Quote of the Day

A later realization – I suppose I have sensed it most of my life, but I have understood it philosophically only during the preparation of this talk – has been the beauty of the idea of the pursuit of happiness. Familiar words, easy to take for granted; easy to misconstrue. The idea of the pursuit of happiness is at the heart of the attractiveness of the civilization to so many outside it or on its periphery. I find it marvelous to contemplate to what an extent, after two centuries, and after the terrible history of the earlier part of this century, the idea has come to a kind of fruition. It is an elastic idea; it fits all men. It implies a certain kind of society, a certain kind of awakened spirit. I don’t imagine my father’s parents would have been able to understand this idea. So much is contained in it; the idea of the individual, responsibility, choice, the life of the intellect, the idea of a vocation and perfectibility and achievement. It is an immense human idea. It cannot be reduced to a fixed system. It cannot generate fanaticism. But it is known to exist; and because of that, other more rigid systems in the end blow away.

V.S. Naipaul, “Our Universal Civilization” (1992) in The Writer and the World.

Facebook is Dead to Me

After soliciting the help of the CB community, for which many thanks, I found that something I had done in setting up my Facebook personal page apparently interfered with something I was trying to do in setting up my FB fan page. I couldn’t figure out how to do what I wanted, my attempt to do what I thought was necessary made the situation worse, perhaps irreversibly, and there appears to be no written explanation on FB’s help pages that addresses my specific situation. What drove me over the edge was that there is no way to contact FB directly to get an answer. I have contacted FB regarding copyright violations and they responded promptly, and I assume they would respond promptly if I wanted to buy advertising. But tech support? Ha ha ha. Facebook users are raw material for the production of ad revenue, not members of a community to be allocated system resources above the minimum needed for bare survival. It’s like being a chicken in a coop. You and the other chickens might imagine that the farmer is part of your circle, but this is an illusion that disappears as soon as you try to get something beyond your daily feed allotment. So I deleted my account.

I reopened the account a few days later to see if anything was different — perhaps the system needed time to propagate new values? perhaps I could now implement the changes I wanted? Nope. So I deleted the account again. The hell with this. I’ll wait the fourteen days and give it another try after my account is wiped clean, but I have low expectations. I should have hired someone who knows FB to get me set up. It’s not worth the time and aggravation otherwise.

It will be interesting to see whether FB eventually decides to reimplement human service beyond the current minimal level.

“Folk Art Battleship”

I was recently in Milwaukee at a very interesting antique store in the 5th ward called the “Riverview Antique Market“. A model caught my eye…

Of course it was a very well made “4 stacker” US destroyer of WW1 vintage. These destroyers were built in large numbers towards the end of WW1 to defeat German U-boats and were subsequently transferred to England in 1940 as part of “lend lease” as the US tried to help the Allies while remaining neutral prior to our entry in WW1.

When I looked at the price tag I was appropriately saddened as they described it as a “folk art battleship”. The antique owner didn’t even think to spend a couple of minutes online trying to figure out if it was a model of a real ship or just an “art object” that someone built from scratch.

Sad but likely only 1 in 10,000 individuals who passed by that model would have seen that it was a “real” model; the odds are probably even less in a hipster neighborhood of people looking for “vintage” objects. After all, it is all just art, anyways.

I, for one, was impressed.

Cross posted at LITGM

Quote of the Day 2

Caroline Glick:

Do you believe a stronger leader than Netanyahu is needed for such a change to occur?
 
A big problem throughout the Western world, not only in Israel, is that due in large part to the intellectual terror of the left there is a huge leadership crisis. People who actually have the strength of their convictions, the character and moral fiber to stand up for their country, are being marginalized. As a result, the people who end up getting through the vetting process of the elite tend to be without strong convictions. This is the real problem. And the answer I found is that the way to have strong leaders is to have strong people. We have to do the hard work the public demands of leadership and then I believe the leaders we need will emerge or the leaders we have will be strengthened.