January 7, 2008
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Why I don’t read the Wilson Quarterly
The whole credit info thing has made some headway. The other day, I was talking with my buddy Arcenis on the matter, and having worked in a bank, he had A LOT of insight on how the system worked, and juts how screwed up it is. Some of the stuff was pretty straight forward, but a good chunk surprised me. If you’ve got a myspace, bother him to go and write a post. Also, if you know of any openings in the financial world that pay well, he may be interested. Anyway, on to the real post.
I subscribe to a lot of magazines. Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, EGM, Handguns, etc. There are only a few instances in which I have let a subscription sunset, especially since, due to me jumping on deals like “$20 for 36 issues,” I have subscriptions that do not expire until 2011. Men’s Journal was one of those. It was as though a lot of the stuff was targeted WAY out of the range of what I was able to do. I didn’t need to hear about $5,000 watches from a $5 magazine. And there were all these places that they went to that I wasn’t about to move to any time in the foreseeable future.
Another magazine that I let cancel was the Wilson Quarterly (WQ), which, as its name states, is published 4 times a year. I originally subscribed to it after receiving a mailing for it (probably because I subscribed to Discover Magazine or Popular Science). My problem with the magazine was simple: it was too smart for me.
Those of you who know me would say that I’m a smart guy. I pick up concepts quickly, I can hold wonderful discussions, and many would consider this blog at least moderately well written, with only the occasional typo (if I were getting paid for this, I’d hire an editor, or at least proofread more).
What tipped me off that I may have been in way over my head was the first issue. I had started reading what I thought was an interesting article. It was written by a guy with his PhD, and was talking about something that had been written in the previous issue, and I believe that he mentioned something about the studies he was currently doing. It was about a page, maybe a page and a half long, and very well written. However, this was only the “Letters to the Editor” section. In the other magazines I read, the “Letters to the Editor” generally consist of comments like “Dude, I liked the article about [workout plan or celebrity name] when last month. it was awesome,” (Men’s Health). Yeah, the people that wrote in to comment in WQ were way above my level.
Here’s a link to an article on global warming. Now, I’m pretty sure that you can follow it. Here are two quotes: “The inherent unknowability
of what would happen if we tried to tinker with the immensely complex
planetary climate system is one reason why climate engineering has until
recently been spoken of only sotto voce in the scientific community,” and “As the sole historian at the NASA conference, I may
have been alone in my appreciation of the irony that we were meeting on the
site of an old U.S. Navy airfield literally in the shadow of the huge
hangar that once housed the ill-starred Navy dirigible U.S.S. Macon.“Reading this now, I guess that’s why it’s published quarterly. Look at the length of just this one article. You need the 3 months just to get through the magazine, and actually comprehend and research what you are reading. I normally go through 2-3 magazines an hour. My brain was probably overloading.
If Einstein were struck by lightning, and instantly lost half of his intelligence, would you be able to tell? Of course not. He was that far above us. Well, this magazine is the Einstein of magazines for me. If you feel like a genius reading Popular Science, maybe you should pick up a copy of the Wilson Quarterly, and take yourself down a peg.
Black 6, out.
