If you want a look at the future of Facebook shares, look to the Dot.Com stocks of the late nineties right up until the bubble popped in 2000. Remember such stalwarts as Global Crossing, Worldcom, Covad and JDS Uniphase?  Remember the Day Trading fad where every week the business press had stories of waiters and students making fortunes flipping shares on margin?

A fool and his money are soon parted.

The choice of a graduation speaker, particularly one who represents a particular position on a raging - perhaps existential in the case of Catholic institutions -  controversy,  is a public statement of which side the university is supporting. This choice once again raises the issue of what it means to be a "Catholic" university in America, much as did the Notre Dame's awarding of an honorary degree to Barack Obama.  Do these schools have an obligation to conform to Church doctrine or are they free to chart their own course in the name academic freedom?  If the latter, is there a point where the Church is compelled to withdraw the Catholic designation?

Comments like this always make me wonder why these parents don't band together and channel that energy into taking over the PTAs or School Boards of their communities?  That's how Sarah Palin got her start - she was a  parent concerned about the quality of the local schools so she rolled up her sleeves and did something about it by running for the School Board.  And I know from reading Ricochet postings that she is widely admired among the Ricochetoi.

In most places I know of, the largest part of the property taxes are applied to the cost running the schools.  Yet home-schoolers seem content to write these these assessments off as a sort of votive offering to the god of unionized jobsworths and, instead, devote their time and money to educating their kids at home.  Why not link arms and force the public schools to deliver the kind of product you want?

Take Vermont as an example: it was a rock-ribbed and copper-bottomed conservative Republican farming state (Calvin Coolidge) like New Hampshire until the sixties when swarms of the children of rich New Yorkers (like Howard Dean) flooded in to attend St Michael's and University of Vermont and never went home.  Now they pride themselves on having elected the only openly socialist members of Congress.

But, though this is the price we pay for being a union of states, I wouldn't want it any other way.  Who would  want to be required to carry an "Internal Passport" like in the old Soviet Union, or have to get permission from a government flunky if you want to move like in China?  Not this kid!

Many people have learned to fly but darned few take to the sky in an airplane built with their own hands.  My hat is off to you. Outstanding!

Nothing in this world is  more powerful than an appropriately-timed hollow gesture.

Are we smarter?  Of course we are.  Our mastery of the practical arts has provided the modern world with a demonstrably better way of life in ways that can easily be measured.  The Greeks had a word for this kind of knowledge: Techne'.

But there is another scale of knowing upon which we do not rate so high: Wisdom. What the Greeks called Sophia.

Since Francis Bacon we have convinced ourselves that the so-called "Wisdom of the Ancients" was as the learning of children.  Have we not harnessed the atom?  Can we not fly faster than sound?  Who before us has left footprints on the moon? The sum-total of all human knowledge sits on our desktop, each home having easy access to its own Library richer than that of the fabled one at Alexandria.  And yet, faced with  questions of Right and Wrong the best we can offer by way of answers are gut-level intuitions about "Caring" or "Fairness."

We are shepherds on a hillside surrounded by the remains of great civilizations and not even curious about who they were, much less realizing they were our ancestors.

How about the classic John Wayne flick, "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon."

I watched that series a few years ago and used it as a guide for reading through the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers.  It gave me a whole new insight into their meaning.  And a much deeper appreciation of the wisdom of men who founded our country.

What struck me most was how many of the "Conservative" and Tea Party positions of today are restatements of the Anti-Federalist arguments against ratification. It was the Anti-Federalists who finally forced the issue of amending the Constitution upon Congress in their very first session to give us what we now [mistakenly] call the Bill of Rights.  (They are just the ten amendments that passed out of a whole slate of proposed amendments.)

I agree that time spent watching Teaching Company lectures is time well-spent.

You're absolutely right. He's specifically addressing liberals in general and Democrats in particular.  At several points in the book he writes of his frustration at trying to explain his research at Democrat assemblies only to have the audience swamp him with angry comments about the immorality of religion, patriotism, George W. Bush, and Conservatives as a sub-species.  What is striking about Haidt's book, to me at least, is -as he admits -  his findings go against all of his instincts, they enrage the very people he wants to help, and yet, in the face of this opposition from his own side he's still willing to cry out in the wilderness trying to be the voice of reason. (To mix a metaphor.)

If you haven't watched his TED Talk, I do recommend it.  It's fascinating once you get past that initial 2 1/2 minutes of him setting up the audience for the coup to their amour propre.

Actually, Haidt has provided some useful intelligence from which you can craft a winning strategy. (I'm assuming you're talking about "Winning" by means of reasoned argument and not musketry.)

Since liberals have only 3 points on their moral compass, if you want to reach them you have to craft your argument in terms of Caring, Fairness or Liberty and not waste time with appeals to Authority, Patriotism, or the Transcendent because, as we have all long suspected, they are deaf to these concepts.

Here are the words with which Haidt closes his book:

“So the next time you find yourself seated beside someone from another [moral] matrix, give [this] a try.  Don’t just jump right in. Don’t bring up morality until you’ve found a few points of commonality or in some other way establish a bit of trust.

If you made such a rule then what would be the purpose for having Congressmen?  The Representative was not designed to represent the nation as a whole but only to stand for the people living in his district.

I'm offering this nifty bumper-sticker and campaign slogan to Obama free of charge.

Like it or not the New York Times is still the nation's premier newspaper. They have news and stories that you just will not find anywhere else.  John Burn's reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan, for example,  was first rate.  The have excellent science reporting. Remember the best seller about fractal geometry and non-linear math,  Chaos? James Gleick was the NYT's science writer.  The Times has a stable of marvelous food writers.  So what's the problem? Their editorial policy stinks.  But I ignore the Editorial Page as assiduously as I do the Sports Page where they cover the - ugh! - Yankees.  Read the Times for what it's good for and ignore the rest.  And you can also compost it and use it in your garden.  The B.S. on the editorial page is good for your tomatoes.

Traditional Bankers may be going extinct because traditional money has gone extinct.

Classically money has three purposes: It's a Unit of Account; A Medium of Exchange: and a Store of Value.  Of the three roles,  Unit of Account is the only one that may still have some validity.  

It has been replaced as a Medium of Exchange by the world's only true universal currency, the Credit Card.  You buy something that catches your eye, flash the plastic peso (or maybe just the account number if you're buying on-line), and, later, you pay the bill - in your home currency - with an electronic funds transfer.  No actually currency need ever change hands.  And Credit, being based on Trust rather than metal or government fiat, is limitless, needing only an agreement between two parties wanting to make an exchange for credit to be created.

As far as the last purpose of money goes - A Store of Value:  Don't make me laugh.

Both grandfathers worked for railroads.  My dad sailed the supertankers. I flew airplanes.  Seemingly disparate jobs but in the end the same job I guess.  

I didn't so much plan it this way; But in my heart was the only thing I ever wanted to do for as long as I can remember.  I did other jobs before I finally got to do the thing my soul yearned for most.  It wasn't  a line of work so much as the thing I was born to do.