{"id":411,"date":"2017-05-02T11:30:21","date_gmt":"2017-05-02T16:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/schlaff.com\/wp\/?p=411"},"modified":"2018-09-07T19:54:27","modified_gmt":"2018-09-07T23:54:27","slug":"high-fidelity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/schlaff.com\/wp\/high-fidelity\/","title":{"rendered":"Inertia or “How Did I Get Here?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is one of my favorite quotes from Nick Hornby’s book High Fidelity<\/a>:<\/p>\n

You see those pictures of people in Pompeii and you think, how weird: one quick game of dice after your tea and you\u2019re frozen, and that\u2019s how people remember you for the next few thousand years. Suppose it was the first game of dice you\u2019ve ever played? Suppose you were only doing it to keep your friend Augustus company? Suppose you\u2019d just at that moment finished a brilliant poem or something? Wouldn\u2019t it be annoying to be commemorated as a dice player? Sometimes I look at my shop (because I haven\u2019t let the grass grow under my feet the last fourteen years! About ten years ago I borrowed the money to start my own!), and at my regular Saturday punters, and I know exactly how those inhabitants of Pompeii must feel, if they could feel anything (although the fact that they can\u2019t is kind of the point of them). I\u2019m stuck in this pose, this shop-managing pose, forever, because of a few short weeks in 1979 when I went a bit potty for a while. It could be worse, I guess; I could have walked into an army recruiting office, or the nearest abattoir.<\/p>\n

In the past I totally know what he meant. These days, I’m feeling pretty good!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is one of my favorite quotes from Nick Hornby’s book High Fidelity: You see those pictures of people in Pompeii and you think, how weird: one quick game of dice after your tea and you\u2019re frozen, and that\u2019s how people remember you for the next few thousand years. Suppose it was the first game […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[51,52],"class_list":["post-411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-audiobooks","tag-quotes","tag-wisdom"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8wCkz-6D","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":463,"url":"https:\/\/schlaff.com\/wp\/nontransitive-dice\/","url_meta":{"origin":411,"position":0},"title":"Nontransitive Dice","author":"Robert Schlaff","date":"June 3, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"I\u2019d always thought of dice as being fair. Like flipping a coin, I\u2019d assumed that a throw of the dice was random. Then I learned about nontransitive dice and it blew my mind. Nontransistive dice are a set of dice that don\u2019t behave in the normal way. Even though each\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Fun Stuff"","block_context":{"text":"Fun Stuff","link":"https:\/\/schlaff.com\/wp\/category\/fun-stuff\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/schlaff.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/dice_illustration-768x858-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/schlaff.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/dice_illustration-768x858-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/schlaff.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/dice_illustration-768x858-1.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/schlaff.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/dice_illustration-768x858-1.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":461,"url":"https:\/\/schlaff.com\/wp\/edward-thorpe\/","url_meta":{"origin":411,"position":1},"title":"A Man for All Markets by Edward Thorpe","author":"Robert Schlaff","date":"May 29, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I finished listening to A Man for All Markets. It's an amazing book on a number of fronts. \u00a0Here's a few of the impressive bits: There's a lot of people who write memoirs like this that seem a bit over the top. But Thorpe is a bit of an over\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books \/ Audiobooks"","block_context":{"text":"Books \/ Audiobooks","link":"https:\/\/schlaff.com\/wp\/category\/books-audiobooks\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11288,"url":"https:\/\/schlaff.com\/wp\/who-really-said-that\/","url_meta":{"origin":411,"position":2},"title":"Who Really Said That?","author":"Robert Schlaff","date":"August 10, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"\u201cThe definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.\u201d \u2013 Albert Einstein We\u2019ve all heard that quote. At meetings. In self-help books. On motivational posters in office break rooms. It exemplifies Einstein\u2019s legendary cut-to-the-chase brilliance. The only problem is, Einstein didn\u2019t say\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Ideas"","block_context":{"text":"Ideas","link":"https:\/\/schlaff.com\/wp\/category\/ideas\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11316,"url":"https:\/\/schlaff.com\/wp\/a-short-history-of-thinking-on-paper\/","url_meta":{"origin":411,"position":3},"title":"A Short History of Thinking on Paper","author":"Robert Schlaff","date":"August 3, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"I love notebooks. I love the ritual of pulling out my Leuchtturm Bullet Journal and pretending\u2014for a few minutes each day\u2014that I\u2019m a nineteenth-century poet in a French cage, writing up my deep and progound thoughts. Most of the time, it\u2019s my work list and reminders for my kids\u2019 homework.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books \/ Audiobooks"","block_context":{"text":"Books \/ Audiobooks","link":"https:\/\/schlaff.com\/wp\/category\/books-audiobooks\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10947,"url":"https:\/\/schlaff.com\/wp\/stay-human-stay-foolish\/","url_meta":{"origin":411,"position":4},"title":"Stay Human, Stay Foolish","author":"Robert Schlaff","date":"April 5, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Here are two quotes from commencement speeches: \u201cYour time is limited, so don\u2019t waste it living someone else\u2019s life.\u201d \u2014 Steve Jobs Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement, 2005Full Video \u201cYou\u2019re not the cold clay lump with a big belly you leave behind when you die. You\u2019re not your collection of walking\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Life Lessons"","block_context":{"text":"Life Lessons","link":"https:\/\/schlaff.com\/wp\/category\/life-management\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":550,"url":"https:\/\/schlaff.com\/wp\/the-halo-effect\/","url_meta":{"origin":411,"position":5},"title":"The Halo Effect by Phil Rosenzweig","author":"Robert Schlaff","date":"January 15, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Have you ever had a thought that the whole world was crazy? That there was something so painfully obvious that you couldn't believe everyone was missing? For me, it was the idea that all business books had the same plot: Let me tell you about this new business theory I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books \/ Audiobooks"","block_context":{"text":"Books \/ Audiobooks","link":"https:\/\/schlaff.com\/wp\/category\/books-audiobooks\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/schlaff.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/schlaff.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/schlaff.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schlaff.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schlaff.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/schlaff.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":414,"href":"https:\/\/schlaff.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions\/414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/schlaff.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schlaff.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schlaff.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}