Freespace

From the Commonplace Book

The ten commandments of Leo Szilard:

1. Recognize the connections of things and the laws of conduct of men so that you may know what you are doing.

2. Let your acts be directed toward a worthy goal but do not ask if they will reach it; they are to be models and examples, not a means to an end.

3. Speak to all men as you do to yourself, with no concern for the effect you make, so that you do not shut them out from your world, lest in isolation the meaning of life slips out if sight and you lose the belief in the perfection of the creation.

4. Do not destroy what you cannot create.

5. Touch no dish except that you are hungry.

6. Do not covet what you cannot have.

7. Do not lie without need.

8. Honor children. Listen reverently to their words and speak to them with infinite love.

9. Do your work for six years; but in the seventh go into solitude or among strangers so that the memory of your friends does not hinder you from being what you have become.

10. Lead your life with a gentle hand and be ready to leave whenever you are called.

William Lanouette, Genius in The Shadows 203 (1992)

Busy week

I'm off on a whirlwind tour to Michigan and Ohio and will be back on the weekend.

Friday art

Rather than choose one, I thought I'd urge readers to check out the work of Julio Reyes a brilliant artist whose work I recently discovered at the State Fair. His equine drawings are particularly excellent.

From the Commonplace Book

Some anti-Jewish measures (or rather safeguards) showed genuine creative thinking. This the Reich Ministry of Education and Science announced on October 20, 1939, that "in doctoral dissertations, Jewish authors may be quoted only when such quoting is unavoidable on scientific grounds; in such a case, however, the fact that the author is Jewish must be mentioned. In the bibliographies, Jewish and German authors are to be listed separately." Yet this major initiative for the cleansing of German science encountered serious obstacles. According to "university sources" alluded to in a SD report of April 10, 1940, students writing their dissertations often did not know whether the author quoted was Jewish or not, and racial identification was at times very difficult. "University sources" therefore suggested that the Ministry of Science should prepare "administrative identification criteria of Jewish scientists which would be used not only for dissertations, but for all other scientific work."

Saul Friedlander, Nazi Germany And The Jews: The Years of Extermination 50 (2007).

Everybody's working for the weekend

Sorta. I'll be out till Monday at a conference in Indiana.

Randy Barnett on the libertarianism of the Constitution

Randy Barnett recently gave one of the best talks I've ever heard about the Constitution. You can download and listen to it here.

The war on caffeine begins

Activists call for warning labels on caffinated drinks.

From the Commonplace Book

Here is the moment of the dispossessed,
The sad anonymous
Whose grudge is that the world's indifferent;
Whom life has made a promise
It has not fulfilled.
They search for the blank face of society
For a look, for a grace,
For an acknowldegement of their human place.
And having been long denied
Any personal pride,
One day they meet a leader
And explode in violence.

-Jacob Bronowski, The Face of Violence

The Truman in Legos

The aicraft carrier U.S.S. Harry Truman in Legos! (c/o)

It's "Cato" not CATO

There appears to be substantial confusion over the Cato Institute's name: many people think it stands for something, and should be written CATO. In fact, it's just "Cato" (although the Institute's logo does use all capital letters).

The Institute is named after Cato's Letters, a series of classical liberal papers written by Trenchard and Gordon, who used the pseudonym Cato in honor of Cato the Younger, the stalwart defender of republican Rome. Cato, along with Pompey, fought against Caesar in the Roman Civil War. When it became clear that Caesar would be victorious, Cato retired to his rooms and stabbed himself in the gut with a dagger. The wound was not fatal, and a surgeon was called to sew him up, but when the surgeon left and the family let him alone to rest, Cato tore open the stitches and ripped out his intestines with his hands rather than live in a Rome governed by Caesar's dictatorship.

He became a symbol of republican virtue for the American patriots. Joseph Addison wrote a play about him, which became George Washington's favorite play, and a line from it was quoted by Nathan Hale when he was executed by the redcoats as a Patriot spy: "I regret that I have but one life to give for my country."