BYCU

New Years Edition It's the last day of the year. 2010 was far better than 2009, and for that I'm grateful. I plan to celebrate the end of the year with friends and family at the local drinking club this afternoon, while watching bowl games. I

Thursday

Gearing Back Up I have returned from my trip to the in-laws in Detroit, and now the Christmas festivities are over, except for the 12 days of Christmas presents that we give the kids. We give each kid a small present every day until the Epiphany, at which time

From the Notebooks

Gabriel Marcel: "The less life is experienced as a captivity the less the soul will be able to see the shining of that veiled, mysterious light." Homo Viator, 32. Placed on the flipside: The more a soul experiences its captivity, its limitations, and its darkness, the more it

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Grosse Pointe, Michigan: home of residents rich enough to buy million-dollar homes, but too cheap to keep their sidewalks clear of snow. Perhaps the most-treacherous walking in Michigan's lower peninsula. -- Mobile post

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Mediterraneans scorn instructions but bow to authority; Anglo-Saxons bow to instructions but scorn authority. Nassim Taleb -- Mobile post

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"Demagoguery: a popular idea disliked by liberals." Bill Kauffman.

Random Thoughts

Tom Bombadil is kinda like Switzerland. Hubris leads to humility, but normally against one's will. "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and hence clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them

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ӬӬ"It is much harder to be a Stoic when wealthy, powerful, and respected than when destitute, miserable, and lonely." Nassim Taleb.

From the Notebooks

I like it when I run across a historian who supports Belloc's popular histories. For kicks, I recently started reading Simon Schama's A History of Britain. On page 45, he writes about the transition from Roman Britain to Anglo-Saxon Britain: A tidy compartmentalization of British

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"Most of what they call humility is successfully disguised arrogance." Nassimn Taleb