Things that were not immediately obvious to me

Last August I noted that NetApp had halted construction on a new office building in sort of an interesting way; they’d basically stacked up the the building’s elements after pouring its pad, and were presumably waiting for the recession to blow over.

Apparently their business has picked up enough to resume construction; they’ve unpacked the skeleton, and seem to be busily proceeding with construction.

My little corner of the Internet seems much nicer than everyone else’s. I’d say that 95% of the mail I get is cheerful and pleasant. Into every life, however, a little rain must fall, and today I’d like to talk about some things I learned from a (by Internet standards, very mild) nastygram that landed in my inbox about a week ago. Briefly: snarkiness inhibits persuasion, and it’s best to state your thesis clearly and early.

Continue reading →

Taken directly from my “procrastinator’s daily calendar” (you can get the 2011 version here):

July 17/18

It’s not a fun topic, but it is important that we look at some of the social/political problems that procrastinators face in this world on a daily basis. They are, more often than not, a marginalized people, an exploited people, a people treated unequally in almost every aspect of society. Procrastinators get turned down for jobs, often based solely on their philosophical choices. Procrastinators may find it more difficult to get into good schools, and end up paying unequal amounts of money for parking tickets (often at least double or triple what the average non-procrastinating citizens have to pay). In fact, this is so upsetting that we’re going to have to stop thinking about it for at least the next 24 hours. Take the rest of the day off; we’ll continue tomorrow.

Continue reading →

A reasonably well remarked feature of the modern world is the decline in the “total fertility rate” (TFR) of many populations. Much of the Western world (plus China) has fallen below the “replacement” TFR of 2.1; this is expected to cause those populations to not only shrink, but to age. An aging population poses some real nuts-and-bolts problems that will affect you.

Continue reading →