Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

I generally ask myself at this time of year what were the biggest stories of the past twelve months in business/financial news. Of course, I choose the ones I do largely because they illustrate an important theme, and in the list below I'll spell out and italicize the theme. Yet the theme itself isn't the story. In terms of regional mix, with this line-up I've got two Asian stories (Feb., April), four European stories (January, June, October, December) and six North America (March, May, July, August, September, Nov.). A nice thematic point: I both begin and end with Russia. All that said, here is this year's list. January 2014: Russian oligarchs. The Supreme Court of Russia releases Platon Lebedev, formerly of NFO Menatep, and a man who had spent more than a decade in lock-up.  Russia has two oligarch problems: the oligarchs have a stranglehold on key parts of the economy, and the govt., when it does try to break that stranglehold, is ham-fisted an...

I remember the following answer to that question from something that Isaac Asimov once wrote, and that I read in my teens. This is from memory:  Life is a localized resistance to entropy, employing enzymes as a critical weapon in this resistance. There are at least four distinct elements to that definition. 1) Entropy is the general tendency of things to run down. Every energy exchange is a loser, with some of the energy turned to a useless form in the process of the exchange, so any closed system tends to run down. 2) Living things are a localized resistance. At certain times and places, things become more orderly (which is possible without violating physical law because they are open systems, not closed). 3) Life isn't the ONLY sort of localized anti-entropy. Volcanic activity is another example. It creates a mountain where there may previously have been a flat plain, a transition that represents a gain in potential energy. So to define life properly ...

No no no. Not "Rubble! I meant "ruble"! You know -- Russia's currency. Okay, I'll re-think this post and get back to you.

The original French lyrics were as follows: Minuit, chrétiens, c'est l'heure solennelle, Où l'Homme Dieu descendit jusqu'à nous Pour effacer la tache originelle Et de Son Père arrêter le courroux. Le monde entier tressaille d'espérance En cette nuit qui lui donne un Sauveur. Peuple à genoux, attends ta délivrance. Noël, Noël, voici le Rédempteur, Noël, Noël, voici le Rédempteur! De notre foi que la lumière ardente Nous guide tous au berceau de l'Enfant, Comme autrefois une étoile brillante Y conduisit les chefs de l'Orient. Le Roi des rois naît dans une humble crèche: Puissants du jour, fiers de votre grandeur, A votre orgueil, c'est de là que Dieu prêche. Courbez vos fronts devant le Rédempteur. Courbez vos fronts devant le Rédempteur. Le Rédempteur a brisé toute entrave: La terre est libre, et le ciel est ouvert. Il voit un frère où n'était qu'un esclave, L'amour unit ceux qu'enchaînait le fer. Qui lui dira notre reconnaissa...

I'll have nothing to say in this blog over the next couple of days. So this will be our last pre-Christmas post. On Christmas Day itself I'll post the lyrics of a favorite Christmas carol, largely because that's easy to do and I'm holiday-lazy. See you then! The following is a fine statement by John Milton of the eschatological hope bound up with Christianity, and for that matter with the Jewish messianic tradition. enjoy. Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold, And spekl'd vanity Will sicken soon and die, And leprous sin will melt from earthly mould, And Hell itself will pass away, And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day. Yea Truth, and Justice then Will down return to men, Th'enamelled Arras of the Rainbow wearing, And Mercy set between, Thron'd in celestial sheen, With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering, And Heav'n as at some festival, Will open wide the Gates of her high Palace Hall. John Milton, Nativ...

President Obama apparently decided to support the omnibus budget bill late Thursday morning, December 11th. He supported the bill because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told him the threat of a government shutdown in the first quarter of 2015 was otherwise a real one, and the President should act quickly to get that off the table. The next few hours appear to have been hectic ones, as alliances formed and shifted both for and against the bill, across party lines. The bill came to be called "cromnibus," apparently for "Continuing Resolution Omnibus." [Personally my first impression was that the "cr" stood from "cram." Alas not.] At 9:37 Thursday evening, the bill passed the House, 219 to 206. Obama and House Speaker Boehner had both kept enough of their troops in line to get the result they both wanted. The Senate passed it on Saturday night, with a vote of 56 to 40. The 40 who voted "no" included both Elizabeth Warren and Te...

A thought today from Bertrand Russell's book, Human Knowledge. Russell is here discussing the relationship of cause and effect. He considers the possibility that the relationship might be entirely subjective, just a name for the fact that A regularly precedes B in my experience . Whenever I see a dry match struck against a rock, I then see a flame, etc. He refers to this hypothesis as that of a "world consisting only of data," because it involves seeing causation (and other relations) as connections between one datum and another, not as facts about some external world whence come the data into my subjective consciousness. And of that idea, he says this: "As regards the irregularity of a world consisting only of data, this is an argument to which it is difficult to give precision. Roughly speaking, many sensations occur without any fixed antecedents in our own experience, and in a manner which suggests irresistibly that, if they have causes, these causes lie ...