time.........................

 I hope there's time

for this and that,

and not just this.

-Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison, Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry

The high ground....................

Brigadier General John Buford and his 2,500 men get to Gettysburg first. His recognition of the importance of holding the high ground and of slowing the advance of the Confederate armies to enable the Union troops to occupy said high ground likely changed the outcome of the Civil War.    July 1, 1863.

 

a great difference............

 There is a great difference between the Idols of the human mind and the Ideas of the divine.

-Sir Francis Bacon, Novum Organum

Consider......................

 You see that I have set out opposing assertions in response to your question and I have touched on quite strong arguments in support of each position. Therefore consider now which seems the more probable to you.

William of Ockham, Dialogus

Trust me. Pick the Cabernet...............

 

more fun here

Cleaning out the closet..........................

 

grown-up...................

      From earliest childhood she had been taught to accept responsibility, and to make her own decisions and abide by them. "Every youngster wants to be grown-up," her father had said, "but the difference between a child and an adult is not years, but rather it's a willingness to accept responsibility, to be responsible for one's own actions."

-Louis L'Amour, Flint

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

    Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
    vacation with pay. Want more
    of everything ready-made. Be afraid
    to know your neighbors and to die.
    And you will have a window in your head.
    Not even your future will be a mystery
    any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
    and shut away in a little drawer.
    When they want you to buy something
    they will call you. When they want you
    to die for profit they will let you know.
    So, friends, every day do something
    that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
    Love the world. Work for nothing.
    Take all that you have and be poor.
    Love someone who does not deserve it.
    Denounce the government and embrace
    the flag. Hope to live in that free
    republic for which it stands.
    Give your approval to all you cannot
    understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
    has not encountered he has not destroyed.
    Ask the questions that have no answers.
    Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
    Say that your main crop is the forest
    that you did not plant,
    that you will not live to harvest.
    Say that the leaves are harvested
    when they have rotted into the mold.
    Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
    Put your faith in the two inches of humus
    that will build under the trees
    every thousand years.
    Listen to carrion – put your ear
    close, and hear the faint chattering
    of the songs that are to come.
    Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
    Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
    though you have considered all the facts.
    So long as women do not go cheap
    for power, please women more than men.
    Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
    a woman satisfied to bear a child?
    Will this disturb the sleep
    of a woman near to giving birth?
    Go with your love to the fields.
    Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
    in her lap. Swear allegiance
    to what is nighest your thoughts.
    As soon as the generals and the politicos
    can predict the motions of your mind,
    lose it. Leave it as a sign
    to mark the false trail, the way
    you didn’t go. Be like the fox
    who makes more tracks than necessary,
    some in the wrong direction.
    Practice resurrection.

-Wendell Berry

haunted..................

 

     The spirit of Plato, and that of his pupil and critic Aristotle, have haunted philosophy throughout its history, and it is to them that almost all medieval controversies in the subject and ultimately be traced.  They each bequeathed to the world arguments and conceptions of superlative intellectual and dramatic power, and it is not surprising that, wherever they were read, their influence was felt.  Each of the important Mediterranean religions—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—attempted either to assimilate their doctrines or to present some alternative that would be equally persuasive and equally compatible with our intuitive sense of the nature of the world and of our place within it.

-Roger Scruton, A Short History of Modern Philosophy

a general unrest..............

The full  moon often rises

in the wrong place.  Tonight I sense

activity up there, a general unrest.

-Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison, Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry

Truth.............(until the third one)

 

Faithful readers.........................

 .............may remember a series of posts about the Hopeful Birth of a Subdivision.  We started the process of developing 113 single-family residential building lots in 2021. We are 97% finished with our part of the development.  Our home builder partner, D. R. Horton, is about 60% finished with their portion of the project.  Drone photography is pretty cool.  This is what progress looked like this hazy afternoon:

The whole development

Phase 1 95% built out

Phase 2 is now really getting started

While not finished, we are announcing the successful birth of Conor's Pass Sub-division. There will likely be a wrap-up post, celebrating the development and construction and sale of all 113 houses next Spring.  Stay tuned.

Was ready ...................

.....................to a call bullshit on this:

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Richard McKenzie points out that one underappreciated cause of the increase in the concentration of wealth in the U.S. is that Americans are living longer. (via)

But then I remembered this.  Maybe it is correct.

Testing our self-awareness.................

...................................with 21 questions.

51 ideas.............................

 29. Occam’s Razor: If there are multiple explanations for why something happened and they are equally persuasive, assume the simplest one is true. In the search for truth, remove unnecessary assumptions. Trust the lowest-complexity answer.

30. Hickam’s Dictum: The opposite of Occam’s Razor. In a complex system, problems usually have more than one cause. For example, in medicine, people can have many diseases at the same time. 31. Hormesis: A low dose of something can have the opposite effect of a high dose. A little bit of stress wakes you up, but a lot of stress is bad for you. Lifting weights for 30 minutes per day is good for you, but lifting weights for 6 hours per day will destroy your muscles. Stress yourself, but not too much. 32. Robustness Principle: Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others. It’s a design guideline for software and a good rule for life: Hold yourself to a higher standard than you hold others to. 33. Legibility: We are blind to what we cannot measure. Not everything that counts can be measured, and not everything that can be measured counts. But people manage what they can measure, so society repeats the same mistakes. 34. Horseshoe Theory: Extreme opposites tend to look the same. For example, a far-right movement and a far-left movement can be equally violent or desire a similar outcome. People on both sides are more similar to each other than they are to people in the center.

-full list here

In the background.......................

..........................Motown's Greatest Hits

Powerful.............................

 ..................................productivity choices.

A teaser.........................

..................................as I crack open the third "summer of Scruton" book.

Sometimes the lines between...........

 .............correlation and causation do touch.

Be careful what you wish for............

 If I can resort to politics to impose my own preferences on the behavior of others, even if these preferences are not highly valued intrinsically, then it would seem that other persons, working in democratic process, can do the same to me. I may find that the political process is double-edged. 

-James Buchanan, as quoted here

And all of a sudden...................

 .................BJJ (Brazilian jiujitsu) is a big thing.  

Back and forth...............

 Raindrops on your glasses;

there you go again,

reading the clouds.

-Either Jim Harrison or Ted Kooser from Braided Creek

your turn David

Overstuffed..........................

 .............................slack is underrated.

-Seth Godin

Life its ownself.........................

.................. Semi-retired but still in the game.