about too much about death and expect the opposite to most likely be true.

5) My final thoughts resemble those of James Madison's deathbed letter entitled "Advice to My Country". His greatest desire was the the United States to perpetuate. My loyalty is a little more localized. My greatest hope is that my family would perpetuate. That my loved ones be taken care of in my absence.

Although I don't want to be buried or have a grave stone, if I did, I'd like this on it: "He Really Lived. He Really Died. He Really Lived Again."

The Past, Present, and Future of Greenville Manufacturing

I love it when NPR does a story on my hometown. Just this week Planet Money did a two part series on the history of American manufacturing through the lens of Greenville, SC. Here's my version of the story:

The Past

With several forces coming together at the right time, the early days of the Industrial Revolution brought about radical economic change. Work moved from the home to factories in cities, greatly improving human life, wealth, and morality. Which meant the late 1800's and early 1900's saw huge economic growth. These increases in production, and in turn increasing wages, didn't require very much expertise (assembly lines run themselves) and could often be created by a lone genius inventor.

The Present

Then we had The Great Stagnation. The Industrial Revolution picked up all the low-hanging fruit of innovation. Printing press, cheap western land, fossil fuel powered machines, penicillin, clean water, cars, planes, basic worker education, etc. all made life better quickly and relatively easily. Computers, cancer research, alternative forms of energy, college education for all, etc are all slow going and complicated to benefit from. Also, much of the innovation of machinery and globalization of trade has replaced the low skill industrial workers of the past and it's still happening (just check this old and new video of automobile manufacturing).

The Future

If you read the full Planet Money story in the Atlantic the future looks grim. Workers are suffering in the name of profit. The poor try, but can never succeed. The reality is a little more optimistic. Every time a human is replaced by a machine (or even a cheaper human) customers benefit. And since all workers are also customers, even the replaced workers' lives can improve. The unemployed of today probably have better living standards than the employed of the 1910's because of increases in productivity. That's why I support some kinds of social safety nets (especially the kind that retrains replaced workers). I also suggest that when choosing a career be sure you can't be replaced by a machine in your lifetime (hint: don't go into the toy assembling business).

The Distant Future

Though if I did have a worry about how technology impacts society, it would be about fertility. As technology improves, jobs become more complicated. That's why the return on education is actually greater than it used to be, even non-economically speaking (especially if you weren't "supposed to go"). This increase in complexity requires an increase in education. Which is usually fine because increases in education result in increases in pay that exceed the cost of that education. But what I'm specially worried that if jobs become so complicated that they require decades of education, they could delay plans for family past the point of our most fertile years. What if we have to learn so much we can't have babies anymore, increasing the future underpopulation bust? My guess is creating a family while still in school will become a more common trend.

Reader Request: Do Christians Really Believe?

I always take reader requests. Here's one from blogger and interesting thinker, Justin Wehr:

Here's one I'd like to see you respond to:

They believe that they believe, but their beliefs are of the easily disposable kind. Suppose you could take a devoutly religious person, ask him, “Are the tenets of your religion true?” and somehow convince him that the life of his child depends on getting the answer right. I’m guessing that nine times out of ten, you’d find yourself confronting a born-again infidel. The only reason that rarely happens is that there’s rarely an occasion when getting the right answer actually matters.

Quote from Steven Landsburg that I came across in this post: http://bit.ly/xpn9Dh 

Here's what I want to know 

• Which (if any) tenets of your religion would you hold onto and which (if any) would you discard if your kid's life were on the line? 

• In your estimate, what percentage of pious people would become, in the above situation, "born again infidels"?

One of the things I noticed on my summer European tour is how global cultural religion is. The American South is famous for religious culture, but it exists everywhere and in every religion. First I'll respond to a specific points made in the post linked above:

If there really is a heavenly and eternal paradise awaiting us after death, one would think more people would be in a rush to get there, right?

I can only speak for Christianity, but the Church mostly agrees that although we long for heaven, we have a mission here on earth. So suicide or a reckless life does not fit with Biblical teachings. Now if the writer had complained that Christians don't live out the second half (the mission part), then that is a legitimate complaint. One that atheist Penn Jillette makes really candidly in this video.

To put it simply, most [religious people] don’t live their lives as if they absolutely believed in the words their religious texts profess. For example, if I truly believed in the Christian God, with absolute certainty, I would live my life in a way consistent with that.

I'm curious what he means by this. If he means living a "good life", that is not the description the Bible seems to describe (Old and New Testament). The Christian life is one of repentance, sin, growth, hardship, joy, etc. And for that, I have witnessed many living that life. Which I don't think this writer gets:

Most religions assert that God is watching our actions even when others aren’t watching. If this were true, my inner economist would tell me that people would avoid displeasing God at all costs.

Now to respond to Justin's blockquote. I think the opposite is true. When people's lives are on the line, we see more religious conversion than abandonment. It doesn't seem to me that this person knows many Christians. I think most I know (let's say 90%), my self included, would not waiver. The biggest belief I am personally sure of is the grace of Jesus. I know of no other way to explain my own failures and my own triumphs. The rest of Biblical doctrine is more malleable. For example I now go to a church that practice believers baptism, which I'm not convinced of. I go to a church that doesn't believe in predestination, which I am convinced of. But I still find myself connected our surety in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.