Scott Adams on Trump's tactics in peace deals

 Episode 1296 Scott Adams: Democrats Fall for Massive Disinformation Campaign From Their Own Side (streamed live on Feb 25, 2021) (13:35)

[...] so when the Khashoggi thing first came out, and it was obvious Trump was sort of underplaying it, I said that's probably the smartest thing he's ever done, because that gives the USA tremendous leverage over Saudi Arabia, [...] because we would have a club over public opinion. Trump decided not to use that club.

What did he get in return? You don't know, do you? I don't know! Do you think that Trump, just think of his personality, think of his deal-making, and think of the fact he would've been completely aware that he had now leverage over Saudi Arabia? Do you think he didn't know that? I said it every day on live stream while it was happening? Yeah, of course he knew it. [...] Do you think [...] Saudi Arabia didn't know that? Do you think he got something in return? 

[...] we do know the peace deals between Israel and other countries started coming together, and that never happened before. What would it take for those other countries to feel safe in joining with Israel on some kind of a peace deal? Well, probably they needed to know that Saudi Arabia wasn't going to be a problem. And they weren't.

Intelligence vs. reversed stupidity

Eliezer Yudkowsky:

Someone* once said, “Not all conservatives are stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.” If you cannot place yourself in a state of mind where this statement, true or false, seems completely irrelevant as a critique of conservatism, you are not ready to think rationally about politics. 

* John Stuart Mill (in a Parliamentary debate with the Conservative MP, John Pakington, May 31, 1866):

What I stated was, that the Conservative party was, by the law of its constitution, necessarily the stupidest party. Now, I do not retract this assertion; but I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conservative. I believe that to be so obvious and undeniable a fact that I hardly think any hon. Gentleman will question it.

C. S. Lewis on the state of colleges

CSL, letter to his father, 3 Nov. 1928, after being elected Tutor and Fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford in 1924:

Two or three of us who are agreed as to what a College ought to be, have been endeavouring to stimulate the undergraduates into forming some sort of literary society. In any other Colleges the idea that undergraduates should require, or endure, stimulus in that direction from the dons, would be laughable. But this is a very curious place. All [Magdalen] College societies whatever were forbidden early in the reign of the late President—an act which was then necessitated by the savagely exclusive clubs of rich dipsomaniacs which really dominated the whole life of the place. […] When I came I found that any Magdalen undergraduate who had interests beyond rowing, drinking, motoring and fornication, sought his friends outside the College, and indeed kept out of the place as much as he could. 

[…] I am quite sure that this College will never be anything more than a country club for the idlest 'bloods' of Eton and Charterhouse as long as undergraduates retain the schoolboy's idea that it would be bad form to discuss among themselves the sort of subjects on which they write essays for their tutors. Ours at present are all absolute babies and terrific men of the world—the two characters I think nearly always go together. Old hearts and young heads, as Henry James says: the cynicism of forty and the mental crudeness and confusion of fourteen. 

Except for classics (and that only at Winchester, and only a few boys even there) I really don't know what gifts the public schools [not the same as USA public schools] bestow on their nurslings, beyond the surface of good manners: unless contempt of the things of the intellect, extravagance, insolence, self-sufficiency, and sexual perversion are to be called gifts.

Gandhi's last words

हे राम

(Roughly pronounced, "hey raam") Google Translate

Rama (Ram) was the seventh avatar of Vishnu, the sustainer.

"Since there is no god, it is our job to do His work."

Howard Bloom:

I realized I was an atheist at thirteen years old and it wasn't a choice, it just happened. But no benevolent God would be so cruel. No benevolent God would create a cosmos with such pain. Any God so vicious would be one that we, as humans, would be obliged to oppose with every muscle and every cell.

And, in fact, whether there is a god or not it is our obligation to oppose the outrages and pains of this planet. Here's something I wrote a while back.

Since there is no god, it is our job to do His work. God is not a being, he is an aspiration, a gift, a vision, a goal to seek. Ours is the responsibility of making a cruel universe turn just, of turning pains to understandings and new insights into joy, of creating ways to soar the skies for generations yet to come, of fashioning wings with which our children's children shall overcome, of making worlds of fantasy materialize as reality, of mining and transforming our greatest gifts--our passions, our imaginings, our pains, our insecurities, and our lusts.

This is the work of deity, and deity is a power that resides in us.

A full Moon can occur on Easter Sunday.

The rule for finding the date of Easter is usually stated as follows:

1. Determine the date of first full Moon on or after the first day of Spring.
2. Easter is the Sunday after that.

This eliminates the possibility of the Moon being full on Easter Sunday.

Except that it doesn't. A lunar eclipse can occur only when the Moon is full, and there was a nearly total lunar eclipse which was seen in most of Europe on Easter Sunday, April 12, 1903 (pdf).

There are two factors in the rule for Easter that contribute to this situation.

1. The first day of Spring is always assumed to be March 21. This is not exactly true. The vernal equinox (determined astronomically) can occur on March 19, 20 or 21.
2. The full Moon used is not the astronomical full Moon, but an ecclesiastical full Moon, i.e., one that is used for ease of determination.

The second factor is responsible for 1903, because the ecclesiastical full moon was on April 11.

The date of Easter is actually determined by the Roman Catholic Church using tables that were set up by Johannes Kepler when the Gregorian Calendar was established in 1582.

For further information: United States Naval Observatory, The Date of Easter.

Loyalty and lying

https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2008/05/ol4-dr-johnsons-hypothesis/

For example, in many ways nonsense is a more effective organizing tool than the truth. Anyone can believe in the truth. To believe in nonsense is an unforgeable demonstration of loyalty. 

Phaedrus - "what is good" - Plato/Jowett vs. Pirsig

Phaedrus by Plato (258d) (translated by Benjamin Jowett):

Soc. The disgrace begins when a man writes not well, but badly.

Phaedr. Clearly.

Soc. And what is well and what is badly—need we ask Lysias, or any other poet or orator, who ever wrote or will write either a political or any other work, in metre or out of metre, poet or prose writer, to teach us this?

As paraphrased in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig:

And what is good, Phaedrus , and what is not good—need we ask anyone to tell us these things?

Science and religion

Max Planck, Where Is Science Going?  (1932), page 214

Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with.

1 Thessalonians 5:21 (NKJV)

Test all things; hold fast what is good.

Picture incorrectly identified

This picture is widely identified as an ancient bridge in Kolpino, Russia.

It's actually the Rakotzbrücke (Rakotz Bridge, also called Devil's Bridge) in the Azalea and Rhododendron Park in the district of Kromlau in Goblenz, Germany. It was built as part of the park development and completed in the 1860s. 

Here's what it looks like in Google Maps.

It's also apparent it isn't as huge as it looks in the first picture. It's a semicircular arch, and the stream is about 70 feet wide, so the arch is about 35 feet high.

spoons (3)

The high value of spoons can be seen from the fact that along with cups they were frequently stolen. To guard against theft, many households had them collected and counted by the steward after the main course. Even at the papal court in Avignon it was customary to keep the doors locked after a meal and not let anyone leave until all dinnerware was accounted for.

Adamson, Food in Medieval Times, p. 169

resistance and rebellion

The people cannot be all, & always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive; if they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty...What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

Thomas Jefferson in a letter to William Stephens Smith, 13 November 1787
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/105.html

serious problems in education

Our Nation is at risk. Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world. This report is concerned with only one of the many causes and dimensions of the problem, but it is the one that undergirds American prosperity, security, and civility. We report to the American people that while we can take justifiable pride in what our schools and colleges have historically accomplished and contributed to the United States and the well-being of its people, the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people. What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur--others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments.

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. We have even squandered the gains in student achievement made in the wake of the Sputnik challenge. Moreover, we have dismantled essential support systems which helped make those gains possible. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.

Our society and its educational institutions seem to have lost sight of the basic purposes of schooling, and of the high expectations and disciplined effort needed to attain them. This report, the result of 18 months of study, seeks to generate reform of our educational system in fundamental ways and to renew the Nation's commitment to schools and colleges of high quality throughout the length and breadth of our land. That we have compromised this commitment is, upon reflection, hardly surprising, given the multitude of often conflicting demands we have placed on our Nation's schools and colleges. They are routinely called on to provide solutions to personal, social, and political problems that the home and other institutions either will not or cannot resolve. We must understand that these demands on our schools and colleges often exact an educational cost as well as a financial one.

opening paragraphs of the report A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, by The National Commission on Excellence in Education, April 1983.

The Wikipedia entry states, "The report was primarily authored by James J. Harvey, who synthesized the feedback from the commission members and the memorable language in the opening pages."

"I came like Water, and like Wind I go."

26

Oh, come with old Khayyam, and leave the Wise
To talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies;
One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.

27

Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same Door as in I went.

28

With them the Seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with my own hand labour'd it to grow:
And this was all the Harvest that I reap'd—
"I came like Water, and like Wind I go." 

51

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.  

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, tr. Edward FitzGerald

Mussolini and Vanderbilt

Time magazine, Feb. 23, 1931:

Cornelius ("Neely") Vanderbilt Jr. … stated that it was he who had supplied the rambunctious General with the anecdote of Il Duce's alleged hit & run motor drive, for relating which the General was reprimanded by the Navy Department (TIME, Feb. 9; 16). But the imaginative young publicist was very wroth because General Butler "took a story of mine, twisted it around to score a point for himself, and made me the goat." Mr. Vanderbilt then gave newsmen the "real truth": "I was riding with Mussolini, who drove. A small child ran in front of the machine … and was hit. I looked back to see if the child was hurt. Mussolini placed his hand on my knee and said: 'Never look back, Vanderbilt, always look ahead in life.' "

As "twisted" by the General, the child was killed, and Il Duce's comment was: "What is one life in the affairs of a state?"

miscellaneous quotes

History does not always repeat itself. Sometimes it just yells "Can't you remember *anything* I told you?" and lets fly with a club. --John W. Campbell

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There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, chapter 17

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A man who is not a republican at 20 has no heart; a man who is a republican at 30 has no brain. (Ne pas être un républicain à vingt est preuve de veulent du coeur; être un à trente est preuve de veulent de la tête.)

François Guizot (French statesman, 1787-1874)

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Be not over just: and be not more wise than is necessary, lest thou become stupid.

Ecclesiastes 7:16 (Douay-Rheims translation)

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"Feminism, Socialism, and Communism are one in the same, and Socialist/Communist government is the goal of feminism." - Catharine A. MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (First Harvard University Press, 1989), p.10 (not found in Google Books version)

"A world where men and women would be equal is easy to visualize, for that precisely is what the Soviet Revolution promised." - Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York, Random House, 1952), p.806

"The Women's Caucus [endorses] Marxist-Leninist thought." -- Robin Morgan, Sisterhood is Powerful, p. 597 (not found in Google Books version)
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I've often heard my liberal colleagues, after an election that the Democrats have lost, say "I don't understand. I don't know a single person that voted Republican".

Michael Munger, Professor, and Chair, Departments of Political Science, Economics, and Public Policy, Duke University in the documentary "Indoctrinate U." at about 0:52

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To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness; though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless.

Gustav Flaubert, letter to Louise Colet, August 3, 1846

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Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, "What shall we do with the Negro?" I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature's plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! If you see him on his way to school, let him alone, don’t disturb him! If you see him going to the dinner table at a hotel, let him go! If you see him going to the ballot-box, let him alone, don’t disturb him! If you see him going into a work-shop, just let him alone--your interference is doing him a positive injury.

Frederick Douglass, At the Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Boston, April, 1865

Victory In Iraq

Reason

“You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason—if you pick the proper postulates. We have ours and Cutie has his.”

“Then let’s get at those postulates in a hurry. The storm’s due tomorrow.”

Powell sighed wearily. “That’s where everything falls down. Postulates are based on assumptions and adhered to by faith. Nothing in the Universe can shake them. I’m going to bed.”

–Isaac Asimov, Reason (1941)

France: "one of the least popular countries…vanity…arrogance"

Reflecting on the reasons for the drubbing Paris received when she submitted her candidacy to host the 2008 Olympics, Jacques Julliard wrote with perceptiveness and candor:

In Moscow we have been abandoned by our European partners, by our Arab 'friends' and by our African supporters. The plain, unvarnished truth—which the whole political community does everything it can to hide—is that France has become one of the least popular countries on the planet. I have already mentioned its arrogance and vanity. To these should be added the way our rulers presume to lecture the entire world.

Jacques Julliard, "Sur une déculotée," Le Nouvel Observateur, July 19, 2001. The meeting of the International Olympic Committee before choosing the host city for the 2008 Olympics took place in Moscow.

Jean-François Revel, "Anti-Globalism and Anti-Americanism", Anti-Americanism, Encounter Books 2003.

Big Bang

From THE ALCHEMY OF THE HEAVENS by Ken Croswell
(page 113):

Popular books claim Hoyle intended "big bang" to be pejorative, but Hoyle disputed that. "The BBC was all radio in those days," he said, "and on radio, you have no visual aids, so it's essential to arrest the attention of the listener and to hold his comprehension by choosing striking words. There was no way in which I coined the phrase to be derogatory; I coined it to be striking, so that people would know the difference between the steady state model and the big bang model."