May John Mayer’s cowardly plan for the world die a lonely death among the naive aspirations of musicians years past. And may this blog rise in content and quality where it once was not destined.
Here’s to ignoring good advice. Cheers.
The only thing lamer then not writing posts is writing posts apologizing for not writing posts.
Paul Graham is nuts. He is definitely one of my favorite writers. I would comment on his newest essay but I would just end up sounding like an idiot so I’ll just tease you with some excerpts. Make sure to read the full essay–“What Business Can Learn from Open Source.â€
Business still reflects an older model, exemplified by the French word for working: travailler. It has an English cousin, travail, and what it means is torture.
This turns out not to be the last word on work, however. As societies get richer, they learn something about work that’s a lot like what they learn about diet. We know now that the healthiest diet is the one our peasant ancestors were forced to eat because they were poor. Like rich food, idleness only seems desirable when you don’t get enough of it. I think we were designed to work, just as we were designed to eat a certain amount of fiber, and we feel bad if we don’t.
There’s a name for people who work for the love of it: amateurs. The word now has such bad connotations that we forget its etymology, though it’s staring us in the face. “Amateur” was originally rather a complimentary word. But the thing to be in the twentieth century was professional, which amateurs, by definition, are not.
Kristen, my wife, will now and forevermore be authoring posts on this blog. I have no editorial control over her but will try to keep her PG.
when a comment is posted on my blog. Any idea WordPress/web guys? It’s really annoying because my RSS reader keeps getting 304 responses when I know there is a new comment.
a loser.