Category: Uncategorized

Decades ago when I was in high school, I came across a Samuel Johnson quote: “Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.”

It struck a chord with me. That prompted me to read James Boswell’s “Life of Samuel Johnson.”

An interesting bit of trivia. The credit for the first major dictionary of the English language goes to Samuel Johnson, also known as the great lexicographer. His “A Dictionary of the English Language” published in 1755 became the dominant English dictionary for over a century and is considered the first truly authoritative, comprehensive English dictionary.

Today I was reminded of that book during a conversation with a friend. The context was what Trump was doing. I quoted Johnson. “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Johnson’s view was that pretended patriotism is often used as a cover for self-interest and deceit. He was critical of people who claimed to be patriots while acting in ways that undermined true national interest. Continue reading “Boswell’s “Life of Johnson””

Belgian cartoonist Philippe Geluck in his 1995 book Ma Langue au Chat wrote, “La mort, c’est un peu comme la connerie. Le mort, lui, il ne sait pas qu’il est mort . . . ce sont les autres qui sont tristes. Le con c’est pareil.”

Ricky Gervais adapted that insight. In October 2013 he wrote on twitter, “When you are dead, you do not know you are dead. It’s only painful & difficult for others. The same applies when you are stupid.”

Being stupid is not a crime. But beyond a certain point, people with very low IQ damage society. Their retardation is pernicious, particularly if they occupy positions of power and influence. Here’s a recent example. Continue reading “Pernicious Retardation”

“‘I sometimes think,’ said the Eternal, ‘that the stars never shine more brightly than when reflected in the muddy waters of a wayside ditch.'”

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Maduro

On January 3rd, the US Delta Force captured Nicolás Maduro, the dictator of Venezuela, in an overnight operation in Caracas that caught Maduro off-guard. The action was planned for months and executed flawlessly without a single US casualty.

Time.com reports: “President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and his wife, Cilia Flores, were seized in a pre-dawn raid in Caracas by American special operations forces, the culmination of months of covert intelligence work and steadily escalating military pressure ordered by President Donald Trump to oust the authoritarian leader. The operation, officials said, unfolded in less than half an hour overnight but drew on weeks of rehearsals and a vast armada of aircraft and intelligence assets that tracked Maduro’s behavioral habits.”

Maduro and his wife were transported to New York to face drug‑trafficking charges. It appears to be the stuff that military action movies are made of.

No doubt there will be a movie soon.

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Venezuela has the largest proven crude oil reserves in the world. The crude is heavy and requires petroleum refineries that can handle it. Venezuela does not have the capacity and depended on the US gulf coast refineries. Continue reading “Reflections”

Slavery is as old as civilization. As hunter-gatherers, humans could not have held slaves. Only with the advent of settled agriculture it became possible for some people to own other people. Every civilization has had the institution of slavery although one may get the impression that only the whites have enslaved blacks, and that the Americans in particular are guilty of the crime of slavery. 

Although that’s a common enough misconception, there’s no justification for it in this day of easy access to historical information. A quick question to any of the AI engines is all you need to learn about the awful history of slavery.

The Atlantic slave trade is the most cited but was neither unique nor even the worst. During the Atlantic slave trade, which lasted from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, around 12 million Africans were put on slave ships, sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and sold into slavery.  Of this approximately 600,000 were transported to north America, which means that about 5% of all African slaves from the Atlantic slave trade were brought to America.

The Europeans did not capture slaves in Africa. The job of capturing Africans and selling them to Europeans was done by Africans. Africans enslaved Africans. They were the original slavers. Continue reading “Slavery”

I looked at the title of this post and realized that the two words in it differ only in one letter. Funny, isn’t it? It’s going to be a sunny Sunday. Funny and sunny rhyme. I’m quite the wordsmith today. Which reminds me that I learned William Wordsmith’s 1804 poem Daffodils by heart in middle school and can still recite it by heart. Its final lines are the best:

“And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.”

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So, what’s happening? Yesterday Courtenay drove down from Oakland to visit for a bit. Hadn’t seen her since January. She had tales of woe. Got fired from her job a few days ago; car’s leaking oil and could set her back a few thousand in repairs; husband and teenage son are tearing around the house breaking stuff; bills to pay; neighbors are being jerks, etc. But she’s a good sport and laughs it off.

You can take the girl out of Toledo, Ohio but you cannot take the Toledo, Ohio out of the girl, is what they say. Continue reading “Sundry Sunday”

Life is a random draw. Much of life is contingent and it’s like a random walk with many unpredictable twists and turns. Many unforeseen events have taken me down roads that I had no inkling about even a few months before I embarked on an adventure. One of those lucky turns happened around 33 years ago.

I was at the Sunnyvale Public Library, waiting in line to check out a few books. SPL was close to home. I would go there a few times a month. While waiting to check out books, I randomly picked up a book from a sorting cart. It was titled “Micromotives and Macrobehavior.” I glanced at a few paragraphs and decided to borrow the book.

That evening, I started reading the book. In a day, I had read the book. I found it fascinating. The author, it turned out, was someone named Thomas Schelling. He was an economist. It dawned on me for the first time that I was an economist. Until that point, I had not only not known what economics was but I had no idea that I was actually an economist.

A few months later, I was telling about that to a friend of mine, VA, in Palo Alto. He said, “Hey, I think you should get a Ph.D. in economics!” That planted a seed. Continue reading “Thomas Schelling”

I am impressed by AI models. They are amazing. We’ve come a long way from Eliza. If you’ve never heard of Eliza, it makes my point that we’ve come a long way. What’s Eliza? Let an AI answer.

“ELIZA is a pioneering AI program created in the mid-1960s by Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT. It was designed to simulate human-like conversations using simple pattern matching and substitution techniques. ELIZA’s most famous script, the DOCTOR script, mimics a psychotherapist by rephrasing user statements into questions, creating the illusion of understanding. Despite its limitations, ELIZA captured the imagination of users, leading to a phenomenon known as the Eliza effect, where people felt emotionally connected to the program, even though it was not genuinely intelligent. ELIZA laid the foundation for modern conversational AI and continues to influence the development of AI technologies today.” Continue reading “AI’s view of this blog”

Thanksgiving day is special because unlike Diwali or Christmas, it is non-religious. It has a special appeal to me because the motivating emotion is one of gratitude.

I have a ritual which I do several times a day: I pause for a minute and focus my mind on how fortunate I am for all the unearned blessing I have. I thank the universe for conspiring in my favor. Certainly things could have been better but it could have been a lot worse too.

But today’s special. I can be specific about what I am grateful about. First of all, I am thankful for my friends and family. I don’t have many but those that I have are wonderful. They give without measure and I do my best to reciprocate. You know who you are. Thank you. Continue reading “Happy Thanksgiving”

Civilizations self-destruct. The English historian, Arnold J. Toynbee, wrote, “Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.” That goes for cities and countries too.

The West is facing an existential threat that is mainly brought on by a mix of suicidal empathy and collective guilt. Both of those are consequences of ignorance of history and stupidity. That said, I will not write off the West yet. The West has successfully triumphed over evil before. The West will defeat Islam too. I think the darkest hour has come but dawn is about to break.

What gives me hope? The young. Here’s one: @kiyahwillis. Her X profile says she is “Ex- Woke Leftist, Ex-Nonbinary | Current advocate for the secular liberal right | Fellow @ObjStdInstitute, Contributor @FreeBlckThought”

She posted the following on X: Continue reading “New York City”