There's no explaining.................

Fleetwood Mac..............................Hypnotized

Still valued....................

thanks to mme scherzo for the photo

Fun with statistics.......................

Or things I should have known, but didn't pay attention to:

95% of the World population is outside the U.S.  

This is a fact that is easy to do the math for, but we 

need reminded of this.

-Rick Platt

Chart via the CCIM Magazine

Admiring things I will never be doing................

thanks jonathan

For a long time, actually....................

Makers....................

"We may become the makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets."
-Karl Popper

Just one key unlocks them both......

The Youngbloods...............................Get Together

Tigerhawk writes a love letter.....................

........to the "academic left," asking for a wee bit of understanding for the trials and travails (and successes) of the small business person.  Letter here.  Excerpt here:

"Business is a creative act, an expression of the human spirit no less noble than art, letters, philosophy and other inquiry, the learned professions, or philanthropy. When you insult or inhibit a person's business, you are invalidating his creative act.

Something to be learned by the time you are in kindergarten..........

Indifferent...............................

"Our American heritage is threatened as much by our own indifference as by the most unscrupulous office or by the most powerful foreign threat."
-Dwight David Eisenhower

See not....................

If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want:  we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories.
-Karl Popper

For another 68 days............

Entirety........................

Eternity is not infinity.
It is not a long time.
It does not begin at the end of time.
It does not run parallel to time.
In its entirety it always was.
In its entirety it will always be.
It is entirely present always.
-Wendell Berry


image via

Pull...........................

It is always a challenge to see who can be more creative, the squirrel trying to access a bird feeder or the human being trying to keep them away.  Score one for the humans, as these bright fellows squirrel-proof their deck:



thanks David

Why not...............?

August Burns Red...........................Carol of the Bells

It's also what passes for blogging around here....

Blind spots.....................

John E. Smith, from the Heartland, talks broccoli and discipline:

"Discipline is like broccoli.  We may not care for it ourselves, 
but we feel it would sure be good for everyone else."

Entangled....................

"The one thing no species can ever be is self-reliant. Being 
entangled is the condition of life itself.”
-Verlyn Klinkenborg

Thanks Jeff

art work via

Deserve......................

"Life responds to deserve and not to need.  It doesn't say, 'If you need, you will reap.'  It says, 'If you plant you will reap.'  The guy says, 'I really need to reap.'  Then you really need to plant."
-Jim Rohn

Too well....................

                      Revelation

We make ourselves a place apart
     Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
     Till someone really finds us out.

'Tis pity if the case require
     (Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
     The understanding of a friend.

But so with all, from babes that play
     At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
     Must speak and tell us where they are.

-Robert Frost

Ouch............

"Failures are skinned knees - painful, but superficial, and they heal quickly."
-H. Ross Perot

Speaking of Ross Perot............

Must fly.......................

It's a Beautiful Day..............................White Bird

A national treasure...............

thanks Mark

Generally speaking, yes..................

Be...................

"The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude.  Be kind, but not weak.  Be bold, but not a bully.  Be thoughtful, but not lazy.  Be humble, but not timid.  Be proud, but not arrogant.  Have humor, but without folly."
-Jim Rohn

Fragile: Handle with care...........

     "Liberty, next to religion, has been the motive for good deeds and the common pretext of crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens, two thousand four hundred and sixty years ago, until the ripened harvest was gathered by men of our race.  It is the delicate fruit of a mature civilisation; and scarcely a century has passed since nations, that knew the meaning of the term, resolved to be free.   In every age its progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man's craving for power, and the poor man's craving for food."

     "Now liberty and good government do not exclude each other;  and there are excellent reasons why they should go together.  Liberty is not a means to a higher political end.  It is itself the highest political end."

-Lord Acton

Eligible.........................

"America, if eligible at all to downfall and ruin, is eligible within herself, not without;  for I see clearly that the combined foreign world could not beat her down.  But these savage, wolfish parties alarm me.  Owning no law but their own will, more and more combative, less and less tolerant of the idea of ensemble and of equal brotherhood, the perfect equality of the States, the overarching American Ideas, it behooves you to convey yourself implicitly to no party, nor submit blindly to their dictators, but steadily hold yourself judge and master over all of them."
-Walt Whitman     1870

Maps..........................

"Human nature is to need a map.  If you're brave enough to draw one, people will follow."
-Seth Godin

map courtesy of

Rules for all of us.........................

Ten rules from Swissmiss:

Volume way up....................!

Allman Brothers....................................Melissa

On picking the wrong fight.............

     "When you stop fighting yourself - when you accept that the way it is, is the way it is, you're free.  Say that to yourself three or four times a day.  'The way it is, is the way it is.  I accept that.'  You see, you don't need perfection, just progress.  Everything can be changed for the better.  Meanwhile, it is the way it is.  Once you can come out of acceptance, you're free, completely free, because you are no longer in the emotion, fighting with yourself."
-Stuart Wilde, Infinite Self

image via

Like climbing a mountain.............

thanks Bill

Teaching........................

"Before teaching others begin by educating yourselves.  Teach by example before teaching by words."
-Kahlil Gibran


cartoon courtesy of

Insidious mastery of song................

                        Piano

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me; 
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see 
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the 
     tingling strings 
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother 
     who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter
     outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano
     our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The
     glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child
    for the past.

-D. H. Lawrence

So she said to me.................

Without partiality.................

     "Heaven overspreads all without partiality.  Earth sustains all without partiality.   The sun and moon shine on all without partiality.  All creatures under Heaven are governed by these 'Three Impartialities' under which they must labor and strive but from which they may also derive comfort."
-The Saying of Confucius

Opening paragraphs.............

"Now at last the slowly gathered, long-pent-up fury of the storm broke upon us.  Four or five million men met each other in the first shock of the most merciless of all the wars of which record has been kept.  Within a week the front of France, behind which we had been accustomed to dwell through the long years of the former war and the opening phase of this, was to be irretrievably broken.  Within three weeks the long-famed French Army was to collapse in rout and ruin, and the British Army to be hurled into the sea with all its equipment lost.  Within six weeks we were to find ourselves alone, almost disarmed, with triumphant Germany and Italy at our throats, with the whole of Europe in Hitler's power, and Japan glowering on the other side of the globe.  It was amid these facts and looming prospects that I entered upon my duties as Prime Minister and Minister of Defence and addressed myself to the first task of forming a Government of all parties to conduct His Majesty's business at home and abroad by whatever means might be deemed best suited to the national interest."
-Winston Churchill,  Their Finest Hour

thanks Doug

Search this whole world over...............

Marshall Tucker Band.....................................Dream Lover

Always bet on the optimist...............

Matt Ridley is my favorite optimist.  In a recent essay in Wired, he has a bit of fun with the doom and gloomers, primarily because they are so often wrong.  A few quotes:

"Ever since Thomas Robert Malthus, doomsayers have tended to underestimate the power of innovation. In reality, driven by price increases, people simply developed new technologies, such as the horizontal drilling technique that has helped us extract more oil from shale."

"Humanity is a fast-moving target. We will combat our ecological threats in the future by innovating to meet them as they arise, not through the mass fear stoked by worst-case scenarios."

Thanks Kurt

Are you hiding?

thanks Mme Scherzo

You pays your money and takes your chances....

Real world decision making....................

Unwholesome fermentation...........

    "During the progress of this famous bubble, England presented a singular spectacle.  The public mind was in a state of unwholesome fermentation.  Men were no longer satisfied with the slow but sure profits of cautious industry.  The hope of boundless wealth for the morrow made them heedless and extravagant for to-day."
-Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

Mackey's excerpt is from his discussion of the South Sea bubble in 1720 England, but it could just as easily describe the 1637 Tulip Mania in Holland, The Mississippi Bubble in France in 1718, the Tech Stock bubble of 2000, or the 2003-2006 American real estate market.  Something about human nature...........

painting courtesy of

The 40-30-30 rule...........

"To improve at anything, we must at some point push ourselves outside our comfort zone."

"Many of the strategies employed in competitive and recreational sports are applicable in business and our personal lives. One lesson I learned from alpine ski racing was the "40-30-30 Rule." During training, early on, I tried to go fast, and I also focused on not falling. On a ride up the ski lift, my coach told me I was missing the point. He explained that success in ski racing, or most sports for that matter, was only 40% physical training. The other 60% was mental. And of that, the first 30% was technical skill and experience. The second 30% was the willingness to take risks."

Both quotes excerpted from here.

Can I get an amen............?

 “'Never again' remains the world’s hollowest slogan, even as yet another American administration painfully discovers that just because your ideas are pretty doesn’t mean your policies work."
-Walter Russell Mead

Ends.............................

"Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end."
-Karl Popper

Repeat this about twenty times a day............

"I have simply ceased being occupied with activities that bring me no joy........I'll make time for joy."
-Ray Visotski

Back to school...................

Chuck Berry......................................School Days

Back to school...................

She's going to miss her boy

Looks like he is in good hands

Under the heading of: Be careful what you wish for

"If God had wanted to put everything into the universe from the beginning, He would have created a universe without change, without organisms and evolution, and without man and man's experience of change. But he seems to have thought that a live universe with events unexpected even by Himself would be more interesting than a dead one."
-Karl Popper

A positive feedback loop................

A verse...................

 "Truly, truly, I say unto you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do, because I go to the Father."
-John 14:12
The Open Bible
New American Standard

Chesterton: "The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man."

c

The not-so-simple village.................

.......undertaker recently revamped his professional life to allow for more blogging time.  Not sure what his family thinks, but it is a good thing for the rest of us.  Do yourself a favor and check out Ray's blog daily.