Sunday, October 31, 2021

Not at Bedtime


The New York Times
(2018): Neil Gaiman, Dan Simmons, and other writers describe their choice for the scariest book.

Screenrant: Cynthia Vinney lists the best and worst portrayals of Count Dracula. [This version deserved greater attention.]

From a Short Story by Stephen King

 


I don't know about the film but the short story was very scary.

Frost on Punkin

 

This has become an Execupundit tradition:

Kent Risley with 
a marvelous recitation of the poem.


[Photo by Aaron Burden at Unsplash]

Boo



No Halloween would be complete without this classic by Warren Zevon. Wait, here's an updated link.


[Photo by Mel Poole at Unsplash]

The Creeps

 Walter Kirn has a Halloween confession.

Friday, October 29, 2021

Wrist Wars

I sprained my wrist around a week ago. Still wearing a brace.

Argh.

I teach an EEO class this week in which I normally do a lot of writing on a flip chart.

Now I'll have to use PowerPoint.

Argh-Argh.

File under "Minor But Irritating."

It's No "Wolf Hall" But It May Work

 


"The Math of Khan"

 From 2012: Laura Vanderkam examines the beginning of the Khan Academy.

First Paragraph

 As I write this in the summer of 2020, Alison Roman, a food writer for The New York Times, is on suspension. You might wonder just what a food writer could do to end up temporarily dismissed by her employer. Roman's sin: In an interview, she passingly criticized two people for commercialism, model and food writer Chrissy Teigen and lifestyle coach Marie Kondo. Roman was Twitter-mobbed for having the nerve, as a white woman, to criticize two women of color.

- From Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America by John McWhorter

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

 


Thursday, October 28, 2021

The Need to Speak Up

 


Powerful

 


Sound the Trumpets


FutureLawyer has admitted that card catalogs were superior to Googling.

I would add, far superior.


[Photo by Erol Ahmed at Unsplash]

A Cut Above Most Science Fiction Films


Once seen, not forgotten:


[Photo by Markus Spiske at Unsplash]

Where You Go and Your Persistence

 


First Paragraph

 One September afternoon in 1960 I was having a drink with an old newspaper friend, Ken Johnstone, when unexpectedly he told me he had a message to pass on from Ronnie Jacques, the well-known New York photographer. Jacques had been in Sun Valley taking some pictures of Hemingway, and they had got to talking about me. After awhile, Hemingway, really opening up, had become warm and jovial. In the old days in Paris, he used to box with me, he said. It had all been rather wonderful and amusing, Hemingway assured Ronnie, and there had been one ridiculous occasion when Scott Fitzgerald had acted as timekeeper, and everybody had been full of wine. Anyway, Hemingway sent his warmest regards. But what had really happened? Ken Johnstone wanted to know.

- From That Summer in Paris: Memories of Tangled Friendships with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Some Others by Morley Callaghan

Wednesday, October 27, 2021

Always Have Thucydides at Hand

I doubt seriously whether a man can think with full wisdom and wuth deep convictions regarding certain of the basic international issues today who has not at least reviewed in his mind the period of the Peloponnesian War and the Fall of Athens.

- Secretary of State George C. Marshall in 1947

Back By Popular Demand

 


"There's a racial divide on radical politics - but it's not what you think"

 Commentary magazine: Wilfred Reilly on "The Whiteness of Wokeness."

A Lot of Buzz

 


Our Man in Oxford

 Go to Nicholas Bate's blog and check out the books on the left side.

Nicholas the Prolific.

"In the movies, the prep is everything."

 Althouse points to reports about what may have happened on the Rust set.

American Humanist

Frontline (1990): "Seven Days in Bensonhurst."

See the City Journal article about Shelby Steele here.

Creator Economy


Rumble has acquired Locals.

Substack. Rumble. Locals. A whole industry is about to change.


[Photo by Melanie Deziel at Unsplash]

Tuesday, October 26, 2021

When Personal Injury Attorneys Dream

A Large Regular shows they're not messing around in Munich.

This would bring people back to the malls.

I Guess It Isn't a Cooking Show

 


Re-Reading the Aubrey-Maturin Series. Now on Volume 2: "Post Captain."


 

I pity anyone who has not read these books.



Hang In There

 Persuasion: Second year Yale law student Trent Colbert on why he didn't apologize for his email.

Not a Newscast

 


Miscellaneous and Fast

The Highly Questionable

They do not want to be transparent. They do not want an open discussion of their policies. They will scrub posts, cloak practices, fiddle the numbers, and use misleading language. They will declare their accessibility on the very sites that are designed to foil investigations. Their advocates will claim that day is night and night is day.

None of that, however, will keep them from believing that they are noble. 

And if any evidence arises which cannot be dismissed, they'll say, "Everybody does it."

Unfortunately, too many do.

Inside America's Baby Bust


 Suzy Weiss meets the women who don't want to have children.


[Photo by Birgit Loit at Unsplash]

Monday, October 25, 2021

Back By Popular Demand


 

You Know You Want One

 A Large Regular has a preview of the Jetson-One.

Drama

 


Our Chosen Bedtime When We Were Kids

 Kurt Harden at Cultural Offering has posted a truth.

Always Remember

The U.S. Constitution . . . was primarily designed to protect personal freedom, property, and individual liberty from both oppressive government elites and periodic mob frenzies.

- Victor Davis Hanson

Or At Most

Our rulers believe it is right for the ruled to shut up and obey, or at most cut little deals for themselves.

- Angelo M. Codevilla, The Ruling Class

In the Pipeline


The course by Allen C. Guelzo.

Saturday, October 23, 2021

What They Said

 


The NSBA Letter

 


Thought-Provoking

 


Meanwhile, in the Schools

The stories about the California math teacher who was suspended for doing a bizarre dance imitating American Indians often downplay or omit another question: If her performance had no reference to any racial or ethnic group, would it be regarded as an acceptable teaching method?

When Distant Meetings Approach


I have heard that Warren Buffett does not schedule meetings far in advance. If you want a meeting with him, you contact his office the day before you'd like to meet and then it will be determined whether he'll meet with you.

When I heard of this, my first reaction was one of intense envy. My second, more measured, reaction was that if you are Warren Buffett, you can get away with such rules.

Nonetheless, a good question when setting a meeting way off yonder in the oh-so-distant future is: "As the meeting date approaches, will I feel happiness or dread?"


[Photo by Debbie Hudson at Unsplash]

I Am a Rock

Althouse and company weigh in on Simon and Garfunkel.

Friday, October 22, 2021

Promising

 


Go for It

It is important to earn a doctorate so that you can leave it off your job application for Target.

- Werner Twertzog

Cancellation, or Cultural Change

When I appeared on Megyn Kelly's podcast, she shared an anecdote (at 46:00 minute mark) about a friend of hers who worked as an editor at a major publishing house. The editor had received a manuscript of a historical novel, based on a true story, of a woman who had to pose as a man in order to receive a medical education and become a surgeon in the 1920's1. The editor admired the novel and circulated it for feedback from some junior editors. 

The rest of Wesley Yang's essay is here

Checklist for Arguments on Social Media

 


Opponents can't just hold a different opinion. They must be:

  • Evil.
  • Selfish.
  • Ignorant.
  • Greedy.
  • Indifferent.
  • Arrogant.
  • Sloppy.
  • Cruel.
  • Weak.
  • Bigoted.
  • Corrupt.
  • Privileged.
  • Stupid.
  • Deceptive.
  • Violent.
  • Too sensitive.
  • Insensitive.
  • Ungrateful. 
  • Treasonous.

Pushing Back Against Indoctrination


The Daily Signal: Tools for Countering Wokeness in K-12 schools.


[Photo by Jeffrey Hamilton at Unsplash]

Thursday, October 21, 2021

First Paragraph

 "We Americans might be excused for believing that the outcome of the Civil War would have set to rest all doubt concerning the date of this nation's founding and the principles on the basis of which it was founded. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's depreciation of the Declaration of Independence in his opinion for the Supreme Court in the infamous case of Dred Scott v. Sandford was answered not only on the battlefield of Gettysburg but, a few months later, by Abraham Lincoln's address on the site of that battle. Lincoln insisted there, in November 1863, as he had in many other places and on many other occasions, that the nation was born at Philadelphia in 1776, four score and seven years earlier. Taney, and the South in general, had denied this, or had come to deny it - the time came when John C. Calhoun and Alexander H. Stephens said the assertion that all men are created equal is a self-evident lie and went so far as to denounce Thomas Jefferson for making it. But what the South, that old South, lost in battle it seems now to be winning back in the groves of academe and the pages of contemporary journalism."

- From Taking the Constitution Seriously by Walter Berns

Films Like This Make Me Want to Re-Watch "The Third Man"

 


Old Business

Eclecticity Light has a map showing attitudes regarding secession.

Nope. We resolved that issue in 1865.

Only One


Our unique place in the world is recognized elsewhere, sometimes grudgingly or inadvertently. In 1987, the bicentenary of our Constitution, I was in Brazil, where the people had recently overthrown a military dictatorship and had begun the process of writing a democratic constitution. I had been invited to lecture on constitutionalism. At one place, a university in Recife, after I had finished my prepared remarks, someone got up and denounced, not me, but the local official who had sponsored my appearance. "Why," he shouted, "did you invite an American? What can they tell us about constitutions? They've only had one. Why didn't you invite a Bolivian? They've had a hundred!"

- From Making Patriots by Walter Berns

[Photo by Max Sulik at Unsplash]

Courage

Allow me to offer the first Talmud lesson ever given at the LA Press Club . . .

Perhaps some here imagine that the Supreme Court is the first place where minority opinions get written down and recorded for posterity. But the Talmud is a 2,000-year-old record of just that — a conversation between sages born hundreds of years apart and speaking across time on a single page. The Talmud is not a document of the majority opinion, the opinion that ended up winning the day. It’s a document, also, of the minority. Of the critics. Of the gadflies.

From Bari Weiss's acceptance speech for the Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism.

Wednesday, October 20, 2021

Speech Analysis

 


Ethics, Faith, and Eccentricity

I asked Sam Oliner, “Knowing all you now know about who rescued Jews during the Holocaust, if you had to return as a Jew to Poland and you could knock on the door of only one person in the hope that they would rescue you, would you knock on the door of a Polish lawyer, a Polish doctor, a Polish artist or a Polish priest?”

Without hesitation, he responded, “Polish priest.” And his wife immediately added, “I would prefer a Polish nun.”

I should note that neither had a religious agenda, as both were secular Jews.

Read the rest of Dennis Prager's column here.

The Great Alienation?


 Inc. magazine: Marcel Schwantes on why people are leaving their jobs.

[I am not sure if I agree with his analysis but it is worth considering.]

Narrative Whiplash

Apparently, it’s difficult to comprehend that the people who never stopped working while you were in your bubble, who bore the greatest risk throughout the whole pandemic, are making their own calculated decisions about getting a vaccine.

Read all of Bridget Phetasy's essay in Tablet.

[HT: A Large Regular]

The Basics Need Not Be Fancy



Pens. Pencils. Journals. Notecards. An appointment book. A good watch. Reliable transportation. A versatile wardrobe.

Add a clear direction and a place to think and all of the truly fancy stuff is secondary.

Ana Kasparian vs. Ben Shapiro

 


Tuesday, October 19, 2021

Meet Molly and More

 Nicholas Bate (a.k.a. The Man Who Never Sleeps) announces that the sequel to Meet Molly will be out soon.

Does OSHA Have an Ethics Officer?

“DOL and OSHA, as well as other federal agencies, are working diligently to encourage COVID-19 vaccinations,” the health agency says on its official website. “OSHA does not wish to have any appearance of discouraging workers from receiving COVID-19 vaccination, and also does not wish to disincentivize employers’ vaccination efforts. As a result, OSHA will not enforce 29 CFR 1904’s recording requirements to require any employers to record worker side effects from COVID-19 vaccination at least through May 2022. We will reevaluate the agency’s position at that time to determine the best course of action moving forward.”

Read the rest here.

Flashback

 


"Nothing Else Will Be Done Until" Day


Today I have several medium-sized tasks which, if completed, will reduce stress and increase a sense of control. These tasks have been the object of much procrastination. 

They have lurked in the back of my mind. 

They have been sooo easy to put off.

But today they will be done. 

To prevent repeating the ridiculous excuses which thwarted their earlier completion, I am designating at least one day a month for the next 12 months as "Nothing Else Will Be Done Until Day."

If my loathing of inactivity is pitted against continued procrastination, the latter will lose.

[Update: ALL were completed! There is dancing in the streets.]

First Paragraph

 In April 2013, SeaWorld, Inc., was riding high. The American theme park company had completed an initial public offering that exceeded expectations, raising more than $700 million in capital and valuing the company at $2.5 billion. "To many Americans, SeaWorld offers family fun amid penguins and killer whales," gushed the New York Times. The story ran with a picture of two adorable penguins waddling around the New York Stock Exchange as part of a promotional tour.

- From Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations Can Anticipate Global Insecurity by Condoleeza Rice and Amy B. Zegart

From an Enrollment Form for a YMCA Event: Expect a Quiz

 

PREFERRED PRONOUN

He / him / his / himself

She / her / her / herself

They (singular) / them / their / themselves

Ey / em / eir / eirself

Sie / sie / hir / hirself

Tey / ter / tem / terself

Ve / ver / vis /verself

Zie / zir / zirs / zirself

 

Monday, October 18, 2021

Hmm

 


Modern Times

They will tell you what you need to know. Before they tell you, you’re not allowed to guess. After they tell you, you’re not allowed to doubt. And when they later tell you something different, you’re not allowed to remember. This is the fullness of the new directive.

- Walter Kirn

Good News

The Alumni Free Speech Alliance has been formed.

A Warning from 1997

 . . . [R]adical multiculturalism leads to disturbing distortions in scholarship and public discourse. Because they reject objectivity as a norm, the radicals are content to rely on personal stories as a basis for formulating views of social problems. These stories are often atypical or distorted by self-interest, yet any criticism of the stories is inevitably seen as a personal attack on the storyteller. More generally, because radical multiculturalists refuse to separate the speaker from the message, they can become sidetracked from discussing the merits of the message itself into bitter disputes about the speaker's authenticity and her right to speak on behalf of an oppressed group. Criticisms of radical multculturalists are seen as pandering to the power structure if they come from women or minorities, or as sexist and racist if they come from white men. This makes dialogue difficult at best.

- From Beyond All Reason: The Radical Assault on Truth in American Law by Daniel R. Farber and Suzanna Sherry (1997)

Always Know Their Principles

When I am the weaker, I ask you for my freedom, because that is your principle. But when I am the stronger, I take away your freedom, because that is my principle.

- Louis Veuillot

Find a Sanctuary

 


In my experience, these two activities are magnets for interruptions:

  1. Reading.
  2. Writing.
Time will not magically appear. It must be carved out and guarded. Find a hide-away.

Hmm

 


Professor George

The Dispatch: The Making of Robert P. George.

[I wondered where those banjo skills came from.]

Bureaucrats That Go Bump in the Night


A Seattle elementary school cancels a Halloween parade.

Wouldn't you love to have a recording of the meeting where that decision was made?


[Photo by Beth Teutschmann at Unsplash]

Saturday, October 16, 2021

Leadership and Legacy

Wally Bock on leadership, legacy, and stories.

Excellent. What stories will they tell about you?

Say No to the Woke Revolution

"We Got Here Because of Cowardice. We Get Out with Courage."

In Commentary magazine, Bari Weiss makes a powerful and eloquent case.


[Bari Weiss is on the Board of Advisors for FAIR.]

When You're on Stage


 
Cultural Offering has a video that should be periodically viewed by everyone who makes presentations.

Friday, October 15, 2021

First Paragraph

Beauty can be consoling, disturbing, sacred, profane; it can be exhilarating, appealing, inspiring, chilling. It can affect us in an unlimited variety of ways. Yet it is never viewed with indifference: beauty demands to be noticed; it speaks to us directly like the voice of an intimate friend. If there are people who are indifferent to beauty, then it is surely because they do not perceive it.

- From Beauty: A Very Short Introduction by Roger Scruton

Atul Gawande

 


Six Books to Understand Our Times


  • 1984 by George Orwell
  • Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  • Animal Farm by George Orwell
  • The Road by Cormac McCarthy
  • Life with a Star by Jiri Weil
  • Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler

[Photo by Florencia Viadana at Unsplash]

Wednesday, October 13, 2021

File Under: "You Don't Know What You've Got Til It's Gone"

 Globalization, Americans are belatedly discovering, meant not that the citizens of the world would become Westerners but rather that the world would superficially look at times American. Such a world would more likely absorb Americans into something antithetical to their own foundations and freedoms - something akin to westernizing abroad while at home de-westernizing.

What arrogantly began as an Americanization of the globe has ended up as a globalization of America.

- Victor Davis Hanson in The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America

That Bookstore Looks Familiar

 



Okay, it's not going to get an Oscar but it was filmed at "Books on 7th Avenue" - my favorite used bookstore in Phoenix.


Evading the Hounds of Hell

 Tunku Varadarajan reviews "Into the Forest" by Rebecca Frankel.

Time Management, Laziness, and Life

 


Over the years, I have learned that one of the best time management questions is "What would a lazy person do?"

Why?

  • A lazy person would say no to more projects.
  • A lazy person would use Zoom instead of driving an hour for a 20 minute meeting.
  • A lazy person would not feel compelled to finish bad books.
  • A lazy person would encourage brief reports that get to the point.
  • A lazy person would not use three words where one would do.
  • A lazy person would take naps.
  • A lazy person would not over-pack.
  • A lazy person would not have time for regrets.
  • A lazy person would talk to dogs.
  • A lazy person would hire a professional rather than squandering a chunks of time producing an amateurish result.
  • A lazy person would not think that hard work is better than smart work.
  • A lazy person would not feel guilty when away from the job.
  • A lazy person would not miss medical appointments or the kid's ball game.
  • A lazy person would listen for meaning.
  • A lazy person would have time for birthdays.
  • A lazy person would be in the moment.
  • A lazy person would never gulp a cup of fine coffee.

Identity Politics

 People who think with their epidermis or their genitalia or their clan are the problem to begin with. One does not banish this specter by invoking it.

- Christopher Hitchens

Stoic

Rick Georges - lawyer, poet, husband, father, parrot protector, Bucs fan, and avid techie - provides insight "On the Topic of Writing Your Own Obituary."

Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Handel Break

 


China's Greatest Weakness

 


The Academy is in Trouble

 Cathy Young on Bright Sheng, Othello, and the cancel culture.

I have spoken with a cross-section of people over the past several months. It's interesting to see how often they raise the subject of cancel culture and the universities. 

The wave of disapproval will have multiple effects.

For the Strugglers


Take a few minutes and read Matt Labash on the strugglers, Old School, and most of us.


[Photo by Joshua Gresham at Unsplash]

Too Much?


It is easier to tell when there is too little than to determine when there is too much. 

"Too little" can produce immediate adverse effects but the problems fostered by "too much" may not be noticed for years. [In many cases, they won't be noticed at all.]

We live with the assumption that it is better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. That clever line assumes that there are no serious drawbacks to having it. If we look closely, however, negatives may be lurking. 

A child who grows up in a family in which everything is quickly provided by others may, in fact, be deprived when compared to a child in a family where pennies must be watched, self-discipline is demanded, and chores are mandatory. 

A large team with a huge budget may lack the creativity, flexibility, and hustle of a smaller underdog.

Less can provide an advantage but it is hidden beneath the more.


[Photo by Content Pixie at Unsplash]

Viewpoint Diversity

 


Fighting and Thinking

The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards.

-        William Francis Butler


Monday, October 11, 2021

Art Break

Bored Panda has the strange art of Guy Billout.

Touch of Excellence

 


It doesn't get better than when you have a scene with Orson Welles and Marlene Dietrich.

Your Side

No matter what side of an argument you're on, you always find some people on your side that you wish were on the other side.

- Jascha Heifetz

The Man Who Doesn't Go Away


An old Soviet joke poses the question: What was the most important world-historical event of the year 1875? Answer: Lenin was five years old.

- From "Leninthink" by Gary Saul Morson in The New Criterion (2019).

[Photo by Steve Harvey at Unsplash]

As We All Know, Secret Material is Supposed to Be Hidden In a Pumpkin

 


Nitwittery Update

 The Art Institute of Chicago gets rid of all of their 122 docents because they are not sufficiently diverse.

The Spin on Spending

Anyone who has ever bought anything knows that the “cost” of something is not the net effect on your debt balance. If you bought $85 worth of groceries and paid from your debit account, you wouldn’t claim the cost of the purchase was zero. If you spend $85 on groceries, that’s $85 less you have to invest, or to spend at the movies or in restaurants. Clearly, that out-of-pocket cost is real to you—it’s a reasonable proxy of the monetary value of what you give up to make the purchase.

Read the rest of Ryan Bourne at The Dispatch.

Saturday, October 09, 2021

In the "Die Hard" Christmas Film Genre

 


The Mob is Intolerant

Tucked within a FutureLawyer post is a scary line which resembles many comments I hear nowadays:

"It is important that we monitor our words carefully in the political environment in which we find ourselves."

Unfortunately, he is correct and yet we need to push back, lest we become Eastern Europe in the bad old days.

Quick Look

 


When Practices are Cloaked, Use The Rooftop Rule


I have long recommended a Rooftop Rule to my clients: If you can't shout a policy or practice from the rooftops, you shouldn't be doing it. Don't have wink-wink, nudge-nudge, policies or practices that cloak the truth.

That said, over the past several months I have been studying practices related to equal opportunity in large organizations and have found many examples of cloaking. These are not inadvertent. They are designed to be deceptive. I'm conducting this review for an organization and cannot cite the examples now, but I recommend looking beneath the surface at the various policies in your own organization - equity policies are especially prone to this - and ask, "What does this really mean? What types of actions does this produce? Is this in accordance with the law?" 

And, of course, "Would we feel comfortable shouting a description of our findings from the rooftops?"


[Photo by Tommy at Unsplash]

From 2010: Bach Day at the BBC Proms

 


There is a Big Difference

 


There is a big difference between:

  • Saying and communicating. 
  • Working hard and working effectively.
  • Studying and knowing.
  • Seeing and noticing.
  • Supporting and helping.
  • Hearing and understanding.
  • Being in love and loving.

Updates on Decline

Friday, October 08, 2021

Candid vs Brutally Frank

 Wally Bock asks, "Are you really ready for candor?"

Sailor's Hornpipe


 

Looks Interesting



I May Miss This Too

 


The Not So Dismal Science


Check out: Smith and Marx Walk into a Bar: A History of Economics Podcast.


[Photo by Q.U.I. at Unsplash]

Into the Abyss

The beasts of modernism have mutated into the beasts of post-modernism - relativism into nihilism, amorality into immorality, irrationality into insanity, sexual deviancy into polymorphous perversity. And since then, generations of intelligent students under the guidance of their enlightened professors have looked into the abyss, have contemplated those beasts, and have said, "How interesting, how exciting."

- Gertrude Himmelfarb, On Looking into the Abyss (1994)

Thursday, October 07, 2021

Unity

 


People are Novels

 A review of the life of George Robert "Bob" Pettit II.


[HT: S on 24th Street]

Danger, Will Robinson!

 


A London Must

There's a very appealing tour at Sir John Soane's Museum in London.

Worth a trip by itself. A remarkable place.

FAIR Webinar

 


Many of Us Have Worked with Vincent and Sylvia

Emotionally unstable people can do inspired work on their own, but if you're assembling people for a joint project, your ideal is not a Vincent van Gogh or a Sylvia Plath.

- John Tierney and Roy F. Baumeister in The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It

George Knew


The object of power is power. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to safeguard the dictatorship.

- George Orwell in 1984


[Photo by Markus Spiske at Unsplash]