Apple News+ is a new unlimited magazine and newspaper subscription service that gives you access to more than 300 magazines and newspapers. “We believe in the
— Read on goodereader.com/blog/digital-publishing/apple-news-is-an-unlimited-magazine-and-newspaper-subscription
New Kindle Paperwhite Already has More Reviews than Kindle Oasis | The eBook Reader Blog
Amazon never reveals any actual Kindle sales figures so you never know how well they are selling or not, but you can use customer reviews to somewhat gauge
— Read on blog.the-ebook-reader.com/2019/03/24/new-kindle-paperwhite-already-has-more-reviews-than-kindle-oasis/
OF family, abortions and contraception
I recall the remark by Chesterton that “birth control” meant really no birth and no control. Of course, in the West since at least the 1920’s artificial birth control has become the norm. I remember a young couple I knew almost broke up because the young man said he believed (he was Polish) that all birth control within the sacrament of marriage was wrong. As an older man I gave him my counsel . I asked him if his girlfriend wanted to have children. He said she did but she wanted to finish her MA before she had children. He said he wanted to get married right away. I told him he need to decide what was the most important to him. He could choose not to marry her right away and wait or choose not to marry her at all. I told him if they practiced non-chemical non abortifacient birth control they would be doing what the majority of American Catholics do who de facto ignore the Catholic Church’s teachings on this issue. He decided to compromise. They got married immediately. They did not have children for a few years. She wanted children and they eventually had two. Neither made much money but as teachers the two could work and thus could have a middle class lifestyle. As for myself the most important value my wife and I had in common is that we wanted to start a family as soon as possible. We married relatively late in life. I was 26 and she was 27. But we were blessed with three children. Two of our children are married and within a few years of marriage each has one so we have two grandchildren. All are gainfully employed and wish to have more children. If one gives children a happy childhood and if one teaches them to have a reverence for life one hopes they will choose well. Today that is the best one can hope for. The reality is one’s children could decide to be childless. For me that would be very sad. I did not exhort my children to have children. I just encouraged them and prayed. All my children love children and our grandchildren seem very happy and healthy. One cannot un-invent artificial birth control. One must, it seems to me, peacefully coexist with it knowing it could wipe out -if uncontrolled- your family tree.
https://www.firstthings.com/article/1999/04/catholics-protestants-and-contraception
The Hayek Auction
You will find them here, for instance Hayek’s copy of Wealth of Nations went for almost 200k, it was estimated in the 4k to 6k range.
“Desktop ephemera and personal effects” were estimated at 200-300 British pounds, went for 87,500 British pounds. Crazy! Many of the items went for 10x or 20x their original estimates.
From Marginal Revolution
The original uploader was DickClarkMises at English Wikipedia. [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
C.S. Lewis and the Truth of Balder ~ The Imaginative Conservative
The story of Balder is one of the oldest in the Northern tradition, and it makes its way into a number of different Scandinavian myths and sagas. Always referred to as Balder (Baldr, Baldar) the Beautiful or the Good and a son of Odin, he experienced terrible nightmares that suggested some imminent danger. Worried, Odin descended into Hel and raised the corpse of a dead witch, seeking her advice and knowledge. Trying to hide his identity from her, Odin forces her to speak, though she is beyond reluctant to do so. Finally exhausting herself beyond recovery, she names Odin as the desecrator of her death. Upset that she has discovered his identity, he curses her. “You are not a prophetess nor a wise woman,” he yells. “Rather you are the mother of three ogres.” Mockingly, she retorts: “Ride home, Odin, and be proud of yourself! No more men will come to visit me, until Loki is loose, escaped from his bonds, and the Doom of the Gods, tearing all asunder, approaches.”
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/03/c-s-lewis-truth-balder-bradley-birzer.html
Read, and then Ride
Adaptation is the key to survival — at work, home, or for that matter in any social environment. The exact adaptive mechanism depends on the situation. But a causal explanation for a problem always helps. Essentially why did something happen? Explanations to that `Why` can happen through therapy, through study, or it can also happen when they are combined with motorcycling.
Understanding the cause requires theory, and adequate explanations mandate good theories applied to correct contexts. Reading provides us with theories. But, hardest part is internalizing those theories and applying them to real life. Marvin Minsky famously said – “You don’t understand anything until you learn it more than one way”. There is a certain depth and significance to this quote. Any relatively complex theory has several implicit assumptions. One way to discover those implicit assumptions is to apply those theories in multiple contexts and see the predictive power. For instance, here is a theory — ‘”Apocalypse Now” is a great war movie’. But is it great because it’s a war movie? Not all war movies are great, so is it because it’s three hours long and well edited? But, then there are other mediocre movies which share the same qualities. We are discovering implicit assumptions by applying our theories to multiple contexts. This is a lot similar to how basic scientific process works in a lab.
Beyond the specific question of a movie, we can also apply this refining process to higher levels of abstraction. For example : “Apocalypse Now” is gritty, atmospheric and sufficiently dark. This can be interpreted as an abstract artistic model which now can be applied to paintings, music, lyrics, and poetry! Can we now say someone who enjoys “Apocalypse Now” will also enjoy doom metal? When sufficiently abstracted, a model can be applied to various contexts to discover new information – details about the context where it’s applied and about the model itself.
To illustrate this principle beyond art — here’s another example of a social theory – `democracy is an effective process to make decisions`. But, if we generalize that to all decision-making, we’d soon be subjected to the whims and fancies of the majority. No organization can function by making all decisions via voting. Sufficiently abstracting an observation into a model, then applying that into a new context enables transfer of learning. It’s a process which is not limited by the boundaries of genres, or scientific disciplines, and is instead tested by limits of our own cognitive boundaries.
Eventually — abstract, apply, test, and progressively refine mental models can be a universal motto. Higher levels of pattern recognition through consciously articulated theories can lead to a unified causal view of reality. Just like how someone can apply Darwin’s individual and group selection process to multiple layers of a system – biology to social order. Eventually these unified theories provide us with an arsenal to fast track root cause analysis. Every experience cannot be a totally new learning opportunity, instead it should be simply about classifying and integrating into a previously known pattern. This enables us to arrive at the same conclusion through multiple paths of reasoning and live up to Minsky’s advice to `learn it more than one way`.
Reading is a way to get exposed to new ideas, but as we can see, internalizing them requires reflection. Everyone has their own assumptions and beliefs – own mental models, often with internal contradictions — developed through accidents of nature, nurture, and life experience. So, no matter how good the book is, new ideas need to always take root and evolve within our own mental context. They need to be progressively refined and adapted to fit within our own minds. To get there — some prefer meditation, or just `sleeping over it`, but for restless minds it can be some activity — like rock climbing or hiking — or motorcycling.
Someone said — you are never on a motorcycle; you are always a part of it. Riding forces us to be outside the cage, vehicular and metaphorical both. At 70mph, reflexes related neural layers are dedicated to sensing impending dangers, while higher levels of cognition are reserved for refining mental models with a picturesque backdrop of passing landscapes. In that sense, when you are a totally different entity, different ways of connecting, interpreting, and unifying ideas simply emerge. So, the scientific excuse for motorcycling would be to live up to Minsky’s sage advice.
Doomed Boeing Jets Lacked 2 Safety Features That Company Sold Only as Extras – The New York Times
As the pilots of the doomed Boeing jets in Ethiopia and Indonesia fought to control their planes, they lacked two notable safety features in their cockpits.
One reason: Boeing charged extra for them.
For Boeing and other aircraft manufacturers, the practice of charging to upgrade a standard plane can be lucrative. Top airlines around the world must pay handsomely to have the jets they order fitted with customized add-ons.
— Read on www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/business/boeing-safety-features-charge.html
StoryBundle By Kevin J. Anderson
The 2019 Truly Epic Fantasy Bundle, curated by Kevin J. Anderson: From legendary authors like Alan Dean Foster (Star Wars: The Force Awakens), Kristine Kathryn Rusch (Star Trek: The Original Series: The Rings of Taute), and James A. Owen (1 Million Sales), to rising stars like James Hunter (Viridian Gate) and Craig A. Price Jr. and Angelique Anderson, this collection will take your imagination to places it didn’t know existed.
Epic Fantasy is a genre that stretches the boundaries of the quest. Whether a triumph of good vs. evil, or a search for meaning or truth, these stories take readers to a new place.
— Read on storybundle.com/fantasy
Stranger Things Season 3 Trailer: It’s all Fun and Games
When last we caught up with Stranger Things’ heroes of Hawkins, they’d successfully managed to fend off yet another inter-dimensional threat seeking to breach the divide and enter our world. For about a few seconds it seemed as if Eleven and her friends were going to be able to enjoy their childhoods in peace. This trailer for season three suggests otherwise.
— Read on io9.gizmodo.com/in-the-first-stranger-things-season-3-trailer-its-all-1833430633
The Lost Fifth Volume of Conceived in Liberty | Mises Institute
So you can imagine the celebration that ensued. We were all thrilled with the book. It is compelling, radical, original, brilliant. It revivifies the first four volumes of Conceived in Liberty, and is a delight to read, with a great introduction by Patrick, who also edited Murray’s hitherto unpublished book, The Progressive Era. As you can imagine, we’re very proud of our former student. I can almost hear Murray exclaiming, “Attaboy, Patrick!”
The fifth volume, entitled The New Republic, 1784–1791, charts the course from the freeing of the 13 states from British mercantilism to their shackling with a new American form of it.
— Read on mises.org/library/lost-fifth-volume-conceived-liberty
Spirit of Cecilia 
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