In a recent review of a new biography of John Maynard Keynes in the New York Review of Books (3 Mar 94), the following two quotes were used from Keynses' General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money.

On Stock Brokers:
"Professional investment may be likened to those newspaper competitions in which the competitors have to pick the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize being awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the average preferences of the competitors as a whole; so that each competitor has to pick, not those faces which he himself finds the prettiest, but those which he thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of the other competitors, all of whom are looking at the problem from the same point of view."

On solving unemployment:
"If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish and leave it to private enterprise on well tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again . . . there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing."



"The Midwest specializes in a certain lonely farmboy type who wants to know everything . . . But these farmboys own a visionary energy . . ."

Revenge
Jim Harrison, p.19


Tis a gift to be simple
Tis a gift to be free
Tis a gift to come down where you ought to be
And when we find ourselves in a place just right
T'will be in the valley of love and delight

When true simplicity is gained
To bow and to bend we will not be ashamed
To turn, turn will be our delight
And by turning, turning, we come round right.

Shaker hymn, 19th Century US




"In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing."

"My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him all good things trout as well as eternal salvation -- come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy."

Norman MacLean, A River Runs Through It

"When I was a young teacher and still thought of myself as a billiards player, I had the pleasure of watching Albert Abraham Michelson play billiards nearly every noon. He was by then one of our national idols, having been the first American to win the Noble Prize in science (for measurement of the speed of light, among other things). To me, he took on added luster because he was the best amateur billiards player I had ever seen. One noon, while he was still shaking his head at himself for missing an easy shot after he had had a run of thirty-five or thirty-six, I said to him, 'You are a fine billiards player, Mr. Michelson.' He shook his head at himself and said, 'No. I'm getting old. I can still make the long three-cushion shots, but I'm losing the soft touch on the short ones.' He chalked up, but instead of taking the next shot, he finished what he had to say, 'Billiards, though, is a good game, but billiards is not as good a game as chess.' Still chalking his cue, he said, 'Chess, though, is not as a good a game as painting.' He made it final by saying, 'But painting is not as good a game as physics.' Then he hung up his cue and went home to spend the afternoon painting under the large tree in his front lawn.

"It is in the world of slow-time that truth and art are found as one."
___________, Young Men and Fire




"it is well to observe the force and virtue and consequences of discoveries; and these are to be seen nowhere more conspicuously than in those th ree which were unknown to the ancients . . .; namely, printing, gunpowder, and the magnet. For these three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world; the first in literature, the second in warfare, and the third in navigation; whence have followed innumberable changes; insomuch that no empire, no sect, no star seems to have exerted greater power and influence in human affairs than these mechanical discoveries." -- Francis Bacon, Novum Organum (1620).

(With a little word replacement it could be one of the quotes you see all the time about the latest techno-fad.) Of the three discoveries, none were of course discovered by the West.







The lead article in the 5 Nov 93 NYR is a translation of a speech by Havel to the Council of Europe telling it like it is. That Europe has missed the point of unification and is doing it in away that is guaranteed to fail. He really hits the nail on the head:

"To put it succinctly, Europe today lacks an ethos, it lacks generosity, it lacks the ability to see beyond the horizons of its own particular interests, be they partisan or otherwise, and to resist pressure from various lobbying groups. There is no real identification in Europe with the meaning and purpose of integration. Europe does not appear to have
achieved a genuine and profound sense of responsibility for itself as a whole, and thus for the future of all those who live in it."

And then using Yugoslavia as an example:

"The peace talks ought to come up with a comprehensive defense of precisely those values on which the future Europe should stand - that is, the values of a civic society based on the peaceful coexistence of different ethnic groups. Instead they are, more and more blatantly, an occasion to argue new borders between ethnically purified mini-states,
as defined by the outcome of clashes between illegal armies. An internationally recognized multinational state is being subdivided according to the dictates of fanatical warlords. Regardless of how well intentioned - and didn't Chamberlain have the best of intentions? - such behavior means sanctifying the idea of the "ethnically pure state" and
giving up on the idea of the civic society. We talk and talk, we drown in compromises, we redraw maps, we read the lips of ethnic cleansers, and with increasingly serious consequences, we forget the fundamental values upon which we would like to shape the future of our continent. We are cutting off the very branch we are sitting on."




"At those sharp points in his career when accusations against him were encouraged, when a rival faction wanted him removed from office, or when a new regime put him to torture on suspicion of conspiracy, what we know of the charges does not include blasphemy. Foes and friends too, half jokingly may accuse him of being a dyed-in-the-wool republican or, on the contrary, of catering to Medici rulers, of roaming too long in too many foreign countries, of speaking ill of the Florentines, of being a bastard's son, of reading too many books, of being impractical, of being ribald, a lackey, an intellect, a sodomite, a philosopher. Socrates was accused of impiety; not Machivelli, not even with trumped up evidence. The most his enemies can say is that while he does not lack faith, there is not much to spare."

- Sebastian de Grazia
Machivelli in Hell


"When you leave the main roads you force your way down barely trodden paths. Finally, you see a field cleared, a cabin made from half-shaped tree trunks admitting light through one narrow window only. You think that you have at last reached the home of the American peasant. Mistake. You make your way into this cabin that seems the asylum of all wretchedness but the owner of the placed is dressed in the same clothes as yours and he speaks the language of towns. On his rough table are books and newspapers; he himself is anxious to know exactly what is happening in old Europe and asks you to tell him what has most struck you in his country. One might think one was meeting a rich landowner who had come to spend just a few nights in a hunting lodge."

de Tocqueville, (upon encountering a settler of the Michigan frontier)
Democracy in America, 1833




"An anarchist is someone who doesn't need a cop to tell him what to do" - Utah Phillips

"The problem with capitalism is that the Republicans think it is the shop on the corner; the Russians think it is the factory owner; they are both wrong. It is the phone company"
- Karl Hess

Interviewer: What is an anarachist?

Karl Hess: An anarchist is a good neighbor, a good friend, and a good lover.

Int: Is that all?!!

KH: So what do you want? Rules!!



l
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af
fa
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one
li
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-e. e. cummings


A Charm invests a face
Imperfectly beheld
The Lady dare not lift her Veil
For fear it be dispelled

But peers beyond her mesh
And wishes and denies
Lest Interview annul a want
That Image satisfies

-- Emily Dickinson


The Bird her punctual music brings
And lays it in its place --
Its place is in the Human Heart
And in the Heavenly Grace --
What respite from her thrilling toil
Did Beauty ever take --
But Work might be electric Rest
To those that Magic make --

Emily Dickinson, 1883







Downhill Skiing is for those people who feel they are not getting enough use of their health insurance. -JD

High Tech in New England is maintained by immigrant labor from the Midwest.
- JD 1983

As your competitor, I think it is a very good idea. -JD 1984

Building barriers to competition is just another way of walling yourself in - JD 1982


While there may not be unity in diversity, there is fascism in monotony. Jeff Day


"What was Marx's problem? Was he an only child?" -- Doonesbury, Gary Trudeau

Political Cartoon during early days of Solidarity. One Communist Party chief to another looking at a huge Soviet Realism Poster over Gdansk Shipyard that says: "Proletariats of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains." The Party Chief says, "I don't care where it came from, get rid of it."

"The only difference between communism and state capitalism is that communism benefits the people." - Lenin

"Asymmetry doesn't generalize." - Day, 1995.

Synchronous RPC? You mean like co-routines in Cobol? - JD 1981

"While there may not unity in diversity, there is fascism in monotony" - Jeff Day, 1994

The sign "=" should be read "is easily confused with." - Gottlieb Frege, circa 1895