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All about the standing-upright chimps that really love to talk about themselves.

Narrowing

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The following is a repeat from two years ago.  It’s a topic I’ve had on my mind as I wallow in a few details for a while.  When I came across this piece in my archives I was hoping to riff off of it to create a new piece, but I decided that I like it just the way it is.  I hope you do, too.

When a child first opens its eyes, it has no idea what it is looking at. All it has are bizarre images and an imagination that works to make sense of it all.

In between is a sense of wonder, the deep feeling that it all makes sense somehow if you just keep drinking it in. That, and keep playing with it.

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Innovation

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It was just an innocent remark over a cup of coffee.  “Erik, I always thought you were some kind of rebel.”  I threw back my head and laughed in a compulsively rude fit of the moment.  If I’m what passes for a “rebel”, this world is really in trouble (to put it the polite way).

Barataria has always been a big experiment – an attempt to prove that a few of the hard written rules about blogging were simply wrong.  Longer pieces with some substance have an audience, even when presented in stark black and white.  Pictures and multi-media aren’t necessary to sell them. It is not essential to be narrowly focused on one subject or area of expertise.  Thank you all for proving that there is an audience for my humble work.

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Work to Live

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Most economists have come to believe that we are likely in for a solid decade of high unemployment and underemployment.  There just doesn’t appear to be enough work to go around.  That, by itself, is why I believe that this period of economic history will eventually become known as a Depression – it’s about an excess of capacity to produce stuff and services that has to be absorbed.  Getting out of these doldrums is going to take fundamental changes in how we work that are probably best understood by how we got to where we are today.  Predicting the future may be hard, but we can at least understand where we’ve been and go from there.

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Ode to Twitter

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The day before Memorial Day weekend is one of the quietest in Saint Paul and all over the USofA.  So I thought I’d offer a little diversion instead of something thoughtful.  I hope you enjoy it!

With the bright summer dawn when I roll up and yawn,
The first thing I do is to switch the news on.
Not the teevee with banter among heads full of chatter
I’d rather log in and see what my friends figure matters.
With coffee and twtter the morning’s complete
With a tweet, retweet, and repeat.

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