A Four Score Graybeard

Missive #429 Published 19 January 2025

Continuing The Anti-Federalist Papers

Cato I
by George Clinton
To the People of the State of New York:

Missive #428 Published 17 January 2025

I didn't like The Passenger very much and liked this book even less. McCarthy was a trustee for the Santa Fe Institute (SFI), a multidisciplinary research center devoted to the study of complex adaptive systems. Unlike most members of the SFI, McCarthy did not have a scientific background. However, he apparently let the research center thinking influence his writing and these last two books were the result.

70. Nasruddin and the Wind…

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Missive #427 Published 15 January 2025

Everyone would benefit from seeing further into the future, whether buying stocks, crafting policy, launching a new product, or simply planning the week's meals. Unfortunately, people tend to be terrible forecasters. As Wharton professor Philip Tetlock showed in a landmark 2005 study, even experts' predictions are only slightly better than chance. However, an important and under reported conclusion of that study was that some experts do have real foresight, and Tetlock has spent the past decade trying to figure out why. What makes some people so good? And can this talent be taught?

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Missive #426 Published 13 January 2025

This is the third book in the series which if you are going to read any of them you should start with the first book and read them in order. The read like all of the were written as one manuscript and the publisher decided to make three books out of it. I was undecided when I read the first book and then liked the second one better; I'm now hooked and will finish the series.

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Missive #425 Published 12 January 2025

Continuing The Federalist Papers.

Federalist No. 38
Concerning the Difficulties of the Convention in Devising a Proper Form of Government
Author: James Madison
To the People of the State of New York:

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Missive #424 Published 10 January 2025

69. Nasruddin and the Apple Tree

As he was riding past an apple orchard, Nasruddin was seized by a desire for apples, so he led his donkey up to one of the trees.

Then, standing on the donkey’s back, he reached up and grabbed hold of a branch.

Just as he was about to pick an apple, though, the orchard’s owner came running up. This startled the donkey, who bolted and left Nasruddin dangling from the branch.

“Get down from there!” the man shouted. “I’m going to have you arrested for stealing my apples!”

“I’m no thief,” Nasruddin shouted back. “I just fell off my donkey.”

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Missive #423 Published 9 January 2025

Now Turtledove returns to the story of a World War in a world where magic works, with this moving second volume. Algarvian soldiers corral Kaunians to send them west, towards Unkerlant, to work camps. The Kaunians left behind are worried about what the work camps might mean, but are assauged by Algarvian lies.
In Kuusamo, scholars race to find the relation between the laws of similarity and contagion. Rumors abound about the Algarvian work camps, rumors most cannot believe as true. But the mages know, for they can feel the loss of life in their very souls.
Turtledove's cast of characters takes on its own life as the reader sees the war from all sides and understands how the death and destruction benefits no one, not even the victors.

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Missive #422 Published 7 January 2025

I could not find any book promos for this book and there are very few customer reviews. Not a very popular book today, just lucky that it is still available at archive.org as part of of the Mainstream Of America series. It is a good history of the Southwest including Texas which some people consider part of the Southwest. The author writes popular history, a broad genre of historiography, that takes a popular approach, aims at a wide readership, and usually emphasizes narrative, personality and vivid detail over scholarly analysis. Much better than the academic historians.

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Missive #421 Published 6 January 2025

That didn't take long. Last Friday I posted that military veterans would be called the terrorist in this country and that same day Fox News reported this:

MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell argued that Americans should look to their fellow citizens, specifically U.S. military personnel, and not illegal immigrants, as instigators of terrorism within the U.S. in a segment Thursday.