A Commonplace Book

[trysail]

When you're at the bottom, this is one goddamn evil lookin' mountain:

Fortunately, it ain't as bad as it looks.

__________________________


As one who at one point or another has braved the slopes of Chamonix, Les Trois Valleés, Deer Valley, Alta, Killington, Snowbird, West Mountain, Courmayeur, Elk Mountain, Whistler, Seven Springs, Sugarloaf, Verbiér, Wintergreen, Val d'Isère, Brighton, Park City, Stratton and Oregon Ridge I can attest that the sport is not without risk— but what worthwhile endeavor is?

 

[trysail]

The Dumbing Of America
Call Me a Snob, but Really, We're a Nation of Dunces

By Susan Jacoby
(Appearing in the Washington Post, p. B1, 16 February, 2008)

"The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself." Ralph Waldo Emerson offered that observation in 1837, but his words echo with painful prescience in today's very different United States. Americans are in serious intellectual trouble -- in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations.

This is the last subject that any candidate would dare raise on the long and winding road to the White House. It is almost impossible to talk about the manner in which public ignorance contributes to grave national problems without being labeled an "elitist," one of the most powerful pejoratives that can be applied to anyone aspiring to high office. Instead, our politicians repeatedly assure Americans that they are just "folks," a patronizing term that you will search for in vain in important presidential speeches before 1980. (Just imagine: "We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain . . . and that government of the folks, by the folks, for the folks, shall not perish from the earth.") Such exaltations of ordinariness are among the distinguishing traits of anti-intellectualism in any era.

The classic work on this subject by Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter, "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," was published in early 1963, between the anti-communist crusades of the McCarthy era and the social convulsions of the late 1960s. Hofstadter saw American anti-intellectualism as a basically cyclical phenomenon that often manifested itself as the dark side of the country's democratic impulses in religion and education. But today's brand of anti-intellectualism is less a cycle than a flood. If Hofstadter (who died of leukemia in 1970 at age 54) had lived long enough to write a modern-day sequel, he would have found that our era of 24/7 infotainment has outstripped his most apocalyptic predictions about the future of American culture.

Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture (and by video, I mean every form of digital media, as well as older electronic ones); a disjunction between Americans' rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism.

First and foremost among the vectors of the new anti-intellectualism is video. The decline of book, newspaper and magazine reading is by now an old story. The drop-off is most pronounced among the young, but it continues to accelerate and afflict Americans of all ages and education levels.

Reading has declined not only among the poorly educated, according to a report last year by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1982, 82 percent of college graduates read novels or poems for pleasure; two decades later, only 67 percent did. And more than 40 percent of Americans under 44 did not read a single book -- fiction or nonfiction -- over the course of a year. The proportion of 17-year-olds who read nothing (unless required to do so for school) more than doubled between 1984 and 2004. This time period, of course, encompasses the rise of personal computers, Web surfing and video games.

Does all this matter? Technophiles pooh-pooh jeremiads about the end of print culture as the navel-gazing of (what else?) elitists. In his book "Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter," the science writer Steven Johnson assures us that we have nothing to worry about. Sure, parents may see their "vibrant and active children gazing silently, mouths agape, at the screen." But these zombie-like characteristics "are not signs of mental atrophy. They're signs of focus." Balderdash. The real question is what toddlers are screening out, not what they are focusing on, while they sit mesmerized by videos they have seen dozens of times.

Despite an aggressive marketing campaign aimed at encouraging babies as young as 6 months to watch videos, there is no evidence that focusing on a screen is anything but bad for infants and toddlers. In a study released last August, University of Washington researchers found that babies between 8 and 16 months recognized an average of six to eight fewer words for every hour spent watching videos.

I cannot prove that reading for hours in a treehouse (which is what I was doing when I was 13) creates more informed citizens than hammering away at a Microsoft Xbox or obsessing about Facebook profiles. But the inability to concentrate for long periods of time -- as distinct from brief reading hits for information on the Web -- seems to me intimately related to the inability of the public to remember even recent news events. It is not surprising, for example, that less has been heard from the presidential candidates about the Iraq war in the later stages of the primary campaign than in the earlier ones, simply because there have been fewer video reports of violence in Iraq. Candidates, like voters, emphasize the latest news, not necessarily the most important news.

No wonder negative political ads work. "With text, it is even easy to keep track of differing levels of authority behind different pieces of information," the cultural critic Caleb Crain noted recently in the New Yorker. "A comparison of two video reports, on the other hand, is cumbersome. Forced to choose between conflicting stories on television, the viewer falls back on hunches, or on what he believed before he started watching."

As video consumers become progressively more impatient with the process of acquiring information through written language, all politicians find themselves under great pressure to deliver their messages as quickly as possible -- and quickness today is much quicker than it used to be. Harvard University's Kiku Adatto found that between 1968 and 1988, the average sound bite on the news for a presidential candidate -- featuring the candidate's own voice -- dropped from 42.3 seconds to 9.8 seconds. By 2000, according to another Harvard study, the daily candidate bite was down to just 7.8 seconds.

The shrinking public attention span fostered by video is closely tied to the second important anti-intellectual force in American culture: the erosion of general knowledge.

People accustomed to hearing their president explain complicated policy choices by snapping "I'm the decider" may find it almost impossible to imagine the pains that Franklin D. Roosevelt took, in the grim months after Pearl Harbor, to explain why U.S. armed forces were suffering one defeat after another in the Pacific. In February 1942, Roosevelt urged Americans to spread out a map during his radio "fireside chat" so that they might better understand the geography of battle. In stores throughout the country, maps sold out; about 80 percent of American adults tuned in to hear the president. FDR had told his speechwriters that he was certain that if Americans understood the immensity of the distances over which supplies had to travel to the armed forces, "they can take any kind of bad news right on the chin."

This is a portrait not only of a different presidency and president but also of a different country and citizenry, one that lacked access to satellite-enhanced Google maps but was far more receptive to learning and complexity than today's public. According to a 2006 survey by National Geographic-Roper, nearly half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 do not think it necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. More than a third consider it "not at all important" to know a foreign language, and only 14 percent consider it "very important."

That leads us to the third and final factor behind the new American dumbness: not lack of knowledge per se but arrogance about that lack of knowledge. The problem is not just the things we do not know (consider the one in five American adults who, according to the National Science Foundation, thinks the sun revolves around the Earth); it's the alarming number of Americans who have smugly concluded that they do not need to know such things in the first place. Call this anti-rationalism -- a syndrome that is particularly dangerous to our public institutions and discourse. Not knowing a foreign language or the location of an important country is a manifestation of ignorance; denying that such knowledge matters is pure anti-rationalism. The toxic brew of anti-rationalism and ignorance hurts discussions of U.S. public policy on topics from health care to taxation.

There is no quick cure for this epidemic of arrogant anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism; rote efforts to raise standardized test scores by stuffing students with specific answers to specific questions on specific tests will not do the job. Moreover, the people who exemplify the problem are usually oblivious to it. ("Hardly anyone believes himself to be against thought and culture," Hofstadter noted.) It is past time for a serious national discussion about whether, as a nation, we truly value intellect and rationality. If this indeed turns out to be a "change election," the low level of discourse in a country with a mind taught to aim at low objects ought to be the first item on the change agenda.

 

[bluebell]

Ain't jokin', neither.

Have I ever told you how superior you are?

 

[trysail]

 

[amicus]

Hello, Trysail, I trust you will permit me to disagree....as I do, with just about everything that article says and implies....

I remember spending endless hours at a campus library, researching a subject, the old way, by reading books, et cetera....

I can do ten hours of work in ten minutes with a search engine.

But I had to learn that the hard way, as the technology became available....these kids today, oh, my fucking God, they were born to it!

Books are old school, man, learn that...on the way to the museum....

And why in the fuck should an english speaking person learn an ancient and useless language? ninety percent of the published literature in the world and ninety percent of the business done, is in english.

And who the fuck needs to know geography elsewhere? The center of the world is no longer Constantinople, or Rome or Athens, or Paris or Berlin or Moscow or London; the center of the world, all that matters, is right here in the US of A!

You ever watched these teen aged girls work a computerized ordering board at McDonalds? They have skills never dreamed of a half century ago, not to speak of their Ipods, knowledge and use of sophisticated electronics....

I could write on this subject for hours, but I will end it here.

Think again folks, the dumbing down is just an older generation not keeping up with the new....


Amicus, the unending irritant....

 

[trysail]

"Our Russian pens write only in large letters. We have lived through so very much, and almost none of it has been described and called by its right name. But, for Western authors, peering through a microscope at the living cells of everyday life, shaking a test tube in the beam of a strong light, this is after all a whole epic, another ten volumes of Remembrance of Things Past: to describe the perturbation of a human soul placed in a cell filled to twenty times its capacity and with no latrine bucket, where prisoners are taken out to the toilet only once a day! Of course, much of the texture of this life is bound to be quite unknown to Western writers; they wouldn't realize that in this situation one solution was to urinate in your canvas hood, nor would they at all understand one prisoner's advice to another to urinate in his boot! And yet that advice was the fruit of wisdom derived from vast experience, and it didn't involve spoiling the boot and it didn't reduce the boot to the status of a pail. It meant that the boot had to be taken off, turned upside down, the boot tops turned inside out and up- and thus a cylindrical vessel was formed that constituted the much-needed container. But, at the same time, with what psychological twists and turns Western writers could enrich their literature (without in the least risking any banal repitition of the famous masters) if they only knew about the scheme of things in that same Minusinsk Prison; there was only one food bowl for every four prisoners; and one mug of drinking water per day was issued to each (there were enough mugs to go around). And it could happen that one of the four contrived to use the bowl allotted to him and three others to relieve his internal pressure and then refuse to hand over his daily water ration to wash it out before lunch. What a conflict! What a clash of four personalities! What nuances! (And I am not joking. That is when the rock bottom of a human being is revealed. It is only that Russian pens are too busy to write about it, and Russian eyes don't have the time to read about it. I am not joking- because only doctors can tell us how months in such a cell will ruin a human being's health for his entire life, even if he wasn't shot under Yezhov and was rehabilitated under Kruschvev.)"

-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (translated by Thomas P. Whitney)
The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
New York, 1973.

"Gulag Archipelago" was published when I was an otherwise preoccupied youth. Of course, I knew of it and the literary sensation that it caused but I never got around to reading it until now. I'm overdue. On the one hand, it is an extraordinary testament- on the other, it is (unfortunately) one more book in what seems an endless series of books I read presenting the horrors of history.

Lest you had doubts, evil is abroad in the world.

 

[trysail]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession_of_2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession_of_2001
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973–1974_stock_market_crash
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession_of_1958
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession_of_1953
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession_of_1937
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Panic_of_1907
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1893
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1890
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1884
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1873
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1866
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1857
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1847
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1837
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1825
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Panic_of_1819

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_Business_Cycle_Theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_cycle



As everyone learns in Economics 101, land, labor and capital are the three elements of production.

"So far as I know, everyone agrees in meaning by Saving the excess of income over what is spent on consumption. It would certainly be very inconvenient and misleading not to mean this."

-John Maynard Keynes
The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money
Cambridge, 1936



"Keynes' flat statement that he finds sympathy with the 'preclassical' doctrine that everything is 'produced by labour' aided by technique, natural resources, and 'past labour, embodied in assets,' has often been cited as a pronouncement in support of the labor theory of value. 'It is preferable to regard labour, including, of course, the personal services of the entrepreneur and his assistants, as the sole factor of production, operating in a given environment of technique, natural resources, capital equipment and effective demand.' Labor, money, and time, he says, are the only physical units he needs for his analysis. But does this mean that he adheres to the labor theory of value? Certainly not. It is one thing to use 'labour-units' as an instrument of measurement and quite another thing to make labor the sole determinant of value.

Keynes argues that capital has value because it is scarce. And it is scarce because capital involves lengthy or roundabout processes. It is the roundaboutness of the process that keeps capital sufficiently scarce so that the sum of its anticipated future yields (annual earnings or rentals) will exceed the cost of production. In other words, the roundabout process— the capital using method— will not be undertaken unless the anticpated proceeds exceed those from the direct application of labor... Capital has to be kept scarce enough 'to have a marginal efficiency which is at least equal to the rate of interest.' This is surely not a labor theory of value."

-Alvin H. Hansen
( Hansen's quotations are from The General Theory )
A Guide To Keynes
New York, 1953.

 

[trysail]

“There is an often-quoted verse in Sanskrit, which appears in the Chinese Tao-te Ching as well:

‘He who thinks he knows, doesn’t know. He who knows that he doesn’t know, knows. For in this context, to know is not to know. And not to know is to know.’ ”

- Joseph Campbell
The Power Of Myth

 

[trysail]

© 2008 Warren E. Buffett
An excerpt from the 2007 Annual Report of Berkshire Hathaway Corporation

"Whatever pension-cost surprises are in store for shareholders down the road, these jolts will be surpassed many times over by those experienced by taxpayers. Public pension promises are huge and, in many cases, funding is woefully inadequate. Because the fuse on this time bomb is long, politicians flinch from inflicting tax pain, given that problems will only become apparent long after these officials have departed. Promises involving very early retirement – sometimes to those in their low 40s – and generous cost-of-living adjustments are easy for these officials to make. In a world where people are living longer and inflation is certain, those promises will be anything but easy to keep."
________________________________

The (awful) facts:
U.S. states have accumulated an estimated $2.73 trillion present value of pension and benefit obligations to retirees, according to a December report from the Pew Center on the States. State pension and benefit funds are short almost 27 percent, or $731 billion, of that amount. The Government Accountability Office said last week that 58 percent of 65 large state and local pension plans were adequately funded in 2006, down from 90 percent in 2000.

Such studies may overstate the health of pensions because they are allowed to include expected returns in determining their funding gap, said Mark Ruloff, director of asset allocation at Arlington, Virginia-based consultant Watson Wyatt Worldwide Inc.

 

[trysail]

In all analysis of data- and, in virtually every field of study- the most difficult (and, perhaps, insoluble) problem is that of accurately distinguishing (in advance) secular change from cyclical change:

These things are always obvious- but only IN HINDSIGHT!

 

[trysail]

I'm sure I've left something out.

Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
Commercial Driver's License Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Excise Taxes
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax (42 cents per gallon)
Gross Receipts Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Taxes
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Personal Property Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service Charge Tax
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax
Sales Tax
Recreational Vehicle Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Taxes
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax

 

[trysail]

"Buy when stock prices are low and hold on to your securities... People seem unable to grasp these simple principles.
They do not buy when prices are low.
They are fearful of bargains."

-J. Paul Getty

 

[trysail]

"I am fond of independence... It is that feeling that prompts me to come up strictly to the requirements of law and regulations. I wish neither to seek nor receive indulgence from anyone. I wish to feel under obligation to no one."

-Robert E. Lee
(from a letter dated June 22, 1851 to his son, Custis)

 

[trysail]

" 'Terrible, isn't it, not being able to trust anyone.'

'Oh, no, Anjin-san, so sorry,' she answered, 'That's just one of life's most important rules-- no more, no less.' "

-James Clavell
Shōgun
New York, N.Y. 1975

 

[trysail]

"There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who 'love Nature' while deploring the 'artificialities' with which 'Man has spoiled Nature.' The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are not part of 'Nature' but beavers and their dams are. But the contradictions go deeper than this prima-facie absurdity. In declaring his love for a beaver dam (erected by beavers for beavers' purposes) and his hatred for dams erected by man (for the purposes of man) the 'Naturist' reveals his hatred for his own race- i.e., his own self-hatred.

In the case of 'Naturists' such self-hatred is understandable; they are such a sorry lot. But hatred is too strong an emotion to feel toward them; pity and contempt are the most they rate.

As for me, willy-nilly, I am a man, not a beaver, and H. sapiens is the only race I have or can have. Fortunately for me, I like being part of a race made up of men and women- it strikes me as a fine arrangement and perfectly 'natural."

-Robert A. Heinlein
Time Enough For Love
"The Notebooks of Lazarus Long"

 

[trysail]

"Until the late 1800s, thought turned on ways to inculcate virtue in a small class that governed. This country's founders, however, took the knowledge they had gained about humans' self-interestedness to create political solutions in which ambition would counteract ambition."

-Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Commencement Address
Union College, Schenectady, N.Y.
June, 1995

 

[trysail]

ZUGZWANG:

In order to "win friends and influence people," it is required that one be nice to people, including the many who are susceptible to bribes. Abhorring those susceptible to bribery, as I do, it therefore logically follows that it is impossible for me to influence them.

 

[trysail]

"Never appeal to a man's conscience...,

he might not have one."​

-Robert A. Heinlein
The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
Time Enough For Love

 

[trysail]

The only constant is change,
the only permanence is impermanence.

 

[rengadeirishman]

your a baltimore man try?

 

[trysail]

Anywhere is...
Lyrics by Enya

I walk the maze of moments
But everywhere I turn to
Begins a new beginning
But never finds a finish
I walk to the horizon
And there I find another
It all seems so surprising
And then I find that I know

Chorus:
You go there you're gone forever
I go there I'll lose my way
If we stay here we're not together
Anywhere is

The moon upon the ocean
Is swept around in motion
But without ever knowing
The reason for its flowing
In motion on the ocean
The moon still keeps on moving
The waves still keep on waving
And I still keep on going

Chorus:
I wonder if the stars sign
The life that is to be mine
And would they let their light shine
Enough for me to follow
I look up to the heavens
But night has clouded over
No spark of constellation
No Vela no Orion

The shells upon the warm sands
Have taken from their own lands
The echo of their story
But all I hear are low sounds
As pillow words are weaving
And willow waves are leaving
But should I be believing
That I am only dreaming

Chorus:
To leave the thread of all time
And let it make a dark line
In hopes that I can still find
The way back to the moment
I took the turn and turned to
Begin a new beginning
Still looking for the answer
I cannot find the finish
It's either this or that way
It's one way or the other
It should be one direction
It could be on reflection
The turn I have just taken
The turn that I was making
I might be just beginning
I might be near the end.

 

[trysail]

"Puritanism-
The haunting fear that somewhere, someone is happy."

-H.L. Mencken

_________________

_________________

_________________

_________________


"Only the dead have seen the end of war."

-Plato

_________________




"With freedom, you get fraud."
-Author not known

"I love liberty and I HATE fraud."
(emphasis mine)

-H.L. Mencken

_________________




"As the bitch returns to her vomit,
and the sow to her mire,
so the poor fool's bandaged finger,
returns to the fire."

-Rudyard Kipling

__________________




"Hypocrisy is the lubricant of social intercourse."

-A person who would suffer a myocardial infarction were they credited with authorship of the above observation on an Internet message board.

___________________




"The amount of noise that one can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity."

-Arthur Schopenhauer

____________________




"First rate men will not canvass mobs and, if they did, the mobs would not elect the first rate man."

-Lord Robert Cecil, Third Marquess of Salisbury

____________________


In an essay comparing Theodore Roosevelt and Kaiser Wilhelm II,

"Both delighted in the armed pursuit of the lower fauna."
-H. L. Mencken

____________________




"Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan."

-Author not known

____________________




"It would take a brave man to be a coward in the Red Army."

-Josef Stalin

____________________




"Creditors have better memories than debtors."

-Author not known

____________________




"If you can trust a man, a legal contract is a waste of paper. If you can't trust a man, a legal contract is still a waste of paper."

-George Getty
(attorney and father of J. Paul Getty)

____________________




"The only place you'll find free cheese is in a mousetrap."

-Russian proverb

____________________




"The race may not always go to the swift nor the battle to the strong, ... but that's the way to bet."

-Damon Runyon

____________________




"A classic is a book that everybody knows about but nobody's read."

-Samuel Langhorne Clemens
"Mark Twain"

____________________




"I profess to thee I desire from my heart, I have prayed for it, I have waited for the day to see union and right understanding between the godly people (Scots, English, Jews, Gentiles, Presbyterians, Independents, Anabaptists and All)... Innocence and integrity loses nothing by a patient waiting upon the Lord."

-Oliver Cromwell

____________________



From that old, classic, film "Putney Swope":

"Whatcha been doin' the last two weeks, Putney?"
"Layin' in a cunt."

____________________





"Pretty girls tend to become insufferable because, being pretty, their faults are too much tolerated."

-Bill James (Author of Baseball Abstract)

____________________




"When the music plays, you have to dance."

-Charles Prince (ex-Chairman of Citigroup, explaining Citigroup's participation in the subprime mortgage fiasco under his watch)

____________________




"... The world is full of trouble but it always was."

-August Mencken (brother of H.L. Mencken), TLS, November 18, 1964 to Father Joseph Stricker (in my collection).

____________________




"You're from a free country. You haven't got a choice."

-John le Carré. Smiley's People. New York, 1979.

____________________




"Whose bread I eat, his song I sing."

-Author not known

____________________




I've been trying to track down this quote for awhile. It speaks to people's tendency to provide certain answers when they would be more honest if they would simply state, "I don't know." Humans are always in search of certainty in the face of uncertainty; that is why many of us are vulnerable to political and religious messiahs. Prophets, demagogues, politicians, salesmen, and evangelists are astute in their knowledge that people hungry for answers can easily be manipulated by the illusory promise of definitive answers to unanswerable questions. Mencken wrote entire books on this human tendency.

“There is an often-quoted verse in Sanskrit, which appears in the Chinese Tao-te Ching as well: ‘He who thinks he knows, doesn’t know. He who knows that he doesn’t know, knows. For in this context, to know is not to know. And not to know is to know.’”

-Joseph Campbell
The Power of Myth​

___________________




"Under pressure, the mouth speaks when the brain is disengaged, and, sometimes unwittingly, the gearshift is in reverse when it should be in neutral."

-Henry Ford

____________________




"If you've been in the game for fifteen minutes and you don't know who the patsy is...........,

.................... you are."

-Author not known

____________________




"When you lend money to a friend, you will likely lose the money or the friend."

-Author not known

____________________




"Economists extrapolate the past while markets discount the future."

-Paul McCulley

____________________




"Always do right- this will gratify some people and astonish the rest."

-Samuel Langhorne Clemens
"Mark Twain"

____________________




"When they're lookin' over there, throw it over here."

"Throw peas at the knees."

-Satchell Paige

____________________



Shortly after returning to Richmond following the surrender at Appomattox, Robert E. Lee was approached on the street by a young mother with her son in tow. She asked Lee what she should teach her son.

"Madam, teach him that he must deny himself."

-Robert E. Lee

____________________




"Feed the rich and grow poor. Feed the poor and grow rich."

-Author not known

____________________

Satchel Paige's Rules For Right Living​

• Avoid fried foods which angry up the blood.
• If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cooling thoughts.
• Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move.
• Go very lightly on the vices such as carrying on in society- the social ramble ain't restful.
• Avoid running at all times.
• Don't look back. Somethin' might be gaining on you.

____________________




"I wish to have no connexion with a ship that does not sail fast--
as I INTEND TO GO IN HARM'S WAY."

-John Paul Jones

____________________




"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."

-Honoré de Balzac


____________________




"It's only when the tide goes out that we find out who's been swimming naked."

-Warren Edward Buffett

____________________




"Frederick the Great, asked why he gave commissions in the Prussian army only to Junker, replied simply, 'Because they will not lie and cannot be bought.' "

-H. L. Mencken

____________________




"Markets can remain irrational longer than you can stay solvent."

-John Maynard Keynes

____________________




"You can have two, and only two, of the following three things: free movement of capital, fixed exchange rates, and independent monetary policy."

-John Maynard Keynes

____________________




"If something can't go on forever, it won't."

-Ben Stein

____________________




"A demagogue is one who knowingly tells untruths to those he believes to be morons."

-H.L. Mencken

____________________



Q: What about all these kids who look up to athletes as role models?
A:"We're not athletes. We're baseball players."

-John Kruk (former Philadelphia Phillie)
+++++++++++++++++++

"If I'd known I was gonna live this long, I would have taken better care of myself."

-Mickey Mantle

____________________




"Never frighten a little man. He'll kill you."

-Robert A. Heinlein

____________________




"Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage."

-Ambrose Beirce

____________________




"Give me
Your dirty love
Like you might surrender
To some dragon in your dream

Give me
Your dirty love
Like a pink donation
To the dragon in your dream

I don't need your sweet devotion
I don't want your cheap emotion
Just whip me up some dragon lotion
For your dirty love

Give me
Your dirty love
Like some tacky little pamphlet
In your daddy's bottom drawer

Give me
Your dirty love
I don't believe you never seen
That book before

I don't need no consolation
I don't want your reservation
I only got one destination
An' that's your dirty love

Give me
Your dirty love
Just like your mama
Make her fuzzy poodle do

Give me
Your dirty love
The way your mama
Make that nasty poodle chew

I'll ignore your cheap aroma
And your little bo-peep diploma
I'll just put you in a coma
With some dirty love

THE POODLE BITES!
(Come on, Frenchie)
THE POODLE CHEWS IT!
(Snap it!)
THE POODLE BITES!
(Come on, Frenchie)
THE POODLE CHEWS IT!
(Snap it!)."

-Frank Zappa
"Dirty Love"

____________________




"Any fool can carry on but it takes a wise man to shorten sail in time."

-Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski (Joseph Conrad)

____________________




"Lt. Col. Frank Slade: Haven't you heard? CONSCIENCE is daihed.

Charlie Simms: No, I haven't heard.

Lt. Col. Frank Slade: Well, then, take the fuckin' WAX outta your ears! GROW UP! It's fuck your buddy. Cheat on your wife. Call your mother on Mother's Day. Charlie, it's all shit."

-"Scent Of A Woman"
Bo Goldman (screenplay)
Giovanni Arpino (novel)

____________________




"I don't believe life has a purpose. Life is a lot of protoplasm with an urge to reproduce and continue in being."

-Joseph Campbell
The Power Of Myth

____________________




"An honest laborer digs coal at about seventy cents a day, while a President digs abstractions at about seventy dollars a day. The coal is clearly worth more than the abstractions."

-Abraham Lincoln


____________________




"When he was talking, he was lying. When he was quiet, he was stealing."

-Warren E. Buffett
(commenting on the notorious swindler, Armand Hammer)


____________________




"Honor to those who in their lives
are committed and guard their Thermopylaes.

Never stirring from duty;
just and upright in all their deeds
but with pity and compassion too;
generous when they are rich,
and when they are poor,
again, a little generous,
again helping as much as they are able;
always speaking the truth,
but without rancor for those who lie.

And they merit greater honor when they foresee
(and many do foresee)
that Ephialtes will finally appear,
and in the end the Medes will go through."


"Thermopylae"
-C. P. Cavafy
(translation by Rae Dalvern)


____________________




"In New York, they ask, 'How much is he worth?' In Boston, 'What does he know?' In Philadelphia, 'Who was his father?."

-E. Digby Baltzell
Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia: Two Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Class Authority and Leadership

____________________




"White men like to dig in the ground for their food. My people prefer to hunt the buffalo as their fathers did. White men like to stay in one place. My people want to move their tipis here and there to the different hunting grounds. The life of white men is slavery. They are prisoners in towns or farms. The life my people want is a life of freedom. I have seen nothing that a white man has, houses or railways or clothing or food, that is as good as the right to move in the open country, and live in our own fashion."

-Sitting Bull,
as quoted by Robert M. Utley in The Lance and the Shield

____________________




"When a man is in debt, he's your slave. You own him body and britches. You are the cat, he is the mouse. You let him have a little space to run about in, and he thinks he's going to get away. But you are only playing with him. You can stick out your paw and claw him across the back any time you wish."

-Daniel Drew
The Book of Daniel Drew

____________________




"Never appeal to a man's conscience...,

he might not have one."​

-Robert A. Heinlein
The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
Time Enough For Love

____________________




"Advice is worthless. A wise man doesn't need it and a fool won't take it."

-Author not known


____________________




"You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away men's initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves."

-Abraham Lincoln


____________________




"It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it."

-Robert E. Lee
Fredericksburg, Virginia.
December, 1862.
(upon viewing the insane Yankee frontal assault upon Marye's Heights)


____________________




"Gratitude is the expression of the expectation of future favor."

-Author not known


____________________




"Through early morning fog I see,
visions of the things to be, ...

...The game of life is hard to play,
I'm gonna lose it anyway,
The losing card I'll someday lay, ...

...' Cause suicide is painless.
It brings on many changes, ..."

-Mike Altman


____________________




"Eventually, she will die the way old people in America die... from humiliation, incontinence, boredom, and neglect."

-Pat Conroy
The Prince of Tides


____________________




"Most people, in fact, will not take trouble in finding out the truth, but are much more inclined to accept the first story they hear."

-Thucydides
History of The Peloponnesian War
(translated by Rex Warner)


____________________




"If you are afraid to die, you are probably afraid to live."

-Rocky Aoki


____________________

 

[trysail]

Ithaka​

By C.P. Cavafy


When you set out for Ithaka
ask that your way be long,
full of adventures, full of instruction.
Laistrygonians and the Cyclops,
angry Poseidon— do not fear them:
such as these you will never find
as long as your thought is lofty,
as long as a rare emotion
touch your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and the Cyclops,
angry Poseidon— you will not meet them
unless you carry them in your soul,
unless your soul raise them up before you.

Ask that your way be long.
At many a summer dawn to enter,
with what gratitude, what joy,
ports seen for the first time;
to stop at Phoenician trading centers
to buy good merchandise,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensuous perfumes of every kind—
sensuous perfumes as lavishly as you can;
to visit many Egyptian cities,
to gather stores of knowledge from the learned.

Have Ithaka always in your mind.
Your arrival there is what you are destined for.
But don’t in the least hurry the journey.
Better it last for years,
so that when you reach the island you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to give you wealth.

Ithaka gave you the splendid journey.
Without her, you would not have set out.
She hasn’t anything else to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka hasn’t deceived you,
so wise have you become, of such experience,
that already you’ll have understood what these Ithakas mean.

[ It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive. ]





Ιθάκη Αναγνωρισμένα

Σα βγεις στον πηγαιμό για την Ιθάκη,
να εύχεσαι νάναι μακρύς ο δρόμος,
γεμάτος περιπέτειες, γεμάτος γνώσεις.
Τους Λαιστρυγόνας και τους Κύκλωπας,
τον θυμωμένο Ποσειδώνα μη φοβάσαι,
τέτοια στον δρόμο σου ποτέ σου δεν θα βρεις,
αν μέν’ η σκέψις σου υψηλή, αν εκλεκτή
συγκίνησις το πνεύμα και το σώμα σου αγγίζει.
Τους Λαιστρυγόνας και τους Κύκλωπας,
τον άγριο Ποσειδώνα δεν θα συναντήσεις,
αν δεν τους κουβανείς μες στην ψυχή σου,
αν η ψυχή σου δεν τους στήνει εμπρός σου.

Να εύχεσαι νάναι μακρύς ο δρόμος.
Πολλά τα καλοκαιρινά πρωιά να είναι
που με τι ευχαρίστησι, με τι χαρά
θα μπαίνεις σε λιμένας πρωτοειδωμένους·
να σταματήσεις σ’ εμπορεία Φοινικικά,
και τες καλές πραγμάτειες ν’ αποκτήσεις,
σεντέφια και κοράλλια, κεχριμπάρια κ’ έβενους,
και ηδονικά μυρωδικά κάθε λογής,
όσο μπορείς πιο άφθονα ηδονικά μυρωδικά·
σε πόλεις Aιγυπτιακές πολλές να πας,
να μάθεις και να μάθεις απ’ τους σπουδασμένους.

Πάντα στον νου σου νάχεις την Ιθάκη.
Το φθάσιμον εκεί είν’ ο προορισμός σου.
Aλλά μη βιάζεις το ταξείδι διόλου.
Καλλίτερα χρόνια πολλά να διαρκέσει·
και γέρος πια ν’ αράξεις στο νησί,
πλούσιος με όσα κέρδισες στον δρόμο,
μη προσδοκώντας πλούτη να σε δώσει η Ιθάκη.

Η Ιθάκη σ’ έδωσε τ’ ωραίο ταξείδι.
Χωρίς αυτήν δεν θάβγαινες στον δρόμο.
Άλλα δεν έχει να σε δώσει πια.

Κι αν πτωχική την βρεις, η Ιθάκη δεν σε γέλασε.
Έτσι σοφός που έγινες, με τόση πείρα,
ήδη θα το κατάλαβες η Ιθάκες τι σημαίνουν.


http://www.cavafy.com/

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2010/04/29

It's the birthday of poet C.P. Cavafy, (books by this author) born in Alexandria, Egypt (1863). His parents were Greek, and he wrote his poetry in modern Greek, but lived in Alexandria almost his entire life. In 1889, he got a job as an unpaid clerk at the city's Irrigation Office, and he stayed there until he retired 30 years later. He lived with his mother until he was 36, in an apartment just above a brothel, and across the street from a church and a hospital. Cavafy once said: "Where could I live better? Below, the brothel caters to the flesh. And there is the church which forgives sin. And there is the hospital where we die.

 

[trysail]

Unfortunately, "stupid" and "dishonest" cannot be outlawed by regulatory fiat or the wave of a legislative wand. I can attest to those facts, having devoted a career to combating "stupid" and "dishonest-" I bear the scars to prove it. Wall Street (and Bay Street and Vancouver and the City) are, always were, and always will be vast promotional machines. These institutions and the people who inhabit them are not the least bit interested in altruism- they exist for the sole purpose of self-enrichment.

As always and as ever will be, the strong prey upon the weak.

 

[trysail]

Men (and women) of science have, in general, contributed to the betterment of society and the increase and diffusion of knowledge. While there have undoubtedly been ugly incidents of individuals who, for competitive reasons, have behaved selfishly (e.g., James Watson, Frances Crick and their behavior toward Rosalind Franklin), the natural impulse of those who pursue knowledge and one of the canons of science is to share knowledge.

That sort of behavior stands in stark contrast to the academics in the field of finance who, in many instances, have contributed nothing but misinformation. The gobbledegook nonsense of alpha, beta, gamma, delta, and the rest of their Greek symbology has done nothing but give a patina of science to a horde of glib snake oil salesmen, enabling them to bamboozle the trusting but gullible patsies. The received wisdom that computer-generated three sigma events won't occur is the whole reason that the financial system is in the sorry mess that it is today.
(End of rant).

John C. Bogle, the 81-year-old founder of the Vanguard Group of mutual funds who has argued for tougher financial oversight, said investors have been fooled into believing they benefit from Wall Street innovations rather than bear the cost.

“The financial system subtracts value from society,” said Bogle. “Wall Street represents a cost that takes away from the proven long-term returns available in the market. That’s the reality.”



http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=ana_DCpXgsSI

http://forum.literotica.com/showpost.php?p=34428865&postcount=308