Jennifer Baez

My favorite Wikipedia entry begins: “Ronald James Read was an American philanthropist, investor, janitor, and gas station attendant.” Ronald Read was born in rural Vermont. He was the first person in his family to graduate high school, made all the more impressive by the fact that he hitchhiked to campus each day. For those who knew Ronald Read,

Once we see the relationship between structure and behavior, we can begin to understand how systems work, what makes them produce poor results, and how to shift them into better behavior patterns

Luck and risk are both the reality that every outcome in life is guided by forces other than individual effort. They are so similar that you can’t believe in one without equally respecting the other. They both happen because the world is too complex to allow 100% of your actions to dictate 100% of your outcomes. They are driven by the same thing:

Social scientists have long known that we tend to be overconfident when we evaluate ourselves. Here are some highlights of their findings: High school seniors: 70 percent report that they have "above average” leadership skills, compared with 2 percent "below average"; in the ability to get along with others, 25 percent rate themselves in the top 1

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

George Bernard Shaw (Page 1)

  The Gaia Theory sees planets, at least the Earth, as more than just balls of rocks and mud. They don’t think that Earth has life  on  it. They theorize that Earth is life itself — it’s living. The Gaia theory states that living things and all their non-living and inorganic surroundings evolve together as a single complex living organism. This