.....a quick trip to Jupiter and Venice. Florida that is.
Saturday, February 4, 2023
But not all of us........................
. . . we have 10,000 baby boomers retiring every day from now until the end of this decade.
-from this Ben Carlson post, in which he offers answers to six significant questions about the economy
Content...........................
I am content to place humankind at the center of Creation. We are complex enough, interesting enough. What we have learned, limited as we must assume it to be, is wonderful even in the fact of its limitations.
-Marilynne Robinson, The Givenness Of Things
Not even going to pretend (or try) to understand...
“What is realised in my history is not the past definitive of what it was, since it is no more, or even the present perfect of what has been in what I am, but the future anterior of what I shall have been for what I am in the process of becoming.”
“I am there where it is spoken that the universe is a defect in the purity of non-being.”
“I always speak the truth. Not the whole truth, because there's no way, to say it all. Saying it all is literally impossible: words fail. Yet it's through this very impossibility that the truth holds onto the real.”
“I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think. I am not whenever I am the plaything of my thought; I think of what I am where I do not think to think.”
“The real is what resists symbolization absolutely.”
On thinking..............................
32. Develop your thinking: treat it as a skill.
33. Observe your thinking to refine it and get more bang per buck.
34. Use proactive thinking: what do I need to anticipate?
35. Use critical thinking: what do I need to do better?
36. Use lateral thinking: what do I need to do differently?
-Nicholas Bate, from this list
Friday, January 20, 2023
Checking in.................................
..........................with Kevin Kelly:
When a child asks an endless string of "why?" questions, the smartest answer is, "I don't know, what do you think?"
To be wealthy, accumulate all those things money can't buy.
Be strict with yourself and forgiving of others. The reverse is hell for everyone.
What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.
Sustained outrage makes you stupid.
Writing down one thing you are grateful for each day is the cheapest possible therapy ever.
There is no limit on better. Talent is distributed unevenly, but there is no limit on how much we can improve what we start with.
Perhaps the most counter-intuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give to others, the more you'll get. Understanding this is the beginning of wisdom.
Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists. To be an optimist you don't have to ignore all the many problems we create; you just have to imagine improving our capacity to solve problems.
Thursday, January 19, 2023
Really good question...........
What if this life is the paradise we were promised, and we're just squandering it?
Capability.......................
We have to deal with things that we're capable of understanding.
I'm really better at determining my level of incompetency and then just avoiding that.
You have a limited amount of time and talent and you have to allocate it smartly.
-Charlie Munger, as culled from here
And we take safety for granted..............
In our common speculations we do not enough remember that interest on money is a refined idea, and not a universal one. So far indeed is it from being universal, that the majority of saving persons in most countries would reject it. Most savings in most countries are held in hoarded specie. In Asia, in Africa, in South America, largely even in Europe, they are thus held, and it would frighten most of the owners to let them out of their keeping. An Englishman—a modern Englishman at least—assumes as a first principle that he out to be able to "put his money into something safe that will yield 3 per cent," but most saving persons in most countries are afraid to "put their money" into anything. Nothing is safe in their minds, indeed, in most countries, owing to a bad Government and a backward industry, no investment, or hardly any, really is safe.
-Walter Bagehot, as excerpted from Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market
Action.....................................
Most people drift through life, accepting whatever they can get without drawing on the forces of their minds. Lake of a Definite Major Purpose is the most deadly form of personal limitation. It has been plainly written in the records of men that all who demand something definite find ways and means of getting it if the persist in their demands. An important part of persistence is action—the sort of action I have been talking about; action in making a start; action in keeping on going, even when the going is hard; action in making a new start when one is temporarily defeated. Action, action, action! Let that word burn itself into your consciousness until it stands out like the shining sun on a cloudless day.
-Andrew Carnegie, from here
Tuesday, January 17, 2023
slandering Pygmies..................
The United States today stands as a living contradiction to the ‘great man theory of history’. For the US is a great country led by small minds. In recent times, it has been ruled by a narcissistic moral reprobate and it is now being run by a cognitively deficient and scandal-plagued politician. There is a growing feeling, particularly among the young, that today’s America is diminished. Yet the US remains the world’s premier power, and its last best hope against a rising authoritarian tide.
So, how does an America led by mediocrities succeed? The secret sauce lies in two great assets – America’s geography and its constitution.
-Joel Kotkin, as he starts this post
In the background..............
Extraordinary...............
It is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.
A rule from Benjamin Franklin..............
3. To apply myself industriously to whatever business I take in hand, and not divert my mind from my business by any foolish project of growing suddenly rich; for industry and patience are the surest means of plenty.
-As cut and pasted from here
People don't talk like this much anymore.....
I preach to you, then, my countrymen, that our country calls not for the life of ease but for the life of strenuous endeavor. The twentieth century looms before us big with the fate of many nations. If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world. Let us therefore boldly face the life of strife, resolute to do our duty well and manfully; resolute to uphold righteousness by deed and by word; resolute to be both honest and brave, to serve high ideals, yet to use practical methods. Above all, let us shrink from no strife, moral or physical, within or without the nation, provided we are certain that the strife is justified, for it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness.
-Theodore Roosevelt, as he concludes this speech
Watson observes.............
"What a very attractive woman!" I exclaimed, turning to my companion.
He had lit his pipe again and was leaning back with drooping eyelids. "Is she?" he said languidly; "I did not observe."
"You really are an automaton—a calculating machine," I cried. "There is something positively inhuman in you at times."
He smiled gently. "It is of the first importance," he said, "not to allow your judgment to be biased by personal qualities. A client is to me a mere unit, a factor in a problem. The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning. I assure you that the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance money, and the most repellent man of my acquaintance is a philanthropist who has spent nearly a quarter of a million upon the London poor."
-Arthur Conan Doyle, channeling his inner Holmes in The Sign of Four
Monday, January 16, 2023
On peace and happiness........
In my own personal experience, the place I end up the most is wanting to be at peace.
Peace is happiness at rest, and happiness is peace in motion. You can convert peace into happiness anytime you want. But peace is what you want most of the time. If you're a peaceful person, anything you do will be a happy activity.
Today, the way we think you get peace is by resolving all your external problems. But there are unlimited external problems. The only way to actually get peace on the inside is by giving up this idea of problems.
in an unknowable world............
Bridge requires a continual effort to assess probabilities in at best marginally unknowable situations, and players need to make hundreds of decisions in a single session, often balancing expected gains and losses. But players must also continually make peace with good decisions that lead to bad outcomes, both one's own decisions and those of a partner. Just this peacemaking skill is required if one is to invest wisely in an unknowable world.
In praise of cash reserves...............
Any sudden event which creates a great demand for actual cash may cause, and will tend to cause, a panic in a country where cash is much economised, and where debts payable on demand are large. In such a country an immense credit rests on a small cash reserve, and an unexpected and large diminution of that reserve may easily break up and shatter very much, if not the whole, of that credit. Such accidental events are of the most various nature: a bad harvest, an apprehension of foreign invasion, the sudden failure of a great firm which everybody trusted, and many other similar events, have all caused a sudden demand for cash. And some writers have endeavoured to classify panics according to the nature of the particular accidents producing them. But little, however, is, I believe, to be gained by such classifications. There is little difference in the effect of one accident and another upon our credit system. We must be prepared for all of them, and we must prepare for all of them in the same way—by keeping a large cash reserve.
-Walter Bagehot, from his 1873 classic, Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market
On courtiers...................
One day the Emperor Julian's courtiers were praising him for being so just. "I would readily take pride in these praises," he said, "if they came from people who dared to accuse or dispraise my unjust actions, if there should be any."
-Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Works, Book 1, Chapter 42
Sunday, January 15, 2023
for the love of the game types...........
More broadly, our society needs many more Charlie Watts’ and should do what it takes to create them. Fewer thieves, militarists, spreadsheet jockeys, influencers, celebrities, administrators: More musicians, painters, photographers, world-builders, model railroaders, knitters, gamers, welders, winemakers, and “for the love of the game”-types generally.
-Lambert Strether, as culled from here
Not to worry..................
Missing out on some opportunity never bothered us. What's wrong with someone getting a little richer than you? It's crazy to worry about this.
Escape....................
“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”
John Ronald ReuelExcept for books and single malt scotch...........
The man who can buy anything he covets, without any consultation with his banker, values nothing that he buys.
On charity...................
A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog when you are just as hungry as the dog.
Responsibility...............
One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”
Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.
-Martin Luther King, Jr., as excerpted from his Letter from Birmingham Jail
You are missing a lot.................
..............if you don't check in with The Hammock Papers on a regular basis.
Tuesday, January 10, 2023
In the background..................................
Monday, January 9, 2023
a fingertip.........................
The genuine love for reading itself, when cultivated, is a superpower. We live in the age of Alexandria, when every book and every piece of knowledge ever written down is a fingertip away. The means of learning are abundant—it's the desire to learn that is scarce.
Of course they do...................
Men of refinement shrink from the House of Representatives as from a parish vestry.
-Walter Bagehot from this +/- 1859 essay
Sunday, January 8, 2023
certain affinities......................
Flawed or not, Burr shared certain affinities with Jackson. Both speculated in land, engaged in duels, and championed the interests of a growing West. Importantly, they also resided outside of the prevailing American power structure. Neither, in other words, were Virginians. Jackson's refusal to join his congressional colleagues and laud Washington is on par with Burr's cutting insistence that the great general lacked completely "independence of character" and managed to somehow become a national hero "without talent." Men on the make, they would have to make their own opportunities.
-David S. Brown, The First Populist: The Defiant Life of Andrew Jackson
In the background.........................
It is early in the game, but "Unprecedented" has jumped to an enormous lead to be 2023's "Word of the Year".........
We live in unprecedented times. The recession in 2020 was not so much a recession as it was a lockdown. Using “normal words” to describe the economy in the last 3 years, we believe, does not make sense.
Whither the market in 2023.......?
The only Wall Street strategist-type forecast I’m willing to make is this: The stock market will have a correction in 2023.
I’m not exactly going out on a limb here for one simple reason — the stock market has a correction every year.
My work shows over the past 100 years or so just 5% of all trading days experience an all-time high for the U.S. stock market. Invert that data and that means 95% of the time as a stock market investor is spent in a state of drawdown from an all-time high.
The stock market cannot go up every single day. In fact, historically the stock market is only up on roughly 55% of all days that it’s open and down on the other 45% of days.
A simple equation......................
Life Fulfillment = Time + Health + Money.
Apply this equation to creating meaningful experiences. Rinse and repeat.
Money isn’t last in the formula by accident. A billion dollars isn’t enough to overcome poor health and to starve yourself of meaningful experiences. Conversely, a modest sum of money goes a long way, combined with optimal health and strong social connections.
Many investors ignore this logic at their peril. Obsessing over money and letting it supersede time and health is the path to anxiety and disappointment, no matter how “rich” a person is perceived.
Putting 2022 to good use...............
..................................20 lessons learned.
4. If you have a problem with them, and them, and them, and them, the problem is probably you.
5. Failure is the tuition you pay for success.
10. Task yourself with a huge must-do project that has a deadline far out enough that you can safely procrastinate on it for a day or two. Watch your productivity on every other possible thing go way up to avoid that one.
17. One day, I hope not to measure my days in minutes or hours, but in miles walked and pages read.
Saturday, January 7, 2023
Traveling to Mars..................
...............or not? Here's a fun-to-read essay suggesting it would be folly to send live humans to explore the red planet.
"When you hold on to a belief so strongly that neither facts nor reason can change it, what you are doing is no longer science, but religion."
Maybe some good will come..................
................from all the drama over the Speakership:
According to ZeroHedge, here is a list of concessions McCarthy had to make to secure the votes of some Representatives. This one caught my eye:
4. Bills presented to Congress will be single subject, not omnibus with all the attendant earmarks, and there will be a 72-hour minimum period to read them.
We will see.
Opening paragraphs..................
I know I'm in trouble on the run down towards Shuttlecock, but I am laughing—I don't care.
I am once again riding in a Grand National, the first time in nearly eight years, but this isn't the four-and-a-half-mile steeplechase over the thirty fences of Aintree Racecourse. This Grand National is a different type of race altogether—a never-jangling, teeth-rattling, buttock-clenching, roller-coaster ride sown the three-quarter-mile long ice chute—the Cresta Run in the Swiss town of St. Moritz.
-Felix Francis, Iced: A Dick Francis Novel
Fifty years ago.............................
intuit.........................
All species struggle to survive and strive to reproduce. A chance mutation about 200,000 years ago made early Homo sapiens more sensitive to social information. This mutation increased the number of oxytocin receptors in the brain's frontal lobe, enabling out ancestors to not only understand what others were doing cognitively, but also experience the emotions of others. This helped early humans survive by enabling them to draw on social resources more effectively.
Over time the mutation spread. Rather than being limited to living in small bands of kin-based groups as our genus had for millions of years, Homo sapiens could live in increasingly larger and more complex societies because they could intuit others' intentions. The most basic social information is the intention to help or harm. As culture flourished, societies developed norms in which helpers were embraced and the selfish and violent were ostracized. . . .
We truly became social creatures when the brain network that oxytocin activates allowed us to determine who to trust. Knowing when to trust strangers led to large-scale societies. In these communities, an individual's survival depended on many others. Cooperation among nonkin provided social insurance against a bad crop or an unsuccessful hunt. Communities began to function like superorganisms in which each segment nourished the other parts.
Paul J. Zak, Immersion: The Science of The Extraordinary and the Source of Happiness
If only...............................
Walter Bagehot's father showed more confidence in his son that Walter did in himself. In preparation for joining the family bank, the refugee from the law lived in Langport to make a study of double-entry bookkeeping. He admitted that the theory of accounting "is agreeable and pretty, but the practice perhaps as horrible as anything ever was." The student who had kept up with the pyrotechnical intellect of Augustus De Morgan at University College could not seem to add or subtract. "If only," Bagehot playfully moaned to a school friend, "my relations would admit that sums are matters opinion."
-James Grant, Bagehot: The Life and Times of the Greatest Victorian
Escape...........................
Another tweet I had that is worth weaving in, but didn't do into the "How to Get Rich" tweetstorm, was very simple: "Escape competition through authenticity." Basically, when you're competing with people, it's because you're copying them. It's because you are trying to do the same thing. But every human being is different. Don't copy.
A realist.................
In dealing with the world, Washington was an utter realist. He always sought, as he put it in 1775, at the outset of the war against Britain, to "make the best of mankind as they are, since we cannot have them as we wish." . . .
If any single person was responsible for establishing the young Republic on a firm footing, it was Washington. He was nearly as much of an aristocrat as the United States ever produced, in his acceptance of social hierarchy and in his belief that some were born to command and most to obey. Although he trusted the good sense of the people in the long run, he believed that they could easily be misled by demagogues. He was a realist who had no illusions about human nature. "The motives which predominate most human affairs," he said, "are self-love and self-interest." The common people, like the common soldiers in his army could not be expected to be "influenced by any other principles than those of interest."
- Gordon S. Wood, Revolutionary Characters: What Made The Founders Different
Friday, January 6, 2023
On appropriateness..................
It is a kind of mockery and insult to praise a man's worth for qualities unbecoming his rank, though they be otherwise laudable, and for qualities also which ought not to be his principal ones; as if you praised a king for being a good painter, or a good architect . . .
The companions of Demosthenes in the embassy to Philip praised that prince as being handsome, eloquent, and a good drinker. Demosthenes said that those were praises more appropriate to a woman, a lawyer, and a sponge, than a king.
-Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Works, Book 1, Chapter 40
Fifty years ago.................
Goodbye Norma Jeane
Though I never knew you at all
You had the grace to hold yourself
While those around you crawled
They crawled out of the woodwork
And they whispered into your brain
They set you on the treadmill
And they made you change your name
Though I never knew you at all
You had the grace to hold yourself
While those around you crawled
They crawled out of the woodwork
And they whispered into your brain
They set you on the treadmill
And they made you change your name
And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a candle in the wind
Never knowing who to cling to
When the rain set in
And I would've liked to known you
But I was just a kid
Your candle burned out long before
Your legend ever did
Like a candle in the wind
Never knowing who to cling to
When the rain set in
And I would've liked to known you
But I was just a kid
Your candle burned out long before
Your legend ever did
Loneliness was tough
The toughest role you ever played
Hollywood created a superstar
And pain was the price you paid
Even when you died
Oh the press still hounded you
All the papers had to say
Was that Marilyn was found in the nude
The toughest role you ever played
Hollywood created a superstar
And pain was the price you paid
Even when you died
Oh the press still hounded you
All the papers had to say
Was that Marilyn was found in the nude
And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a candle in the wind
Never knowing who to cling to
When the rain set in
And I would've liked to known you
But I was just a kid
Your candle burned out long before
Your legend ever did
Like a candle in the wind
Never knowing who to cling to
When the rain set in
And I would've liked to known you
But I was just a kid
Your candle burned out long before
Your legend ever did
Goodbye Norma Jeane
Though I never knew you at all
You had the grace to hold yourself
While those around you crawled
Though I never knew you at all
You had the grace to hold yourself
While those around you crawled
Goodbye Norma Jeane
From the young man in the twenty second row
Who sees you as something as more than sexual
More than just our Marilyn Monroe
From the young man in the twenty second row
Who sees you as something as more than sexual
More than just our Marilyn Monroe
And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a candle in the wind
Never knowing who to cling to
When the rain set in
And I would've liked to known you
But I was just a kid
Your candle burned out long before
Your legend ever did
Like a candle in the wind
Never knowing who to cling to
When the rain set in
And I would've liked to known you
But I was just a kid
Your candle burned out long before
Your legend ever did
Depends on whether ice cream is also involved?
. . . in the battle between the dieter and the brownie, the brownie always wins . . .
Retain the optimism................
There is always something to be pessimistic about. Usually dozens of things. But it’s often like being on a flight that’s delayed, and the food is awful, and the turbulence is frightening, and they lose your bags, and the guy sitting next to you is snoring. Yes, that’s miserable. But are the engines roaring? Are the wings intact? Are the pilots capable? OK, well that’s all you need. You’ll get to your destination. You should remain an optimist.
-Morgan Housel, from here
Opening paragraphs................
The Human Riff was actually explaining to me about the synthesis of hillbilly and black music that customized the recipe for rock 'n' roll, putting a match to the kindling for the nascent Rolling Stones and the generation of hopeful oiks they represented. But that payoff line has always felt like a playfully succinct overview of the man who sat behind him for 58 years. In parallel timeline, you could imagine Wolfgang Amadeus looking up to Charlie Watts. Everyone else did.
-Paul Sexton, Charlie's Good Tonight: The Life, the Times, and the Rolling Stones
a good drummer.................
Mozart knew what he was talking about. But he should have had a good drummer.
-Keith Richards
Thursday, January 5, 2023
Our magnificent Elites...........
They are the best—and if you have any doubt, they will explain to you why. For example, ask Anthony Fauci and he will tell you, “I represent science.” Ask a high-flying U.N. undersecretary with a degree in journalism and she will say, “We own the science and the world should know about it.” Think of how amazing that is! To be an elite is to hold a 30-year mortgage on science, zero interest, payment infinitely deferred.
They are also the smartest. In fact, the elites resemble those science fiction beings with enormous brains and thoughts too complex for normal communication. They keep trying to explain the meaning of everything, but all that ordinary people hear is a series of dull clicks and buzzes. That leaves the elites frustrated and sad. They are often misunderstood by the public because—as a French parliamentarian put it—their ideas are “too intelligent, too subtle, too technical.”
Here’s another way to detect an elite: They are “I” while the rest of us are “them.” The difference in character is not subtle. For “I,” think Mahatma Gandhi or St. Francis of Assisi—for “them,” the Beast of the Apocalypse. Let the ever-helpful Anthony Fauci illustrate the point: “I’m going to be saving lives,” he said, “and they’re going to be telling lies.”
You can know the elites by their ownership of reality. Jesus might have said, “I am the truth and the life,” but Jacinda Ardern, prime minister of New Zealand, prefers to be a little more exclusive: “We continue to be your single source of truth … Unless you hear it from us it is not the truth.” To protect the truth, the elites have hired gangs of roving bouncers to usher out of the building any would-be Pontius Pilates who ask, “What is truth?” (That question, like all of science, is settled.) For unknown reasons, these elite enforcers call themselves “fact-checkers.”
So elite-spotting can be a fun and profitable activity. Elites talk like one another and dress like one another. They are all over TV and the internet—and, since they are barely aware of our existence, we can observe them in the wild, as they really are! Anyone who still has trouble spotting them should remember that the elites are always ahead and above us. Like certain species of baboons, they can be identified by their posteriors.
-Martin Gurri, as cut-and-pasted from here
Fifty years ago.........................
Pink Floyd.............................................Breathe
a sharp uncertainly...............
The newly anointed Hero of New Orleans seemed almost eager to endanger his sudden rise in public esteem. Two days after the battle, with rumors and jittery reports of tall British ships cannonading in the area, Jackson ordered an officer on the west bank to solidify his defenses by demolishing private property—never a popular move among property owners. "Set fire to and destroy every house," he commanded. "Altho I feel great pain at the . . . infliction of individual injury, yet when the imperious dictates of public duty require the sacrifice I am not allowed to hesitate." Governor Claiborne, the state legislators, and a good many living and working in the city grew concerned that Jackson might soon sacrifice all of New Orleans rather than permit enemy troops to pass through its gates. No doubt the high tensions brought about by weeks of gossip, military preparations, and martial law produced a sharp uncertainty only imperfectly punctured by the recent British defeat. The city badly needed a cooling-off period, but what it got was Andrew Jackson.
-David S. Brown, The First Populist: The Defiant Life of Andrew Jackson
On questions and answers........
To the dumb question "Why me?" the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?
-Christopher Hitchens, from this Vanity Fair essay
Wednesday, January 4, 2023
a two-minute warning.................
It is interesting to watch football teams on a Sunday afternoon. They spend the first fifty-eight minutes routinely following the game plan they thought would result in victory. Then something rather remarkable happens. An official walks onto the center of the field and announces what has become known as the "Two-Minute Warning."
What happens in the next one hundred and twenty seconds is frequently awesome. We often witness more intensity, more cleverness, more expended energy, and more action compacted into those two final minutes than occurs in the previous fifty-eight.
Why?
A sudden awareness of the sense of imminent defeat, and a birth of a new and sharpened sense of urgency. The participants know that the clock will show no favoritism. The clock will merely do what clocks are supposed to do: they will tick away the seconds until the game is finally over.
The team that finds itself on the threshold of defeat night have shown an extraordinary level of ingenuity and intensity at any time throughout the game. They had the potential and the opportunity to outscore their opponents early in the game. But sometimes, despite their intentions, the players make only an average effort until it is too late. Sometimes the blowing of the whistle announcing the two-minute warning is merely a formality signifying the probability of impending and irreversible defeat.
And so it is with the individual human life.
-Jim Rohn, The Five Major Pieces To The Life Puzzle
Fifty years ago............................
So far so good with our real estate...............
The plunging markets are the result of a decades-old macroeconomic regime falling apart. High inflation, not seen in the rich world since the 1980s, is back, which in turn has brought to an end ten years of near-zero interest rates. As a result, the rule book of investing is being rewritten. Protecting portfolios from inflation, once a peripheral concern, is now a prime consideration. Rising government-bond yields, meanwhile, make riskier assets less desirable.
-The Economist, from this Briefing
a naive confidence......................
But he suffered from a naive confidence in the power of reason and a few good men to arrange complex matters. As late as 1775 he was still persuaded that the issues separating Britain and the colonies were "a mere Matter of Puncitilo, which Two or three reasonable People might settle in half an Hour." He had little or no comprehension of the structural forces and the popular passions that limited individual action. In the end he was convinced that the glorious empire to which he had devoted so much of his life was broken by "the mangling hands of a few blundering ministers."
-Gordon S. Wood, from the chapter "The Invention of Benjamin Franklin" in his book, Revolutionary Characters: What Made The Founders Different
Tuesday, January 3, 2023
In praise of apathy......................
Democracy cannot work without a fair level of political and social stability. This implies a certain level of political apathy. Anything resembling fanaticism, a domination of the normal internal debate by "activists" is plainly to be deplored.
-Robert Conquest, The Dragons of Expectation: Reality and Delusion in the Course of History
Fifty years ago...........................
"Renegade liberals"....................
He defines them, with characteristic felicity, in the unused preface to Animal Farm, as those who hold that "defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought."
-------
Elsewhere (in his "The Prevention of Literature") he comments, "When one sees highly educated men looking on indifferently at oppression and persecution, one wonders which to despise more, their cynicism or their shortsightedness."
-Robert Conquest, channeling George Orwell
Monday, January 2, 2023
Remember: Always bet on the optimist...............
Be there................
So that was why I was in the city that day. Not to just teach my class or network or catch up with clients. Not to get a free dinner or a lead on another deal down the road.
Just to be there. To connect with someone. To share the least marketable part of me - my silly sense of puns - and to make someone laugh a little. To break tension and restore some hope.
-Matthew Ferrara, the rest of the story here
You just never know..................
2023 predictions from "America's Newspaper of Record". My favorite is the one for November 25th.
Fifty years ago.......................
Twists..................
However, I only have one goal for the coming new year. Staying alive, and smiling no matter what. The toughest time to find joy is when fate isn't kind. So, call me anything but serious. If you aren't laughing at the twists fate brings us, you aren't living.
Ah, science.........................
However frustrating this debate may be for all participants – and I imagine it can be very frustrating at times – to me it is an excellent example of the dynamic process of the scientific method. Claims are advanced, they are robustly criticised, and additional evidence is brought forward to refute the critiques. Bit by bit, the field advances in its understanding.
Sunday, January 1, 2023
Haven't played this in a while...............
My Sweetie and I.................................
...........................will be watching this one again!
A worthy suggestion ...................
We have to come up with a new word for "reporters" because they are not "reporting" the news but instead spinning propaganda - so calling them reporters becomes Orwellian. How about calling them "liberal artists?"
-as culled from here
Nourishment...............................
I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them lovingly, I feed on the food that alone is mine and that I was born for.
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