From Ben Casnocha: The Blog
January 10, 2012 at 5:48 pm
How do you deal with feelings of intellectual inadequacy?
A high school student applying to MIT is struggling with these feelings. Here's one reply on this Reddit thread via ... (
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From Ben Casnocha: The Blog
January 7, 2012 at 8:43 pm
Two nights ago, a top high school football recruit announced live on ESPN--during the "Under Armour All American Game"--that he will go to Alabama for college. The video of him ... (
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From Ben Casnocha: The Blog
January 5, 2012 at 5:16 am
Alex Taborrok's Launching the Innovation Renaissance is full of common sense about how to promote innovation in America. Unlike so much "innovation" literature that is disconnected ... (
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From Ben Casnocha: The Blog
January 3, 2012 at 2:54 am
How many debut novels get sold to a publisher for reportedly almost $700,000, stay on the bestseller list for weeks, receive lengthy blurbs from Jonathan Franzen and James Patterson, ... (
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From Ben Casnocha: The Blog
December 31, 2011 at 6:03 am
Matt Ridley's latest book, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, is a dense but fascinating argument for why life is going to get better and better. Ridley's optimism ... (
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From Ben Casnocha: The Blog
December 29, 2011 at 3:56 am
It is fashionable these days to decry "food miles." The longer food has spent traveling to your plate, the more oil has been burnt and the more peace has been shattered along ... (
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From Ben Casnocha: The Blog
December 22, 2011 at 5:09 am
Someone at LessWrong transcribed Tyler Cowen's TEDx talk on the problem with stories and narrative--and how we let ourselves be governed by them. It's a good one, and faster to ... (
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From Ben Casnocha: The Blog
December 17, 2011 at 5:04 am
A Tumblr post with life advice got sent around to several people I know, via retweets and shares. Key excerpts:
This is the thing: When you hit 28 or 30, everything begins ... (
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From Ben Casnocha: The Blog
December 12, 2011 at 11:39 pm
Whether you think of Nietzsche or Kanye West when you hear the line "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger"--you probably think of it as true. Or at least I did. Short term ... (
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From Ben Casnocha: The Blog
December 10, 2011 at 5:01 am
All dating compatability tests end up testing for a simple question: "Will we laugh at the same shit?"
That's one nugget among many from the relatively recent New Yorker article on ... (
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From Ben Casnocha: The Blog
December 1, 2011 at 1:55 am
Benjamin Schwarz comments on John Updike's writing at the end of his life, and says:
Above all, and most poignantly, this collection highlights Updike’s evaluation of the ... (
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From Ben Casnocha: The Blog
November 26, 2011 at 11:24 pm
The always worthwhile Caitlin Flanagan recently penned a gushing essay about Oprah. Oprah possess remarkable range--in a single show she can interview a guest who was abused by ... (
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From Ben Casnocha: The Blog
November 23, 2011 at 2:03 am
Fascinating 20 min video of Steve Jobs leading a brainstorming session (among other things) at NeXT in the late 80's. At his death he was leader of one of the world's largest ... (
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From Ben Casnocha: The Blog
November 14, 2011 at 6:11 am
Sportswriter Joe Ponsnaski is in the middle of writing of biography of Joe Paterno. And then last week happens.
On his blog, Ponsaski reflects on the man, and starts with this:
Writing ... (
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From Ben Casnocha: The Blog
November 12, 2011 at 9:20 pm
"Inside baseball" refers to using jargon, specialized knowledge, acronyms, first names instead of full names, or other such things when speaking and writing. Using shorthand ... (
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From Ben Casnocha: The Blog
October 31, 2011 at 11:58 pm
I'm reading The Pale King by David Foster Wallace, his unfinished novel. There are lots of dark passages. Here's an excerpt which addresses, as DFW often does, terrible truths:
I'm ... (
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From Ben Casnocha: The Blog
October 27, 2011 at 4:15 am
I thought Jerry Webman, the chief economist at Oppenheimer Funds, captured the essence of finance nicely and simply in his op/ed in the FT the other day:
At its core, finance ... (
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From Ben Casnocha: The Blog
October 25, 2011 at 3:07 am
"We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who ... (
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From Ben Casnocha: The Blog
October 24, 2011 at 3:04 am
Is going off the grid and retreating into nature sure to be relaxing and rejuvenating? Not for Rob Horning, who spent some time in Idaho for a nature trip awhile back. He reports:
Contra ... (
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From Ben Casnocha: The Blog
October 17, 2011 at 10:36 pm
I spent last week in Athens, Greece. It was my first time to the country. I didn't have time to make it to the islands, but I did have time to meet many students, NGO leaders, ... (
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From Ben Casnocha: The Blog
October 14, 2011 at 3:56 am
There has been so much written about him already. I wanted to share a few random, personal reflections.
-- Jobs was an icon to me, though he was not a role model, mentor, or muse. It's ... (
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From Ben Casnocha: The Blog
October 4, 2011 at 11:16 pm
Browsing in a book store a couple months ago--something I wish I did more, to introduce serendipity that doesn't happen when buying books online--I noticed an item that caught ... (
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From Ben Casnocha: The Blog
September 29, 2011 at 8:54 pm
At a San Francisco Giants game a couple months ago, I joked to Cal Newport, who was sitting next to me, that the Newportian analysis of the game had nothing to do with bases and ... (
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From Ben Casnocha: The Blog
September 22, 2011 at 4:37 am
My friend Nathan Labenz writes about the success of TripAdvisor (the leading review site of hotels) and what it means to the future of brands:
Historically, brands were built ... (
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From Ben Casnocha: The Blog
September 15, 2011 at 5:18 am
Generally, the harder it is to explain to someone you've just met at a cocktail party what it is you do on a day to day basis, the more interesting the work you're engaged in.
Arnold ... (
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