Saturday, September 16, 2017

Reverie

The first step towards such restoration...[of classical liberalism]... requires us to recognize that our basic institutions are the heritage of a public philosophy clearly articulated by our eighteenth-century forebears, notably by Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment as well as by the American Founders.  It was they who refined a set of norms, rules, procedures, and practices that we now simply take for granted: the rule of law with its universal and nondiscriminatory application; separation of powers; and universal and open franchise.  This means guaranteed protection of person, property, and contract, with periodic elections, open entry into competition for political office, and constitutional limits on the extent of governmental action.  That is the institutional heritage of classical liberalism, which we must zealously protect.--Buchanan



Synoptic: adjective:
1. Relating to a summary or general view of something.
2. Covering a wide area (as weather conditions).
3. Taking a similar view (as the first three Gospels of the Bible: Matthew, Mark, and Luke).
ETYMOLOGY:
From Greek synopsis (general view), from syn- (together) + opsis (view). Earliest documented use: 1764.





The Owl Service by Alan Garner released in 1967 broke new ground in fantasy literature. It is tightly structured around the last episode of the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi, one of the earliest tales of the medieval Welsh mythological compilation known as the Mabinogion. The young protagonists become caught up in the myth which begins to run their lives.  Its haunting quality was unlike anything seen before in a young adult novel. Its focus on class conflict and ethnic and cultural identities (Welsh vs. English) linked its mythological past yet made it currently relevant. The novel’s writing style, which relied heavily on dialogue (exploiting Garner’s earlier experience as a freelance television reporter), gave it a feverish energy. The Owl Service won both the prestigious Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize.

One big danger with modern-day presidents has been that they are too eager to improve the nation’s moral health. They either hector the country to atone for its past sins (Barack Obama). Or they aggressively push it to the promised land of moral perfection (Teddy Roosevelt who declared that he would do “battle for the Lord” to improve mankind during his term). (dalmia) Enter Trump......



Who is.... Antifa?


From a recent editorial on the style and rhetoric of the U.S. and China:
"We're at economic war with China," Mr. Bannon said. "One of us is going to be a hegemon in 25 or 30 years and it's gonna be them if we go down this path.
China's foreign ministry responded by saying that the China-US economic relationship was "mutually beneficial" and there could be "no winner from a trade war". It added: "We hope that people will not use 19th- and 20th-century perspectives and measures to address 21st-century problems."


A Christopher Columbus monument was destroyed in Baltimore and a YouTube video was made of it. This was the declaration of one of the vandals:
“Racist monuments to slave owners and murderers have always bothered me,” a narrator identified as Tye says in his YouTube video. “Baltimore’s poverty is concentrated in African-American households, and these statues are just an extra slap in the face. They were built in the 20th century in response to a movement for African Americans’ human dignity. What kind of a culture goes to such lengths to build such hate-filled monuments? What kind of a culture clings to those monuments in 2017? The culture of white supremacy preceded the United States. It’s at the foundation of U.S. culture, business, bureaucracies and psychology.”

President Trump said he would expand the U.S. mission in Afghanistan but take a different approach from his predecessors by being tougher on Pakistan and refraining from telegraphing troop levels. (wsj)


Sometimes it is difficult to figure out which teapot-seeking tempest one should pay attention to.
Antifa is a Left group with a diffuse identity. The Philadelphia branch defines itself this way on its website, as if these qualities were in some way compatible: "Philly Antifa is a Antifascist division operating in Philadelphia, PA and the surrounding area.  We are in direct conflict with Racism, Homophobia, Sexism, Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Transphobia, and all the various other flavors of Fascism."
From The Atlantic by Peter Beinart: "But for all of antifa’s supposed anti-authoritarianism, there’s something fundamentally authoritarian about its claim that its activists—who no one elected—can decide whose views are too odious to be publicly expressed. That kind of undemocratic, illegitimate power corrupts. It leads to what happened this April in Portland, Oregon, where antifa activists threatened to disrupt the city’s Rose Festival parade if people wearing 'red maga hats''—you know, the "Make America Great Again" hats—"marched alongside the local Republican Party. Because of antifa, Republican officials in Portland claim they can't even conduct voter registration in the city without being physically threatened or harassed. So, yes, antifa is not a figment of the conservative imagination. It’s a moral problem that liberals need to confront

Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2013/08/sunday-sermon-81813.html

steeleydock.blogspot.com
What is the nature of truth and falsehood?  This seems to be the question Christ is asking today when he says, " Think ye, that I am come ...







Plato’s epitaph for Socrates in the Phaedo: “Upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit.”


It will be interesting to see if the recent sanctimonious epidemic has any effect upon the Che statues, college posters and t-shirts that memorialize the ideological serial killer. But the new Pure-of-Heart may see their purity in him.


In 79, the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were destroyed when Vesuvius erupted. Of the 20,000 residents of Pompey, 2,000 were killed. Pompeii was buried under 14 to 17 feet of ash and pumice, and the nearby seacoast was drastically changed. Herculaneum was buried under more than 60 feet of mud and volcanic material.


The finale episode of Game of Thrones' penultimate season, called "The Dragon and the Wolf", will be a record-breaking 79 minutes and 43 seconds long. I will miss it when it finishes.


According to Politico, tax reform is actually moving forward, include capping the mortgage interest deduction for homeowners; scrapping people's ability to deduct state and local taxes; and eliminating businesses' ability to deduct interest, while also phasing in so-called full expensing for small businesses that allows them to immediately deduct investments like new equipment or facilities.


There were “nearly 1.3 million hospitalizations involving opioids...in the United States in 2014,” representing “a 64 percent increase in inpatient stays and a doubling” in opioid-related emergency room visits since 2005, according to data “published this year” by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).


ESPN confirmed Tuesday night that it had decided to pull an announcer from calling a University of Virginia football game because his name is Robert Lee. This Robert Lee is Asian.
“We collectively made the decision with Robert to switch games as the tragic events in Charlottesville were unfolding, simply because of the coincidence of his name. In that moment it felt right to all parties,” reads the ESPN statement posted at the popular Fox Sports college-football blog Outkick the Coverage.
They exiled him to bland old Pittsburgh to do the Youngstown State game.
Pittsburgh is the "Panthers" and Youngstown State, for some reason, the "Penguins" (Pete and Penny), so maybe there is an animal activist opportunity there.


In his new book, Dennis Rasmussen suggests that, in some important instances, Adam Smith’s views diverge from, and indeed are more sophisticated than, his friend David Hume’s. Smith states, for example, that a true moral judgment must contemplate not merely the effects of an action, as Hume maintained, but also the circumstances in which it transpired. Nor did Smith take as dim a view of religion as Hume. He adopted the more conventional view that religion, with its emphasis on punishment or reward in the afterlife, tends to buttress rather than subvert traditional morality.





Hume met Rousseau in Paris and invited him to England. Baron d’Holbach warned Hume that “you are warming a viper in your bosom.” Rousseau  soon turned on Hume, accusing him of spearheading an international conspiracy to traduce his reputation. In a thirty-eight-page epistle, Rousseau said, among other things, that Hume’s charitable acts on his behalf were simply a ruse to win control over him. Adam Smith, Hume's friend,  warned Hume not to respond: “To write against him, is, you may depend upon it, the very thing he wishes you to do.” Hume ignored this sage advice and wrote a pamphlet that sought to vindicate his name. After Rousseau departed England for Calais, Smith asked, “What has become of Rousseau? Has he gone abroad, because he cannot continue to get himself sufficiently persecuted in Great Britain?”





A tablet, known as Plimpton 332, was discovered in the early 1900s in Southern Iraq by the American archaeologist and diplomat Edgar Banks, who was the inspiration for Indiana Jones. The true meaning of the tablet has eluded experts until now but new research by the University of New South Wales, Australia, has shown it is the world’s oldest and most accurate trigonometric table, which was probably used by ancient architects to construct temples, palaces and canals.
However unlike today’s trigonometry, Babylonian mathematics used a base 60, or sexagesimal system, rather than the 10 which is used today. Because 60 is far easier to divide by three, experts studying the tablet, found that the calculations are far more accurate.
The tablet, which is thought to have come from the ancient Sumerian city of Larsa, has been dated to between 1822 and 1762 BC.



The Greek astronomer Hipparchus, who lived around 120BC, has long been regarded as the father of trigonometry, with his ‘table of chords’ on a circle considered the oldest trigonometric table.
A trigonometric table allows a user to determine two unknown ratios of a right-angled triangle using just one known ratio. But the tablet is far older than Hipparchus, demonstrating that the Babylonians were already well advanced in complex mathematics far earlier.



AAAAaaaaaaannnnnndddddd.....a chart:


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