Tim Buckley...............................................Once I Was
Saturday, July 13, 2013
John's got it figured out.......................
Reading the books, as my kids remind me whenever I buy a new book without first having read the last new one I bought (or the one before that too), is a good first step.
The Political Correctness Enforcement Agency........
As the old joke goes: what's the opposite of diversity? University.
At least in regard to diversity of thought. The above quote comes from this essay on the changing nature of climate change from Matt Ridley.
At least in regard to diversity of thought. The above quote comes from this essay on the changing nature of climate change from Matt Ridley.
C. S. Lewis and democracy..............
What I want to fix your attention on is the vast, overall movement toward the discrediting, and finally elimination, of every kind of human excellence–moral, cultural, social, or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how Democracy is now doing for us the work that once was done by the ancient Dictatorships, and by the same methods? ... Allow no pre-eminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser, or better, or more famous, or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them down to a level; all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals. Thus Tyrants could practise, in a sense, 'democracy'. But now 'democracy' can do the same work without any other tyranny than her own.
-C. S. Lewis, as excerpted from The Screwtape Letters
thanks Mungo
-C. S. Lewis, as excerpted from The Screwtape Letters
thanks Mungo
Fifty years ago.................................
Follow The Boys...............................Connie Francis et. al
Time to invest in carbon paper............................?
Typewriters making a comeback? Maybe. Fuller story here.
Makes one kind of nostalgic. I earned my beer money in school typing papers for fraternity brothers. Might have actually learned more doing that than I did from going to class.
Makes one kind of nostalgic. I earned my beer money in school typing papers for fraternity brothers. Might have actually learned more doing that than I did from going to class.
Friday, July 12, 2013
David Kanigan..........................
...........is on a hot streak. Scroll through the posts from the past week at his Lead.Learn.Live blog. Put him on your everyday reading list. You'll be glad you did.
A great dissent..................................
............or, kissing the Fourth Amendment goodbye. Really faithful readers will remember that, from time to time, judicial dissents capture my interest. I'm indebted to Conor Friedersdorf for pointing this one out. While the cited case involved the drug testing of railway workers, feel free to substitute terrorists, leakers, tea partiers, or your favorite cause of the day, as the raison du jour. The dissenter is Thurgood Marshall. Full dissent is here. Timely excerpts here:
"The issue in this case is not whether declaring a war on illegal drugs is good public policy. The importance of ridding our society of such drugs is, by now, apparent to all. Rather, the issue here is whether the Government's deployment in that war of a particularly draconian weapon -- the compulsory collection and chemical testing of railroad workers' blood and urine -- comports with the Fourth Amendment. Precisely because the need for action against the drug scourge is manifest, the need for vigilance against unconstitutional excess is great. History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure."
"I recognize that invalidating the full-scale searches involved in the FRA's testing regime for failure to comport with the Fourth Amendment's command of probable cause may hinder the Government's attempts to make rail transit as safe as humanly possible. But constitutional rights have their consequences, and one is that efforts to maximize the public welfare, no matter how well-intentioned, must always be pursued within constitutional boundaries. Were the police freed from the constraints of the Fourth Amendment for just one day to seek out evidence of criminal wrongdoing, the resulting convictions and incarcerations would probably prevent thousands of fatalities. Our refusal to tolerate this spectre reflects our shared belief that even beneficent governmental power -- whether exercised to save money, save lives, or make the trains run on time -- must always yield to "a resolute loyalty to constitutional safeguards." Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U.S. 266, 273 (1973). The Constitution demands no less loyalty here."
"In his first dissenting opinion as a Member of this Court, Oliver Wendell Holmes observed:
'Great cases, like hard cases, make bad law. For great cases are called great, not by reason of their real importance in shaping the law of the future, but because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgment. These immediate interests exercise a kind of hydraulic pressure which makes what previously was clear seem doubtful, and before which even well settled principles of law will bend.' Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U.S. 197, 400-401 (1904)
A majority of this Court, swept away by society's obsession with stopping the scourge of illegal drugs, today succumbs to the popular pressures described by Justice Holmes. In upholding the FRA's plan for blood and urine testing, the majority bends time-honored and textually based principles of the Fourth Amendment -- principles the Framers of the Bill of Rights designed to ensure that the Government has a strong and individualized justification when it seeks to invade an individual's privacy. I believe the Framers would be appalled by the vision of mass governmental intrusions upon the integrity of the human body that the majority allows to become reality. The immediate victims of the majority's constitutional timorousness will be those railroad workers whose bodily fluids the Government may now forcibly collect and analyze. But ultimately, today's decision will reduce the privacy all citizens may enjoy, for, as Justice Holmes understood, principles of law, once bent, do not snap back easily. I dissent."
"The issue in this case is not whether declaring a war on illegal drugs is good public policy. The importance of ridding our society of such drugs is, by now, apparent to all. Rather, the issue here is whether the Government's deployment in that war of a particularly draconian weapon -- the compulsory collection and chemical testing of railroad workers' blood and urine -- comports with the Fourth Amendment. Precisely because the need for action against the drug scourge is manifest, the need for vigilance against unconstitutional excess is great. History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure."
"I recognize that invalidating the full-scale searches involved in the FRA's testing regime for failure to comport with the Fourth Amendment's command of probable cause may hinder the Government's attempts to make rail transit as safe as humanly possible. But constitutional rights have their consequences, and one is that efforts to maximize the public welfare, no matter how well-intentioned, must always be pursued within constitutional boundaries. Were the police freed from the constraints of the Fourth Amendment for just one day to seek out evidence of criminal wrongdoing, the resulting convictions and incarcerations would probably prevent thousands of fatalities. Our refusal to tolerate this spectre reflects our shared belief that even beneficent governmental power -- whether exercised to save money, save lives, or make the trains run on time -- must always yield to "a resolute loyalty to constitutional safeguards." Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U.S. 266, 273 (1973). The Constitution demands no less loyalty here."
"In his first dissenting opinion as a Member of this Court, Oliver Wendell Holmes observed:
'Great cases, like hard cases, make bad law. For great cases are called great, not by reason of their real importance in shaping the law of the future, but because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgment. These immediate interests exercise a kind of hydraulic pressure which makes what previously was clear seem doubtful, and before which even well settled principles of law will bend.' Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U.S. 197, 400-401 (1904)
A majority of this Court, swept away by society's obsession with stopping the scourge of illegal drugs, today succumbs to the popular pressures described by Justice Holmes. In upholding the FRA's plan for blood and urine testing, the majority bends time-honored and textually based principles of the Fourth Amendment -- principles the Framers of the Bill of Rights designed to ensure that the Government has a strong and individualized justification when it seeks to invade an individual's privacy. I believe the Framers would be appalled by the vision of mass governmental intrusions upon the integrity of the human body that the majority allows to become reality. The immediate victims of the majority's constitutional timorousness will be those railroad workers whose bodily fluids the Government may now forcibly collect and analyze. But ultimately, today's decision will reduce the privacy all citizens may enjoy, for, as Justice Holmes understood, principles of law, once bent, do not snap back easily. I dissent."
Fifty years ago....................................
The Beatles...................................There's A Place
Ever wonder.............................
.........about Thomas Sowell's young adulthood? Read about it in this essay wherein he reminds the "elite busybodies" that their "compassionate" policies usually create more damage than provide actual help.
"I could even put aside some money for a rainy day. It was the closest thing to nirvana for me. Thank heaven there were no busybodies to prevent me from working more hours than they thought I should."
"I could even put aside some money for a rainy day. It was the closest thing to nirvana for me. Thank heaven there were no busybodies to prevent me from working more hours than they thought I should."
Opening paragraphs............................
Dear Son - So begins Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography (1788), and with it the Harvard Classics. On that New Year's night, the words seemed to confirm my idea of the Classics as a communication from earlier generations, and I was excited to be finally receiving this communication. Several times over the months since I'd come up with my plan to read the Shelf, I'd considered getting an early start. I would walk to the place where the volumes waited in my parents' library and run my fingers along their spines, wondering what secrets they held for me. The fifty-one volumes took up three shelves, each close to two feet wide - the whole thing a bit more than the advertised five feet, I guessed. Reading a volume of four or five hundred pages a week didn't seem like much of a task, but when these books were taken together the expanse was overwhelming.
-Christopher R. Beha, The Whole Five Feet: What the Great Books Taught Me About Life, Death, and Pretty Much Everything Else
-Christopher R. Beha, The Whole Five Feet: What the Great Books Taught Me About Life, Death, and Pretty Much Everything Else
Yep.............................................
"Returns to skilled investing end up accruing to the people who have the skills (i.e. the managers) rather than to people who just have money."
-Matt Yglesias, as excerpted from this post on "The Hedge Fund Myth"
-Matt Yglesias, as excerpted from this post on "The Hedge Fund Myth"
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Learn to fly again........................................
Mr. Mister......................................................Broken Wings
Focusing.............................
Our man on the ledge posts a Blaise Pascal quote on how the past and future mess with our present. Jeff also pointed to Project Gutenberg's e-publication of Pascal's Pensees, where I happily spent a half hour of my present pondering the differences between the 17th and 21st centuries. I stopped reading when I came to this:
"In writing down my thought, it sometimes escapes me; but this makes me remember my weakness, that I constantly forget. This is as instructive to me as my forgotten thought; for I strive only to know my nothingness."
"In writing down my thought, it sometimes escapes me; but this makes me remember my weakness, that I constantly forget. This is as instructive to me as my forgotten thought; for I strive only to know my nothingness."
A foundational truth........................
"It doesn’t matter who sits in the Presidential Palace if the country runs out of bread."
-Spengler, as excerpted from this essay on Islamism and Egypt in July of 2013
-Spengler, as excerpted from this essay on Islamism and Egypt in July of 2013
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