On the importance............................

 

.................of merging the longer view with a focus on the here and now.

Michael Wade's Substack is up and running.  Tune in!

Old friends..................

      Renias stops and turns to me, "Come, buti, it's your turn now," he says.

     He brings me to the front of the line and offers me the trail.  My job now will be to follow, and as we are close, Renias and Alex will look over the top of me into the brush ahead so that we don't come upon the lions without seeing them.  At the head of the trail, I feel the natural pressure of being thrown the ball in front of people I admire.

     Suddenly, I feel an old friend who has walked with me for years arise.  Each of us has these friends, mine is called self-doubt.  I have learned rather than to resist him, to invite him in, welcoming him as a teacher of humility.  Together we continue.  The first track, and then the next first track.

-Boyd Varty, The Lion Tracker's Guide To Life

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

      The sudden rearmament that followed Napoleon's escape from Elba had done little to thin the ranks of unemployed sea-officers by the early spring of 1815.  A man-of-war stripped, dismantled and laid up cannot be manned, equipped and made ready for sea in a matter of weeks; and the best vantage-points in Gibraltar were now crowded with gentlemen on half-pay who with others had gathered to watch the long-expected arrival of Commodore Aubrey's squadron from Madeira, a squadron that would do something to refurnish the great bare stretch of water inside the mole - an extraordinary nakedness emphasized by the presence of a few hulks, the Royal Sovereign wearing the flag of the Commander-in-Chief, and a couple of lonely seventy-fours: no stream of liberty-boats plying to and fro, almost no appearance of true wartime life.

-Patrick O'Brian,  The Hundred Days

Science takes another guess............

.................................................at an interesting behavior pattern.



Patience please.  Wait until the 28th second, then see if you agree that the quote "We're going to need a bigger boat" is likely true.

It was a good day for a ferry ride.................

To Staten Island (and back), for no particular purpose...............

Boarding the Samuel I . Newhouse

Head in the clouds

The always faithful Lady Liberty

A fine day for a sail

Good thing............................

“I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men” 
-Charles Darwin

More about HMS Beagle can be found here.

I wonder what made me.............................

..........................think, "Oh, bullshit" when I read this quote?

"None of us who protested was motivated by our own bottom line so much as by the principle,” Ms. Lewis said, expressing concern about the impact of the changes on lower-paid employees.

Back story:  The Execupundit pointed to this fun New York Times article about health care cost chickens coming home to roost at Harvard.

Us Ohioans will welcome them with open arms...

"A combination of expensive green policy missteps and a hesitance to explore its own shale reserves have sent Europe’s electricity prices spiraling upward in recent years. That’s hurting households and businesses alike, and has many European companies eying the greener grass of shale-rich America."
-Walter Russell Mead, as excerpted from this blog post

Our boy has been hiding in plain sight..............

I was going to post Gary Larson's "Beware of Doug" cartoon to celebrate the surfacing of Eclecticity Light, but seeing as Blogger just won't cooperate, you'll have to follow the first link.

Welcome to the real world....................

Matt Yglesias, a pretty smart guy who will never be mistaken for a conservative, discovers the joys small business people face when confronting the "bureaucracy."  All those reasonable rules and regulations.  Right.  His full essay is here.

Red tape, long lines, inconvenient office hours, and other logistical hassles probably won’t stop tomorrow’s super-genius from launching the next great billion-dollar company. But it’s a large and needless deterrent to the formation of the humble workaday firms that for many people are a path to autonomy and prosperity.

Looking forward to reading more on his continuing education.

image via

And to think he was a Milton scholar.............

Operating on the theory that a) we should encourage all the
budding authors and blogsters that we can, and b) that people
who can string words together in an interesting fashion are worth
paying attention to, and c) that exiles from academia should be
rewarded not punished,  I propose you go visit the new blog
of Jarod Anderson.

Jarod (operating now as J. Kelley Anderson) has discovered a
taste for Stephen King:

"Well, it’s happened. I have been away from academia for four months and I’ve started liking Stephen King. I have descended from my handcrafted biodegradable perch of literary hipsterdom. I have navigated the obscure and treacherous rivers of artisan beers in my kayak of self-satisfaction, and I have found myself afloat in the Budweiser Sea of mainstream fiction. My literary snob credentials are forever lost."

(Editors Note:  In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention
that J. Kelley is the very talented son of my business partner of
these many years.)