Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

The staff of the Federal Reserve recently concluded that President Trump's war on trade has not produced or created US jobs. Quite the contrary. Gee, you could've knocked me over with a feather when I saw this. Who predicted such a thing? Anyway, for the curious, here's a URL for the report: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2019086pap.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2C4oBHUEDstQXGV7kTkwvTftRoJ19ObYsmsU9vH6gS4sinFcxTIijs80g One quote, and I am done for this post: "We find that tariff increases enacted in 2018 are associated with relative reductions in manufacturing employment and relative increases in producer prices. In terms of manufacturing employment, rising input costs and retaliatory tariffs each contribute to the negative relationship, and the contribution from these channels more than offsets a small positive effect from import protection. For producer prices, the relative increases associated with tariffs are due solely to the rising input cost channe...

By any sane understanding of recent events, the US is now at war with Iraq. Of course, it is an unconstitutional war. All of them since 1945 have been. Big deal. What is odd is the way the commander-in-chief has been talking about this one. It is a manner of talking that stands out for its incoherence and malice (yes, those are mutually consistent facts) EVEN given the recent US history of acts of war initiated by unilateral C-in-C commands -- an altogether unlovely history, surely. One statement stands out. When Iran threatened retaliation, POTUS replied that Iran "has never won a war, but never lost a negotiation." Huh? I guess this means that since HE is the artist of the deal, they have finally met their match, because he can beat them at their one strong point. It is historical nonsense. Iran (fka Persia) has been winning wars at least since its conquest of Lydia in 546 BC. Yes, it was halted by the Athenians and Spartans working together a few years later, but...

A distinguished philosopher, and historian of philosophy, Brian McGuinness, passed away on December 23, 2019. Here is a list of some his publications. As you may notice, he was an authority on Wittgenstein and on related matters such as the Vienna Circle. Oddly, I haven't found a decent obituary. Please let me know if you see one, dear reader.  Thanks. https://philpapers.org/s/Brian%20McGuinness

I recently read a post in MEDIUM in which some young person was complaining that her generation is subjected to a lot of bad humor from Boomers, who apparently think it amusing that they love their cell phones too much.  What follows was an off-the-cuff response. I omit some initial persiflage and begin where I get to my point. --------------------  Humor in its essence involves the juxtaposition of the living and the mechanical, the organic and the inorganic. Two quick (and timeless) examples: first, the pun. Why are puns funny? Because they use the vital/organic instrument of language in the most mechanical possible way. The vital way of understanding a word — by its meaning. The mechanical way — by its sound. So even simple puns can be funny. Another example: the ol’ slip on a banana peel. Comedian, or unwilling victim, slips on the peel and immediately begins trying to regain his equilibrium. Arms flail about. In desperation to avoid a fall, even a usually gr...

Greetings, fellow humans, from the Bay State, aka Massachusetts. I open that way because I'm about to describe a commercial paid for by the state government here, to promote its lottery. That is: to get people to buy the tickets and in most cases lose money. It is a commercial that seems normal enough inside these state boundaries but outside of them, to our fellow humans, would likely seem very strange indeed. Other states advertise their lotteries by playing up what the potential winners of the lottery can gain -- the new house! the '60s muscle car! -- the chance to tell your boss where he can shove his next quarterly review! All of that. In Massachusetts, though, we are treated to TV commercials in which workers using forklifts create a sort of sculpture with the use of $1 billion in cash. (No I didn't get a good luck at the denominations.) There is a voice-over saying words to this effect (I misquote from memory, but this is the gist of it) -- "This is th...

Years ago I read a novel that took a Big Picture view of the history of England, with an especial focus on the area around Salisbury. It went VERY far back it time, and carried its story forward to the age of Margaret Thatcher. One of those novels in which you're all worked up about some character, only to turn a page and realize that character is dead and you're now reading about his grandchildren. I've forgotten the name of the novel -- or the author -- but it doesn't really matter. What does seem to me to matter is the beginning of this novel. A glacier melts. The melting causes a flood. The flood cuts a channel, cutting England off from Europe and destroying existing paths of migration. I wonder if those cave people excitedly yelled "Brexit!"

At this time of year I ask myself what were the biggest stories of the past twelve months in business/financial news.  Here are the twelve stores that especially caught my attention and that in retrospect I recommend to yours. I'll make no effort to rank their importance against one another, so I will order them simply by month. January: Brick and mortar retail.  A bankruptcy court judge offered Lambert, the man behind the chief institutional owner of Sears, another chance at avoiding the liquidation of that august institution. (Update -- Lambert would get that chance, but wouldn't make it stick. By end of year liquidation was well advanced.)  February : Space exploration for profit. The Dutch organization, Mars One, entered bankruptcy. Why do I elevate that fact to the unutterable prestige suggested by putting it on this list? Because it suggests the narrowness of the line that now separates reasonable business plans from fantasy/fraud. Mars One had planned to cr...