proverbs

Nobody is more manipulable than the paranoid.  A trusting nature enables the canniest people.

Welles

It takes effort to attribute canniness to the wide-eyed.

socially

Am I a spider?  Not if there is no fly.  But even when there is, usually not.

evening

The social dance begins, with our erstwhile partners seated comfortably, ready for a show.

respect

The beauty of your friends results partly from a walling-off, by the friends and by you, of their trashiness.  That is, friends are not only an opportunity for opening up, but also should impel us to clean up, to be better because there are those nearby who esteem and care for us - and see in.

pleading

A court is a temple within which sits a judge, meant to hold the sword in one hand, and the book of law in the other.  One approaches with care.

Ford Mustang GT in the driveway

Much of what makes American bedevilments - cars, guns, suburbs - so difficult to deal with is that they are each, in their way, so very beautiful.

variety

Great lines from youtube: "I am a Space Pirate.  And this burrito's my gold."

frank and rose

It isn't enough to say that a commercial activity has no social benefit.  First because a socially neutral commercial activity is unobjectionable.  Second because one's proper suspicion that no commercial activity could be socially neutral suggests that the benefits, as much as the detriments, might be very subtle.  Third because social benefit is too vague a phrase.

A better attack along the same lines might be, for example: when banks become too proccupied with complex trading, they become simultaneously less effective at capital intermediation and more difficult for the managers of ends requiring intermediation to profitably engage.

fly

So, we'll be flying in the upper deck of a 747 later this year.  That's a lovely pleasure: it isn't often that the elegance of a craft is so localized, and we'll be flying in the elegance.  It'll be like flying inside Marilyn Monroe's beauty mark or Jimmy Stewart's stutter.

no fly

With misinformation as complete as this, there might just be some good going on.  But probably not.

experiment

How would the abortion debate change, and how would it stay the same, if humans laid eggs like reptiles and these needed: much tending? little tending? no tending?

chicken dinner

It is beautiful to watch people work to make a social connection over drinks and dinner - the hive of tools and moves and responses, swarming to a common purpose, with elegance seen and charm felt.

Damascus Rd.

A sincere and peaceful religious faith is a crown of glory upon the common man but a millstone about the neck of the great.

geography lesson

Brooklyn and Queens are adjacent, but each is closer to Manhattan than to the other.

throne

It is difficult, without the facilities of organized religion, to carry off a dignified recognition of a common person.  And with it, quite easy.

simple

No surprise here: The worst and commonest way to lack time is to take too many breaks.

gone

She liked one Chick-Fil-A in particular.  She said they used the least seasoning.

legitimacy

A flash mob is not necessarily the people.  But neither is the same population, in its quietness the day before, the people...necessarily.  One does not want any people to understand too well what "the people" is.

oil

Wealth exists along a spectrum between husbanded produce, at one extreme, and extracted loot, on the other.  There is a moral polarity to the spectrum, the one indicated by these labels for the poles, but as usual the morality of any particular wealthiness is only lightly implied by its individual place along the spectrum.

At the productive side of the spectrum, there is as much wealth as there is labor.  It is infinite in resource, bounded by time, but multipliable by methods and machines, or better materials, or more men.  Any of these enhancements press it down the scale towards extraction.

At the extractive side of the spectrum, there is (only) as much wealth as is found.  It is finite (though huge) in resource, but unbounded by time.  Thus, in the perception of time-bound creatures such as ourselves, it may be effectively concentrated: piled up for a few years, but this will be no matter to a person who is concerned only with his own few years.

The habits of husbandry and the habits of extraction are largely, not entirely, contrary.  But they are not contradictory, and the complete person has the essential habits of both, and can both take (planning, selection, orchestration) and make (craft, fit, patience, finish).

knowlessge

One wishes some truths had never seen the light of day: the power of "heightening the differences", for example.  I know a couple that haven't gotten out, to my knowledge, and I'll keep them that way.

sober

We live in time, but in the strangest way: we are each, as it were, a snake upon a rock, a snake able to wriggle in space but basically placed along the axis of time, bound at its top and bottom at the time and place of its birth and death.  Able to move, but mostly in the middle, like a guitar string or clothes line might move in its middle, but is tied down at the ends.  The snake, though, moves by its own motivation.  That is how we are.

Strange enough, but here is the strangest bit, this snake's head travels through the snake, from tail to front, and this is felt by the snake as the passage of time.  And the movement of the snake's body occurs in the region through which the head is passing.

To identify with the sections of one's self that one has not yet reached, is needful and difficult to each of us.  One who can do so well may be wise.  One who cannot do so is little more than an animal.

next

Spending, and only spending, finally validates the possession of money.  The value of money is in security against contingency, but the realization of that value is in what is bought. 

I mean that as a familiar example of delayed validation, and its importance.  I am more thinking of global warming, or growing populations, or peak oil.  Acting on something whose validation is delayed is something few can handle, but fortunately a few can handle it, on behalf of the many: for actions (such as saving) on the basis of delayed validation requires trust (the basis of money), which is a form of openness, on the basis of hedging against contingency, which is a form of carefulness or closedness.  The right weave of these two is the thing, then - and law, finance and science are the looms.

all the modern inconveniences

Hug the acquisitive.  Possession is hard work that receives no praise and gives little pleasure.

see

Call it a home-team advantage, or a consequence of the brain's visual processing facilities, or an embedded procreative urge, or whatever you will.  But here's a question that shouldn't be answerable, but is:  What is most beautiful to behold?  Beautiful people. 

ideas

Out in the woods?  No way - what would I do with the money in my pocket?

l'escalier

Not Epcot, but Watson is the true heir to the World's Fairs.