When intellectuals discover that the world does not behave according to their theories, the conclusion they invariably draw is that the world must be changed. It must be awfully hard to change theories.
Monday, December 22, 2025
dogmas.....................
Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion. And the skepticism of our time does not really destroy beliefs, rather it creates them; gives them their limits and their plain and defiant shape.
-Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Collected Works, Volume 1
Let it be.....................
When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least, must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in its breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from its nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, “Safe!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be."
-Robert Frost, Acceptance
mastery...........................
Self-discipline begins with the mastery of one's thoughts. Without control over thoughts there can be no control over deeds! Let us say, therefore, that self-discipline inspires one to think first and act afterward. The usual procedure is just the reverse. Most people act first and think afterward (if and when they think at all).
-Andrew Carnegie, as he answers questions from Napoleon Hill
tough job.................
One secret to being a successful prognosticator? Never mention a number and a date in the same sentence.
a curious inversion.................
The populations of wealthy democratic societies expect to have total choice over their satellite TV package, yet think it perfectly normal to allow the state to make all the choices in respect of their health care. It’s a curious inversion of citizenship to demand control over peripheral leisure activities but to contract out the big life-changing stuff to the government.
participation...................
Rootedness is perhaps the most important and least know human spiritual need. It is one of the hardest to define. A human being is rooted through their real, active and natural participation in the life of a collectivity that keeps alive treasures of the past and has aspirations for the future. This participation is natural in that it sems automatically from place, birth, occupation and those around them. Every human being needs to have multiple roots and to derive almost all their moral, intellectual and spiritual life from the environment to which they naturally belong.
-Simone Weil, The Need for Roots
Sunday, December 21, 2025
Happy First Day of Winter.................
Nine hours, twenty-two minutes, and twenty-six seconds of sunlight today. For what it is worth, on New Year's Eve we will have nine hours, twenty-five minutes, forty-six seconds of sunlight. Sunlight chart here.
content with silence...................
When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.
speaking in silence.................
No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied — it speaks in silence to the very core of your being.
Good answer....................
I would never apologize for photographing rocks. Rocks can be very beautiful. But, yes, people have asked why I don’t put people into my pictures of the natural scene. I respond, “There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.” That usually doesn’t go over at all.
Saturday, December 20, 2025
On the importance of sensing problems...
Silent acquiescence is the enemy. The key is to get people talking.
Once that happens, you may be surprised at how things can turn around.
Once that happens, you may be surprised at how things can turn around.
-Michael Wade, from this edition
Thursday, December 18, 2025
And he's cruisin' every pad with a little surprise...
Pausation........................
Reflection
requires stillness.
One cost of
rushing from thing to thing is that you lose the space to think. Hard work
matters, but nonstop motion often hides a quiet truth: you could have used your
time better.
If you never
pause, you confuse activity with effectiveness. Make time to think. Walk
outside. Sit quietly. Create space. Then move again, but this time on
purpose.
-James Clear, from this episode
Humilitism.................
.........................Can I get an Amen?
Humilitism says that an
elite should consist of people who are aware of the limits of our ability to
comprehend complex social systems.
reformation....................
As Tolstoy put it: “Everyone thinks of changing the world. But no
one thinks of changing himself.” Kierkegaard said it more sharply: “It has
often been said that a reformation should begin with each man reforming
himself.”
Ouch.......................
Capitalism seems to have moved into an actively misanthropic stage. Corporations don’t just hate their workers. They hate their customers.
The deadening effect...............................
..............................of managerialism:
Managerialism is a form of political economy in which the middle-man steps in with a claim that he has some special competence, through the exercise of which new efficiencies can be realized, or some process of production or distribution can be optimized through quantitative rigor. But a funny thing then happens. His metrics easily come detached from the underlying things they are meant to track, no doubt because the incentives of the manager are tied to metrics, rather than directly to the thing. The latter orientation is characteristic of the craftsman, via the “internal rewards” and satisfactions that are intrinsic to some skilled practice (such as making good television), as opposed to the “external rewards” of money, or social position, or other goods that may be a second-order consequence of getting to be really good at something. But you can’t get good at something while focused on external rewards. You have to go deep into the practice itself.
Wednesday, December 17, 2025
wavelets in a ceaseless surf..........
Now Aristotle understands Plato to have held that the universals have objective existence, and indeed Plato had said that the universal is incomparably more lasting and important than the individual,—the latter being but a little wavelet in a ceaseless surf; men come and go, but man goes on forever. Aristotle's is a matter-of-fact mind; as William James would say, a tough, not tender, mind; he sees the root of endless mysticism and scholarly nonsense in the Platonic "realism"; and he attacks it with all the vigor of a first polemic. As Brutus loved not Caesar less but Rome more, so Aristotle says, Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas—"Dear Plato, but dearer still is truth."
-Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy
On particulars and generalities......
A hostile commentator might remark that Aristotle (like Nietzsche) criticizes Plato so keenly because he is conscious of having borrowed from him generously; no man is a hero to his debtors. But Aristotle has a healthy attitude, nevertheless; he is a realist almost in the modern sense; he is resolved to concern himself with the objective present, while Plato is absorbed in the subjective future. There was, in the Socratic-Platonic demand for definitions, a tendency away from things and facts to theories and ideas, from particulars to generalities, from science to scholasticism; at last Plato became so devoted to generalities that they began to determine his particulars, so devoted to ideas that they began to define or select his facts. Aristotle preaches a return to things, to the "unwithered face of nature" and reality; he had a lusty preference for the concrete particular, for the flesh and blood individual. But Plato so loved the general and universal that in The Republic he destroyed the individual to make a perfect state.
-Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy
A challenge..................
Thus it can be seen that mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become. Such a tension is inherent in the human being and therefore is indispensable to mental well-being. We should not, then, be hesitant about challenging man with a potential meaning for him to fulfill.
-Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
Aging like a fine wine...........
From the inside, old age is not so simple. We may be more concerned about time as death approaches, but older folks are also more capable of appreciating that time. The fewer moments we have to look forward to in life, the more valuable they become. Past grievances and preoccupations often dissipate, and what's left is what we have before us. The beauty of a snowy day, the pride we have in our children or in the work we've done, the relationships we cherish. Despite the perception that old people are grumpy and cantankerous, research has shown that human beings are never so happy as in the late years of their lives. We get better at maximizing highs and minimizing lows. We feel less hassled by the little things that go wrong, and we are better at knowing when something is important and when it's not. The value of positive experiences far outweighs the cost of negative experiences, and we prioritize things that bring us joy. In short, we're emotionally wiser, and that wisdom helps us thrive.
-Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz, The Good Life: Lessons From the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness
outshine................
In this life, in our mind, through our eyes, and on each day,
doubt is logical and reasonable.
Faith is not.
Faith does not rid doubt, rather it carries us through it.
May our faith outshine our doubt.
-Matthew McConaughey, Poems & Prayers
Tuesday, December 16, 2025
Kindness: costless and priceless...........
One perhaps self-serving observation. I’m happy to say I feel better about the second half of my life than the first. My advice: Don’t beat yourself up over past mistakes – learn at least a little from them and move on. It is never too late to improve. Get the right heroes and copy them. You can start with Tom Murphy; he was the best.
Remember Alfred Nobel, later of Nobel Prize fame, who – reportedly – read his own obituary that was mistakenly printed when his brother died and a newspaper got mixed up. He was horrified at what he read and realized he should change his behavior.
Don’t count on a newsroom mix-up: Decide what you would like your obituary to say and live the life to deserve it.
Greatness does not come about through accumulating great amounts of money, great amounts of publicity or great power in government. When you help someone in any of thousands of ways, you help the world. Kindness is costless but also priceless. Whether you are religious or not, it’s hard to beat The Golden Rule as a guide to behavior.
I write this as one who has been thoughtless countless times and made many mistakes but also became very lucky in learning from some wonderful friends how to behave better (still a long way from perfect, however). Keep in mind that the cleaning lady is as much a human being as the Chairman.
-Warren Buffett, from this Thanksgiving letter
The super power......................
.................................of reading:
Becoming a lifelong learner is the best career decision I have ever made. But I had no other choice.
-Ben Carlson
cognitive misers...............
Nowhere in the modern world do we see the effects of our emotional behavior more clearly than in markets. Our emotions lead us to be overconfident when we should be humble, panicked when we should be circumspect, and deeply engaged in seeking information that conforms (rather than disconfirms) our preexisting beliefs. . . .
According to Bernstein, humans are "cognitive misers," relying on simple narratives instead of using complex analytical thinking. The more compelling the narrative is, the more corrosive it becomes to our analytical abilities.
-Barry Ritholz, How Not To Invest: The Ideas, Numbers, and Behaviors That Destroy Wealth—And How to Avoid Them
On the art of breaking rules...............
Commenting on the behavior of the Bank of England in the crisis of 1825, Thomas Joplin said, "There are times when rules and precedents cannot be broken; others, when they cannot be adhered to with safety." Of course. But breaking the rule establishes a precedent and a new rule, which should be adhered to or broken as occasion demands. In these circumstances, intervention is an art, not a science. General rules that the state should always intervene or that is should never intervene are both wrong, . . .
-Charles P. Kindleberger, Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises
the madness of the people................
Not everyone was convinced by the rise in the South Sea share price. . . . Sir Isaac Newton, the Master of the Mint, began selling his £7,000 holding of South Sea shares (when asked about the direction of the market, he is reported to have replied, "I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of the people").
-Edward Chancellor, Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation
two "races" of man..............
From all this we may learn that there are two races of men in this world, but only these two—the "race" of the decent man and the "race" of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrated into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people. In this sense, no group is of "pure race"—and therefore one occasionally found a decent fellow among the camp guards.
Life in a concentration camp tore open the human soul and exposed its depths.
-Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
Monday, December 15, 2025
Sunday, December 14, 2025
El Fuego......................
I had always loved sunrise: was always renewed in spirit. For all my life I'd felt cheated if I'd ever slept through dawn. The primeval winter solstice on bitter Salisbury Plan had raised my childhood's goose pimples long before I understood why, and it had long seemed to me that dawn-worship was the most logical of primitive beliefs.
-Dick Francis, as excerpted from Wild Horsesdo the work.............
The universe does not offer financing.
This is hard to accept because modern life trains us to expect
the opposite. We are addicted to "Buy Now, Pay Later." You live in
the house before you pay off the mortgage. You get the degree before you pay
off the loan. You eat the meal before you ask for the check.
We are conditioned to enjoy the benefit today and pay the cost
tomorrow.
Achievement reverses the transaction. It requires full payment
in advance (and regular payments forever). If you want a fit body, a calm mind,
a healthy relationship, or financial independence, the cost is non-negotiable.
You must do the work before you get the result.
This is why most people quit. They pay a little, see nothing,
and stop. They never make it far enough to see the first return arrive.
-Shane Parrish via Farnum Street, from this edition
Never surrender.........................
Gibran's bitter denunciation of both religious and political injustice prevailing at the time, brought about his anticipated exile from the country and his excommunication from the church, although his parents were staunch Maronites. It was the story, Khalil the Heretic, in particular which drove the Sultan and his Emirs into trepidation and cause nervous authorities in the entire Middle and Near East to examine their governments.
Gibran was quietly pursuing painting with his friend Rodin in Paris when he learned of the ceremonial destruction of his book, and he merely expressed the thought that it was excellent cause for the issuance of a second edition.
-Martin L. Wolf, from the Preface to Gibran's Spirits Rebellious
Good questions all....................
How long will it be before we discover we cannot dazzle God with our accomplishments?
When will we acknowledge that we need not and cannot buy God's favor?
When will we acknowledge that we don't have it all together and happily accept the gift of grace?
-Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel
Saturday, December 13, 2025
reinvention.........................
The
older I get, the more I realize nothing changes if nothing changes. The new
life you want doesn’t magically appear. It’s built through action. New habits.
New mindsets. New standards. New boundaries. Reinvention has a cost of entry.
Pay it with pride.
Make everything OK
Have been missing the wonderful world of the Eclecticity blog. Stumbled across this post of his while rooting through the archives. Hope all is well with you Doug.
Ouch....................
Ladies and gentlemen of the class of 2005 at Emory, real life is not college; real life is not high school. Here is a secret that no one has told you: Real life is junior high. The world that you’re about to enter is filled with junior high adolescent pettiness, pubescent rivalries, the insecurities of 13-year-olds, and the false bravado of 14-year-olds.
-Tom Brokaw, Emory University Commencement Address (2005)
as found in this week's edition of Tim Ferriss's Five-Bullet Friday
Friday, December 12, 2025
The 95/5 rule................
It was a step in the right direction, if not the perfect solution; I did miss the orderly abundance of a fully replenished case. But the experience showed me that creativity was going to be the main ingredient in striking a true balance between restaurant-smart and corporate-smart. . . .
We threw ourselves into the project. Jon proved to be an extremely dangerous co-conspirator. For example, he found a company in Italy making amazing, tiny blue spoons. How amazing could a plastic spoon possibly be? You are going to have to trust me on this: they were paddle-shaped, extraordinarily well designed, and completely unique. They were also preposterously, heartbreakingly expensive.
But I had to have them; the Sculpture Garden deserved them. Nothing else would do.
The first time my boss saw one of those spoons, she narrowed her eyes and asked me what they had cost. I told her, and her eyes got even narrower: "We'll talk about this later." But a month later, we sat down to review the first P & L for the cart, and I never heard another word about those spoons.
I'd managed 95 percent of my budget aggressively, leveraging MoMA's brand to get excelled gelato at a steep discount, and a beautiful cart for free. I'd earned the right to splurge on those spoons, the one small detail I believed would dramatically transform the experience of getting an ice cream at the cart.
This is what I would later call the Rule of 95/5. Manage 95 percent of your business down to the penny; spend the last 5 percent "foolishly." It sounds irresponsible; in fact, it's anything but. Because that last 5 percent has an outsized impact on the guest experience, it's some of the smartest money you'll ever spend.
-Will Guidara, Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect
Art........................
Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary. All I want is the best of everything and there’s very little of that left . . .
Science......................?
Throughout history, there have always been those who would manipulate others in order to gain sex, money, or power. We have not yet put that era behind us.
-Richard Brodie, Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme
Thursday, December 11, 2025
the other side......................
When things
don't go well it's easy to wonder, "Why me?" It's easy to point
fingers. It's easy to wallow in frustration or defeat.
But it is
also easy to ask, "What is this teaching me?"
You can't remove the frustrations from life, but you can always try to come out a little wiser on the other side.
-James Clear, from this edition
quality of life......................
Tip generously. You go around only once, and tipping generously is a meaningful way to improve your own quality of life.
hell......................
Religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell; spirituality is for those who have been there.
The art is in the question............?
Computers are useless; they can only give you answers.
-attributed to Pablo Picasso (perhaps modified a bit)
the odd idea.................
Now, I am faced with another illusion. It is no longer a question of particular privileges, but of transforming privilege into a common right. The entire nation has conceived the odd idea that it could increase production indefinitely by handing it over to the State in the form of taxes in order for the State to give it back a portion in the form of work, profit, and pay. The state is being requested to ensure the well-being of every citizen; and a long and sorry procession, in which every sector of the workforce is represented, from the severe banker to the humble laundress, is parading before the organizer in chief in order to ask for financial assistance.
-Frédéric Bastiat, Economic Sophisms and "What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen" (March 1848)
Wednesday, December 10, 2025
Too present to imagine...................
Age saw two quiet children
Go loving by at twilight,
He knew not whether homeward,
On outward from the village,
Or (chimes were ringing) churchward.
He waited (they were strangers)
Till they were out of hearing
To bid them both be happy.
"Be happy, happy, happy,
And seize the day of pleasure."
The age-long theme is Age's.
'Twas age imposed on poems
Their gather-roses burden
To warn against the danger
That overtaken lovers
From being overflooded
With happiness should have it
And yet not know they have it.
But bid life seize the present?
It lives less in the present
Then in the future always,
And less in both together
Than in the past. The present
Is too much for the senses,
Too crowding, too confusing—
Too present to imagine.
-Robert Frost, Carpe Diem
Arnold Kling.........................
....................and Conservatism 101:
. . . many conservatives are fed up with important institutions, including higher education and mainstream media. This has turned many conservatives into “brokenists.” They are not disposed to protect the authority and legitimacy of existing institutions.
Seems like the distrust of all "isms" has been well earned.
Incentives matter...................
We should also heed the general lesson implicit in the injunction of Ben Franklin in Poor Richard’s Almanack: “If you would persuade, appeal to interest and not to reason.” This maxim is a wise guide to a great and simple precaution in life: Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.
-Charlie Munger, from his The Psychology of Human Misjudgment
On the importance of value................
If time=money, your earning potential is limited. If value=money, your earning potential is unlimited.
-Nicholas Bate, from Rule 4 of 7 about money
On the power of beauty...........
Neuroscientists tell us that awareness of beauty in one’s environment for a long time, reduces stress, can have physiological benefits, perhaps even longevity, . . .
-as lifted from this David Kanigan post
Tuesday, December 9, 2025
Winter................
I walked abroad in a snowy day
I asked the soft snow with me to play
She playd & she melted in all her prime
And the winter called it a dreadful crime
I asked the soft snow with me to play
She playd & she melted in all her prime
And the winter called it a dreadful crime
irremediable.......................
The guiding notion of the Enlightenment, and later of Marx and Lenin's "scientific" socialism, was that henceforth the alliance between happiness and justice would no longer come about through the individual quest for wisdom, but through the rebuilding of society as a whole. And before building a new society, the old one first had to be completely destroyed. It was at the end of the eighteenth century that the idea of revolution took on its modern meaning. Personal salvation was from then on subordinate to collective salvation. . . . suffice it to say that somewhere between 1965 and 1970 I thought I'd seen the irremediable bankruptcy of this illusion, the progenitor of the great totalitarian movements that have ravaged the twentieth century.
Smile..................
Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.
-Dr. Seuss, as channeled by Theodor Seuss Geisel
Logic.....................
Logic means, simply, the art and method of correct thinking. It is the logy or method of every science, of every discipline and every art; and even music harbors it. It is a science because to a considerable extent the processes of correct thinking can be reduced to rules like physics and geometry, and taught to any normal mind; it is an art because by practice it gives to thought, at last, that unconscious and immediate accuracy which guides the fingers of the pianist over his instrument to effortless harmonies. Nothing is so dull as logic, and nothing is so important.
-Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, from the chapter on Aristotle, the world's first logician
Lucky......................
You gotta try your luck at least once a day, because you could be going around lucky all day and not even know it.
-attributed to Jimmy Dean
Monday, December 8, 2025
Retirement.......................?
No thank you. But if it is soon to be part of your future, Eric Barker has some valuable, and free, advice.
Turns out, “endless free time” is only fun when you’re supposed to be doing something else.
fences.....................
The first man who having enclosed in a piece of land, bethought himself of saying, "This is mine," and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society.
-attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau
in conspiracy...................
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay, Self-Reliance
obstinate notions................
He dwelt in himself
like a rook in an unroofed tower.
To get close I had to maintain
a climb up deserted ramparts
and not flinch, not raise an eye
to search for an eye on the watch
from his coign of seclusion.
Deliberately he would unclasp
his book of withholding
a page at a time, and it was nothing
arcane, just the old rules
we all had inscribed on our slates.
Each character blocked on the parchment secure
in its volume and measure.
Each maxim given its space.
Tell the truth. Do not be afraid.
Durable, obstinate notions,
like quarrymen's hammers and wedges
proofed by intransigent service.
Like coping stones where you rest
in the balm of the wellspring.
How flimsy I felt climbing down
the unrailed stairs on the wall,
hearing the purpose and venture
in a wingflap above me.
-Seamus Heaney, The Master
On calculated risks........................
Most of us cannot hide from the world. We have responsibilities that require engagement and personal skills that will be lost without frequent connection to other people.
If
everything we do requires that we have an iron-clad assurance of safety, we’ll
be on our way to becoming hermits. No great civilization was ever built and
maintained by hermits
-Michael Wade, from this episode
Sunday, December 7, 2025
Let the games begin.................
..............................Will be very surprised if there aren't a few first round blow outs.
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