Nassim Nicholas Taleb has a nice article at the NewStatesman.

Debt implies a strong statement about the future, and a high degree of reliance on forecasts. … debt is dangerous if you are overconfident about the future and are Black Swan-blind – which we all tend to be.

Read it here.

Camille Paglia takes a shot at explaining the female sexual apathy for which drug makers seek to provide a “female Viagra”. She makes a few good observations, including:

In the discreet white-collar realm, men and women are interchangeable, doing the same, mind-based work. Physicality is suppressed; voices are lowered and gestures curtailed in sanitized office space. Men must neuter themselves, while ambitious women postpone procreation. Androgyny is bewitching in art, but in real life it can lead to stagnation and boredom, which no pill can cure.

Let that sink in for a minute and then see what you think of this:

The sexes, which used to occupy intriguingly separate worlds, are suffering from over-familiarity, a curse of the mundane. There’s no mystery left.

Mystery… It almost seems like a nasty word in this day and age. Like mystery is a shameful failure instead of the main fixture of our human condition. Read more: Op-Ed Contributor – No Sex Please, We’re Middle Class – NYTimes.com.

Jessica Bennett lists 10 facts (although I have a hard time regarding figures from an AskMen.com poll as facts) that should cause a person to think twice about marriage. A commenter responds:

Youth is a time of selfishness and immaturity, when the world revolves around you, and you think that’s the way it should be. But as you grow older, you realize that there is more to life than an endless party, more to life than even living for fun—that happiness too vigorously pursued doesn’t lead to happiness at all.

@Marriage Facts and Trivia: Men, Women and Surveys – Newsweek

If you happen to have a few hours to burn, The Case Against Credentialism from The Atlantic tracks the fascinating development of credentialism:

Three changes, which took place in the past hundred years, produced the system that is now producing M.B.A.s. They were the conversion of jobs into “professions,” the scientific measurement of intelligence, and the use of government power to “channel” people toward certain occupations.

Readiness to answer all questions is the infallible sign of stupidity.

Saul Bellow, via Marginalia, no.116 « The New Psalmanazar

I like this guy already:

When patients pretended to confide in me that they were suffering from low self-esteem, I used to reply that at least, then, they had got one thing right: they had valued themselves at their true worth.

The self-esteemist wants something for nothing, and, because in his heart he knows that what he wants is impossible, he is wretched and ascribes all the many failures of his life to it. Self-esteem is therefore first cousin to resentment.

@Theodore Dalrymple on Self-Esteem vs. Self-Respect — Features — In Character, A Journal of Everyday Virtues by the John Templeton Foundation

But how do these things get started? Maybe we should ask The Rambling Fool or The Last Psychiatrist.

While financial reform is needed, there’s no reason to wait for it. Sarbox is already there. And even if financial reform is enacted without loopholes, there’s no reason to think it will be enforced if laws already on the books, such as Sarbox, aren’t. @Robert Reich Fraud on the Street

The 20th century was a century of the redistribution of wealth; the 21st century will probably be a century of the redistribution of work. @Futurity.org – Will 90 be the new 40?

Taking time out to put your personal finances in gear can reap both immediate and long-term benefits, from cashing gift cards to reallocating investments. This checklist can help you formulate a strategy, providing tips, the time needed to achieve them, and links to additional resources. @31 Steps to a Financial Tuneup – Interactive Feature – NYTimes.com

Some people seem to have an affinity for pursuing paths that lead to pain and frustration. It is like they seek out situations that give them the opportunity to feel wronged. Does this self-defeating behavior have a psychological payoff? Perpetually being a victim may give a person a way to consistently feel morally superior to the institutions, people or situations that they feel have wronged them. @Mind – It’s Self-Defeating Behavior That Done Them Wrong – NYTimes.com

All the standard stuff Kawasaki usually talks about.

…in the end, success in business comes from the willingness to grind it out. It’s not because of the brilliant idea. It’s because you are willing to work hard. That’s the key to my success.

@Corner Office – Guy Kawasaki – I Want 5 Sentences, Not ‘War and Peace’ – Question – NYTimes.com

I came across this while reading a review on Amazon (where you’ll always find something interesting or at least comical):

The lone inventor/entrepreneur is a nice fantasy, but in practice it seldom works out that way. Brilliance is often incremental in nature, and, well, you’ve heard the saying. “If I have seen further, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants.” Compare that to the Galt fallacy, where you’re born on third and think you hit a triple. Basing an entire political worldview off of it? That’s bordering on solipsism.

@Amazon.com: Barry Milliken’s review of The Spirit Level

The Last Psychiatrist analyzes an author’s thoughts about marriage that appeared last summer in The Atlantic:

if marriage is to blame, why did it take 20 years of it to figure it out?

See it @Atlantic Capture

How we view the Depression today has much to do with how leaders chose to portray their actions then. Whether we realize it or not, we are still reacting to those portrayals more than we are to the actions themselves. What really changed was the way the world’s elite thought of themselves and their institutions. Above all, what happened in the early 1930s was a loss of trust in authority—a loss of faith that the institutions that ordered society could be counted on to provide stability and prosperity for those willing to work for it. Suffering the most damage was the great, but still relatively new and fragile Western idea that anonymous and uncoordinated exchanges among millions of strangers could be trusted to lead to good outcomes without supervision or filtering. @The Real New Deal – John V. C. Nye – The American Interest Magazine

Are we finally in a recovery? Who’s “we,” kemosabe? Big global companies, Wall Street, and high-income Americans who hold their savings in financial instruments are clearly doing better. As to the rest of us – small businesses along Main Streets, and middle and lower-income Americans – forget it. @Robert Reich (The Sham Recovery)