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| Cafe Terrace at Night Oil on Canvass 1888 |
“I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.”
Thursday, April 14, 2022
On being unmoored..............
It is impossible to be one's own pope. For some, the moral life becomes an endless, solipistic quest to figure out "what my true self stands for." Many feel they have to reinvent the moral wheel daily, which is the height of arrogance, not to mention utterly exhausting. Still others externalize all of the conscience's furies, directing them against the faults of others or those of social and political systems. Worse, too many simply learn to tune out the conscience's voice, now lowered to a murmur for lack of authoritative supports.
The think-for-yourself culture celebrates all of these groups for their "free minds." Yet we know that most people sway, feather-like, to the prevailing winds of news and social media, fashion and fadism, public and "expert" opinion, P.R. and propaganda. Large corporations, especially, what nothing more than for our minds to be independent—that is, unmoored from absolute, unbendable moral authorities that might challenge corporate agendas. And how much the better for the powers that be if pliant consumers and docile workers fancy themselves rebels and radicals.
-Sohrab Ahmari, The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos
Wednesday, April 13, 2022
What a difference a year makes............
The ethos, whatever its general benefits was not one that the newly arrived Oscar Wilde found immediately congenital. At nine he was almost a full year younger than the designated entrance age. And there was little in his character that suited him to the rough-and-tumble of boarding school life. Slight, imaginative, independent, and dreamy, he drifted to the edge of things. He made no firm friends. Games—the great motor of schoolboy existence—held no interest for him ("I never like to kick or be kicked," he claimed). Work, too, at first failed to engage his energies. He distinguished himself mainly by being hopeless in mathematics.
-Matthew Sturgis, Oscar Wilde: A Life
Checking in..................................
......................with Oscar Wilde:
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live. It is asking other people to live as one wishes to live.
It is only intellectually lost who ever argue.
It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.
Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.
I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.
On the value of writing............
Writing about something, even something you know well, usually shows you that you didn't know it as well as you thought. Putting ideas into words is a severe test.
-Paul Graham, from this essay
Fifty years ago.............................
Paint the stars................
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| Starry Night Over the Rhone Oil on canvass 1888 |
When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion, then I go out and paint the stars.
The only unbreakable law...................
..............is the law of unintended consequences. Having said that, rent control is always a bad idea. Ok, so I'm a real estate investor and may be a tad biased. Don't take my word for it. Check out the latest study:
"Thus, to the extent that rent control is intended to transfer wealth from high-income to low-income households, the realized impact of the law was the opposite of its intention."
Tuesday, April 12, 2022
Still one of the all-time great movies...
In accord.................
Modern civilization is all about conquering space: winning territory in geopolitical contests, building ingenious contraptions and monuments to this ingenuity, growing and prospering economically. It seeks relentlessly to convert time, priced like any other commodity into achievements in space. But, "the danger begins," Heschel worried, "when gaining power in the realm of space we forfeit all aspirations in the realm of time." In that realm, "the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord."
-Sohrab Ahmari, The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos
Fifty years ago......................................
Ripens..........................
It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper meaning.
On curiosity......................
Perhaps there is no better skill to have and master than the skill of curiosity. . . . Learning requires you being open, interested, and ready to lean into differences. It requires surrendering being judgmental. It is impossible to be curious and judgmental at the same time. Curiosity is different than just asking a lot of questions. Curiosity is a deeper more soulful interest. People who are genuinely curious ask great questions because it originates from an authentic place. Asking questions without curiosity is just obnoxious.
-Mike Staver, from here
Monday, April 11, 2022
Licking County, Ohio sure makes it easy.........
............................to vote early. No line, no waiting. Plus, a paper ballot is created!
The hopeful.............................
..................birth of a sub-division: Episode 19
At the top of the aerial photo is Phase 1. Completed in early December, the builder (D. R. Horton) recently completed the purchase of all 49 developed lots. If you squint your eyes, you may notice they have about 15 houses under construction. The bottom portion of the aerial photo shows the early days of the 64 lots in Phase 2. Progress.
Checking in with Martin Gurri...........
In a magnificently ironic moment, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, referred to Mount Rushmore with reverence during his address to the U.S. Congress. Every one of the four presidents carved on that mountain has had his statue toppled and his name removed from some elite institution. Few right-thinking U.S. politicians would bring up their names today. Zelensky knows what so many of us have forgotten: That this is a war of systems as well as nations, and that the alternative to American democracy isn’t utopia but Putin and gangsterism. We should internalize this truth before the Ukrainian dead rise from their graves to remind us of it.
Fifty years ago............................
Opening paragraphs................
Salmon Portland Chase never liked his name. In his early twenties, Chase wrote to a college classmate that he was thinking of changing his "awkward, fishy name" to something more impressive, like Spencer Payne Cheyce. Five years later, he had another idea: Samuel Paca Chase, taking the names of one of the early justices of the Supreme Court, Samuel Chase, whom Chase believed was a distant relation, and William Paca, another signatory of the Declaration of Independence, apparently simply because his last name started with P. During the Civil War, when an admirer wrote that he was thinking of naming his son Salmon Portland, Chase replied that he "had the misfortune to be born about a year after my uncle Salmon Chase died at Portland; and to have a sort of monument to his memory made of me by giving me the name of Salmon Portland." His uncle "was an excellent man and Portland a very respectable city, but somehow I never liked the name derived from them." Chase urged the father to think of "the feelings of your boy, fifteen years hence or twenty," and to find a better name.
-Walter Stahr, Salmon P. Chase: Lincoln's Vital Rival
Two realms.....................
In the realm of tradition, truth is something that precedes individual human beings, something we inherit and must hand down, in turn. We can discover truth and reason about it, to be sure, but we can't change it. In the realm of progress, however, truth is what individuals or groups can articulate or build on their own, through scientific inquiry and their acts in history. Truth thus becomes an ongoing project, a malleable thing. In our realm of progress, tradition is viewed as not only antiquated and inefficient, but as an impediment to achievement.
But what if that confidence of the modern world is an illusion, the product of a determined resolution not to confront the fundamental dilemmas of what it means to be fully human? Or what if beneath the moderns' complacency lurks a deep soul-soreness?
Pick your favorite negatively trending social indicator—loneliness, alienation, addiction, polarization, etc.—and the dire message is the same: the realm of progress can't fulfill our soul's yearning or satisfy our urge to put ourselves right with the sacred.
-Sohrab Ahmari, The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos
About history.......................
I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.
Sunday, April 10, 2022
A vacation................................
..............We journeyed south to Destin, Florida, with a brief layover in Nashville. A few observations: Nashville is an amazing place, but Broadway is a younger person's game. There is music everywhere. Next time we go, we will seek out more of the smaller, quieter venues. The traffic on I-65 from Nashville to the Florida Panhandle is ridiculous this time of year. Visiting Seaside is a wonderful idea, but during Spring Break the place is overrun with kids, of all ages. It is really easy to get sunburned in April. Renting a house for a week in Destin, and having the whole tribe join you, is a fabulous thing to do.
On freedom..............
Do not free a camel from the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
against a culture.........................
How do I transmit to my son the value of permanent ideals against a culture that will tell him that whatever is newest is also best, that everything is negotiable and subject to contract and consent, that there is no purpose to our common life but to fulfill his desires? How do I reinforce that fragile thread linking my son to a life of humane obligations and responsibilities? To a life anchored in stable and unchangeable ideals? To a life, in other words, filled with the goods secured by tradition?
-Sohrab Ahmari, The Unbroken Tread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos
Monday, March 28, 2022
Forecasts.................
Forecasts may tell you a great deal about the forecaster; they tell you nothing about the future.
Like this would ever happen............
When everyone thinks central bankers, money managers, corporate managers, politicians or any other group are the smartest guys in the room, you are in a bubble.
Blowing bubbles................
Explanation: Massive stars can blow bubbles. The featured image shows perhaps the most famous of all star-bubbles, NGC 7635, also known simply as The Bubble Nebula. Although it looks delicate, the 7-light-year diameter bubble offers evidence of violent processes at work. Above and left of the Bubble's center is a hot, O-type star, several hundred thousand times more luminous and some 45-times more massive than the Sun. A fierce stellar wind and intense radiation from that star has blasted out the structure of glowing gas against denser material in a surrounding molecular cloud. The intriguing Bubble Nebula and associated cloud complex lie a mere 7,100 light-years away toward the boastful constellation Cassiopeia. This sharp, tantalizing view of the cosmic bubble is a reprocessed composite of previously acquired Hubble Space Telescope image data.
On anxiety, a useless emotion........
Your first step, if you deal with stress and anxiety? Start reading the Stoics. Then, take two Ibuprophens or Acetaminophens and read some more. Since I deal with anxiety about the future most (I hate lack of control), my favorite quote from this article:
“He suffers more than necessary, who suffers before it is necessary”
– Seneca
-Rick Georges, from here
Almost like it is a historical cycle or something...
Good times plant the seeds of their destruction through complacency and leverage, and bad times plant the seeds of their turnaround through opportunity and panic-driven problem-solving.
-Morgan Housel, from here
Inversely.......................
I would say that the quality of our society will be inversely proportion to the level of political energy. One of the toxic effects of social media is to elevate the level of political energy. We would be much better off with people putting energy into their relationships and their work.
-Arnold Kling, from here
In the background......................
Saturday, March 26, 2022
An opinion on the housing market.....
Some people think it’s a bubble because prices are rising so fast but there are so many other variables at play that I’d label it unhealthy rather than euphoric. . . . "While demand is strong, supply is short and constrained, the ability to actually build and deliver homes has been slowed by the supply chain that is all but broken, by the workforce that is short in supply, and the intense competition for scarce and titled land assets." . . .
Unfortunately, even if we wanted to build more houses right now, it’s basically impossible with all of the supply chain issues and worker shortages.
The supply chain is all but broken and maybe the housing market is too.
-Ben Carlson, from here
The hopeful birth..........................
..................of a sub-division: Episode 18:
The market may be broken, but we are doing our part to mend it.
Thirty fully developed building lots sold to D. R. Horton, a production builder. They are scheduled to buy 19 more next week. Footers have been poured on about 15 lots, slabs poured on nine lots, framing of houses started on two lots. In a perfect world, which you all know we live in, there will be thirty new houses, with new homeowners, in this sub-division by early summer.
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| Footers poured |
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| slab poured |
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| framing started |
Unless provoked...................
In the eighteenth century, the liberal idea aborning was that every person regardless of age or gender of ethnicity or position in the hierarchy should have equal rights. Such an idea of equality was still to most people shocking. About gender, for example, it was inconceivable even to the Founding Brothers. In earlier centuries of agriculture and its accompanying hierarchy, topped by the stationary bandits in charge, a liberal equality was held in fact to be absurd and dangerous. Justice was a matter of treating a duke as a duke and a plowman as a plowman, with the differing respect owed in justice to each—but certainly not equality. You bowed low to a duke. And you did not murder a plowman, unless provoked.
-Deidre Nansen McCloskey, Why Liberalism Works: How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World For All
local knowledge.....................
I spent ten days on the roof as we flowed through the migration and the migration flowed around us. It was always amazing to watch Uncle John stop and film in the bush. Camera crews from the BBC, the Disney Channel, National Geographic, and other networks were fighting for the best position at various crossing points so they could capture the tumult of thousands of wildebeests massing to plunge into croc-infested waters. Uncle John was nowhere to be seen. On the advice of some Masai friends, he'd be asleep under his frayed bush hat, half a mile from where the action was about to take place. Sure enough, at the last moment, a single wildebeest would break rank, run the half-mile down to where Uncle John was parked, causing an avalanche of pounding hooves to follow suit.
"Buddy, never follow the rules," he'd tell me. "Stick with the local knowledge and build relationships—that's how you get the shots." Then he'd offer up his trademark vampire smirk, having just canned to best high-action sequence of the day. After the first wildebeest jumped, thousands of others likewise took the plunge, and they churned through the water, swimming nose to tail, battling the current. Crocodiles began slipping off the banks in pursuit. The water boiled, foaming white as the crocodiles' powerful tails thrashed back and forth. Their jaws mashed down on wildebeests, pulling them beneath the surface. The air shrilled with wildebeests' alarm calls as they disappeared from sight. The ones who made it to the other side, heaving with exhaustion, found lions in wait. After so many hours of sitting around, I found the scene unbelievably thrilling.
-Boyd Varty, Cathedral of the Wild: An African Journey Home
Old-fashioned humor...............
Another week we were reminiscing about how we'd started in vaudeville and had gone to Al Jolson to ask for a job. Jolie mistakenly thought Gracie was a ventriloquist and I was her dummy.
"But he's not a dummy," Gracie protested, "he's a real man. He's George Burns."
Jolson couldn't believe it. "Are you trying to tell me that he has blood and muscles, and that he walks and talks and makes love like other men?"
"No," Gracie explained, "I'm trying to tell you he's George Burns."
On another show she decided to help Mickey Rooney; she wanted to adopt him because she was certain he hadn't gotten a proper education. Mickey told her that he had received a degree in geometry and a degree in Latin.
"Oh, yeah?" Gracie challenged. "Say something in geometry."
Mickey thought about that for a second, then stated, "Okay, Pi R square."
"Ah ha!" Gracie exclaimed. "There's proof you haven't had a good education. Everybody knows pie are round!"
-George Burns, Gracie: A Love Story
Can I get an Amen...................?
Normal people just want America to produce more energy. And maybe when it’s all said and done, that’s the most humanitarian thing we could do.
-Arnold Kling, from here
In the background...........................
Saturday, March 19, 2022
Back in 1918....................
But as Camus knew, evil and crises do not make all men rise above themselves. Crises only make them discover themselves. And some discover a less inspiring humanity.
As the crest of the wave that broke over Philadelphia began its sweep across the rest of the country, it was accompanied by the same terror that had silenced the streets there. Most men and women sacrificed and risked their lives only for those they loved most deeply: a child, a wife, a husband. Others, loving chiefly themselves, fled in terror even from them.
Still others fomented terror, believing that blaming the enemy—Germany—could help the war effort, or perhaps actually believing that Germany was responsible. Doane himself charged that "German agents . . . from submarines" brought influenza to the United States. "The Germans have started epidemics in Europe, and there is no reason why they should be particularly gentle to America."
Others around the country echoed him. Starkville, Mississippi, a town of three thousand in the Mississippi hill country, was built around a sawmill, cotton farms—not the rich, lush plantations of the Delta but harsh land—and Mississippi A&M College (now Mississippi State University). It served as headquarters for Dr. M. G. Persons, the U. S. Public Health Service officer for northeastern Mississippi, who proudly informed Blue that he had succeeded in getting local newspapers to run stories he made up that "aid in forming the proper frame of mind" in the public. That frame of mind was fear. Person wanted to create fear, believing it "prepared the public mind to recieve and act on our suggestions."
-John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History
"facts".....................
In the crazy early days when the Covid-19 coronavirus went global, Scientific American admonished journalists, 'facts about this epidemic that have lasted a few days are far more reliable than the latest "facts" that have just come out, which may be erroneous or unrepresentative and thus misleading . . . a question that today con be answered only [by] informed belief may perhaps be answered by a fact tomorrow.' Sound advice, and not just for journalists but for citizens too. So however much news you choose to read, make sure you spend time looking for longer-term, slower-paced information. You will notice things - good and bad - that others ignore.
-Tim Horford, How to Make the World Add Up: Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers
Heart......................
More says to his arch-enemy Cromwell, “What you have hunted me for is not my actions, but the thoughts of my heart. It is a long road you have opened. For first men will disclaim their hearts and presently they will have no hearts. God help the people whose Statesmen walk your road.”
Thursday, March 17, 2022
moderately........................
"The man who works so moderately as to be able to work constantly," wrote Adam Smith, "not only preserves his health the longest, but in the course of the year, executes the greatest quantity of work." Yes, doing less is a way to be kinder to yourself, and to be more present to the world around you – but paradoxically, it's also an excellent way to get more done.
-Oliver Burkeman, from here
Sometimes............
Laying on my back, watching the stars emerge, I was struck by how they'd been there all along, invisibly lining my day even when I couldn't see them. Sometimes the darkness reveals, it's ways more mysterious than light's. Sometimes the darkness gives a gift of stars by which we can navigate our way home.
-Boyd Varty, Cathedral of the Wild
Our old friend inflation is back..........
Making more money is one of those things no one teaches you how to do but it’s probably your best bet for improving your standard of living over the long haul.
I know putting inflation hedges on your portfolio is the sexier option but you have more control over your personal finances than the markets when it comes to fighting inflation.
Wednesday, March 16, 2022
A pretty good rule..............
The first rule of a happy life is low expectations. If you have unrealistic expectations you’re going to be miserable your whole life. You want to have reasonable expectations and take life’s results good and bad as they happen with a certain amount of stoicism.
-Charlie Munger, as culled from here
Common Sense..................
PERHAPS the sentiments contained in the following pages are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor. A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.
-Thomas Paine, from the Introduction to Common Sense
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