...............or not? Here's a fun-to-read essay suggesting it would be folly to send live humans to explore the red planet.
"When you hold on to a belief so strongly that neither facts nor reason can change it, what you are doing is no longer science, but religion."
................from all the drama over the Speakership:
According to ZeroHedge, here is a list of concessions McCarthy had to make to secure the votes of some Representatives. This one caught my eye:
4. Bills presented to Congress will be single subject, not omnibus with all the attendant earmarks, and there will be a 72-hour minimum period to read them.
We will see.
I know I'm in trouble on the run down towards Shuttlecock, but I am laughing—I don't care.
I am once again riding in a Grand National, the first time in nearly eight years, but this isn't the four-and-a-half-mile steeplechase over the thirty fences of Aintree Racecourse. This Grand National is a different type of race altogether—a never-jangling, teeth-rattling, buttock-clenching, roller-coaster ride sown the three-quarter-mile long ice chute—the Cresta Run in the Swiss town of St. Moritz.
-Felix Francis, Iced: A Dick Francis Novel
All species struggle to survive and strive to reproduce. A chance mutation about 200,000 years ago made early Homo sapiens more sensitive to social information. This mutation increased the number of oxytocin receptors in the brain's frontal lobe, enabling out ancestors to not only understand what others were doing cognitively, but also experience the emotions of others. This helped early humans survive by enabling them to draw on social resources more effectively.
Over time the mutation spread. Rather than being limited to living in small bands of kin-based groups as our genus had for millions of years, Homo sapiens could live in increasingly larger and more complex societies because they could intuit others' intentions. The most basic social information is the intention to help or harm. As culture flourished, societies developed norms in which helpers were embraced and the selfish and violent were ostracized. . . .
We truly became social creatures when the brain network that oxytocin activates allowed us to determine who to trust. Knowing when to trust strangers led to large-scale societies. In these communities, an individual's survival depended on many others. Cooperation among nonkin provided social insurance against a bad crop or an unsuccessful hunt. Communities began to function like superorganisms in which each segment nourished the other parts.
Paul J. Zak, Immersion: The Science of The Extraordinary and the Source of Happiness
Walter Bagehot's father showed more confidence in his son that Walter did in himself. In preparation for joining the family bank, the refugee from the law lived in Langport to make a study of double-entry bookkeeping. He admitted that the theory of accounting "is agreeable and pretty, but the practice perhaps as horrible as anything ever was." The student who had kept up with the pyrotechnical intellect of Augustus De Morgan at University College could not seem to add or subtract. "If only," Bagehot playfully moaned to a school friend, "my relations would admit that sums are matters opinion."
-James Grant, Bagehot: The Life and Times of the Greatest Victorian
Another tweet I had that is worth weaving in, but didn't do into the "How to Get Rich" tweetstorm, was very simple: "Escape competition through authenticity." Basically, when you're competing with people, it's because you're copying them. It's because you are trying to do the same thing. But every human being is different. Don't copy.
In dealing with the world, Washington was an utter realist. He always sought, as he put it in 1775, at the outset of the war against Britain, to "make the best of mankind as they are, since we cannot have them as we wish." . . .
If any single person was responsible for establishing the young Republic on a firm footing, it was Washington. He was nearly as much of an aristocrat as the United States ever produced, in his acceptance of social hierarchy and in his belief that some were born to command and most to obey. Although he trusted the good sense of the people in the long run, he believed that they could easily be misled by demagogues. He was a realist who had no illusions about human nature. "The motives which predominate most human affairs," he said, "are self-love and self-interest." The common people, like the common soldiers in his army could not be expected to be "influenced by any other principles than those of interest."
- Gordon S. Wood, Revolutionary Characters: What Made The Founders Different
It is a kind of mockery and insult to praise a man's worth for qualities unbecoming his rank, though they be otherwise laudable, and for qualities also which ought not to be his principal ones; as if you praised a king for being a good painter, or a good architect . . .
The companions of Demosthenes in the embassy to Philip praised that prince as being handsome, eloquent, and a good drinker. Demosthenes said that those were praises more appropriate to a woman, a lawyer, and a sponge, than a king.
-Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Works, Book 1, Chapter 40
. . . in the battle between the dieter and the brownie, the brownie always wins . . .
There is always something to be pessimistic about. Usually dozens of things. But it’s often like being on a flight that’s delayed, and the food is awful, and the turbulence is frightening, and they lose your bags, and the guy sitting next to you is snoring. Yes, that’s miserable. But are the engines roaring? Are the wings intact? Are the pilots capable? OK, well that’s all you need. You’ll get to your destination. You should remain an optimist.
-Morgan Housel, from here
The Human Riff was actually explaining to me about the synthesis of hillbilly and black music that customized the recipe for rock 'n' roll, putting a match to the kindling for the nascent Rolling Stones and the generation of hopeful oiks they represented. But that payoff line has always felt like a playfully succinct overview of the man who sat behind him for 58 years. In parallel timeline, you could imagine Wolfgang Amadeus looking up to Charlie Watts. Everyone else did.
-Paul Sexton, Charlie's Good Tonight: The Life, the Times, and the Rolling Stones
Mozart knew what he was talking about. But he should have had a good drummer.
-Keith Richards
They are the best—and if you have any doubt, they will explain to you why. For example, ask Anthony Fauci and he will tell you, “I represent science.” Ask a high-flying U.N. undersecretary with a degree in journalism and she will say, “We own the science and the world should know about it.” Think of how amazing that is! To be an elite is to hold a 30-year mortgage on science, zero interest, payment infinitely deferred.
They are also the smartest. In fact, the elites resemble those science fiction beings with enormous brains and thoughts too complex for normal communication. They keep trying to explain the meaning of everything, but all that ordinary people hear is a series of dull clicks and buzzes. That leaves the elites frustrated and sad. They are often misunderstood by the public because—as a French parliamentarian put it—their ideas are “too intelligent, too subtle, too technical.”
Here’s another way to detect an elite: They are “I” while the rest of us are “them.” The difference in character is not subtle. For “I,” think Mahatma Gandhi or St. Francis of Assisi—for “them,” the Beast of the Apocalypse. Let the ever-helpful Anthony Fauci illustrate the point: “I’m going to be saving lives,” he said, “and they’re going to be telling lies.”
You can know the elites by their ownership of reality. Jesus might have said, “I am the truth and the life,” but Jacinda Ardern, prime minister of New Zealand, prefers to be a little more exclusive: “We continue to be your single source of truth … Unless you hear it from us it is not the truth.” To protect the truth, the elites have hired gangs of roving bouncers to usher out of the building any would-be Pontius Pilates who ask, “What is truth?” (That question, like all of science, is settled.) For unknown reasons, these elite enforcers call themselves “fact-checkers.”
So elite-spotting can be a fun and profitable activity. Elites talk like one another and dress like one another. They are all over TV and the internet—and, since they are barely aware of our existence, we can observe them in the wild, as they really are! Anyone who still has trouble spotting them should remember that the elites are always ahead and above us. Like certain species of baboons, they can be identified by their posteriors.
-Martin Gurri, as cut-and-pasted from here
The newly anointed Hero of New Orleans seemed almost eager to endanger his sudden rise in public esteem. Two days after the battle, with rumors and jittery reports of tall British ships cannonading in the area, Jackson ordered an officer on the west bank to solidify his defenses by demolishing private property—never a popular move among property owners. "Set fire to and destroy every house," he commanded. "Altho I feel great pain at the . . . infliction of individual injury, yet when the imperious dictates of public duty require the sacrifice I am not allowed to hesitate." Governor Claiborne, the state legislators, and a good many living and working in the city grew concerned that Jackson might soon sacrifice all of New Orleans rather than permit enemy troops to pass through its gates. No doubt the high tensions brought about by weeks of gossip, military preparations, and martial law produced a sharp uncertainty only imperfectly punctured by the recent British defeat. The city badly needed a cooling-off period, but what it got was Andrew Jackson.
-David S. Brown, The First Populist: The Defiant Life of Andrew Jackson
To the dumb question "Why me?" the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?
-Christopher Hitchens, from this Vanity Fair essay
It is interesting to watch football teams on a Sunday afternoon. They spend the first fifty-eight minutes routinely following the game plan they thought would result in victory. Then something rather remarkable happens. An official walks onto the center of the field and announces what has become known as the "Two-Minute Warning."
What happens in the next one hundred and twenty seconds is frequently awesome. We often witness more intensity, more cleverness, more expended energy, and more action compacted into those two final minutes than occurs in the previous fifty-eight.
Why?
A sudden awareness of the sense of imminent defeat, and a birth of a new and sharpened sense of urgency. The participants know that the clock will show no favoritism. The clock will merely do what clocks are supposed to do: they will tick away the seconds until the game is finally over.
The team that finds itself on the threshold of defeat night have shown an extraordinary level of ingenuity and intensity at any time throughout the game. They had the potential and the opportunity to outscore their opponents early in the game. But sometimes, despite their intentions, the players make only an average effort until it is too late. Sometimes the blowing of the whistle announcing the two-minute warning is merely a formality signifying the probability of impending and irreversible defeat.
And so it is with the individual human life.
-Jim Rohn, The Five Major Pieces To The Life Puzzle
The plunging markets are the result of a decades-old macroeconomic regime falling apart. High inflation, not seen in the rich world since the 1980s, is back, which in turn has brought to an end ten years of near-zero interest rates. As a result, the rule book of investing is being rewritten. Protecting portfolios from inflation, once a peripheral concern, is now a prime consideration. Rising government-bond yields, meanwhile, make riskier assets less desirable.
-The Economist, from this Briefing
But he suffered from a naive confidence in the power of reason and a few good men to arrange complex matters. As late as 1775 he was still persuaded that the issues separating Britain and the colonies were "a mere Matter of Puncitilo, which Two or three reasonable People might settle in half an Hour." He had little or no comprehension of the structural forces and the popular passions that limited individual action. In the end he was convinced that the glorious empire to which he had devoted so much of his life was broken by "the mangling hands of a few blundering ministers."
-Gordon S. Wood, from the chapter "The Invention of Benjamin Franklin" in his book, Revolutionary Characters: What Made The Founders Different
Democracy cannot work without a fair level of political and social stability. This implies a certain level of political apathy. Anything resembling fanaticism, a domination of the normal internal debate by "activists" is plainly to be deplored.
-Robert Conquest, The Dragons of Expectation: Reality and Delusion in the Course of History
He defines them, with characteristic felicity, in the unused preface to Animal Farm, as those who hold that "defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought."
-------
Elsewhere (in his "The Prevention of Literature") he comments, "When one sees highly educated men looking on indifferently at oppression and persecution, one wonders which to despise more, their cynicism or their shortsightedness."
-Robert Conquest, channeling George Orwell
So that was why I was in the city that day. Not to just teach my class or network or catch up with clients. Not to get a free dinner or a lead on another deal down the road.
Just to be there. To connect with someone. To share the least marketable part of me - my silly sense of puns - and to make someone laugh a little. To break tension and restore some hope.
-Matthew Ferrara, the rest of the story here
2023 predictions from "America's Newspaper of Record". My favorite is the one for November 25th.
However, I only have one goal for the coming new year. Staying alive, and smiling no matter what. The toughest time to find joy is when fate isn't kind. So, call me anything but serious. If you aren't laughing at the twists fate brings us, you aren't living.
However frustrating this debate may be for all participants – and I imagine it can be very frustrating at times – to me it is an excellent example of the dynamic process of the scientific method. Claims are advanced, they are robustly criticised, and additional evidence is brought forward to refute the critiques. Bit by bit, the field advances in its understanding.
...........................will be watching this one again!
We have to come up with a new word for "reporters" because they are not "reporting" the news but instead spinning propaganda - so calling them reporters becomes Orwellian. How about calling them "liberal artists?"
-as culled from here
I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them lovingly, I feed on the food that alone is mine and that I was born for.
“It’s OK to be surprised. The world is a surprising place. Just don’t be surprised that you’re surprised about what happens . . ."
-Ben Carlson, from here
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