Slope of Hope Blog Posts

Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.

The Rise and Fall of American Growth

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A thoughtful Sloper recently bought me a new book called The Rise and Fall of American Growth which you can see on Amazon by clicking here. I’ll save myself some typing and just paste a partial description of the book from the publisher:

In the century after the Civil War, an economic revolution improved the American standard of living in ways previously unimaginable. Electric lighting, indoor plumbing, home appliances, motor vehicles, air travel, air conditioning, and television transformed households and workplaces. With medical advances, life expectancy between 1870 and 1970 grew from forty-five to seventy-two years. Weaving together a vivid narrative, historical anecdotes, and economic analysis, The Rise and Fall of American Growth provides an in-depth account of this momentous era. But has that era of unprecedented growth come to an end?

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The Normal Steve

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Yesterday on the plane ride from Seattle back to San Francisco, I finished up the Becoming Steve Jobs book which I wrote about about a week ago. The book is even more outstanding than I suspected it would be halfway through it. Late in the book, it mentioned Jobs’ last truly public appearance: this one in front of the Cupertino City Council, getting their approval for their gigantic new headquarters building. According to the book, Jobs was in searing pain by this time of his life, but his presentation shows him at his most personable and human self.

Becoming Steve Jobs

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Well, my long weekend in Milwaukee is over, and I’m heading home. I’ve never been to Wisconsin in my life. It’s nice to see a place that (a) actually has real weather (b) doesn’t charge you an arm and a leg for everything. Looking at the real estate ads, it’s just bizarre seeing places being sold for less than they even cost to build. Comparisons to Palo Alto become preposterous. One could buy up an entire neighborhood block of houses for what it costs to get a nice house in my ridiculous burgh.

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History Written by the Victors

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Well, grab your anti-nausea medication, because Ben Bernanke, on the heels of his one-week 0408-courageold blogging career, is amping up his credentials as a writer by penning his own book.

In spite of the fact that, years from now, I believe this person will be held up as one of the most disastrous men in power in U.S. history, he is currently able to get away with the self-congratulatory title The Courage to Act.

Sorry, Ben, but if the United States actually had “courage”, it would have let Goldman Sachs, AIG, JP Morgan, and all of the rest of them go belly-up and engaged in an honest-to-God organic recovery, as opposed to the fake-fest you foisted upon the feeble. Shame on you.