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.

Varsity Impressions

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I grew up in the upper-middle class my entire life. I never knew any rich people for most of my years. Indeed, in the many times I’ve addressed the subject of wealth distribution, I have recalled that during my upbringing, the “rich” man I met was a general manager at a Ford dealership, and probably made $45,000 a year to my Dad’s $35,000. So that, to me, was rich.

I wish it was still so. I never thought I’d type this, but I truly do yearn for the days of my childhood when, yes, there were fables about millionaires, but on the whole, people were more or less in the same boat. This is a thing of the past now, although I strongly suspect in about twenty to thirty years, it’ll be very much with us again. Life moves in cycles, of course.

This came to me because I finally got around to watch the Netflix documentary about Operation Varsity Blues. I love documentaries, and as such, it is excellent. For those of you who subscribe to Netflix, I certainly recommend it. They’ve done a beautiful job weaving the tale, splicing in real-life images of high school kids (the honest ones, not the rich ones) in the throes of getting either accepted or rejected from their hoped-for schools. Although the “script” was simply copied from the real-life FBI wiretap recordings, the dramatization is led by the actor Matthew Modine (of Full Metal Jacket fame) who plays the detestable Rick Singer.

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California Gold

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With the focus on precious metals lately, I wanted to share a free chapter from my Panic Prosperity and Progress book about a germane period in financial history related to the California Gold Rush of the mid-19th century. Enjoy!

The California Gold Rush is one of the most universally-known eras of American history, but it is also one of the most widely-misunderstood. It obviously altered the importance of California (which today reigns as one of the most important technological and business powerhouses on Earth), but it was just as important to the history of the entire nation in the decades that followed gold’s initial discovery at Sutter’s Mill.

There were not any meaningful financial markets for it to affect, but the gold rush laid the foundation for some important personal fortunes and fundamental Californian characteristics that lived far past the middle of the 19th century.

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Twenty Years Ahead of My Time

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This is going to seem like a really egocentric post, but honestly, it isn’t intended to be. It is simply a recognition on my part about something which has been in the back of my mind for a while: specifically, the apparent fact that society at large tends to adopt whatever weird-ass thing I am doing about, oh, twenty years or so afterward. Allow me to offer three examples.

The first one, which I’ve written about many times, is personal computing. More specifically, interconnected computing. I was hugely into this stuff – – it pretty much ruled my life – – starting in 1982 (at which time I wrote my first book). The percentage of people on the planet doing this kind of thing was – – what – – maybe 0.1%? If that? And then, about twenty years later, everyone discovers the Internet and being “connected” is what everyone does. Nothing rules our lives more now. Nothing.

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Miracle of Miracles

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There’s a lot about this life that I find just plain spooky.

Take time, for example. I am convinced we do not understand the true nature of time. Indeed, it is possible that our minds aren’t even capable of grasping what time really is, even if we had an omniscient entity patiently try to explain it to us.

Think back to when you first learned about the theory of relatively, or the intermingling of time and space. I’m not sure about you, but for myself, starting in the 5th grade, I tried terribly hard to understand these concepts. I read book after book, including those books written for children curious about such things. It seems I simply don’t have the mind for it, in spite of all my efforts. Those gifted by genius, or at least more flexible minds than my own, can perhaps grasp these things, but so far, I cannot.

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