Author Archives

  • ELECTIONS MATTER, OR DO THEY?

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    “The important thing to know about an assassination or an attempted assassination is not who fired the shot, but who paid for the bullet.” ― Eric Ambler, The Mask of Dimitrios   Yesterday was Election Day in Tennessee and today… Read More ›

  • IS IT US OR THEM?

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    “Orozco’s despair was not just in finding himself poor, but in discovering that effort, honest intentions, and gentlemanly status had nothing to do with sucess in a commercial economy.” ― Timothy Brook, Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn… Read More ›

  • HERE WE GO AGAIN.

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    “The facts are really not at all like fish on the fishmonger’s slab. They are like fish swimming about in a vast and sometimes inaccessible ocean; and what the historian catches will depend, partly on chance, but mainly on what… Read More ›

  • IT MAY NOT BE A NINETIES POP SONG, BUT ISN’T IT…

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    “And Paris! All afternoon in someone’s attic We raised our glasses And drank to the asses Who ran the world and turned neurotic.” ― Galway Kinnell   If one looks for samples of irony, they really need to look no… Read More ›

  • WHO’S LISTENING?

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    “Perhaps the most indispensable thing we can do as human beings, every day of our lives, is remind ourselves and others of our complexity, fragility, finiteness, and uniqueness.” ― Antonio R. Damasio   Yesterday I came across a lengthy piece… Read More ›

  • MORE SOUND AND FURY, BUT WILL IT PROVE SIGNIFICANT?

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    “In my opinion,” said the Superintendent slowly, “an arm-chair review of a case is often far more profitable than any number of enquiries and cross-examinations. You get a better perspective. More wood. Fewer trees.” ― John Bude, The Cornish Coast… Read More ›

  • FANNING THE FLAMES

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    “Just got back into the country. For the record: teachers rock!!!!” – Penny Schwinn   The above are words posted on the Facebook page of Tennessee’s Commissioner of Education. Mrs. Schwinn goes on to inform folks that she’s been out… Read More ›

  • THE CIRCUS GRINDS ON

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    “Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic countries. The acronym is well deserved,” ― Hugo Mercier, The Enigma of Reason   Years ago I was tending bar on a slow New Years’ Eve. I had roughly 10 people at the bar, among… Read More ›

  • DON’T LET THE REVOLUTION DIE WITH A WIMPER

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    “Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.” ― Karl Popper   Over the holiday weekend,… Read More ›

  • DAMMIT REF! I’M MAD!

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      “So I’ve given it one. I call it scout mindset: the motivation to see things as they are, not as you wish they were. Scout mindset is what allows you to recognize when you are wrong, to seek out… Read More ›