Saturday, September 19, 2020
On trouble...........................
If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I wouldn't pass it around. Wouldn't be doing anybody a favor. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't say embrace trouble. That's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say, meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it.
Fifty years ago..........................
Black Sabbath...........Iron Man...from the Paranoid album
And it will be ever so...............................
The revelation of the structure of DNA by Watson, Crick, Wilkins, and Franklin brought one journey of genes to its close, even as it threw open new directions of inquiry and discovery. . . . Old questions were replaced by new ones.
-Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Gene: An Intimate History
Aging like a fine wine..............................
"When I was young I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people."
Smiling............................
I dream of a quiet man
who explains nothing and defends
nothing, but only knows
where the rarest wildflowers
are blooming, and who goes,
and finds that he is smiling
not by his own will.
-Wendell Berry, Sabbaths 1999 II
Friday, September 18, 2020
It does not have to be this way.............................
"A thing that’s obvious but easily overlooked is that feeling wealthy has little to do with what you have. It’s more about the gap between what you have and what you expect. And what you expect is driven by what other people around you have."
-Morgan Housel, from this post
As they say in the twelve-step movement, "an expectation is merely a premeditated resentment." Comparison doesn't help much either. As Louis L'Amour noted, there's always a faster gun. Gratitude for what we do have is a key to power. How about we try to be worthy of what we do have?
Samuel Johnson.............................
..........................................Born this day in 1709.
Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments; any enlargement of wishes is therefore equally destructive to happiness with the diminution of possession, and he that teaches another to long for what he never shall obtain is no less an enemy to his quiet than if he had robbed him of part of his patrimony.
Simple.............................
At the prodding of the New York Times, (Elmore) Leonard published his simple rules of writing, which include "Avoid prologues," "Never use a verb other than 'said' to carry dialogue," and "Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip." These are not universal rules that apply to all authors.
-Donald Sull and Kathleen M. Eisenhardt, Simple Rules: How To Thrive In A Complex World
Boots.................................
By the end of his first month Bud Nagle had known he was not a cavalryman. He knew he was not a soldier of any kind, but after seven months, it was too late to do anything about it, and even if the office door in Milwaukee that bore the legend L. V. Nagle, Attorney, could not prevail against it. Enlistments do not dissolve, even if the recruit realizes he is out of place; and especially were not dissolving that spring of 1870 when Apacheria, from the Dragoons to the San Andres, was vibrating with the beat of hundreds of war drums. The Apaches were up and Cochise would not be stopped. Now he saw the street again. The shouting, laughing people and the ordinarily shy girls who giggled and threw their arms around the returning soldiers and kissed them right on the street. Right on Wisconsin Avenue. He remembered the deep-blue uniforms and the glistening boots and the one-eyed angle of the kepis, and could hardly wait. The uniforms disappeared from the cobblestone street. They had been gone for almost five years, but never from the mind of Bud Nagle. Smiling girls and glistening boots. By the time he found out how long issue boots kept a shine, it was too late. He was in Apache country.
-Elmore Leonard, from his short story, Cavalry Boots
History doesn't repeat itself...............
.......................................but it often rhymes.*
After a tumultuous first term in office, Grant occasionally dreamed of returning to his farm in St. Louis. "I was not anxious to be President a second term," he confided to a reporter, "but I consented to receive the nomination because I thought that was the best way of discovering whether my countrymen . . . really believed all that was alleged against my administration and against myself personally."
-Ron Chernow, Grant
*Ed Note: saying attributed to Mark Twain, but who knows for certain.
Opening paragraphs................
A rooftop billboard cast a flickering blue light through the studio windows. The light ricocheted off glass and stainless steel: an empty crystal bud vase rimed with dust, a pencil sharpener, a microwave oven, peanut butter jars filled with drawing pencils, paintbrushes and crayons. An ashtray full of pennies and paper clips. Jars of poster paint. Knives. A stereo was dimly visible as a collection of rectangular silhouettes on the window ledge. A digital clock punched red electronic minutes into silence. The maddog waited in the dark.
-John Sandford, Rules of Prey, the first of many Lucas Davenport novels
Thursday, September 17, 2020
Whither commercial real estate...........................?
Warren Meyer, a pretty smart guy, takes a stab at the future of commercial real estate in the age of Amazon/Covid. Working from home is not likely to be a workable long-term solution, but then, neither is a return to 2019. You pays your money and you takes your chances. There will be winners and losers. It is not a game for the faint of heart.
Learned a new phrase today................
"Revenge effects." Story can be found at the link. Always remember: the one unbreakable law is the law of unintended consequences.
Tenner writes: “Revenge effects happen because new structures, devices, and organisms react with real people in real situations in ways we could not foresee.” He goes on to add that “complexity makes it impossible for anyone to understand how the system might act: tight coupling spreads problems once they begin.”
-from this Farnam Street post
A vital reservoir......................
Nature was not as hungry to homogenize genetic variation as human eugenicists had presumed. Indeed, Dobzhansky recognized that natural variation was a vital reservoir for an organism—an asset that far outweighed its liabilities. Without this variation—without genetic diversity—an organism might ultimately lose its capacity to evolve.
-Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Gene: An Intimate History
Recommended..............................
At the dawning of the 14th century, Scotland could be easily characterized as a hot mess. The clans were not playing well together, and King Edward of England was having his way. Robert The Bruce changed all of that. It is a story of leadership, courage, character, faith, tenacity, flexibility, and smarts. Starting with about forty devoted followers, Bruce united and freed Scotland, forcing his terms on the more powerful England. He loved a good fight. This is history worth knowing.
On science and vaccines.........................
Science of course should play a major role. Only it can determine a vaccine’s likely medical effectiveness and side effects. But science cannot possibly determine what is the acceptable amount of risk to be traded off against reward. Should approval be given to a vaccine that’s 98 percent effective but which carries a 0.05 percent chance of causing serious and possibly fatal illness? What about a vaccine that’s 90 percent effective but which carries a 0.002 percent chance of causing seriously illness or death?
-Don Boudreaux, as culled from this letter
Which reminds me:
On freedom........................................
We are sometimes naïve in our goodness – Americans are. It’s part of the nature of our life lived in a free society; part of our ‘social contract’ in which we each seek out our own self-interest through hard work and discipline and thrift, understanding that the true meaning of freedom is freedom from our vices and our own raging passions; and in that understanding we reap a bounty that has spilled over to build the greatest society the world has ever known. Not by invasions, pillaging and theft; but the tremendous abundance of productively free men giving back through their love of themselves, their country and each other.
-Joel D. Hirst, as cut-and-pasted from here
Wednesday, September 16, 2020
Opening paragraphs.........................
Many restless men rowed north from Skania with Brue and Vagn, and found ill fortune at Jorundfjord; others marched with Styrbjorn to Uppsala and died there with him. When the news reached their homeland that few of them could be expected to return, elegies were declaimed and memorial stones set up; whereupon all sensible men agreed that what had happened was for the best, for they could now hope to have a more peaceful time than before, and less parceling out of land by the ax and sword. There followed a time of plenty, with fine rye harvests and great herring catches, so that most people were well contented; but there were some who thought that the crops were tardy, and they went a-viking in Ireland and England, where fortune smiled on their wars; and many of them stayed there.
-Frans G. Bengtsson, from the prologue to The Long Ships
One way to look at it..............................
Huey Long certainly intended to go up and to go up high, but he was going to ascend in an American context, in the milieu of parties and politics. And he was going to employ the traditional methods of the politician—cajolery, compromise, organization, and, when it was necessary, the slick deal. He felt he had great powers, but even if he had not, he would have gone into politics; he was a natural, and instinctive, politician, and his entrance into politics was, literally, a compulsive act. He was fascinated with it for itself—it was an art and also a science, a game for high stakes, a constant contest in a great arena. Most of all, he was fascinated with its possibilities for building power. Like all masters of the art of politics, he delighted in playing with the "blocks" that make up a power structure, arranging the blocks to suit his purpose—and piling them ever higher. Even if such a man has no ideals to put into practice, he may find politics so exciting and exhilarating that merely to be in it is satisfaction enough. Long had his ideals, but he also loved politics for its own sake. Once when he was at the crest of his career, on the eve of one of his many conflicts, he exclaimed happily to a friend as he plunged into the fray: "This is the sport of kings."
-T. Harry Williams, Huey Long
Patanjali.............................
33. Vitarka badhane pratipaksa bhavanam.
When disturbed by negative thoughts, opposite [positive] ones should be thought of.
Here, Patnjali gives us a very nice clue on how to control the mind and obstruct those thoughts we don't want. The best way, he says, is to invite opposite thoughts. If the though of hatred is in the mind, we can try to bring in the thought of love. If we can't do that, we can at least go to the people we love and, in their presence, forget the hatred. So, although hatred comes to the surface, we can keep it from coming out or staying long by changing the environment. . . .
We can create a positive atmosphere by looking at a holy picture, by reading an inspiring book, by meeting with a special person or simply by leaving the disturbing environment. This is a very practical point. It is difficult to control negative thoughts while staying in a negative environment unless we have extraordinary strength. The easiest way is to change the environment.
-Sri Swami Satchidananda, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
Tuesday, September 15, 2020
Utilize..............................
"It is true husbandry to fence your field with the stones that encumber it, to utilize obstacles."
-John Burroughs, from an essay in The Art of Seeing Things
The old over/under........................
"Don't overestimate the world and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think."
About sunbeams................................
Just be glad. Whether there is anything to be glad for or not, just be glad. It is the royal path to happiness. It is the royal path to all that is worthy and beautiful in life. Above all things, possess gladness, and you will soon possess those things that produce gladness. Be your own sunbeam, and you will attract a million sunbeams. Be your own source of your own joy, and you will attract everything and everybody that can add to your joy. To him that hath shall be given. And he already hath who has found the riches of his own nature. To find those riches is the first step. All else must follow. All other things will be added. And to find those riches, use well every talent you possess. Then whatever comes, just be glad. For all things respond to the call of rejoicing; all things gather where life is a song.
-Christian D. Larson, Just Be Glad: Insights For Your Spiritual Journey
A cost of freedom....................................
Conflict is the essential core of a free and open society. If one were to project the democratic way of life in the form of a musical score, its major theme would be the harmony of dissonance.
-Saul D. Alinsky, a lifted from Rules For Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals
This..................................
The universe is a form of divine law,
your reasonable father.
When you feel ungrateful to him,
the shapes of the world seem mean and ugly.
Make peace with that father, the elegant patterning,
and every experience will fill with immediacy.
Because I love this, I am never bored.
Beauty constantly wells up, a noise of springwater
in my ear and in my inner being.
Tree limbs rise and fall like the ecstatic arms
of those who have submitted to the mystical life.
Leaf sounds talk together like poets
making fresh metaphors. The green felt cover slips,
and we get a flash of the mirror underneath.
Think how it will be when the whole thing
is pulled away! I tell only one-thousandth
of what I see, because there is so much doubt everywhere.
The conventional opinion of this poetry is,
it shows great optimism for the future.
But Father Reason says,
No need to announce the future!
This now is it. This. Your deepest need and desire
is satisfied by the moment's energy
here in your hand.
-Rumi
Opening paragraphs........................
The story seems too good to be true—but people who should know swear that it is true. The first time that Huey P. Long campaigned in rural, Latin, Catholic south Louisiana, the local boss who had him in charge said at the beginning of the tour: "Huey, you ought to remember one thing in your speeches today. You're from north Louisiana, but now you're in south Louisiana. And we got a lot of Catholic voters down here." "I know," Huey answered. And throughout the day in every small town Long would begin by saying: "When I was a boy, I would get up at six o'clock in the morning on Sunday, and I would hitch our old horse up to the buggy and I would take my Catholic grandparents to mass. I would bring them home, and at ten o'clock I would hitch the old horse up again, and I would take my Baptist grandparents to church." The effect of the anecdote on the audiences was obvious, and on the way back to Baton Rouge that night the local leader said admiringly: "Why, Huey, you've been holding out on us. I didn't know you had any Catholic grandparents." "Don't be a damn fool," replied Huey. "We didn't even have a horse."
-T. Harry Williams, Huey Long
Monday, September 14, 2020
Seems about right..............................
There is no such thing as perfection, only the relentless, thirsty matching of an organism to its environment. That is the engine that drives evolution.
-Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Gene: An Intimate History
Funny, that's when my hearing is most acute.......
Willpower, it turns out, is more like a reservoir than a river. If we deploy willpower in one decision, we have less self-control available for our next decision. Many of our worst dietary choices, for example, are made in periods of low self-control—at the end of a long day when a big glass of cabernet or a pint of Ben and Jerry's calls out our name.
-Donald Sull and Kathleen M. Eisenhardt, Simple Rules: How To Thrive In A Complex World
This day in history.................................
On September 14, 1814, Francis Scott Key pens what became the National Anthem of the USA. Story here.
Pessimists may generate the headlines..............
.................but the smart bet is on the optimists:
As long as more people try to get better than screw up, the long-term odds are in an economy’s favor. And that’s virtually always the case because the screw-ups – the declines, the recessions, and panics, the wars – fuel the problem-solving.
-As extracted from this Morgan Housel post
Keep your eyes open.......................
Littlewood's law states that a person can expect to experience events with odds of one in a million (defined by the law as a "miracle") at the rate of about one per month.
Littlewood defines a miracle as an exceptional event of special significance occurring at a frequency of one in a million. He assumes that during the hours in which a human is awake and alert, a human will see or hear one "event" per second, which may be either exceptional or unexceptional. Additionally, Littlewood supposes that a human is alert for about eight hours per day.
As a result, a human will in 35 days have experienced under these suppositions about one million events. Accepting this definition of a miracle, one can expect to observe one miraculous event for every 35 days' time, on average – and therefore, according to this reasoning, seemingly miraculous events are actually commonplace.
-as cut-and-pasted from our friends at Wikipedia
No regrets.......................................
Knowing when enough is enough. A nice post about brothers Dick and Mac McDonald.
Sunday, September 13, 2020
Not sure how I missed...............................
............................. H. L. Mencken's 140th birthday.
11. The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
One should always remember..........................
.............................to check in periodically with Martin Gurri:
The repudiation of everything in a free, reasonably prosperous democratic society echoes the web’s rhetoric of the rant but probably springs from deeper sources. Lacking community and religion, a significant percentage of the public has looked for personal meaning in utopian political aspirations that invariably collide with reality. The pose of universal grievance may well be based in a politics of cultural despair.
-as culled from this essay which concludes like this:
The demonstrable failure of our political elites during this episode can be added to the long roster of disasters they have mismanaged. Those in charge continue to bleed out authority, and the democratic institutions they represent have begun to totter. Since we, the voters, elevated them to office, the supreme lesson of this troubled moment should probably be how to replace them with competent grown-ups. But that is another story.
Just be glad..........................
The great soul is always in search of ways and means for adding to the welfare of others. But no way is better, greater or more far reaching than this — just be glad.
Life becomes worth the living only when the living of life makes living more worthwhile for an ever increasing number. It is only the joys we share that give happiness; it is only the thoughts we express that enrich our minds; it is only the strength we use in actual helpfulness that makes our souls strong. Therefore, to add to the pleasures of others, is to add to our own pleasure; to add to the wealth and comfort of others is to add in like manner to our own. This the great soul knows; and every soul is great that has learned to be glad regardless of what may come of go in the world.
To be glad at all times is to be of greater service to mankind than any other thing that we can do.
-Christian D. Larson, Just Be Glad: Insights For Your Spiritual Journey
Might as well....................
It started in the galley of my wobbly old house during a lightning storm that fried a nearby transformer. A sizzling boom rattled the windows. Combusted ozone drifted bayward and sweetened the air while rain hammered the tin roof.
The lights went out.
"Perfect," my boat bum pal, Tomlinson, said. "Natural disaster is humanity's last hope. The internet has butt-ravaged us all and looted our privacy. I say bring on the pale rider. Might as well have another beer, huh?"
-Randy Wayne White, Salt River: A Doc Ford Novel
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