Good News- Father Dies, Son Dies, Grandson Dies

Still Life With Skull- Louis Jules Duboscq-Soleil, c. 1850.

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That State of the Union. Dare I say it was uplifting? Is it true that Biden can really do this again?

Someone commented on Mike Johnson's page after he criticized Biden's State of the Union- "Dude, you just winced at affordable child care. Seriously."

And Katie Britt's rebuttal, probably the worst one I've ever seen. A mixture of menace and artificial condescending friendliness. A total political lightweight, the worst acting I think I've ever seen. In other words, she's going places.

March 6, 2024

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Jakob Fugger was born on this day in 1459. He was a German merchant, a banker, and a guy with a funny name. 

It's estimated that he was worth the equivalent of $400 billion in today's money! That was approximately 2% of the GDP of all of Europe at that time. Imagine what that type of money can do. 

Today we're squabbling over $60 billion for Ukraine to squash the Russian army, before they try to take over more countries. He could have paid for it and had $340 billion left. Several of our citizens today could pay for that themselves and have more money left over than they could ever spend. 

Think about that. Several of our citizens have enough power to totally destroy the Russian military.

If that old Fugger were alive today, he could really change the world for the better. To put it another way, imagine what our tax dollars could do if we collected them proportionately, and used them wisely. 

Instead we have a bunch of new Fuggers sitting on their own dragon hoards of treasure, while old Fugger's bones slowly turn to dust, the same as theirs will one day.

Portrait of Jakob Fugger by Albrecht Dürer, from 1518

March 6, 2024

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I had a few hundred memos on my phone- jokes I heard, random thoughts, notes for work, books to read, movies to watch, a general to-do list, political diatribes. You know, normal stuff. If you don't write this stuff down, it's gone. 

Tonight I was working on moving them from my phone to better storage, but when I came back to my room with the kids' dinner I saw that Gretel had picked up my phone and was reading it. She said that she found "a very inappropriate article." Oh my God, I thought, what could have she found???

It was a Sarah Silverman joke- "I was a bedwetter well into my teens, and when you're a bedwetter there's only one group you can feel better than- bedshitters. And unfortunately they are hard to come by."

Haha! I just read her autobiography recently, and this incident reminded me of her recounting the time her grandma came out with a big tray of brownies that she just baked, and asked Sarah if she wanted one. Sarah looked at her dad, he smiled and nodded, and she said, "You know you can do with them, stick them up your ass."

She turned out alright, so it seems an argument can be made that there's absolutely no harm in a little playful vulgarity!

March 6, 2021

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I'm thinking of starting a cult of people obsessed with documentaries about cults. Anybody interested in joining?

March 6, 2021

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Have you ever taken The Bus To Abilene? 

Have you heard that expression? There were four friends sitting on a porch in the middle of Texas wondering what to do with the day. One thinks the other three might want to go to Abilene, so he asks if they do. The second agrees because he thinks the first wants to go. The third and fourth agree because they think the other two want to. So they all end up on the bus to Abilene although nobody wanted to go.

You notice this metaphor everywhere you look. Today for me, it's Biden. Maybe everyone is voting for Biden because everyone thinks everyone else wants to vote for Biden.

March 6, 2020

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It might be the height of irony in American Democracy that candidates who want to genuinely improve the lives of people who have lost all hope, are trying to appeal to the very people who have lost all hope to even vote for them.

Nevertheless, I have hope that I'm wrong.

March 6, 2020

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Zen Story- Real Prosperity

A rich man asked Sengai to write something for the continued prosperity of his family so that it might be treasured from generation to generation.

Sengai obtained a large sheet of paper and wrote: "Father dies, son dies, grandson dies."

The rich man became angry. "I asked you to write something for the happiness of my family! Why do you make such a joke of this?"

"No joke is intended," explained Sengai. "If before you yourself die your son should die, this would grieve you greatly. If your grandson should pass away before your son, both of you would be broken-hearted. If your family, generation after generation, passes away in the order I have named, it will be the natural course of life. I call this real prosperity."

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Clip of Ebert from the Oscars- "The purpose of civilization is to be able to empathize with other people and for me the movies are like a machine that generates empathy, it lets you know a little bit more about hope, aspirations, dreams, fears."

March 6, 2018

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NPR- Robert Osborne, Host Of Turner Classic Movies, Dies At 84

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/06/518859379/robert-osborne-host-of-turner-classic-movies-dies-at-84

I owe Robert Osborne a debt of gratitude. I can't begin to imagine which movies I came to love because of him, and how those movies influenced the way I see the world and helped me understand my place in it. If I saw a movie coming on TCM that I liked but didn't necessarily want to watch, I'd tune in anyway to see what he had to say about it. His exit reminds me of a Persian proverb, "When an old man dies, a library burns down." I'll always miss his perspective and presence.

Robert Osborne- "I think we have to have dreams. We need a little Carmen Miranda with all her tutti frutti hats. ... We need to be taken into a fantasy world, and not be afraid to go there occasionally."

March 6, 2017

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It's being reported that Comey is calling on the Department of Justice to refute the president's claim that Obama wiretapped him. That's bad for the president! Now if the head of NBC comes out and says that Arnold Schwarzenegger was not fired from the Apprentice, he actually quit, then I'm going to go on record and say that the president's judgement is so impaired he's unfit to be commander-in-chief.

March 6, 2017

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Quite often I think of status updates that are simply too outrageous to post. But I need an outlet, so there's a file on my computer where I store all of them. Which of you, my friends, can I entrust to read them at my funeral?

March 6, 2013

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Golden opportunity missed! My parents couldn't reach me for a few hours so they called Sloth and told him they thought I might have fallen down the stairs. By the time I talked to my dad he said that Sloth was on his way. The exact moment Sloth rustled at the door I realized I missed my chance to play dead at the bottom of the stairs. Rats!

March 6, 2011

Postscript- I was at home by myself recovering from Achilles surgery at the time.

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The Alamo was captured on this day in 1836. After a thirteen-day siege by an army of 3,000 Mexican troops, 187 Texas volunteers we're killed, including frontiersman. 

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On this day in 1857, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled 7–2 in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case that the Constitution does not confer citizenship on black people.

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Dmitri Mendelev presented the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society on this day in 1869.

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On this day in 1934, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, 

Dillinger and his gang robbed the Security National Bank of $49,500. That's the equivalent today of about $1.1 million.

"OK, boys; let's go make a withdrawal."

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On this day in 1953, a coded message was intercepted from Russia announcing Stalin's death. The 21-year-old Air Force Sergeant who intercepted it... was Johnny Cash.

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On this day in 1964, Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad officially gave boxing champion Cassius Clay the name Muhammad Ali.

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An explosion at the Weather Underground safe house in Greenwich Village killed three members on this day in 1970.

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On this day in 1975, for the first time the Zapruder film of the assassination of John F. Kennedy was shown in motion to a national TV audience.

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Polish poet Stanislaw Lec joined us on this day in 1909. From Unkempt Thoughts:

"You will always find a few Eskimos ready to tell the Congolese how to cope with the heat."

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The poet Alan Greenspan joined us on this day in 1926. One of my favorite quotes of all-time.

"I know you think you understand what you thought I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant."  

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Rob Reiner joined us on this day in 1947. How about this for a string of great movies- This Is Spinal Tap, The Sure Thing, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Misery. The Sure Thing??? I guess need to see that!

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Twin Peaks' Moira Kelly join us on this day in 1968.

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Other notable birthdays- Michelangelo (1475), Cyrano de Bergerac (1619), Lefty Grove (1900), Bob Wills (1905), Lou Costello (1906), Ed McMahon (1923), Andrzej Wajda (1926), Willie Stargell (1940), Shaquille O'Neal (1972), Sam Bankman-Fried (1992)

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Novelist and Nobel laureate, Pearl S. Buck left us on this day in 1973. She's my 5th cousin, 3 times removed. Our common ancestors are Peter Good (1688-1754) and Hannah Groff (1670-1727).

"I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings. I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels."

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Ayn Rand left us on this day in 1982. 

Thoughts on Ayn Rand

March 3, 2010

For a long time I've been meaning to elucidate my thoughts on her. Here goes. 

-She sees selfishness realized through the profit motive as the only noble motive force while ignoring all of the others- such as acceptance, curiosity, family, honor, idealism, physical activity, power, romance, peer relationships, and tranquility. 

-Jonas Salk discovered the polio vaccine and could have sold it for billions, but instead he gave it away. To her, that would be a negative example for society- giving people something for nothing. 

-She’s said that if you have a choice between spending money at a nightclub or using it to buy pain medication for your sick spouse, of course you wouldn’t be wrong to do the latter… but because that’s where YOU find YOUR fulfillment. She refuses to see others as things in and of themselves… at best, others to her are a means to an end. 

-She thinks it’s evil to love others as yourself, which happens to be the best teaching of all religions. It’s not true because the religions preach it, it’s true in spite of it… meaning it requires no dogmatic subservience. If there were no God or religion, it would still be the best way for humans to exist among each other. 

-She doesn’t believe we have the right to vote to enact any socialist program- she sees the government taking taxes as a loss of freedom and antithetical to intent of the country’s founders. What does that mean? No public libraries, no police and fire departments, no social security, no unemployment, no worker’s comp, no interstate highways (or public highways of any kind), no public education, obviously no public health care… basically, no private money to fund the public good, even if the vast majority want it. Nonsense. (Ironic that millions of people read her books at the public libraries that wouldn’t exist under her ideal.) 

-She believes in laissez-faire capitalism- no laws protecting business, or restricting it. How does that apply to ponzi schemes, chemical plants poisoning rivers, or, let’s say, the nuclear bomb making business? 

-The best of the New Deal enacted child-labor laws, the 40-hour work week and minimum wage. She’d have none of it, but every one of us believe in at least one of them. 

-She’s guilty of believing in the incorruptible character of the leaders of business. Adam Smith, the founder of our economic system, even admitted that when meeting in private, leaders of business will always engage in collusion- private agreements that benefit themselves at the expense of the workers/public. 

-She believes her arguments are true because they are logical. I wonder what she would say to the fact that any logical argument is only as good as the axioms it accepts as true, on faith. 

-She misplaces her faith, believing that leaders of business hold the long-term well-being and sustainability of the country above short-term economic gain. Even Alan Greenspan (one of her inner-circle) admitted recently that he miscalculated the self-correcting nature of the market. (Look what it takes for these people to admit their mistaken ideal.) 

-Her supporters herald her as being pro-individualistic. And? What’s the value of an individualist acting outside of the community? It could be argued that Marx was an individualist- “from each according to his abilities.” Strength in individual abilities for the benefit of the whole. 

-I understand her novels are devoid of any morality. If that’s not true, fine… but I see no reason to spend months of reading time discovering that for myself. 

-Christopher Hitchens considers it quaint that there are still people in the world who believe Americans are just not quite selfish enough. When talking about The Virtue of Selfishness, he said “I see no need for a collection of essays advocating selfishness among human beings. I don’t know what your impression has been? Some things require no further reinforcement.” 

-She’s devoid of empathy, and in that, she can be completely disregarded as a model for human well-being. The most ancient of ancient graveyards show skeletons of old people with physical deformities that would have made it impossible for them to live to old-age without the help of others. Someone who believes we should not help each other should be considered among the worst of us, by definition.

Whew, and with that I'm done thinking about Ayn Rand for the rest of my life! That is, unless you can give me a reason to reconsider her. I'll happily accept criticism of my assessment. I also accept praise. And paypal.

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Flannery O'Connor- "I hope you don’t have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky."

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Gore Vidal- "Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society.... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil."

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Kirby Puckett left us on this day in 2006.

Mike Trombley- "In 1992, I was sitting at my locker staring at my first MLB check. Kirby Puckett walked by and said, "First Big League check, huh?" I nodded with a proud smile. Puck then reached into his pocket, pulled out a big roll of money, and asked, "You want me to cash it for you?""

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Other notable deathdays- Georgia O'Keefe (1986), Teresa Wright (2005)

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Try to watch this without smiling- Cyndi Lauper singing to people stuck in the Buenos Aires airport.

https://youtu.be/4PrBnG9E4I4

http://www.buzzfeed.com/dailypicksandflicks/cyndi-lauper-performs-girls-just-want-to-ha-2ghf

March 6, 2011

Postscript- I remember when I posted this. I was stuck in my house recovering from Achilles surgery, on some serious pain medicine, and I started crying!

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Washington Post- Carson compares slaves to immigrants coming to ‘a land of dreams and opportunity’

And to think that if not for a big belt buckle shielding his intended murder victim, this brainless retired brain surgeon could be in prison instead of running HUD.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/06/carson-compares-slaves-to-immigrants-coming-to-a-land-of-dreams-and-opportunity/

March 6, 2017

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Big Think- Mathematics explains why non-conformists always end up looking alike

George Carlin summed it up differently. "It used to be you got a tattoo because nobody had one. Now people get them because everyone's got one."

https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/hipsters-look-alike

March 6, 2019

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Treehugger- Cuttlefish Pass ‘Marshmallow Test,’ Showing Impressive Self-Control

Kids who pass the "marshmallow test" have a greater tendency to graduate college. I'm not sure though how many dogs, crows, and cuttlefish join them at graduation.

https://www.treehugger.com/cuttlefish-marshmallow-test-self-control-5115272

Mar 6, 2021

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Asch Conformity Test

https://youtu.be/NyDDyT1lDhA

I watched the HBO documentary on the Heaven's Gate cult this week, the people who killed themselves thinking that there was a UFO behind the Hale-Bopp comet that would take them away to the next level of human experience. Excellent documentary, if you're interested in what makes otherwise sensible people join cults. They reviewed the Asch Conformity Experiment in the documentary... 2/3 of us ignore the clear evidence our own eyes and ears and give into groupthink. Would you? How do you know? Every single one of us would look at this experiment and say that we wouldn't give in, but it's been repeated over and over in a variety of ways and in a variety of cultures and 2/3 of us always give in. The key thing toward understanding this... they don't believe they're giving in to groupthink, they think their perception is off. Heaven's Gate, and similar cults, work in the same way.

March 6, 2021

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New Yorker- Noam Chomsky Believes Trump Is “the Worst Criminal in Human History”

Great article, from just before the election. Particularly noteworthy is Chomsky's take on cancel culture. He goes on later to say that you can never adopt the tactics of your enemy, which would be to outlaw free expression that you disagree with.

Chotiner: You signed the Harper’s letter about free speech and “cancel culture.” What did you make of that letter?

Chomsky: That letter was so anodyne and insignificant; I barely noticed it. The only interesting thing about that letter is the reaction to it. The reaction was extraordinary. It showed that the problem is far greater than I thought it was.

Chotiner: Say more.

Chomsky: The problem was that people were outraged that somebody should make an anodyne statement, a simple statement, saying we should have some commitment to freedom of speech, even views we don’t like. I thought that’s the kind of thing people say to each other in their sleep. But apparently many people said, “No, can’t say that, too dangerous”—all kinds of crazed interpretations. Some of the interpretations were really wild. A lot of the protest was about the people who signed it. How can you sign a statement when such-and-such a person signs it? It takes thirty seconds of thought to understand that if you accept that principle, there are no statements, for very simple reasons. You’ve gotten plenty of statements to sign. Do you know who else is going to sign it? If the question of who else signs a statement is a criterion for signing it, then nobody in their right mind ever signs anything. Just that simple point of logic couldn’t fit the people who were so outraged that someone should say it’s not a good idea to shut people up.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/noam-chomsky-believes-trump-is-the-worst-criminal-in-human-history

March 6, 2021

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New Yorker- Last Words, by Joan Didion

The opening paragraph of Hemingway's Farewell to Arms... wow. I read it, and then reread it. How did he do that???

"In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves."

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1998/11/09/last-words-6

March 6, 2021

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Word Fun:

A perfect pangram- Cwm fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz.

The literal translation being "symbolic drawings on the narrow opening of the sea valley walls annoyed the eccentric person."

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Kurt Russell's first movie was It Happened At the World's Fair, starred Elvis. Elvis's last movie was Change of Habit with him in the role of "John Carpenter." In 1979 Kurt Russell starred in Elvis, directed by John Carpenter.

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Steven Wright- "All those who believe in psychokinesis - raise my hand."

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Carrie Fisher- "There's no room for demons when you're self-possessed."

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Buddha, The Dhammapada- "The mind is everything. What you think you become."

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Bertrand Russell- Why I Am Not a Christian:

"One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it. That is the idea—that we should all be wicked if we did not hold to the Christian religion. It seems to me that the people who have held to it have been for the most part extremely wicked. 

We find as we look around the world this curious fact, the more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs. Every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step towards the diminution of war, every step towards better treatment of the coloured races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organised Churches of the world. 

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organised in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. You may think that I am going too far when I say that that is still so. I do not think that I am."

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Henry Miller- “There is every reason to be sad at this moment: all the premonitions which I have had for ten years are coming true. This is one of the lowest moments in the history of the human race. There is no sign of hope on the horizon. The whole world is involved in slaughter and bloodshed. I repeat—I am not sad. Let the world have its bath of blood…”

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Albert Einstein- "I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will. The Jews believe in free will. They believe that man shapes his own life. I reject that doctrine philosophically. In that respect I am not a Jew… I believe with Schopenhauer: We can do what we wish, but we can only wish what we must. Practically, I am, nevertheless, compelled to act is if freedom of the will existed. If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being."

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Arthur Schopenhauer- "After your death, you will be what you were before your birth."

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Hunter S. Thompson, The Curse of Lono- "Yesterday's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why."

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David Foster Wallace- "And make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down. All U.S. irony is based on an implicit "I don’t really mean what I’m saying." So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That it’s impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it’s too bad it’s impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today’s irony ends up saying: "How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean.""

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Seth MacFarlane at the 2013 Oscars- "Daniel Day-Lewis is not the first actor to be nominated for playing Lincoln. Raymond Massey portrayed him in 1940s Abe Lincoln In Illinois. I would argue, though, the actor who really got inside Lincoln’s head was John Wilkes Booth."

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Hagakure- "Listening to the old stories and reading books are for the purpose of sloughing off one's own discrimination and attaching oneself to that of the ancients."

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Errol Morris- "The thing that makes civilization possible is that people lie to one another routinely."

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Kahnman- "Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance."

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Mitch Hedberg- "On a traffic light, green means go and yellow means yield. But on a banana, it's just the opposite. Green means "hold on" and yellow means "go ahead." And red means "where the fuck did you get that banana?""

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