Home of the "Little Known Blogger"
yeah I know you did not ask!
There is a group of people partaking or getting ready to partake of a meal. The all too common site today is one or more persons at that table deeply involved with their cell phones. They are essentially ignoring the other souls at the table. I wondered what would happen if I brought a book to that table and begin reading. Undoubtedly I would be considered rude. However, in my mind, I do not see a whole lot of difference.
yeah I know you did not ask!
Have you noticed that people talk about social media, especially Facebook, in terms of drug addiction? Anything thought about in those terms cannot be good in the long run. The question then becomes the same as for any agent that modifies our body or mind. Is the good it does more than the harm/side effects? No answers just the question.
Charles Darwin is one of the greatest intellects that mankind has produced. He is also a great communicator and writer. This book was well received by a populist audience in its time. It is still an immensely accessible book. It is at times even poetic.
“Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none exceed in sublimity the primeval forests undefaced by the hand of man; whether those of Brazil, where the powers of Life are predominant, or those of Tierra del Fuego, where Death and decay prevail. Both are temples filled with the varied productions of the God of Nature:—no one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body.”
The book is first, and foremost a travelogue. The HMS Beagle left England just at the end of 1831 for a planned 2 year expedition. The voyage stretched out to almost five years, and circumnavigated the globe. The actual time Darwin spent on the Beagle was Continue reading “The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin”
Nicholas Kristof recently wrote an editorial, The Cost of a Decline in Unions
On the whole I believe unions to be a necessary component of our capitalistic system. The individual worker has very little power in dealing with large businesses or large government entities. When they do have power it is when there is a tight labor market, but those seldom seem to last very long.
It is always dangerous to generalize from one’s personal experience to make points about larger issues, but here I go. I have seen union membership be required when the union did little for the worker. They were in place, gathered their dues, and that was about it. At the other end I have seen unions so intent on justifying their existence that they frequently went to the extremes. They did not realize that sometimes good is good enough. There is, of course, a MLK holiday. The union for the outfit I worked for in Memphis managed to wrangle another holiday, the day of MLK’s assassination. It always struck me that they filed all too many grievances, and generally tried to maintain an attitude of the union versus management. Frequently what seems to happen with unions in place is an overly structured workplace. The company and the worker lose some ability to do the work creatively. In the past the union managed to create jobs that were perhaps unnecessary. I had a roommate in Rhode Island who was a union fireman. His workday consisted of going in at 11 p.m., Continue reading “Unions Are About Fairness”
When I think about describing this book the phrase, “utterly delicious”, comes to mind. Initially I had a hard time getting into the book. Wainaina has a unique way with language. While the story is linear, the prose is borderline stream of consciousness. Once I gathered in the rhythm of the language, the harmony emerged. Certain passages were pure umami tantalizing the brain much like a morel does the tongue.
The Kenya described therein is an olio of languages.
“There are many understood ways to address someone: sometime you shift quickly into English; often you speak in a mock Kiswahili, in an ironical tone, simply to indicate that you are not dogmatic about language, that you are quite happy to shift around and find the bandwidth of the person to whom you are speaking.”
The book is like this too. It weaves in little snippets of African languages that give you a feel of time and place. Many words seem to be a mash-up of English and a tribal language.
This is a memoir. It is a coming-of-age story. Continue reading “One Day I Will Write About This Place by Binyavanga Wainaina”
From “Henry Ford’s Own Story” by Rose Wilder Lane
Ford settled every problem by his own simple rule,”Do what is fundamentally best for everybody. It will work out for our interests in the end.” And always he was pondering the big problem of putting back into active use the millions that were accumulating to his credit. Every year the price was lowered on his cars, following his original policy of making the automobile cheap. Still the sales increased by leaps and bounds, and his margin of profit on each car mounted into a greater total.
“The whole system is wrong”, he says. Continue reading “Henry Ford a Socialist?”
From Gulliver’s Travelers
(Apologies to my daughter, the attorney. She does do good work via working with the state DHS)
Amazing how little things have changed in the 300 years.
I assured his honour, “that the law was a science in which I had not much conversed, further than by employing advocates, in vain, upon some injustices that had been done me: however, I would give him all the satisfaction I was able.”
I said, “there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving, by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are slaves. For example, if my neighbour has a mind to my cow, he has a lawyer to prove that he ought to have my cow from me. I must then hire another to defend my right, it being against all rules of law that any man should be allowed to speak for himself. Now, in this case, I, who am the right owner, lie under two great disadvantages: first, my lawyer, being practised almost from his cradle in defending falsehood, is quite out of his element when he would be an advocate for justice, which is an unnatural office he always attempts with great awkwardness, if not with ill-will. The second disadvantage is, that my lawyer must proceed with great caution, or else he will be reprimanded by the judges, and abhorred by his Continue reading “Jonathan Swift on Lawyers”
This is one of the most mind blowing things I have heard in a while…
This is from a wonderful radio program / podcast Radio Lab. Check them out at RadioLab.org
“Can you make your own universe? We usually think of the universe as ‘everything that exists,’ so how could you make another one?”
After all the allegations of sexual improprieties and an affair Herman Cain’s presidential bid is in a bit of a pickle. Herman Cain is flying back to Atlanta to have a “face to face” with wife. The result of the discussion, he said, will help him to the decision to soldier on or call it a day. For some reason during the meeting I just picture the song, You Must Believe Me, from Curtis Mayfield& The Impressions playing in the background.
You Must Believe Me Lyrics
You must believe me
No matter what the people might say
You must believe me
Darling it just didn’t happen that way
No, no it just didn’t happen that way
Continue reading “You Must Believe Me”
I use Yahoo as my web portal, partly out of habit, but mainly because I like their financial section. I follow the market and my investments there. The news section on the other hand leaves a lot to be desired. Oh it touches all the key stories of the day, but then I have to wade through the celebrity gossip, the reality show buzz, and other such nonsense. What really tears me up is that sometimes I find myself reading that garbage.
The other day for some reason still unclear to me, an article on 10 styles of jeans trending currently caught my attention. What really made my eyes pop were the prices. The cheapest pair was maybe $60, most were over $100, and a couple pair were north of two bills. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I still think a good pair of Levi’s should cost $20. Of course, they don’t, but if I have to pay much over $30 or $35 for a pair of jeans I am not a happy camper.
The overpriced jeans reminded me of an incidence with my now grown daughter when she was in 5th or 6th grade. This would have been around 1979 or 1980. That year we made the leap and bumped her up to Levi’s from Wranglers. She was after all a little older now, and young women are very into fashion. Given our budget at the time we thought this a generous move on our part. Continue reading “$40 A$$”