Applied Philosophy

Business men with awkward hips
And dirty jokes upon their lips,
And large behinds and jingling chains,
And riddled teeth and riddling brains,
And plump white fingers made to curl
Round some anaemic city girl,
And so lend colour to the lives
And old suspicions of their wives.

-John Betjeman

That there’s a falsehood in his looks
I must and will deny
They say their master is a knave
And sure they do not lie

-Robert Burns

[NOTE: As I was deciding last weekend to start a break world events moved significantly, I find myself compelled to make a couple of remarks.]

For those of us who are interested in the general movement of history following current events could be extremely boring, but sometimes events move in a speed sufficient to engage us. On the eighth of August 2008 the state of Georgia and that of Russia engaged in armed conflict. I will try to put this event in historical context.
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Can aught from cold Kamschatka to Cape Horn
With Waltz compare, or after Waltz be born? 

-Byron

Today is the six months anniversary of this blog, sadly I must announce an indefinite break. The coming weeks my free time might be constrained also I might not have access to the Internet. The break might take from six weeks to six months so I thought it would be better to have a formal break than just abscond.

The comments are open to everyone, no approval is needed, so anyone can post. Every Friday, until the second Friday of October, a scheduled miscellaneous post will be published automatically, hopefully I will be back by then with new posts.

Thanks to all my readers.

In this series of posts I will be discussing Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market By Walter Bagehot (the text is available on the Internet). The book discusses the financial system of Britain circa 1870. I will be quoting whole paragraphs, with emphasis from me, and then commenting on them. The fifth part will handle the final two chapters and the appendix.
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When third world countries that had adopted the so-called ‘socialist’ system started to collapse in the seventies and early eighties they pointed to the future of the whole socialist block, they were the canary in the mine. The imported system with its western symbols and nomenclature was grafted by force on these countries’ societies, this left them extremely weak and so they failed before the countries that exported the system to them did.

The grafting of western liberal democracy on weak third world countries-with imported symbols, nomenclature, foreign educated leaders and deadly force where resistance is encountered-has already produced several victims: eastern Europe, the Asian Tigers, Russia, Argentina and last but not least Zimbabwe.
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In this series of posts I will be discussing Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market By Walter Bagehot (the text is available on the Internet). The book discusses the financial system of Britain circa 1870. I will be quoting whole paragraphs, with emphasis from me, and then commenting on them. The fourth part will handle chapters 8-11 (out of 13).
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Gracious Lord, oh bomb the Germans,
       Spare their women for Thy Sake,
And if that is not too easy
       We will pardon Thy Mistake.
But, gracious Lord, whate’er shall be,
Don’t let anyone bomb me.

-John Betjeman

In this series of posts I will be discussing Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market By Walter Bagehot (the text is available on the Internet). The book discusses the financial system of Britain circa 1870. I will be quoting whole paragraphs, with emphasis from me, and then commenting on them. The third part will handle chapters 6 & 7 (out of 13).
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The Dark Knight, 2008, directed by Christopher Nolan, starring Christian Bale, Heath Ledger and Aaron Eckhart.

In The Illusionist vs. The Prestige I wrote the following:

Nolan’s film is just a cheap trick that only impresses small children and credulous people; this is not a surprise, his first film Following and second Memento are, also, cheap tricks, the latter more so than the former. Even Batman Begins is turned into a card trick, a three villains trick. The problem is that all these tricks are done for the sake of tricks only, no inner meaning, nothing profound.

Despite my low assessment of Nolan’s talent I went to see his latest film in cinema. A large part of my motivation was to write a post about the film, but the film was such a mess that I struggled to find even a coherent element to criticise.
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In this series of posts I will be discussing Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market By Walter Bagehot (the text is available on the Internet). The book discusses the financial system of Britain circa 1870. I will be quoting whole paragraphs, with emphasis from me, and then commenting on them. The second part will handle chapters 3-5 (out of 13).
Read the rest of this entry »

In this series of posts I will be discussing Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market By Walter Bagehot (the text is available on the Internet). The book discusses the financial system of Britain circa 1870. I will be quoting whole paragraphs, with emphasis from me, and then commenting on them. The first part will handle the first two chapters (out of 13).

Read the rest of this entry »

Her cutty sark, o’ Paisley harn
That while a lassie she had worn
In longitude tho’ sorely scanty
It was her best, and she was vauntie

 -Robert Burns