Tamas in our time

Ancient texts often resonate with startling relevance. Teaching the Bhagavad-Gita for the first time in many years, I read the following passage with new eyes. The context: Krishna teaches that tamas is one of the three gunas, the movers of all action, “the bonds that bind / The undying dweller / Imprisoned in the body.” Tamas binds with “bonds of delusion, / Sluggishness, torpor.” When tamas prevails, one is “lost in delusion.” Here I think of the folly that has given us a war in Iraq:

The act undertaken
In the hour of delusion
Without count of cost,
Squandering strength and treasure,
Heedless of harm to another,
By him who does not question
His power to perform it:
That act is of tamas.

[Translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood.]

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Not dead yet
Petraeus

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Tamas in our time

As a child, Mr. Newman decided to pursue a career in bio-technology. This vision lasted until he landed a biotech internship the summer before college. “I soon discovered that this was a place where people told jokes with the punch line: ‘And that’s why they call it reverse-transcriptase,’” says Mr. Newman. “I was like: Get me out of here.”

CollegeJournal | On the Job

So now listen up. We need to get these boxes the hell out of the warehouse. Meaning, if you are thinking of buying a set of figures, stop thinking, stop thinking immediately, and just do it. Feel, don’t think. Spend, don’t think. Be an American. Spend money you don’t have on something cool you don’t need. It’s only money. You’ll make more. I assure you, you will. But we might not make more of these Chinese-produced plastic hate effigies. Really, now, what would you rather be – safe, sane and sad, or devil-may-carefree and (momentarily) happy? Think about it. No wait, don’t think, stop, just do it!

evandorkin: Arrival and Departure

You learn something new every day

I am trying hard to keep all politics out of this blog, but this bears notice given the source.

In a withering critique of his fellow Republicans, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says in his memoir that the party to which he has belonged all his life deserved to lose power last year for forsaking its small-government principles.

In “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,” published by Penguin Press, Mr. Greenspan criticizes both congressional Republicans and President George W. Bush for abandoning fiscal discipline.

Mr. Greenspan, who calls himself a “lifelong libertarian Republican,” writes that he advised the White House to veto some bills to curb “out-of-control” spending while the Republicans controlled Congress. He says President Bush’s failure to do so “was a major mistake.” Republicans in Congress, he writes, “swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose.”

Via the Wall Street Journal.



You learn something new every day

I Wood if I Could

As much as I love good “link” blogs i don’t link to others much, but try and provide original content on the Arf Lover’s Blog. Gotta let you know, though, about the terrific Wally Wood post by the esteemed Bhob Stewart. The public was exposed to the beloved cartoonist Wally Wood when he did the great print ad for Alka Seltzer. Bhob, who was working with Wood at the time, gives us a fascinating behind the scenes glimpse and shows the rare animated commercial that Wood storyboarded based on the print ad. Word! Or should I say, “Wood!”
I Wood if I Could

Hey, someone finally said it!

From the New York Times:

Nationally… more than one third of mortgage holders — 37 percent, up from 35 percent in 2005, or a rise of more than 1.5 million households — spent at least 30 percent of their gross income on housing costs, the level many government agencies consider the limit of affordability.

“Maybe it all means that housing is not as smart an investment for as many people as we thought,” said Matt Fellowes, a scholar in metropolitan policy at the Brookings Institution. “Stocks perform better than houses over time. Maybe the American dream should be building wealth in general, not building a certain type of wealth, which we see is narrow and dangerous.”



Hey, someone finally said it!

Quote of the week, bonus edition: The Panic of 1907

From the new book The Panic of 1907, about the great banking panic of 1907, by Robert Bruner and Sean Carr, page 2 (!):

To understand fully the crash and panic of 1907, one must consider its context.

A Republican moralist was in the White House.

War was fresh in mind.

Immigration was fueling dramatic changes in society.

New technologies were changing people’s everyday lives.

Business consolidators and their Wall Street advisers were creating large, new combinations through mergers and acquisitions, while the government was investigating and prosecuting prominent executives – led by an aggressive young prosecutor from New York.

The public’s attitude toward business leaders, fueled by a muckraking press, was largely negative.

The government itself was becoming increasingly interventionist in society and, in some ways, more intrusive in individual life.

Much of this was stimulated by a postwar economic expansion that, with brief interruptions, had lasted about 50 years.

Bring, then, a sense of irony informed by the present to an understanding of 1907.



Quote of the week, bonus edition: The Panic of 1907