Monday, April 17, 2017
On being careful what you wish for.........
.....................................................Or: On the weaponizing of ideas.
"He's just expressing annoyance that ideas that came from the left didn't restrict themselves to serving only the interests of the left. That's not how ideas work. They get out and about and wreak havoc."
-culled from this Althouse post
Fifty years ago....................
The Youngbloods......................................................Get Together
Sunday, April 16, 2017
Fifty years ago..............................
Cream.......................................................................World of Pain
Saturday, April 15, 2017
290........................................
.......................rules from writers. Here is a simple sample!:
5 Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
the messiness of reality...............
Any scheme that attempts to predict the future based on the patterns of the past is but a grid laid over the messiness of reality. History is ambiguous, and every financial mania is unique, the product of the peculiar folly of its time.
-Maggie Mahar, as borrowed from this post
Fifty years ago..........................
Cream..........................................................Dance the Night Away
Friday, April 14, 2017
Regression.......................
We’re all focused on Trump, but one of the reasons Trump was elected was that many of the people who try to use government to do good just haven’t thought things through.
-David Brooks, as culled from here
via
My favorite optimist..................
................notes that failed populist revolts often bring the unexpected tyranny. History may not repeat itself, but its cycles sure seem similar (and not very pretty). Full post is here. Two wee excerpts here:
"There is a lesson here. Europe as a whole is heading down the same path: slow growth and far too many people living off redistribution rather than enterprise — in private, public and voluntary sectors. The goose that always lays the golden eggs of prosperity is the habit of exchange and specialisation: people doing what they are good at, and getting better at it with innovation, while swapping the results freely with others through commerce."
"Yet history shows that free exchange is constantly at risk of being infected and captured by parasites and predators who live off productive people through taxes, tithes, rents, slavery, subsidy, war and theft. This is what killed the goose in ancient Greece and Rome, in Renaissance Italy and Holland’s golden age. From time to time anti-oligarch insurgents are needed to purge the parasites, expel the predators and free the economy from their burden."
Stark.............................
It is right, and a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.
Fifty years ago................................
Cream..................................................................We're Going Wrong
Thursday, April 13, 2017
Fifty years ago.............................
Cream.........................................................Tales of Brave Ulysses
Wednesday, April 12, 2017
Hanging out...........................
........................................................with Søren Kierkegaard:
“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”
“How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.”
“Nothing is as heady as the wine of possibility”
“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”
“A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it's a joke.”
“The daily press is the evil principle of the modern world, and time will only serve to disclose this fact with greater and greater clearness. The capacity of the newspaper for degeneration is sophistically without limit, since it can always sink lower and lower in its choice of readers. At last it will stir up all those dregs of humanity which no state or government can control.”
“What looks like politics, and imagines itself to be political, will one day unmask itself as a religious movement.”
more
Three problems for the wide world of retail......
.............I was well aware of the first two. The third is kind of interesting. Breakdown on the retailing world's woes here.
via
The basics.................................
"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences."
-P. J. O'Rourke
And here I thought this was a Zig Zigler quote...
“To get what he wanted, a man had to give other people what they wanted.”
-Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest
A novel approach.............................
“You're broke, eh? I been shaking two nickels together for a month, trying to get them to mate.”
-Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep
Fifty years ago............................
Cream................................................................................SWLABR
Can I get an Amen..............................?
“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”
-Agatha Christie
Tuesday, April 11, 2017
Symptoms................................
"Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms ... but a dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot. This symptom is especially serious in that an individual displaying it never thinks of it as a sign of ill health, but as proof of his/her strength.”
-Robert Heinlein, Friday
your own bit......................
“The books are to remind us what asses and fool we are. They're Caeser's praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, "Remember, Caeser, thou art mortal." Most of us can't rush around, talking to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven't time, money or that many friends. The things you're looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book. Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.”
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Fifty years ago..............................
Cream..........................................................Sunshine of Your Love
pass over............................
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
-Frank Herbert
Monday, April 10, 2017
On errors..............................
“Science, my lad, has been built upon many errors; but they are errors which it was good to fall into, for they led to the truth.”
-Jules Verne
Unfortunately...........................
“Now times had changed, and the inherited wisdom of the past had become folly.”
-Arthur C. Clark, as culled from 2001: A Space Odyssey
Love the quote, but removing it from its context might change its meaning. Here it is in its full context:
Those instincts had served his ancestors well, in the days of warm rains and lush fertility, when food was to be had everywhere for the plucking. Now times had changed, and the inherited wisdom of the past had become folly. The man-apes must adapt, or they must die - like the greater beasts who had gone before them, and whose bones now lay sealed within the limestone hills.
A fire shall be woken............................
- All that is gold does not glitter,
- Not all those who wander are lost;
- The old that is strong does not wither,
- Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
- From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
- A light from the shadows shall spring;
- Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
- The crownless again shall be king.
- - J. R. R. Tolkien
Can I get an Amen...........................?
Spengler weighs in on Syria:
They're nuts. The last thing the US should do is commit ground forces.
Feel free to read the whole thing. This part was especially interesting:
A seventh of Russia's population is Muslim, and 90% of them are Sunnis. China has a restive Muslim population among the Uyghurs in its far West, and all of them are Sunnis. Moscow and Beijing therefore support Shi'ite terrorists as a counterweight to Sunni jihadists. A Eurasian Muslim civil war is unfolding as a result. Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum thinks America should let Sunnis and Shi'ites exhaust each other. If it were just Syria, that would make sense, but the Syrian conflict is the nodal point for a much larger and more dangerous conflagration. If the 300 million Muslims of Southeast Asia were to become involved, the consequences would be horrific.
Us western types would do well to remember that not all that long ago Western Europe was convulsed by more than a century's worth of religious wars (reasonable people may disagree whether the will to power was the root cause and religion was just the pretext, or visa versa). Islam is +/- 700 years younger than Christianity. Maybe they're just playing catch-up.
On love.....................................
Two questions should be asked of very love; does it benefit the object, and does it benefit the subject? ... Love is not good in itself; it is good when part of virtue, bad when part of vice. In which case we should follow Aristotle, and say that it is not as such good to love, but good to love the right object, on the right occasion and to the right degree. Learning how and what to love is part of growing up, and love, like other emotions, must be disciplined if it is not to collapse into sentimentality on the one hand, or domination on the other.
-Roger Scruton, as excerpted from Confessions of a Heretic
thanks kurt
Cost-free................................
Dogs do not judge, and their love is unconditional only because it has no conception of conditions. From a dog, therefore, we can enjoy the kind of endorsement that requires no moral labour to earn it. And this is what we see all around us: the dwindling of human affection, which is always conditional and dependent on moral work, and its replacement by the cost-free love of pets.
-Roger Scruton, Confessions of a Heretic
Fifty years ago......................
Cream.............................................................Outside Woman Blues
Sunday, April 9, 2017
Hey kids, no hurry......................
Yet one recent idea emerging from his interest in self-deception appears to have real significance: Research shows that older adults are biased toward paying attention to and remembering the positive over the negative and that they don’t dwell in negative moods, a phenomenon called the aging positivity effect. There’s been no functional explanation, and it would seem that such a bias could be dangerous by blinding people to hazards. But Trivers notes that positive moods improve immune function, and older adults have a greater need for a strong immune system to fight off tumors and other ills. So maybe we’ve evolved to cheer ourselves up as we age just to boost immunity.
He suggested the idea to von Hippel, who didn’t buy it. Why would natural selection shape old age, after we can no longer reproduce? But, Trivers argued, you can still help raise your grandchildren, who carry your genes. Von Hippel ran a test that found that in older adults, a greater positivity bias correlated with stronger immune function. So they published the findings in 2014 in Psychology & Aging. Now they’re working on a longitudinal study to see if positivity predicts later immune function.
-Matthew Hutson, as excerpted from this experience with Robert Trivers
When the student is ready..............
"Before you can be physically free you need to be mentally free."
-Nicholas Bate, lifted from Zen and the Art of Cubicle Freedom
Fifty years ago...........................
Cream........................................................................Strange Brew
As plans go...........................
“Take wrong turns. Talk to strangers. Open unmarked doors. And if you see a group of people in a field, go find out what they are doing. Do things without always knowing how they'll turn out. You're curious and smart and bored, and all you see is the choice between working hard and slacking off. There are so many adventures that you miss because you're waiting to think of a plan. To find them, look for tiny interesting choices. And remember that you are always making up the future as you go.”
-Randall Munroe
Saturday, April 8, 2017
Take note......................
“History is merely a list of surprises,' I said. 'It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again. Please write that down.”
Highest recommendation...............
We all went to see Beauty and the Beast at the cinema last night. The kids grew up watching the Disney animated version, oh, at least twenty times. The 2017 live acting version may even be better; great casting, great music, digital wizardry, a little more depth to the story. Pure family fun. Do go see it. If you see the 3D version, you get these really cool glasses (I'm never taking them off):
From the "Change is Hard" category.....
"......all of the knowledge and technological advances in the world are never enough to change behavior."
-Ben Carlson, as culled from this "it's always and never different" post. that leads off this way:
"I'm fascinated with financial market history because learning about prior cycles gives you a sense about how some things never change while others are in a constant state of flux. It’s both always and never different this time."
On the danger.........................
........................of bubbles of different sorts:
Diversity of thoughts and ideas, amicably and thoughtfully exchanged, are the ideals. All three of the cited writers want that. Many more of us, including "The resistance", ought to take up the banner.
-Peter Gordon, as borrowed from here
Friday, April 7, 2017
The devil is in the details................
................................On the wisdom of re-legislating Glass-Steagall while repealing Dodd-Frank:
"Hence, we find ourselves in the unusual circumstances where potential regulatory legislation that started on the political left also has appeal to the political right."
-Barry Ritholtz, as extracted from this knowledgeable post on the subject.
It would certainly be fun to watch.
Oh, wow...............................
"So we have a crop of young bored billionaires looking to change the world. I think that’s cool. I hope they succeed."
-Steven Novella, as lifted from here
One should be very careful about what one wishes for.
Thursday, April 6, 2017
Fun with the language............
Not sure exactly what the phrase means (I suspect Fred borrowed the word from Spanish), but one can use one's imagination:
The anger is dangerous because it is not visible. The rigorous censorship we call “political correctness” prevents expression of ideas disliked by the ruling classes. It leads to surprises. It is why the Talking Heads were consistently, universally, and utterly wrong about Donald Trump’s chances of being elected. They continue to suffer from this cerebrocolonic congruence.
-as taken from here
In a seemingly chaotic world.................
.....................................it's comforting to know that there really is some good news out there.
Me too.........................................
3. I find it easier to be anti-anti-Trump than to be pro-Trump. Left-wing campus activism repels me. The Democratic Party’s identity politics repels me. The outrage-manufacturing machine that is the Washington Post front page repels me. The arrogance of those in power regarding ordinary citizens repels me, although I do not think that American’s citizenry is blameless when it comes to the health care mess, for example.
-Arnold Kling, as extracted from here
Basic................................
.................................................................Wisdom from Nicholas Bate:
3. Play Beat the Robot by being excellent in your field. The 'OK' will be outsourced and/or replaced by robot.
Fifty years ago..........................
The Blues Magoos..................................................There She Goes
(psychedelia alert)
Wednesday, April 5, 2017
Finally.................................
..................................................................................got one!
Stepping Backward........................
Good-by to you whom I shall see tomorrow,
Next year and when I'm fifty; still good-by.
This is the leave we never really take.
If you were dead or gone to live in China
The event might draw your stature in my mind.
I should be forced to look upon you whole
The way we look upon the things we lose.
We see each other daily and in segments;
Parting might make us meet anew, entire.
You asked me once, and I could give no answer,
How far dare we throw off the daily ruse,
Official treacheries of face and name,
Have out our true identity? I could hazard
An answer now, if you are asking still.
We are a small and lonely human race
Showing no sign of mastering solitude
Out on this stony planet that we farm.
The most that we can do for one another
Is let our blunders and our blind mischances
Argue a certain brusque abrupt compassion.
We might as well be truthful. I should say
They're luckiest who know they're not unique;
But only art or common interchange
Can teach that kindest truth. And even art
Can only hint at what disturbed a Melville
Or calmed a Mahler's frenzy; you and I
Still look from separate windows every morning
Upon the same white daylight in the square.
And when we come into each other's rooms
Once in awhile, encumbered and self-conscious,
We hover awkwardly about the threshold
And usually regret the visit later.
Perhaps the harshest fact is, only lovers--
And once in a while two with the grace of lovers--
Unlearn that clumsiness of rare intrusion
And let each other freely come and go.
Most of us shut too quickly into cupboards
The margin-scribbled books, the dried geranium,
The penny horoscope, letters never mailed.
The door may open, but the room is altered;
Not the same room we look from night and day.
It takes a late and slowly blooming wisdom
To learn that those we marked infallible
Are tragi-comic stumblers like ourselves.
The knowledge breeds reserve. We walk on tiptoe,
Demanding more than we know how to render.
Two-edged discovery hunts us finally down;
The human act will make us real again,
And then perhaps we come to know each other.
Let us return to imperfection's school.
No longer wandering after Plato's ghost,
Seeking the garden where all fruit is flawless,
We must at last renounce that ultimate blue
And take a walk in other kinds of weather.
The sourest apple makes its wry announcement
That imperfection has a certain tang.
Maybe we shouldn't turn our pockets out
To the last crumb or lingering bit of fluff,
But all we can confess of what we are
Has in it the defeat of isolation--
If not our own, then someone's, anyway.
So I come back to saying this good-by,
A sort of ceremony of my own,
This stepping backward for another glance.
Perhaps you'll say we need no ceremony,
Because we know each other, crack and flaw,
Like two irregular stones that fit together.
Yet still good-by, because we live by inches
And only sometimes see the full dimension.
Your stature's one I want to memorize--
Your whole level of being, to impose
On any other comers, man or woman.
I'd ask them that they carry what they are
With your particular bearing, as you wear
The flaws that make you both yourself and human.
-Adrienne Rich
via
Fifty years ago.................
The Temptations..................................................Just One Last Look
(the song and the video are mismatched, but it's pretty cool anyway)
Beware the forecaster..............
The bedrock lesson here is as old as time: The future — not all of it, but much of it — is too complex to be predicted. There are too many moving parts; too much is unknown; people wrongly think the future will resemble the past; they don’t foresee political, economic and technological change.
-culled from this Robert J. Samuelson essay, "Why Economists Can't Forecast"
thanks craig
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
Cycling..............................
If you torture financial data enough and play around with start and end dates you can show almost anything you want historically, but it’s obvious that the stock market is cyclical in nature. Periods of high returns are eventually followed by periods of low returns. Cycles are one of the few dependable aspects of investing in stocks.
-Ben Carlson
"The way to stop wearing out...............
............................is to speed up." Bob Schieffer spends a few minutes with Willie Nelson, the quintessential American.
Thanks David
Fifty years ago......................
Jefferson Airplane.....................................Plastic Fantastic Lover
Hey, wait a minute..................
.............................................................................Say it isn't so!
The reality: We can’t be anybody we want to be and we won’t get rich overnight. The possibilities are not limitless. Our lives are not Disney movies. Except in a few rare instances—where success is often built on a modicum of talent and an excess of luck—we will not earn ridiculous amounts of money and we won’t end up fabulously wealthy.
-Jonathan Clements, as borrowed from this post suggesting we make the best use of the time and gifts given us
Monday, April 3, 2017
I don't know if this is true.............
............................but the mental image of it makes me smile:
“IF YOU WANT TO transfer a few hundred gigabytes of data, it’s generally faster to FedEx a hard drive than to send the files over the Internet. This isn’t a new idea—it’s often dubbed “SneakerNet”—and it’s even how Google transfers large amounts of data internally.”
-Randall Munroe
Fifty years ago.......................
Jefferson Airplane............................................Embryonic Journey
In praise of...........................
........................................................................deliberate downtime:
In other words, the top students were applying some of the habits of deliberate practice—mindfulness, an ability to observe their own performance, a sense that their time was valuable and needed to be spent wisely—to their downtime. They were discovering the immense value of deliberate rest. They figured out early that rest is important, that some of our most creative work happens when we take the kinds of breaks that allow our unconscious minds to keep plugging away, and that we can learn how to rest better. In the conservatory, deliberate rest is the partner of deliberate practice. It is in the studio and laboratory and publishing house, too. As Dickens and Poincaré and Darwin discovered, each is necessary. Each is half of a creative life. Together they form a whole.
via
Sunday, April 2, 2017
Both...............................
“There are two ways of being happy — we may either diminish our wants or augment our means — either will do, the result is the same; and it is for each man to decide for himself, and do that which happens to be the easiest. If you are idle or sick or poor, however hard it may be to diminish your wants, it will be harder to augment your means. If you are active and prosperous, or young, or in good health, it may be easier for you to augment your means than to diminish your wants. But if you are wise, you will do both at the same time, young or old, rich or poor, sick or well; and if you are wise, you will do both in such a way as to augment the general happiness of society.”
-Ben Franklin, as cited here
Symbols..........................
So why are people thinking about Putin as much as they do? Because he has become a symbol of national self-determination. Populist conservatives see him the way progressives once saw Fidel Castro, as the one person who says he won't submit to the world that surrounds him. You didn't have to be a Communist to appreciate the way Castro, whatever his excesses, was carving out a space of autonomy for his country.
In the same way, Putin's conduct is bound to win sympathy even from some of Russia's enemies, the ones who feel the international system is not delivering for them. Generally, if you like that system, you will consider Vladimir Putin a menace. If you don't like it, you will have some sympathy for him. Putin has become a symbol of national sovereignty in its battle with globalism. That turns out to be the big battle of our times. As our last election shows, that's true even here.
-Christopher Caldwell, as excerpted from this essay, How to Think About Vladimir Putin
A damn good question....................
Of course, as the twentieth century - the century of the modernists - taught us, people have an astonishing ability to march toward catastrophe. But why should we endorse that behavior when we still retain our critical faculties?
-Roger Scruton, as excerpted from this essay, Cities For Living.
thanks Kurt
Service.............................
I don't care how you define it, but if you don't think this is one of the greatest acts of public service ever completed (and likely not yet completely completed).............well, you are just wrong.
Fifty years ago..............................
Jefferson Airplane......................................................D.C.B.A. - 25
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