Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
When I was about 13 we had a cow go down with a calf gone breach. The calf had died by the time we found her in the morning but the cow had been trying to squeeze the calf out sideways all night and couldn’t push anymore. Somebody had to stick their arm way up in the cow and rotate the calf so it was head and feet first.
Now, you might think that there is all kinds of room up in a cow’s vagina (and there is) but it tightens a lot at the cervix. The cervix is pushed open from the inside by the pressure of the calf in the womb being squeezed outward by the muscles of the womb. If the cow stops pushing, you’ve got maybe a two-inch gap to squeeze into and try to open it. It takes small hands and arms.
Between my 6’2″ grandfather, our burly family friend Mr. Tiesdale and the 13-year-old me, who do you think had the slimmest, girliest hands?
Steve has an interview section on his newly redesigned site and I join a series of bloggers and authors like InstapunditGlenn Reynolds, Tim O’Brienand SethGodin who have sat down, in a virtual sense, with Steve for a discussion about writing and creativity. Having done such interviews of others in the past, it was a good experience to be on the receiving end of questions, for which I thank Steve:
SP: Mark, what is the ZenPundit philosophy? How do you decide which stories or posts (or even guest bloggers) you want to include? What criteria do you use?
MS: Good question. My philosophy is something I also try to impart in my teaching.
Marcus Aurelius said “Look beneath the surface; let not the several qualities of a thing nor its worth escape you.” Most phenomena have many dimensions, multiple causes and second and third order effects. To deal with all of this complexity, we simplify matters by looking at life through an organizing frame, which we might call a worldview, a schema, a paradigm or a discipline. Whatever we call our mental model, we tend to become wedded to it because it “works.” It helps us understand some of what we are looking at-and in getting good at applying our model, advances us professionally and brings prestige or material rewards. So we will defend it to the death, from all challengers!
That’s getting carried away. Our mental model is just a tool or, more precisely, a cognitive lens. We need to be less attached to our habitual and lazy ways of looking at the world, put down our magnifying glass and pick up a telescope. Or, bifocals. Or, a microscope. Stepping back and applying different perspectives to a problem or an issue will give us new information, help us extrapolate, identify unintended consequences or spot connections and opportunities. When I do analytical pieces, I try to take that approach….
I thought this photo might strike a chord with the Chicago crowd.
This is Lake Arrowhead at 12:40 PM, May 24. I have been planning to retire there but, after seeing this, might give it more thought. I have had weekend homes there for 35 years and don’t believe I have seen snow past March. They had a lot of snow in February this year, over a foot, and it is very clean but this is getting ridiculous.
Lake Arrowhead is at about 5200 feet elevation at the lake surface. There is snow all over southern California today above 4500 feet, which is below the level of the passes to central California.
If you are holding a cabbage in one hand over a bowl of dirty water in your kitchen sink, and you are holding a knife in your other hand and using it to trim the bad parts from the cabbage, things may not end well.
Per Lex’s request, on this, the day America laid siege to Boston, MA, interrupting the otherworldly disputations of many a Brahmin:
Noted American science fiction writer Philip K. Dick once observed:
The ultimate in paranoia is not when everyone is against you but when everything is against you. Instead of “My boss is plotting against me,” it would be “My boss’s phone is plotting against me.”
My boss’s phone is rather nondescript. It’s color is a few shades darker than full oppression gray. It whimpers with the soul draining anonymity of the standard corporate VoIP phone design. It has a gray LCD, gray buttons with obscure functions, and an incomprehensible gray user manual.
It frequently finds itself on sales calls.
If it was a person, it would have no face.
My boss’s phone lacks the personality of the door from Ubik:
The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.”
He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.”
“I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt.”
In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip.
“You discover I’m right,” the door said. It sounded smug.
From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt’s money-gulping door.
“I’ll sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out.
Joe Chip said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it.”
Of course the motives of doors are usually open and shut. The hang ups of boss’s phones are more cryptic:
and 
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: