Slope of Hope Blog Posts

Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.

Loathing in Las Vegas

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I'm not a very good hedonist, I guess.

Here I am in Las Vegas, and to my way of thinking, everything I hate about the human race is conveniently compressed into one tidy package.

And I ask myself: what's my problem? Why do I let places like this get to me so much? I mean, after all, why should I care what other people do with their time and their lives? What business is it of mine?

Well, it's none of my business, of course. The whole human race could wallow around in whatever it wants, and as long as it doesn't adversely affect me or the people about whom I care, it really shouldn't matter. And, on the whole, this is the state of affairs, because I have designed my life in a tidy little bubble and need not trouble myself with such thoughts.

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Zuck’s World

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Since I'm kind of tied up for the trading day, I figured I'd write a post about Facebook's headquarters as an interesting anecdote post. After all, FB's founder lives just a few blocks from me, and the headquarters of his firm is just a short bike ride from here. What lies between here and there is kind of interesting.

Look at the map below. The blue arrow denotes where Mark lives. It's a nice house, but I imagine many of you reading this live in something nicer (here in the Silicon Valley, we try to be understated – – even 27-year old zillionaires). Crescent Park is one of the two "rich" neighborhoods in Palo Alto (the other being Old Palo Alto, not shown here). Another nice zone is Lindenwood, marked with the purple arrow (it's kind of obviously a nice part of town – in this case, Menlo Park – because the distance between the streets is much greater). 

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