Shoshana Weissmann's Reading List →

July 14, 2018 by Miles Kimball

Update: Charles Steindel makes some good book suggestions on the Facebook page for this link post.

Olivia Goldhill: Oxford Philosopher’s Jeff McMahan's Moral Crisis Can Help Us Learn to Question Our Moral Instincts →

July 13, 2018 by Miles Kimball

Bret Stephens: America’s Immigration Crisis Right Now is that We Don’t Have Enough Immigrants →

July 11, 2018 by Miles Kimball

Eating on the Road

July 10, 2018 by Miles Kimball

Healthy eating on a car trip can be difficult. I thought it might be useful to share how I dealt with that on our recent car trip to a Cozzens family reunion in Northwest Wyoming (my wife Gail's side of the family).

One of the important considerations in how I approach eating on the road is my belief that loosening the constraints on special occasions is important to sustainability of an eating program. But the main way in which I loosened constraints was in having a much more spread-out eating window than I normally would. (See "Stop Counting Calories; It's the Clock that Counts.") I was just as careful as usual about what I ate. (Gail's choices were similar to mine except that she skipped breakfast in the hotel, didn't go for the pistachios, and doesn't like green bananas.)

Day 1: Monday, July 2

I didn't eat any breakfast before getting on the road. Having fasting as a regular part of our routine made it easier to get out the door. We wanted to see Fort Collins and had lunch at a Mexican restaurant there. We shared our dishes:

tortilla soup (skipping the tortillas)
carne asada (steak)
fajita salad (skipping the crisp tortilla bowl)

I tried to hold off eating until lunch time, but then as we continued our journey I did eat some of the things we's packed:

tea (Yogi and Tazo have some great herbal tea flavors)
a mix of baked cashews and almonds
macadamia nuts
pistachios nuts
manchego cheese

Other than the tea, I tried to be conscious of portion sizes on these. Portion sizes are not a big issue when eating low on the insulin index at home within a very short eating window, but it is easy to eat a lot out of boredom on the road, and the eating window wasn't as short.

We stopped in Casper for the evening. At an Asian fusion restaurant I had coconut curry over chicken and many vegetables. At the Hampton Inn, I had some decaf and half & half.

Day 2: Tuesday, July 3

Hampton Inn has a free breakfast. I had:

scrambled eggs with ham and cheese
decaf with half & half
oatmeal with half & half
cream cheese (with no bagel on my cream cheese)

We had a late lunch at the Irma Hotel in Cody. We shared our dishes:

burger with fixings, no bun
salad bar
vegetable beef stew (small cup—skipped the potatoes)
taco salad (skipping the shell)

We stayed at the Ralston Clubhouse & Inn owned by my sister-in-law and brother-in-law Deirdre and Dirk Cozzens. They have done a great job with it:

*Facebook page for the Ralston Clubhouse*

Knowing we would have a refrigerator and freezer, we stocked up at the Albertson's in Cody:

3 nectarines
half gallon half & half
2 green bananas
2 containers of mint chip Halo Top
2 bags full-fat cheese curd ("squeaky cheese") for our contribution to the reunion pot-luck

The actual eating of those things was spread out over two days: July 3 and July 4. Based on glycemic index data, I think of green bananas as having less of an insulin kick that would lead to overeating than ripe bananas would. (See "Using the Glycemic Index as a Supplement to the Insulin Index.") In addition, at the Ralston Clubhouse I ate nuts and three squares of 88% chocolate. (See "Our Delusions about 'Healthy' Snacks—Nuts to That!" and "Intense Dark Chocolate: A Review.")

Our relatives are supportive of our eating program. At dinner that evening with relatives, I had:

salad with olive oil (the mayo had too much sugar)
roast beef (au jus without the bread)
fresh bing cherries

Day 3: July 4

I skipped breakfast and had two nectarines cut up in half & half at lunch. At the reunion that evening in Burlington, Wyoming, I had:

sloppy joe meat
elk meat
salad
refried beans

I went back for many servings. That evening we ended the day of celebration by sharing a container of Halo Top ice-cream.

Day 4: July 5

On our trip back home to Superior, Colorado, we did it all in one day—about an 8.5-hour drive. Other than water, I only had tea on the trip. When we were back home, I had cherries and half & half.

Conclusion

I found what I ate on this trip quite satisfying. I can't recommend the particular restaurants we ate at, but the food there was OK and infused our diet with some variety. All of the other things I ate were quite tasty.

I hope this account is helpful in illustrating how to eat reasonably well even in circumstances that are more difficult than when eating at home.

Don't miss these other posts on diet and health and on fighting obesity:

Also see the last section of "Five Books That Have Changed My Life" and the podcast "Miles Kimball Explains to Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal Why Losing Weight Is Like Defeating Inflation." If you want to know how I got interested in diet and health and fighting obesity and a little more about my own experience with weight gain and weight loss, see my post "A Barycentric Autobiography."

Noah Smith: If Elite Schools Care About What They Claim To, and Believe in the Value of What They Do, They Should Take On More Students →

July 09, 2018 by Miles Kimball

The title of this post is a link to a Bloomberg piece I agree with wholeheartedly. My retitling summarizes what I think is the logical structure of Noah's argument. I have a related post:

The Extensive Margin: How to Simultaneously Raise Quality and Lower Tuition at Elite Public Universities

The Conversation: Religion May Alter Your Psychology, Even If You’re a Non-Believer →

July 08, 2018 by Miles Kimball

Annie Atherton: I Tried 7 Different Morning Routines — Here’s What Made Me Happiest →

July 07, 2018 by Miles Kimball

2018 First Half's Most Popular Posts

July 06, 2018 by Miles Kimball

Note: this post has now been superseded by “2018's Most Popular Posts” at this link here.

The "Key Posts" link at the top of my blog lists all important posts through the end of 2016. Along with "2017's Most Popular Posts," this is intended as a complement to that list. (Also, my most popular storified Twitter discussions are here, and you can see other recent posts by clicking on the Archive link at the top of my blog.) I put links to the most popular posts from the first half of 2018 below into four groups: popular new posts in 2018 on diet and health, popular new posts in 2018 on other topics, and popular older posts in those two categories.

I am no stranger to bragging; however, I give statistics not to brag, but because I am a data hound. I would love to see corresponding statistics from other blogs that I follow! The numbers shown are pageviews in the first six months of 2018 according to Google Analytics. In that period, I had 129,326 pageviews total, with 21,651 pageviews on my blog homepage.

New Posts in 2018 on Diet and Health

New Posts in 2018 on Other Topics

Older Posts with Continuing Popularity on Diet and Health

Older Posts with Continuing Popularity on Other Topics

Joseph Adalian on Netflix: Inside the Binge Factory →

July 05, 2018 by Miles Kimball

This was a fascinating long-read. It paints a vivid portrait of how new technological possibilities made possible a very different business model in entertainment.

Questioning Authority

July 04, 2018 by Miles Kimball

Independence Day is a day for celebrating the freedom we have in our republic. One of our most precious freedoms is the freedom to question authority. Let me share with you a lightly edited version of an email I sent one of my coauthors a while back on how deeply I feel about the right to question authority:

I was pleased that I did a little better today about handling gracefully the issue of scientific authority. I have been embarrassed about getting so heated about that on some occasions. I think I am getting closer to figuring it out.

As a practical matter, the main thing I want you to know is that I respect you, way more than a random paper in the literature, even if it is by someone called an "expert" on some topic. So your saying you think X carries a lot more weight to me than saying "the experts on this think X."

Here are some of my relevant values and experiences:

I am a child of the 60s. "Question Authority" was one of our watchphrases and is burned into me.
My path out of Mormonism (a very big deal in my life) involved questioning authority. There in particular, the primacy of truth versus hierarchy was something I felt deeply.
My relative success as an economist has involved questioning authority all along the way.
I have a very strong value of giving everyone a fair hearing. So I don't need someone to claim authority for me to be willing to listen to their idea. (On Twitter, people find my willingness to treat the questions and ideas of people with no particular status seriously quite unusual.)

The ultimate nonnegotiable principle for me in our work is that we make the final judgment—not any other purported experts—or even scholars accepted as experts by general (but uncareful) social consensus. There may sometimes be tactical reasons to act as if we were deferring to the experts, but in the first instance we should make our own judgments (except in cases where we don't care enough—then we might as well defer to whomever our audience might be induced to think is an expert).

Anyway, sorry for the excess heat along the way on this.

See also:

On the Virtue of Scientific Disrespect

Andrew Sullivan on Cultural Anxiety →

July 03, 2018 by Miles Kimball

In Praise of Avocados

July 02, 2018 by Miles Kimball

Avocados are both healthy and delicious. When I am not fasting, I typically eat an avocado a day in my giant salad. I am glad I am not the only fan of avocados. Bee Wilson, in her delightful February 16, 2018 pocket history of avocados, "What Explains Our Mania for Avocados," writes:

In the U.S., demand for avocados is now so frenzied that it threatens to outstrip supply. The average American consumes 7 pounds of avocado a year, up from 1 pound in 1974. By 2016, annual retail sales of avocados in the U.S. had reached $1.6 billion, according to the Hass Avocado Board.

Bee agrees with my assessment of avocados:

Few other ingredients taste at once so dreamily rich and so healthy. ...

Avocado is one of the few modern foods that manages to straddle our ideas of both comfort and health.

Among the many cultural, technological and economic factors that have driven the increasing popularity of avocados, a key factor has been Americans beginning to turn away from the lowfat orthodoxy has gripped us for so long. As Bee writes:

Our avocado-love has also been driven by cultural changes, large and small: the popularity of tacos, the rise of the hipster cafe, the rehabilitation of fat as a health food. ...

In the 1980s, at the height of low-fat orthodoxy, avocado was regarded as dangerously fattening, and the wholesale price plummeted to 10 cents a pound.

Even better, in many circles nowadays, people realize both

avocados are healthy
sugar is unhealthy.

Don't miss these other posts on diet and health and on fighting obesity:

John Locke: The Law Must Apply to Rulers, Too

July 01, 2018 by Miles Kimball

The principle that law must apply to the head of a nation as well as to everyone else is an important one. We feel this principle strongly with our own leaders, but still may not appreciate the full importance of this rule, since it deters many possible evils that are less salient because they don't actually happen.

Thus, it is good to have a reminder from John Locke in Sections 90-94 of John Locke's 2d Treatise on Government: “Of Civil Government” (in Chapter VII, "Of Political or Civil Society") of what happens when rulers are not subject to law: it is like being in the state of nature, unilaterally disarmed in the face of someone who at best is a judge in his or her own case, at worst an out-and-out predator. The full text of the passage is below. But let me first draw out what strike me as the most telling passages:

He that would have been insolent and injurious in the woods of America, would not probably be much better in a throne; where perhaps learning and religion shall be found out to justify all that he shall do to his subjects, and the sword presently silence all those that dare question it ...
... every man, who loves his own power, profit, or greatness, may, and naturally must do, keep those animals from hurting, or destroying one another, who labour and drudge only for his pleasure and advantage; and so are taken care of, not out of any love the master has for them, but love of himself, and the profit they bring him ...
... if it be asked, what security, what fence is there, in such a state, against the violence and oppression of this absolute ruler? the very question can scarce be borne ...
Betwixt subject and subject, they will grant, there must be measures, laws and judges, for their mutual peace and security: but as for the ruler, he ought to be absolute, and is above all such circumstances; because he has power to do more hurt and wrong, it is right when he does it.
To ask how you may be guarded from harm, or injury, on that side where the strongest hand is to do it, is presently the voice of faction and rebellion: as if when men quitting the state of nature entered into society, they agreed that all of them but one should be under the restraint of laws, but that he should still retain all the liberty of the state of nature, increased with power, and made licentious by impunity. This is to think, that men are so foolish, that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them by pole-cats, or foxes; but are content, nay, think it safety, to be devoured by lions.
... when time, giving authority, and (as some men would persuade us) sacredness of customs, which the negligent, and unforeseeing innocence of the first ages began, had brought in successors of another stamp, the people finding their properties not secure under the government ... could never be safe nor at rest ... till the legislature was placed in collective bodies of men, call them senate, parliament, or what you please. By which means every single person became subject, equally with other the meanest men, to those laws, which he himself, as part of the legislative, had established; nor could any one, by his own authority, avoid the force of the law, when once made; nor by any pretence of superiority plead exemption, thereby to license his own, or the miscarriages of any of his dependents.
No man in civil society can be exempted from the laws of it: for if any man may do what he thinks fit, and there be no appeal on earth, for redress or security against any harm he shall do; I ask, whether he be not perfectly still in the state of nature, and so can be no part or member of that civil society ...

One implication of John Locke's argument is that when a ruler is not subject to the law, then everyone else in the nation is in a state of nature vis a vis that ruler, and so can legitimately combine together with others to act as vigilantes to punish that ruler if justice demands that the ruler be punished. But the costs of vigilante action to punish a ruler are extraordinarily high—not only bloodshed, but the danger that conspirators against the ruler might be judging their own case and so might judge wrongly. It is much better to have a legal system that can punish the ruler when appropriate.

For rebels and conspirators against a ruler who is not subject to the law, in addition to the danger of judging wrongly that the ruler has committed an injustice that deserves to be punished, there is also the danger that an offense by the ruler that ought to be punished by a penalty less than death will be punished by death because only death seems effective in preventing the ruler from retaliating. However, it might be reasonable to stipulate that any ruler is deserving of death who does not agree either (a) to become subject to the law or (b) to remain outside civil society but to resign. In that case, tyrannicide would always be justified, as long as the ruler was first loudly called upon to either become subject to the law or to resign, with due time given to the ruler to contemplate the merits of that demand.

For links to other John Locke posts, see these John Locke aggregator posts:

Here is the full passage, including John Locke's footnotes to it:

§. 90. Hence it is evident, that absolute monarchy, which by some men is counted the only government in the world, is indeed inconsistent with civil society, and so can be no form of civil government at all: for the end of civil society, being to avoid, and remedy those inconveniences of the state of nature, which necessarily follow from every man’s being judge in his own case, by setting up a known authority, to which every one of that society may appeal upon any injury received, or controversy that may arise, and which every one of the 1 society ought to obey; wherever any persons are, who have not such an authority to appeal to, for the decision of any difference between them, there those persons are still in the state of nature; and so is every absolute prince, in respect of those who are under his dominion.

§. 91. For he being supposed to have all, both legislative and executive power in himself alone, there is no judge to be found, no appeal lies open to any one, who may fairly, and indifferently, and with authority decide, and from whose decision relief and redress may be expected of any injury or inconveniency, that may be suffered from the prince, or by his order: so that such a man, however intitled, Czar, Grand Seignor, or how you please, is as much in the state of nature, with all under his dominion, as he is with the rest of mankind: for wherever any two men are, who have no standing rule, and common judge to appeal to on earth, for the determination of controversies of right betwixt them, there they are still in the state of nature, 2 and under all the inconveniences of it, with only this woeful difference to the subject, or rather slave of an absolute prince: that whereas, in the ordinary state of nature, he has a liberty to judge of his right, and according to the best of his power, to maintain it; now, whenever his property is invaded by the will and order of his monarch, he has not only to appeal, as those in society ought to have, but as if he were degraded from the common state of rational creatures, is denied a liberty to judge of, or to defend his right; and so is exposed to all the misery and inconveniences, that a man can fear from one, who being in the unrestrained state of nature, is yet corrupted with flattery, and armed with power.

§. 92. For he that thinks absolute power purifies men’s blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need read but the history of this, or any other age, to be convinced of the contrary. He that would have been insolent and injurious in the woods of America, would not probably be much better in a throne; where perhaps learning and religion shall be found out to justify all that he shall do to his subjects, and the sword presently silence all those that dare question it: for what the protection of absolute monarchy is, what kind of fathers of their countries it makes princes to be, and to what a degree of happiness and security it carries civil society, where this sort of government is grown to perfection, he that will look into the late relation of Ceylon, may easily see.

§. 93. In absolute monarchies indeed, as well as other governments of the world, the subjects have an appeal to the law, and judges to decide any controversies, and restrain any violence that may happen betwixt the subjects themselves, one amongst another. This every one thinks necessary, and believes he deserves to be thought a declared enemy to society and mankind, who should go about to take it away. But whether this be from a true love of mankind and society, and such a charity as we owe all one to another, there is reason to doubt: for this is no more than what every man, who loves his own power, profit, or greatness, may, and naturally must do, keep those animals from hurting, or destroying one another, who labour and drudge only for his pleasure and advantage; and so are taken care of, not out of any love the master has for them, but love of himself, and the profit they bring him: for if it be asked, what security, what fence is there, in such a state, against the violence and oppression of this absolute ruler? the very question can scarce be borne. They are ready to tell you, that it deserves death only to ask after safety. Betwixt subject and subject, they will grant, there must be measures, laws and judges, for their mutual peace and security: but as for the ruler, he ought to be absolute, and is above all such circumstances; because he has power to do more hurt and wrong, it is right when he does it. To ask how you may be guarded from harm, or injury, on that side where the strongest hand is to do it, is presently the voice of faction and rebellion: as if when men quitting the state of nature entered into society, they agreed that all of them but one should be under the restraint of laws, but that he should still retain all the liberty of the state of nature, increased with power, and made licentious by impunity. This is to think, that men are so foolish, that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them by pole-cats, or foxes; but are content, nay, think it safety, to be devoured by lions.

§. 94. But whatever flatterers may talk to amuse people’s understandings, it hinders not men from feeling; and when they perceive, that any man, in what station soever, is out of the bounds of the civil society which they are of, and that they have no appeal on earth against any harm, they may receive from him, they are apt to think themselves in the state of nature, in respect of him whom they find to be so; and to take care, as soon as they can, to have that safety and security in civil society, for which it was first instituted, and for which only they entered into it. And therefore, though perhaps at first, (as shall be shewed more at large hereafter in the following part of this discourse,) some one good and excellent man having got a pre-eminency amongst the rest, had this deference paid to his goodness and virtue, as to a kind of natural authority, that the chief rule, with arbitration of their differences, by a tacit consent devolved into his, without any other caution, but the assurance they had of his uprightness and wisdom; yet when time, giving authority, and (as some men would persuade us) sacredness of customs, which the negligent, and unforeseeing innocence of the first ages began, had brought in successors of another stamp, the people finding their properties not secure under the government, as then it was, (whereas government has no other end but the preservation of property 3) could never be safe nor at rest, nor think themselves in civil society, till the legislature was placed in collective bodies of men, call them senate, parliament, or what you please. By which means every single person became subject, equally with other the meanest men, to those laws, which he himself, as part of the legislative, had established; nor could any one, by his own authority, avoid the force of the law, when once made; nor by any pretence of superiority plead exemption, thereby to license his own, or the miscarriages of any of his dependents. No man in civil society can be exempted from the laws of it: 4 for if any man may do what he thinks fit, and there be no appeal on earth, for redress or security against any harm he shall do; I ask, whether he be not perfectly still in the state of nature, and so can be no part or member of that civil society; unless any one will say, the state of nature and civil society are one and the same thing, which I have never yet found any one so great a patron of anarchy as to affirm.

Note 1. The public power of all society is above every soul contained in the same society; and the principal use of that power is, to give laws unto all that are under it, which laws in such cases we must obey, unless there be reason shewed which may necessarily inforce, that the law of reason, or of God, doth enjoin the contrary, Hooker’s Eccl. Pol. l. i. sect.16. [back]

Note 2. To take away all such mutual grievances, injuries and wrongs, i. e. such as attend men in the state of nature, there was no way but only by growing into composition and agreement amongst themselves, by ordaining some kind of government public, and by yielding themselves subject thereunto, that unto whom they granted authority to rule and govern, by them the peace, tranquillity, and happy estate of the rest might be procured. Men always knew that where force and injury was offered, they might be defenders of themselves; they knew that however men may seek their own commodity, yet if this were done with injury unto others, it was not to be suffered, but by all men, and all good means to be withstood. Finally, they knew that no man might in reason take upon him to determine his own right, and according to his own determination proceed in maintenance thereof, in as much as every man is towards himself, and them whom he greatly affects partial; and therefore that strifes and troubles would be endless, except they gave their common consent, all to be ordered by some, whom they should agree upon, without which consent there would be no reason that one man should take upon him to be lord or judge over an other. Hooker’s Eccl. Pol. l. i. sect. 10. [back]

Note 3. At the first, when some certain kind of regiment was once appointed, it may be that nothing was then farther thought upon for the manner of governing, but all permitted unto their wisdom and discretion, which were to rule, till by experience they found this for all parts very inconvenient, so as the thing which they had devised for a remedy did indeed but increase the sore, which it should have cured. They saw, that to live by one man’s will, became the cause of all men’s misery. This constrained them to come unto laws, wherein all men might see their duty beforehand, and know the penalties of transgressing them. Hooker’s Eccl. Pol. l. i. sect. 10. [back]

Note 4. Civil law being the act of the whole body politic, doth therefore over-rule each several part of the same body. Hooker’s Eccl. Pol. l. i. sect. 10.

Katherine Schafler—The 4 Questions Everyone Asks Constantly →

June 30, 2018 by Miles Kimball

The heart of Katherine's essay is the 4 questions themselves. Here they are:

Do you see me?
Do you care that I’m here?
Am I enough for you, or do you need me to be better in some way?
Can I tell that I’m special to you by the way that you look at me?

Fight the Backlash Against Retirement Saving Nudges: Everyone Benefits When People Save More for Old Age →

June 29, 2018 by Miles Kimball

"Fight the Backlash Against Retirement Planning Nudge" is my first piece as a Bloomberg columnist. Thanks to Noah Smith for recommending me to my new Bloomberg editor, Jonathan Landman.

Thanks also to many on Twitter who pointed me to the ferment on this topic. I hope to do a Wakelet story of those tweets once I have a little more functionality on Wakelet. (Wakelet has been great at transferring over all of my organized-tweet stories from Storify—see "My Organized-Tweet Stories, In Order of Popularity, in Their Flight from a Dying Storify to the Haven of Wakelet." It still isn't easy to make new stories with Wakelet, but I am optimistic it will be.)

Kristin Johnson on How Depressing It Is to Be a Lawyer →

June 29, 2018 by Miles Kimball

Gabriela D'Souza on Failure in Learning Math

June 28, 2018 by Miles Kimball

The guest post below originally appeared on Medium. Gabriela D'Souza's personal Twitter feed is @gabster0191. Her Medium bio says "Econo nerd. Kitten-obsessed but it's validated by my other occupation - one of the editors-in-chief @econlolcats. Also… — The guest post below originally appeared on Medium. Gabriela D'Souza's personal Twitter feed is @gabster0191. Her Medium bio says "Econo nerd. Kitten-obsessed but it's validated by my other occupation - one of the editors-in-chief @econlolcats. Also tweets from @act_yen."

Miles: In my experience as a writer, I have only had a piece go viral once: the Quartz column "There's One Key Difference Between Kids Who Excel at Math and Those Who Don't" Noah Smith and I wrote, which was also syndicated to the Atlantic under the title "The Myth of 'I'm Bad at Math,'" and translated into Spanish here. Noah and I have been heartened to see those ideas do some good in people's lives. I am grateful to Gabriela D'Souza for permission to share her experience here. Here are her words, which I follow with links to other resources about math learning.

Gabriela: I’m writing this mostly because when I needed to read something similar a few years ago, it wasn’t there.

In economics, it feels really hard to admit failure to your peers…sometimes harder than actually facing it. And even the ones who have posted their failures, well let’s be real, they appear to have landed on their feet okay. So you weren’t accepted into one elite university, you got into another — doesn’t really seem like failure to me. But that’s part of the problem too; one person’s definition of failure is quite different from another’s. That aside, sometimes failures are pretty black and white, as it was in my case.

Five years ago I began a rather foolhardy mission. I started a Master of Economics degree at Australian National University, without much prior maths knowledge, while working full time. I went to a high school that allowed me to drop maths in Years 11 and 12 and you better believe I dropped it. I was lucky enough that the university I picked for my undergrad turned a blind eye to my lack of maths credentials, and admitted me in to their Economics program. I struggled through calculus in second year micro, and first year business stats, but I got there in the end, graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in Economics.

I was warned that the maths in the Master of Economics program at Australian National University was hard, but I thought I’d be able to crack it. I was very wrong and in so over my head. To make matters worse, I had visa issues (an added stress that I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy). In the end it was all too much and I failed the maths and the microeconomics component for my master’s degree.

Going back to how it felt — it sucked. I have no words. I was consumed every day by the thought that I was a fraud; that people were going to think less of me; that I alone had *failed*. I was put on warning for academic probation. It was a low low point. I honestly thought I would never get over the panic I felt every time I walked past the Australian National University College of Business and Economics building. Typing that line out now makes me smile.

The reason this is easier to write about now is time and achievement. At the end of the year I will have completed my Master of Economics degree at Monash University.

I finally got around to trying again a couple of years after that ill-fated attempt at ANU, realising that I was seriously limiting my career options if I didn’t do it. I didn’t mess around this time. I used Khan Academy religiously, brushing up on calculus, topological spaces, lagrange multipliers (special shoutout to Patrick JMT on Youtube). I worked out problem after problem from Schaum’s Intro to Math econ. I got a tutor for my first semester.
Reading this article by Noah Smith and Miles Kimball (one of my favourite go-to articles when someone says to me, “I’m just bad at maths”) helped me realise that while I might not be naturally gifted when it comes to maths, or most things for that matter, I can sure as hell work really hard to figure out what I don’t know and improve on it. And while there was a certain fear of finding out what I didn’t know, it at least gave me something to work on.

We haven’t yet normalised it so it’s acceptable to fail. Failure is feared, avoided, and we shy away from it. But as many have noted, it makes us know what we’re better at and if we’re lucky it teaches us how to become better.

And here’s the other thing I have to keep reminding myself about failure — it helps me realise that I’m trying and sometimes that’s both enough, and all I can do.

Miles: I wrote a follow-up column "How to Turn Every Child into a "Math Person" that gives links to some of the reactions to "There's One Key Difference Between Kids Who Excel at Math and Those Who Don't" and many resources for math learning. Here are some links to posts on math learning that didn't make it into that column:

Also, here are some Twitter discussions on math learning:

Ken Rogoff: Robots Mean China's Large Population Is Not As Big an Advantage in Its Chances to Become World Hegemon →

June 27, 2018 by Miles Kimball

I am not convinced that Ken's argument can do the quantitative heavy lifting over the next 50 years. Here is my more people-centric perspective:

My Giant Salad

June 26, 2018 by Miles Kimball

Photo by Miles Spencer Kimball. I hereby give permission to use this image and the others in this post for anything whatsoever, as long as that use includes a link to this post.

Some of my readers have encouraged me to write about my own experience with trying to eat right and with weight loss. I tell my overall story on that front in "A Barycentric Autobiography," (which also has before and after photos). But I also want to detail my day-to-day, week-to-week practice of trying to eat right. Last week, in "Our Delusions about 'Healthy' Snacks—Nuts to That!" I wrote about snacks. Today is about my main dish on a typical day: a giant salad.

Based on my attempts to order something like it in restaurants when I am traveling, I know my giant salad can be described as a kind of Cobb salad. Gail and I were very lucky in the house we managed to nab when we moved to Colorado; among other things it has a wonderful kitchen with an island. You can see laid out both the ingredients for my giant salad and the snacks that I eat while making the salad:

Focusing in on just the ingredients:

Here is the breakdown of salad ingredients by retail source:

Costco:

One serving of Kirkland organic Hummus (from a box of single-serving containers)
a few pine nuts
7 pitted Kalamata olives
2 NestFresh cagefree eggs (box of 5 dozen)
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (bottle barely visible on the left)

Safeway:

1 avocado (Don't stint on this. Avocadoes are great.)
1 tomato
1/2 cucumber
4 mushrooms
1 stripe of full-fat ranch dressing (Don't overdo this; to me it ruins the taste to have too much
salt on the avocado and egg slices
prewashed lettuce or spinach; on this day I did some of each. "Tender Ruby Reds" last much longer than other types of prewashed lettuce before getting slimy. Spinach also lasts longer. So I eat the other types of lettuce first if I bought any other kinds.

I sometimes add a sliced radish or two for variety. Sometimes we bake broccoli or cauliflower with a little olive oil on it. Until that is gone, I always add some of that to my salad.

A key to this dish is to have lots of lettuce or spinach:

Note that I am using a large mixing bowl or serving bowl. When guests come, a salad that feeds me alone on a typical day can be a great side dish for a whole crowd. This amount is well over half the amount in a large plastic container of prewashed lettuce or spinach.

The photo at the top of the post shows what my giant salad looks like right before tossing. (Some of the ingredients are hidden under the ingredients on top. It doesn't look quite as good after tossing, but tastes better from the tossing.)

While making the salad, I snack on Manchego cheese and nuts:

Here are the retail sources:

Costco:

manchego cheese
cashews
almonds
macadamias

Whole Foods:

brazil nuts
hazelnuts (only available to buy seasonally, concentrated around December, but they will last a year if you buy a lot)

Two other staples are some fruit powder (see "Forget Calorie Counting; It's the Insulin Index, Stupid") and probiotic powder (see "Hints for Healthy Eating from the Nurse's Health Study") in almond milk, and a few squares of 88% chocolate (see "Intense Dark Chocolate: A Review").

Finally, for dessert, pitted frozen cherries with half and half. I cut the cherries in half to get the perfect bite, and don't stint on the half and half:

If my schedule allows, I eat all this at brunch time in an eating window of a couple of hours. Then I'm not hungry the rest of the day and don't eat the rest of the day. That schedule is in line with what I discuss in "Stop Counting Calories; It's the Clock that Counts" and "Obesity Is Always and Everywhere an Insulin Phenomenon." All of this is only for a typical day. Eating out at restaurants and occasional additions at home (that displace some of the snacks above) give me variety.

Don’t miss my other posts on diet and health:

I. The Basics

II. Sugar as a Slow Poison

III. Anti-Cancer Eating

IV. Eating Tips

V. Calories In/Calories Out

VI. Other Health Issues

VII. Wonkish

VIII. Debates about Particular Foods and about Exercise

IX. Gary Taubes

X. Twitter Discussions

XI. On My Interest in Diet and Health

See the last section of "Five Books That Have Changed My Life" and the podcast "Miles Kimball Explains to Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal Why Losing Weight Is Like Defeating Inflation." If you want to know how I got interested in diet and health and fighting obesity and a little more about my own experience with weight gain and weight loss, see “Diana Kimball: Listening Creates Possibilities” and my post "A Barycentric Autobiography. I defend the ability of economists like me to make a contribution to understanding diet and health in “On the Epistemology of Diet and Health: Miles Refuses to `Stay in His Lane’.”

Virginia Postrel on Advocating for Abundant Housing at the Grassroots Level →

June 25, 2018 by Miles Kimball

In addition to this piece, you might be interested in the wonderful quotations from Virginia Postrel that I have singled out on my blog. I have links here, on my Happiness sub-blog.