I Dream Awake

First snow, originally uploaded by Kirill Tryaskin.

I wish there were that much snow outside my window… Hasn’t felt very cold out at all the last few days.

Light Trails, originally uploaded by vanshnookenraggen.

I’ll have to try this myself sometime…

Debate word cloud, originally uploaded by Ann Althouse.

Via Ann Althouse on Flickr.

My losses are no longer character building. They are in the Willy Loman realm, and I am starting to have dark doubts about the benign nature of American capitalism…..An awful lot of modern life, and not just finance, is based on a Ponzi scheme. If, as sometimes happens, you have an asthma attack and join fifty other acute asthmatics in the ER, you have a good chance of not being intubated in time. If most investors think that the market will go belly up, the market will go belly up. The most fundamental of fundamentals is that people have to believe in the worth of their currency, the liquidity of their bank and money market deposits, and the viability of the markets. If these basic beliefs are violated, then no one wishes to be the last man out of a pyramid scheme… The wise men are going to knock heads together this week-end and re-engineer the American economy. What could possibly go wrong?……Over the past two hundred years, particularly in the anglosphere, capitalism has drastically improved life on earth. There have been frequent panics and crises but in my lifetime they have occurred with less frequency and severity. Still, there’s always that last sabre toothed tiger in the woods.

Someone in the comments section on an Ann Althouse entry.

How do we chart a course out of this? How do we create when severly limited in our resources, abilities, and even in our own certainty of what we are doing? Innovate (create something from nothing — hint: use math). Start small (micro-finance). Build value with every interaction (social capital). Build strong ties with a wide network of people with diverse skills and interests (social networking is loose connectivity — what is strong?). Maintain sound monetary and fiscal discipline (once an an investment in work has become an income stream, secure it through paying ahead towards savings, investments, further education, and physical assets)(or on the national scale strengthen the dollar, reduce budgetary spending, reduce taxes, reward innovation, inspire entrepreneurship, and reduce debt).

The problem is that it’s much easier said than done. Many of us have ideas. Many follow through with all we can to work to make those ideas a reality… But it’s still very tough going when everywhere you turn it’s tight, tight, tight. We all need liquidity again, just as we all need discipline in building products with actual value.

Zog Victorious, originally uploaded by dlanham.

Climbing up hill. Feeling better about it the further I go.

., originally uploaded by ?mark?.

I’m… busy as all hell. Will try to make better use of this space. Maybe invent a way to trick and fold time in my spare seconds of it.

An amazingly well done site design for a fascinating website. I wish I had done that.

http://www.simplebits.com/css/simplebits-master.css

“Summation of every Jewish holiday: they tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat.”

Karol @ Alarming News

Insta linked the Fox News video Alex KP did about the drinking age. Very favorably, in fact:

…the Federal government should get out of the business of trying to regulate state drinking ages, a subject of no legitimate federal concern whatsoever. it’s also telling that MADD wouldn’t even appear on camera to argue the other side.

Glenn Reynolds, Seven States Thinking of Lowering Drinking Age

Just finished The Man Who Loved Only Numbers by Paul Hoffman. It was fantastic. Emotional and stimulating, difficult and easy to read… both in the right ways. Part biography of Paul Erdös, part introduction to the mathematics he did so much of. Very much worth the all too short read.

…return to first principles:

And it came to pass that the great Rebbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, Master of the Good Name, known for his powers in heaven as well as on earth, decided to try once more to force his Creator’s hand.

He had tried many times before—and failed. Burning with impatience, he wanted to end the ordeals of exile forcibly; and this time he was but one step away from success. The gates were ajar; the Messiah was about to appear and console the children and old men awaiting him, awaiting no one else but him. The Diaspora had lasted long enough; now men everywhere would gather and rejoice.

The heavens were in an uproar. The angels were dancing. Red with anger, outraged, Satan demanded an audience with God. Brought before Him, he protested, invoking laws and precedents, history and reason. Look at man’s impudence, he said, how dare he take things in his own hands? Does the world deserve redemption? And the conditions to warrant the Messiah’s coming, have they been met?

God listened. And had to recognize the validity of Satan’s arguments: Lo ikhshar dara, the Rebbe’s gesture was judged premature; his generation was not yet ready for a miracle of such magnitude. Moreover, since the order of creation may not be disturbed with impunity, he and his faithful scribe Reb Tzvi-Hersh Soifer were deported to a distant uncharted island. Where they were promptly taken prisoners by a band of pirates.

Never has the Master been so submissive, so resigned.

“Master,” the scribe pleaded, “do something, say something!”

“I can’t,” said the Baal Shem Tov, “my powers are gone.”

“What about your secret knowledge, your divine gifts: your yikhuddim? What happened to them?”

“Forgotten,” said the Master. “Disappeared, vanished. All my knowledge has been taken away; I remember nothing.”

But when he saw Hersh Soifer’s despair, he was moved to pity. “Don’t give up,” he said, “we still have one chance. You are here, and that is good. For you can save us. There must be one thing I taught you that you remember. Anything—a parable, a prayer. Anything will do.”

Unfortunately, the scribe too had forgotten everything. Like his Master, he was a man without memory.

“You really remember nothing,” the Master asked again, “nothing at all?”

“Nothing, Master. Except…”

“…except what?”

“…the aleph, beith.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” Shouted the Master, suddenly excited. “Start reciting! Right now!”

Obedient as always, the scribe proceeded to recite slowly, painfully, the first of the sacred letters which together contain all of the mysteries of the entire universe: “Aleph, beith, gimmel, daleth…”

And the Master, impatiently, repeated after him: “Aleph, beith, gimmel, daleth…”

Then they started all over again, from the beginning. And their voices became stronger and clearer: aleph, beith, gimmel, daleth… until the Baal Shem became so entranced that he forgot who and where he was. When the Baal Shem was in such ecstacy, nothing could resist him, that is well known. Oblivious to the world, he transcended the laws of time and geography. He broke the chains and revoked the curse: Master and scribe found themselves back home, unharmed, richer, wiser and more nostalgic than ever before.

The Messiah had not come.

Souls on Fire, by Elie Wiesel.

In fact, there’s more than one… First off, at least this year, we have the start of Passover. While that alone would be plenty good for most days’ claim to holiday fame, 4.19 isn’t content to leave it at that. No, this day is ambitious. A young upward mover. A from the bootstraps striver… Ok, I’m getting too into this. I blame Coming Anarchy. See, it turns out today is also Primrose Day:

Today is Primrose Day in the United Kingdom, an uncelebrated memorial day marking the death of former Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, Britain’s only Jewish head of government…

But that’s not all… 4.19 is also Patriots Day:

Patriots Day may be the least known American holiday, and the day most deserving of our recognition. Observed in Massachusetts and Maine only. Don’t know it? It marks the day, April 19, 1775, on which Americans took up arms against their king, and bled, at the crack of terrible dawn.

And of course, for a certain group of people, the most important holiday of all those marked today is the widely celebrated (if accompanied by a slight whiff of illegality) 420-eve.

As Jimmy Carter plans to meet with Hamas, this Hamas MP explains that it is an Islamic imperative to subjugate the world “thorough da’wa and military conquests.”

As the EU President insists that there is no link between Islam and terrorism, this Islamic cleric explains that the conquests he dreams of are “Islamic,” and that Muslims need to be prepared to carry out these conquests “by means of the mosques and the Koran books, and the history of our Prophets.”

Has the world ever before witnessed cognitive dissonance on this grand a scale?

Islamic cleric: We will conquer Rome, and then Eastern Europe and the Americas

It’s all just a big misunderstanding, right Jimmy?

This one by way of FFFFound and Shorpy.com:

Related: Japanese and Russian war tubas from Coming Anarchy.

Well, that’s what Candace Lightner (founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving) said about every member of our Armed Forces under 21 on The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet this past Monday. It was the most insulting, cowardly, and despicable thing she spit out during the show… And believe me, there were quite a few candidates for that honor.

At least she’s being honest about how she feels, and what kind of government enforced infantilist America she wants us all to live in. What a surprise someone with such an advanced, well-developed brain could have no functional understanding at all of what tact means… or YouTube for that matter.

Update: Radar isfirst to the presses with this punchy but spot on write up:

Koroknay-Palicz said U.S. soldiers between the ages of 18 and 21 should have the legal right to drink a beer, which seems more than reasonable considering that they might, you know, die at any moment. (You need to unwind after your day at work?) But Lightner was disgusted that our fighting men and women would have the audacity to imbibe. She ranted that 18-year-olds haven’t “developed, and that’s exactly why the draft age is 18, because these kids are malleable.” She added: “They will follow the leader, they don’t think for themselves, and they are the last ones I want to say, ‘Here’s a gun, and here’s a beer.’ They are not adult—that’s why they’re in the military. They are not adults.”

There ya have it: Thanks for protecting us at home and abroad, ya mindless juvenile killing machines. No drinky for you!

And for blog reaction, Age of Reason has a good post:

MADD, and Lightner herself, have been making us think for years that teenagers are deliberately irresponsible with alcohol and that, if given the freedom to drink, would disregard the sensibilities imparted upon them and use the freedom recklessly. Now we are to believe that people under 21 will, in fact, do whatever they are told? In typical fashion, NYRA’s opponents are having us believe that teenagers are at once rebellious and malleable, at once recklessly independent and firmly under the thumbs of their parents and elders.

read more | digg story

Stumble Upon showed off a new feature recently that I’m liking quite a bit. Now all of the “favorites” I post there can be displayed in a grid view. Here are my most recent ones:

The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. he is the owner of a large personal library ( containing thirty thousand books), and separates vistors into two categories: those who react with ‘Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have you read?’ and others - a very small minority- who get the point that a private library is not an ego boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real estate market allow you to put there. You wil accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growig number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call the collection of unread books an antilibrary.

Zenpundit comments section

Via: Coming Anarchy.

Sounds strangely familiar…

Countries go to war when they think they have to, and figure out how to pay for it on the fly, including the old favorite “print money”.

1914 is indeed the least encouraging precedent there is. Everyone correctly said, “the great powers cannot go to war, they will ruin the world economy and all go broke.” They did it anyway, and it was worse than anyone predicted in every dimension including financial.

The financial sophistication of the Anglosphere powers over the centuries, their ability to tax and borrow and juggle the books, especially during major and protracted wars, has been possibly the singlem predominant source of strength and cause of victory. The Anglosphere powers have won every hegemonic-scale war for over three centuries. If yo have to bet, the trend is your friend.

A protracted conflict with China would be an unmitigated global catastrophe. I have a friend at PACOM who is the sharpest-clawed hawk I know. His comment, very seriously: “If conflict with China ever goes kinetic it will be the worst thing that has ever happened.” But we will ride out the catastrophe much better than China will if, God forbid, it comes to it. Their system is brittle along many axes.

Pray for peace.

From the always fantastic comments on Coming Anarchy.

You admitted that the crime committed against the Jewish people during the war was the greatest crime in recored history, and you admitted your role in it. But you said you had never acted from base motives, that you had never had any inclination to kill anybody, that you had never hated Jews, and still that you could not have acted otherwise and that you did not feel guilty. We find this difficult, though not altogether impossible, to believe; there is some, though not very much, evidence against you in this matter of motivation and conscience that could be proved beyond reasonable doubt. You also said that your role in the Final Solution was an accident and that almost anybody could have taken your place, so that potentially all Germans are equally guilty. What you meant to say was that where all, or almost all, are guilty, nobody is. This is an indeed quite common conclusion, but one we are not willing to grant you. And if you don’t understand our objection, we would recommend to your attention the story of Sodom and Gommorah, two neighboring cities in the Bible, which were destroyed by fire from Heaven because all the people in them had become equally guilty. This, incidentally, has nothing to do with the newfangled notion of ‘collective guilt’, according to which people are supposedly guilty of, or feel guilty about, things done in their name but not by them — things in which they did not participate and from which they did not profit. In other words, guilt and innocence before the law are of an objective nature, and even if eighty million Germans had done as you did, this would not have been and excuse for you.

Luckily, we don’t have to go that far. You yourself claimed not the actuality but only the potentiality of equal guilt on the part of all who lived in a state whose main political purpose had become the commission of unheard-of crimes. And no matter through what accidents of exterior or interior circumstances you were pushed onto the road of becoming a criminal, there is an abyss between the actuality of what you did and the potentiality of what others might have done. We are concerned here only with what you did, and not with the possible non-criminal nature of your inner life and of your motives or with the potentialities of those around you. You told your story in terms of a hard-luck story, and, knowing the circumstances, we are, up to a point, willing to grant you that under more favourable circumstances it is highly unlikely that you would ever have come before us or before any other criminal court. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that it was nothing more than misfortune that made you a willing instrument in the organization of mass murder — there still remains the fact that you have carried out, and therefore actively supported, a policy of mass murder. For politics is not like the nursery; in politics obedience and support are the same. And just as you supported and carried out a policy of not wanting to share the earth with the Jewish people and the people of a number of other nations — as though you and your superiors had any right to determine who should and who should not inhabit the world — we find that no one, that is no member of the human race, can be expected to want to share the earth with you. This is the reason, and the only reason, you must hang.

Hannah Arendt, p. 105-107, Eichmann and the Holocaust

It is quite gratifying to feel guilty if you haven’t done anything wrong: how noble! Whereas it is rather hard and certainly depressing to admit guilt and to repent.”

Hannah Arendt, p. 88, Eichmann and the Holocaust

It is in the very nature of things human that every act that has once made its appearance and has been recorded in the history of mankind stays with mankind as a potentiality long after its actuality has become a thing of the past.

Hannah Arendt, p. 98, Eichmann and the Holocaust