Post-truth....................................

The underlying difficulty of today’s polemics about post-truth is that many well-meaning residents of the reality-based community are talking as though it is ­always obvious and uncontroversial what is a “fact” and what isn’t. And yet the very idea of a fact is a social construct with an origin. (As the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has written: “Facts, like telescopes and wigs for gentlemen, were a 17th-century invention.”) Facts are fuzzy and changeable; in scientific practice, matters of truth and evidence are always at issue. The best scientific theories are social constructs. Whether they should be taken as accurately describing reality is still an unresolved debate in quantum physics; and, as the biologist Stuart Firestein has written: “All scientists know that it is facts that are unreliable. No datum is safe from the next generation of scientists with the next generation of tools.”

-Steven Poole, as excerpted from this essay

via

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

Donovan...............................................................Sand and Foam

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

Sammy Davis, Jr..........................................................Mr. Bojangles

The perfect gift................

.................................................for the person who has everything?

     via

Shoes make the man......................

    via

Theorizing is fun...........................

.....................How did wolves become dogs?  Arguable theory here.

The blogosphere..........................

.............................................was a better place when Jade Page Press was open for business.   I hope she returns soon.

The blame..................................

.............................................................................................game.

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

Donovan...............................................................Young Girl Blues

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

Erroll Garner........................................................................Misty

The Execupundit.........................

............................raises an interesting, and important, question:

Who in today's media-political complex inspires trust?   Suggestions?

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

Donovan...............................................................Writer In The Sun

Second order thinking...................

In the mid 1960s, Norway was a regular Scandinavian country, subsisting on an economy centered around agriculture, timber, and fishing. Life was good, but by no means out of the ordinary (apart from all you can-eat-cod buffets).   Then in the summer of 1969, while the rest of the world was focusing on hippy love, a Norwegian off-shore oil driller named the Ocean Viking struck oil in the North Sea.

Read the rest of the tale (about a fine example of second-order thinking) right here.

via

Have I told you lately.........................

........................how much I love my BP credit card.   For every hundred dollars charged on the card a reduction in gas prices is offered.   It has become my go-to credit card.   Gas hasn't been this cheap since I was in college.   Think I'll take My Sweetie out for dinner.

Sometimes I think they just make this stuff up....

Cooling Neutron Star 
 Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/UNAM/Ioffe/D.Page, P. Shternin et al; Optical: NASA/STScI;
Illustration: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss Explanation: The bright source near the center is a neutron star, the incredibly dense, collapsed remains of a massive stellar core. Surrounding it issupernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A), a comfortable 11,000 light-years away. Light from the Cas A supernova, the death explosion of a massive star,first reached Earth about 350 years ago. The expanding debris cloud spans about 15 light-years in this composite X-ray/optical image. Still hot enough to emit X-rays, Cas A's neutron star is cooling. In fact, years of observations with the orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory find that the neutron star is cooling rapidly -- so rapidly that researchers suspect a large part of the neutron star's core is forming a frictionless neutron superfluid. The Chandra results represent the first observational evidence for this bizarre state of neutron matter.

via the remarkable APOD blog.  Do visit it.

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

George Shearing.............................................Lullaby of Birdland

Yawning is now fashionable.........

"But it is hard to resist the idea that there is a news-fatigue element to what is going on. Stocks, traditionally, have overreacted to news. A thing happened, and traders thought they were smart and over-interpreted it, and the next day something else happened and people over-interpreted it the other way. But there is just too much news now. If you over-interpreted all of it, you'd get whiplash. So a retreat into under-interpreting -- from panicking at minor news to shrugging off huge news -- seems like a natural reaction. The new way to tell yourself that you're smart is by not reacting to news"


-Matt Levine, as extracted from here

You know he is on to something...........

.............................................when even the polar bears agree!

In case you were curious...................

.....................................................my favorite optimist doesn't have much good to say about wind power:

"As for resource consumption and environmental impacts, the direct effects of wind turbines — killing birds and bats, sinking concrete foundations deep into wild lands — is bad enough. But out of sight and out of mind is the dirty pollution generated in Inner Mongolia by the mining of rare-earth metals for the magnets in the turbines. This generates toxic and radioactive waste on an epic scale, which is why the phrase ‘clean energy’ is such a sick joke and ministers should be ashamed every time it passes their lips."

-full post is here

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

Donovan..............................................................Mellow Yellow

You know the world has become...........

...............................................strange when you have to rely on Scott Adams for news analysis.

"All the important stuff is trending positive. Trump is not the sole cause of all that goodness, but he hasn’t broken anything important. That counts too. We’ve had plenty of presidents who broke stuff. Think of Nixon’s price caps, Carter’s hostage rescue mission failure, and Bush-the-younger’s Iraq war. When presidents don’t break anything, that’s a big deal."

On ideals..............................

To ponder interminably over the reason for one’s own existence or the meaning of life in general seems to me, from an objective point of view, to be sheer folly. And yet everyone holds certain ideals by which he guides his aspiration and his judgment. The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle.

-Albert Einstein, as culled  from this remarkable bit of writing

Moral princesses................

........................or, it must be fun having an evil twin.  If you are interested in Three Theories of Social Justice Activism, do read this.  As a bit of flavor:

Regular person: “Mmm, chicken tikka masala is delicious.”
Activist: “I can’t eat that, as doing so makes me complicit in the British colonialist legacy.”

via

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

Stan Getz..............................Desafinado & The Girl From Ipanema

"the ugly underbelly"..................

.....................................................and the interesting world of investment advisement compensation.

The differences.......................

... Mr Baumol's primary intellectual focus was the entrepreneur, whose role was badly neglected by prevailing economic theories.  This he reckoned was an intolerable omission.  The differences between rich countries and poor ones rests on differences in their uses of technology, he argued, and that it is through enterprising individuals and firms that innovations go from the drawing board to active use across an economy.  Business theories, he lamented, inevitably treated people as automatons, rather than potential revolutionaries.
     Mr Baumol did better, casting entrepreneurs as crafty strivers dedicated to raising their personal status, who plot their course in life based on the incentives they face.  Policy determines whether that means climbing the bureaucracy of founding Microsoft.

-as taken from this Free Exchange essay in The Economist

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

Love.................................................................Alone Again Or

One look at globalization..............

     In particular, it is unimaginable, at least to me, that the poverty reductions in India, China, and elsewhere could have happened without globalization.  Some argue that globalization is a neoliberal conspiracy designed to enrich a very few at the expense of the many.  If so, that conspiracy was a disastrous failure - or at least, it helped more than a billion people as an unintended consequence.  If only unintended consequences always worked so favorably.

-Angus Deaton, culled from his essay in the recent Cato's Letter, "Thinking about Inequality"

Thank you.....................

If you find yourself half naked
and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing
again, the earth's great, sonorous moan that says
you are the air of the now and gone, that says
all you will love will turn to dust,
and will meet you there, do not 
raise your fist.  Do not raise
your small voice against it.  And do not
take cover.  Instead, curl your toes
into the grass, watch the cloud 
ascending from your lips.  Walk
through the garden's dormant splendor.
Say only, thank you.
Thank you.

-Ross Gay

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

Bobby Vee...............................The Night Has A Thousand Eyes

On populism......................

Populism is a political and social phenomenon that arises from the common man being fed up with 1) wealth and opportunity gaps, 2) perceived cultural threats from those with different values in the country and from outsiders, 3) the “establishment elites” in positions of power, and 4) government not working effectively for them. These sentiments lead that constituency to put strong leaders in power. Populist leaders are typically confrontational rather than collaborative and exclusive rather than inclusive. As a result, conflicts typically occur between opposing factions (usually the economic and socially left versus the right), both within the country and between countries. These conflicts typically become progressively more forceful in self- reinforcing ways.


Within countries, conflicts often lead to disorder (e.g., strikes and protests) that prompt stronger reactions and the growing pressure to more forcefully regain order by suppressing the other side. Influencing and, in some cases, controlling the media typically becomes an important aspect of engaging in the conflicts. In some cases, these conflicts have led to civil wars. Such conflicts have led a number of democracies to become dictatorships to bring order to the disorder that results from these conflicts. Between countries, conflicts typically occur because populist leaders’ natures are more confrontational than cooperative and because conflicts with other countries help to unify support for the leadership within their countries.


In other words, populism is a rebellion of the common man against the elites and, to some extent, against the system. The rebellion and the conflict that comes with it occur in varying degrees. Sometimes the system bends with it and sometimes the system breaks. Whether it bends or breaks in response to this rebellion and conflict depends on how flexible and well established the system is. It also seems to depend on how reasonable and respectful of the system the populists who gain power are.


-Ray Dalio, as excerpted from this essay

death-birth continuity......................

     When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process.  That is fairly well understood, at least in the arts.  Mark Twain's experience comes to mind, in which, after he had mastered the analytic knowledge needed to pilot the Mississippi River, he discovered the river had lost its beauty.  Something is always killed.  But what is less noticed in the arts - something is always created too.  And instead of just dwelling on what is killed it's important also to see what's created and to see the process of a kind of death-birth continuity that is neither good nor bad, but just is.

-Robert M. Pirsig,  from chapter seven of Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance:  An Inquiry Into Values

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

Jimi Hendrix........................................................................Fire

Undulate.................

"I get tired of either sense or nonsense if I am kept continuously to either and like my mind to undulate between the two as it likes best."

-Walter Bagehot

Likely true............................

"... the biggest lever for change is not a change in self-belief but a fundamental change in the way one sees and regards one's connections with and obligations to others."

-The Arbinger Institute,  The Outward Mindset:  seeing beyond ourselves:  How To Change Lives & Transform Organizations

thanks David

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

Desmond Dekker...............................................007  (Shanty Town)

Memories...............................

..............................and a bit of counsel may be found here.

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

The Doors........................................Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar)

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

Donald Dunn.........................Hanging out here with Steve Cropper

Releasing.......................

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.

-Billy Collins,  Today, from Nine Horses

Peonies........................

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

The Doors........................................................Break On Through

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

     Hillary Clinton had a new rendezvous with destiny on her mind.  Her motorcade sped toward Roosevelt Island on the morning of June 13, 2015.  In a little more than an hour, she would officially kick off what she hoped would be a trailblazing, glass-ceiling-shattering campaign for the presidency.  For most of the previous forty-eight hours, she had been trying to give a feel of historic importance to her first major address.  It just wasn't there yet.

-Nathan Allen & Amie Parnes, Shattered:  Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign

Can I get an Amen........................?

" ... the real world rarely plays out like the textbook theories say. The human element often invalidates studies or theories that take place in a vacuum."


-Ben Carlson, from this post

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

James Cotton.........................................................Slow Blues

Wisdom.......................

"... do two things:  1) Improve everything touched by the problem; turn bad fortune around.  It tells the unforeseen not to mess with you;  and 2) Push your way back in.  Cajole progress.  Make things move along without making everyone miserable.  If you wait on progress you will only frustrate yourself. "

-Kurt Harden, from here

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

From the best-selling list........................Leon Uris's Topaz

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

     The day was balmy.  That certain magic of Copenhagen and the Tivoli Gardens had Michael Nordstrom all but tranquilized.  From his table on the terrace of the Wivex Restaurant he could see the onion dome of the Nimb, saturated with a million light bulbs, and just across the path came a drift of laughter from the outdoor pantomime theater.  The walks of the Tivoli were bordered with meticulous set-in flowers which gave out a riot of color.

-Leon Uris,  Topaz

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

The Doors................................................................Back Door Man

One hundred skills...............

...............................every man person should know.   15 on the list are beyond my experience and at this point in time they are likely to stay that way.

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

J. Geils..................................................sitting in with James Cotton

Cognative dissonance.....................

President Trump’s official reason for the Comey firing has to do with a loss of confidence over his handling of the Clinton email investigation. The beauty of that official explanation (true or not) is that it is making heads explode with Democrats and the Opposition Media. How dare President Trump fire the person we publicly demanded he fire!


-Scott Adams, as taken from this post


Just love his first sentence.  Scott Adams is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Something from nothing...................

................In this wondrous post, Althouse shares Dusty Springfield and the Pet Shop Boys and a whole lot more.  Who knew?

Please pass the salt...................

.................More from the world of unsettled science:   Higher salt intake may be a key to reducing obesity?   It gets curiouser and curiouser.   Full story here.  Wee excerpt (the Mike reference is Bloomberg) here:


Savor this (pardon the pun): salt consumption may be useful in fighting obesity, the current obsession of the nattering class.  If Mike has been encouraging people to gain weight by limiting salt consumption, he is undoing the work he did limiting soda servings to 16 ounces.

via

What could possibly go wrong.................?

....................................Estonia shows one path towards the future.    Looking forward to an update in ten years or so.

thanks craig

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

The Doors.....................................................................Light My Fire

Random stuff found on the computer......

Fog..................................

The fog of war isn't remarkable, moments of clarity are.  History is written from those moments, which is why it's impossible to read history without wondering at least once, "how could they have been so stupid?"

-Ol' Remus, as culled from here

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

Sonny Geraci................................here fronting for The Outsiders

The basic Basics.....................

.....................................................................from Nicholas Bate.

On Pre-existing conditions..................

....................................................Life its ownself from Seth Godin.

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

On the best-selling books list.........Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore..............The Medium is the Massage:  Inventory of Effects

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

The medium, or process, of our time - electric technology - is reshaping and restructuring patters of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life.  It is forcing us to reconsider and reevaluate practically every thought, every action, and every institution formerly taken for granted.  Everything is changing - you, your family, your neighborhood, your education, your job, your government, your relation to "the others."  And they're changing dramatically.

-Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore,  The Medium Is The Massage:  An Inventory of Effects

The secret art....................

“Be kind to others, so that you may learn the secret art of being kind to yourself.”

Paramahansa Yogananda

via

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

The Doors...............................................................The Crystal Ship

Checking in with.............................

..................................................................Walter Russell Mead.


It is a lot of fun until the music stops.

On the dark side of human nature............

We aren't inherently stupid. We have made ourselves stupid by averting our gaze from our own history.

-Spengler, as excerpted from this essay

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

Ray Manzarek................................Messing around on the organ

Remember..........................

The surprising.........................

......................................cosmology of Edgar Allen Poe:

In his final major work, Eureka – A Prose Poem (1848), he took his fascination with nature beyond the human world and crafted a chronicle of the Universe itself. The unique subject matter required an inversion of his usual approach. Instead of imagining a breaking down of regularity into shards, as in many of his famous short stories, Poe envisioned a systematic building up of order from a unitary beginning – a genesis rather than an apocalypse.

Who knew?   Full interesting essay on Poe's approach is here

via

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

The Doors.............................................................I Looked At You

On Oz..........................

No matter how forgotten and neglected, there is a child in all of us who is not just willing to believe in the possibility that maybe fairy tales are true after all but who is to some degree in touch with that truth. 

-Frederick Buechner, as taken from here

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

     There are times in our lives - scary, unsettling times - when we know that we need help or answers but we're not sure what kind, or even what the problem or question is.  We look and look, tearing apart our lives like we're searching for the car keys in our couch, and we come up empty-handed.  Then when we're doing something stupid, like staring at the dog's mismatched paws, we stumble across what we needed to find.  Or even better, it finds us.  It wasn't what we were looking or hoping for, which was usually advice, approval, an advantage, safety, or relief from pain.  I was raised to seek or achieve them, but like everyone, I realized at some point that they do not bring lasting peace, relief, or uplift.  This does not seem fair, after a lifetime spent in their pursuit.  Where, then, do I turn in these increasingly frightening days?  Where do I look for answers when I'm afraid, or confused, or numb?   To an elegant Japanese sage?  A dream-dancing Sioux grandmother with a tinkling laugh?  No.  More often than not, the North Star that guides me through the darkness is the Old Testament prophet Micah.  He must have looked like a complete stoner or a Games of Thrones extra, and smelled like a goat, yet nearly three thousand years ago, he spoke the words that often remind me of my path and purpose.  "What doth God require of thee but to do justice and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"

-Anne Lamott,  Hallelujah Anyway:  Rediscovering Mercy

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

Nat King Cole.....................................................Unforgettable

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

On the best-sellers list...Robert Crichton's The Secret Of Santa Vittoria

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

     The hour this story begins is known.  The minute is known; the exact moment is recorded.  To some this might not appear to be remarkable, but when it is considered that there are entire generations in the history of Santa Vittoria about which nothing at all is known, the statement becomes remarkable.

-Robert Crichton,  The Secret of Santa Vittoria

The old-fashioned way..................

But character comes before credentials. If our children are to become real adults, they need to know that difficult tasks are things to be conquered, not avoided.

-Ben Sasse, as culled from here

I got around the WSJ paywall by going here and clicking on Jim Stroup's tweet.  Your results may vary.

There is no shame......................

....................................in losing a bet with Warren Buffett.

"Studies of human behavior repeatedly point to the inability of investors to stay the course through tough times."

-as quoted from this Ted Seides post

via

One amazing chart............................

Mark Perry posted this chart a week ago.  He also wrote, "As Larry Kudlow often reminds us, 'Free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity,' and it’s market forces that have lifted more people out of poverty than any government program or initiative from the United Nations, World Bank or International Monetary Fund."  All this is most likely both true and a good thing, but what are the odds that declining world poverty has a close relationship to the off-shoring of American manufacturing jobs during that same time period?   At the end of the day, "market forces" will always have their say, cheaper labor tends to replace more expensive labor.  A necessary ingredient for capitalism to survive (and succeed) is the notion of "creative destruction."  We could do a better job of accounting for that.

True this...............................

Those who can tell their story in an engaging way will have a leg up on the competition. Everyone is in sales.

-Ben Carlson, from this post on Selling Intangibles

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

The Byrds......................................................................Lady Friend