Paul Krugman

I guess nobody is perfect. Paul Krugman gets called out on what has to be one of the absolute worst predictions in history.

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“The growth of the Internet will slow drastically [as it] becomes apparent [that] most people have nothing to say to each other…. By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”

-- Paul Krugman, 1998

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He clearly underestimates our insatiable demand for pornography in as many forms as we can get it. He also does a disservice to the power of self-love. It is much more fun to write something on the Internet with the happy idea that there is an audience than to write your little notions in notebooks to be stacked in the back of the bedroom closet collecting spiderwebs. And there is all the news and celebrity gossip that you can want just a click away. I guess it was just a question of making it easier and more affordable for the bored masses.

Cats

For a few days now, Coco and Ash have elected to come inside and spend a good part of the day with me. I am shaking my head in disbelief. The weather is about as perfect as you can wish. If it were July and a hundred degrees outside, I would practically have to capture and imprison them to have them in the house. Sammy, interestingly enough, also comes inside but only wanders around a bit for a couple of minutes before he is mewling to be let out again, as though he just wants to stay familiar with the territory. Aside from any rain chances, this is a good time of the year for the cats to enjoy a long string of days in which they can stay outdoors for weeks at a time, both night and day, before the chill of winter settles snowlessly on us.

Reading Life

I woke up at a little before seven. It was a good night’s sleep, and I am feeling game for a morning walk. Lingering in bed, I look toward the window and see how fiercely dark it is outside, and it feels like there are larger forces conspiring against my little bit of exercise. However, it has been close to two weeks since my last go-around, and I am not going to give up that easily today. I get up and start getting ready, thinking that it may lighten enough before eight. At least it isn’t very cold this morning. I am out the door by 7:40.

I have Plato’s “Symposium” with me. I have been reading a lot of “Dino” and want to make some more headway in another book, and my history book is too heavy to carry around with me on my walk, and I am also happy to give Plath and Pessoa more of a rest. It has been a little while since I cracked open “Symposium”. It is also a very thin and lightweight book (at least in terms of physical weight).

By the time I came home, I was thinking that my reading life needed a whole new revolution. I should just be reading Plato and Shakespeare over and over, reading them as much as I can. It was a funny turn, because during the first half of my walk, I was feeling pretty disgusted with Plato and his talk of the gods named Resource and Poverty. However, I had to admit that the idea that the hunger for love and beauty is born of such forces kept me thinking that there may be a lot here that is worthy of much thought, and that my discontent with the work has more to do with the limitation of my education and native intellect. Still, the reasoning struck me as being rather random and uncompelling, and I cannot help thinking that if it were not for the luminous name of Plato, there would not be a lot of interest in this material.

The reason why I came home feeling the need for a rebooting of my reading life has to do with Plato’s discussion about how people are drawn to particular thinkers for their uncanny grasp on wisdom. And I cannot help feeling that Plato is that kind of figure for me. Shakespeare also draws that kind of association from me. I am not trying to claim that I am super-smart; I probably couldn’t pass a good high school test on them. But it is like love, I think. I feel something special inside of myself when I struggle with their books.

This lesson was grounded in my experience last night. I was ready to order a book to replace “Dino”, as I am on my last hundred pages. This is my night-time reading; it is suppose to be my fun reading. It should be an easy pick. Yet, all the books on my ‘wanna read’ stack seem so random. I wanted to go with a more serious novel, maybe Pynchon’s “Bleeding Edge” or Coetzee’s “Childhood of Jesus”. Although I am sure both are worthy books, I just had that recurring feeling that there must be something that is more compelling for me. Time is short and diminishing; I don’t want to read something random. I want to hold meaningfulness in my hands.

This morning, I realized that I tend to feel that when I read Shakespeare and Plato, and since time is so short, it can make sense just to lose myself in them. However, the ecstasy of the morning has cooled. I will read more of them, but there is not going to be a revolution in my reading life. I am not going to draft a whole new regimen. At least not for now.

Celebrities and Stuff

Lindsay Lohan

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