Category: Economics

I went backpacking last weekend and found a new mining adit in a valley I frequent. The entrance was huge and monolithic and appeared to be very stable, but I didn’t go inside. I was alone, far away from people and trails, and I value my life. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t occur to […]

One of the biggest reasons people hold on to old junk is that “it could be worth something someday!” On very rare occasions, this can be true. One of my friends has mentioned that certain classic or otherwise limited-production cars go up in value, ditto for rare guns, and I don’t want to ignore this […]

When I was a kid, I first discovered video games in the basement of some friends’ house down the street, where they had a Sega Genesis. I would later receive one for Christmas because I wanted one so badly, and it wasn’t long before the first Playstation came out and I had one of those, […]

I have to admit, this title is sort of click-bait because it’s unexpected and is likely to trigger my achiever friends. But there is some merit to it in this short post. These thoughts came to me as I was thinking this morning about career selection and the economics of career growth. Standard weekend morning […]

Gear hell is real. I really enjoyed my first backpacking trip several weeks ago, but my setup was all wrong. I was using a 36L backpack because that’s the largest I owned and I had heard it was just large enough that some people use it for backpacking. In retrospect, I’m convinced that only serious […]

We’ve probably all heard it before: “Every dollar counts”. And so every dollar does count. But does every cent count, too? How far does this way of thinking really go? If you are one of the ultra-rich, earning a million dollars a year, does every dollar still count to you? In a way, dollars only […]

Back in college, I had a friend who asked for some help moving heavier objects at his parents’ house, so I volunteered. It was a very spacious house, very nice, and I believe I made a comment about it and how well everything seemed to fit into place. My friend’s parents were a little sheepish […]

For both my previous car and my current car, I’ve purchased K&N reusable performance air filters. What makes them “performance” is that they apparently let more air in, which gives more power to the engine, in theory. In general, I have found my cars more responsive using these air filters, but I can’t say with […]

I used to read a lot. I saw it as a sort of educational salvation, a path to enlightenment or greatness. It was also very much an addiction, and probably the greatest distraction in my life. My journals have been absolutely littered with references of wanting to escape books. One time at church we went […]