Saturday, February 6, 2016
Fifty years ago......................
The Sandpipers..................................................Guantanamera
Friday, February 5, 2016
Ouch.........................
Methinks Spengler is not a big fan of The Donald:
"Trumpelstiltskin, meanwhile, has revealed a side of his character that voters hitherto have ignored, or even admired in a perverse way. He inherited wealth and ran a private company the way he wanted to, saying what he wanted and hiring and firing whom he pleased, without answering to partners, shareholders or the general public.
"He is not a particularly good businessman; had he invested his inheritance in a stock-market index fund, his net worth would be double what it is today. But the psychic rewards of unrestricted narcissism more than compensated for the unperformance of his portfolio."
Pretty sure Spengler is rooting for Cruz. Full post here.
Fifty years ago...........................
Dean Jackson...................Love Makes The World Go Around
Hey old woman, have you ever danced.......?
.....................................story here. Moral here:
1 – Never be arrogant.
2 – Don’t waste ammunition.
3 – Whiskey makes you think you’re smarter than
you are.
4 – Always make sure you know who has the
power.
5 – Don’t mess with old people; they didn’t get old
by being stupid.
Thursday, February 4, 2016
I'll ask the stars above....................
Jeff Healey...........................................................Angel Eyes
Jeff Healey wiki here
thanks jetboy
About commerce.......................
Politics endures, but human action evolves. We learn.
And what are we learning? How to take care of one another, which is the point of what we sometimes call capitalism. (Don't tell Ayn Rand.)
It is remarkable that we speak and think about commerce as though competitiveness were its most important feature. There is, as noted, a certain Darwinian aspect to economic competition - and of course we humans do in fact compete over scarce resources. But what is remarkable about human action is not its competitiveness but its almost limitless cooperativeness. Competition is only one of the ways that we learn how best to cooperate with one another - competition is a means to the higher end of social cooperation.
-Kevin D. Williamson, The End Is Near And It's Going To Be Awesome: How Going Broke Will Leave America Richer, Happier, and More Secure
Raise your hand..................
..................if you have ever "flipped" a Monopoly board because of the "obnoxious" behavior of one of your game mates. Hmm. Okay, raise your hand if any of your game mates has ever "flipped" the Monopoly board on you.
Interesting post here (Crazy Math Fact #8 out of 9) about whether all spaces on a Monopoly board should be considered "equal". Note the fine print at the bottom of this slide:
Spoiler alert (too late):
thanks Craig
Fifty years ago.......................
The Ray Conniff Singers.......................Somewhere My Love
On random walks..................
 |
| Hidden Galaxy IC 342 |
"There are very few straight paths in the universe, but an endless supply of random walks."
-Kevin Williamson
photo, with description, via
We, the people................
Megan McArdle suggests:
The first, most glaring problem is that people complaining about Washington are quite often demanding the impossible.
- They want Washington to grow the economy or the job market a lot, which no one in Washington actually knows how to do.
- They want Washington to collect less in taxes, without cutting any significant programs or borrowing money. (Or they want more programs, with taxes to stay the same on everyone except “the rich,” conveniently defined as anyone who makes 20 percent more than the person issuing the demands.)
- They want Washington make all the other countries in the world behave themselves, without getting any Americans killed in the process.
- They want Washington to ignore most of the rest of the country and just concentrate on their problems, and the problems of people they like.
Washingtonians, unlike the people making the demands, actually have to analyze the feasibility of these various sorts of requests. When they do, they quickly see that they are impossible, and set about finding innovative ways to ignore them.
Or, as our old friend Walt Kelly would say:
Wednesday, February 3, 2016
Designs................................
What follows is neither a political manifesto nor a plan for building a utopian society. To the contrary, I will argue, among other things that the desire to design a perfect society in theory is one of the main obstacles to achieving a better society in fact, and that the very desire to design human communities is itself destructive. The fundamental political problem is politics itself: not liberal politics, not conservative politics, not politics corrupted by big money or distorted by special-interest groups, but politics per se - the practice of delivering critical goods and services through the medium of federal, state, and local governments and their obsolete decision-making practices.
-Kevin D. Williamson, The End Is Near And It's Going To Be Awesome: How Going Broke Will Leave America Richer, Happier, and More Secure
A depersonalized cog..............
Third, I opposed communism's political totalitarianism. In communism the individual ends up in subjection to the state. True, the Marxist would argue that the state is an "interim" reality which is to be eliminated when the classless society emerges; but the state is the end while it lasts, and man only a means to that end. And if any man's so-called rights or liberties stand in the way of that end, they are simply swept aside. His liberties of expression, his freedom to vote, his freedom to listen to what news he likes or to choose his books are all restricted. Man becomes hardly more, in communism, that a depersonalized cog in the turning wheel of the state.
-Martin Luther King, Jr., as excerpted from here
Aspirations............................
With apologies to the sainted Thomas Jefferson, there are few if any truths that we may hold to be self-evident. The words of the Declaration of Independence are both beautiful and inspiring, but to believe that we may find within them the answers to our present difficulties is to be a hostage to sentimentality. The Declaration of Independence is a statement of our aspirations, not a description of our reality. Good poetry makes bad politics.
-Kevin D. Williamson, The End Is Near And It's Going To Be Awesome: How Going Broke Will Leave America Richer, Happier, and More Secure
Lest we forget.....................
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.
-Full text of the Declaration of Independence is here
Fifty years ago.........................
Brenda Lee....................................................Coming On Strong
Opening paragraphs..............
It was at Harvard University in 1927 that I first decided to go into politics.
No, I wasn't a Harvard man. But I was born and raised in North Cambridge, Massachusetts, a stable, mostly Irish, working-class neighborhood a mile or two from the university. At the age of fourteen, I landed a summer job as a groundskeeper, cutting the grass and trimming the hedges at Harvard. It was tough work, and I was paid seventeen cents an hour.
On a beautiful June day, as I was going about my daily grind, the class of 1927 gathered in a huge canvas tent to celebrate commencement. Inside, I could see hundreds of young men standing around in their white linen suits, laughing and talking. The were also drinking champagne, which was illegal in 1927 because of Prohibition.
I remember the scene like it was yesterday, and I can still feel the anger I felt then, almost sixty years ago, as I write these words. It was the illegal champagne that really annoyed me. Who the hell do these people think they are, I said to myself, that the law means nothing to them?
-Tip O'Neill, with William Novak, The Man Of The House: The Life and Political Memoirs of Speaker Tip O'Neill
Tuesday, February 2, 2016
We don't always post thirty-three minute songs on this blog, but when we do..................
The Allman Brothers......................................Mountain Jam
Complexity as a subsidy..................
"I definitely think the system is designed in a way that benefits rich people (that’s a significant theme of the book I’m working on), but that has not much to do with the preferred policies of a bunch of mustache-twirling fat cats. Indeed, the whole notion that rich people are ideologically homogenous is little more than the grimy, greasy, stain left behind from Marxism’s departure down the toilet bowl of history. There are rich people -- and some big corporations -- that are for limited government and there are rich people -- and far too many big corporations -- that want to expand the role of government.
"My very short, partial, explanation for why the system seems rigged for the benefit of rich people has to do with the fact that complexity is a subsidy. The more rules and regulations the government creates, the more it creates a society where people with resources -- good educations, good lawyers, good lobbyists, and good connections -- can rise while those without such resources are left to climb hurdles on their own."
-Jonah Goldberg, as excerpted from here
Making it up as he went along................
...Shakespeare accelerated his pace as his career proceeded. In plays written during his most productive and inventive period - Macbeth, Hamlet, Lear - neologisms occur at the fairly astonishing rate of one every two and a half lines. Hamlet alone gave audiences about six hundred words, that according to all other evidence, they had never heard before.
Among the words first found in Shakespeare are abstemious, antipathy, critical, frugal, dwindle, extract, horrid, vast, hereditary, excellent, barefaced, assassination, lonely, leapfrog, indistinguishable, well-read, zany, and countless others (including countless). Where would we be without them? He was particularly prolific, as David Crystal points out, when it came to attaching un- prefixes to words to make new words that no one had thought of before - unmask, unhand, unlock, untie, unveil, and no fewer that 309 others in a similar vein. Consider how helplessly prolix the alternatives to any of these terms are and you appreciate how much punch Shakespeare gave English.
-Bill Bryson, Shakespeare: The World as Stage
Fifty years ago................
Robert Parker...................................................Barefootin'
On ends and means.....................
"Constructive ends can never give absolute moral justification to destructive means, because in the final analysis the end is preexisting in the mean."
-Martin Luther King, Jr., as excerpted from here
Monday, February 1, 2016
Not successfully (or painlessly) anyway.......
"I don't think you can impose a social order from the top down."
-David Douglas Duncan
Visit here to see a bunch of Duncan's photographic work
Fifty years ago....................
The Count Five.......................................Psychotic Reaction
Change...........................
Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.
-Rumi
via
Opening paragraphs.............
I usually trust my instincts. This time I did not, which almost proved fatal. The day was pure Jamaica in February, the sun brilliant overhead, the air soft with only the hint of an afternoon thundershower. Perfect flying weather, as we boarded the UH-1 helicopter. My wife, Alma, and I were visiting the island of my parents' birth at the invitation of Prime Minister Michael Manley. Manley had been after me for a year, ever since the Gulf War. "Get some rest, dear boy," he had said in that compelling lilt the last time he had called. "Come home, if only for a few days. Stay at our government guesthouse." This time I accepted with pleasure.
-Colin Powell (with Joseph E. Persico), My American Journey
Sunday, January 31, 2016
Simpler times....................
The Champs................................................................Tequila
Posture.........................
"He came to conclude that the way to inner joy is not through agency and action, it's through surrender and receptivity to God. The point, according to this view, is to surrender, or at least suppress, your will, your ambition, your desire to achieve victory on your own. The point is to acknowledge that God is the chief driver here and that he already has a plan for you. God already has truths he wants you to live by."
"The implied posture here is one of submission, arms high, wide open and outstretched, face tilted up, eyes gazing skyward, calm with patient but passionate waiting. Augustine wants you to adopt this sort of surrendered posture. That posture flows from an awareness of need, of one's own insufficiency. Only God has the power to order your inner world, not you. Only God has the power to orient your desires and reshape your emotions, not you.
This posture of receptiveness, for Augustine and much Christian thought since, starts with the feeling of smallness and sinfulness one gets next to the awesome presence of God. Humility comes with daily reminders of your own brokenness. Humility relieves you of the awful stress of trying to be superior all the time. It inverts our attention and elevates the things we tend to look down on."
"But in Christianity, at least in its ideal form, the sublime is not in the prestigious and the lofty but in the everyday and the lowly. It is in the washing of feet, not in triumphal arches. Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled. Whoever humbles himself shall be exalted. One goes down in order to rise up. As Augustine put it, 'Where there's humility, there's majesty; where there's weakness, there's might; where there's death, there's life. If you want to get these things, don't disdain those.'"
-David Brooks, as excerpted from his chapter, Ordered Love, in his book, The Road to Character
Sage advice........................
Don't be a crank. Push back against the cranks. They will never be happy, or have a good time. Carpe diem.
-the rest of the story - here.
Fifty years ago (sort of)....................
The Marvelettes..........The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game
Purists will note, but likely not care, that this was recorded on December 27, 1966, and not was not released until 1967. Full story here.
Fear not............................
Purely for distraction I reached (painfully) for the Good Book. It fell open at one of the young nurse’s bookmarks: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, …”
the rest of the story - here.
The message............................
“By living in a spirit of forgiveness we not only uphold the core value of citizenship but also find the path to social membership that we need. Happiness does not come from the pursuit of pleasure, nor is it guaranteed by freedom, it comes from sacrifice. That is the message of the christian religion and it is the message that is conveyed by all the memorable works of our culture. It is the message that has been lost in the noise of repudiation, but which it seems to me can be heard once again if we devote our energies to retrieving it. And in the Christian tradition the primary act of sacrifice is forgiveness. The one who forgives sacrifices vengeance and renounces thereby a part of himself for the sake of another.”
-Roger Scruton
Snowmen.....................
Friend Bilbo offers ten snowman cartoons, but with nary a Calvin and Hobbes entry. We can fix that, right here.
Wishing you a very merry Unbirthday......
Alice In Wonderland..............................The Unbirthday Song
MARCH HARE: A very merry unbirthday to me
MAD HATTER: To who?
MARCH HARE: To me
MAD HATTER: Oh you!
MARCH HARE: A very merry unbirthday to you
MAD HATTER: Who me?
MARCH HARE: Yes, you!
MAD HATTER: Oh, me!
MARCH HARE: Let's all congratulate us with another cup of tea. A very merry unbirthday to you!
.........
MAD HATTER: Now, statistics prove, prove that you've one birthday
MARCH HARE: Imagine, just one birthday every year
MAD HATTER: Ah, but there are three hundred and sixty four unbirthdays!
MARCH HARE: Precisely why we're gathered here to cheer
BOTH: A very merry unbirthday to you, to you
ALICE: To me?
MAD HATTER: To you!
BOTH: A very merry unbirthday
ALICE: For me?
MARCH HARE: For you!
MAD HATTER: Now blow the candle out my dear. And make your wish come true
BOTH: A merry merry unbirthday to you!
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