Saturday, August 23, 2014

Cab Thoughts 8/23/14

"I have not the pleasure of knowing my reader but I would stake ten to one that for six months he has been making Utopias, and if so, that he is looking to Government for the realization of them."--Bastiat

Obama has maintained an academic distance from much of the world's problems. One of his more interesting observations was that of Putin not behaving like a 21st Century leader in Ukraine. There was a scolding, pedantic quality about his criticism, as if Putin needed only to read up a bit and be schooled; his behavior ignored recent developments. He needed to see things more clearly. One wonders how Obama thinks of homicidal, beheading maniacs.

The Fed is considering raising rates. That will crimp the economy. Sooooo.......?

Who is....Italo Cavino?

The energy group Douglas-Westwood says half the oil industry needs prices of $120 or more to generate free cash flow under current drilling plans and shareholder dividends. The oil-exporting states are also trapped. Russia needs crude prices near $110 to balance the budget. Natixis says the fiscal break-even cost for Iraq is $108, for Saudi Arabia $97 and the Emirates $89. Bahrain and Algeria are over $120.

The great coach, Vince Lombardi, revolutionized football--and locker rooms. His first act was to clear out the training room. He said injuries and pain were "in the head."

If art is one man's vision, why do we accept the political notion of one man as universal?

Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2012/01/why-investing-is-so-hard-1.html

Corrected for size, the housing bubble in Spain was 3 or 4 times the bubble in the U.S..

At the time of the asteroid strike 66 million years ago which presumably wiped out the dinosaurs and almost everything of any size, the Midwest was covered by shallow water called the Bearpaw Sea.

Lincoln carried Euclid's "The Elements" while riding the circuit, trying to understand how a "demonstration" differed from other arguments. A "proof" should "compel belief."

Is it possible that we have a culture that hopes to accommodate everyone? That no one will be disappointed, angry or offended? A 6'2'' bearded man who feels there is a girl inside him will be accommodated in the women's bathroom? That we will preserve the dignity of a pre-wheel stone age culture whose major achievement seems to have been the organizing of mammoth human sacrifice festivals? What about the heartfelt beliefs of ISIS?

Heidigger became rector of Freiburg University on May 27, 1933. He had joined the Nazi party two weeks earlier and designed the Nazi themed inauguration himself. By 1940, one half of Germany's academic philosophers were Nazi party members.

Sharrow and Gordon theorize the genome complexity doubles every 376 million years--sort of a Moore's law of genealogy. Following the numbers back, one can conclude that life on Earth began 10 billion years ago, long before Earth  existed. So.....all sorts of trouble. Perhaps the early genome rode here from elsewhere.

If we can just print the money we want, why have a budget at all? And why would we want to bother with counterfeiters?
Lindsey Lohan is writing her memoirs. Three volumes.

Junk DNA: A phrase that describes vast stretches of animal DNA that seems to serve no purpose. Coined in 1972 by geneticist Susumu Ohno.

Beltrami's pseudosphere and Poincare's disc offer two geometry alternatives to Euclid. "If mathematics was doubtful, how much more doubtful must ethics be."--Bertrand Russell.

Donald Kagan is a Yale classicist who thinks America has the burden of the Free World's "seriousness" but fears America might be limited by "unsubtle Christianity" and its "passivism." "Turning the other cheek" he says, cedes the field. He also believes that a culture must be educated in its accomplishments and value to survive.

AAAAAAAaaaaannnnndddddd .......a close-up of the famous Washington portrait with a misspelling:

lansdowne

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