Find Something Beautiful Today

 

San Xavier Del Bac, Tucson, Arizona - founded in 1692.

[Photo by Bree Evans at Unsplash]

Keep This in Mind

"All the good music’s already been written by people with wigs and stuff on."

- Frank Zappa

Frequent Conversation

"You know, dog, you've got a good gig here. You've got a nice house, a big yard, good food, and two live-in servants who monitor your every mood."

Response: (Stare)

Saturday Morning

 My wife is ill.

My dog is rapidly aging.

My Substack article is up.

My desk is packed.

But coffee is calling my name.

Get In to Work

My latest Substack article is up.

Read it here. [Correction made.]

Effective Communication

“The man who did the shouting at the P.S.U.C. post down on our right was an artist at the job. Sometimes, instead of shouting revolutionary slogans he simply told the Fascists how much better we were being fed than they were. His account of the Government rations was apt to be a little imaginative. 'Buttered toast!' - you could hear his voice echoing across the lonely valley - 'We're just sitting down to buttered toast over here! Lovely slices of buttered toast!' I do not doubt that, like the rest of us, he had not seen butter for weeks or months past, but in the icy night the news of buttered toast probably set many a fascist mouth watering. It even made mine water, though I knew he was lying.”

- George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia

First Paragraph

 Peter, James, and John. Paul and his missionary companion, Barnabas. All of these men were Jews, though we identify them with "the origins of Christianity." This is because we know that their efforts would eventually lead to the formation of that later - and predominantly gentile - religious community. But they did not know this. Committed to their movement's core prophecy - "The times are fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand! Repent, and trust in the good news!" - they foresaw no extended future. They passionately believed that God was about to fulfill his ancient promises to Israel: to redeem history, to defeat evil, to raise the dead, and to establish a universal reign of justice and peace.

- From When Christians Were Jews: The First Generation by Paula Fredriksen

A Giant Step for Anti-Discrimination

The Free Press: Coleman Hughes on the end of DEI.

[Photo by Sara Hamza at Unsplash]

We Drifted

 

"What is life as a Hermit?"

Check out The New Camaldoli Hermitage.

Hmm. A few days there might work wonders.

The Executive Orders: What Will Stand and What will Fall

Yale Law School professor Jed Rubenfeld at The Free Press examines some of Trump's most important executive orders.

Time well-spent.

The Stoic

 

An RV pulls up in front of a Florida courthouse. The door of the RV opens slowly, and a lawyer emerges, wearing a toga.

His hair is perfect.

A crowd quickly assembles, and he speaks.

I have been remiss and am ordering a copy today.

[Photo by Denys Kostyuchenko at Unsplash]

Worth Re-Reading

 

Biz Travel Flashbacks

 The Ashleigh Brilliant postcards at the Santa Barbara Airport. The Lincoln Fox sculpture at the Albuquerque Airport. A 12-hour flight from Pittsburgh to Phoenix. A flight canceled due to storms in Atlanta and then a rainy rush the next morning to teach a class in Tallahassee. The cabbie in San Juan who knew all of the state capitals. The rocket-like take-offs from The John Wayne Airport. Crossing the Navajo Reservation at night. Landing at Reagan National and being in my hotel room in 20 minutes. A drive from Frankfurt to Heidelburg. The porpoises at The Kahala Hilton in Hawaii. Night drive from New Hampshire to Maine. Being the only passenger on a large airliner flying out of Yuma. The entrance of Pittsburgh. The advantage of ugly luggage. A meeting on Capitol Hill. Undercover agents in Kaiserslautern. Listening to the "Nixon in China" musical while driving through the fog in Oakland. A dead motorcyclist in San Francisco. A very shady establishment in Frankfurt. Securing my room at a spooky hotel in North Carolina. Staying at The World Trade Center. Studying the Mississippi barges in St. Paul. Wandering through the tunnels of downtown Houston. A wasp in Baton Rouge. An audit in La Mesa. The River Walk in San Antonio. The Peabody Hotel's ducks in Memphis. A kettle of vultures circling my suite in Miami. Driving along the Gulf Coast from Beaumont to Houston. The Napoleon House in New Orleans. Jogging directions at the Detroit Renaissance Center. The lemon cake in Washington, D.C. The airport slot machines in Las Vegas. Racing through multiple airports. A stormy flight from Salt Lake City to Helena. Raccoons in Atlanta. A would-be criminal in Honolulu. MacArthur Park in LA. The view from the Army CID regional commander's office at the Presidio.

Moral Clarity

I decline utterly to be impartial between the fire brigade and the fire.

- Winston Churchill

First Paragraph

A dozen years ago, when evil seemed funnier than it does now, Ron Reagan, the son of former President Ronald Reagan, had a television talk show that he taped in Los Angeles.

- From Evil: An Investigation by Lance Morrow

Civil Rights Progress

 City Journal: Christopher Rufo on Trump's DEI actions.

Modern Education

 

Keeping the Lid On

 Jeffrey Blehar, writing at National Review, notes a big reason why Joe Biden didn't fire anyone.

Never Forget

The American revolutionaries may have been the only ones in the history of the world who sought to limit their own power.

That, in itself, justified their renown.

March 4, 1865

 Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address has withstood the test of history for its brilliance in wording and leadership.

An excerpt:

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it-- all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war-- seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

Best Wishes to the New President and the Entire Nation

 

[Photo by Andrew Neal at Unsplash]

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

 

[Photo by Unseen Histories at Unsplash]

Find Something Beautiful Today

[Photo by Austin Rucker at Unsplash]

First Paragraph

This book is about my fifteen years at Apple, my efforts to make great software while I was there, and the stories and observations I want to relate about those times. If you want to know what it was like to give a demo to Steve Jobs, or why the iPhone touchscreen keyboard turned out the way it did, or what made Apple's product culture special, read on.

- From Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda

"I See Dead Amendments"

Law professor Jonathan Turley on President Biden's bizarre declaration on the Equal Rights Amendment. 

Keep in mind that members of the White House staff participated in the issuance of that declaration. The Vice President also issued the statement.

Creativity Wow

Prolific writer and Beatles wizard Nicholas Bate has an Exhibit A on "Just How Good Was Paul McCartney?" I think we suspected the answer but click here.

Hydrants, M&Ms, and the LA Fires

My new Substack article is up.

Click here to read it.

[BTW: I've been getting a lot of positive comments on the earlier and related essay proposing the creation of a White House Office of Crisis Identification. Here's hoping that some devoted Substack readers are in the Trump Transition Team.]

Rough Times Ahead for CNN

 

Hiring Perspectives: A Series

I was weak at selection. They all looked good to me. So I needed a strong idea to help me. It was: Hire the one you would rather work for.

- From Further Up the Organization by Robert Townsend (published in 1985).

The Shortest Inaugural Address in American History

 George Washington's Second Inaugural Address in 1793.

Fellow Citizens: 

I am again called upon by the voice of my country to execute the functions of its Chief Magistrate. When the occasion proper for it shall arrive, I shall endeavor to express the high sense I entertain of this distinguished honor, and of the confidence which has been reposed in me by the people of united America.

Previous to the execution of any official act of the President the Constitution requires an oath of office. This oath I am now about to take, and in your presence: That if it shall be found during my administration of the Government I have in any instance violated willingly or knowingly the injunctions thereof, I may (besides incurring constitutional punishment) be subject to the upbraidings of all who are now witnesses of the present solemn ceremony.

Chasing Down a Churchill Quote

Part of the morning, a small part I hope, will be spent chasing down a Churchill line I read back in the Sixties.

It lingered with me.

Espresso will be part of the search.

The Directors

 

Two Leaders to Study

 Given the likely changes in the years ahead, I recommend a close study of these two leaders:

• Lee Kuan Yew
• Dwight Eisenhower

Two examples of quiet and highly effective leadership.

Post on the Wall

The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.

- Daniel Patrick Moynihan

[Execupundit note: The ability of politics to change a culture does not mean that in all instances it will be saving that culture. It can also destroy a culture.]

A Good Sign

I have recently seen a big jump in requests for training and coaching.

Clients I have not heard from in months are calling.

Here's hoping the freeze that has so harmed the job market is lifting.

The Seating Chart and More

PJ Media reports that possible changes in the White House Press room may be coming.

Among the Barely Noticed Hardships That Made the Nation

 "Half-starved, their teams grew weaker and weaker while the roads grew worse, and so the loads that could be carried kept growing smaller. Grant later told Halleck that the incredible number of 10,000 animals had perished on this road; the troops were on half-rations, and it was perfectly clear that when winter came the road could hardly be used at all."

- From Grant Takes Command by Bruce Catton regarding the efforts to supply Federal troops that were trapped by Confederate forces

Politicizing the Reading Experience

GOAL: Select stories written by the group of people that the book is about. The phrase Own Voices has been used most recently to indicate that a member of a group is writing from their first-person experience. The author and/or illustrator may be drawing from their experience as a member of a particular racial or ethnic identity, such as Black or tribally enrolled in the Cherokee Nation, or as a member of an affinity group, such as queer or transgender. While it isn’t always obvious when reading an author’s biography if they are writing an Own Voices story, it’s a good idea to seek out these options when race or culture are a critical element of a book. 

Reach for: We Are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom and Michaela Goade, a picture book inspired by indigenous-led efforts of environmental activism that was written by a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe Indians and illustrated by a member of the Raven moiety and Kiks.áti Clan. Also consider When Aiden Became a Brother, a picture book celebrating a child’s coming out and his family’s subsequent support, by Kyle Lukoff, a transgender author, and Kaylani Juanita, a femme queer illustrator.

- An excerpt from the national Parent Teacher Association guidelines on the Family Reading Experience.

[Execupundit note: A lot of great literature would not meet their standards.]

Strictly Business

 

Is HR Software Screening Out Too Many Applicants?

This issue keeps bubbling along. It deserves far more attention.

Hiring departments need to take back control from Human Resources.

First Paragraph

I offer the following comparison of Haiti, a former French slave colony, and the Dominican Republic, a former Spanish slave colony, to demonstrate that culture matters. The two countries share the island of Hispaniola, largely neutralizing geography, climate, and environment as possible explanations for their divergent histories.

- From The Central Liberal Truth: How Politics Can Change a Culture and Save It from Itself by Lawrence E. Harrison

An Office in the White House Basement

My latest Substack column is up.

Check it out here.

Many thanks to those of you who are spreading the word about my Substack articles.

As the Society Declines

The top grossing films in 1958.

1. South Pacific
2. Auntie Mame
3. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
4. The Big Country
5. The Inn of the Sixth Happiness
6. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
7. Indiscreet
8. Separate Tables
9. Gigi
10. I want to Live!
11. Marjorie Morningstar
12. The Bravados
13. Vertigo

Crank It Up

 

The Tiger Mother Roars Back

The Free Press has a great article on Amy Chua.

On my desk:

While Studying Culture

I recently ran across this item from a 2006 David Brooks column in The New York Times: 

Between 1997 and 2002, the UN mission of Kuwait picked up 246 parking violations per diplomat. Diplomats from Egypt, Chad, Sudan, Mozambique, Pakistan, Ethiopia, and Syria also committed huge numbers of violations. Meanwhile, not a single parking violation by a Swedish diplomat was recorded. Nor were there any by diplomats from Denmark, Japan, Israel, Norway or Canada.

Cabinet of the Canceled

 City Journal: Abigail Shrier on Trump's selections.

On My List

 

Responding in California

 Quillette: Three Hard Truths About California's Fire Crisis.

"Red Wind" by Raymond Chandler (1938)

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husband's necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.

Read all of Raymond Chandler's story here.

Find Something Beautiful Today

[Photo by Michael Yantis at Unsplash]

Learning About the Enemies of Israel and America

Now, the ICC is an “international court” the way the food court at EPCOT Center is an international court. Which is why I think the ICC, which issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, had the most to gain from Poland reneging on its “obligations.” Set aside the fact that the warrant is illegitimate because (for one) the ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel. Were the ICC to be the reason for the arrest of the leader of the Jewish state at Auschwitz—at Auschwitz, for Pete’s sake—it would be exposed as a threat to the democratic order and as a tool of the regimes that both deny the Holocaust and seek to repeat it. 

Read the rest of Seth Mandel's essay in Commentary magazine.

Hmm

 

Saturday Morning Plus

Boxing books for donation to either a charity or my favorite used bookstore. Clearing out old files. Sending off some business proposals. Clearing desks. Billing.

And some reading, of course.

But also: Coffee. Conversation. Gratitude. Work on a new Substack column.

[The most recent one is here.]

Every day should have gratitude. 

[Photo by Nick Fewings at Unsplash]

Crank It Up

 

Fire in the City of Angels

 "Between January 2023 and May 2024, more than 300 fire hydrants were stolen from LA County streets, according to data from the Golden State Water Company, which manages the fire hydrants."

and

"Ten years ago, California voters approved spending $7.5 billion to build water storage and improve state water facilities - but by 2023 not one dam had been finished, per the Los Angeles Times."

Read all of the Nellie Bowles column in The Free Press.

First Paragraph

Senior Lieutenant Alexander Logachev loved radiation the way other men loved their wives. Tall and good-looking, twenty-six years old, with close-cropped dark hair and ice-blue eyes, Logachev had joined the Soviet army when he was still a boy. They had trained him well. The instructors from the military academy outside Moscow taught him with lethal poisons and unshielded radiation. He traveled to the testing grounds of Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, and to the desolate East Urals Trace, where the fallout from a clandestine accident still poisoned the landscape; eventually, Logachev's training took him even to the remote and forbidden islands of Novaya Zemlya, high in the Arctic Circle and ground zero for the detonation of the terrible Tsar Bomba, the largest thermonuclear device in history.

- From Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham

Crank It Up

 

Teaching EEO Again

Back in front of the class.

A huge array of topics.

It's like Europe in One Day.

I'm armed with espresso.

Beware of the Dystopian Utopians

Orwell, Huxley, and Bradbury. We were living in a blend of their novels and then along came The Great Clarification.

Check out my latest Substack essay here.

A Few Minds to Follow in No Particular Order

 Plato. Aristotle. Homer. Solzhenitsyn. Epictetus. Seneca. Madison. Tacitus. Shakespeare. Cervantes. Taleb. Swift. Locke. Jefferson. Mill. Ellington. Melville. Gibbon. Ellison. Franklin. Tocqueville. Dickens. Lincoln. Berry. Aron. Grant. Thatcher. Douglass. Trollope. Johnson (Samuel and Paul). Twain. Kurzweil. Tolstoy. Moynihan. Tennyson. Proust. Chesterton. Unamuno. Lewis. Conrad. Orwell. Bellow. Scalia. Sowell. Murray. Vargas Ilosa. Yeats.

A Full Day

Was teaching a workshop on Equal Employment Opportunity today. Bright audience. Great questions.

Have another session later this week in another city. Also working on some Substack essays.

Bear with me.

Off the Grid

 

Back soon.

[Photo by Dino Reichmuth at Unsplash]

The Master List

 Nicholas Bate with a simple but powerful suggestion.

No Surprise

 City Journal: Heather Mac Donald on the rise of anti-immigration power in Germany.

Kindness

Many thanks to Ray at Mitigating Chaos for the kind mention.

I've been reading and enjoying his blog since it was "A Simple Village Undertaker."

Big Clive

 In the forty years it took me to write this book, I only gradually realized that the finished work, if it were going to be true to the pattern of my experience, would have no pattern. It would be organized like the top of my desk, from which the last assistant I hired to sort it out has yet to reappear. The book I wanted to write had its origins in the books I was reading. Several times, in my early days, I had to sell my best books to buy food, so I never underlined anything. When conditions improved I became less fastidious. Not long after I began marking passages for future consideration, I also began keeping notes in the margin beside the markings, and then longer notes on the endpapers. Those were the very means by which Montaigne invented the modern essay; and at first I must have had an essay of my own in mind: a long essay; but one with the usual shape, a single line of argument moving through selected perceptions to a neat conclusion.

- From Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts by Clive James

Seeger Thought Stalin Was "Heavy-Handed"

Michael C. Moynihan at The Free Press on the real reason for the attack on Bob Dylan's going electric.

Find Something Beautiful Today

[Photo by Chad Greiter at Unsplash]

Ukraine

 

Why? Because It's the Weekend and You Need Some Italians on the March

 

Considering the New Year

It seemed as if the last year only had five months. 

The sense that time is shooting past may be a sign of age, but it may be something deeper and more ingrained.

Perhaps we should merge months and conduct our planning around a five-month schedule to reflect psychological reality.

Seriously.

[Photo by Nathan Dumlao at Unsplash]

Impressive Cast

 

In the Stack

 

"I can imagine the surprise and, at the same moment, dread that will overcome you all. But you need have no worries, everything is so well prepared here hardly anything can go wrong."

- German artillery soldier on the verge of the German invasion of the Soviet Union

How Boys and Girls Use Technology: Williamson and Haidt

 

Debussy

Cultural Offering (A life well-lived) has the mix.

No surprise there. The man knows music.

[Photo by Romain Virtuel at Unsplash]

Back By Popular Demand

 

A World Without Work?

My latest Substack essay on A.I. and work can be found by clicking here.

Many thanks to all of my Substack followers, paid and free. You are deeply appreciated.

[Photo by Cash Macanaya for Unsplash+]

First Paragraph

 At the time I did not realize that the donkey ladies were terrorizing all of Riyadh; I thought I had a scoop.

- From Sandstorms: Days and Nights in Arabia by Peter Theroux

The First Quarter

I am setting my goals for the first quarter of the year.

There will be four main areas:

Writing. I have three major projects. Two will be done in the first quarter.

Office Organization. Long postponed. Am aiming for a new home library in the second quarter.

Study. Specific time is being set aside. The time must be preserved, or it will drift.

Coaching/Training. This is fun and is dedicated to a small pool of clients.

[Photo by Arnaud Papa at Unsplash]

Remember the Cake Mix Story?

Matt Klein argues that the Betty Crocker's egg story is a myth.

[Photo by Will Echols at Unsplash]

Interesting Perspective as We Roll into the New Year

 

Happy New Year!

[Photo by Shireah Ragnar at Unsplash]