Short content: a microblog of status updates or short notes
After 20+ years with Sprint (or their predecessors), I’ve made the switch to Verizon this afternoon. Here’s hoping that I don’t have the same issues with knucklehead customer service to get simple things taken care of. I really wish any of the 3 people I spoke with would have gotten the simple request I was trying to make in 10 minutes (each).
I was a bit disappointed by the title of the final chapter which gives things away paragraphs earlier than it should have. It makes the build up to the big reveal a bit less than lackluster.
The 70’s version of the film has a stronger finish than the novel by showing Charlie’s nobility. In particular it was even better given the overall morals put forth by the book.
I find myself thinking about how solidly this book still stands today. I suspect that a slightly more modern retelling would replace gum chewing with the moral ills of using social media.
One has to love Veruca in the nut room. This is one of the substantive changes from the movie which opted for a similar narrative, but apparently gooses were easier to film than squirrels.
I think I preferred the squirrels and the way this plays out in the novel. In particular, the fact that the parents get thrown down the trash chute as well (and the reason why) are fantastic!
📖 Read pages 51-68 of Complexity and the Economy by W. Brian Arthur
Complexity and the Economy by W. Brian Arthur
An interesting reference to the origin of life and some related research actually pops up in the discussion!
I’ve made some additional tweaks to my PressForward installation so I can begin using more of its full power. It’s a fantastic WordPress plugin that gives you a built in RSS reader and so much more!
We get the story of the Oompa-Loompas and Augustus goes up the pipe. Parables about benign exploitation and colonialization followed by a short tale of gluttony.
📖 Read loc 1440-2080 of 12932 (16.08%) of American Amnesia by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson
Examples and discussion of how markets can manage to fail and why we need good government to fill in the (gaping) holes.
There’s also some good discussion of rent seeking behavior here too. The more I read, the more I think this should be required reading for everyone. I could see a need for taking just the first three chapters and expanding them out into their own book.
The big day finally arrives and the children enter the chocolate factory with Mr. Willy Wonka. We see the chocolate waterfall and river and see the first Oompa-Loompas.
I’m not quite sure how Mr. Wonka (and interestingly he’s always called Mr.), managed to get sunlight down into his underground chocolate room–I’m presuming all the edible plants grow somehow.
Circumstances for our poor hero Charlie become far more desperate before they begin to turn for the better.
Except that we’ve just read how horrifically poor and physically starving the family was, I’m surprised that he took two candy bars. Though I suspect his family would easily have given him the who dollar’s worth of food.
📖 Read loc 962-1440 of 12932 (11.13%) of American Amnesia by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson
This continues to be intriguing with lots of examples (and footnotes, which I’ve been skipping over presently, but will circle back upon later). It continues to make a strong argument for a mixed economy and even bolsters with evidence that the richest countries are usually the ones with the most government–something which flies in the face of traditional Republican values. There’s also some good discussion of what markets are and aren’t capable of, a point which is often missed in the bigger public, potentially because of the decades of chanting that capitalism is best while we fought a cold war with Russia.
More people should really be concerned with externalities in the markets.
In general this seems to be a sweeping meta-analysis of lots of other sources and material, most of which is footnoted. I do sometimes wish they went into greater detail on many of their points, but I suspect that no one else would be reading the book because of its length. Their arguments are fairly quick and to the point however.
I suspect at the time this was written many of these horrid children were hyperbole. It now seems like people accidentally read this as a model for how children should be and they totally missed the fact that Charlie was the hero.
Donald Trump was 18 years old when this book was released. Sadly, I strongly suspect he never read or benefited from it.
