Wednesday, March 16, 2011

RE THE CURRENT POSITION

My suspicion is that various events, and long standing unrests, which few Americans have been even really very aware of,

are converging, so to speak,

into what I have been reluctantly predicting for some time now,

a generalized global violent episode, call it world war three, but there is not so much a strategic world war focus for the disparate sites of violence,

as the situation is not even really susceptible to a tidy 'political' ceasefire or settlement,

I fear that, as with this globalization, no one is, or really can, legitimately, be in charge, (how could they?)

and the likelihood of ongoing generalized unrest and violence, in many places, both in the developed world, and the developing world, for many years to come seems perhaps now as likely as not,

under the circumstances.

I see Bobbitt's Shield analysis as, at the very least, impressionistic as it was, not inconsistent with this assessment, at this time, regardless of what he, or others, might perhaps aver to the contrary.

And I do not necessarily agree with his overarching schematic analysis, or his specific 'possible worlds' scenarios, or hypothetical inferences.

Terms search eg: Bobbitt.

RE ENTREPRENEURS NEEDING SAVING IN LIBYA

On a related note, there must not be quite enough new entrepreneurs needing saving in Libya to unleash the forces of freedom and justice in that terrible conflict.

Perhaps this is a conflict best left to the Muslim world, no?

RE GEN PETRAEUS' REPORT NYT EDITORIAL

Why, really, would any regime in its right mind want to expend huge resources taking, or then holding, part of Afghanistan?

Has anyone bothered to look at what that place looks like?

It is a desert and mountainous waste land. What is that land good for to us here?

Farming minerals, trade route?

The British at least had a rational account of the need to occupy and control the Middle East.

I doubt whether anyone has a good explanation that holds water either strategically or from a resource basis, for why we are over there.

You have to go back to people like the Romans, who usually asked questions like, 'What is this campaign for?', re whether to take, and then hold, some piece of adjoining real estate from its erstwhile occupants.

Since it is just a buffer area (not a lot of rewarding agricultural commercial or mineral uses for it), why should Americans, rather than strictly natives, take or hold it?

In a world like this, it may some day soon appear to have seemed like an insight, back now, to have kept some scarce financial and economic powder dry.

RE OPINIONATOR THE RISE OF THE WEST ARENSON

'Civil War too long seen as a two way conflict.'

He is fundamentally wrong about this. Although there was gradually developing a 'West', ultimately also as a sectional or multi sectional identity, that was not yet importantly what was going on around the 1850s.

It helps to read eg Nevins' account,

rather than snippets like this.

Monday, March 14, 2011

the menu and The Literary Gourmet Just Ducky curried

One might have guessed that I would do something like this. I never had duck in an Indian restaurant.....

I was influenced, back in the mid 70s, in London, by Madhur Jaffrey, who wrote a very good book on Indian cooking, I believe I had An Invitation To Indian Cooking.

There was a good 'student' Indian restaurant, back then, I believe on Charlotte Street, called The Natraj. Of course the city was filled with them.

I have consulted other books since, but this was a good early one for me.

Duck needs a lot of sauce, and rice, to cut the fat which roils around the roasting pan.

Thus, leftover roast duck, curry.

I used various dry frozen ground spices for this little number, cumin, garam masala, cardamom;plus Muir Glen garlic roast garlic tomato sauce, leftover red chard.

RE ANOTHER INSIDE JOB KRUGMAN NYT EDITORIAL THURSTON

He is onto something here, outside the little bailiwick of economics proper.

Thurston had said in Boca way back in 06, "Who do you think they will bail out, you or me?"

That was a comment on 'big' 'property rights',

not the kind the Constitution talked about, over two centuries ago now, and quite dated really, but the new big ones.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

RE JULY 2010 POWER STRUGGLE TERM SEARCHES

Readers might go back and look at prior years' posts, on certain topics. 'Terms search' seems to be limited to current year (?).

I referred to this book back in July 2010.

THE BEGINNING OF TALKS ABOUT 'SPECIALIZATION' WAS:

http://geraldmeaders.blogspot.com/2010/07/specialization.html

ALSO IN JULY 2010.

RE HISTORY ELECTRIC POWER ENRON ETC ETC

See this now dated book, for some history on electric power and politics, American style: POWER STRUGGLE: THE HUNDRED-YEAR WAR OVER ELECTRICITY

FEW BOOKS HAVE BEEN WRITTEN ON THIS HISTORY APPARENTLY. Wonder why?

RE NAGEL ON BROOKS THE SOCIAL ANIMAL AND THE APPEAL TO UNCONSCIOUS FORCES

Coincidentally, because of forces I described in previous posts re compartmentalization and anti intellectualism,

one can end up with a rather 'intellectual' pundit going 'against the grain', A REBOURS, so to speak, as Nagel's article shows re Brooks' new book The Social Animal (which I haven't read):

'Brooks is out to expose the superficiality of an overly

rational view of human nature, but there is more

than one kind of superficiality.'

This article is connected, as I see it, with my topic, just yesterday,

and today, Nagel gives us a very contemporary example of what I was referring to.

A subrational account of human nature and behavior is in part derived from, and can easily dovetail into, an anti intellectual social and more importantly political stance,

albeit surrounded by various specialized and compartmentalized social, as well as so-called exact, scientific fields and 'findings'.

Here we have Brooks, with, so to speak (no doubt an exaggeration and falsification to some extent), a subrational Hobbesian body, enchained within and by a Lockean moral and intellectual soul and political system.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

RE INTELLECTUAL PROFESSIONAL COMPARTMENTALIZATION SPECIALIZATION AND ANTI INTELLECTUALISM

One would not necessarily have seen these phenomena as being connected; in fact, the tendency may have been to see such a connection as counter intuitive; but it turns out that they apparently are.

The ways in which this has come to be so can be fleshed out, but it may take me some few entries to try to articulate some of them.

the menu and The Literary Gourmet Just Ducky

Whole Roast Long Island duckling, with potatoes, onions, red wine, Thyme, capers, garlic cloves, mild Greek pepperoncinis are de riguer, etc., etc.,

I consulted Anne Willan's Regional French Cooking; Callea, Burgundy Gastronomie; but did not slavishly follow them,

and also took a glance at a fine old hardback book, The Literary Gourmet, a book I especially recommend, the entry called Forbidden Fruit, inspired by de Maupassant, I believe,

with a French recipe from 19th Century, 'Duck, American style'. I used a little leftover smoked bacon and pork sausage fat......

Field greens vinaigrette,
steamed red chard,
organic chocolate chip cookies.

RE THE BLOBBAL SITUATION Qu'est-Ce Que C'est Que Ca?

This is looking more and more to me like a

Qu'est-Ce Que C'est Que Ca?

moment.

Friday, March 11, 2011

MOST UNFORTUNATELY

Most unfortunately, the rational individual self interest of Adam Smith, etc., leads,

a couple of hundred years later,

to the 'rational self interest', and individualism, of Ayn Rand, etc.

Call it pedigree.

Cyber Warfare Say What BBC article

China cyber-warfare capability a 'formidable concern'

RE DUMBING DEFICITS DOWN

He has some points.

What would real 'hard thinking' about America's real, and bigger, problems look like?

Would it be just economic tweaking, here and there, as has been the history for a long time now?

It used to be that the fast growing economies of Asia were viewed as a mere isolated aberration, ostensibly isolated 'free riders', 'beggar thy neighbor' regimes, not likely to go anywhere big in the global economic marketplace of ideas.

In recent years they have been called mercantilist economic powerhouses.

They can flaunt so called enlightened democratic ideals with impunity. They don't have to 'lie low and bide their time' anymore, as Joseph Nye the other day put it on the BBC website.

Why is that? Perhaps their time has come, albeit unacknowledged so far by most, including Nye.

How did the political economic and military misperception subsist for so long, until really too late to change course in terms of industrial or commercial or trade or investment policy?

Terms search verious terms.

RE L S LOWRY LIFE DRAWINGS

These are drawings on the reverse of the figure at bottom. They are faint, and this image is digitally altered by a powerful scanner program to bring out features barely or not visible to the naked eye.

Term search L S Lowry for other details regarding this drawing, including watermark, and paintings with related figures.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

RE JOSEPH NYE BBC editorial

'China miscalculated by deviating from the smart strategy

of a rising power...proceed cautiously and "skilfully keep a

low profile".'

Or did they?

Bide time, gaining strength, while the others lose it.....

Smart strategy, to have them for a trading partner since

mid 70s.

Maybe China believes that time is now growing short.

Who can say that they are wrong? Certainly Nye

apparently.

Term search various terms.

RE 20 STATES PROPOSING COLLEGE STUDENTS CARRY GUNS ECHOES OF THE 50S

In the wake of some mass murderer events over the decades, one can see how some well intentioned people believe this type of legislation would help rather than hurt the peacefulness and safety of campuses.

Unfortunately, I strongly doubt that the results would be at all as hoped.

One would be likely to see numerous violent episodes, not much greater safety, and greatly enhanced militarism and divisiveness, on campuses and off.

I am reminded, Echoes Of The Fifties, to paraphrase DK's recent topic on the 1950s, but I am thinking of the 1850s, and of passages in Nevins, Ordeal, Volume 2, the passages recounting events leading up to the Civil War, in the Territory of Kansas in, I believe, 1856.

They were all advised to come well armed, and they did.

(BUT YOU ALSO HAVE TO RECALL, or be made aware, THAT EVEN FEDERAL CONGRESSMEN BACK THEN WENT AROUND THE CAPITOL ARMED, AND FREQUENTLY REFERRED TO USE OF THEIR WEAPONS TO MAKE A RHETORICAL POINT IN THE HOUSE OR SENATE. That was how it was then.)

BBC: MAHER OUT IN JAPAN WHY?

This area is a real center of global trade.

Guess what else:

KEITH FITZ-GERALD ETF DAILY NEWS GREAT ARTICLE

March 9.

Re DK's topic a while back

American Anger:

http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/2010/05/american-anger.html

re KRUGMAN'S BLOG AND HIS REPUBLICANS AND MEDICARE POST

Great stuff. What an image:

DESCRIPTION

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

RE OBAMA LOCKE CHINA COMMERCE DEPARTMENT CONUNDRUM BBC EDITORIAL

Read 'Thurston's' lips:

Commerce has been the orphan cabinet post for many decades, way behind State and Defense, which called all of the futile
trade-concessing shots of the Cold War.

Now it is merely a thinly disguised pawn of foreign masters, within the now, bowing and scraping, free trade Executive branch.

Someone, do tell me how wrong I really must be.

Chris Farley very funny.

David Spade, the 'Bertrand' of the Saturday Night Live Farley/ 'Macaire' skits.

This is, of course, my creative interpretation of this long comedic history, not theirs or their bosses'.

IF ALL ECONOMIES EVEN ADVANCED ONES ARE SO TO SPEAK FRAGILE YES FRAGILE

(this is not my term or my analysis, but theirs' ('almost all economists'),

then why would anyone want to hold their currencies, when you can hold something else?

Terms search eg:
fragile

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

WHERE DOES MARY POPPINS' SECURITY UMBRELLA SET DOWN HERE?

Say what?

"Is it a bird, is it a plane, is it a helicopter, is it Mary Poppins?"

Term search various terms.

RE GETTING RID OF PESKY UNIONS BY LEGISLATION

I was watching Hitler's speeches tonight. Wonderful viewing.

One of the first things he did, in power, as Chancellor I believe in 1933, was to outlaw trade unions.

Of course we have long rendered the private sector unions obsolete, by globalist blobbalist competition,

and mostly only public sector ones still fleetingly remain, to be rendered extinct shortly.

Great stuff.

RE OBAMA AND SOUTH KOREA FREE TRADE DEAL URGENT FOR THE UMPTEENTH TIME FOR THE PRESIDENCY

RE THE BIG SHORT JOHN GUTFREUND SALOMON CEO LUNCH RUMPOLE the menu

As he said to Lewis over lunch, avec deviled eggs, (could have been a quote from my character Thurston Robert Macaire Howell,)

'It's laissez - faire until you're in deep shit.'

Of course it is, here.

'Thurston', after all, had said, Boca, was it 06 "Who do you think they will bail out, you or me?"

Term search this site eg: laissez faire, lazy fare, laissez fairy tale, laissez fairy, etc.

Too bad, Tavern On The Green closed down a while back.......end of an era, really.

Rumpole might have said,
eg 'it's been a season of Keats really'.

RE BBC NEWS IS BETTER ISN'T IT

'Japan protest over 'dangerous' China helicopter fly-by'

This is a much more important issue than those we see

in the states news media.

RE DEGREES AND DOLLARS

'The fact is that since 1990 or so the U.S. job market has been characterized not by a general rise in the demand for skill, but by “hollowing out”: both high-wage and low-wage employment have grown rapidly, but medium-wage jobs — the kinds of jobs we count on to support a strong middle class — have lagged behind.'

One has to disagree with this picture for several reasons.

First, the hollowing out he refers to really began back in the 50s and 60s, as part of a strategy to defeat Communism.

It was far advanced even in the 70s.

Second, the hollowing out was not just the middle, but all types of jobs, but hitting the middle harder.

Term search Trading American Interests, Trading Places, etc

Monday, March 7, 2011

the menu

Ribeye steak, under the broiler with flat side potatoes down then up, onions, garlic, rosemary, capers, and a hint of health food smoked bacon fat.

Romaine tomato Greek olive salad vinaigrette,

sauteed kale.

Red Truck 07 organic California zinfandel.

Chocolate ice cream.

RE DEGREES AND DOLLARS KRUGMAN NYT EDITORIAL SEE ALSO UNIONS FLATLY WRONG

Re this is what I have been saying for about 25 years now, if you can offshore service jobs, after having offshored manufacturing jobs, who needs high dollar cost graduates, of anything, from developed countries, when low dollar ones from developing ones will be cheaper?

Thus, the US and other MNCs have been growing their 'markets', they have thought, quite knowingly, at the expense of advanced populations, and their children, and their childrens' children, and so on to infinity.

But there is perhaps a limit beyond which they cannot go.

The limit is that short term profitability is not the only criterion for such decisions, in the long run;

and by long run, I am not referring to Keynes' famous dictum,

but something quite other.

See also my prior posts :

RE WISCONSIN POWER PLAY KRUGMAN NYT EDITORIAL UNIONS RIGHT BUT ALSO FLATLY WRONG

RE REPRESENTING AN INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

This was one of the very few acquisitions we did, while I was at the County:

www.sptimes.com/2003/04/29/.../Runway_work_moves_for.shtml

RE ETF daily news blogger comment

I don't know if he is onto something, but the trend, I believe, is certainly out of the dollar:

The world will be in an utter panic to get rid of

dollars. And the stock market is not going to

provide protection from this kind of inflationary

storm so a lot of those dollars are going to end up

in the commodity markets, and especially in the

precious metals. When that kind of money hits a

thin market like gold, and especially silver, it

will drive gigantic gains.

Maybe he is wrong, some believe that the dollar

is actually a sort of safe haven in such

circumstances,

but I am on the other side a bet that he is

wrong...

Sunday, March 6, 2011

re Armageddon apocalypse and Wagner's ring

For those who can understand this comment, the conservative expectation of an apocalypse associated with Israel is as unlikely to happen as foretold, and is as unlikely to play out in anticipated ways, as Wagner's ring cycle, to which Hitler's regime looked for spiritual support.

RE BBC CAPTION BELOW MARCH 4 SMELL THE COFFEE

China says it will boost its defence budget in 2011

RE THE 110 BILLION DOLLAR QUESTION

This is my version of his question:

How many Arab nouveau bourgeoisie do you want?

There are a lot of potential bourgeoisie out there waiting to rise up, say a billion.

Just when the bourgeoisie as a class is, unfortunately, going out of business here,

we have billions of potential new ones elsewhere to welcome.

Laissez faire capitalism (call it liberal democracy) is wonderful isn't it.

re Kristof IS ISLAM THE PROBLEM? MULTICULTURAL CULTURE THESIS GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES

When one takes a long look at the Middle East (not to get into Indonesia, etc.), one can see how someone like Rufus Fears reiterates the adage, the Middle East is the 'graveyard of empires'.

It had also been if not 'the' cradle of empires, certainly one such cradle.

What else emerges about it?

It has long been an area tormented by the close proximity of diverse human civilized habitation, small alien tribes, each very different from its neighbor, various small warlike and aggressive temple cults, etc.; and poor, impotent, and draining ancient agriculture.

It has been an area amid and between developing larger civilizations, on all sides, and subject to movements across its regions, both by armies and merchants, for thousands of years.

One might call it the first 'multicultural' culture.

RE MERS IS NOT A REFORM OF THE 50 STATES' PROPERTY LAWS CF BILL GATES

This type of securitization pawn entity is not an example of the kind of 'reform' I have suggested is needed.

Quite the contrary.

In fact, it is an example of why I have suggested reform and consolidation, at a government level, rather than by quasi public entities in cahoots with large private ones.

Cf my comments on Bill Gates comments below, re why not let wonderful private sector accounting or bookkeeping entities, like for example MERS, brainchild of some of our biggest and best private entities, take care of our well being:
Bill Gates criticizes states....

Everyone can see that thousands of picayune county clerks' offices, and their myriad idiosyncrasies have ill served their clients, even though many of them have modernized and put on line their title docs, etc.,

but on the other hand, consolidation of these thousands of government recordkeeping functions should not have lead in the direction of a MERS type solution, in my judgment.

State and even local laws govern this area, and these have not played well with MERS.

RE TALK DOESN'T PAY NYT EDITORIAL INCENTIVES COMPARTMENTALIZATION INTELLECTUAL DRIFT DUTIES VERSUS TAXES

Re this article: Talk Doesn't Pay, So Psychiatrists Turn to Drug Therapy

Another comment on the overwhelming power of incentives (and conversely disincentives), and the suggestibility of all specialized endeavors.

Michael Lewis commented, or one of his subjects in The Big Short, did so, on the power of incentives in the behavior of Wall street denizens, but it applies to everyone.

Interest 'expense', deducted from income in federal income tax calculations, a classic example, having enormous consequences both for private homeowners, and for the structure and directions banks and corporation have taken (debt to equity rations, LBOs, takeovers, mergers, etc.)

Another critical aspect, historically, of a change in 'incentives', and thus of institutions public and private, is the change from the federal government, and individual state governments, financed largely by duties and other restraints on movements of commodities and imports (including movements of goods across state lines), which was how it had started out, to a system financed largely by federal and state taxation of domestic persons and entities.

Another example, from law: Change how attorney fees are calculated, and experienced lawyers conform their litigation or advisory ways, almost overnight. If 'talk doesn't pay', in calculating attorney fees, say no longer an hourly rate but a flat rate, lawyers may no longer seem to need to do elaborate, time consuming discovery, or have lengthy conferences with their clients or experts.

This idea plays into the comments here about compartmentalization and expertise and experts.

Isolated specializations, sometimes created either by well considered or from odd or porkbarrel incentives whose real or apparent relevance can come and then go over time, once cut firmly adrift from other fields and subfields of human endeavor, lying around or above or below them, cut free from some overarching notion of a humanities ethic of inquiry, or say a discipline and ethic of craftsmanship, quality, and veracity (related notions), or the subfield technology shifts, or the disciplinary paradigm shifts, out from under them

easily become over time doctrinaire little fiefdoms, until say the funding is reduced or cut off, rightly or wrongly,

and once developed and isolated, are especially susceptible to incentive manipulations ('good' or 'bad') of their operations and their conclusions.

(I once took a course, in the MBA program, taught by Srinivasan Umapathy, Management Control Systems, where the concept of incentives played a major role, and was integrally related to accounting practices.)

Saturday, March 5, 2011

RE DK'S CURRENT POST RE THE FINANCIAL MESS

David Kaiser reiterates a critical point here:

"And--and this is the critical point--since the repeal of Glass-Steagall, they can, as I understand it, now borrow money from the Federal Reserve, whose rates have been at historically low levels for most the last decade--coincidentally (?) the period following the repeal of Glass-Steagall. And that is how the banking world has become almost entirely disconnected from the rest of the economy. It's essentially a game of monopoly in which loans at 1% interest take the place the $200 you collect for passing Go. In such a system, it's easy to bid up the price of both stocks and commodities like oil, even in hard economic times like these--and that is what has happened since 2009. And a rise of just 5% in the price of such assets obviously translates into huge profits and bonuses."

See also video on this particular theme, emailed today from realecontv.com

http://www.realecontv.com/page/1221.html

RE BILL GATES CRITICIZES STATES' ACCOUNTING HUFFINGTON

Gates criticizes states' accounting frauds and tricks.

Very fair comment. He is playing off of Wall Street, and

federal government, bail out shenanigans.

'Gates argued that government accounting practices

should be more like private accounting.'

However,

I don't know if anyone else can see the humor,

or the fallacies, in such a position.

His fallacy, one of them, is that he holds up private

sector ethics in accounting as an ideal for these public

sector rascals. But no one but a fool believes much

anymore in private

sector ethics in accounting or auditing. That system is

thoroughly broken.

Cannot be fixed by our flawed political regulatory

system.

A related point:

Many conservative Americans honestly believe that a

solution for their woes is elimination of only the federal

government, leaving them to the tender mercies of rule

under their particular state, and to the rest of the states

and the world.

Friday, March 4, 2011

RE HUNTINGTON'S CLASH REVISITED BROOKS' NONSENSE NYT EDITORIAL

Whom do you believe, Huntington, or Brooks?

Anyone who reads this blog knows which side I come down on.

Brooks claims that nationalism is contrary to Huntington's theses.

Nationalism is also contrary to Brooks' kind of multicultural cross civilizational, globalist (non)-states, call them market states, which Brooks lionizes.

Call nationalism the clash of civilizations' 'double whammy'.

Really, what can one properly say about Huntington's arguments on Brooks' editorial page, given its very limited scope and purposes?

What else, really, would the average American be entitled to, comprehend, or deserve, at this point, other than a short, incorrect, misleading critique, from Brooks, or for that matter from anyone else, in this format?

Term search various terms.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

The menu

This was mild, but doctored up, free range pork pattie sausage night. I couldn't just leave it as mild American pork sausage, could I?

So I threw some cumin, fennel, oregano, garlic, and onion into the pan with it.

Home made Italian tomato sauce, over spaghetti, aged grated Romano, rounded out the affair.

Field greens vinaigrette.

Green Truck California Rhone red.

Breyers vanilla with ripe banana crushed in.

RE OIL WEALTH MUST BE SHARED WITH CITIZENS EDITORIAL BBC SOROS

Sounds like communism, doesn't it?

Soros, a laissez faire capitalist, sounds like a communist.

Wonder why?

Take a guess.

RE GOLD ETC

Countries now hoarding gold......

“Feb 27 (Reuters) – Egypt has issued a ministerial decree immediately banning the export of gold in all its forms, including jewelry and ornaments, until June 30, the official news agency MENA said on Sunday. This decision, which comes in light of the exceptional circumstances the country is passing through …, is to preserve the country’s wealth until the situation stabilizes…”

Note they didn't say cash, or oil.

They banned export of gold.

Why, if it is a useless anachronism?

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

RE THIS IS JUST THE START NYT TIMES THOMAS FRIEDMAN

I think so too, but not because of the points he makes.

His article makes you think that if only every country were a lot more like Israel, then the world would be a much more peaceful happy place.

That would not at all be the case, even if such an impossible dream world idea, a world full of Israeli-type military democracies,

came true.

He once, long ago, apparently said something like no two countries with a McDonald's had ever gone to war against eachother.

I believe that situation has drastically changed, and was, once again, even back in the early nineties, a utopian Cobdenist dream world picture advocated by his laissez faire clients.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

RE LOWRY DRAWINGS PAINTINGS CONNECTIONS FLEDERMAUS DRACULA SPOCK

Lowry did several drawings which I stumbled on, one of which, of an unknown sitter of African descent, is at bottom.

On the reverse of this large sheet are several life drawing sketches of another, seemingly caucasian, sitter. This person has a hunchback. He also, in these drawings at least, has pointed, so-called Stahl ear deformity, Spock, Satyr, Vulcan, or perhaps bat, ears. (Fledermaus, as well as Dracula, were popular at that time, I believe.) I will insert an image of him with this post here.

These sitters, both the African sitter, and the hunchback with Spock ears, I believe are also shown at several points in other drawings and in later oil paintings. Here are some references:

Drawings Of L. S. Lowry, Mervin Levy, image number 8, seems to be this man, albeit with normal shaped ears. I believe that I have seen another image of this sitter, with the hair covering over his ears, but cannot find it among my reference books.

Levy's book also contains an image of an Antique shop, image number 22, 1924, which may, possibly, show the same earlier African sitter, as the central tall figure in the foreground.

Regarding the early drawing of a hunckback sitter with pointed ears, refer to Shelley Rohde's book, L. S. Lowry, A Life, pages 216 a drawing, 186 a painting from 1949 and detail p. 239, for related images of a similar figure, now somewhat older, with hunchback, pointed ears.

I have some highly detailed scanned images of the faint images for the hunchback figure, but they will not insert into the blog spot.

RE WITTGENSTEIN AND JUSTICE PITKIN WINCH AND THE LAW

This is an interesting journalistic tour through some modern analytic philosophy and social scientific theory.

She follows Cavell, and in my judgment is much too quick to try to find fault with Winch's ideas, lumping him in with positivists, which he certainly was not.

She also incidentally seems to benefit, as she goes along in this work, not just from Wittgenstein's ideas, but also from many of Winch's.

None of this of course has virtually anything to do with any actual practical applications in the legal system.

It has much more to do with social scientific theory, but at least she is willing to struggle with issues across multiple disciplines, an almost lost art.