My sister has another amazing post up. The whole thing is so good, it’s hard for me to pick one section to quote, so I randomly chose this rumination on prayer:
I do consider myself a religious person. I know the prayers and the traditions, and I’ve never questioned the existence of G-d.
Last year was without a doubt the most difficult time of my life. I asked for a lot of help, but never from G-d.
When I was lonely or upset, I turned to my friends. When my classroom was a disaster, I turned to other teachers. When I was broke, I turned to my dad.
I like results. G-d might answer prayers eventually, but he rarely offers the immediate gratification I desire. So I don’t ask G-d, I ask people.
Maybe if I were in an airplane that was crashing to the ground, it would be a different story.
Categories: Education, Jewishness
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Chicago cab drivers petitioned the city to let them charge $50 when passengers vomit in their cab, in addition to other rate hikes. But according to Something Awful this isn’t a rate hike, it’s a premium service:
I’m a vomit-bucket-half-full sort of guy. I don’t think these cabbies are trying to charge you for puking, I think they are offering you the premium service of vomiting in their taxi.
America was built on the idea of premium services. This is how the wealthy are able to have so much more fun than everyone else. They can behave however they want as long as they have the money to cover the premiums!
The $70 currently in my wallet entitles me to a good three blocks on Michigan Avenue and a nice half-digested deep dish pizza projectile vomited all over the headrest.
The best part? This was through The Economist. How else could you get a comment like this on an Economist article:
Sir-
I don’t always vomit. But when I do, I probably drank Dos Equis.
Categories: America, Behavioral Economics, Chicago, Funny, Incentive Centered Design
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September 21, 2009 11:11 pm
The Wall Street Journal reviews The Management Myth:
The business world, according to Mr. Stewart, has become so obsessed with its own perverse value system and view of human nature that it is undermining the “commons” of society. Workers, for instance, are regarded as dehumanized labor, tools for businesses to use and dispose of at will. Management “science” also fails to take into account the broader context in which businesses function, choosing to focus on the interests of individual businesses at the expense of the rest of society. Mr. Stewart blames the enablers and peddlers of management science, including the consultants who seem to be everywhere.
From the review, I can’t tell if the book is a useful critique of consultants and management science, or just another hippie diatribe about how businesses are exploitative and our crass capitalist consumer culture has lost all meaning. I did, however, love this quote:
The consultant co-workers he describes are a collection of intelligent nut-jobs devoted to corporate in-fighting, client-gouging, psychological humiliation and sexual harassment. Mr. Stewart does not name his employers, but he implies that their conduct is symptomatic of the profession.
That’s something I can vouch for.
Categories: Books, Business and Economics, Managing
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Jeffrey Goldberg writes:
But coming back to the issue of the pressure cops feel, let me ask another question: Are cops aware of the immense power they have? The power to arrest someone is awesome; any cop, at any moment, can take temporarily take your freedom. Yes, there are courts to protect the rights of the innocent, but in the meantime, a police officer can still put handcuffs on you, shove you in the back of his vehicle, fingerprint you and lock you up for at least a couple of hours; and lock you up with some pretty mangy people if he so desires. That is real power, traumatizing power. Society grants police officers that power, but in exchange, we must expect certain things — that the police officer granted this responsibility show more patience, more kindness, and better judgment than the average citizen. Which brings us back to the issue of Sgt. Crowley. Once he ascertained that Henry Louis Gates was the legal occupant of the house, it was Sgt. Crowley’s responsibility to apologize, turn around and walk out. It does not matter at all whether Gates yelled at him, mocked him, got loud at him. It was Crowley’s responsibility to understand why Gates could have been upset, and it was his responsibility to turn around and leave. Good police officers know how to control their tempers, and know enough to understand why someone might be upset with them. Crowley should have left the house.
Tyler Cowen makes another point:
On the substance of the altercation I do not know the details but some time ago we decided, for better or worse, to give policemen a lot of discretion in intimidating individuals, including innocent individuals and especially African-Americans. I don’t think we chose an optimum but it is disingenuous to be suddenly shocked by what happened.
Categories: Governance, Law
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Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution says:
With New York and Los Angeles in some disarray, Chicago is arguably North America’s “coolest” city right now; the new contemporary wing of the Art Institute is the best “new U.S. museum” in many years.
I visited the Modern Wing for the first time this past weekend and was equally impressed. That Chicago is the coolest city in fact goes without argument: I live here.
Categories: Chicago
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I received an e-mail today from my little brother, who is working at a summer camp in Georgia. His only correspondence to me over the past six weeks, aside from a brief phone call, was the message “The south is fucked up” and this picture:
More information about his camp is available here.
Categories: Ephemera, Funny
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While I was in Sweden, my cousin Sarah made this homemade donut recipe that she’s been generous enough to share. -D
Sarah’s Swedish Donuts
- 1 dl milk
- 25g dry yeast
- 4 ½ dl white flour
- 50g margarine
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 ½ tsp cardamom
Filling:
- Vanilla cream or applesauce
Warm the milk until it’s about 104°, don’t heat the milk to hot or the yeast will die. Pour the milk into a big bowl and add the yeast. Add 3 dl of the flour. Melt the margarine and mix well with the sugar, the egg, the cardamom and the vanilla sugar in a separate bowl. Then pour into the big bowl and add the rest of the flour. Pour out the dough on the counter and knead very well, add more flour when needed.
Cut the dough in half and put the other half back in the bowl. Roll out the dough until thin. Use a tortellini maker or something similar to make light marks on half of the dough. Then put small cliques of vanilla cream in the center of the markings and gently pull the other half of the rolled out dough over. Then use the tortellini maker to press out round donuts where the bumps of filling stick up. It’s crucial that you use a tortellini maker or something similar because it closes the dough around it so it won’t split in two. Continue this procedure until the dough is finished.
Heat the oil in the deep-fryer to about 360° and put in a couple donuts at a time. They will float to the surface and when turned brown you flip them over and fry them on the other side. When done roll them immediately in sugar.
Smaklig måltid!
Note: The milk temperature is in Celsius, the deep-fryer (I assume made in the US) is in Farenheit
Categories: Food, Travel
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My last night in Sweden, my little cousin wrote this guest post that I’m just getting around to putting up. Better late than never, I suppose. -D
It’s great having David here! Even though he doesn’t do much shopping and dishing, which happened to be my two favorite things, we have a lot of fun together. He’s leaving tomorrow and he missed all his chances to hang out with my regulated hottie friends such as Natalie and Josefine. If he would have come a week earlier he would have been here for the party of the year, the 080808, which is arranged yearly by Stockholm for the younger public. This year it was set on Sweden’s Time Square, Stureplan, with 30.000 wild dancing Swedes, world known Djs such as Axwell and a 500 foot long bar! He really missed something I tell you that, especially the ridiculously long bar and the hot 20 year old blonde gazelles.
David’s done all the major sightings in Stockholm. I went with them to Skansen and fed him the way through, this is what we bought (that David mostly ate): 4 Swedish cinnamon buns, 2 sugar buns, 1 huge sugar bun filled with applesauce, 2 of my favorite lollipops with taste of sugar and chestnut, Swedish hard candy “polkagris” and a Swedish waffle with whip cream and jam. Sarah does not do sighting but she does do lunch and dessert, and therefore took David to places that blew his brains out with original Swedish awesomeness. It wouldn’t surprise me if he actually gained a pound or two. David gave me a reason to pig out which I rarely ever do since the size 4 became the new 2 and the 2 the new 0. It’s hard to get in to clubs and bars when you’re under aged so when your contacts call you and say they can get you in that night you show up. It was unfortunate for David that he never was in the mood for Swedish partying, since I was told to hook him up with a natural Swedish blonde? We also went on a daytrip to an old fishing village in the Swedish archipelago called Vaxholm. Some of my friends have summerhouses or live on the islands around Vaxholm and during the summer it’s tradition to do lunch in Vaxholm. David and I went to the chocolate store and I astonished him with my egocentric and arrogant ways of chocolate… Anyways it has been a blast having him here and I wish my other American relatives would get their butts on a plane and come here. I miss him already and can’t wait to see him soon in Chicago again.
Thank you for coming!
“Tack för att du kom!”
XOXO – Sarah Ross
Categories: Travel
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Megan McArdle writes:
The real problem with investment bankers goes deeper, and is the problem of the entire upper middle class: we have come to believe that complying with the rules produces excellent results as by some natural law. In school, if you do your work, teacher gives you an A. It comes to seem like a sort of a natural law: if you have a good education and work hard, the universe is supposed to reward you. After school, the upper middle class gravitates towards careers with very well defined advancement hierarchies: medicine, law, finance, consulting, where this subtle belief is constantly reinforced.
Categories: Business and Economics, Careers
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When I started reading this, I thought “wow, I have a dream like this all the time.” Then I found out that’s what he was talking about. Sometimes it’s nice to know you’re not alone.
Categories: Uncategorized
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