My Reading & Thoughts
Current Stack
I managed to finish 6 books in April. The most enjoyable was Paul Johnson’s epic Birth of the Modern. Currently I am working on seven physical books and two ebooks. The only one I am really struggling with–still–is The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. Not sure if it is the writing style or the topic, but I am rarely reaching for it. I have been making steady progress on The Search for Deeper Learning after stalling out on it for a bit. While I appreciate the look into how different high schools operate, I am put off by the very typical, unrealistic academic perspectives of non-teachers expecting ‘learning’ that is actually impossible on the scale they expect to see it at.
Orwell & le Carré
I love reading biographies. A sub-genre of biography that I like are those written about writers. One of the books I am reading now is a biography about the thriller writer John le Carré. Have I read any of le Carré’s books yet? No, not yet. Nevertheless, the life of a successful writer is endlessly fascinating to me.
Another book I just started (that I am really enjoying) is Louis Menand’s Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War. In it, Menand has a long section about the writer George Orwell. Like most Gen Xers, I read Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm in middle school and/or high school. However, I didn’t know much about him. What struck me right away are some of the similarities between le Carré and Orwell.
Here are a few:
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Both were British writers.
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Both wrote with pen names. le Carré’s real name was David Cornwell. Orwell’s given name was Eric Blair.
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Orwell attended Eton College (which isn’t actually a college) in his youth and le Carré taught there.
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Both were anti-Stalinist. Orwell was famously a leftist, but was never a fan of Stalin, which helped him to stand against many of his fellow leftists in the early years of the Cold War. le Carré actually worked for a time for the British secret service in the Cold War (experiences which helped lead him to become a writer of spy novels).
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Both writers were deeply skeptical of concentrated power. Whether it was Orwell’s critique of totalitarianism in 1984 or le Carré’s critique of the “Circus” and the cynicism of Western bureaucracy, both viewed big institutions as inherently dehumanizing.
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Both lived lives characterized by a sense of not quite belonging. Orwell was an highly educated man who spent years living among the “down and out” ; le Carré was a spy who felt like an outsider within his own service due to his father’s criminal background.
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Finally, both authors were fiercely independent thinkers who refused to follow a party line. Orwell was a socialist who critiqued the Left; le Carré was a patriot who remained one of the most vocal critics of British and American foreign policy (particularly the Iraq War).
The 6 Virtues of Positive Psychology
Often I come across in close succession two (or more) bits of knowledge that are connected in my mind. This afternoon, I came across the video below of Ryan Holiday critiquing Ivanka Trump’s public discussion of Marcus Aurelius. I love Ryan’s work and agree with his take in the video 100%. Of course, Ryan’s recent books constitute a four part series on the Stoic Cardinal Virtues, all of which I loved.
Later tonight while reading I came across, for the first time, the ‘6 Virtues of Positive Psychology.’ Reading about them, I noticed that there is quite a bit of overlap between the Cardinal Virtues and the 6, which were developed by psychologists Martin Seligman (the founder of positive psychology) and Christopher Peterson.
Needless to say, I’m glad I came across this more detailed list of charater traits and virtues. I wish more people, and especially more people in power, exemplified them.
On Woodrow Wilson and His Wife Edith
Few Americans know that in a sense, we’ve already had a female president. Back in 1919, after the fighting in World War I had ended, President Woodrow Wilson went to Paris to help negotiate what became the Treaty of Versailles. It was the first time a sitting American president had ever left the country. The negotiations were famously convoluted and difficult. One of the elements of the treaty was the idea of a League of Nations, which had been the 14th point of Wilson’s 14 Points. I’ve learned from reading Paul Johnson’s book Modern Times that the idea for such a league was not actually Wilson’s.
Nevertheless, he came to believe it was necessary and was willing to fight for it. However, treaties in America must be ratified by the Senate. In order to win support for the League, in 1919 Wilson barnstormed the country, speaking to massive rallies in the hopes of turning the focus of public opinion onto the Senate. Wilson apparently had a small stroke in Paris during the treaty negotiations early in 1919. Back in the states, he had a massive stroke in America in the fall at the end of his speaking tour. The stroke was so debillitaing that Wilson was essentially bed-bound and out of commission for the last year and half of his presidency.
During that time, his second wife, Edith Wilson, became a sort of shadow president. Indeed, he had only just married Edith in 1915, so she had only been the first lady for four years when this all went down. I was aware of this episode from my reading of A.Scott Berg’s biography of Wilson, but was reminded about it recently while reading Johnson’s book. Indeed, I make a point to teach this strange episode to my students.
The quote below is from Johnson and it is what sparked this post. Not only do I think it is a great sentence, but I just taught the Treaty of Versailles last week so Wilson was top of mind. The second quote below from Johnson’s book shines a light on another noteworthy event in Wilson’s administration–the jailing of Social Eugene Victor Debs for speaking out against the war. Debs ran for president from jail in 1920 and garnered slightly less than a million votes. His disgust with Wilson is understandable. Debs, luckily for him, was pardoned by the winner of the 1920 election, Warren Harding.
On the Uniqueness of Oregon's State Flag
I grew up in California, and always believed Cali had the coolest state flag. I still do. However, there is only one state flag that has images on both sides, and of course it is Oregon’s. Up until yesterday, I did not know this about our state flag.
What I did know was the following. First, Oregon became the 33rd state on Valentine’s Day, 1859, which is why there are 33 stars on the front. The front of the flag also has the year 1859 on it, as well as the words The Union. This checks out of course, because the Civil War was just two years away, and threats of disunion by traitorous southern fire-eaters were near peak levels. (John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry and then Lincoln’s election in 1860 continued the insanity and lead to the terrible rupture that eventually killed close to 700,00 people.)
The back of the flag shows a beaver, the animal that brought the first Europeans and Americans to the region. Portland may be the alpha city of Oregon today, but Fort Vancouver, across the Columbia in what is now Washington, was the fur trading outpost of the Hudson’s Bay Company and was founded well before Portland, back in 1825.
This sort of thing is neither here nor there, but good to know if you’re an Oregonian.
Of Ballots and Bullets
As a social studies educator, perhaps I should have already known this; but it was news to me. I’m talking about the etymology of the word ‘ballot.’ While watching an episode from the Great Courses class on Turning Points in American History (#15 Expanding Universal Suffrage), the instructor mentioned that the word ‘ballot’ comes from the Italian word meaning small ball. In that time and place people voted with small colored balls, often white or black. I had never connected the word ‘ball’ with the word ‘ballot’, despite their obvious similarity.
In the United States, up until the early 20th century, people voted publicly, though usually with colored paper, not small balls. The wisdom of the Australian Ballot eventually became clear and states learned to make voting private. Good move. Thanks, Australia!
Thinking about all this, it occurred to me that perhaps the word ‘bullet’ also derived from the same root, since bullets used to essentially be small balls. The word ‘bullet’ apparently comes from the Middle French word boulette, also meaning “small ball” or “small pellet.” This was a diminutive of boule (ball). So, same original meaning, but different language. Digging further, it appears they do both have the same root, descending from the Vulgar Latin word balla, which means ‘ball’. Makes sense.
Did Boss Tweed know any of this? Not likely.
Update to My Daily Wisdom Reminder Protocol
I shared before that I use Notebook LM (on most days) to provide myself with highly curated daily reminders. Yesterday I spent some time building a new Notebook LM that includes curated ‘reminders lists’ from smart people like Morgan Housel. I then used Notebook LM to distill the various lists into a ‘study guide.’ I then shared that study guide with my already created ‘Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom" notebook that I use for my daily reminders.
When asking for reminders today I asked that it included a newly added ‘general’ reminder, pulled from the study guide I created. Below is a screenshot of today’s reminder output. I’m pleased with the result and look forward now to getting 1) a general life reminder, 2) a Stoic wisdom reminder, and 3) a Buddhist wisdom reminder.
As I said before, a lot of people will likely find this practice useless and a waste of time. However, I need the constant drip-drip of wisdom or wisdom doesn’t sink into my mind. Current consensus about learning supports my practice, particularly around the benefits of spaced repetition.
Recent Book Haul FTW!
The world is going crazy so I decided to indulge in some book buying. The pile is from a trip to Powell’s, a mecca for Portland book lovers. Six of the eight were used and heavily discounted. The two in the second picture were newer books I got online and are newer releases. All in all, a satisfying haul.
Here is a link to a review of Beckert’s book on capitalism.
Here is a link to a short review of the great Bertrand Russell’s book.
Finally, here is a link to a review of the Sherman biography.
Three Takes on Truth
The beauty of collecting quotes and ideas from what I’ve read is being able to see what I have saved that touch on specific subjects. In a time of such blatant lying, I poked around some of the quotes I’ve saved over the years that touch on truth. Below are three.
A Quick Word about Priorities
Last week the faux-king president announced he was going to ask for $1.5 trillion for the military in the next budget cycle. From what I have read, the war in Iran has been costing us roughly $1.5 billion a day. For comparison, Biden’s 2024 budget request for the Pentagon was $850 billion. According to the Education Data Initiative all K-12 public schools spent $981.57 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2024.
Then the other day I came across this report by the American Society of Civil Engineers. They give U.S. infrastructure an overall grade every year. This year’s report is 225 pages long. See the scorecard below to see how we are doing. I’m sure you aren’t surprised.
The report says we need slightly more than $9 trillion to bring our infrastructure “into a state of good repair.” According to the folks at Morning Brew (who are citing the World Bank), it is also true that every dollar of infrastructure spending leads to $1.50 in economic activity.
But what about all that potential military spending? Sure it’s great for Northrup Grumman, whose CEO Kathy Warden has taken home more than $20 million in each of the last four years. But what about we the people? According to Morning Brew (again, citing a 2022 study by the World Bank), a 1% increase in military spending leads to a 9% decrease in economic activity.
Are we great yet?
The View from Germany and the UK
After yesterday’s ‘day late and a dollar short’ address about the Iran War by the faux-king president, I came across two European takes. The first is from the the authoritative German magazine Der Spiegel. The translation below comes from a @Burgerb on Reddit. The second take is the new cover of the great U.K. news magazine The Economist.
Translation from German:
The Strategic Catastrophe of the Iran War
“He appeared tired. When Donald Trump addressed the nation on Wednesday evening to explain for the first time why he had led his people into a war with Iran, he spoke for nineteen minutes and said nothing new. Instead: boasting, threats, exaggeration. He spoke of bombing the Iranians back to the Stone Age—a remarkable strategy for winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of the local population. He said he would destroy the power plants. He would be finished in two or three weeks. He held all the cards. He had won.
Trump again spoke of Venezuela as a shining example for Iran—referring to the kidnapping of the local ruler, Nicolás Maduro. But in doing so, he only illustrated how badly he had misjudged the Iranian regime from the start. At the same time, he called Iran one of the most powerful countries in the world. Yet, even before the war, Iran was at best a middle power. What we saw was the opposite of control. It was the image of a man who has stumbled into an adventure for which he can find no end.
The Reality: There is no regime change, no surrender, not even negotiations. The regime has not become more pragmatic through the war, but more radical. Instead of a containment of the Iranian nuclear program, an expansion could follow the war. And with far inferior means, Iran has shown that it can take the world economy hostage at the Strait of Hormuz. Trump claims that is not America’s problem. Others should take care of it.
The head of the International Energy Agency calls what could follow the greatest energy security threat in the history of the world—worse than the oil shocks of the seventies, worse than Covid, worse than the Russian attack on Ukraine. In the Philippines, there are already four-day weeks. In India, people are once again cooking over wood fires.
With this aimless war, the American empire is not only burning its political capital. It is literally burning its ammunition. Over 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles have been fired—replenishing the arsenal takes years. While America is tied up in Ukraine and actually wanted to focus on the Pacific, it is wearing down its military in the Middle East of all places, where Trump allegedly never wanted to lead his troops again. The Iran war is a strategic catastrophe for the USA.
Imperial powers rarely destroy themselves through defeats. They destroy themselves through overconfidence—through the belief that military superiority alone means power. Rome is the oldest lesson: its legions remained effective until the end. What decayed first were the institutions. The British Empire shows the same pattern, only faster: in the 19th century, the Royal Navy was superior to any other fleet, and yet London got bogged down in too many wars on too many continents. Every single campaign was winnable. Together, they ate up the capital that held the empire together: the finances, the alliances—and the allies' belief that London knew what it was doing.
The United States did not win its global position through battlefields alone. After 1945, they created a system in which others participated voluntarily: institutions, alliances, dollar hegemony, moral credibility. Political capital, saved over generations. Trump is currently gambling it away systematically.
In Europe, Secretary of State Rubio has threatened to “review” NATO after the war ends—the clearest questioning of the alliance by a sitting U.S. Secretary of State in its history. Allies whose bases America wants to use for a war they do not support are insulted as cowards. In the Middle East, Trump publicly boasted that the Saudi Crown Prince had not expected to have to “kiss his ass.” Allies treated this way will not put up with it forever.
While Washington fires off its ammunition and damages its alliances, Beijing only has to wait. The Economist put a smiling Xi Jinping on its cover looking at Trump, with a line attributed to Napoleon: Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. Xi has built up strategic oil reserves for several months, secured supply chains, and is betting heavily on renewable energies. China’s three largest battery manufacturers are together worth $70 billion more since the start of the war. Trump’s America, the most fossil-fueled government in the Western world, is accelerating the energy transition—in China’s favor. There is a bitter irony at the core of Trumpism: He is obsessed with the decline of America. And he is accelerating it.
And at home? In his speech, Trump explains that America can afford wars—but not childcare, not Medicaid, not Medicare. The cost-of-living crisis was already the dominant issue in the country before the war. Now come rising energy prices. People who can no longer afford life eventually present the bill. In the midterm elections in November.
Trump asked Americans to put the war into perspective. Vietnam lasted almost twenty years, Iraq almost nine. His war has only been running for a good month. You have to read that twice to understand what it means: Don’t worry, there are much worse wars I could lead you into.”
Freedom and Happiness
One of the books I am reading now, Neil Howe’s The Fourth Turning is Here, mentions a group called the Freedom House. They are a Washington DC based organization that studies freedom and democracy around the world and I had never heard of them before coming across their work in Howe’s book. According to their website, they are ‘founded on the core conviction that freedom flourishes in democratic nations where governments are accountable to their people.’ They were started in 1941 in order to help ‘raise awareness of the fascist threat to American security and values’ amidst the Nazi aggression that started World War II.
One of the things Freedom House does is rank the nations of the world with respect to the freedom experienced by the people living in those places. Number 1 on the list is Finland. Indeed, three of the top four most free countries in the world are Scandinavian. Not surprising. Canada is sitting pretty at #6. America is labeled ‘free’ but is ranked below more than 60 other countries, and recently earned its lowest rating ever. Hmmmm, I wonder why…
It is worth thinking about where these countries land with regards to the type of political economy they favor.
Below are the top ten lists from Freedom House and from the 2026 World Happiness Report.
My Current Stack
My reading continues to be enjoyable. I finished four books in March and while I continue to slack on The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (too depressing?), I have been making nice progress on the book I’ve been reading the second longest, In Search of Deeper Learning. Paul Johnson’s book should be done by the end of May if my pace continues. His style is so enjoyable that I now have three of his other books in my TBR pile. The Great Hunt is getting a bit exciting, finally. Reading on Kindle continues to be fun. Richard Rhodes' book on writing has been surprisingly good.
A Shoppe Moost Gentil
When I am vacationing, checking out local bookstores is a top priority. Recently I was able to enjoy Santa Barbara’s excellent Chaucer Books. The wee one headed to her section and I enjoyed a good 45 minute browse. Lots and lots of new titles, including a bunch of books I hadn’t browsed before, which is saying something since I browse bookstores on the regular. Their history section, in particular, was fantastic. Walked out with one book I hadn’t seen before. 4.5/5 rating all together. Only thing holding back the perfect score was size. Compared to Powell’s or NYC’s The Strand, it has a small footprint.
The Possible Connection Between Bodhisattva Guanyin and the Nestorian Christians
I’ve been working my way through a Great Courses class on the Middle Ages, and it sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole I wasn’t expecting: the feminization of Guanyin, the beloved Buddhist “Goddess of Mercy.” As someone who has had Avalokiteśvara on our family altar for twenty years, I found this story interesting.
Guanyin is famously female. But here’s the thing: Guanyin started out as a dude. The original figure — Avalokiteśvara in Sanskrit — was a male bodhisattva, essentially a handsome Indian prince of compassion. Early Chinese Buddhist art reflects this clearly. Indeed, paintings from the Dunhuang caves dating to the tenth century show the figure with a moustache. The full feminization into the graceful, white-robed goddess we recognize today was largely complete by the Song Dynasty, making it a uniquely Chinese transformation.
So why the change? Mostly internal Chinese forces, including the needs of laywomen for a relatable female figure, Confucian social dynamics, and the gradual indigenization of Buddhism as it took root in China. The folk legend of Miao Shan, a compassionate princess who sacrifices herself for her father, became enormously influential in giving Guanyin a distinctly feminine Chinese biography.
But here’s where it gets really interesting and what specifically stoked my initial curiosity about this. Some scholars argue that the Nestorians — a Christian sect that traveled the Silk Road and established a presence in Tang Dynasty China — may have nudged things along. Their veneration of Mary, and specifically stories of holy women who were pure and compassionate intermediaries, may have influenced how Chinese people imagined a female divine figure. The “child-giving” Guanyin, holding an infant in a pose unmistakably reminiscent of the Madonna and Child, likely reflects later Jesuit influence in the Ming Dynasty, but according to professor teaching the Great Courses class I am learning this from, the Nestorians may have planted some earlier seeds. Crazy!
Apparently this is not totally settled among scholars. Nevertheless, the idea that a modern female Buddhist bodhisattva may have transformed from male to female in part due to a small Christian sect that settled in Asia in the 630s is nuts. This is the sort of story that illustrates why I love learning history.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poet, Addict and Underachiever?
I first encountered Samuel Taylor Coleridge the way many fellow Gen Xers did, through a speaker cabinet. Iron Maiden’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, from their amazing 1984 album Powerslave, is a thirteen-minute epic based on Coleridge’s poem of the same name. It’s definitely a lot of song. The poem it draws from is a lot of poem; over six hundred lines of albatrosses, cursed sailors, and supernatural dread. Indeed, I remember making my Dad listen to it with me, thinking he’d be more likely to enjoy it since it was based on a Coleridge poem. At the time, I was more focused on Steve Harris’s bass lines than on British Romantic poetry, but Coleridge’s name lodged somewhere in the back of my brain.
He’s come back around to me recently via Paul Johnson’s The Birth of the Modern, which I continue to happily work through. Johnson covers in great detail the market for opium in Britain in the first decades of the 19th century (see the quote below). Never one to pull punches I’m discovering, Johnson also sketches a rather unflattering portrait of Coleridge. Indeed, his opium addiction is front and center. Apparently Coleridge had developed a serious dependency on laudanum, which in those days was widely available as a tincture. Ostensibly Coleridge used the drug for pain relief, but the habit consumed him. Johnson paints a picture of a man of staggering intellectual gifts who was nonetheless chronically unable to finish what he started. The unfinished poem Kubla Khan is perhaps the most famous example. It is a fragment of fifty-four lines that Coleridge claimed to have composed in an opium-induced dream, only to be interrupted by “a person from Porlock” before he could complete it.
What strikes me about Coleridge is the gap between his potential and his output. By most accounts, he was one of the most brilliant minds of his era — a gifted poet, philosopher, and literary critic. His conversations were legendary. His follow-through, considerably less so. The opium didn’t help. Neither, apparently, did the chaos of his personal life.
History is full of people undone by the distance between what they could have been and what they managed to pull off. F. Scott Fitzgerald, filmmaker Orson Welles, and original Pink Floyd frontman Syd Barret also come to mind in this regard. Coleridge is a particularly affecting case. Water, water everywhere — and yet.
On Other Sources of News
The screenshot below is from today’s New York Times. It is clear as day that the people in charge of the United States government today do not believe in the free press, free speech, or the truth. At this point, calling them authoratarian would be understating it. Bullshit from FCC Chair Brendan Carr, together with the near total domination of American media by right leaning, pro-regime corporations (see Bernie Sanders tweet below and this list of local TV stations in America owned by conservative Sinclair Media), means I am making a concerted effort nowadays to read more news from outside the United States and from indepedent outlets.
A great place to find international newspapers is RefDesk.com . Some sources I plan on reading more often going forward include the BBC, The Sunday Times (London), The Guardian (Manchester, UK), The Christian Science Monitor, as well as Israeli papers.
New Pew Polling on Buddhism in America
The Pew Research Center recently published polling about Buddhism in America. A few interesting facts include the following:
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As of 2020 only about 1.3% of the U.S. population was Buddhist.
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American Buddhists are much more likely to live in the West. This isn’t surprising considering the West Coast’s relative proximity to Asia.
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There is high turnover in that many who are Buddhist converted and many who were Buddhist left the religion.
I, of course, live in the West so I am a typical ‘American Buddhist’ in that regard. I also connect with the fluidity of being Buddhist, as I was raised with no religion and my specific beliefs about Buddhism have evolved over the past 30 years since I intially took refuge in the Three Jewels. In my case, I’ve moved from being more religous to what I’d describe as a ‘secular Buddhist.’
Pew also reports that Buddhism is shrinking world wide. I take heart that ‘religiously unaffiliated’ is a growing group worldwide. Sadly, the theistic religions continue to grow. (See the second image below)
The quote shared below is from Pew’s related focus group interviews.
SCOTUS Case Resources
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is visiting my school in the coming days. I decided to read one of her dissent’s to help my students prepare for her visit. I decided to take a look at her dissent in Trump v. CASA (June 2025). I really enjoyed it and am going to do my best to work more SCOTUS opinions (both majority and dissents) into my regular reading.
I have discovered a few websites where one can access decisions and learn more about the Court. They are listed below. Now, more than ever, I believe active citizenship and defense of democracy requires ‘doing your homework’ on the issues that our judicial branch is wrestling with.
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Oyez (The Best for Context & Audio) A key feature of this site is that It offers a “synchronized” audio player where you can listen to the oral arguments while the transcript scrolls, highlighting which Justice or lawyer is speaking.
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Cornell Legal Information Institute (LII) This collection includes a curated section for Landmark Decisions organized by topic (e.g., “Powers of the Presidency” or “Civil Rights”)
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Scotus Blog Another great resource!
Tsundoku
I came across a Japanese word recently (having stumbled upon this video) that I am pretty sure was invented specifically to describe me: tsundoku. It refers to the practice of acquiring books and letting them pile up, unread. The word is a blend of tsunde (to stack things) and oku (to leave for a while), with a nod to dokusho, meaning reading. So: books acquired, stacked, and left to wait. Guilty as charged.
As soon as I had disposable income, I started buying more books than I can reasonably read. My shelves are a mix of the finished, the half-finished, and the optimistically purchased. Some books have been waiting patiently for years. I’ve made peace with this. More than peace, actually — I’ve come to think there’s something genuinely pleasurable about it.
Indeed, in recent years I’ve noticed that I get real joy just from browsing my books. Pulling something off the shelf, flipping through the first few pages, putting it back. There’s something nice about knowing a good book is sitting there waiting for you. It feels like having a really good meal to look forward to, or a good show on the horizon. The reading is coming; just not today. Tsundoku, it turns out, doesn’t carry a negative connotation in Japanese. It’s more of an affectionate acknowledgment of a very human habit. I appreciate that. The west tends to pathologize accumulation (though admittedly, the general behavior can get out of control). The Japanese apparently just gave it a name and moved on.
Consider me a proud practitioner.
