.........................(and maybe showing my age).
Thursday, February 9, 2017
On fudging the data........................
There have been a number of Intertunnel sites suggesting that all is not well in the wide, wide, world of climate science. Faithful readers will know that I believe the climate is always changing and, for most forms of life, warmer is preferable to colder. Panic does not seem appropriate. Regardless, there are reports of "adjustments" and other shenanigans regarding the collection of temperature data. Truth is an elusive commodity in the new millenium, but if one wants to trust someone, my choice would be to trust Matt Ridley, aka my favorite optimist. His post here is worth the read.
In the meanwhile, I will contend that, for the past 4,530,000,000 or so years, this fiery orange ball
likely has more to say about our climate than anything we might do.
image via
Did I ever tell you...............................
.....................that Edwin Hubble is one of my heroes?
Astronomers believed our Milky Way Galaxy was the universe until 1923 when Edwin Hubble discovered two variable stars in the Andromeda "nebula" useful for precise distance measurements. At 900,000 light years away it could not be part of our galaxy, it too was a galaxy.
A few years later Hubble discovered the farther a galaxy was from us, the faster it was receding from us, which suggests the universe is expanding. Hubble resisted this interpretation but Einstein immediately saw it was predicted by his theory of relativity, minus the fudge factor he'd entered by hand. The rate at which the universe is expanding is known as the Hubble Constant. But not known until very recently, the rate is accelerating.
-as cut-and-pasted from here. I don't question that the Universe is expanding, but I am curious about what exactly it is expanding into.
The more things change..............
Even so, he had discovered the power of words and was hungry for more. Mencken was still an eight-year-old and found himself at home in need of something to read. He tried the Baltimore newspapers, but they had too many "political diatribes," and he knew "no more about politics than a chimpanzee." ... In despair, Mencken resorted the the row of books atop the secretary, "dismal volumes in the black cloth and gilt stamping of the era." His father had collected these but seldom read them since the elder Mencken was given to news stories on the condition of the country and the world, both of which he thought were "going to Hell."
-D. G. Hart, Damning Words, the life and religious times of H. L. Mencken
Ed. Note: The year was 1888
An unexpected conclusion.................
.......................................to a post titled, It was the best of times, it was the second best of times:
"Still, I see Trump as a pretty small cloud attached to an awfully big silver lining."
Opening paragraphs..............
H. L. Mencken was baptized in the fall of 1880, a few months after his birth on September 12, into the Protestant Episcopal Church. His baptized name was Louis Henry. The initials came later when, in his first business venture as a nine-year-old printer of business cards and a neighborhood newspaper, Mencken's choice of movable type prevented him from spelling out his whole Christian name. With the r's in his printing kit either broker or defective, he resorted to "H. L."
-D. G. Hart, Damning Words, the life and religious times of H. L. Mencken
Fifty years ago................................
The Young Rascals................................I've Been Lonely Too Long
Wednesday, February 8, 2017
An Off-the-Cuff Observation...........
One cannot observe markets without coming away mightily impressed with the ....
One cannot observe politics without coming away mightily distressed at the ...
-Don Boudreaux, whose full, but short, post is here
On creating your very own.......................
...................................................................personal brand.
17. Keep asking: how can I offer more value per hour?
-22 ways to accomplish your branding are here
It's a good thing...............
..........................because the battle hasn't been going well:
"Your goal is not to battle with the mind, but to witness the mind."
-Muktananda
Fifty years ago..............................
The 5th Dimension................................................Up, Up and Away
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
May it ever be so..................
“Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.”
-Daniel Kahneman
The mystery, and the magic,...................
............................................................of the market system. Contrary to popular belief, no one is smart enough to accomplish what the "market" already has. Invest less than five minutes and become smarter. Do watch:
thanks craig
An essay....................................
.............................................................on the importance of harnessing the "ego", concluding with the suggestion that we be:
Humble in our aspirations
Gracious in our success
Resilient in our failures
.....................................................................full essay hereIf you wonder why...............................
.........................our economy seems to have lost its zip growth-wise and entrepreneurial-wise, you might ponder this chart for a few minutes:
via
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.
Fifty years ago.......................
The Buckinghams.......................................................Don't You Care
Monday, February 6, 2017
Opening paragraphs............................
Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances. For years we lived anyhow with one another in the naked desert, under the indifferent heaven. By day the hot sun fermented us; and we were dizzied by the beating wind. At night we were stained by dew, and shamed into pettiness by the innumerable silences of stars. We were a self-centered army without parade or gesture, devoted to freedom, the second of man's creeds, a purpose so ravenous that it devours all our strength, a hope so transcendent that our earlier ambitions faded in its glare.
-T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars Of Wisdom
Here's a brilliant concept for you........
"but pay by results, not intentions."
-quoting My Favorite Optimist, from this post on farming, gardening, wilding, and localized policies.
A worthy mission...................
All of these connections that social networking has allowed us to create, all of the friends and acquaintances, all of the inspirational quotes and links to amazing articles and essays, all of the breaking news, all of them have one important missing feature.
The missing feature is depth.
Depth is most realized from full sensory experience. The sight of someone's expressions and body movements. Hearing sounds and inflections in the voice. The surrounding smells and tastes. All of these assist us in deriving deeper meaning and connection with the person on people involved.
It is not longer enough to skim the surface with people we would like to call friends. We should strive to find every way possible, no matter the location or distance, to have as many and frequent one-on-one conversations with people we want to know better as possible. We should even be on a mission to find ways for technology to bridge the divides, connect face-to-face, break bread, bounce ideas, or even listen to the same music simultaneously.
Because if you really want to test the waters with someone else, sometimes it is not enough to dip. Sometimes, you must dive.
-Patrick Rhone, as excerpted from Enough
Quite the achievement.....................
It is the cheap cloth, the cheap cotton and rayon fabrics, boots, motorcars and so on that are the typical achievements of capitalist production, and not as a rule improvements that would mean much to the rich man. Queen Elizabeth owned silk stockings. The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for the queens, but in bringing them within the reach of factory girls in return for steadily declining amounts of effort....in other words, that the capitalist process, not by coincidence but by virtue of its mechanism, progressively raises the standard of life of the masses.
-Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy
Old reliable...............................
“A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact.”
-Daniel Kahneman
brain-machinery whizzing...........
“Imagination has brought mankind through the Dark Ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity. Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking-machine and the automobile, for these things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams - day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain-machinery whizzing - are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to create, to invent, and therefore to foster civilization.”
-L. Frank Baum
Fifty years ago...........................
Procol Harum........................................A Whiter Shade Of Pale
Sunday, February 5, 2017
Recommended...................
Unlike the high priest Theodorus in Leibniz's fable about an infinite palace of possibilities, we cannot inspect alternative realities and see what would have transpired if certain things had not happened. What if Descartes had not asked a passerby for help with a Flemish puzzle, and had never had his vivid dreams of a "marvellous science"? What if Leibniz had accepted a professorship instead of racing around Europe, fizzing with ideas and suggesting schemes to sovereigns? What if Hume's career in business had gone rather well, or Oxford had not refused Locke a medical doctorate, or Hobbes had not become starry-eyed about Galileo and fallen in love with Euclid? What if Spinoza had stayed in his synagogue? Ours may not be the best of all possible worlds; but these pioneers helped to make it an intellectually adventurous and, as d'Alembert suggested, a less ignorant one.
My first experience with a college course in philosophy did not go very well. Maybe it was the professor, maybe it was me. Regardless, not much in the way of teaching or learning was accomplished. Fast forward nearly four decades, Gottlieb introduces this reader to the ideas and writings of Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Bayle, Leibniz, Hume, Voltaire, and Rousseau. More importantly, he introduces them in their historical setting. Ideas are provided a context. This reader found that exceedingly helpful.
A question mark..........................
"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted."
-widely attributed to Bertrand Russell. Tried to find the source, but didn't, and then stopped trying.
cartoon via
One risk of the Intertunnel...............?
Does a man of sense run after every silly tale of hobgoblins or fairies, and canvass particularly the evidence? I never knew anyone, that examined and deliberated about nonsense who did not believe it before the end of his enquiries.
-David Hume
On winning tranquility.............
“We are great fools. 'He has spent his life in idleness,' we say; 'I have done nothing today.' What, have you not lived? That is not only the most fundamental but the most illustrious of your occupations. . . . To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately.”
-Harold Bloom, as excerpted from The Western Canon
thanks Rob
Fifty years ago.....................
Van Morrison.....................................................Brown Eyed Girl
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