What I've been Reading

The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

LOVED IT!! Even the footnotes oozes with brilliance - "The best way to spot a charlatan: someone (like a consultant or a stock broker) who tells you what to do instead of what not to do."

For Cable News addicts: Sound bites loses information; aphorism gains.

few keepers...

• They will envy you for your success, for your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status -- but rarely for your wisdom.
• There are two type of people: those who try to win and those who try to win arguments. They are never the same.
• The suckers trap is when you focus on what you know and what other don't know. rather than the reverse.
• True humility is when you can surprise yourself more than others; the rest is either shyness or good marketing.
• Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur.
• Conscious ignorance, if you can practice it, expands your world; it can make things infinite.
• I suspect that they put Socrates to death because there is something terribly unattractive, alienating, and nonhuman in thinking with too much clarity.
• The traits I respect are erudition and the courage to stand up when half-men are afraid for their reputation. Any idiot can be intelligent.
• We find it to be extremely bad taste for individuals to boast of their accomplishments; but when countries do so we call it "national pride."
• The classical man's worst fear was inglorious death; the modern man's worst fear is just death.