What I’m Reading: “The Allure of Protective Stupidity”

I insist that any manuscript sent to me for review be clearly written. And I use a device called the FK (Flesch-Kincaid), Readability Tool, to mandate that. (The FK score is an algorithm that measures complexity of vocabulary and sentence structure.) I do it because I want to avoid reading text burdened with one of the most common writerly mistakes: weak and confused thinking.

As George Orwell said, “If you simplify your English… when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself.”

Here’s an interesting essay on how Orwell anticipated the language policing that is so popular among leftists today.

The latest issue of Independent Healing

“The Truth Behind Cannabis Marketing Hype”

10 Conditions That CBD and Marijuana Can Effectively Treat… and 5 Others They Can’t

The Story of English by Robert McCrum, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil is a readable encyclopedic history of the English language. It is well written and includes as much history of England as it does of English itself. I’m enjoying it. I will spend years reading it, I think.

What I’m Reading… James Altucher is a very impressive guy. But two things impress me most: his ability to absorb not just knowledge but wisdom – fast. And his relentless drive to improve his life.

A Letter I Would Send to My Teenage Self

By James Altucher

What I’m Reading: 

I have often made this argument in conversation but never in print. Had I tried I could not have done as well. 

All the World on Stage

By Theodore Dalrymple in Taki’s Magazine

http://takimag.com/article/unfit-to-a-t