The Free Press: Elliot Ackerman on "How to Dress Like a Gentleman."
Commentary by management consultant Michael Wade on Leadership, Ethics, Management, and Life
Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Monday, February 10, 2025
Disaster in the Schools
Frannie Block in The Free Press: How American Educators Are Conning Kids.
Note from Boss to Employees
Whether you are a boss or an employee, this latest Substack post contains some vital reminders.
Practical, relevant, and timeless.
Wisdom of the Founders
Public Discourse: Michael Maibach and Howard Muncy on the history and virtues of the Electoral College.
Sunday, February 09, 2025
Saturday, February 08, 2025
Back on the Shelf
Call me Oscar Progresso. Or, for that matter, call me anything you want, as Oscar Progresso is not my name. Nor are Baby Supine, Euclid Cherry, Franklyn Nuts, or any of the other aliases that, now and then over the years, I have been forced to adopt. No one knows my real name anymore: it's been too long. And all the things that I myself once knew are like a ship glittering in the dark, moving away from me as I am left in homely silence. My time is drawing to a close, so I thought I would take one last shot.
- From Memoir from Antproof Case by Mark Helprin
I have not read this novel in years. Was thinking of giving it away, but glanced at the first paragraph and thought, "This deserves another reading."
If Mark Helprin is not the greatest living American novelist, he's in the top three.
First Paragraph
Premonitions can be precious. They offer an uncanny, decipherable warning about something or other, especially if the person having them is at the right place at the right time. Consider the Anglo-American Christopher Isherwood and the German Alfred Döblin, novelists who each wrote about Berlin in the 1920s and early 1930s. In the guise of fiction, a writer can more easily tell the truth, hiding behind his characters and other forms of make-believe. Their Berlin is a fantastic, neurotic nightmare.
- From Wasteland: A World in Permanent Crisis by Robert D. Kaplan
Escape from Quicksand
Manhattan Institute: A new framework for modernizing America by Philip K. Howard.
[Photo by Jonathan Ansel Moy de Vitry at Unsplash]
Remember
You can get all A's and still flunk life.
- Walker Percy, The Second Coming
Friday, February 07, 2025
It's Time to Expand Job Interview Pools
My latest Substack post tackles a timely subject: Why are job ads so narrow?
Spread the word. We need less tech and more job interviews.
Time Travel
One of the greatest autobiographies ever written. I first read it while a freshman in college.
An amazing life. Very human. Often haunting.
First Paragraph
The DOGE $2 trillion budget savings goal is crucial to the very future of constitutional democracy and capitalist prosperity in America. In fact, the soaring public debt is now so out of control that the Federal budget threatens to become a self-fueling financial doomsday machine.
- From How to Cut $2 Trillion by David A. Stockman
Thursday, February 06, 2025
An Ounce of Prevention vs. A Pound of Cure
A reminder: The President needs to create an Office of Crisis Identification.
DOGE is doing a lot, but even it will miss things.
The Next Pandemic?
Commentary magazine's James B. Meigs explores the possibility of avian flu. An excerpt:
What’s particularly damning is that, while Covid came seemingly out of nowhere, the potential for a human breakout of avian flu has worried epidemiologists for decades. As Princeton University data scientist Zeynep Tufekci writes, “If there is an avian flu epidemic it will rank among the most foreseeable crises in history.”
Avoiding a Debt Crisis
The Manhattan Institute's Brian Riedl has a plan to avert a debt crisis. An excerpt:
The fiscal consolidation in this report calls for trimming some Social Security and Medicare benefits for upper-income recipients. Some taxes would rise. Spending on defense would continue to fall as a share of the economy. In short, there is something in this blueprint for everyone to oppose. But letting the country plunge into a debt crisis would be far more painful than this blueprint’s reforms.
Wednesday, February 05, 2025
WordPerfect Nostalgia
Word seems to go out of its way to remind me why I get nostalgic for WordPerfect.
I am seriously considering switching back.
To Be Read and Re-Read
This book by The Stoic of South Florida - FutureLawyer and High Techie Rick Georges - has arrived. I am eagerly going through what will be multiple readings.
I should note that his section on zones of indifference is brilliant, but I also like how he applies the lessons of Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca to everyday life.
The "multiple readings" part is no joke. These lessons need to be periodically renewed lest our problems chomp down and drag us into a swamp.
The Marcus Aurelius quote on page 87 is just one of the many lessons that I will be passing on to my clients. Wisdom in a stomach punch.
Elon and Friends
The Free Press: Eli Lake looks at The Boys of DOGE.
When Writing
Don't confuse writing to persuade with writing to dissuade.
In the first case, you are marshaling facts and arguments that will logically lead to a particular conclusion.
In the second case, you have a more tightly focused mission. You are mentioning a fact or a potential development that will spark fears that cannot be quickly, if ever, swept aside.
If you have any concerns about the courage or reasoning ability of your audience, the second approach is the most effective.
First Paragraph
Finally, all questions concerning the rise of Christianity are one: How was it done? How did a tiny and obscure messianic movement from the edge of the Roman Empire dislodge classical paganism and become the dominant faith of Western civilization? Although this is the only question, it requires many answers - no one thing led to the triumph of Christianity.
- From The Rise of Christianity by Rodney Stark
Tuesday, February 04, 2025
From Bert Fireman's "Mostly Sweat" Speech on Arizona History
callus on the palm of an unknown woodcutter was more important in
Arizona's development than a notch on Wyatt Earp's gun. I believe
the shovel was a lot more important than the six-gun. I believe the
church was more important than the gambling hall. I believe that an
immigrant's wagon being ferried across the Colorado River on the
trail from Utah to Arizona was more important than a stagecoach
robbery anywhere. I believe the tiny wisp of smoke from a prospec-
tor's forge on the desert was more important to Arizona's develop-
ment than all the gunsmoke at the O. K. Corral. And I believe that
when Barry Goldwater's grandfather opened a sack of beans because
some miner was hungry, that was more important than when another
"bucket of blood" opened on Whisky Row in Prescott or Brewery
Gulch in Bisbee ....
I wish the movies and TV shows would present this side of west-
ern history.
Bert Fireman
Arizona Pioneers Reunion
Phoenix, Arizona
April 12, 1958
First Paragraph
Throughout my years as a social psychologist, I have learned how important a sense of belonging can be. Today, many people who once took that feeling for granted seem unmoored and adrift. In the turbulent election season of 2016, my colleagues and I conducted a survey of law students at a selective university to determine who felt most alienated on campus. The two groups who felt least like they belonged were black women and politically conservative white men. These two groups seem to fall at the farthest poles of our political discourse. Yet they shared a feeling: They felt like outsiders. The defining feature of our era seems to be that few groups feel confident in their sense of belonging.
- From Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides by Geoffrey L. Cohen
Monday, February 03, 2025
Remembering James Hilton
You'd think that the author who wrote Lost Horizon; Goodbye, Mr. Chips; and Random Harvest, all of which were made into major films, would be better known.
The Career Manifesto is Back!
I've popped it up on Substack.
Read it. Learn it. Live it.
[And don't forget to subscribe. Free subscribers are welcome. Paid ones are honored.]
First Paragraph
In 1937, the soul of Genghis Khan disappeared from the Buddhist monastery in central Mongolia along the River of the Moon below the black Shankh Mountains where the faithful lamas had protected and venerated it for centuries. During the 1930s, Stalin's henchmen executed some thirty thousand Mongols in a series of campaigns against their culture and religion. The troops ravaged one monastery after another, shot the monks, assaulted the nuns, broke the religious objects, looted the libraries, burned the scriptures, and demolished the temples. Reportedly, someone secretly rescued the embodiment of Genghis Khan's soul from the Shankh Monastery and whisked it away for safekeeping to the capital in Ulaanbaatar, where it ultimately disappeared.
- From Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford
Sunday, February 02, 2025
Saturday, February 01, 2025
Chaos, Anyone?
I was saved by these wise words of Nicholas Bate as I was pondering some invitations to chaos that were on my desk.
Remember, chaos doesn't come with warning labels.
Deeply Missed
Read any of the material about Tom Wolfe at this National Endowment for the Humanities site.
An excerpt:
Bruce Cole: I wanted to talk about literature and you as a chronicler. You just spent a lot of time on college campuses talking to kids. What is happening with how we study literature and how we interpret literature in the academy now?
Tom Wolfe: The study of literature has been so politicized at the graduate level that I urged my daughter, who has a degree in English from Duke, not to even think about it. It's a theory-ridden field now and the theories, somewhat like the theories of the international style in architecture, are essentially political.
Memorable Encounters
Encounter A: He had long bushy hair and a beard. Was wearing a yellow Mickey Mouse t-shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes. Scruffy look but not so much that you'd give him a lot of attention.
Encounter B: They were dressed neatly and could have been grad students or professors. Every item they had on was German. They spoke German flawlessly and were circumspect in their use of German body language. I was permitted one quick glance across a room.
Encounter C: Both of them were filthy. Long unwashed hair. Large beards. Leather jackets. Greasy Levis. Motorcycle boots. One had a chain for a belt. I assumed they were armed.
Encounter D: A police supervisor. Sharp and experienced. He described the psychological problems often faced by those who were in deep undercover work. One of his concerns: an undercover officer had recently gotten a tattoo, which could be a warning sign regarding identity issues. Another topic to counter a civil rights query by a state attorney general's office: there was no way that we were going to put a female officer in an undercover assignment in a biker bar. The gangs regarded women as currency.
Encounter E: The managers explained that their employee came up clean in a local records check. [He had been convicted in California.] He was hired in a special jobs program and then transferred to the City Treasurer's Office. He was caught after an alert bank employee noticed an odd movement of over $700,000. Everyone in the office liked him. A frequent comment: "Willing to work late."
Friday, January 31, 2025
Sorely Needed
Every week, I see reasons why a White House office of this nature is needed.
Reminder
I've mentioned this before. This is a reminder.
Keep a pen and pad near your bed so you can jot down those late-night thoughts.
You know, the ones you believe you'll never forget but which usually evaporate by daylight.
Will all of them be gems? No, but enough of them will be worthy of preservation and, I hope, subsequent action.
I mention this because last night, the solution to two very important projects suddenly struck me. Fortunately, pen and pad were nearby.
And the really good news is the idea looked even better in the morning.
Thursday, January 30, 2025
From a Different World
Good movie but read the novel first.
Bernie's Job Interviewing Techniques
Althouse has the video on the onesies.
Compelling stuff.
And in a Florida Law Office
The beginning of a love story.
I am a little disappointed that her name isn't Della.
A Cycle?
Weaker citizens produce a reduction in morals which produces greater uncertainty which then requires more law which in turn creates more government which eventually produces weaker citizens.
First Paragraph
One of my favorite anecdotes about the two decades I spent working alongside China's Premier Zhou Enlai comes from the first formal words he exchanged with Henry Kissinger in 1971, at a top-secret meeting in Beijing. After more than two decades of war and threats of war, it was the first time that a senior representative of each of these great nations had sat at the same table.
- From The Man on Mao's Right: From Harvard to Tiananmen Square, My life Inside China's Foreign Ministry by Ji Chaozhu
Wednesday, January 29, 2025
Astronomy Lab Notes
In the modern university, no subject is immune from politicization.
Our Times
"I saw a guy today at Starbucks. He had no smartphone, tablet or laptop. He just sat there drinking his coffee. Like a psychopath."
- Bryan Kramer
The Balance
If there is going to be a portion of our lives that is heavily influenced by technology, does it not make sense to preserve a portion that is more human and less technical?
What would that involve?
More face-to-face conversations. Fewer texts and more phone calls. Fewer emails and more hand-written letters.
More time for small pleasures, such as a good cup of coffee made in a traditional, grind-the-beans, manner.
Or listening to live musical performances or watching stage plays instead of streaming entertainment.
Or devoting an hour a day to reading fine literature.
Or at least 30 minutes to meditation or a walk.
Or playing Sherlock Holmes and spending a little time each day to intense observation.
[Some sample questions: What types of birds are in your neighborhood? What types of trees? What are the street names five streets over? How many of your neighbors can you name? Who is on your city council? If you looked at the night sky tonight, which planets would be visible?]
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
A Morning Exercise
A Large Regular has a great one by Tony Robbins.
Repealing Affirmative Action
The Free Press: Christopher Caldwell on "The Biggest Policy Change of the Century."
Times are A-Changing
FutureLawyer, the ultimate techie, talks about the allure of DeepSeek and an even deeper relationship he has with a female bot named Sunshine.
When Observing Organization Charts
As you glance at an organization chart, recognize that the white space between the boxes is where a great deal of the action is, but also recognize that it can be very difficult to determine where the people stop, and the organization begins.
Also remember that an organization does not think, speak, feel, or breathe. It also does not hold affection or loyalty.
Those actions can only be taken by individuals.
The question is whether they will do so.
Keep in Mind
Who controls the past controls the future,
Who controls the present controls the past.
- George Orwell
Monday, January 27, 2025
The Deep, Deep Sleep of England
Down here it was still the England I had known in my childhood: the railway-cuttings smothered in wild flowers, the deep meadows where the great shining horses browse and meditate, the slow-moving streams bordered by willows, the green bosoms of the elms, the larkspurs in the cottage gardens; and then the huge peaceful wilderness of outer London, the barges on the miry river, the familiar streets, the posters telling of cricket matches and Royal weddings, the men in bowler hats, the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, the red buses, the blue policemen - all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs.
- From Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell, 1938
Last Paragraph
Her reply was surprising: She didn't think any of them would get the nomination. A self-promoting New York real estate developer, however, had announced his candidacy three days before, appearing in a Manhattan office building he pretended to own, making a few off-the-cuff-sounding remarks about Mexican immigration and how great America could be, and eliciting the unanimous ridicule of the press corps. Coulter stonily spoke his name. Her fellow panelists seemed to think she was cracking a joke. They twisted their faces into histrionic expressions of puzzlement to play along. The studio audience roared with laughter.
- From The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties by Christopher Caldwell
Sunday, January 26, 2025
Saturday, January 25, 2025
Keep This in Mind
Frequent Conversation
"You know, dog, you've got a good gig here. You've got a nice house, a big yard, good food, and two live-in servants who monitor your every mood."
Response: (Stare)
Saturday Morning
My wife is ill.
My dog is rapidly aging.
My desk is packed.
But coffee is calling my name.
Friday, January 24, 2025
Effective Communication
“The man who did the shouting at the P.S.U.C. post down on our right was an artist at the job. Sometimes, instead of shouting revolutionary slogans he simply told the Fascists how much better we were being fed than they were. His account of the Government rations was apt to be a little imaginative. 'Buttered toast!' - you could hear his voice echoing across the lonely valley - 'We're just sitting down to buttered toast over here! Lovely slices of buttered toast!' I do not doubt that, like the rest of us, he had not seen butter for weeks or months past, but in the icy night the news of buttered toast probably set many a fascist mouth watering. It even made mine water, though I knew he was lying.”
First Paragraph
Peter, James, and John. Paul and his missionary companion, Barnabas. All of these men were Jews, though we identify them with "the origins of Christianity." This is because we know that their efforts would eventually lead to the formation of that later - and predominantly gentile - religious community. But they did not know this. Committed to their movement's core prophecy - "The times are fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand! Repent, and trust in the good news!" - they foresaw no extended future. They passionately believed that God was about to fulfill his ancient promises to Israel: to redeem history, to defeat evil, to raise the dead, and to establish a universal reign of justice and peace.
- From When Christians Were Jews: The First Generation by Paula Fredriksen
Thursday, January 23, 2025
"What is life as a Hermit?"
Check out The New Camaldoli Hermitage.
Hmm. A few days there might work wonders.
Wednesday, January 22, 2025
The Executive Orders: What Will Stand and What will Fall
Yale Law School professor Jed Rubenfeld at The Free Press examines some of Trump's most important executive orders.
Time well-spent.
The Stoic
An RV pulls up in front of a Florida courthouse. The door of the RV opens slowly, and a lawyer emerges, wearing a toga.
His hair is perfect.
A crowd quickly assembles, and he speaks.
I have been remiss and am ordering a copy today.
[Photo by Denys Kostyuchenko at Unsplash]
Biz Travel Flashbacks
The Ashleigh Brilliant postcards at the Santa Barbara Airport. The Lincoln Fox sculpture at the Albuquerque Airport. A 12-hour flight from Pittsburgh to Phoenix. A flight canceled due to storms in Atlanta and then a rainy rush the next morning to teach a class in Tallahassee. The cabbie in San Juan who knew all of the state capitals. The rocket-like take-offs from The John Wayne Airport. Crossing the Navajo Reservation at night. Landing at Reagan National and being in my hotel room in 20 minutes. A drive from Frankfurt to Heidelburg. The porpoises at The Kahala Hilton in Hawaii. Night drive from New Hampshire to Maine. Being the only passenger on a large airliner flying out of Yuma. The entrance of Pittsburgh. The advantage of ugly luggage. A meeting on Capitol Hill. Undercover agents in Kaiserslautern. Listening to the "Nixon in China" musical while driving through the fog in Oakland. A dead motorcyclist in San Francisco. A very shady establishment in Frankfurt. Securing my room at a spooky hotel in North Carolina. Staying at The World Trade Center. Studying the Mississippi barges in St. Paul. Wandering through the tunnels of downtown Houston. A wasp in Baton Rouge. An audit in La Mesa. The River Walk in San Antonio. The Peabody Hotel's ducks in Memphis. A kettle of vultures circling my suite in Miami. Driving along the Gulf Coast from Beaumont to Houston. The Napoleon House in New Orleans. Jogging directions at the Detroit Renaissance Center. The lemon cake in Washington, D.C. The airport slot machines in Las Vegas. Racing through multiple airports. A stormy flight from Salt Lake City to Helena. Raccoons in Atlanta. A would-be criminal in Honolulu. MacArthur Park in LA. The view from the Army CID regional commander's office at the Presidio.
Moral Clarity
I decline utterly to be impartial between the fire brigade and the fire.
- Winston Churchill
Tuesday, January 21, 2025
First Paragraph
A dozen years ago, when evil seemed funnier than it does now, Ron Reagan, the son of former President Ronald Reagan, had a television talk show that he taped in Los Angeles.
- From Evil: An Investigation by Lance Morrow
Civil Rights Progress
City Journal: Christopher Rufo on Trump's DEI actions.
Keeping the Lid On
Jeffrey Blehar, writing at National Review, notes a big reason why Joe Biden didn't fire anyone.
Never Forget
The American revolutionaries may have been the only ones in the history of the world who sought to limit their own power.
That, in itself, justified their renown.
Monday, January 20, 2025
March 4, 1865
Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address has withstood the test of history for its brilliance in wording and leadership.
An excerpt:
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it-- all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war-- seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.
Best Wishes to the New President and the Entire Nation
Sunday, January 19, 2025
Saturday, January 18, 2025
First Paragraph
This book is about my fifteen years at Apple, my efforts to make great software while I was there, and the stories and observations I want to relate about those times. If you want to know what it was like to give a demo to Steve Jobs, or why the iPhone touchscreen keyboard turned out the way it did, or what made Apple's product culture special, read on.
- From Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda
"I See Dead Amendments"
Law professor Jonathan Turley on President Biden's bizarre declaration on the Equal Rights Amendment.
Keep in mind that members of the White House staff participated in the issuance of that declaration. The Vice President also issued the statement.
Creativity Wow
Prolific writer and Beatles wizard Nicholas Bate has an Exhibit A on "Just How Good Was Paul McCartney?" I think we suspected the answer but click here.
Hydrants, M&Ms, and the LA Fires
My new Substack article is up.
[BTW: I've been getting a lot of positive comments on the earlier and related essay proposing the creation of a White House Office of Crisis Identification. Here's hoping that some devoted Substack readers are in the Trump Transition Team.]
Friday, January 17, 2025
Hiring Perspectives: A Series
I was weak at selection. They all looked good to me. So I needed a strong idea to help me. It was: Hire the one you would rather work for.
- From Further Up the Organization by Robert Townsend (published in 1985).
The Shortest Inaugural Address in American History
George Washington's Second Inaugural Address in 1793.
Fellow Citizens:
I am again called upon by the voice of my country to execute the functions of its Chief Magistrate. When the occasion proper for it shall arrive, I shall endeavor to express the high sense I entertain of this distinguished honor, and of the confidence which has been reposed in me by the people of united America.
Previous to the execution of any official act of the President the Constitution requires an oath of office. This oath I am now about to take, and in your presence: That if it shall be found during my administration of the Government I have in any instance violated willingly or knowingly the injunctions thereof, I may (besides incurring constitutional punishment) be subject to the upbraidings of all who are now witnesses of the present solemn ceremony.
Chasing Down a Churchill Quote
Part of the morning, a small part I hope, will be spent chasing down a Churchill line I read back in the Sixties.
It lingered with me.
Espresso will be part of the search.
Thursday, January 16, 2025
Two Leaders to Study
Given the likely changes in the years ahead, I recommend a close study of these two leaders:
Post on the Wall
The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.
- Daniel Patrick Moynihan
[Execupundit note: The ability of politics to change a culture does not mean that in all instances it will be saving that culture. It can also destroy a culture.]
A Good Sign
I have recently seen a big jump in requests for training and coaching.
Clients I have not heard from in months are calling.
Here's hoping the freeze that has so harmed the job market is lifting.
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
The Seating Chart and More
PJ Media reports that possible changes in the White House Press room may be coming.
Among the Barely Noticed Hardships That Made the Nation
"Half-starved, their teams grew weaker and weaker while the roads grew worse, and so the loads that could be carried kept growing smaller. Grant later told Halleck that the incredible number of 10,000 animals had perished on this road; the troops were on half-rations, and it was perfectly clear that when winter came the road could hardly be used at all."
- From Grant Takes Command by Bruce Catton regarding the efforts to supply Federal troops that were trapped by Confederate forces
Politicizing the Reading Experience
GOAL: Select stories written by the group of people that the book is about. The phrase Own Voices has been used most recently to indicate that a member of a group is writing from their first-person experience. The author and/or illustrator may be drawing from their experience as a member of a particular racial or ethnic identity, such as Black or tribally enrolled in the Cherokee Nation, or as a member of an affinity group, such as queer or transgender. While it isn’t always obvious when reading an author’s biography if they are writing an Own Voices story, it’s a good idea to seek out these options when race or culture are a critical element of a book.
Reach for: We Are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom and Michaela Goade, a picture book inspired by indigenous-led efforts of environmental activism that was written by a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe Indians and illustrated by a member of the Raven moiety and Kiks.áti Clan. Also consider When Aiden Became a Brother, a picture book celebrating a child’s coming out and his family’s subsequent support, by Kyle Lukoff, a transgender author, and Kaylani Juanita, a femme queer illustrator.
- An excerpt from the national Parent Teacher Association guidelines on the Family Reading Experience.
[Execupundit note: A lot of great literature would not meet their standards.]
Is HR Software Screening Out Too Many Applicants?
This issue keeps bubbling along. It deserves far more attention.
Hiring departments need to take back control from Human Resources.
First Paragraph
I offer the following comparison of Haiti, a former French slave colony, and the Dominican Republic, a former Spanish slave colony, to demonstrate that culture matters. The two countries share the island of Hispaniola, largely neutralizing geography, climate, and environment as possible explanations for their divergent histories.
- From The Central Liberal Truth: How Politics Can Change a Culture and Save It from Itself by Lawrence E. Harrison
Tuesday, January 14, 2025
An Office in the White House Basement
My latest Substack column is up.
Many thanks to those of you who are spreading the word about my Substack articles.
As the Society Declines
The top grossing films in 1958.
- South Pacific
- Auntie Mame
- Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
- The Big Country
- The Inn of the Sixth Happiness
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
- Indiscreet
- Separate Tables
- Gigi
- I want to Live!
- Marjorie Morningstar
- The Bravados
- Vertigo
Monday, January 13, 2025
While Studying Culture
I recently ran across this item from a 2006 David Brooks column in The New York Times:
Between 1997 and 2002, the UN mission of Kuwait picked up 246 parking violations per diplomat. Diplomats from Egypt, Chad, Sudan, Mozambique, Pakistan, Ethiopia, and Syria also committed huge numbers of violations. Meanwhile, not a single parking violation by a Swedish diplomat was recorded. Nor were there any by diplomats from Denmark, Japan, Israel, Norway or Canada.
Cabinet of the Canceled
City Journal: Abigail Shrier on Trump's selections.
Responding in California
Quillette: Three Hard Truths About California's Fire Crisis.
"Red Wind" by Raymond Chandler (1938)
Read all of Raymond Chandler's story here.
Sunday, January 12, 2025
Saturday, January 11, 2025
Learning About the Enemies of Israel and America
Now, the ICC is an “international court” the way the food court at EPCOT Center is an international court. Which is why I think the ICC, which issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, had the most to gain from Poland reneging on its “obligations.” Set aside the fact that the warrant is illegitimate because (for one) the ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel. Were the ICC to be the reason for the arrest of the leader of the Jewish state at Auschwitz—at Auschwitz, for Pete’s sake—it would be exposed as a threat to the democratic order and as a tool of the regimes that both deny the Holocaust and seek to repeat it.
Read the rest of Seth Mandel's essay in Commentary magazine.
Saturday Morning Plus
Boxing books for donation to either a charity or my favorite used bookstore. Clearing out old files. Sending off some business proposals. Clearing desks. Billing.
And some reading, of course.
But also: Coffee. Conversation. Gratitude. Work on a new Substack column.
[The most recent one is here.]
Every day should have gratitude.
[Photo by Nick Fewings at Unsplash]
Friday, January 10, 2025
Fire in the City of Angels
"Between January 2023 and May 2024, more than 300 fire hydrants were stolen from LA County streets, according to data from the Golden State Water Company, which manages the fire hydrants."
and
"Ten years ago, California voters approved spending $7.5 billion to build water storage and improve state water facilities - but by 2023 not one dam had been finished, per the Los Angeles Times."
Read all of the Nellie Bowles column in The Free Press.
First Paragraph
Senior Lieutenant Alexander Logachev loved radiation the way other men loved their wives. Tall and good-looking, twenty-six years old, with close-cropped dark hair and ice-blue eyes, Logachev had joined the Soviet army when he was still a boy. They had trained him well. The instructors from the military academy outside Moscow taught him with lethal poisons and unshielded radiation. He traveled to the testing grounds of Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, and to the desolate East Urals Trace, where the fallout from a clandestine accident still poisoned the landscape; eventually, Logachev's training took him even to the remote and forbidden islands of Novaya Zemlya, high in the Arctic Circle and ground zero for the detonation of the terrible Tsar Bomba, the largest thermonuclear device in history.
- From Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham
Thursday, January 09, 2025
Teaching EEO Again
Back in front of the class.
A huge array of topics.
It's like Europe in One Day.
I'm armed with espresso.
Beware of the Dystopian Utopians
Orwell, Huxley, and Bradbury. We were living in a blend of their novels and then along came The Great Clarification.
Check out my latest Substack essay here.
Wednesday, January 08, 2025
A Few Minds to Follow in No Particular Order
Plato. Aristotle. Homer. Solzhenitsyn. Epictetus. Seneca. Madison. Tacitus. Shakespeare. Cervantes. Taleb. Swift. Locke. Jefferson. Mill. Ellington. Melville. Gibbon. Ellison. Franklin. Tocqueville. Dickens. Lincoln. Berry. Aron. Grant. Thatcher. Douglass. Trollope. Johnson (Samuel and Paul). Twain. Kurzweil. Tolstoy. Moynihan. Tennyson. Proust. Chesterton. Unamuno. Lewis. Conrad. Orwell. Bellow. Scalia. Sowell. Murray. Vargas Ilosa. Yeats.
Tuesday, January 07, 2025
A Full Day
Was teaching a workshop on Equal Employment Opportunity today. Bright audience. Great questions.
Have another session later this week in another city. Also working on some Substack essays.
Bear with me.
Monday, January 06, 2025
Kindness
Many thanks to Ray at Mitigating Chaos for the kind mention.
I've been reading and enjoying his blog since it was "A Simple Village Undertaker."
Big Clive
In the forty years it took me to write this book, I only gradually realized that the finished work, if it were going to be true to the pattern of my experience, would have no pattern. It would be organized like the top of my desk, from which the last assistant I hired to sort it out has yet to reappear. The book I wanted to write had its origins in the books I was reading. Several times, in my early days, I had to sell my best books to buy food, so I never underlined anything. When conditions improved I became less fastidious. Not long after I began marking passages for future consideration, I also began keeping notes in the margin beside the markings, and then longer notes on the endpapers. Those were the very means by which Montaigne invented the modern essay; and at first I must have had an essay of my own in mind: a long essay; but one with the usual shape, a single line of argument moving through selected perceptions to a neat conclusion.
- From Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts by Clive James
Seeger Thought Stalin Was "Heavy-Handed"
Michael C. Moynihan at The Free Press on the real reason for the attack on Bob Dylan's going electric.
Sunday, January 05, 2025
Saturday, January 04, 2025
Considering the New Year
It seemed as if the last year only had five months.
The sense that time is shooting past may be a sign of age, but it may be something deeper and more ingrained.
Perhaps we should merge months and conduct our planning around a five-month schedule to reflect psychological reality.
Seriously.
[Photo by Nathan Dumlao at Unsplash]
Friday, January 03, 2025
In the Stack
"I can imagine the surprise and, at the same moment, dread that will overcome you all. But you need have no worries, everything is so well prepared here hardly anything can go wrong."
- German artillery soldier on the verge of the German invasion of the Soviet Union
Thursday, January 02, 2025
Debussy
Cultural Offering (A life well-lived) has the mix.
No surprise there. The man knows music.
[Photo by Romain Virtuel at Unsplash]
A World Without Work?
My latest Substack essay on A.I. and work can be found by clicking here.
Many thanks to all of my Substack followers, paid and free. You are deeply appreciated.
[Photo by Cash Macanaya for Unsplash+]
First Paragraph
At the time I did not realize that the donkey ladies were terrorizing all of Riyadh; I thought I had a scoop.
- From Sandstorms: Days and Nights in Arabia by Peter Theroux
The First Quarter
I am setting my goals for the first quarter of the year.
There will be four main areas:
Writing. I have three major projects. Two will be done in the first quarter.
Office Organization. Long postponed. Am aiming for a new home library in the second quarter.
Study. Specific time is being set aside. The time must be preserved, or it will drift.
Coaching/Training. This is fun and is dedicated to a small pool of clients.
[Photo by Arnaud Papa at Unsplash]