May 16, 2023

Thought for the Day:

“The man whose public spirit is prompted altogether by humanity and benevolence, will respect the established powers and privileges even of individuals, and still more those of the great orders and societies, into which the state is divided. Though he should consider some of them as in some measure abusive, he will content himself with moderating what he often cannot annihilate without great violence. When he cannot conquer the rooted prejudices of the people by reason and persuasion, he will not attempt to subdue them by force; but will religiously observe what, by Cicero, is justly called the divine maxim of Plato, never to use violence to his country no more than to his parents. He will accommodate, as well as he can, his public arrangements to the confirmed habits and prejudices of the people; and will remedy, as well as he can, the inconveniencies which may flow from the want of those regulations which the people are averse to submit to. When he cannot establish the right, he will not disdain to ameliorate the wrong; but like Solon, when he cannot establish the best system of laws, he will try to establish the best that the people can bear.”

― Adam Smith

Birthdays:

1831 David Edward Hughes, inventor

1938 Ivan Sutherland, computer scientist

1641 Dudley North, economist

1761 John Opie, painter

1857 Juan Morel Campos, composer. Sueños Dorados, and Danza Laura y Georgina

1923 Merton Miller, economist

MISCELLANY:

IT’S AMAZING WHAT’S POSSIBLE WHEN THERE’S NO INTERFERENCE (SEE THE THE VIDEO). 27-year-old pays $0 to live in a ‘luxury tiny home’—how she built it for $35,000: ‘I forget I’m living in a shed’ (7:50)

FOCUSED PROTECTION: The Great Barrington Declaration

SCIENCE, ETHICS, AND THE NUREMBERG CODE: Declaration of Canadian Physicians for Science and Truth