I know one thing: this is no time for further gambling. John McCain rolled the dice on Sarah Palin. I’m grateful to Bob Rice of Tangent Capital for pointing out that the actuarial risk, based on mortality tables, of Palin becoming president if the Republican ticket wins the election is about 1 in 6 or 7.
That’s the same odds as your birthday falling on a Wednesday, or being delayed on two consecutive flights into Newark airport. Is America ready for that?
The lesson of the last eight years is this: when power is a passport to gamble, people can end up seriously broke or seriously dead.
There is one capable, sober guy in the Bush administration: Defense Secretary Robert Gates. He recently said that U.S. forces in Iraq had to learn counterinsurgency on the job. “But that came at a frightful human, financial and political cost,” he noted.
Gates warned that “warfare is inevitably tragic, inefficient.” He urged skepticism of any notion that “adversaries can be cowed, shocked or awed into submission, instead of being tracked down, hilltop by hilltop, house by house, block by bloody block.”
In short, he lambasted the Rumsfeld-Cheney-Bush war effort for its gambler’s irresponsibility. The financial equivalent of reckless “Shock and Awe” has been “Sub and Prime.”
I just found a copy of Argonautica by Apollonius, translated by R. C. Seaton, available online at The Internet Classics Archive A Greek epic poem written in the 3rd century BCE, it tells of a mythical voyage by Jason and the Argonauts to retrieve the Golden Fleece from Colchis.
Italy is boot-shaped, for reasons lost in the mists of geology. The South is essentially agricultural, and administered by local land authorities, called the Mafia; the North is industrial, and run by tightly interlocked corporations, called the Mafia. The largest Italian city is New York, and is linked to the mainland by a highly specialized and efficient communications system, called the Mafia
Here he is on Democracy:
Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they’ve told you what you think it is you want to hear.
A nice explanation of the economy in the Netherlands:
Apart from cheese and tulips, the main product of the country is advocaat, a drink made from lawyers.
He even tried to explain Swiss exports:
Since Switzerland has nothing else to identify it and since both its national products, snow and chocolate, melt, the cuckoo clock was invented solely in order to give tourists something to remember it by.
“Well,” said Pooh, “what I like best,” and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.
The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet.
Oppenheim’s quote highlights a dichotomy, rather than a solution to happiness. Some might believe in a nomadic lifestyle to find their fortunes in areas of abundance while minimizing risks of drought and hardship, whereas others believe in tilling the soil and building security around the land where they plant roots. The two are opposed in many ways, but I am not sure one will ever provide a perfect solution to risk.
a blog about the poetry of information security, since 1995