drupagliassotti @ July 31, 2008 # No Comment Yet
Wildfires, earthquakes, and floods are sometimes said to be Southern California’s three seasons. But over the last few years we’ve ignored earthquakes, our collective attention taken up by a series of large-scale wildfires and the inevitable flooding and hillside collapses that occur once winter’s rain hits all the burnt-out areas.
However, earlier this week we Southern […]
drupagliassotti @ July 29, 2008 # No Comment Yet
So, after reading about it in numerous blogs, I finally got my hands on Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food. This is the book in which he boils down eating guidelines to seven words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Past reading, especially w/regard to historical conceptions of beauty and critiques of fat prejudice, had […]
drupagliassotti @ July 14, 2008 # No Comment Yet
You can read an interesting historical perspective of consumerism in U.S. society from Orion Magazine: “The Gospel of Consumption” — It was this […] concern that led Charles Kettering, director of General Motors Research, to write a 1929 magazine article called “Keep the Consumer Dissatisfied.” He wasn’t suggesting that manufacturers produce shoddy products. Along […]
drupagliassotti @ June 12, 2008 # No Comment Yet
The drawback to being a writer, editor, and professor is that sometimes I live too much in my head. Getting out hiking or traveling is fun because it forces me out of my head and into my body. Right now I have a new project to work my body and relax my brain — cleaning […]
drupagliassotti @ June 11, 2008 # No Comment Yet
After yesterday’s blog post about gas prices, friend Dan Berger suggested working at a local library or coffee shop or starting to commute by scooter or motorbike. Since I’d been casually thinking about scooters since reading an article about their mileage a few months ago, we began discussing the issue more thoroughly by email […]
drupagliassotti @ June 10, 2008 # One Comment
A long time ago, when I was working on my doctoral dissertation, I picked up a piece of advice that’s lingered with me: “Treat your dissertation as a job. Work on it from 9 to 5 every day.”
I was a full-time graduate student living on student loans, so that summer it would have been easy […]
drupagliassotti @ May 31, 2008 # One Comment
Yesterday I took a long evening walk, deciding to follow a nearby street to wherever it dead-ended in the scrubby mountains that surround the area where I live right now.
The street took me out of my apartment complex beside a series of strip malls and into the rarified air of remote, high-income estates. The median […]
drupagliassotti @ May 30, 2008 # No Comment Yet
Is it better to save for a retirement at age 50 or beyond or to take a series of mini-retirements throughout your life? Over at Get Rich Slowly, J.D. wrote a post about mini-retirements that includes an interview with Timothy Ferriss that got me thinking about how I approach my own life.
Many personal finance […]
drupagliassotti @ May 29, 2008 # 2 Comments
Sartre said “Hell is other people,” and I often agree with him, particularly in crowded malls around Christmastime and when my Neighbors of the Perpetual Laundry are running their machines after 11 at night or at 5 in the morning. I may be one of the few people on earth who’s deliberately trying to […]
drupagliassotti @ May 17, 2008 # No Comment Yet
Trent, over at The Simple Dollar, wrote about his and his wife’s decision not to use a clothesline, even though they’d like to and it would be better for their pocketbooks and the environment than running the dryer.
The thought of putting out a clothesline had crossed my mind after moving into my new apartment, too. […]