Politics
Words to remember after Tuesday
VauvenarguesSpinoza -- Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment (New York: Oxford University, 2002), page 71.
Chapbook
Commerce
Why Warren Buffett can keep going
Financial maneuvering is a form of endeavor favorable to old men: The financial brain, unlike brains adept in various other areas—for example, mathematics, physics, chess, and, quite possibly, armed bank robbery—apparently deteriorates very little, if at all, with passage of time, even in the eighth and ninth decades
Philosophy
The unavoidable superficial
The following reflection on the unknowable vastness of human knowledge was written 75 years ago: SpenglerEduard Meyer So wrote Will Durant, looking back at the 1920s. When we think of the unknowable—the almost unfathomable—depths of what human individuals in the aggregate know; and then think of what is
History
GOP words of wisdom
For the 1916 presidential election, Republican leaders tried to find a candidate who could unite the party, after the Progressive split of 1912 had cost the GOP the presidency. The elders' first choice for a unifier was Elihu Root, who had won the 1912 Nobel Peace Prize and been
History
American freedom
[…] [People emigrated to America] largely to get away—that most simple of motives. To get away. Away from what? In the long run, away from themselves. Away from everything. That's why most people have come to America, and still do come. To get away from everything they are
History
Newspaper control
Newspapers have a much greater importance in America than they do in Europe. You must not conclude, however, that the press is more free in the New World than in the Old. With us it is the government that watches over and controls the newspapers; in the United States, the
Chapbook
Knowledge
[Gustave Flaubert's comic characters Bouvard and Pécuchet] discovered through their friendship a common purpose: the pursuit of universal knowledge. To achieve this ambitious goal […] they attempted to read everything they could find on every branch of human endeavor, and cull from their readings the most outstanding facts and
Commerce
Old money, Part 2
I find these quotes from Bernstein fascinating because popular history books so often mention money, but so rarely describe what that money was. [The eight-real "Spanish dollar"], which flooded the European currency markets in the sixteenth century, was approximately the same size and weight as the Bohemian thaler—
Commerce
Old money
The basic unit of currency of the premodern world was remarkably constant: a small gold coin weighing approximately four grams—one-eighth of an ounce—and about the size of a present-day American dime, appearing in various times and places as the French livre, Florentine florin, Spanish or Venetian ducat, Portuguese