Max Frost et. al. ........Shape of Things To Come

There's a new sun
Risin' up angry in the sky
And there's a new voice
Cryin' we're not afraid to die
Let the old world make believe
It's blind and deaf and dumb
But nothing can change the shape of things to come
There are changes
Lyin' ahead in every road
And there are new thoughts
Ready and waiting to explode
When tomorrow is today
The bells may toll for some
But nothing can change the shape of things to come
The future's comin' in, now
Sweet and strong
Ain't no-one gonna hold it back for long
There are new dreams
Crowdin' out old realities
There's revolution
Sweepin' in like a fresh new breeze
Let the old world make believe
It's blind and deaf and dumb
(But) nothing can change the shape of things
Nothing can change the shape of things
Nothing can change the shape of things
Nothing can change the shape of things
To come

unmired..................

 

     Specifically, NASA was unable to predict solar particle storms, radioactive material spewed by the sun that can gravely damage astronauts and the equipment they depend on.  Solar physicists were understandably skeptical that outsiders could help, but after three decades of being stuck, there was nothing to lose; NASA posted through InnoCentive in 2009.  Within six months, Bruce Cragin, an engineer retired from Sprint Nextel and living in rural New Hampshire, solved the challenge using radio waves picked up by telescopes.  Pre-retirement, Cragin had collaborated with scientists, and found that those specialist teams often got mired in working out small details at the expense of practical solutions.  "I think it helped me being out of that," he said, "having moved on."  A NASA official noted, diplomatically, that "there was some resistance" to Cragin's solution at first, "because it was using a different methodology."

-David Epstein, Range:  Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

A republic, if we can keep it...........

 

     Our constitutional system has endured for more than two centuries, but its preservation is not guaranteed.  Today, as at other critical times in our nation's history, it is an open question whether a constitutional system and culture that are "so ordered" can continue to flourish.

-Samuel A. Alito Jr., from the introduction to So Ordered: An Originalist's View of The Constitution, The Court, and Our Country

a balancing act..............

 

      A point Holmes recurred to was that many of the new rules that had evolved reflected efforts by courts to work out a balance between competing interests in society and establish standards of conduct so as to avoid conflict.  That meant the law was as much about setting policy as doing justice in individual cases: "In substance the growth of the law is legislative," he insisted.  To American legal theorists, that was an especially heretical idea.  They had been adamant that judges were not "legislators": that was a power reserved to the democratic will of the people, expressed through their elected representatives.

-Stephen Budiansky, Oliver Wendell Holmes: A Life in War, Law, and Ideas

strange times.............

 

A new generational war could prove devastating. Societies, noted Aristotle, are like ships: though the crew members have different roles, they all must work together on a common journey. Seniors and young people need each other, but the movement to confiscate the wealth of “the greedy geezer” can only fundamentally weaken society by turning parents against children and vice versa.

-Joel Kotkin, from this essay

A tune from 1962.....................

 

Booker T. & the M.G.s..........Green Onions

choices.......................

 

Interesting for certain...................

 

stingy....................

 

People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but a soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.

-Seneca

yearning...................

 

Our consciousness yearns for transcendence, to feel we are a part of something greater than our individual selves.

-Robert Greene, The Law of The Sublime

coherent and livable..................

Holmes said he thought railing against the universe was like damning the weather or firing a gun at the sky; the only change it produced on the relation between man and the cosmos was the kick of the gun on the man who fired it.  "It seems to me that the only promising activity is make my universe coherent and livable, not to babble about the universe," he wrote (William) James in 1907.

-Stephen Budiansky, Oliver Wendell Holmes: A Life in War, Law, and Ideas

Wait . . . . . .what?..............

 

Fall back........................

 

via 

Sixty years ago.....................

 

On the TV...............Adam West debuts as Batman

Halloween.......................

 

.............as celebrated in Downtown Newark this evening:

Amusement..................

 

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

-Bertrand Russell

Ah, human nature..............

 

It is doubtful if the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power—power to oppress others. The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors; they want to retaliate.

-attributed to Eric Hoffer

The beat of a different drummer........

 

Age may have one side, but assuredly Youth has the other. There is nothing more certain than that both are right, except perhaps that both are wrong. Let them agree to differ; for who knows but what agreeing to differ may not be a form of agreement rather than a form of difference?

-Robert Louis Stevenson, Crabbed Age and Youth

On ignorance and wisdom.............

 

For it was my master who taught me not only how very little I knew but also that any wisdom to which I might ever aspire could consist only in realizing more fully the infinity of my ignorance.

-attributed to Karl Popper