Nothing succeeds like success.

Artist
by Robert Service

He gave a picture exhibition,
Hiring a little empty shop.
Above its window: FREE ADMISSION
Cajoled the passers-by to stop;
Just to admire - no need to purchase,
Although his price might have been low:
But no proud artist ever urges
Potential buyers at his show.

Of course he badly needed money,
But more he needed moral aid.
Some people thought his pictures funny,
Too ultra-modern, I'm afraid.
His painting was experimental,
Which no poor artist can afford-
That is, if he would pay the rental
And guarantee his roof and board.

And so some came and saw and sniggered,
And some a puzzled brow would crease;
And some objected: "Well, I'm jiggered!"
What price Picasso and Matisse?
The artist sensitively quivered,
And stifled many a bitter sigh,
But day by day his hopes were shivered
For no one ever sought to buy.

And then he had a brilliant notion:
Half of his daubs he labeled: SOLD.
And lo! he viewed with queer emotion
A public keen and far from cold.
Then (strange it is beyond the telling),
He saw the people round him press:
His paintings went - they still are selling...
Well, nothing succeeds like success.

Well, that's a quick $250-500,000 expense which can be saved.

From The Impact of Chief Diversity Officers on Diverse Faculty Hiring by Steven W. Bradley, et al. Emphasis added. From the Abstract:

As the American college student population has become more diverse, the goal of hiring a more diverse faculty has received increased attention in higher education. A signal of institutional commitment to faculty diversity often includes the hiring of an executive level chief diversity officer (CDO). To examine the effects of a CDO in a broad panel data context, we combine unique data on the initial hiring of a CDO with publicly available faculty and administrator hiring data by race and ethnicity from 2001 to 2016 for four-year or higher U.S. universities categorized as Carnegie R1, R2, or M1 institutions with student populations of 4,000 or more. We are unable to find significant statistical evidence that preexisting growth in diversity for underrepresented racial/ethnic minority groups is affected by the hiring of an executive level diversity officer for new tenure and non-tenure track hires, faculty hired with tenure, or for university administrator hires.

There's not much value to add to the traditional suite of Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Chief Operating Officer (COO), and Chief Information Officer (CIO). Maybe Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) in some industries. Chief Diversity Officer, Chief People Officer, Chief Sustainability Officer, Chief Knowledge Officer - all are non-value adding affectations. Virtue signaling at the expense (when it comes to universities) of tuition.

Monaghan and two sailors stood by their wounded officer, fighting until overpowered, killed, and beheaded by the natives

From Down to the Sea by Bruce Henderson.

The last Farragut-class destroyer built, Monaghan was launched on January 9, 1935, in Boston and christened by Mary F. Monaghan, niece of its namesake. Like all destroyers, Monaghan was named for a hero; other ships were named for states (battle ships), cities (cruisers), famous ships (aircraft carriers), and fish (submarines). Ensign John R. Monaghan had served aboard the cruiser Philadelphia during a native uprising in Samoa in 1899. Monaghan had joined a landing party assigned to restore order among the natives, and his small band was returning to the ship when they were ambushed, during which a lieutenant was badly wounded. Despite the lieutenant’s order to leave him and save themselves, Monaghan and two sailors stood by their wounded officer, fighting until overpowered, killed, and beheaded by the natives.

Aircraft Carriers named after famous ships? That's not quite right. Think of all the carriers in the Pacific in World War II such as Lexington, Bunker Hill, Ticonderoga, Belleau Wood, Princeton, Saratoga, Yorktown. I had always assumed that carriers were largely named for famous battles, especially Revolutionary War battles. Enterprise, Essex, Hornet, Wasp all obviously indicate that the conventions were not immutable. So why does Henderson say aircraft carriers are named after famous ships? He is a pretty careful historian.

Wikipedia has the answer. United States ship naming conventions

• Battleships (BB), by law, were named for states, except for USS Kearsarge (BB-5).
• Battlecruisers (CC) under the 1916 program were to receive names of battles or famous ships. When cancelled under the Washington Naval Treaty, two were converted to Aircraft Carriers (CV), and this became the standard for them, with the exception of USS Franklin D. Roosevelt (CVB-42), USS Wright (CVL-49), USS Forrestal (CVA-59), and USS Kitty Hawk (CVA-63); some had names evoking flight (e.g., Wasp, Hornet).
• Large Cruisers (CB) under the 1940 program were named for United States Territories.
• Cruisers, both light and heavy (CL and CA), were named for cities in the United States and Territories, with the exception of USS Canberra (CA-70).
• After the first nuclear-powered guided missile cruiser, USS Long Beach (CGN-9), CGN's of the California and Virginia classes were named for states. (USS Bainbridge and USS Truxtun were commissioned as frigates).
• Destroyers (DD) and Destroyer Escorts (DE) were named for Navy and Marine Corps heroes, with the exception of;
• USS Douglas A. Munro (DE-422), named for Douglas Albert Munro the only member of the Coast Guard to ever receive the Medal of Honor
• Destroyer Leaders (DL) were likewise named after naval heroes; these were reclassified as cruisers or destroyers in 1975.
• Frigates (FF), formerly ocean escorts, were also named for naval heroes.
• Submarines (SS and SSN) were either given a class letter and number, as in S-class submarines, or the names of fish and marine mammals.
• Oilers (AO and AOR) were named for rivers with Native American names, and colliers named for mythical figures.
• Fast Combat Support Ships (AOE) were named after US cities.
• Ammunition ships (AE) were named either after volcanoes (e.g., Mauna Loa) or words relating to fire and explosions (e.g., Nitro and Pyro).
• Combat Stores Ships (AK, AF, and AFS) were named after stars and other heavenly bodies.
• Minesweepers (MS) were named for birds, or after "positive traits," e.g. Admirable and Dextrous.
• Hospital Ships (AH) were given names related to their function, such as Comfort and Mercy.
• Fleet Tugs (AT) and harbor tugs (YT) were named after American Indian tribes.
• The first forty-one nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) (called "boomers") were named after historical statesmen considered "Great Americans."

The next section then goes on to elaborate the more contemporary, and often variant, naming conventions. I like that the naming convention for battle cruisers simply ported over to the class of ship to which they were converted - aircraft carriers. So aircraft carriers are named after famous battles, famous ships, famous presidents, famous people, famous American historical places, and flight. An algorithm of sorts, but not much of one.

Secrecy is a mode of regulation

From On Trump-Russia, too much secrecy keeps public in dark by Byron York.

National leaders of all stripes have complained for decades that Washington keeps too many secrets. Too much of the government's information is classified, the argument goes, making it nearly impossible for Americans to know what their leaders are doing.

"Secrecy is a mode of regulation," Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote in 1997, when the congressionally-created board he headed, the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, released a report. "In truth, it is the ultimate mode, for the citizen does not even know that he or she is being regulated."

Moynihan hoped that a "culture of openness" would develop to balance the culture of secrecy. It didn't happen. A dozen years later, in 2009, the New York Times editorialized that the federal government's creation of "107 different categories of restricted information ... seems designed not to protect legitimate secrets but to empower bureaucrats." Still more recently, when the House held hearings on secrecy in 2015, the journalist Terry Anderson testified, "The Moynihan commission recommended some changes in the law, including an office of declassification. Nothing was acted upon."

Our government needs the capacity to keep secrets but secrecy is also a powerful tool for the government: you both need it and need to get rid of it.

York's is a long litany of instances where the Government, or parts of the government, have kept secrets which were only secret because they were embarrassing to one party or the other. Such secrets are always a conspiracy against the American public.

Time to let some sun shine in.

Hatakudari in Shiobara by Kawase Hasui

Hatakudari in Shiobara by Kawase Hasui (1883-1957)

Click to enlarge.

Going once . . .

Got to enjoy the laughs when they come along. Not every deliberative body has an auctioneer but their talents are called for sometimes.

As a protester interrupts hearing with @Twitter CEO @Jack Dorsey, Rep. Billy Long (@USRepLong @auctnr1), a former auctioneer, takes action.

Watch full hearing with here: https://t.co/Gh099bDc9w pic.twitter.com/e4bRzvtBe1

— CSPAN (@cspan) September 5, 2018

Exhibit 27 in the case against Establishment vs. American People

I have long argued that we are not facing a polarization across the political establishment (though that is a small element) but rather we have a rejection by the electorate at large of an isolated, self-serving, self-enriching, cocooned political establishment (Republican and Democrat). An electorate whose patience has been exhausted. We are seeing it happen across the world but especially in Europe.

In the US, it got underway with an internal revolt by the Tea Party in the Republican Party beginning in 2009 seeking to replace establishment Republicans with politicians more aligned with the interests and concerns of the average American. One might argue that the Gingrich Revolution and its associated Congressional reforms was a precursor to the Tea Party. In 2016, it was the turn of the Democrats with the unexpected strength of the Bernie Sanders campaign which threatened the establishment Democrat candidate. To the dismay of both establishment Democrats and establishment Republicans, their candidates were defeated by a political upstart outsider.

The Tea Party has made steady in-roads on the Republican establishment over the years with perhaps their most stunning win occurring in Virginia when they took down incumbent House Majority leader, Eric Cantor and replaced him with an economist. There have been several such upsets since then.

The popular reform movement came late for the Democrats but has been racking up surprises this election round. First there was the Sanders shock in 2016. Then, earlier this year, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old neophyte defeated Democratic incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley, the fourth-ranking Democrat in the House, a fifty-eight year old, nineteen year insider for New York’s 14th Congressional District.

Now, again - Ayanna Pressley Upsets Capuano in Massachusetts House Race. Another Democrat establishment figure falls to the popular revolt.

BOSTON — Ayanna Pressley upended the Massachusetts political order on Tuesday, scoring a stunning upset of 10-term Representative Michael Capuano and positioning herself to become the first African-American woman to represent the state in Congress.

The New York Times interprets this in political/ideological terms.

Ms. Pressley’s triumph was in sync with a restless political climate that has fueled victories for underdogs, women and minorities elsewhere this election season, and it delivered another stark message to the Democratic establishment that newcomers on the insurgent left were unwilling to wait their turn. Ms. Pressley propelled her candidacy with urgency, arguing that in the age of Trump, “change can’t wait.”

If I were an Establishment Republican or Establishment Democrat, I'd be trying to figure out why the electorate rejects the establishment rather than trying to rehash the left-right narrative.

The people versus the establishment seems to me to be the salient issue, not fringe left versus fringe right. Left Right spectrum polarization is simply a symptom of the disease and a distraction being pushed by the mainstream media who are all for the establishment. They are the establishment and their knowledge of and concern for the average American is vestigial at best.

"Now blast you! bend and pick up daises."

The Enigma
by Robert Service

The Sergeant of a Highland Reg-
-Iment was drilling of his men;
With temper notably on edge
He blest them every now and then.
A sweet old lady standing by,
Was looking on with fascination,
And then she dared this question shy,
That pertubates the Celtic nation.

"Oh gentle Sergeant do not scold;
Please tell me, though your tone so curt is:
These bare-legged boys look sadly cold -
Do they wear wool beneath their skirties?
The Sergeant's face grew lobster red,
As one who sends a bloke to blazes . . .
Then: "round about turn, squad," he said;
"Now blast you! bend and pick up daises."

In short, the person for whom everyone waits, whether he knows it or not, and who brings the heavenly message that changes your life for good or ill, you don’t know which until he opens his mouth.

From The Periodic Table by Primo Levi. In the chapter, Nickel, page 67.

I had in a drawer an illuminated parchment on which was written in elegant characters that on Primo Levi, of the Jewish race, had been conferred a degree in Chemistry summa cum laude. It was therefore a dubious document, half glory and half derision, half absolution and half condemnation. It had remained in that drawer since July 1941, and now we were at the end of November. The world was racing to catastrophe, and around me nothing was happening. The Germans had spread like a flood in Poland, Norway, Holland, France, and Yugoslavia and had penetrated the Russian steppes like a knife cutting through butter. The United States did not move to help the English, who remained alone. I could not find work and was wearing myself out looking for any sort of paid occupation; in the next room my father, prostrated by a tumor, was living his last months.

The doorbell rang—it was a tall, thin young man wearing the uniform of the Italian army, and I immediately recognized in him the figure of the messenger, the Mercury who guides souls, or, if one wishes, the annunciatory angel. In short, the person for whom everyone waits, whether he knows it or not, and who brings the heavenly message that changes your life for good or ill, you don’t know which until he opens his mouth.

He opened his mouth, and he had a strong Tuscan accent and asked for Dr. Levi, who incredibly was myself (I still wasn’t accustomed to the title), introduced himself urbanely, and offered me a job. Who had sent him to me? Another Mercury, Caselli, the inflexible custodian of another man’s fame: that “laude” on my diploma had actually served for something.
That I was a Jew the lieutenant apparently knew (in any event, my last name left little room for doubt), but it didn’t seem to matter to him. Moreover, it seemed that the business somehow suited him, that he took a bitter and subtle pleasure in breaking the laws of racial separation—in short, he was secretly an ally and sought an ally in me.

We only need to go back to the year 1250 to have more direct ancestors than the number of human beings who have ever lived.

From The Book of the Dead by John Mitchinson.

The first thing that strikes you about the Dead is just how many of them there are. The idea you hear bandied about that there are more people living now than have ever lived in the past is plain wrong—by a factor of thirteen. The number of Homo sapiens sapiens who have ever lived, fought, loved, fussed, and finally died over the last hundred thousand years is around 90 billion.

Ninety billion is a big number, especially when you’re trying to write a book with a title that implies it covers all of them. But it all depends how you look at things. Ninety billion is big, but also small. You could bury everyone who has ever lived, side by side, in an area the size of England and Scotland combined. Or Uruguay. Or Oklahoma. That’s just 0.1 percent of the land area of the earth. And if you piled all the dead people who have ever lived on to an enormous set of scales, they would be comfortably outweighed by the ants that are out there right now, plotting who knows what. It’s all a question of perspective.

The Dead are, literally, our family. Not just the ones we know we are related to: our two parents, four grandparents, and eight great-grandparents. Go back ten generations and each of us has a thousand direct relatives; go back fifteen and the number soars to more than thirty-five thousand (and that’s not counting aunts and uncles). In fact, we only need to go back to the year 1250 to have more direct ancestors than the number of human beings who have ever lived. The solution to this apparent paradox is that we’re all interrelated: the further back you go, the more ancestors we are likely to share. The earliest common ancestor of everyone living in Europe lived only about six hundred years ago, and everyone alive on the planet today is related to both Confucius (551–479 BC) and Nefertiti (1370–1330 BC). So this is a book of family history for everyone.