Michael Feldman visited with his wife's aunt and uncle.#

The uncle, in particular, had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of favorite stories and memories attached to some of the photos. We will never forget, hard though we may try, one particular album featuring photos of a historic trip to Europe 40 years ago. Like many older people who have trouble remembering the names of grandchildren or the current president, he was able to recreate, in excruciating detail, every step of that tour of Europe, every conversation, museum, meal, bus ride and mishap along the way.

Somehow we arrived at the last page of the last album. We felt like we had just run a marathon while simultaneously taking the SAT, GMAT, LSAT and MCAT exams. With the ingenuous and only partially invented excuse of wanting to visit the nearby Basilica before it closed for the day, we began the complicated process of disengagement and polite adioses.

Gina Smith links to an interesting story about Hitler's closest living relative.#

Hitler died with no immediate heirs but Leo Raubal was one of his half-sister Angela Raubal's children. Maser said Leo Raubal long considered such a lawsuit before his death in 1979. Bild am Sonntag said royalties [for 'Mein Kampf'] could be worth millions of euros.

"Yes I know the whole story about Hitler's inheritance," Peter Raubal told Bild am Sonntag in what the paper said were his first public comments on the issue. "But I don't want to have anything to do with it. I will not do anything about it. I only want to be left alone."

Gina Smith posts her Saturday Zen story. So awesome.#

A Zen Master lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening, while he was away, a thief sneaked into the hut only to find there was nothing in it to steal. The Zen Master returned and found him. "You have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler, "and you should not return empty handed. Please take my clothes as a gift." The thief was bewildered, but he took the clothes and ran away. The Master sat naked, watching the moon. "Poor fellow," he mused, " I wish I could give him this beautiful moon."

Don Boudreaux doubts the existence of "predatory pricing" and explains it:#

All agree that the costs the predatory firm incurs today (by pricing below its costs) are an investment by the firm in securing future monopoly power. The firm will make this investment only if the investment's expected, risk-adjusted rate of return is the highest the firm can get for the funds it will invest.

But what a poor investment predatory pricing would be.

Chip Gibbons writes about love, pets, and grown men crying.#

That evening my roommate came home. He was a young law student, a nice kid who loved animals and had grown attached to Kodak in the short time he lived with us. He asked how my day was and I just burst into tears and sobbed uncontrollably just like the man in Lenn's story did. Jeff, my roommate, knew before I could even get the words out what had happened because he knew that Kodak was dying. So 6'2" Jeff just held me until I was done. I grieved for days after that, just as if a human friend had died. Actually, I think it was more than if a human friend had died. In the previous fifteen years I had lost dozens of friends to AIDS and none of their deaths set me off like Kodak's death did.

Kodak weighed only about three pounds when she died. I had her cremated and scattered her little tiny pile of ashes at the top of Angel Island in San Francisco Bay.

Mark Schmitt wonders why the Senate has so many problems and Senators are not Great Men™.#

How did the institution come to this point? It's not because the Senators of today are lesser individuals than in the past, although that may be true also. Rather, I think, it is the way the Senate goes about its business that brings out the worst in those individuals, whereas there are things about the Senate in the past that brought out the best democratic and deliberative capacities of its members.

Hmm, robbers and murderers who don't have to be efficient because of their monopoly not acting up to our expectations and desires? What a surprise!

James Wilson writes about the work that Ludwig von Mises accomplished.#

The relationship of two or more sets of statistical data does not prove or disprove anything. We must use reason to understand what's really going on.

And this is the ultimate, supreme debt we owe to Ludwig von Mises. He established, in Human Action, the premises and logic of human behavior. Not that human behavior is moral, or even reflects "rational self-interest." But rather, that human beings act by making choices through time, and that these choices are a reflection of costs and benefits according to one's values at the time of his decision and action. Just as green apples, red apples, and rotten apples are all still apples, it is self-evident - a rational discernment of recognition - that a human being makes choices through time. And that a human being's will is self-governing - that is, one person can influence, but not control, another person's will. An organism's will, and, as Rose Wilder Lane put it, "control of his own energy" is entirely up to the organism. Politics can influence us by imposing additional costs on certain behaviors, and provide rewards for others. But politics can not control behavior or control values. In establishing these axioms, Mises systematically destroyed the conceit of The State, that its laws and coercion can function as values that can persuade people to become "good" in The State's eyes. Instead, he advanced the idea that The State only imposes additional costs and impediments on human action and thereby distorts it and takes away the freedom and prosperity we otherwise would have had.

Mark Schmitt writes about religious freedom in Texas. Particularly with regards to the UU decision described on Garalog.#

The news that the state of Texas has decided that the Unitarian/Universalist church no longer qualifies as a legitimate religion like Scientology, because it does not require that its adherents profess belief in a higher being, says a lot about Texas but also brought to mind something I learned some time ago about religious freedom.

Ryan Overbey is hilarious, or I guess that Buddhist scriptures are.#

Sometimes Buddhist scriptures read like brainstorming notes for B-movie horror flicks. Tonight's favorite paragraph from the Peacock Sutra:

There are 8 Great Demonesses. They eat blood and consume flesh and hurt people. [...] These demonesses eat blood and consume flesh, and they kidnap little boys and girls and firstborn and old women and familiies. They constantly chase people. Sometimes they enter lairs in caves. Sometimes they scream people's names. They constantly suck out people's souls. They have no compassion. They are heartless. They are extremely terrifying!