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