Adages
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A short adage
Julian Sanchez comes up with a new term, the Outsight, defined as the opposite of insight, further defined as an
elementary point that everyone else had taken for granted as a premise of the conversation, and indeed, one too obvious to be worth stating.
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The quotable Dwight Eisenhower
While perusing WikiQuote while waiting for some files to upload I came across these nuggets of wisdom
if a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.
An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking… is freedom.
In his case, there seems to be no final answer to the question, “How stupid can you get?”
The runner up
The United States never lost a soldier or a foot of ground in my administration. We kept the peace. People asked how it happened — by God, it didn’t just happen, I’ll tell you that.
Any my favorite
Oh, goddammit, we forgot the silent prayer.
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A wonderful adage
Via PurpleSlog comes “until robots get better” which is a fine life motto. Much more appropriate these days than Woodie Guthrie’s “Until we outnumber ’em”
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I coin a new phrase
I hereby dub Climate Change Activists “The coalition of the chilling”.
And here’s an article on public attitudes on Climate Change
The Ipsos Mori poll of 2,032 adults – interviewed between 14 and 20 June – found 56% believed scientists were still questioning climate change.
There was a feeling the problem was exaggerated to make money, it found.
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Quote of the moment
From this BloggingHeads episode:
The world is a tragedy to those who feel and a comedy to those who think.
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Random Thursday links
- How to fix the Microsoft Home Page
- Robert Conquest’s 3 Laws of Politics
1. Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
2. Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
3. The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies. - More Stirling Engines how to guides – this one looks a bit better than the last one I posted. Here is another one.
- The top 100 web apps for freelancers – mine is not on it, yet.
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Wars in the Middle East are officially a vested interest
I read this article on CNN.com
White House taps general for ‘war czar’ post
President Bush has chosen Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, the Pentagon’s director of operations, to oversee the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan as a “war czar” after a long search for new leadership, administration officials said Tuesday.In the newly created position, Lute would serve as an assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser, and would also maintain his military status and rank as a three-star general, according to a Pentagon official.
and was reminded of this Albert Jay Nock quote:
Experience has made it clear beyond doubt or peradventure that prohibition in the United States is not a moral issue; it is not essentially, even, a political issue; it is a vested interest.
and this H.L. Mencken quote:
The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.
We have this horrible tendency in our culture to see the means (a big new bureaucracy) as an end in itself, nay, an achievement. What endeavor has failed because there are too few managers? The right managers, sure, lots of failures due to a lack of them. But too few?
Plus an additional bureaucracy just creates it’s own principal-agent and knowledge problems.
Functionally Lute will probably serve as a dedicated adviser, but why the title Czar? All of the Russian Czars were an odd combination of stagnant, incompetent and murderous. Why is that some role model.
Sigh.
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More wisdom from my old econ professors
The same professor mentioned in the previous post said that it is the natural order of things for
“Those who study the very big see the study of the very small as true, but not relevant. Those who study the very small see the study of the very big as relevant, but not true”.
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Infuriating comments
From this CNN.com article
Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, for example, is a sponsor of a bill that would call for troops to come home in 180 days and allow for a minimum number of forces to be left behind to hunt down terrorists and train Iraqi security forces.
“Read the Constitution,” Boxer told her colleagues last week. “The Congress has the power to declare war. And on multiple occasions, we used our power to end conflicts.”
This idea is coming to her now? It’s nauseating how we elect these people. There are countless acts of courage and kindness that happen when the cameras aren’t running, but as soon as they start everyone puts their head down and genuflects to the conventional wisdom. Congress gives war making authority to the president, who of course was only enforcing UN resolutions. All to avoid criticism or losing a job, which very few of them need.
That’s an odd thing about American; risk taking is private. That’s good I suppose.
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A useful axiom
In my first advanced macroeconomics class my professor defined truth as “The consensus of informed opinion”. I remembered that for some reason today.