Monday, March 05, 2018

Daffodils


20 comments:

  1. listener--I sent a couple of e-mails to you at julianswindow; beginning to think that might be the wrong one. Will try another.

    Bill--Checking alibris.com, I find books called "The Alchemist's Daughter" by Katharine McMahon, Mary Lawrence, and Elaine Knighton, plus "The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter" by Theodora Goss, which latter I think is your delightful wyvernless romp. Please advise.

    Today I ordered one more fountain pen [Click] for sketching. A very economical piston filler made in India with a decent flex nib (writes from fine to very broad by varying the pressure). Reviews are fairly good; the only other affordable flex nib pen in the US has a lot of bad press. The next step up is to vintage flex fountain pens from the pre-WWII era, which are uncommon, highly prized, and priced to match.

    --Alan

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    1. Yes, you're exactly right about which one I meant.

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  2. After perusing the Historic Churches of Rural Georgia, I am left with the question how it happened that in one generation, less than a hundred years, a modest self-sustaining culture was destroyed and replaced by gaudy plastic and electric lights. It was not industry that produced the throw-away society and substituted quantity for quality. People did that; people who are into glitter without substance.
    Why was that permitted? Encouraged, even?
    Here is an addendum to the original collection.

    http://hrcga.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/HRCGA-Chubb-Chapel.pdf

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    1. I think the underlying factors must be about the same as for the community where my grandfather was born, and surrounding communities, hardly any signs of which remain. When my grandfather's grandparents settled there, living conditions were hardly improved over the middle ages; iron stoves were not available, so all cooking was done in big (very inefficient) fireplaces, for instance. Not enough land had been cleared to provide grain for horses, so the land had to be worked with oxen. It seems to me that what did the community in was improved transportation (starting with roads, then railroads, then the internal combustion engine and paved highways) and mechanization of agriculture. Improved communications (e.g. the telegraph) probably played a role as well. Electricity increased productivity too.

      Alan

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  3. The preview function is very helpful.

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  4. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/04/opinion/trump-king-of-chaos.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

    "And one thing that clearly comes across in those meetings is how much he talks rather than listens. It’s all about what he believes, what he would do, how courageous he is, how conciliatory he is, how smart he is about the subject.

    That is precisely how you know that none of it is true, and that he is simply stringing together a jumble of words into conflicting ideas. You see a fear of being exposed as an idiot and fraud. As Friedrich Nietzsche once put it: “Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.”

    So Trump simply bulldozes his way through, boasting and bragging, distracting and dissembling, making promises without making sense."

    "The only way that a person can live out a life in this fashion is to be a liar and a fraud. That’s why the majority of Americans find him unlikable and unfit. Character still matters."

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    1. UNFIT for the Office...and Unfit for Humanity.

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  5. This in from March For Our Lives:


    We have an official location for our Washington D.C. March! On Saturday, March 24 at 12pm, thousands of students will march on Pennsylvania Avenue near the Capitol building and demand that our nation's leaders take action to keep us safe. You can RSVP here for the most up to date info on the march. We will be following up with more details as they come together.

    Alan

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  6. How the “corporations are people” fraud came about.[Click] Mind boggling—and it points the way toward undoing it.

    —Alan

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    1. It seems doubly incredible that no case has yet been brought that challenges the foundational lie.

      Alan

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    2. Certainly mind-boggling by present-day standards. But the idea of corporations as people has been a fixed part of US jurisprudence for 130 years. Laws have been written on that basis. Overturning it at this point would tear everything apart.

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    3. In this case, tearing everything apart might not be a bad thing. Corporations are not persons, and they do not need to be treated and constitutionally protected as such. They are business entities, with responsibilities and duties similar to but not identical with those of persons. I mean, what next? Are we going to give ExxonMobil the right to vote? Seems like that's the logical next step.

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    4. Only citizens can vote, and corporations are not citizens. The distinction between persons and citizens was the crux of the story that lawyer told the Supreme Court.

      But you know what? Although I like to think of myself as some sort of anarchist, the idea of a system where there are laws but nobody has a clue what they mean frankly scares me.

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  7. Didn't know it was possible to refuse to appear before a grand jury. But I suppose it saves all that tedious repetition of one's Fifth Amendment rights.

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  8. On to Fury of Desire, book four in the Dragonfury series. Bloody books are like potato chips. Though I must say, the stories become more interesting as the series continues. Audible has two more after this. I hope that's the end, because I hate waiting for the next book in a series. Already waiting for the NLS to release the fourth book in Sebastien de Castel]s Greatcoat series.

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  9. Quite a think piece about China.[Click] “Not only would the Chinese Communist Party never willingly liberalize, he argued, but rather than permit liberalization, the party would eventually smother China’s economic growth too.” And thus it seems to have been and to be.


    How to persuade a robot that you should get the job[Click] It seems to have become far worse that it was the last time I paid any attention to it. “One HR employee for a major technology company recommends slipping the words ‘Oxford’ or ‘Cambridge’ into a CV in invisible white text, to pass the automated screening.”

    —Alan

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