Why and what...........................?

     Many people at the time of the September crisis thought they were only giving away the interests of Czechoslovakia, but with every month that passes you will see that they were also giving away the interests of Britain, and the interests of peace and justice.  Now I have defended this speech which has been attacked, and I say never did I make a truer statement to Parliament.  Practically everything that I said has already been proved true.  And who are these people who go about saying that even if it were true, why state the facts?  I reply, why mislead the nation?  What is the use of Parliament if it is not the place where true statements can be brought before the people?  What is the use of sending Members to the House of Commons who say just the popular things of the moment, and merely endeavor to give satisfaction to Government Whips by cheering loudly every Ministerial platitude, and by walking through the Lobbies oblivious of the criticisms they hear?  People talk about our Parliamentary institutions and Parliamentary democracy; but if these are to survive it will not be because the Constituencies return tame, docile, subservient Members, and try to stamp out every form of independent judgment.

-Winston Churchill, from a March, 1939 speech

Gone, but not forgotten..................

..................................Keith Jackson, one of the great voices of college football, has passed.

 

Fifty years ago..........................

Dionne Warwick..........................................Valley Of The Dolls

We are having some weather tonight.....

"Beware the man who takes the weather personally."

-Ol' Remus

It's a comforting thought, actually........

via

I can't be the only one...............

......................that misses all the goings-on at Sippican Cottage.  Please come back.  A healthy Intertunnel needs you.

All other things being equal...................

....................I'm 97% sure that I prefer global warming to global cooling.   My favorite optimist has the story.  A few cherry-picked quotes:

" If we aspire to keep the show on the road for another 10,000 years, we will have to understand ice ages."

“winter storms are a manifestation of winter, not climate change”.

"All of human civilisation happened in an interglacial period, with a relatively stable climate, plentiful rainfall and high enough levels of carbon dioxide to allow the vigorous growth of plants. Agriculture was probably impossible before then, and without its hugely expanded energy supply, none of the subsequent flowering of human culture would have happened.

"That interglacial will end."

About value................................

The contemporary land-bank projectors, who wanted to replace a gold-backed currency with one supported by the value of land, even realised that the notion of "intrinsic value" was an oxymoron, since "intrinsic" suggested an inward quality, while "value" was always external.  For instance, Nicholas Barbon argued that "things have no Value in themselves, it is opinion and fashion which brings them into use and gives them a value."

-Edward Chancellor,  Devil Take The Hindmost:  A History of Financial Speculation

Ed. Note:  Spell check keeps telling me "realised" is incorrect.  Perhaps not.

Wants vs. Needs...................

"It is not Necessity that causeth the Consumption, Nature may be Satisfied with little; but it is the wants of the Mind, Fashion, and desire of Novelties, and Things scarce, that causeth Trade. A Person may have English-Lace, Gloves, or Silk, as much as he wants, and will Buy no more such; and yet, lay out his Mony on a Point of Venice, Jessimine-Gloves, or French-Silks; he may desire to Eat Westphalia-Bacon, when he will not English; so that, the Prohibition of Forreign Wares, does not necessarily cause a greater Consumption of the like sort of English. Besides, There is the same wants of the Mind in Foreigners, as in the English; they desire Novelties; they Value English-Cloth, Hats, and Gloves, and Foreign Goods, more than their Native make."

-Nicholas Barbon  (Only follow the link if you want to be truly amazed by a middle name.  There is no accounting for parents.)  Barbon's quote above was found here.

Fifty years ago.................................

On the TV............................................................The Mod Squad

Opening paragraphs.......................

When the first man woke up that morning, he wasn't thinking about killing anyone.  He woke up with a head full of blues, a brain that was too big for his skull, and a bladder about to burst.  He lay with his eyes closed, breathing across a tongue that tasted like burnt chicken feathers.  The blues rolled in through the bedroom door.
     Coming down hard.

-John Sandford,  Easy Prey

Was this really published in..................

.............................................................the Washington Post?

"... — always wrong but nonetheless repeated so often as to take on the appearance of truth — ..."

"Despite the media circus surrounding the salacious but questionable allegations in Wolff’s book, most Trump supporters don’t care. Nor do they care much about the very public row between the president and Bannon. They care about what the president and his administration can do for them. They support Trump because he articulated and, increasingly, is enacting an agenda they believe will improve their lives and secure the future peace and prosperity of the country. It’s that simple."

It could be that.........................

............I'm just a poor line-switcher, but I too find this rings true:

via

Fifty years ago................................

At the movies....................................................2001: A Space Odyssey 

I wonder if Scott Adams agrees........

"Words which are on proper occasions the most powerful engines lose their weight and power and values when they are not backed by fact or winged by truth, when they are obviously the expression of a strong feeling, and are not related in any way to the actual facts of the situation."

-Winston Churchill, from a 1926 speech in the House of Commons

David Warren asks..................

Is it alright to express outrage against excessive displays of outrage?

Feel free to read his whole post, but I suspect his answer is:

 Anger may serve to inspire us to action, but makes a poor formulator of tactics. 

Have you hugged a fracker lately...........?

via

Fifty years ago........................

In the news...................January 10, 1968 Surveyor 7 "soft lands" on the moon.   The seventh and final Surveyor mission, setting the stage for Neil Armstrong's first step onto the moon.

Surveyor 7 model

"Tycho" crater, the target for Surveyor 7 (landed just north)

zen parenting............................

"The first time I fell in love" recalled the Seeker, "my dad's reaction was an amused 'Fine, now go mow the lawn,'"..

-The Monks of New Skete,  In The Spirit of Happiness

Am I the only one ...................

.......................who thinks that most of the the problems we create in trying to solve problems we've created - or otherwise encounter - are caused by our confusion over "time frames"?

"People will be right for the wrong reasons and wrong for the right reasons but markets don’t care about these things over shorter time frames. Over any given year a great process can produce subpar results while a terrible (or no) process can produce phenomenal results. Bad decisions get rewarded all the time but luck doesn’t last forever in the markets. Eventually a good decision-making process will win out but over a one-year time frame anything can happen."

-Ben Carlson, as culled from this smart list of ten things investors can expect in 2018.

On civility and open-mindedness......

Tim Harford offers a check-list for the art of disagreement:

1.   Take five minutes before responding. Walk around the block.
2.   Don’t argue to win, argue to learn.
3.   Avoid people who fan flames.
4.   Don’t feel you have to weigh in on every topic.
5.   If your peers demand you weigh in, ponder your choice of peers.
6.   Seek out thoughtful people who disagree with you. Listen.
7.   Examine your own emotional responses.
8.   Summarise your opponents’ arguments fairly and thoughtfully.

Gone, but not forgotten.....................

Ray Thomas............................................................For My Lady

So much for my history degree..............

The one wholly true thought one can hold about the past is that it is not here.  To think about it at all is therefore to think about illusions.

-The Course In Miracles,  Workbook: Lesson 8

Fifty years ago............................

Vanilla Fudge...................................You Keep Me Hangin' On

 

a Utopian yearning............

     The spirit of speculation is anarchic, irreverent, and antihierarchic.  It loves freedom, detests cant, and abhors restrictions.  From the tulip Colleges of the seventeenth century to the Internet investment clubs of the late twentieth century, speculation has established itself as the most demotic of economic activities.  Although profoundly secular, speculation is not simply about greed.  The essence of speculation remains a Utopian yearning for freedom and equality which counterbalances the drab rationalistic materialism of the modern economic system with its inevitable inequalities of wealth.  Throughout its many manifestations, the speculative mania has always been, and remains to this day, the Carnival of Capitalism, a "Feast of Fools."

-Edward Chancellor, Devil Take The Hindmost:  A History Of Financial Speculation

Learned a new word today..............

Tulip mania.........................

Sounds like fun..............................

     No actual delivery of tulips took place during the height of the boom in late 1636 and early 1637 as the bulbs remained snug in the ground.  A market in tulip futures appeared, known as the windhandel (the wind trade):  sellers promised to deliver a bulb of a certain type and weight the following spring, buyers took the right to delivery - in the meantime, cash settlement could be made for any difference in market price.  Most transactions were expedited with personal credit notes which also fell due in the spring when the bulbs would be dug up and delivered.  Gaergoedt boasts of having made 60,000 guilders from his tulip speculations but admits that he has only received "other people's writing."  By the later stages of the mania the fusion of the windhandel with paper credit created a perfect symmetry of insubstantiality:  most transactions were for tulip bulbs that could never be delivered because they didn't exist and were paid for with credit notes that could never be honoured because the  money wasn't there.

Edward Chancellor,  Devil Take The Hindmost:  A History Of Financial Speculation

Opening paragraphs.........................

     The propensity to barter and exchange is an innate human characteristic.  An inclination to divine the future is another deeply ingrained trait.   Together they comprise the act of financial speculation.   "All life is speculation," declared the celebrated nineteenth-century American trader James R. Keene, "the spirit of speculation is born with men."  For the earliest known historical cases of speculation we must turn to ancient Rome during the Republic of the second century B.C.  By this date, the Roman financial system had developed many of the characteristics of modern capitalism:  markets flourished because Roman law allowed the free transfer of property, money was lent out at interest, money changers dealt in foreign currencies, and payments across the Roman territories could be made by bankers' draft.  Capital concentrated in Rome, as it later did in Amsterdam, London, and New York.  The idea of credit had also developed, along with a primitive form of insurance for ships and other forms of property.  The people of Rome exhibited a passion for the accumulation of wealth, matched by an extravagance in its display and consumption.  Gaming was common.

-Edward Chancellor,  Devil Take The Hindmost:  A History Of Financial Speculation

Fifty years ago...................................

The Turtles.......................................................................Elenore

Recommended..................

     "Keep in mind that my main point of this book is that humans do not see reality as it exists.  We didn't evolve to have that capability.  What we do have is the ability to rationalize our observations and wrap them into little movies about reality that we create in our minds."

-Scott Adams,  Win Bigly:   Persuasion In A World Where Facts Don't Matter

If only they had known............

From the day that Trump announced his candidacy, his biggest persuasion challenge was that people literally couldn't imagine him as president. We can easily imagine boring old senators and governors sitting in the Oval Office. But it was tough to imagine this orange ball of provocation sitting in the Oval Office. And so I watched in awe as Trump methodically fixed his biggest problem by helping us imagine his presidency until we we could do it on our own. His best persuasion move on this front involved his appearance on the late-night television program Saturday Night Live. 
        I have enough experience appearing on TV and radio - having done it several hundred times - that I know some things that the general public wouldn't necessarily know. One thing I know is that a guest as important as a presidential candidate gets a hard veto over any skit they are in. And that means Trump approved the SNL skit that imagined him as president and working in the Oval Office. I have a distinct memory of Trump in the Oval Office on SNL, but I can't remember a single joke from the skit. Visual memory overwhelms any other kind of memory, and vision is the most persuasive of your senses.
       I assume the jokes on SNL that night were at Trump's expense. I assume the humor was edgy but not so bad that Trump would veto any of it. SNL allowed Trump to show his sense of humor, which is one of his strengths. But more important, it created a future "visual memory" of Trump in the Oval Office. If you saw that episode live, or on social media later, you suddenly had an easy way to imagine Trump as president. SNL did that for him. 

 -Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion In A World Where Facts Don't Matter

For your viewing pleasure:

 

And Scott continues.............................

       Compare Trump's skit with Hillary Clinton's appearance on Saturday Night Live. She approved a skit in which she played a bartender named Val who was serving a drunken Hillary Clinton who was played by one of the SNL cast. The visual we got from that was that Clinton loved alcohol - maybe too much. That is just about the worse image you could present for a presidential candidate. And it is doubly bad because of the power of contrast. Trump was a rare nondrinking candidate for president. He was competing for a job that required sobriety at all hours of the day. And thanks to SNL, he was competing against the image of a drunk. 
       After seeing how both candidates handled their SNL choices, my opinion of Trump's chances was set in concrete. Barring any surprises (and there were plenty to come), this was not going to be a fair fight. To me it looked like a massacre in the making. 
       In political terms, and looking back at the SNL skit, if you are helping people think of you as president of the United States while your competitor is self-branding as a barfly, you are right where you want to be. 

 -Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion In A World Where Facts Don't Matter


 

a belief........................

"There are many definitions of populism. I think American populism is a belief that the citizenry should be empowered, not the government."

-Lawrence Kudlow, as extracted from here

Strength..............................

"After Abba John the Dwarf had prayed to the Lord and the Lord had taken away all his passions, he went to one of the experienced old men and said, 'You see before you a man who is completely at rest and has no more temptations.'  The elder replied, 'Go and pray to the Lord to stir up your passions once again, for the soul is made strong only in battle.  And when this happens, do not pray that the struggle be taken away from you, but only say, 'Lord, give me strength to get through the fight.'"

-As extracted from The Monks Of New Skete's In the Spirit of Happiness

Interesting times.................

"Many of the qualities that make Trump seemingly unfit for the presidency in fact increase his attractiveness as a weapon in the hands of a mutinous public:  his utter lack of experience, for example, his disdain for history and tradition, even his vulgarity.  The people who voted for Trump expect him to humble the elites and break a lot of institutional crockery in the process.  They demand different."

-Martin Gurri, as culled from here

Fifty years ago............................

The Troggs............................................Love Is All Around

 

 Released in the fall of 1967, this song first charted in February of 1968.