Ben Sima

  • Tyranny—It’s not just for breakfast anymore!

    Seven o’clock de la mañana. Tuesday, November 5th. Susan slips out of bed, into her day clothes, and makes for the polls. Today would be the first day she voted. Finally! After all this time! She had been waiting her whole life—she was too nervous to even eat breakfast. A few months later, many people […]

  • Rant: Teaching Styles in Medical and Philosophy Classes

    As a student of both philosophy and medicine, I see two very different teaching strategies on a daily basis. My philosophy classes are almost always approached in the same manner: through the readings, I am exposed to a multitude of different perspectives on a single issue. I must then synthesize the arguments and write an […]

  • Unexpected Things Happen – Why We Study Them

  • How not to talk to your kids

    Interesting article from the New York mag: Life Sciences is a health-science magnet school with high aspirations but 700 students whose main attributes are being predominantly minority and low achieving. Blackwell split her kids into two groups for an eight-session workshop. The control group was taught study skills, and the others got study skills and […]

  • Successful people vs. Failures

    “Successful people suffer through catastrophes and bankruptcies. The successful person fails many times and bounces back. The failure fails only once, letting that one failure become a judgement of his worth, and thus his label.” From a well-designed PDF summary of The Now Habit by Neil Fiore, which is moving straight to the top of […]

  • A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean

    Every once in a while you find a book that speaks to you in a way you don’t understand. The story in itself ebbs and flows like the tide of water on a beach of characters that teach you more about yourself than you can consciously comprehend. The elegant prose so enraptures you in its […]

  • Lucky or Smart by Bo Peabody — “Smart Enough to Realize I Was Getting Lucky”

    I’m smack in the middle of a personal challenge to read at least one book every week. The erudition section of this blog is my attempt to chronicle my challenge and galvanize a lifetime of curiosity and learning. If you have read any of these books before, or happen to pick one up and find […]

  • The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco — See the Process Behind the Product

    I’m smack in the middle of a personal challenge to read at least one book every week. The erudition section of this blog is my attempt to chronicle my challenge and galvanize a lifetime of curiosity and learning. If you have read any of these books before, or happen to pick one up and find […]

  • My Anti-library

    <picture missing> Pictured above is part of my anti-library. The first bottom row are unread or partly-read books. The back row and shelf are either read or reference books. What’s an anti-library? In The Black Swan, Taleb talks about Umberto Eco’s collection of 30,000 unread books. These books represent Eco’s anti-library, the reservoir of information […]

  • Forget About Black Swans, the One Ahead is Neon

    From Forget About Black Swans, the One Ahead is Neon on the Wall Street Journal: As Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s bestseller “The Black Swan” made clear, the human mind is poorly equipped to prepare us for rare, important and unpredictable events. But maybe our minds—and our markets—aren’t very well equipped to protect us against neon swans, […]