February 1. A few months ago I thought Donald Trump was a joke, and now I see him as an unstoppable juggernaut. Read this month old reddit comment about Trump's mastery of the media. I would go farther and say he has an intuitive understanding of mass psychology, and he's been laying the foundation for this run since the the 1990's. Because he has established a persona where people already expect him to say ridiculous things, he's gaffe-proof. Other candidates have to walk a tightrope between boring the voters and alienating them, while Trump is walking a highway where he can be popular and offensive at the same time. Somehow he can play the strong leader and play the clown. You can read more about Trump's powers in several smart posts on Scott Adams' blog.
Assuming it's Trump against Clinton in November, I see this as a repeat of 1996, where Trump is Bill Clinton, polarizing but charismatic, and Hillary is Bob Dole: unlikeable and unlucky. And Trump can easily rebrand himself as a moderate, because he has a long history of being a moderate before he talked like an extremist to win the primaries.
I don't think President Trump would ruin America, or save it. I would expect him to propose a bunch of simple-minded reforms, let congress rework them to fit the system, and where the reforms work he'll take credit, and where they fail he'll blame congress. The big doom scenario is if there's some disaster that shuts down congress, Trump takes temporary unchecked power, it goes to his head, and he doesn't give it up.
February 5. Last month my restless legs syndrome was really acting up. It's like an itch in my leg muscles that I can "scratch" by vigorously moving them. If you have it and you want a cure, try high-CBD marijuana edibles. I don't want a cure, because leg strength is correlated with brain fitness, and I can spend a half hour a night doing one-legged squats and heel lifts, not because of self-discipline, but because I have an overwhelming urge to do so.
If only I had an overwhelming urge to write novels or play music. We imagine that highly successful people have some kind of magical virtue, when really they have various restless syndromes that compel them to do things that other people happen to find valuable.
February 15. I love this short piece about How to Raise a Creative Child. The author starts with the observation that child prodigies tend to fizzle as adults because they were learning success on their parents' terms, instead of learning creativity. Then he drops this bomb:
One study compared the families of children who were rated among the most creative five percent in their school system with those who were not unusually creative. The parents of ordinary children had an average of six rules, like specific schedules for homework and bedtime. Parents of highly creative children had an average of fewer than one rule.
Also on the subject of creativity, Why Quantity Should be Your Priority. I've seen the anecdote about the ceramics class before, where students who were graded on quantity cranked out hundreds of pieces and eventually did much better work than students who were graded on quality and did only a few pieces. I doubt that it actually happened, but it would happen, and I would explain it like this: When you do work in the physical world, you learn things you could never learn by doing the work in your head.