War’s intensity is a great catalyst for reflection, but few combatants can afford the luxury. Most real thought must wait until the shooting stops. I wish I could say I took strength in combat from poetry or prayer or love, but I didn’t. I was concerned with more prosaic things: studying maps, planning missions, and cleaning weapons. When I had a few minutes free, I slept."When Yellow Ribbons and Flag-Waving Aren't Enough" - Capt. Nate Fick
[A]s far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the λόγος". This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts, σὺν λόγω, with logos. Logos means both reason and word - a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: "Come over to Macedonia and help us!" (cf. Acts 16:6-10) - this vision can be interpreted as a "distillation" of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.Pope Benedict XVI's Regensburg Address (2006)
Gamesa of Spain was the wind turbine market leader in China when Beijing mandated in 2005 that 70 percent of each wind turbine installed in China had to be manufactured inside the country. The company trained more than 500 suppliers in China to manufacture practically every part in its turbines. It set up a plant to assemble them in the city of Tianjin. Other multinational wind turbine manufacturers did the same.How China Obtains American Trade Secrets
The Obama administration questioned the policy as a violation of World Trade Organization rules and China withdrew it, but by then it was too late. Chinese state-controlled enterprises had begun to assemble turbines using the same suppliers. China is now the world’s biggest market for wind turbines, and they are mostly made by Chinese companies.
A somewhat similar industrial evolution occurred soon after in solar energy. China required that its first big municipal solar project only use solar panels that were at least 80 percent made in China. Companies rushed to produce in China and share technology.
The Chinese government also heavily subsidized the manufacture of solar panels, mostly for export. Chinese companies ended up producing most of the world’s solar panels.
To understand Solzhenitsyn, one has to understand Ivan Denisovich, the character, and what he stands for. For his hero Solzhenitsyn did not choose a member of the liberal intelligentsia, who filled the Soviet camps in those days. In fact, Solzhenitsyn had a rather disdainful attitude toward liberals. He considered them people with a backbone that was either too fragile or too elastic. His hero was not a rebel against the camp regime, someone who considered that regime to be abnormal and contradictory to common sense. Ivan Denisovich has accepted the camp as given, a stage set on which the is merely an actor who must play a part, whether he likes the set or not. Ivan Denisovich's main goal is to survive. Therefore, he does not waste too much energy on the high-flown discussions of the intellectuals in the camp barracks, and listens to them only halfheartedly.from Yevgeny Yevtushenko's introduction to Alexander Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
[...] What can you cut with talk of art? Ivan Denisovich is much more interested in the tangible tools needed for survival, and he is careful with the smallest trifle that could help him. He hides a spoon inside his felt boot; he keeps a crust of bread wrapped in a white rag so that he can wipe every last bit of gruel from his bowl.
Ivan Denisovich is surrounded by people who are much better educated than he is. Captain Buinovsky, for instance, still speaks to people as if he were their commander, teaching them not to pick up butts from the ground and smoke them, as it was unsanitary and could lead to contracting syphilis from the original smoker. Yet all his virtues did not help the captain or make him any smarter, for he ended up in solitary anyway. And what about the three camp artists, Ivan Denisovich reasons, what good are all their diplomas? Just to touch up numbers on camp clothes?
Ivan Denisovich has a different education--he knows how to stay out of solitary and how to hide a piece of hacksaw blade in his mitten. In the camp, an extra piece of bread acquired by hook or by crook is the only diploma of higher education that counts. Everything that takes place in the square of the camp zone under the theatrical lighting of the ruthless projectors beating down from the watchtower is the stage play in which Ivan Denisovich feels he has the leading role. The philosophizing intellectuals who surround him are helpless in matters of daily life and play only marginal roles.
"Хан богд уулын ар бие, Хатан Туул голын хойд эрэг хавьд миний бие бага насаа өнгөрүүлсэн юм аа."- Дипломатч Д.Эрдэмбилэг
the magnificent Bogdo ula—the true natural park of Mongolia, where since the eighteenth century the hewing of wood and hunting have been strictly prohibited. The mountain is considered holy and in the times of the Incarnate Lama rulers of Mongolia, offerings were made to it twice a year. The cult was begun in 1778 A.D. when a petition was presented to the throne, on behalf of the Urga authorities, requesting the Imperial Court to legalize the cult of the sacred mountain. The petition was based on the belief that Chinghiz Khan was born at the foot of the Bogdo ula. The petition was granted and the Emperor was pleased to grant an Imperial Decree ordering the sending of a proscribed quantity of incense sticks and pieces of silk from Peking twice a year.- from George N. Roerich's Trails to Inmost Asia
Generally, these four mountains are constantly remembered, as Mongols, wherever they happen to be, offer them the first best (deej) bit of any notable food or drinks, flicking tiny amounts into the air in the direction of the mountains. Many people have the idea that these mountains have, or in some way ‘are’ ruling spirits of the surrounding land. Each mountain has its own likes: Bayan Zurkh accepts all kinds of food and alcohol, but Chingeltei likes sweet things, Songino takes alcohol, and Bogd Uul will only accept products made of milk.- from Caroline Humphrey's "Avgai Khad: theft and social trust in post-socialist Mongolia"
Энэ зун манайх Богд уулын Богинын аманд зусланд гарсан юм. Уржнан зун Бага тэнгэрийн амны адагт, ноднин Хүүшийн аманд, энэ жил Богинын аманд гээд л Богд уулаа тойроод л байдаг. Таксины буудал дээр бараг цаг илүү хүлээж байж арай гэж нэг унаа залгалаа. Нутгийн салхины үнэрийн сайхныг яана. Нар шингэж байсан цаг. Богд уулын орой Цэцээ гүн, Ширээтийн хад тод улбартан, дээр нь гүн хөх тэнгэр цэлийгээд дотор уужрам. Богинын аманд дахь гэрийнхээ гадаа ямбий "Победа"-аар харжигнуулан очиж буулаа. Салхнид яйжийсан муухан гэрийн маань яндангаар Богд уулын хуурай мөчрийн оч хаялан байна. "Миний гурав хөөрхий галтай л байгаа юм байна даа" гэж бодтол өөрийн эрхгүй нүдэнд нулимс гүйлгэнэж, ам умалзаад ирлээ.- Сэнгийн Эрдэнийн "Халхын заяат харгуй минь"
Сэтгэл намайг дийлнэ
Сэлүүхэн тал дуудна
Богдхан ууландаа ирлээ
Борхон гэртээ заларлаа
It is tempting to see Naipaul as a blimpish figure, aping the manners of British bigots; or as a fussy Brahmin, unwilling to eat from the same plates as lower castes. Both views miss the mark. Naipaul’s fastidiousness had more to do with what he called the “raw nerves” of a displaced colonial, a man born in a provincial outpost of empire, who had struggled against the indignities of racial prejudice to make his mark, to be a writer, to add his voice to what he saw as a universal civilization. Dirty towels, bad service, and the wretchedness of his ancestral land were insults to his sense of dignity, of having overcome so much."V.S. Naipaul, Poet of the Displaced" by Ian Buruma
Scott Schuman always says that clothing is a medium of personal expression. If that is the case, it means one dresses as much for oneself as for the others. Through our choice of clothes, ultimately, we strive to signal certain particularities about ourselves to the person who is seeing or interacting with us.
Then what kind of a message does a normal tie convey? As a corollary to the sense of formality that such clothing accessory evokes, it tends to raise a certain shield between you and your counterpart. It is as if the words that the other person saying would immediately reflect back on the shiny silk of your tie before it even reaches you.
In contrast, I find the rugged surface of knit ties to be warm and absorbing. The cosy uncle-like quality aside, these ties quietly gesture a refuge, air to breath—someone with whom you can talk to and trust amidst the sea of social normativity for silky superficiality.
1. Чрезвычайную хрупкость человеческой культуры, цивилизации. Человек становился зверем через три недели — при тяжелой работе, холоде, голоде и побоях.
4. Понял, что человек позднее всего хранит чувство злобы. Мяса на голодном человеке хватает только на злобу — к остальному он равнодушен
7. Понял, что человек стал человеком потому, что он физически крепче, цепче любого животного — никакая лошадь не выдерживает работы на Крайнем Севере.
10. Увидел, каким веским аргументом для интеллигента бывает обыкновенная плюха.
16. Понял, что можно жить злобой.
17. Понял, что можно жить равнодушием.
20. И физические и духовные силы мои оказались крепче, чем я думал, — в этой великой пробе, и я горжусь, что никого не продал, никого не послал на смерть, на срок, ни на кого не написал доноса.
31. Узнал, что мир надо делить не на хороших и плохих людей, а на трусов и не трусов. 95% трусов при слабой угрозе способны на всякие подлости, смертельные подлости.
In the last full year of the second ReaganFinally, somebody who understood it all.
administration, all seemed setting fair
for freedom. Noble dreams were coming true.
Zeks were trekking homeward from the camps
in their first fours and fives to find what faces
waited in villages now parts of cities.
From Petersburg to Vladivostok, troubled
small people were enjoying making trouble
for the brute, the berk and the bureaucrat.
They would soon learn about insurance scams,
the speed with which poems give way to porn,
the greed that keeps the market cycle turning,
but this was spring in Europe, cleaning house
with windows open to the songs of birds.
I’m grateful to have lived at such a time
and sorry truth exacts that I add this:
eighty-eight was also the last full year
of the red threat that kept our bankers honest.
TYLER COWEN: Let’s say you’re trying to select people for your Thiel fellowships, or maybe to work for one of your companies, or to start a new company with. Just you, Peter Thiel, as a judge of talent, what trait do you look for in that person that is being undervalued by others? The rest of the world out there is way too conformist, so there must then be unexploited profit opportunities in finding people. If you’re less conformist, which I’m very willing to believe, indeed would insist on that being the case, what is it you look for?Peter Thiel on Stagnation, Innovation, and What Not to Call your Company
PETER THIEL: It’s very difficult to reduce it to any single traits, because a lot of what you’re looking for, are these almost Zen-like opposites. You want people who are both really stubborn and really open-minded. That’s a little bit contradictory. You want people who are idiosyncratic and really different, but then who can work well together in teams. And so, this is again, maybe not 180 degrees opposite, but like 175 degrees.
Normally we expect opposite traits to be mutually exclusive: a normal person can’t be both rich and poor at the same time, for instance. But it happens all the time to founders: startup CEOs can be cash poor but millionaires on paper. They may oscillate between sullen jerkiness and appealing charisma. Almost all successful entrepreneurs are simultaneously insiders and outsiders. And when they do succeed, they attract both fame and infamy.from Peter Thiel's Zero to One (Chapter 14: The Founder's Paradox)
Вместо свободы нам раздали ваучеры. Так поделили великую страну: нефть, газ… Не знаю, как выразиться… Кому бублик, а кому – дырка от бублика. Ваучеры надо было вкладывать в акции предприятий, но мало кто это умел. При социализме делать деньги не учили. Отец приносил в дом какие-то рекламки: “Московской недвижимости”, “Нефть-Алмаз-Инвеста”, “Норильского никеля”… Спорили с мамой на кухне, и кончилось это тем, что они продали все какому-то типу в метро. Купили мне модную кожаную куртку. Весь навар. В этой куртке я в Америку приехала…Светлана Алексиевич - "Русский разговор в Чикаго” из Время секонд-хэнд
Learning the job, in fairness, is a big task for any new President. “Regardless of his prior training, nothing he has done will have prepared him for all the facets of that job,” Richard Neustadt, the great scholar of the American Presidency, wrote in “Presidential Power,” his influential study, in 1960. All Presidents, he argued, enter office ignorant, innocent, and arrogant—liabilities it can take two, three, or even six years for them to overcome. Some never do."Can President Trump Learn on the Job?" by Jeff Shesol
It is an illusion to believe that leaders gain in profundity while they gain experience. The convictions that leaders have formed before reaching high office are the intellectual capital they will consume as long as they continue in office. The public life of every political figure is a continual struggle to rescue an element of choice from the pressure of circumstance.from Henry Kissinger's White House Years (Boston, 1979), p.54
Each trip (to Egypt, Greece, Indonesia, Peru, Morocco, Burma, India, Russia) was thoroughly prepared for with advance reading and orderly itineraries, and then preserved—usually by his wife—in photographs of buildings and cities: pyramids, temples, mosques, streets, columns, ruins [...]"Shelf Life: Packing up my father-in-law’s library." by James Wood
One of my father-in-law’s busy, ephemeral projects fell out of a book about Greek history. A single sheet of paper, with notes written in his careful hand. The date was 2/1/95, and the notes were preparation for a trip to Greece: “History of Ancient Greece. Jean Hatzfeld and André Aymard, N.Y., Norton 1966.” Under this heading were lines in English:
- Greeks establish themselves during second millennium BC: Greece, Black Sea, Asia Minor, Islands, S. Italy.
- Common language and tradition but very divided. Hellas = culture, civiliz. (“Hellenes” does not come until 800 BC. “Greek” is Roman.)
- Geographic identity between Greece and Western Asia Minor: the sea is due to a subsidence which broke up a continent of recent formation and whose structure was very complicated—fjords, deep bays, mountains, capes, islands.
The one thing I really love about it, that maybe is a little bit weird, is I think that a lot of what is great about travel is focusing your attention on a place in a way that is not necessarily related, actually all the time, to being there.Ezra Klein on Media, Politics, and Models of the World
Often times, when I’m traveling somewhere, part of why I learn so much about the place I’m going is that I’m thinking about it, I’m reading about it as I’m there watching it. A lot of it is the mustering of other kinds of attentional resources, watching movies, or documentaries, or consuming other kinds of culture from it before.
There is more than just the seeing. Sometimes people feel like the learning about a place is just going and seeing it. For me, I find that a lot of the benefits of travel are actually about things that I could have done even if I haven’t been there, but I would have never focused on in the same way, and with the same intensity, for the same period of time.
Few places seem to matter less for the West than Mongolia. Policy makers in Ulaanbaatar have tried hard over the years to develop their “third neighbour” policy in a bid to escape the hard geographic reality of being perpetually sandwiched between two great powers, China and Russia. However, there are few buyers in the West for the role of Mongolia’s “overseas neighbour.” The Bush Administration at least kept an eye on this sparsely populated expanse of territory the size of Western Europe (Bush even turned up in Mongolia in 2005 for an unprecedented, if short, visit). Under Obama, the country has simply disappeared off Washington’s radar. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has not even looked that way on any one of her frequent Asian blitz-tours. And who cares? After all, Mongolia is basically peripheral to Western political and economic interests. Even BBC World News, in a recent online piece, confused the country with China-administered Inner Mongolia."Mongolia between Russia and China" by Sergey Radchenko
Let’s face it, Mongolia is the end of the earth as far as they’re concerned. Here is a country which when I went there was the largest land-locked country in the world. In the United States, it would stretch from New York to Denver, from Minneapolis to Dallas, with a population of two and a half million people. It is the least densely populated country in the world. And between Russia and China. How much more forgotten and obscure can you be in terms of the rest of the world?“Secretary Baker played such a key role” by Ambassador Joseph Lake
The death of Churchill reminds us of the limitations of our craft, and therewith of our duty. We have no higher duty, and no more pressing duty, than to remind ourselves and our students, of political greatness, human greatness, of the peaks of human excellence. For we are supposed to train ourselves and others in seeing things as they are, and this means above all in seeing their greatness and their misery, their excellence and their vileness, their nobility and their triumphs, and therefore never to mistake mediocrity, however brilliant, for true greatness."Churchill's Greatness" by Leo Strauss
Facts are better than dreams.from Winston Churchill's "The Gathering Storm"
“Nice guy” and “role model” have become synonyms in sport but a role model is someone who shows you how to move through the world as it is."The devil and Roger Federer" by Janan Ganesh
The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.
They barely had an idea of their original civilization. They had the Koran and its laws; they stuck to certain fashions in dress, wore a certain kind of cap, had a special cut of beard; and that was all. They had little idea of what their ancestors had done in Africa. They had only the habit of authority, without the energy or the education to back up that authority. The authority of the Arabs--which was real enough when I was a boy--was only a matter of custom. It could be blown away at any time. The world is what it is.from V. S. Naipaul's “A Bend in the River”
President Obama and President Clinton had some things in common, but they also had respects in which they were very different. President Clinton was unlikely to begin a meeting on schedule, but he was even less likely to end it on schedule, so you were likely to get a little more than your allotted time. President Obama, meetings could begin early and so you needed to be in your office and ready to come downstairs in case he wanted to begin a meeting early. You had better be pretty sure that you were able to say what you had to say quickly because when your time was over, your time was over, and he was going to move on. President Clinton was less than 100 percent certain to have read your memo. But if he hadn’t read it he would read it as you summarized it for him, and he would master it very quickly. President Obama was virtually certain to have read your memo and to have read it extremely thoughtfully. President Obama brought a focused discipline. He didn’t want to talk about things that the President didn’t need to get involved in. If his economic advisor couldn’t figure out the difference between subordinated debt and preferred stock, he certainly didn’t think it was his job to help. President Clinton was prepared to try to do his job, but was also prepared to offer you a tremendous amount of advice on how to do your job. President Obama was focused on how, whatever particular issue was being discussed, related to the rest of the issues in his Presidency and the rest of the factors that were present in any political situation. President Clinton was focused on those things, but was likely also focused on things he had read somewhere or conversations he had had at some point in the past. I remember his once telling the Secretary of the Transportation at substantial length about new developments in environmentally friendly concrete and how that needed to be considered. President Obama’s approach was a more sharply focused approach.Conversations with Bill Kristol: Larry Summers
"He is thoroughly predictable in having gone through every piece of paper that he gets,” said Tom Donilon, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser from 2010 to 2013. “You’ll come in in the morning, it will be there: questions, notes, decisions.”"Obama After Dark: The Precious Hours Alone"
You have to exercise,” he said, for instance. “Or at some point you’ll just break down.” You also need to remove from your life the day-to-day problems that absorb most people for meaningful parts of their day. “You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits,” he said. “I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.” He mentioned research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one’s ability to make further decisions. It’s why shopping is so exhausting. “You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.” The self-discipline he believes is required to do the job well comes at a high price. “You can’t wander around,” he said. “It’s much harder to be surprised. You don’t have those moments of serendipity. You don’t bump into a friend in a restaurant you haven’t seen in years. The loss of anonymity and the loss of surprise is an unnatural state. You adapt to it, but you don’t get used to it—at least I don’t.”"Obama's Way" by Michael Lewis
Standing in his favorite classroom in the austere main building, sharp-witted students looming above him, Mr. Obama refined his public speaking style, his debating abilities, his beliefs. “He tested his ideas in classrooms,” said Dennis Hutchinson, a colleague. Every seminar hour brought a new round of, “Is affirmative action justified? Under what circumstances?” as Mr. Hutchinson put it."Teaching Law, Testing Ideas, Obama Stood Slightly Apart" Addendum: Letters to President Obama + Obama's class Current Issues in Racism and the Law ("Taking Professor Obama's Class") + "Breaking the War Mentality" by Barack Obama (1983)
[Obama] was certainly one of the most complete man I'd ever met.Junot Diaz
For me, particularly at that time, writing was the way I sorted through a lot of crosscurrents in my life — race, class, family. And I genuinely believe that it was part of the way in which I was able to integrate all these pieces of myself into something relatively whole. People now remark on this notion of me being very cool, or composed. And what is true is that I generally have a pretty good sense of place and who I am, and what’s important to me. And I trace a lot of that back to that process of writing. [I started to read Shakespeare] tragedies and dig into them. And that, I think, is foundational for me in understanding how certain patterns repeat themselves and play themselves out between human beings. It gives me a sense of perspective. I think Toni Morrison’s writings — particularly “Song of Solomon” is a book I think of when I imagine people going through hardship. That it’s not just pain, but there’s joy and glory and mystery. I think that there are writers who I don’t necessarily agree with in terms of their politics, but whose writings are sort of a baseline for how to think about certain things — V. S. Naipaul, for example. His “A Bend in the River,” which starts with the line, “The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.” And I always think about that line, and I think about his novels when I’m thinking about the hardness of the world sometimes, particularly in foreign policy, and I resist and fight against sometimes that very cynical, more realistic view of the world. And yet, there are times where it feels as if that may be true.Transcript: President Obama on What Books Mean to Him
A dark view of humans, a certain resignation to the imperfectibility of things, is what marks literature out from the idealistic arts [...] It is there — more than anywhere else — in Naipaul, whose circuitous route to Britain via India and Trinidad does not show up in cosmopolitan pieties but almost the opposite: an unsentimental attitude to developing countries, a commitment to the culture he has fought to join. Graham Greene detected a “splinter of ice” in the heart of a writer. There is sometimes a shard of the cold stuff in an immigrant, as well. To endure the upheaval, to brave the new, to make a success of it all requires (or inculcates) some of that sub-zero Naipaulian attitude. They cannot allow themselves to become nothing. This sentiment is not always captured by the immigrant fiction of the past decade or two, which comes in jaunty multicoloured dust jackets and seems to showcase diversity as an end itself, as if any actual migrant ever has that in mind. For more than a century, anglophone literature has thrown up masters who look slightly askance at the modern world and its sensibilities. It is not a political conservatism, as such [...] It is something more like a sceptical habit of mind and a preference for dismal truths over well-meaning lies (which is what political correctness often amounts to). [A] writer must believe that human nature is universal and more or less unchangeable. Most non-conservative schemes — social-democracy, the wilder edges of identity politics — are efforts to refine or deny that nature through bureaucratic tinkering. As the arts despair of the world, it may fall to novelists to do more than vent. Theirs is the only medium with the scope to air complex ideas, which is why film adaptations feel so diminished. It also has unique conservative pedigree. Do not wait for a film, album or image to do justice to our times. A novel might."In praise of literary conservatives" by Janan Ganesh
When I think about how I understand my role as citizen, setting aside being president, and the most important set of understandings that I bring to that position of citizen, the most important stuff I’ve learned I think I’ve learned from novels. It has to do with empathy. It has to do with being comfortable with the notion that the world is complicated and full of grays, but there’s still truth there to be found, and that you have to strive for that and work for that. And the notion that it’s possible to connect with some[one] else even though they’re very different from you. [...] Occasionally, you’ll be disappointed, but more often than not, your faith will be confirmed.President Obama & Marilynne Robinson: A Conversation—II
Whatever our current travails, we now have a literate president capable of coherent discourse, but too many other politicians are devoid of syntax and appear to have read nothing. Aggressive ignorance in aspirants to high office is another dismal consequence of the waning of authentic education."Get Lost. In Books." by Harold Bloom (2008) Addendum: Every book Barack Obama has recommended during his presidency
