The Choice is Yours

We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.

~Carlos Castaneda

On How To Live

"Walk tall, kick ass, love music, and never forget you come from a long line of truth seekers, lovers, and warriors."

- Hunter S. Thompson

Living

Al-anon tells me to live One Day at a Time. This is that day.

- Anonymous

What's Old Is New Again

Ronald McDonald is the new Joe Camel.

- Adam Wygle

Jerry Yang (July 2008)

“I’ll admit that I haven’t been following this particular story that closely. Since getting laid off from AOL, my interest in this genre of news only stretches as far as what new horror has befallen my former employer. But I do read through the tales of the Yahoo debacle, and it struck me this morning that Jerry Yang is kind of like the Amy Winehouse of the corporate world. Entertaining for a while, but now just a bit… sad.”

- unknown

How we DON"T get there.

There are few political positions that can be reached only by argument and empirical evidence.

- Michael White

On Shiny Things

A favorite pastime of us phone nerds is to gather around a phone in a box ... and take it out.

- Phil Nickinson

On Surviving After the Apocalypse

The only advise that they will need is ‘Zombies can only be killed by destroying the brain stem. A gun shot wound to the head or decapitation will suffice.’

- "ilandrah"

Investment Advice

What the world really needs is a product that will prevent people from using their own dumbass ideas to invest.

- Scott Adams

On the Religion of Atheism

I’m not going to loop myself in with atheists, because they seem so militant. It’s like, even though they don’t believe in God, they have to be so ridiculously enthusiastic about it that it’s practically a religion to them.

- Brad from Staires

Main St or Wall St?

We may have wasted valuable time trying to save Wall Street at the cost of Main Street. …Has the time come to shift the policy focus away from the things that we love, namely big zombie banks, to tackle those things that are truly hurting us?

- Christopher Whalen

Football as Preparation for Polititcs

"Pro football gave me a good perspective. When I entered the political arena, I had already been booed, cheered, cut, sold, traded, and hung in effigy." 

- Jack Kemp (R.I.P.)

Protection

“The rain forests certainly deserve our protection, but man as creature indeed deserves no less.”

--Pope Benedict XVI

But now I get it!

"We're all wearing the blue dress now."

--Plaztiq

Me either...

"I think BK is the only viable solution to any of these zombie companies. However, what I find ironic and highly problematic, is that a company like GM, which actually MANUFACTURES something, is left to go the BK route, while all the zombie banks, which just push around paper and don't actually produce anything except shit sandwiches and profits for their executives, are kept alive at any cost. I just don't get it."

--"Mondocondo"

Well, that's a pleasant thought

"Economic volatility, plus ethnic disintegration, plus an empire in decline: That combination is about the most lethal in geopolitics. We now have all three. The age of upheaval starts now."

--Niall Ferguson

Analysts

"...they can tell the Reuters poll of ten analysts to pack sand in their left ear and walk lopsided..."

- Doug Smith

Let's cut to the chase

"I'm taking this class where they're trying to help us figure out how to determine what's right from wrong. But the kids at my school all know right from wrong. That's not the problem. The problem is that some kids just don't give a shit."

--Annonymous, 16 years old

Curiousity and the sense of a fuller truth.

"Religion partakes of elements of both art and science. It could not have begun without our uniquely human understanding of false belief, which develops in individuals during their fourth year—our awareness that another person can have a different understanding of a situation from what we know to be the case, and our concomitant awareness that in other circumstances we may not have all we need to understand this or that situation. Our capacity to understand false belief has amplified our curiosity and spurred us to the quest for the deeper knowledge that has led to both religion and science."

--Brian Boyd

Do we REALLY need to study this so closely?

Simply analyzing the tactical engagements that occurred over the 34 days of direct contact between Israel and Hezbollah doesn't serve either side of the COIN/Conventional debate well. Israel's long term policies and actions built Hezbollah. The particular situation within Lebanon created the conditions under which an organization like Hezbollah could grow and thrive. If the U.S. thinks it makes sense to invade another country without our own security being gravely at risk, then we haven't learned our own set of lessons from Iraq. 

Let's figure that one out before we spend too much time picking apart 34 days of fighting between two entities that have been battling each other for years.

Why science works and consensus is a loss, not a gain.

"Dyson may be an Obama-loving, Bush-loathing liberal who has spent his life opposing American wars and fighting for the protection of natural resources, but he brooks no ideology and has a withering aversion to scientific consensus.... Dyson has said he believes that the truths of science are so profoundly concealed that the only thing we can really be sure of is that much of what we expect to happen won’t come to pass. In “Infinite in All Directions,” he writes that nature’s laws “make the universe as interesting as possible.”

--Nicholas Dawidoff

Human ingenuity.

The blogger from Rands in Repose gives us some insight into building the Brooklyn Bridge:

"With the caisson on the riverbed, it’s time to push it another 45 feet into the riverbed in search of bedrock. Workers did this through the continued application of stone to the top while workers in the caisson dug out the riverbed with shovels, buckets, and, when necessary, dynamite. There was nothing resembling an electrical grid, so there was nothing resembling modern lighting in this watertight pine-tarred box, which was slowly descending through the floor of the East River. There were no jack hammers, so when they hit rock, they used small amounts of dynamite to crack these rocks. In a pine-tarred box, at the bottom of a river, mostly in a very wet dark.

And when the caisson finally hit bedrock 45 underground, they had to do it all over again for the New York tower. 30 feet deeper."

Friedman on the political crisis accompanying the financial crisis

"Right now we have an absence of inspirational leadership. From business we hear about institutions too big to fail — no matter how reckless. From bankers we hear about contracts too sacred to break — no matter how inappropriate. And from our immature elected officials we hear about how it was all 'the other guy’s fault.'"

The Orator stumbles

"The story of the day often catches the president flat-footed or on the defensive — and regularly undercut by fellow Democrats. To Obama’s dismay, he is learning that successful presidential communications is only in part — often a fairly small part — about personal eloquence."

Yep.

At a time when the world seems
to be spinning hopelessly out of control,
There's deceivers and believers and old in-betweeners,
That seem to have no place to go.

--Willie Nelson

Why they lost connection to life as the rest of us live it?

"Perhaps the most important difference is that, not so long ago, the overwhelming majority of the elites in each generation were drawn from the children of farmers, shopkeepers, and factory workers—and could still remember those worlds after they left them. Over the last half century, it can be demonstrated empirically that the new generation of elites have increasingly spent their entire lives in the upper-middle-class bubble, never even having seen a factory floor, let alone worked on one, never having gone to a grocery store and bought the cheap ketchup instead of the expensive ketchup to meet a budget, never having had a boring job where their feet hurt at the end of the day, and never having had a close friend who hadn’t gotten at least 600 on her SAT verbal. There’s nobody to blame for any of this. These are the natural consequences of successful people looking for pleasant places to live and trying to do the best thing for their children."

--Charles Murray

Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable � Clay Shirky

"When reality is labeled unthinkable, it creates a kind of sickness in an industry. Leadership becomes faith-based, while employees who have the temerity to suggest that what seems to be happening is in fact happening are herded into Innovation Departments, where they can be ignored en masse."

-Clay Shirky on the ongoing destruction of newspapers.

On the urge to say "because I said so."

"This adoration of science apart from "dogma" is stunningly unscientific, leaping past a host of questions properly called philosophic, to reach a place where no human endeavor should lurk, the place beyond questioning."

--Michael Winters

The Future of Music

CD sales continue to decline by 20% per year, and the only thing that’ll stop that trend is when those sales reach zero.

- Anonymous 

On the Credit Mess

"The whole evolution of the credit markets resulted in all sorts of complex financial instruments that are difficult to unwind. It's like trying to unscramble scrambled eggs. It just can't be done that easily. I don't know if it can be done at all."

- Mark Vitner

"No shit, Sherlock."

- Jess Johnson

In the dark, with the bullshit piling high. It would be great if we were mushrooms.

"I think the defining moment for me was when Bernanke responded to the question from Congress, as to whether the American people (and their elected representatives in Congress) would be told to whom all their tax dollars have been given or lent. That single word summed it up perfectly for me: "No."

Any illusions that the money trust in the US, that collection of bankers and hedge fund managers and industrialists who are the beneficiaries of the systematic looting of the Treasury under the current "emergency" measures, is going to do anything other than precisely whatever it likes, or is going to report to those being looted, was dispelled at that moment. Likewise, nobody has been able to articulate why the massive swindle at AIG continues to be subsidized by our tax dollars - but again, no reporting on where those dollars are going will be forthcoming."

--Bob O'Brien

Education in an evolving world

"We send kids to school, they move grade by grade, using the 18th-century model, and during that time, the whole world has changed so much. How relevant is that education? We're training them for jobs that existed 20 years ago, not for those that'll exist when they finish school."

Jakeism

Friday was so nice at recess. The wind was hardly blowing. The sun was on our faces. It was really beautiful, dad!

- Jake Z

Where to Invest

Assuming impending monetary collapse, isn't education one of the best investments? Value stored in your mind is more portable than gold and can't be taken away (short of blunt force trauma).

- Tim G.

Is Growth Always Good?

Limitless growth is the ideology of a cancer cell.

- Edward Abbey

Night of the Living Citibank

"Zombie banks beg for money. They are very clever. They come up with ways you can give them money while pretending not to give them money, such as guaranteeing their assets, guaranteeing new debt issues, or buying up assets at "hold to maturity" values. Just say no! A healthy financial system cannot be run by zombies. "Rescuing" insolvent banks makes about as much sense as tying string to the arms of a loved one's corpse so it can come to the dinner table as a marionette. For a while that may be comforting (or not), but pretty soon it's sure to smell really bad, and it's gonna ooze. If you think you have engineered a miraculous turnaround, you have only made matters worse. An undead bank is an abomination. It will pretend good health but hide a rot. It will afflict you, over and over and over again, with harrowing near insolvencies (cf Citibank). Dead banks must be allowed to die."

--Steve Waldman

Our Situation

“The situation we find ourselves in at this moment, this week, is very strongly reminiscent of the situations we've seen many times in other places. But they're places we don't like to think of ourselves as being similar to. They're emerging markets. It's Russia or Indonesia or a Thailand type situation, or Korea... I have this feeling in my stomach that I felt in much poorer countries, countries that were headed into a really difficult economic situation, when there’s a small group of people who got you into a disaster, who were still powerful, and disaster made them more powerful... Don’t get me wrong – these are fine upstanding citizens who have a certain perspective and a certain kind of interest, and they see the world a certain way... That web of interest is not my interest or your interest or the interest of the taxpayer. It’s the interest, first and foremost, of the financial industry in this country.”

- Simon Johnson

The Internet and Farraris

“I am shocked and awed at how few people use RSS feed readers. If you are using the web without a rss reader, it is kinda like putting your Ferrari in neutral and pushing it around town with your feet.”

- Josh Reighley

Peace in our time....

"The stock market responded badly to Geithner because it is crying out for someone in authority who can make bold moves and justify them, someone non-mealy-mouthed, someone who has an equal mix of brains, principles and confidence. The market wants Churchill and they keep tossing it Chamberlains."
-Emanuel Derman

Why fight it?

"As for writers, there's no keeping your stories and books yours, all yours. Unless you print it out and put it in a locked safe. In which case no one would ever read it. That's not what a writer wants. It's not what I want, anyway. I want people to read what I've written. The enemy of a writer is not piracy. It's obscurity.

If you put content on the internet, you give it away. That's the reality. Rather than fight it, I think it behooves writers and artists of all stripes to embrace this reality."

--Court Merrigan

Hmmm......

"It's a curious reversal in moralizing. Food was once a matter of personal taste. Now sex is a matter of taste, and food puts people in high moral dudgeon."

--Mary Eberstadt as paraphrased by A&L Daily

"The Bailout Shuffle"

"I think this is called the "bailout shuffle." Step 1: Company goes out of its way to appear financially sound in order to appease private investors. Step 2: Company pivots 180 degrees and goes out of its way to appear financially strapped in order to access government bailout funds. Step 3: Company pivots back to step 1 in order to convince thegovernment that the money has been used effectively.... I'm guessing step 4 looks a whole lot like step 2. Repeat until company and government are both out of money."

--Tim F.

Hrmph.

Pakistan Lifts Restrictions on Nuclear Scientist - NYTimes.com

Starting to wonder if people and countries aren't taking advantage of our political transition. Between this and Russian pressure on Kyrgystan, things don't look pretty right now. Did I mention North Korea is directly threatening the South again...?

A continued slide into chaos

Not only has the Mexican government lost its monopoly on the use of force, it has proven to be far less effective in leveraging that force than its opponents.

If we just stare a little bit harder...

If you stare at a cloud long enough, you can see whatever you want, right? Is the same true for a statistical tie...?

If you can't spot the patsy at the table.....

"The banksters hold the marked cards, the politicians are the dealer, and the taxpayers are the patsy in this game."


--BC

Sound advice

"The first rule is that unicorns are tricky bitches and often fake death just to lure you within impaling range. To avoid this common and undesirable hunter's fate, pump a couple of rounds into your unicorn's torso (just don't hit the horn!)."


--"Lowbeyond"

On Accountability

This view is widely ignored by economists -- almost all of whom were unable to see the bubble. Track records do not count for much in economics.

--Dean Baker

Financial Crisis

“The resources of nature and men’s devices are just as fertile and productive as they were. The rate of our progress towards solving the material problems of life is not less rapid. We are as capable as before of affording for everyone a high standard of life. ... But today we have involved ourselves in a colossal muddle, having blundered in the control of a delicate machine, the working of which we do not understand.”

- John Maynard Keynes

(On the Great Depression)

A thesis in moral philosophy

"It sounds like something you'd read on a movie poster: sometimes the sins you haven't committed are all you have to hold on to. If you're really desperate, you might need to grope, saying, for example, 'I've never killed anyone with a hammer' or 'I've never stolen from anyone who didn't deserve it.... [But] I can glimpse at what my life would be like without my [sexual fidelity], of how lost I'd feel without this scrap of integrity, and the fear is enough to wake me up."

--David Sedaris

Heart

It is essential to understand that battles are
primarily won in the hearts of men.

- Vince Lombardi

American Capitalism and the Glory of the "Free Market" in The Age of Bank Bailouts.

"I think here of a [laid-off worker] I had the other day: he has cancer. So the loss of his job means the loss of his health insurance, and the loss of his job, at age 61, really could be a death sentence. It’s a long trek from age 61 to Medicare."

--Thomas Geoghegan

It's true, the internet cant do that.

"Times sure have changed. I remember the good ol' days when you guys had to hide all of your sticky porn mags in secret places, fearing that someone would discover them. Now it's all just a bunch of 1s and 0s on your hard drive, or floating somewhere in cyber space.

Now if someone walks in on you, your porn can vanish instantly with the click of a button . It's too bad you still haven't figured out a way to yank your pants up that fast yet. ;-)"

--SheilaNoya