Author Archives: walthe310

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair

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"Lev Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana", 19...

“Lev Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana”, 1908, the first color photo portrait in Russia Français : « Léon Tolstoï à Iasnaïa Poliana », 1908, le premier portrait photographique en couleur en Russie. Suomi: “Leo Tolstoi Jasnaja Poljanassa”, 1908. Ensimmäinen Venäjällä otettu värimuotokuva. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, My Year of Magical Reading by Nina Sankovitch. She lost her older sister to a fast-growing cancer that struck unexpectedly in middle age. She and her sister were very close and shared a love of reading. Nina had difficulty accepting that she was alive while her sister was dead. After two to three years of difficulty accepting the loss, she decided to devote one year to reading a book a day and writing a review of it to be posted online. She selected books of approximately 300 pages that she could complete reading in four hours and she allotted two hours for the writing of the review. I love to read, but I am a slower reader than she and now I lack the stamina and discipline to read one book per day. I read many books at the same time, and I enjoy jumping from one to another as the mood takes me.

After one year, she returned to a slower pace of reading, but with a greater acceptance of the loss of her sister. The purple chair of the title was her reading chair.

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Mitt and women

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Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney (Photo credit: Gage Skidmore)

Mitt Romney has a problem with women. Campaigning separately yesterday, both Mitt and his wife Ann put a foot into their respective mouths when talking to and/or about women’s issues. I recently saw an article on the web that speculated that Mitt’s inability to connect with women is due to the fact that he has never dealt with women as equals. The Romney family is 6 guys and one woman, Ann. And the Mormon Church is a male-dominated organization too. It’s an interesting theory. We will probably never know for sure unless Mitt is more forthcoming about himself than he has been to date.

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“Deficits don’t matter”

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Official White House Photo of U.S. Vice Presid...

Official White House Photo of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Dick Cheney said that and in the short run, he was correct. Deficits do matter in the longer term. Yes, Dick Cheney was a reliable source some of the time. Even a stopped clock tells the correct time occasionally, actually twice a day. Cheney was also the author of the 1% doctrine which had nothing to do with wealth or Wall Street. Cheney’s version concerned  national defense. If there was a 1% percent chance of the US being attacked, we should attack first, preventive war.

Break, broke, broken

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English: Fareed Zakaria, American journalist a...

English: Fareed Zakaria, American journalist and author (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When things wear out or break, good maintenance practice is to fix or replace them. When an individual or nation is short of cash or credit (broke), then maintenance is deferred. The US is in that position now. Devoting too much of our resources to defense and a sizable portion of the rest to social programs, we are cash-strapped to invest in education, research and infrastructure that will grow our economy in the future.

We defeated the USSR in the Cold War, because we increased our defense spending to the point that they could not compete. Their economy cracked under the strain. We are headed in the same direction with China, but now we are the ones whose economy is showing the strains. If our economy grows at 2-3% per year and the Chinese economy grows at 9-10% per year, the simple laws of interest compounding ensure that they will have the capacity to grow all their expenditures, civilian and defense, at a faster rate than we can.

It is my belief that we must grow our economy faster if we wish to remain a superpower. We will never grow our economy as fast as China does, but according to Fareed Zakaria, China is about to experience slower growth, around 6%, due to the sheer size of their economy. Therefore, the parties in Washington must stop their bickering and put our economy on a sustainable path to recovery. We have a more educated work force than the Chinese do. We should encourage everyone’s participation in the economy to reap maximum benefits for them and for the US.

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