Yes

Finally figured out how Treasury Bills work. I have no idea why it took so long. Treasury bills are purchased at a discount from the dollar amount on their face. And they don’t pay interest. Instead, the return on your investment is the difference in price between the originally purchased discount amount and the amount at maturity.

My exam said that “yields on Treasury bills have declined in the past month to 4.58% from 4.61%” and this clearly means that “buyers of new bills paid more than buyers paid the previous month.”

To which I said, “What the blazes.” Why would a buyer pay more to buy a treasury bill whose yield has gone down in the past month?

Because the return is the maturity amount minus the purchased discount price. Forgot that part. Which means that a lower discounted price at the outset is ultimately more valuable. 12 – 4 is less than 12 – 3. I dislike overlooking things.

Look at these two pictures closely. Same mountain. In the lower picture, that’s not a lake. That’s Glacier Bay — sea level. How often do you find an 18,008 ft. juggernaut plopped a mere 10 miles from the shoreline? That’s Alaska, baby.

A brilliant piece from Doug Wilson’s blog today; 2 issues:

1. Primarily, “fatherless cultures produce men who do not understand honor.”
2. “Hokiness” and seeing beyond it. Excellent. Read:

Wilson writes:

“A friend sent me a copy of Doug Phillips’ post on honor, which was simply outstanding, and which included a paragraph that was pure gold. Here it is: “In examining Hebrews 12:5-13, I shared my own view that fatherless cultures produce men who do not understand honor, and therefore relate dishonorably to fathers, employers, pastors, and — most importantly — to God the Father. In fact, cultures dominated by prodigal fathers produce men and women who actually view dishonorable conduct as a virtue.”

Full disclosure here: some of the Vision Forum material (e.g. the picture for League of Grateful Sons) does strike me as hokey and sentimental. Okay, I admit it, but please hear me out. This is not a backhanded “compliment” to Phillips — delivered with a backhand. Rhetorical and stylistic differences between us notwithstanding, the substance of what Phillips wrote here was world-class, first-rate, and desperately needed. We have no commandment in Scripture that says “thou shalt not go into the red zone on Wilson’s hokey-meter,” and we do have the call given to us to render honor, as Phillips so admirably argues and shows, as a maxim for life.”

And, for what it’s worth (and yes, it’s worth a lot), here is the aforementioned “Post on Honor” by Doug Phillips from Vision Forum.

“When we preach Christ crucified, we have no reason to stammer, or stutter, or hesitate, or apologize; there is nothing in the gospel of which we have any cause to be ashamed.” [C.H. Spurgeon]

Anyhow, I reckon we’d get a lot more accomplished if we actually adopted the truth that what someone else thinks of us is really none of our business.

Walter Benjamin wrote some famous theses on the philosophy of history back in about 1940. Below is one of the last, Thesis A:

Historicism contents itself with establishing a causal connection between various moments in history. But no fact that is a cause is for that very reason historical. It became historical posthumously, as it were, through events that may be separated from it by thousands of years. A historian who takes this as his point of departure stops telling the sequence of events like the beads of a rosary. Instead, he grasps the constellation which his own era has formed with a definite earlier one. Thus he establishes a conception of the present as the “time of the now” which is shot through with chips of Messianic time.

Fundamentally, Benjamin is giving historicism its comuppence. History isn’t simply composed of a conglomeration of already-happened events. Still, it doesn’t follow that Benjamin denies causal relations between events, qua events. Benjamin’s own act of writing these theses involves causation or chains of events. One idea follows from another, thus forming a coherent argument; and as those arguments are written and recorded as actions, they are transferred from the present to the past. However, in terms of an historical orientation, causality has no claim to having an historical identity. Simple events such as writing a treatise on the philosophy of history do not become historical simply because those actions are now past events.

“Posthumously” is the key word within this thesis A, since it indicates a separation between the life of the event and its new identity as an historical moment. Our present time is joined to an historical one only through a “constellation” of multiple eras – though not a constellation of successive eras or events – and that constellation is “shot through with the chips of Messianic time.” How’s that for an unusual phrase? Essentially, the cohesion of this constellation is dependent upon a Messianic notion of remembrance; what, after all, is remembrance other than a re-collection, so to speak, of the fragments of a threatened or endangered past? Remembrance of past events is the method by which the present is given meaning with relation to the past, as well as a method by which the future might be conceived. In relation to this Messianism, Lloyd Spencer notes that “Judaism . . . emphasized that the past was the only source of an image of the possible future: ‘The Jews were prohibited from investigating the future. The Torah and the prayers instruct them in remembrance however.’” By means of fully redeemed past, that is, a knowledge of the life and force of every smallest aspect of the past, Judaism was able to use the past to provide meaning and definition to the images of the present and future. Without such an historical orientation, the prohibition of investigating the “future” would be needless, for the notion of a future would be incoherent. So Benjamin caps his “A” thesis by the claim that the “‘time of the now’ . . . is shot through with the chips of Messianic time.

The Past for Benjamin is simply never past. History is never a mere conception. The means by which the present exists is due to the existence of the historical past and the crucial relationship between the past and the present. The past is alive and part of the constellation between present and historical events. Usual notions of history view past events as lacking current significance, existing only as elements of potential curiosity. But the historical past for Benjamin actually has a claim toward the present, and that claim is fulfilled through a remembrance of the past and a knowledge that the past must be “citable in all its moments.” The past is not that upon which we improve; it is that which improves and shapes the present and future and that which has the most force and vitality through its historical identity.

Peter Wehner of The Wall Street Journal on how “The president’s critics keep spinning Iraq.” Popular notions debunked are:

1. The president misled Americans to convince them to go to war.
2. The Bush administration pressured intelligence agencies to bias their judgments.
3. Because weapons of mass destruction stockpiles weren’t found, Saddam posed no threat.
4. Promoting democracy in the Middle East is a postwar rationalization.

“This is why the dearth of serious, sustained biblical preaching in the Church today is a serious matter. When the Church loses the Word of God it loses the very means by which God does his work. In its absence, therefore, a script is being written, however unwittingly, for the Church’s undoing, not in one cataclysmic moment, but in a slow, inexorable slide made up of piece by tiny piece of daily dereliction.” [David Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), p. 9]

Or as Ezra Pound says in The Garden:

Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piece-meal of a sort
of emotional anaemia.

“Movies are fantasies, but a nation’s fantasies are also statements about itself.” [E. Christian Kopff, The Devil Knows Latin (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 1999), p. 223]

And speaking (indirectly) of the Devil, a selection from Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary:

• REALITY, n. The dream of a mad philosopher. That which would remain in the cupel if one should assay a phantom. The nucleus of a vacuum.

John McCain gave this commencement address to the New School in New York on Friday. As highlights (though not to replace reading the speech entire), two quotes:

• [On the war in Iraq] This is a clash of ideals, a profound and terrible clash of ideals. It is a fight between right and wrong. Relativism has no place in this confrontation. We’re not defending an idea that every human being should eat corn flakes, play baseball or watch MTV. We’re not insisting that all societies be governed by a bicameral legislature and a term-limited chief executive. We are insisting that all people have a right to be free, and that right is not subject to the whims and interests and authority of another person, government or culture. Relativism, in this contest, is most certainly not a sign of our humility or ecumenism; it is a mask for arrogance and selfishness. It is, and I mean this sincerely and with all humility, not worthy of us. We are a better people than that.

• We have our disagreements, we Americans. We contend regularly and enthusiastically over many questions: over the size and purposes of our government; over the social responsibilities we accept in accord with the dictates of our conscience and our faithfulness to the God we pray to; over our role in the world and how to defend our security interests and values in places where they are threatened. These are important questions; worth arguing about. We should contend over them with one another. It is more than appropriate, it is necessary that even in times of crisis, especially in times of crisis, we fight among ourselves for the things we believe in. It is not just our right, but our civic and moral obligation.

Directly related is the fury of McCain’s listeners. It is difficult to know how to proceed when history, rationality, and polite respect are utterly ignored. This is not an issue of which political side is “correct,” obviously. It’s an issue of both rationality and respect. If these two crucial components are missing from either a speaker or his listeners, nothing will be accomplished.

Additionally, college students apparently possess the notion that, since they finally carry the identity of “college student” or “university student,” they have a divine right to disregard respect for elders, historical institutions, and any other contrary ideas. Often, the simple act of protesting seems to be an end in itself for many students; the protest is their argument. As always, assertions are easy. Protesting, name-calling, and disrespect are easy. But not actual rational arguments. Not actual respect. These things are hard, and apparently too hard for the students at the New School in New York.

A must-read article discussing current and biblical attitudes toward pregnancy. Procreation rather than reproduction, the inherent honor of the pregnant mother, and the act of sacrificially “practicing habits of nurture and hope on behalf of another.”

Pope John Paul II’s 1994 Letter to Families: “Man’s coming into being does not conform to the laws of biology alone, but also, and directly, to God’s creative will, which is concerned with the genealogy of the sons and daughters of human families.”

Pregnancy beautifully executes God’s covenantal family planning, to a thousand generations, which he planned out before the foundations of the earth.