Monday, June 30, 2025

History

 

An Insight

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

Other half of the pansies by Katie G. Whipple

Other half of the pansies by Katie G. Whipple (America, 1991 - )





























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Sunday, June 29, 2025

History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

Girl Resting on Swivel Chair, 2006 by Michael Taylor

Girl Resting on Swivel Chair, 2006 by Michael Taylor (Britain, 1952 - ) 






























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Saturday, June 28, 2025

History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

Salmagundi Library, 2023 by Chien Chung-Wei

Salmagundi Library, 2023 by Chien Chung-Wei (Taiwan, 1968 - )
























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Friday, June 27, 2025

History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

Golfers; Whistler, B.C., 2025 by Darrell Wyant

Golfers; Whistler, B.C., 2025 by Darrell Wyant (Canada, 1958 - )




















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Thursday, June 26, 2025

History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

Maybe it wasn't about the market sector. Maybe it was always a political/ideological issue.

When I was a youthful econ. major (late 1970s, early 1980s), Detroit was an example of urban decline driven by economic conditions.  There were still, just, fitful major programs of public policy and private-public investment attempting to resurrect the declining city.  Or to at least halt the decline.  Nothing worked.

The general story line was that Detroit's problems were instigated by, and then exacerbated by the continuing decline of the American automotive industry.  Sure, bad public policy, political corruption, and poor state capacity all contributed to the nightmare, but the central issue was economic decline from a particular industry.

Since then, New York City's serial cycle of decline and resurrection, compounded by the economic suicide, led by politicians, of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and now, again, New York, have cast that earlier morality tale into question.  Almost to the point of refutation.

Urban decline is a selected choice, not some random economic/industrial cycle of decline.  Electorates choose ideological and incompetent leaders who then blithely lead the city into an accelerating cycle of ruin.  

IowaHawk captures it:





















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Corner of a Room, 2022 by Patty Rodgers

Corner of a Room, 2022 by Patty Rodgers (America)






























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Wednesday, June 25, 2025

History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

Lords and Ladies, c. 1936 by Gluck (Hannah Gluckstein)

Lords and Ladies, c. 1936 by Gluck (Hannah Gluckstein) (Britain, 1895–1978)

























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He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.

From Caesar and Cleopatra (1899) by George Bernard Shaw.

CLEOPATRA [interrupting him] Are you not going to speak to me?

CAESAR. Be quiet. Open your mouth again before I give you leave, and you shall be eaten.

CLEOPATRA. I am not afraid. A queen must not be afraid. Eat my husband there, if you like: he is afraid.

CAESAR [starting] Your husband! What do you mean?

CLEOPATRA [pointing to Ptolemy] That little thing.

[The two Romans and the Briton stare at one another in amazement.]

THEODOTUS. Caesar: you are a stranger here, and not conversant with our laws. The kings and queens of Egypt may not marry except with their own royal blood. Ptolemy and Cleopatra are born king and consort just as they are born brother and sister.

BRITANNUS [shocked] Caesar: this is not proper.

THEODOTUS [outraged] How!

CAESAR [recovering his self-possession] Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.

BRITANNUS. On the contrary, Caesar, it is these Egyptians who are barbarians; and you do wrong to encourage them. I say it is a scandal.

CAESAR. Scandal or not, my friend, it opens the gate of peace. [He addresses Pothinus seriously]. Pothinus: hear what I propose.

The moral trade-offs in pursuit of peace have been around in history and literature for a long time.

Tuesday, June 24, 2025

History

 

An Insight

 

There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists.

 

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

Soft Shades, 2024 by Ralf Heynen

Soft Shades, 2024 by Ralf Heynen (Netherlands, 1978 - )






























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Monday, June 23, 2025

History

 

An Insight

 

I ss wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

Still Life,1941 by Olle Hjortzberg

Still Life,1941 by Olle Hjortzberg (Sweden, 1872–1959)






























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Sunday, June 22, 2025

A statistical tragedy

An excellent and lengthy piece, Africa's Poor Numbers by Inquisitive Bird.  The subheading is:  How much do we really know about African state of affairs?

More recently, Devarajan (2013), then chief economist for Africa at the World Bank, described the state of affairs as “Africa's Statistical Tragedy”. Others call it Africa’s “data gap” (Adebisi & Lucero-Prisno, 2022). But perhaps the most well-known critical appraisal of Africa’s developmental statistics is Morten Jerven’s 2013 book Poor Numbers—the inspiration of the title of this piece.

As an economist, Jerven’s interest pertained to the production of GDP figures, the sort of numbers that are illustrated in the earlier graph. What methodology and data were used to produce those numbers? How reliable were the numbers?

In 2007, Jerven visited the statistical office responsible for Zambia’s national accounts. It was only with personal experience that the gravity of the situation truly revealed itself.

There were only three employees, and just one regularly in the office while he was visiting. No employee could account for how income estimates had been generated more than a decade ago. They lacked resources and staff. They lacked basic data. Many sectors of the economy had no usable data, or estimations were made based on a very small subset of the sector’s economy. Many numbers were functionally guesstimates with no underlying rigorous and reproducible methodology.

When he revisited in 2010, the situation was even worse. As he explains (Jerven, 2013):

“What happens if I disappear?” In 2010, I returned to Zambia and found that the national accounts now were prepared by one man alone. His question was not hypothetical, but one of real concern. Until very recently he had had one colleague, but that man was removed from the National Accounts Division to work on the 2010 population census. To make matters worse, lack of personnel in the section for industrial statistics and public finances meant that the only statistician left in the National Accounts Division was responsible for these data as well.

In total, he visited eight Sub-Saharan African countries, and had extensive e-mail correspondence with statistical offices in several others.1 The problems were by no means unique to Zambia. “Similar anecdotes could be told from research visits I have made to other countries in sub-Saharan Africa since 2007,” he writes. Nor is this problem contained to economic statistics.

As he points out, this statistical problem is not isolated to Africa but it is certainly concentrated there.















Statistical performance indicator (SPI) overall scores by country, 2020. Source: Dang et al. (2023)

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All very related to the "legibility of the state" discussed by James C. Scott in his, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

History

 

An Insight

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

The Rising Tide, 1913 by Felix Vallotton

The Rising Tide, 1913 by Felix Vallotton (Switzerland, 1865-1925) 































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Saturday, June 21, 2025

Battleship at War

From Battleship at War by Ivan Musicant.  The subheading is The epic story of the USSS Washington.  

The blurb:

The USS Washington - commissioned in 1941 and launched on a perilous career across two war-bloodied seas . . . an invincible battleship, destined to become the pride of the Navy and the hope of the nation at war.  

That is the Washington's story - a riveting chronicle of awesome andurance and unshakeable heroism.  Whether she was slicing through the sub-infested waters of the Atlantic or spearheading the American drive in the Pacific, the Washington was unstoppable, the only U.S. battleship ever to sink an enemy battleship on-on-one.  From Honolulu to Murmansk to Iow Jima, Okinawa, and Guadalcanal, THE BATTLESHIP AT WAR is the unforgettable saga of one of the most illustrious vessels of all time . . . and of the valiant men who guided her to victory.

The blurb over-eggs the pudding.  The Washington was a battleship in an aircraft carrier war.  She served diligently and honorably in both the Atlantic and the Pacific.  She was involved in many engagements but rarely in the sole lead role.

Because it is the biography of the ship, the officers and crew and largely walk on parts and therefore lose some of the narrative drive.  

The strong suit of Battleship at War is that it covers the operationally mundane but critical details which allow a capital ship to be where she needs to be, when, and with what crew and capabilities.  This isn't the bok for someone new to military history but is interesting to someone already well read in modern naval warfare.


History

 

Andrew Jackson and the Miracle of New Orleans

Andrew Jackson and the Miracle of New Orleans by Brian Kilmeade and Don Yeager.  An excellent read and battle history.  From the blurb:

The War of 1812 saw America threatened on every side. Encouraged by the British, Indian tribes attacked settlers in the West, while the Royal Navy terrorized the coasts. By mid-1814, President James Madison’s generals had lost control of the war in the North, losing battles in Canada. Then British troops set the White House ablaze, and a feeling of hopelessness spread across the country.

Into this dire situation stepped Major General Andrew Jackson. A native of Tennessee who had witnessed the horrors of the Revolutionary War and Indian attacks, he was glad America had finally decided to confront repeated British aggression. But he feared that President Madison’s men were overlooking the most important target of all: New Orleans.

If the British conquered New Orleans, they would control the mouth of the Mississippi River, cutting Americans off from that essential trade route and threatening the previous decade’s Louisiana Purchase. The new nation’s dreams of western expansion would be crushed before they really got off the ground.

So Jackson had to convince President Madison and his War Department to take him seriously, even though he wasn’t one of the Virginians and New Englanders who dominated the government. He had to assemble a coalition of frontier militiamen, French-speaking Louisianans,Cherokee and Choctaw Indians, freed slaves, and even some pirates. And he had to defeat the most powerful military force in the world—in the confusing terrain of the Louisiana bayous.

In short, Jackson needed a miracle. The local Ursuline nuns set to work praying for his outnumbered troops. And so the Americans, driven by patriotism and protected by prayer, began the battle that would shape our young nation’s destiny.

Enough of a biography of Jackson to provide meaningful context without getting lost in the woods.  The battle descriptions are evocative and clear, supplemented with excellent maps that provide perspective.  

Very much enjoyed.

There are consequences

I have a love of language, specifically English.  My shelves are loaded with reference books, histories of English, Dictionaries of Quotations, grammar, etc.  

Today I begin tackling a room in the house which has become a book overflow repository.  I need to organize and ideally dispose of some of the many volumes.  Always unrewarded quest.

As is my usual custom, in order find the books later, stop myself from buying books I have already, or books I have already bought and gotten rid of, I begin inventorying the stacks.

I come across the fifth edition of The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, edited by Elizabeth Knowles.  I know I have at least one Oxford Dictionary of Quotations from sometime in the fifties which is excellent.  When was this one published?  Maybe it is old enough to dispose of.  1999.  

My very first thought, unbidden, was "Well, no one has said much that is memorable in the past twenty years.  I'll keep it."  

I know the statement is not completely true.  If I think hard, I can probably come up with a couple of quotes from the past twenty years.  But it would be a hard enough task that I think the first thought was usefully true.  

So the fifth edition stays.

The first quote I read, randomly, is from American Robert G. Ingersoll, 1833-99.  From Some Reasons Why (1881)

In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments - there are consequences.

A fine insight.  We view the consequences as rewards and punishments based on our objectives and emotions.  But all they are is consequences.  Ties in nicely with Stoicism.  


An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

Portrait of a Girl with Iris Flowers by Edgar Maxence

Portrait of a Girl with Iris Flowers by Edgar Maxence (France, 1871-1954)



 


























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Friday, June 20, 2025

History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

A London Garden, Islington, 1924 by Roger Fry

A London Garden, Islington, 1924 by Roger Fry (England, 1866-1934)



















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Thursday, June 19, 2025

History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

Man Reading, 1963 by Wayne Thiebaud

Man Reading, 1963 by Wayne Thiebaud (America, 1920-2021)
































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Wednesday, June 18, 2025

History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

Sunday Morning Service, 1945 by Jeffrey Edison Smart

Sunday Morning Service, 1945 by Jeffrey Edison Smart (Australia, 1921-2013)





















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Tuesday, June 17, 2025

Prison Song by Richard (the Lionheart) I of England

Written circa 1193 by Richard (the Lionheart) I of England (1157-1199) and translated from Occitan French by Henry Brooks Adams (1838-1918).  The alternate title is King Richard’s Lament

Prison Song 
by Richard (the Lionheart) I of England

No prisoner can tell his honest thought
Unless he speaks as one who suffers wrong;
But for his comfort as he may make a song.
My friends are many, but their gifts are naught.
Shame will be theirs, if, for my ransom, here
—I lie another year.

They know this well, my barons and my men,
Normandy, England, Gascony, Poitou,
That I had never follower so low
Whom I would leave in prison to my gain.
I say it not for a reproach to them,
—But prisoner I am!

The ancient proverb now I know for sure;
Death and a prison know nor kind nor tie,
Since for mere lack of gold they let me lie.
Much for myself I grieve; for them still more.
After my death they will have grievous wrong
—If I am a prisoner long.

What marvel that my heart is sad and sore
When my own lord torments my helpless lands!
Well do I know that, if he held his hands,
Remembering the common oath we swore,
I should not here imprisoned with my song,
—Remain a prisoner long.

They know this well who now are rich and strong
Young gentlemen of Anjou and Touraine,
That far from them, on hostile bonds I strain.
They loved me much, but have not loved me long.
Their plans will see no more fair lists arrayed
—While I lie here betrayed.

Companions whom I love, and still do love,
Geoffroi du Perche and Ansel de Caieux,
Tell them, my song, that they are friends untrue.
Never to them did I false-hearted prove;
But they do villainy if they war on me,
—While I lie here, unfree.

Countess sister! Your sovereign fame
May he preserve whose help I claim,
—Victim for whom am I!

I say not this of Chartres’ dame,
—Mother of Louis!

History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

Moonlit Landscape, 1878 by Arthur Parton

Moonlit Landscape, 1878 by Arthur Parton (America, 1842-1914)




























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Monday, June 16, 2025

History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California, 1865 by Albert Bierstadt

Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California, 1865 by Albert Bierstadt (Germany/America, 1830-1902)

















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Sunday, June 15, 2025

History

 

An Insight

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

Mother and Child, 2000 by Jeffrey Smart

Mother and Child, 2000 by Jeffrey Smart (Australia, 1921-2013) 




















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Saturday, June 14, 2025

DISTORTION. A Stop motion Animation by Guldies


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History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

Cliff Dwellers, 1913 by George Bellows

Cliff Dwellers, 1913 by George Bellows (America, 1882–1925)  
























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Friday, June 13, 2025

Buster Keaton


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History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

The River Chelmer, Essex by Michael James Smith

The River Chelmer, Essex by Michael James Smith (England)

























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Thursday, June 12, 2025

History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

Fisherman, 1930 by Fรฉlix Elie Tobeen

Fisherman, 1930 by Fรฉlix Elie Tobeen (France, 1880-1938)

























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Wednesday, June 11, 2025

History

 

An Insight

 

I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Data Talks

 

Vogue, 1933 by Pierre Brissaud

Vogue, 1933 by Pierre Brissaud (France, 1885-1964 ) 































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