Thursday, July 27, 2017
It's the question of the decade........
"One of the puzzling questions about the financial crisis is why none of the executives of the major firms were prosecuted for what some legal experts believe was widespread fraud."
-as culled from here
Wouldn't prosecution of fraud have been a better solution to the problem than Dodd-Frank? Just wondering.
Wisdom.........................
....................................................another collection of "random thoughts" from the Execupundit.
Wednesday, July 26, 2017
What could possibly go wrong............
...............................starring Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote
Look Deeper.....................
Look deeper through
the telescope
and
do not be afraid when the stars
collide towards the darkness,
because sometimes,
the most beautiful things
begin in chaos.
Crash and burn.
Let it all fuse into one.
Let it all collide
the way two people exchange
eyes
when they meet for the
very first time.
-Robert M. Drake
One way for Democrats................
...........to reclaim the mantle of being the party "for the people," would be to vow to stop civil forfeiture. Megan McArdle weighs in. This whole concept is madness. What is Sessions thinking? I can think of no one I would trust with this sort of power.
But the Founding Fathers were not unaware that bad people would sometimes get away if prosecutors had a high burden of proof to meet. They were not unaware that some of those people would go on to do further bad things. What they understood, and Sessions apparently does not, is that there are even worse things than crime, and one of them is a government that is allowed to steal our liberty like a thief in the night.
On my way..................................
David Sanborn...............................................Comin' Home Baby
Fifty years ago...........................
The Who.....................................................................Tattoo
Tuesday, July 25, 2017
Opening paragraphs.................
The dark-haired man stared at the wall in front of him. His chair, like the rest of the furniture, was pleasing to the eye but not made for comfort. The style was Early American, the theme Spartan, as if those about to be granted an audience with the occupant of the inner office should reflect on their awesome opportunity in stern surroundings.
-Robert Ludlum, The Chancellor Manuscript
On dusty roads............................
Mountain.................................Theme For An Imaginary Western
On the importance of "incremental progress"....
John McCain delivers a listen-worth speech. Lots of great quotes. One of my favorites, as he describes Senate deliberations, "they haven't been overburdened by greatness lately." Do give it a listen.
In the right place................
All she needed
was a minute
to fall in love
with all the stars,
With all the night
and all the day.
With the way the world
took her breath,
and the way
her life took a different
turn.
Things change...
and after that night
it all just changed.
She believed
and
that is all she needed.
That night she inspired me.
That night I, too,
had changed.
-Robert M. Drake
Monday, July 24, 2017
A very good reason to study history.....
Why am I telling you all this? Because I fear that, except for a few of us remaining graybeards and some immigrants from the world’s manifold tyrannies and anarchies, most Americans are too young to remember, even vicariously, the ills that the world can inflict and the effort it takes to withstand and restrain them. They have studied no history, so not only can they not distinguish Napoleon from Hitler, but also they have no conception of how many ills mankind has suffered or inflicted on itself and how heroic has been the effort of the great, the wise, and the good over the centuries to advance the world’s enlightenment and civilization—efforts that the young have learned to scorn as the self-interested machinations of dead white men to maintain their dominance. While young people are examining their belly buttons for microaggressions, real evil still haunts the world, still inheres in human nature; and those who don’t know this are at risk of being ambushed and crushed by it.
-Myron Magnet, as culled from this essay
via
On civil forfeiture...................
........................................Glenn Reynolds weighs in:
In the meantime, Sessions is doing exactly the wrong thing by doubling down on asset seizure. The message it sends is that the feds see the rest of us as prey, not as citizens. The attorney general should be ashamed to take that position. And, really, he should just be gone.
The Art of Parenting..............
...........23 dangerous things you should
via
Engage..........................
We crave ease, but stimulation is what really makes us happy. We try to subtract at work, do less, check out. These are signs of burnout. We don't need to subtract; we need to add novel challenges to create engagement.
-Eric Barker, Barking Up The Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong
Fifty years ago...............................
The Rolling Stones........................Let's Spend The Night Together
Truth telling..............................
“It has long been recognized that getting an education is effective for bettering oneself and one's chances in the world. But a degree and an education are not necessarily synonymous.”
-Jane Jacobs, Dark Age Ahead
From an Amazon customer review of Dark Age Ahead comes this passage: In her definition, a "dark age" is one in which a culture loses its past knowledge, falling into a mass amnesia in which life grows more miserable and short under the influence of quacks, fear and superstition, with each resulting failure driving people further into desperation, isolation and further self-destructive action.
Sunday, July 23, 2017
Politics as blood sport...............
While Blaine was determined to keep Stalwarts out of Garfield's administration, he knew that he had to resist the temptation to rush in as Sherman had. Conkling and his men were formidable adversaries. To succeed, an attack would have to be both clever and quiet. "They must not be knocked down with bludgeons," Blaine brooded. "They must have their throats cut with a feather."
-Candice Millard, Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President
Everybody listen to me......................
Grand Funk Railroad................I'm Your Captain/Closer To Home
Memory Lane...........................
Ray reaches back and shares his youthful self's television favorites. Here's one of mine:
Mighty Mouse wiki here
And also incoherent........................
“our tolerance of our own tolerance is making us intolerant of other people’s intolerance, which is intolerable. And, unlikely as it sounds, this has now become the highest, most rarefied form of multiculturalism...."
-Mark Steyn, as quoted here
The good old days.............................
Although he argued that he should "take the stump and bear a fighting share of the campaign," traveling from town to town and asking for votes was considered undignified for a presidential candidate. Abraham Lincoln had not given a single speech on his own behalf during either of his campaigns, and Rutherford B. Hayes advised Garfield to do the same. "Sit crosslegged," he said, "and look wise."
-Candice Millard, Destiny Of The Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President
Ed. Note: History has shown that Lincoln wasn't totally against giving speeches. See also the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
Mind and heart........................
"Mind and heart. Materialistic values cannot give us peace of mind. So we really need to focus on our inner values, our true humanity. Only this way can we have peace of mind - and more peace in the world."
-the Dalai Lama, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World
Thursday, July 20, 2017
Hmmmm..................................
- A paradox: Boosting efficiency often reduces effectiveness.
-Nicholas Bate, from his wonderful new series
Tuesday, July 18, 2017
Well...................................
....................................................it would be a good start anyway. The WaPo clearly picked this up. Don't know what they said, because it is behind their paywall, one I won't be penetrating. Let me know what I missed.
Here is where I confess..................
.................to never having read anything written by David Foster Wallace, until now. Pointed in his direction by this blog post, I read his July, 1996 Esquire magazine essay, The String Theory. Faithful readers may remember that my love of reading was kindled by Philadelphia sports writers in the 1960s. DFW puts those guys to shame. When one gets a kick out of reading the author's footnotes, one suspects the author is among the best.
"You are invited to try to imagine what it would be like to be among the hundred best in the world at something. At anything. I have tried to imagine; it's hard."
Monday, July 17, 2017
On creating problems.................
"It's so much easier to suggest solutions when you don't know too much about the problem.”
-Malcolm Forbes
image via
On problems...............................
"It turns out that wishful thinking does not solve problems, but creates them."
-Tim Harford, as culled from here
I know how the story ended............
..................but I still got anxious watching the countdown:
July 16, 1969. Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins head toward the moon.
Ten declarations...........................
4. I declare that it is true that life turns out best for the one who makes the best of the way life turns out. The key is improvisation in the face of the unexpected, which is always to be expected. A better name for that is surprise.
-Robert Fulghum, other nine are here
via
Twofer............................
Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington/Don't Get Around Much Anymore
Willie Nelson............................Don't Get Around Much Anymore
Friday, July 14, 2017
Morning drive music....................
The Tornados...........................................................Telstar
Thursday, July 13, 2017
Steam................................
Steam.......................................Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye
A good question........................
On what principle is it that with nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?
Progress................................
"Getting 100,000 miles out of a car in 1970 was cause for celebration. Not getting 100,000 miles out of a car today is cause to think you bought a lemon."
-Steven Horwitz, as taken from this publication
The more things change............
...............................the more they stay the same. To wit:
The present moment is one of great distress. But how small will that distress appear when we think over the history of the last forty years; a war, compared with which all other wars sink into insignificance; taxation, such as the most heavily taxed people of former times could not have conceived; a debt larger than all the public debts that ever existed in the world added together; the food of the people studiously rendered dear; the currency imprudently debased, and imprudently restored. Yet is the country poorer than in 1790? We firmly believe that, in spite of all the misgovernment of her rulers, she has been almost constantly becoming richer and richer. Now and then there has been a stoppage, now and then a short retrogression; but as to the general tendency there can be no doubt. A single breaker may recede; but the tide is evidently coming in.
-as quoted from Southey's Colloquies on Society, published in 1830
Remember when we were told..............
.................we couldn't "drill our way out" of an oil crisis"?
Divining the reasons behind ordinary Americans’ disenchantment with the political class is a robust industry these days. They might, in their searches, want to consider that smug, unequivocal assertion that “we can’t drill …” And that patronizing, “addicted to oil” line. The people saying these things were so sublimely confident in their predictions. Seems they weren’t familiar with the wisdom of Yogi Berra who said, immortally, that, “Predictions are hard. Especially about the future.”
-as excerpted from here
via
Sorry, not sorry......................
Sorry, not sorry. A neologism which I hear young people use frequently, and now people my age are adopting. It's a great phrase. People want you to be sorry for something you did, you feel you're in the right. Sorry, not sorry.
"Safe Spaces" aren't about knowledge. They are about being thin-skinned and unwilling to think.
... life means we're free to be offended. We're not free from being offended. We're free to be heard. We're not free to force people to listen. If my tone offends you, if it causes you to discount what I have to say, if it causes you any kind of problem, well, it's your right to feel that way. Good luck with that.
-three wee excerpts culled from this Maggie's Farm essay. Read the whole thing.
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
Cruising............................
Russ Ballard...................................................The Fire Still Burns
Opening paragraphs....................
For something so unprecedented, so fraught with institutional risk, it was all handled with a minimum of fuss. And quietly, too. That was the remarkable thing about it, the operational silence with which it was carried out. Yes, there had been the dramatic announcement broadcast live to the nation, and the splashy first Cabinet meeting, and the lavish party at Ari Shamron's lakeside villa in Tiberias where all the friends and collaborators from his remarkable past - the spymasters, the politicians, the Vatican priests, the London art dealers, even an inveterate art thief from Paris - had come to wish him well. But otherwise it came to pass with scarcely a ripple. One day Uzi Navot was seated behind his large smoked-glass desk in the chief's office, and the next, Gabriel was in his place. Absent Navot's modern desk, mind you, for glass wasn't Gabriel's style.
-Daniel Silva, House of Spies
On sources................................
"Too much self-centered thinking is the source of suffering. A compassionate concern for others' well-being is the source of happiness."
-The Dalai Lama
On dejection..........................
"If something can be done about the situation, what need is there for dejection? And if nothing can be done about it, what use is there for being dejected?
-Shantideva
Monday, July 10, 2017
30 observations after 30 years..........
Today marks 30 years since a confident young man walked into the back office of Schroder Investment Management in London, to start his first day on the job, the first in his career. Ask me a question back then and I would have answered assuredly and quickly. Today I’d be more likely to say ‘I don’t know’ with just as much confidence.
-so commences this Broadsword Capital post. Read the whole thing. Here are a few wee passages:
The lessons stand the test of time. The stocks, companies, and players change, but human nature never changes. We’re all human, even millennials.
Everything is a risk. Getting up, going out, crossing the road, but ultimately I am responsible for everything that happens to me.
Social media is a tough arena. ... Be nice. We all have off days. You never know what’s going on in people’s lives. Everyone’s going through something.
Moment by moment....................
"Throughout the entire history of philosophy, philosophers have sought to discover what man is - or what human nature is. But Sartre believed that man has no such eternal nature to fall back on. It is therefore useless to search for the meaning of life in general. We are condemned to improvise. We are like actors dragged onto the stage without having learned our lines, with no script and no prompter to whisper stage directions to us. We must decide for ourselves how to live."
-Jostein Gaarder
via
Sunday, July 9, 2017
The more things change...............
In the eighteenth century certain members of the clerisy, such as Voltaire and Tom Paine, courageously advocated our liberties in trade. And in truth our main protection against the ravenous has been just such competition in trade - not City Hall or Whitehall, which have their own ravenous habits, backed by violence. During the 1830s and 1840s, however, a much enlarged clerisy, mostly the sons of bourgeois fathers, commenced sneering at the economic liberties their fathers were exercising so vigorously, and commenced advocating the vigorous use instead of the state's monopoly of violence to achieve one or another utopia, soon.
-Deidre Nansen McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital Or Institutions, Enriched The World
a fresh living thing......................
To understand anything you must live with it, you must observe it, you must know its content, its nature, its structure, its movement. Have you ever tried living with yourself? If so, you will begin to see that yourself is not a static state, it is a fresh living thing. And to live with a living thing your mind must also be alive. And it cannot be alive if it is caught in opinions, judgments and values.
In order to observe the movement of your own mind and heart, of your whole being, you must have a free mind, not a mind that agrees and disagrees, taking sides in an argument, disputing over mere words, but rather following with an intention to understand - a very difficult thing to do because most of us don't know how to look at, or listen to, our own being any more that we know how to look at the beauty of a river or listen to the breeze among the trees.
When we condemn or justify we cannot see clearly, nor can we when our minds are endlessly chattering; then we do not observe what is; we look only at the projections we have made of ourselves. Each of us has an image of what we think we are or what we should be, and that image, that picture, entirely prevents us from seeing ourselves as we actually are.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known
A continuation....................
It is one of the most difficult things in the world to look at anything simply. Because our minds are very complex we have lost the quality of simplicity. I don't mean simplicity in clothes or food, wearing only a loin cloth or breaking a record fasting or any of that immature nonsense the saints cultivate, but the simplicity that can look directly at things without fear - that can look at ourselves as we actually are without any distortions - to say when we lie, we lie, not cover it up or run away from it.
Also in order to understand ourselves we need a great deal of humility. If you start by saying, 'I know myself', you have already stopped learning about yourself. ...
-Jiddu Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known
The biggest picture....................
You want to talk about "big picture" thinking? It doesn't get any bigger than this. We're talking about stuff like fate and destiny.
We often confuse those two words as meaning the same thing. But UCLA professor Howard Suber clarifies the distinction. Fate is that thing we cannot avoid. It comes for us despite how we try to run from it. Destiny, on the other hand, is the thing we must chase, what we must bring to fruition. It's what we strive toward and make true. When bad things happen, the idea of fate makes us feel better, whereas taking the time to consider eulogy values helps us think more about destiny. Success doesn't come from shrugging off the bad as unchangeable and saying things are already "meant to be"; it's the result of chasing the good and writing our own future. Less fate, more destiny.
-Eric Barker, as borrowed from the chapter in Barking Up The Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong, wherein he compares "resume" values and "eulogy" values
Saturday, July 8, 2017
Working on it..................
William Bell............................................I Forget To Be You Lover
Where would we be without "experts"......?
Also, the more self-confident an expert appears, the worse his or her track record is likely to be.
-Barry Ritholtz, lifted from his footnotes to this post on "An Expert's Guide to Calling a Market Top."
Since we are sharing..................
..............................................the good stuff today, check out Dan Piraro's Bizarro cartoons.
I hate being bossy..................
...............................so consider this as a suggestion, not an order: visit View From the Ledge. The Intertunnel is a better place when Jeff posts regularly.
Friday, July 7, 2017
Taking the rest of the day off...............
The Rippingtons................................................Wednesday's Child
Knowledge is good......................
"It’s a universal law — intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education,” observed Alexander Solzhenitsyn. “An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.”
-as culled from here
Ouch..........................
"The Bloomberg syndrome is a characteristic of contemporary government officials. When they are unwilling or unable to address pre-modern problems in their jurisdictions — crime, crumbling infrastructure, inadequate transportation — they compensate by posing as philosopher kings who cheaply lecture on existential challenges over which they have no control."
-Victor Davis Hanson, as extracted from here. As they say, read the whole thing.
Stories..............................
Optimists told themselves a story that may not have been true, but it kept them going, often allowing them to beat the odds. Psychologist Shelly Taylor says that "a healthy mind tells itself flattering lies." The pessimists were more accurate and realistic, and they ended up depressed. The truth can hurt.
-Eric Barker, Barking Up The Wrong Tree
That woman.......................
Marshall Tucker Band......................................Can't You See
Connection.............................
Karl Marx was wrong about a lot of things in economics, but we're now realizing he was also right about some stuff. When you remove people's emotional connection to their labor and treat them merely as machines that produce effort, it's soul killing.
-Eric Barker, Barking Up The Wrong Tree
Thursday, July 6, 2017
In praise of mavericks....................
Here was just the right sort of maverick: someone with very high intellectual credentials and a sterling education but not housebroken enough by politics to prevent her from doing serious research on the character strengths of students who succeed and the character deficits of students who fail.
-Martin E. P. Seligman, Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being
Incalculable................................
Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid, and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely happy as pirates or burglars. Accordingly they invent systems which make the future calculable, at least in the main outlines.
-Bertrand Russell, from his essay "Philosophy's Ulterior Motives," as found in Unpopular Essays
Must be thinking more, here of late......
Perhaps, as Borges concludes in his story, it is forgetting, not remembering, that is the essence of what makes us human. To make sense of the world, we must filter it. "To think," Borges writes, "is to forget."
-Joshua Foer, Moonwalking With Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
Can I get an Amen.........................?
In the age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow.
In the age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention.
And in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent that sitting still.
-Pico Iyer, The Art of Stillness: Adventures In Going Nowhere
It's a process...............................
Traffic...................................................John Barleycorn Must Die
There were three men came out of the west, their fortunes for to try
And these three men made a solemn vow
John Barleycorn must die
They've plowed, they've sown, they've harrowed him in
Threw clods upon his head
And these three men made a solemn vow
John Barleycorn was dead
They've let him lie for a very long time, 'til the rains from heaven did fall
And little Sir John sprung up his head and so amazed them all
They've let him stand 'til Midsummer's Day 'til he looked both pale and wan
And little Sir John's grown a long long beard and so become a man
They've hired men with their scythes so sharp to cut him off at the knee
They've rolled him and tied him by the way, serving him most barbarously
They've hired men with their sharp pitchforks who've pricked him to the heart
And the loader he has served him worse than that
For he's bound him to the cart
They've wheeled him around and around a field 'til they came onto a pond
And there they made a solemn oath on poor John Barleycorn
They've hired men with their crabtree sticks to cut him skin from bone
And the miller he has served him worse than that
For he's ground him between two stones
And little Sir John and the nut brown bowl and his brandy in the glass
And little Sir John and the nut brown bowl proved the strongest man at last
The huntsman he can't hunt the fox nor so loudly to blow his horn
And the tinker he can't mend kettle or pots without a little barleycorn
THE YEAR WAS 2081......................
.......................................and everybody was finally equal.
Re-reading Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s short story, Harrison Bergeron, is an annual event around these parts. Try it out.
Others feel the same
Wise selfishness............................
"So as you rightly mentioned, a self-centered attitude is the source of the problem. We have to take care of ourselves without selfishly taking care of ourselves. If we don't take care of ourselves, we cannot survive. We need to do that. We should have wise selfishness rather than foolish selfishness. Foolish selfishness means you just think only of yourself, don't care about others, bully others, exploit others. In fact, taking care of others, helping others, ultimately is the way to discover your own joy and to have a happy life. So that is what I call wise selfishness."
-The Dalai Lama
receiving and retrieving.................
Spirit ........................................................................Nature's Way
It's nature's way of telling you something's wrong
It's nature's way of telling you in a song
It's nature's way of receiving you
It's nature's way of retrieving you
It's nature's way of telling you
Something's wrong
It's nature's way of telling you, summer breeze
It's nature's way of telling you, dying trees
It's nature's way of receiving you
It's nature's way of retrieving you
It's nature's way of telling you
Something's wrong
It's nature's way, it's nature's way
It's nature's way, it's nature's way
It's nature's way of telling you
It's nature's way of telling you
Something's wrong
It's nature's way of telling you
It's nature's way of telling you
In a song, oh-h
It's nature's way of receiving you
It's nature's way
It's nature's way of retrieving you
It's nature's way
It's nature's way of telling you
Something's wrong, something's wrong, something's wrong
-Randy California
It's nature's way of telling you something's wrong
It's nature's way of telling you in a song
It's nature's way of receiving you
It's nature's way of retrieving you
It's nature's way of telling you
Something's wrong
It's nature's way of telling you, summer breeze
It's nature's way of telling you, dying trees
It's nature's way of receiving you
It's nature's way of retrieving you
It's nature's way of telling you
Something's wrong
It's nature's way, it's nature's way
It's nature's way, it's nature's way
It's nature's way of telling you
It's nature's way of telling you
Something's wrong
It's nature's way of telling you
It's nature's way of telling you
In a song, oh-h
It's nature's way of receiving you
It's nature's way
It's nature's way of retrieving you
It's nature's way
It's nature's way of telling you
Something's wrong, something's wrong, something's wrong
-Randy California
It's Entertainment.....................
The world is actually entertainment. Like amusement, it is meant to be worn lightly. Heaven is within and is revealed by awareness. The world is merely an appearance. Its melodrama is an artifice of the distorted sense of perception. It leads one to think that the world is large, powerful, and permanent and that the Self is small, weak, and transitory; exactly the opposite is true.
-David R. Hawkins
Wednesday, July 5, 2017
Soothing every raging wave that comes.......
Sugarloaf..........................................................Green Eyed Lady
Transition from misery to hope................
In other words, when we economic historians lecture to undergraduates we emphasize an anti-Malthusian message of hope - that average human welfare has shot up startlingly since 1980. A graph of average income over time resembles an ice hockey stick, with tens of thousands of years spent tracing the long, horizontal handle. Then finally, after 1800, history reached the business end of the hockey stick and shot up the blade. A video by Rosling, "200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes," makes the optimistic point, illustrating the transition from misery to hope.
-Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital Or Institutions, Enriched The World
the strange idea.........................
The bourgeois, voluntary, egalitarian, bettering ideology writ across a society is recent, and therefore cannot be put down to ancient risings of empires and strugglings of classes, or to biological evolution on a scale of centuries. We did not become rich at the time of the rise of trade, which is paleolithically ancient, or upon the establishment of towns and the agricultural state and the legal protection of real property, which are less ancient but nonetheless many millennia old, or in long times of peace, which has characterized life in economically stagnant places as much as in Europe 1815-1914. An ideological change did it, and recently. In northwestern Europe the strange idea grew up that aristocracy (the rule of the best by descent) and theocracy (the rule of priests) and even plutocracy (the rule of the present rich) were all nasty. What replaced them in people's ideology, slowly, was the rule of the better technique, allowing free entry to compete with the monopolies that the aristocrats or the plutocrats had arranged under the aegis of a captured government. The new ideology in places like Britain and Belgium around 1800 favored a "betterocracy," or, if you want the pure Greek, a "kaluterocracy."
-Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital Of Institutions, Enriched The World
The Great Enrichment..................
Then after 1798 - as economic historians have discovered over the past few decades - life in quite a few places got better. Slowly, and then quickly, and by now with unstoppable, ramifying, worldwide force, it got much better. Material life got better not merely for Europeans or imperial powers or Mr. Moneybags, but for ordinary people from Brooklyn to Beijing.
The betterment stands out in human history as the Great Enrichment, the most important secular event since we first domesticated squash and chickens and wheat and horses. The Enrichment has been and will continue to be more important historically that the rise and fall of empires or the class struggle in all hitherto existing societies. Such perennial fascinations of historians, entranced by the realpolitik that accompanies empires rising and classes struggling, had little to do with our enrichment. Empire did not enrich Britain. America's success did not depend on slavery. Power did not lead to plenty, and exploitation was not plenty's engine.
The real engine was the expanding ideology of liberty and dignity that inspired the proliferating schemes of betterment by and for the common people.
-Diedre Nansen McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital Or Institutions, Enriched The World
Because the learning never stops...........
Not remembering my Zeno's Paradoxes, the Oracle Google was consulted. Now I remember, but I still don't understand. Read it yourself.
"To fully solve any of the paradoxes, however, one needs to show what is wrong with the argument, not just the conclusions."
Really? I think Diogenes the Cynic had the correct answer.
Forty years ago......................
Santana...................................................................She's Not There
Tuesday, July 4, 2017
Learning something new (again)............
.....................................................................The Ship of Theseus
A visit to this post at Maggie's Farm will provide the readable context, as well as a cool link. Keep learning.
Ouch.........................
Finally, no one has calibrated quite the nation’s deep antipathy toward the coastal media-university-political-cultural nexus, most specifically its utter hypocrisy. Half the country sees not so much Democrats or progressives, but rather a bankrupt class whose venom for others is used to excuse their own exemptions from the ramifications of their own ideology.
People are tired of the social justice warrior Obama frolicking in Tahiti, the feminist Hillary Clinton excusing four decades of the sexual predations of her husband upon the weak, the supposedly in the know campus bullies picking on the vulnerable while shelling out a quarter-million dollars for a mediocre education; the progressive media decrying inequality and fairness amid face-surgeries, hair plugs, nannies, and prep schools; the Silicon Valley masters of the universe sermonizing on the evils of walls, inequality, and social justice from their gated hideaways, servants, and schemes to monopolize, offshore, outsource, and avoid taxes.
There is a limit to Trump’s crude personal tweets, but apparently no observer has yet calibrated where it is—given the country’s disdain for the media, the progressive hypocritical agenda, and the scatological and obscene rhetoric of Trump’s opposition.
-Victor Davis Hanson, as extracted from this essay on the president's communication style
Next thing you know....................
...................................they will be telling us that quarter-pounders with cheese, with a side of fries and a coke, are bad for you. I wish these people would just stop.
via
School is never out....................
...........................................................with Professor Althouse:
....................................................fun with the language
....................................................on "doctoring" videos
Responsibility.........................
..........................is the price one pays for independence. Seth Godin has some thoughts, and some more thoughts, on the subject.
A few more thoughts on liberty and responsibility
There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.
-Denis Waitley
Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.
-Sigmund Freud
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
-George Bernard Shaw
The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That's the day we truly grow up.
-John C. Maxwell
You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.
-Jim Rohn
Freedom and responsibility aren't interconnected things. They are the same thing.
The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily. No great work has ever been based on hatred and contempt. On the contrary, there is not a single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom of each person who has known and loved it.
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.
-Ronald Reagan
Sunday, July 2, 2017
Well, it would explain a lot...................
If power were a prescription drug, it would come with a long list of known side effects. It can intoxicate. It can corrupt. It can even make Henry Kissinger believe that he’s sexually magnetic. But can it cause brain damage?
-Jerry Useem, as he opens this essay in The Atlantic
Read the whole thing. Amazingly, the essay never mentions our current president.
via
One reason us History majors..............
.........................appreciate the Oracle Google, is that it helps us understand correct grammar. Reading the essay featured in the above post, your faithful blogger was puzzled. Shouldn't "If power were a prescription drug..." be "If power was a prescription drug..."? The Oracle Google seems to say that the wordsmiths at The Atlantic are correct:
Learned something new today.
Saturday, July 1, 2017
Got to get The Dog one of those vests.....
"I have confirmed that 30% of the public can’t identify a joke without the help of a service animal."
-Scott Adams, taken out of context here
The Dog:
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