"Life is 10% What Happens to Me and 90% How I React to It"

One of my all time favorite quotes, by Chuck Swindol:

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company...a church...a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past...we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you. We are in charge of our attitudes.

Questions: How might differences in our attitude affect the cognitive costs of dealing with difficult issues in life? How do they affect our gratitude, which in turn affects our happiness? Our openness to new experiences? Our overall contentment? How can studying economics help our attitude?

(Photo and quote via Lifehacker)

Why You Should Study Statistics

(via Dilbert.com)

Tenure Track at Marymount University!

I just accepted a full-time tenure-track position as an Assistant Professor of Economics at Marymount University here in Arlington, VA.  Got my office this past week and classes start on Tuesday.  As part of my responsibilities, I will be director of Marymount's Economics in Society undergraduate program.  It seems a perfect match on many levels.

The position is heavily oriented toward teaching.  To make this position even sweeter, the university is a 10-minute walk from home.  The Economics in Society program also seems a perfect match to my academic training and research interests in economics of religion, law and economics, and public choice.

This first semester, I will also continue to adjunct at Catholic University -- teaching two courses at Marymount (Principles of Macroeconomics and Business and Economics of Sports) and two courses at Catholic (Principles of Microeconomics and Quantitative Methods for Decision Making).  I expect it to be a busy and wonderful semester.

Getting this position at Marymount in many ways a dream come true for me.  This is exactly the type of job I was hoping for when I entered GMU's PhD program in the exact location I hoped to stay in.  I am deeply grateful and profoundly elated.

Merry Christmas!

Wishing all my readers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Rest In Peace, Steve Jobs

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. 

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” 

- Steve Jobs at the Stanford University commencement address in 2005 (via Cult of Mac)

Below is the video of Jobs giving the speech where these quotes come from.  (Highly recommended viewing.)



And another video tribute remembering some of Jobs' greatest presentations:



More of Steve Jobs in his own words:

• “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.” 
• “When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. 
• “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Additional quotes after the link.


Below is a roundup of obituaries from around the web:

• WSJ: Apple’s Steve Jobs is Dead
• Bloomberg: Steve Jobs, Who Built World’s Most Valuable Technology Company, Dies at 56
• Reuters: A world without Steve Jobs
• AP: The World-Changer: Steve Jobs knew what he wanted
• ThisIsMyNext: Steve Jobs: 1955-2011
• Los Angeles Times: Steve Jobs dies; Apple’s co-founder transformed computers and culture
• BoingBoing: Steve Jobs has died
• People: Steve Jobs, Apple’s Visionary, Dies
• The Guardian: Steve Jobs obituary
• The New York Times: Steve Jobs, Apple’s Visionary, Dies at 56
• The Financial Times: Apple: Jobs done but magic lingers
• PCWorld: Apple Chairman Steve Jobs Dead at 56
• The Economist: Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs, you sought to "put a dent in the universe" and you succeeded.  You will be missed.