..............................more fun here.
Saturday, October 3, 2020
Morgan Housel..............................
..............writes some smart stuff. A few highlights from his post on "Common Causes of Very Bad Decisions":
Incentives can tempt good people to push the boundaries farther than they’d ever imagine.
Tribal instincts reduce the ability to challenge bad ideas because no one wants to get kicked out of the tribe.
Lots of little errors compound into something huge.
Underestimating adaptation, both present and future, leaving you convinced that history will repeat itself and bitter when it doesn’t.
Being influenced by the actions of people who are playing a different game than you are.
Wrongly assuming that the information you have at your disposal tells a complete picture of what you’re dealing with.
The most deadly.........................
I'm glad somebody has time to figure all this out. Here is the ranked list of actors/actresses who have—in film—killed the most people. I must not get out much. Never heard of the "winner."
Ed. Note: No, Helen Mirren is not on the list. Just liked the clip from RED
Vitamin D............................
........................................read this post if you want to know more about it. A snippet here:
The gold standard of medical research is the randomised controlled trial. Back in May, we had no such test for vitamin D and Covid-19. Now we do. The world’s first randomised control trial on vitamin D and Covid has just been published. The results are clear-cut. The trial, which took place in Spain at the Reina Sofía University Hospital, involved 76 patients suffering from Covid-19. Fifty of those patients were given vitamin D. The remaining 26 were not. Half of those not given Vitamin D became so sick that they needed to be put on intensive care. By comparison, only one person who was given Vitamin D requiring ICU admission.
Friday, October 2, 2020
Opening paragraphs................
This little book arose from a course of public lectures, delivered by a theoretical physicist to an audience of about four hundred which did not substantially dwindle, though warned at the outset that the subject-matter was a difficult one and that the lectures could not be termed popular, even thought the physicist's most dreaded weapon, mathematical deduction, would hardly be utilized. The reason for this was not that the subject was simple enough to be explained without mathematics, but rather that it was much too involved to be fully accessible to mathematics. Another feature which at least induced a semblance of popularity was the lecturer's intention to make clear the fundamental idea, which hovers between biology and physics, to both the physicist and the biologist.
-Erwin Schrödinger, What Is Life?
Career advice........................
Three rules for a career: (1) Don't sell anything you wouldn't buy yourself; (2) Don't work for anyone you don't respect and admire; and (3) Work only with people you enjoy.
In the year 2020............................
"All we can know is that we know nothing. And that is the sum total of human wisdom."
Thursday, October 1, 2020
No matter how holy the motives..............
“Secrecy is the keystone to all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy and censorship. When any government or church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man who has been hoodwinked in this fashion; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, whose mind is free. No, not the rack nor the atomic bomb, not anything. You can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.”
Nature's way.......................
“Nature does not make mistakes. Right and wrong are human categories.”
Wednesday, September 30, 2020
Forget this at your own peril........................
We have the worst system except for all the others. Remember that.
-Kurt Harden, from this post on the debate last night
Got the undisciplined part down..............
“Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.”
Crazy, but not that crazy.................
“To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. The world is not yet a crazy enough place to reward a whole bunch of undeserving people.”
An invitation to a calamity.................
“We are all members of the same flawed species. Putting our moral vision into practice means imposing our will on others. The human lust for power and esteem, coupled with its vulnerability to self-deception and self-righteousness, makes that an invitation to a calamity, all the worse when the power is directed at a goal as quixotic as eradicating human self-interest.”
Sometimes he was mistaken..................
It is a fact that no man improves much after the age of 60 and after 65, most suffer a really alarming decline. I could give some examples, but at the advice of my publisher will refrain from doing so.
Tuesday, September 29, 2020
A writer's craft..............................
I find myself amused by this unassuming paragraph, a bridge in the action, written by John Sandford in Dark of the Moon:
That was in the afternoon, in which some other things happened, but none that turned out to be important.
I read the rest of the chapter, unsuccessfully looking for the "some other things."
Opening paragraphs..................
The war had not yet come to us. We lived in fear and hope and tried not to draw God's wrath down upon our securely walled town, with its hundred and five houses and the church and the cemetery, where our ancestors waited for the Day of Resurrection.
We prayed often to keep the war away. We prayed to the Almighty and to the kind Virgin. We prayed to the Lady of the Forest and to the Little People of Midnight, to Saint Gerwin, to Peter the Gatekeeper, to John the Evangelist—and to be safe we also prayed to Old Mela, who during the Twelve Nights, when the demons are let loose, roams the heavens at the head of her retinue. We prayed to the Horned Ones of ancient days and to Bishop Martin, who shared his cloak with the beggar when the latter was freezing, so that they were both freezing and pleasing to God, for what's the use of half a cloak in winder, and of course we prayed to Saint Maurice, who had chosen death with a whole legion rather than betray his faith in the one just God.
-Daniel Kehlmann, Tyll
Re-reading Shakespeare.................
The following lines are all to be found in Act 2, Scene 2 in Hamlet
Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.
Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't.
Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing
either good or bad, but thinking makes it so:
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god!
I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is
southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.
The best actors in the world, either for tragedy,
comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical,
historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-
comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or
poem unlimited: Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor
Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the
liberty, these are the only men.
I'll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks;
I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds
More relative than this: the play 's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
Sunday, September 27, 2020
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