zenpundit.com

HOUSEKEEPING

My PC problems continue apace after the second system crash in as many weeks. It’s up and running again but the question is for how long ? It’s the oldest computer in the house and has worked well for the most part but it may be time to start saving all my files and scanning for the next generation of home electronics. The laptop is cool to take to work, not so cool to hunch over for an hour writing blog posts.

As I was reloading lost programs and apps last night, I fiddled with the SpringWidget in the margin to add some new RSS feeds to my own( Tom and The Small Wars Council). I’ll round it out in a few days with a mil-theory circle of bloggers and sites. Once I’m done, readers who really enjoy this genre can simply copy the embed code and stick it on their own pages (it goes into blogs, myspace, xanga -whatever) or modify it as they wish.

If you are, unlike myself, genuinely computer-crafty, you might wish to look at Grazr’s capabilities first, as this app migt suit your needs better. Critt, who was an early adapter of OPML, can do some amazing things with a grazr.

The blogroll needs updating, pruning and featuring of new additions.

Much to do. Much to do….

EMERGING FROM RADIO SILENCE

THE TYRANNY OF THE MUNDANE

I have been inundated with a series of small tasks. None of them are particularly large or weighty but the combination is most excellent for creating a sensation of constant interruption in which nothing seems to get accomplished. I’m going to try to get some chores out of the way today and clear my head, in order to do some quality blogging.

I have a number of book reviews on my agenda, some foreign policy commentary on which to bloviate as well as a few more esoteric items. Hopefully, coming soon. :o)

BOOKS ARE SIGNPOSTS ON THE ROAD OF LIFE

“I cannot live without books”
– Thomas Jefferson

First, I’d like to thank Dr. Barnett and Dan of tdaxp for the kind remarks and links the past few days. Both men have often provoked me to new thoughts or reconsidered views and it is nice to know that I can return the favor on occasion.

Tom had a post Sunday entitled ” Why the grand strategist/visionary needs the discipline of books” that echoed something I’ve long believed. Something Lexington Green, in his enviably book-lined home, probably would agree with,

a) First, there’s really no substitute for a good “hard” book.

b) Fiction becomes a guilty pleasure.

Perhaps, the physicists and mathematicians among us ( Von, Shane, Wiggins) will put a word in for the elegance of the mathematical equation, but for me, the supremacy of the book reigns without a rival. As I reflect on the evolution of my thinking as a teen and an adult, inevitably there are many books and a handful of people who leap to mind. Many, many, books and very, very, few people.

As much as I love history, the best reading I have done, in terms of determined, sustained, thought, involved philosophy and economics – Aristotle, Plato, Marx, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Keynes, Galbraith, Von Mises, Von Hayek, Nietzsche, Marcus Aurelius, Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, Machiaveli, Kuhn -because it trained my mind to accept the discipline of formal logic. Logic is invaluable for a rational mind but wisdom is discerning logic’s limitations of functioning within paradigms and that the paradigms themselves are tools for the mind to understand a part of reality; and not one of these paradigms is sufficient to encompass the whole. You have to synthesize, learn, adapt – there is no point at which you ” rest” or become complacent with your expertise.

The joy is in the journey and not in the destination.

A MANTRA I CAN LIVE WITH

As the dreaded Four-Zero raises it’s head on my own horizon, I am much relieved to hear that Shane has declared ” Forty is the New Twenty!”.

Woo-hoo! Happy Birthday Shane!