I can’t remember every having less face-to-face contact with other human beings than I have over the last six months, nor can I remember a time when every day was so much like every other. You’d think that I would welcome any opportunity to interrupt the monotony, to do something or see someone new. And yet there seems to be a kind of inertia at play. . . .
Author: Paul Knight
Learning to Fly
For reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me, I’ve starting thinking about taking flying lessons when the pandemic is over. My primary concern is that flying is not an inexpensive hobby. I’ve read that one should expect to spend about $10,000 getting a private pilot’s license, and a friend of mine said that flying regularly once you have a license is likely to cost a similar amount each year. . . .
What’s the Real Cause of Those Long Lines at the MVC?
I was at the South Brunswick office of the NJ Motor Vehicles Commission this morning to register my mother’s new car. MVC offices were closed for several weeks at the height of the pandemic, which resulted in a backlog of demand. I’d read about how long the lines have been since the MVC reopened, but this was my first opportunity to stand in one of those lines. . . .
The Politics of Humiliation
My friend Marty texted me a link to an op-ed piece by Thomas Friedman a couple of days ago titled “Who Can Win America’s Politics of Humiliation?” Friedman asserts that “unless Biden finds a way to speak to the sense of humiliation felt by many working-class voters, even Trump’s failure to deal with the pandemic may not be enough to turn these voters against him.” That’s because “the politics of humiliation is at the heart of Trump’s appeal.” . . .
Love This T-Shirt
Jennifer came across this t-shirt in a catalog. It immediately went to the top of my list of favorite t-shirt slogans of 2020. . . .
Writing Postcards to Get Out the Vote
As I’ve mentioned, I volunteered on a Democratic congressional campaign in 2018 to help the Democratic Party win a majority in the House. This year I’ve struggled with what I could do to support Biden’s campaign. . . .
Maximizing Our Productivity
Before I retired five years ago I was responsible for overseeing the various productivity-improvement initiatives undertaken by my company’s R&D organization. After I left that job, my “retirement gig” involved showing managers and knowledge workers how they could better manage their incoming email so as to avoid “email overwhelm” and do a better job of tracking everything they needed to attend to.
Along the way I’ve done a lot of thinking about what it takes to maximize one’s personal productivity, and the more I’ve thought about it, the more challenging it seems. That’s because it’s a multi-factorial problem, so there is no one approach, no particular system, that addresses all the obstacles to being productive. . . .
Our Remarkable Neighborhood
I live in one of the most neighborly neighborhoods I’ve ever known. It consists of 63 homes on two intersecting streets in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Jennifer and I moved here in 2014 because we liked the house; we didn’t know anything about the neighborhood. But whenever we were outdoors during our first few days here, someone would come by, introduce themselves and welcome us. They never failed to declare what a great neighborhood it was. Everyone was so nice that at one point I confessed to Jennifer that I was waiting for the other shoe to drop — I was afraid we might have moved to Stepford. . . .
CBS Sunday Morning
It’s another Sunday, so there’s another episode of CBS Sunday Morning on my DVR. As I’ve noted, I have cut back on my consumption of news. I’ve decided that mainlining alarmist coverage of aberrant events just isn’t good for my mental health or my perspective on reality. CBS Sunday Morning is one of the few news shows that I still make a point of watching. It doesn’t focus on the outrages and catastrophes of the last 24 hours as most news programming does, or the bizarre and menacing topics that are fodder for many news magazine shows. . . .
The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It
I’ve felt for a long time that income inequality is one of the biggest problems in this country, but I’ve also had a sense that the problem isn’t just that a few people are making an obscene amount of money while many more struggle to get by, or even that the disparity between rich and poor is increasing. It also seemed to me that our country was drifting in the direction of becoming an oligarchy, in which a small number of people not only enjoy a disproportionate share of the country’s wealth but also an ever-increasing share of power over our politics and governance. . . .