FutureLawyer, who practices law near the beaches of Florida, points to a nifty site for those wanting to start their own law firm.
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Grit Required. Sand Optional.
FutureLawyer, who practices law near the beaches of Florida, points to a nifty site for those wanting to start their own law firm.
Chap
Chap is celebrating its 100th edition and this is the first I've heard of it?
I'm beginning to feel like a thawed-out Dr. Evil.
Door Sign
If you do not disturb me right now . . .
you will indeed be blessed.
[Photo by Arren Mills at Unsplash]
[Photo by Arren Mills at Unsplash]
First Paragraph
The pony stepped carefully down the rock-strewn path, the pony boy walking ten paces behind, his long hillman's stride effortlessly keeping pace. Rodney eased his weight forward, loosened the reins, and sighed with content. The sound of the Girwan torrent came muted to him up here, nearly six hundred feet above the gorge, adding a deep undertone to the soughing of the wind in the deodars and the rhythmic crunch of the pony's hoofs. Straight ahead, looking down the V of the valley, the forested hills across the Liddar fell like a dense dark curtain from a pale blue sky, streaked with high, slow-moving cirrus clouds. Behind him a parapet of snow, glittering now in the direct rays of the late morning sun, blocked the upper end of the Girwan. Over his right shoulder, as he turned to look, Kolahoi towered in aloof splendor, veils of snow streaming away from its thrusting pines.
- From The Himalayan Concerto by John Masters
- From The Himalayan Concerto by John Masters
Monday, April 29, 2019
Turn Loose the Gargoyles
Theodore Dalrymple on some of the architects discussing the rebuilding of Notre-Dame. An excerpt:
If French president Emmanuel Macron had any sense, he would forbid any modernist British architect from coming within a radius of 100 miles of Notre-Dame—not that French modernist architects are any better, of course.
If French president Emmanuel Macron had any sense, he would forbid any modernist British architect from coming within a radius of 100 miles of Notre-Dame—not that French modernist architects are any better, of course.
Must Read Memoirs
You will ask why I don't buy an automatic toaster, and the answer is that I have, several times, but they all broke. I have a cupboard full of their corpses, each preserved in case the plug should come in handy. Here is yet more proof that I remain, as I approach the last lap of my life, someone who, left to himself, would die of exposure even on a warm day. On the tropical island with everything, I would choke on a coconut. There was once a terrible song that started 'People who need people'. Barbra Streisand used to sing it. As far as I remember, the next line wasn't 'Are to be avoided'. It should have been. In the concourse of the great railway stations you can pick us out by the way we stand in front of the automatic ticket machines and look around for advice. All too often we take it from each other, with predictable results.
- From The Blaze of Obscurity: The TV Years by Clive James
[Clive James has written a multi-volume autobiography that is an unmitigated pleasure. In order, the volumes are: Unreliable Memoirs; Falling Towards England; May Week Was in June; North Face of Soho; and The Blaze of Obscurity.]
- From The Blaze of Obscurity: The TV Years by Clive James
[Clive James has written a multi-volume autobiography that is an unmitigated pleasure. In order, the volumes are: Unreliable Memoirs; Falling Towards England; May Week Was in June; North Face of Soho; and The Blaze of Obscurity.]
Let's Have Details on How That Got Published
Althouse on the anti-Semitic cartoon published in the international edition of the New York Times.
First Paragraph
I had a fine Norton that year, in Bhowani. It's got smashed up since, but it was looking good the day I went down to see Victoria after she came back from the Army. I got to the house, cut off the engine, and sat there in the saddle while it coughed, hiccupped once or twice, and died. The truth is I was afraid to go in. She'd been away a long time. She was an officer. She'd have changed.
- From Bhowani Junction by John Masters
- From Bhowani Junction by John Masters
Sunday, April 28, 2019
Saturday, April 27, 2019
Caro's "Working"
In City Journal, Lance Morrow reviews historian Robert Caro's latest book. An excerpt:
We have not yet come to the actual writing. Early on, Caro discovered that he was too facile on the typewriter. So, to slow himself down and to teach himself not to write before thinking, he adopted the practice of doing his first several drafts in pencil or pen, in longhand, on long legal pads. With those drafts completed, he would switch to his Smith-Corona electric typewriter, which he still uses. He honors the writing habits of his youth, before the coming of computers, which he never uses. He puts his words on paper. He dresses in jacket and tie when he goes to his writing office, near Columbus Circle. He believes that the formality induces in him a mood to do serious work.
We have not yet come to the actual writing. Early on, Caro discovered that he was too facile on the typewriter. So, to slow himself down and to teach himself not to write before thinking, he adopted the practice of doing his first several drafts in pencil or pen, in longhand, on long legal pads. With those drafts completed, he would switch to his Smith-Corona electric typewriter, which he still uses. He honors the writing habits of his youth, before the coming of computers, which he never uses. He puts his words on paper. He dresses in jacket and tie when he goes to his writing office, near Columbus Circle. He believes that the formality induces in him a mood to do serious work.
Wit
Who was the writer, Stoppard wonders, who, when his publisher asked him for a better photograph for the book jacket, replied with a blunt telegram: “Little, Brown: you have an ugly author”? But nobody knows.
- From the NewStatesmenAmerica article cited in the earlier "Gathering of Old Friends" post.
- From the NewStatesmenAmerica article cited in the earlier "Gathering of Old Friends" post.
First Paragraph
I remember the cries of Caesar's war-horns chasing us over the darkened fields of Latium - their yearning, keening howls, like animals in heat - and how when they stopped there was only the slither of our shoes on the icy road and the urgent panting of our breath.
- From Dictator by Robert Harris
- From Dictator by Robert Harris
Bock's Assignments
Wally Bock has weekend leadership reading assignments for you.
Don't wait until the night before the quiz.
[Photo by micaela Marianthi at Unsplash]
Friday, April 26, 2019
Miscellaneous and Fast
- The Spectator: Douglas Murray on the hit job on Sir Roger Scruton.
- FutureLawyer: Get your in-box under control.
- Spiked: In defense of Barry Humphries (aka Dame Edna and Sir Les Patterson).
- The National Interest: The unusual story of France's Char B-1 tank.
- The Sovereign Professional: Carl Jung on a meaningless life.
When Numbers Stun
"By latter 1942, the Eastern Front was costing the Third Reich a hundred thousand dead each month."
- From The Second World Wars by Victor Davis Hanson
- From The Second World Wars by Victor Davis Hanson
First Paragraph
Anyone looking for a good used machine tool should talk to Noel Dempsey, a dealer in Richmond, Virginia. Noel's bustling warehouse is full of metal lathes, milling machines, and table saws, and it turns out that much of it once resided in schools. EBay is awash in such equipment, also from schools. Most of this stuff has been kicking around the secondhand market for about fifteen years; it was in the 1990s that shop class started to become a thing of the past, as educators prepared students to become "knowledge workers."
- From Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford
- From Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford
Talking Past One Another
Amanpour: Walter Isaacson and Frank Luntz talking about today's toxic political scene.
Thursday, April 25, 2019
Bravo
Daniel Hope and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra playing the love theme from "El Cid."
Training Tales
Like many management consultants, I've conducted a ton of management workshops over the years. They've provided many good memories. On the other hand, I recall:
- When a client decided to change the name of the workshop to something entirely different (and not tell me). [I'm still baffled by that one and I'm sure the class was.]
- When the hotel conference room had an outside wall that had partially collapsed. [We worked around it.]
- When a hotel arranged a training room by putting the chairs for some attendees behind large pillars. [I vetoed that arrangement.]
- When an attendee sat in the front row and checked off every time I mentioned a subject that had been promised in a brochure. [He wanted to make sure I didn't leave anything out. I didn't.]
- When my night flight from Atlanta to Tallahassee was cancelled and the subsequent juggling had me on an early morning flight on the day of the training. As a result, I had to run from a cab right into the Tallahassee hotel's conference room. [But I started the class exactly on time!]
- My favorite: When a five-alarm fire interrupted a large class I'd just started at a fire academy. Within one minute the entire audience had disappeared. [It was not a false alarm.]
Since I've been training for over 40 years, that's really not bad at all.
Lessons learned: You can only worry about so much and it helps to keep in mind that the day has brought far greater concerns to millions of other people. Roll with it.
[Photo by Changbok Ko at Unsplash]
Lessons learned: You can only worry about so much and it helps to keep in mind that the day has brought far greater concerns to millions of other people. Roll with it.
[Photo by Changbok Ko at Unsplash]
Wednesday, April 24, 2019
When Everyone Becomes Big Brother
As I said before, somewhat joshingly - 1984 is coming to pass not because it's imposed, but because everyone is volunteering to do their part.
- James Lileks
[Photo by Viktor Forgacs at Unsplash]
A Sign
"Let me tell you how dumb they are despite the fact that they beat us."
First Paragraph
It is almost midnight. I am sitting at a small table by an open window, in the north German town of Hamm, writing these first lines. The rest of the house is quiet, but voices rise and fall on the street below, some talking quietly, others loud with drink and the end of a working week.
- From Diary of a Dead Man on Leave by David Downing
- From Diary of a Dead Man on Leave by David Downing
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
"Ben-Hur"
Possibly the greatest film score ever written and there is very stiff competition in that arena.
Time to Read
In hiding. Reading and jotting thoughts in prep for some meetings.
[Photo by Aaron Burden at Unsplash]
First Paragraph
Lane starts the month with two bottles of decent pinot noir from the Washington State Liquor Store up on Lake City Way. He determines these wines to be decent, based on their price and minimalist label design. Plus, Mia always drinks pinot noir or pinot something. In the winter, anyway.
- From Lake City: A Novel by Thomas Kohnstamm
- From Lake City: A Novel by Thomas Kohnstamm
American Exceptionalism
Writing in Commentary, John Steele Gordon on what makes America exceptional.
[Photo by specphotops at Unsplash]
Keeping Alive
I understand that it's the music that keeps me alive . . . . That's my lifeblood. And to give that up for, like, the TV, the cars, the houses - that's not the American dream. That's the booby prize, in the end. Those are the booby prizes. And if you fall for them - if, when you achieve them, you believe that this is the end in and of itself - then you've been suckered in. Because those are the consolation prizes, if you're not careful, for selling yourself out, or letting the best of yourself slip away. So you gotta be vigilant. You gotta carry the idea you began with further. And you gotta hope that you're headed for higher ground.
- Bruce Springsteen in Rolling Stone magazine
- Bruce Springsteen in Rolling Stone magazine
Monday, April 22, 2019
Standing Together
My wife has been under the weather. She ate some lentil soup today.
As a sign of solidarity I ate a chocolate rabbit.
As a sign of solidarity I ate a chocolate rabbit.
Modern Times
But the weird thing is that many of the people who are outraged by benign nationalism or the benign pan-nationalism that is pride in Western civilization take no umbrage when someone from Iran or China says they think their civilization is best. This of course is a manifestation of the ancient cult of identitarianism, which the best traditions of the West have battled internally at great cost for thousands of years. Saying Western civilization is great hurts the feelings of some people invested in some other source of identity. And it hurts the feelings of some Westerners because they think it’s a sign of enlightenment to get offended on other people’s behalf or to denigrate the society that gave them their soap box.
- Jonah Goldberg
- Jonah Goldberg
A Visitor from Korean War Days
A Sabre jet joins modern aircraft in a show at Davis-Monthan Air Base.
Strategy Page has the details.
[U.S. Air Force photo by 2LT. Samuel Eckholm]
Sounds Fascinating
Schiltz, P.J. "On Being a Happy, Healthy, and Ethical Member of an Unhappy, Unhealthy, and Unethical Profession." Vanderbilt Law Review, 52 (1999): 871-918.
First Paragraph
The man is sitting on the shore, looking out upon the sea, his arms about his knees. That's what he has done for a long time now, longer than he can remember. He sheds a tear.
- From Nostalgia: Going Home in a Homeless World by Anthony Esolen
From the review by Tracy Lee Simmons in National Review:
"This book is, in other words, for adults, not children. It's for those willing to ask ultimate questions and armed with the courage to listen to a few answers and follow up."
- From Nostalgia: Going Home in a Homeless World by Anthony Esolen
From the review by Tracy Lee Simmons in National Review:
"This book is, in other words, for adults, not children. It's for those willing to ask ultimate questions and armed with the courage to listen to a few answers and follow up."
Scared Brave
Scared is what you're feeling.
Brave is what you're doing.
- Emma Donoghue
[Photo by MD Duran at Unsplash]
Bach's Secret
Cultural Offering has Bach's secret.
It makes a lot of sense to me.
[Photo by Josh Applegate at Unsplash]
What?
The danger of heavy-handed politics is noted in Judith Miller's City Journal review of the new revival of "Oklahoma!" An excerpt:
But Fish’s determination to highlight the carnage inflicted by guns leads him to rewrite—indeed, to pervert—the play’s crucial scene: the fight between Curly and Jud, in which Jud dies. In the original production, a drunken Jud attacks Curly with a knife. As Curly dodges the blade, Jud falls on his own knife. At a makeshift trial, a jury made up of local town folk, aware of the longstanding rivalry between the men and believing that Jud’s death was accidental, declare Curly “not guilty.” Moments later, Curly and Laurey leave for their honeymoon on their proverbial surrey with the fringe on top.
In Fish’s rendition, Jud presents a gun to Curly as a wedding gift, seeming to offer himself up for slaughter. There is no struggle. Curly simply points the gun at Jud and fires—point blank—splattering his own and his bride’s faces and white suits with his rival’s blood.
[Here is a collection of links to other reviews.]
[Here is a collection of links to other reviews.]
Sunday, April 21, 2019
Saturday, April 20, 2019
Artificial Intelligence
Wally Bock's weekend leadership reading assignments deal with the timely subject of artificial intelligence (AI).
[Photo by Franck V. at Unsplash]
Friday, April 19, 2019
Classic
And speaking of Maurice Jarre soundtracks, here is the "Building the Barn" scene from "Witness."
Maurice Jarre Soundtrack Break
Clemente Mata directs the Orquesta y Coro Cathedral de Cordoba with the main theme music from "Jesus of Nazareth."
Education
The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.
- C. S. Lewis
Hollywood and Then Some: Stanley Donen
Commentary: Frederic Raphael writes an appreciation of Stanley Donen. An excerpt:
In the early 1960s, Matthau had played a minor part in Charade. Stanley, always polite, went to meet him at Charles de Gaulle airport. On the way into Paris, Matthau said, “You know I should be playing the Cary Grant part, don’t you?” Stanley laughed. Matthau didn’t. A few years later, he was a big star. But he was never Cary Grant. Stanley told us how one day Cary was asked to a charity event to which, he was warned, entry was forbidden to anyone not carrying a ticket. Cary forgot his. Head down over her list, the lady at the desk said, “Then you can’t come in.” Cary said, “I’m Cary Grant.” She looked up and said, “You don’t look like Cary Grant.” Cary said, “Nobody does.”
Thursday, April 18, 2019
Dylan in Vienna
Hurrah for Bob Dylan.
If the trend keeps up, when the world ends 90 percent of the people will be taking its picture.
If the trend keeps up, when the world ends 90 percent of the people will be taking its picture.
Free Speech on Campus
Charles Murray has a modest proposal for making a campus safe for speakers.
The key is finding campus administrators with the courage to implement it.
The key is finding campus administrators with the courage to implement it.
To Talk of Many Things
I can either watch a press conference or read "The Walrus and the Carpenter."
There are similarities but the latter will be more informative.
Bullseye
Learn how to handle the three big distractors: digital, people and our own insatiable curiosity to be doing anything but the main thing.
- Nicholas Bate
It Will Not Hurt
It will not hurt if I grab a bunch of files today and go off somewhere and think.
I deeply regret not having done so at various times in the past. Distractions are deadly and impatience is a cancer.
[Photo by Jeff Sheldon at Unsplash]
Roman Holiday
The Sovereign Professional has just added to my reading list.
[Photo by Mauricio Artieda at Unsplash]
Scribble Scribble
The very rough first draft of my new book gets run off today.
I figure it will take four to five drafts before it gets near an agent.
The topic is confidential. The subject is unusual.
Make that very unusual.
I figure it will take four to five drafts before it gets near an agent.
The topic is confidential. The subject is unusual.
Make that very unusual.
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
On Dasher! On Dancer!
FutureLawyer has a video demonstrating the impressive strength of robots.
Impressive and a tad creepy.
Impressive and a tad creepy.
Philosophy and Food
Althouse: The Twitter CEO eats one meal a day and nothing on weekends.
If it works for him, that's fine. I'm not sure how closely linked that is to stoicism.
[Photo by Jason Leung at Unsplash]
Systems
If you've got a problem, make it a procedure and it won't be a problem anymore.
- Ben Feldman
- Ben Feldman
No Contest
First Paragraph
On chill misty mornings, I liked to walk down to the river and fish for a while. I never caught anything, but that didn't matter, particularly. It was relaxing just to stand on the bank and cast and watch the bright orange tip of my float drift downstream. Arblaster, my Residence's Porter, provided me with sandwiches and a Thermos, and I could quite happily stay there all day. Sometimes I could almost forget about the other things I should have been doing.
- From Europe at Midnight by Dave Hutchinson
- From Europe at Midnight by Dave Hutchinson
Not So Modern
I got a text message last night from a friend who had just emerged from a canyon in a remote part of Arizona where there is no cell phone coverage. He promised to be in touch once he got to Page, Arizona where the coverage would be stronger. [Look it up. It's up yonder.]
This is not a surprise. There are parts of central Phoenix that have lousy cell phone coverage.
People can call from the top of Mount Everest, of course, but not with the average cell phone service. I look forward to the days when such limited coverage will be a quaint story for one's grandchildren.
This is said, however, with a certain nostalgia for the days of phone booths.
[Photo by Dariana Anairad at Unsplash]
In Paris, as Notre Dame Burned
My doorbell rang insistently. It was my father. “Notre Dame is on fire,” he said through the intercom. I rushed downstairs. “It’s burning to the ground,” he said. I was speechless.
Read the rest of Claire Berlinski in City Journal.
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
Painful
I don't know which would be worse: being subjected to repeated viewings of "The Egyptian" or simply listening once to its soundtrack.
Waiting
Waiting for someone to call you back or to send an email can squander a great deal of time that would be far better spent calling people or sending emails.
[Photo by NordWood Themes at Unsplash]
First Paragraph
I have lived in the Sonoran Desert since I was a boy and unless I get unlucky, I will die here. My home is a web of dreams. Thousands move here each year under the banners of the New West or the Sunbelt. This is the place where they hope to escape their pasts - the unemployment, the smoggy skies, dirty cities, crush of human numbers. This they cannot do. Instead, they reproduce the world they have fled. I am drawn to the frenzy of this act.
- From Blue Desert by Charles Bowden
[Photo by Robert Murray at Unsplash]
Monday, April 15, 2019
Notre Dame
Notre Dame: A reminder that while science waits to be discovered, history can be lost.
A sad day for France and the world.
A sad day for France and the world.
Fractures in France
- The New York Times today: Inequality fuels the "Yellow Vests."
- BBC News in February.
- EuroNews today: President Macron to address the nation.
[Photo by Kilyan Sockalingum at Unsplash]
And Now for Something Very Different
Some novels that are sort of "out there" can enliven the imagination. Here are a few to consider.
- "Zeroville" - Steve Erickson. Very strange main character and an equally strange plot with a lot of trivia about Hollywood. As for the ending, I'm still not certain what took place.
- "The Price You Pay" - Aiden Truhen. One of the best-written books I've read. Bizarre, funny, and fascinating. I re-read it a few months later and will be reading it again.
- "Wild Seed" - Octavia Butler. Strange science fiction from a major sci-fi writer. I just started this one.
- "Mr. In-Between" - Neil Cross. The main character is a hit-man, the others are London criminals, and they don't much like one another.
- "Europe in Autumn" - Dave Hutchinson. Odd doings in a very fractured Europe of the future.
- "Method 15/33" - Shannon Kirk. A crime story in which the young and pregnant kidnap victim is no one to mess with.
- "Cosmocopia" - Paul Di Filippo. Steampunk well done. Let's say you enter another world in which you are the odd creature.
- "Soulless" - Gail Carriger. A woman in Victorian times is standard stuff. In this case she doesn't have a soul and she's dealing with werewolves and vampires.
Ways of Thinking
Farnam Street has some reflections on how Darwin thought. It includes an observation by Charlie Munger:
Darwin’s result was due in large measure to his working method, which violated all my rules for misery and particularly emphasized a backward twist in that he always gave priority attention to evidence tending to disconfirm whatever cherished and hard-won theory he already had. In contrast, most people early achieve and later intensify a tendency to process new and disconfirming information so that any original conclusion remains intact. They become people of whom Philip Wylie observed: “You couldn’t squeeze a dime between what they already know and what they will never learn.”
[Photo by Aron Visuals at Unsplash]
The College Bargain
Salena Zito believes the answer to the rising costs of college may be found at the community colleges.
I agree.
I agree.
Sunday, April 14, 2019
Saturday, April 13, 2019
First Paragraph
This is the time of year when wars break out and when a broken glass betrays the woodland to the vindictive sun. Already the forest fires have accounted for a thousand hectares of the Var. We fight them by starting little manageable blazes which burn a strip to ashes before the main conflagration has had time to arrive. These flames in turn must be extinguished and isolated by setting fire to other and still more obedient strips till the last cinders expire in the garden where I am writing.
- From Enemies of Promise by Cyril Connolly
- From Enemies of Promise by Cyril Connolly
True
"Great opportunities never have 'great opportunity' in the subject line."
- Scott Belsky
[Photo by bruce mars at Unsplash]
Friday, April 12, 2019
Post on the Wall
"Elmore Leonard was working on his forty-sixth novel when he died at the age of eighty-seven."
- Donald Sull and Kathleen M. Eisenhardt in Simple Rules
- Donald Sull and Kathleen M. Eisenhardt in Simple Rules
First Paragraph
In January 1913, a young army officer, Edward Cobb, passing through London on his way home after a tour of duty in South Africa, was taken by a friend to a party in Chelsea. There he found himself among people he had never encountered before - actors, artists, writers, publishers and young women who smoked cigarettes, drank gin and danced the Boston and the Tango. Edward was drawn to one young woman in particular who was dark and pretty and taught him the steps of the Turkey Trot, the latest craze. When they went out on to a narrow balcony to escape the heat and noise, she became more serious and asked him about South Africa: what were the differences between General Herzog and General Botha? Had he seen the effects of the recent drought?
- From Alice in Exile by Piers Paul Read
- From Alice in Exile by Piers Paul Read
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