Saturday, October 13, 2012

Parallel Universes...................

Nicholas Bate offers us 101 aspects of a different world.  I'm good with all but #6 and #90.  Full list is here.
First five here:


  1. Kids find public libraries as exciting as Abercrombie & Fitch. And they prefer the lighting.
  2. Mark Zuckerberg doesn't go to college but becomes a rock star. He's happier. We're happier: there is no facebook.
  3. Apple designs a dishwasher. Siri operated. Get those glasses done!
  4. Sharks dislike swimming near surfers.
  5. The Beatles separate, go on sabbaticals, produce their own work and then agree to produce one joint album every other year.

I don't know...................

The Beatles..............................Hello Goodbye

Growth industry....................














thanks Mark

Survive...........................

















"As we peer into society's future, we - you and I, and our government - must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow."
-Dwight D. Eisenhower (from his 1961 farewell address)

Well,................................


"The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines - so they should go as far as possible from home to build their first buildings."
-Frank Lloyd Wright

image via

Fleeting...............






















"Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbour."
-Arnold Toynbee

image via

Politicians...................


"A politician is a man who understands government, and it takes a politician to run a government.  A statesman is a politician who's been dead for 10 or 15 years."
-Harry S. Truman

Be warned........................























via

Friday, October 12, 2012

Underneath the silver moon.....

Poco.............................................Widowmaker

Competition........

As promised, we return to McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader.  The following was transcribed (including the definitions and exercises), not because of its message, but because of its relative brevity -  I didn't want to spend all night typing.  The unspoken message of lesson XLVIII, though, is typical of all the readings:  there is a right and a wrong way to think and behave, learn from this.  Not sure these values are being transmitted today.  Our loss.

                                  XLVIII.   EMULATION.

1.  Frank's father was speaking to a friend, one day, on the subject of competition at school.  He said that he could answer for it that envy is not always connected with it.
2.  He had been excelled by many, but did not recollect ever having felt envious of his successful rivals; "nor did my winning many a prize from my friend Birch," he said, "ever lessen his friendship for me."
3.  In support of the truth of this, a friend who was present related an anecdote which had fallen under his own notice in a school in his neighborhood.
4.  At this school the sons of several wealthy farmers, and others, who were poorer, received instruction.  Frank listened with great attention while the gentleman gave the following account of the two rivals:
5.  It happened that the son of a rich farmer and the son of a poor widow came in competition for the head of their class.  They were so nearly equal that the teacher could scarcely decide between them; some days one, and some days the other, gained the head of the class.  It was determined by seeing who should be at the head of the class for the greater number of days in the week.
6.  The widow's son, by the last day's trial, gained the victory, and kept his place the following week, till the school was dismissed for the holidays.
7.  When they met again the widow's son did not appear, and the farmer's son, being next to him, might now have been at the head of his class.  Instead of seizing the vacant place, however, he went to the widow's house to inquire what could be the cause of her son's absence.
8.  Poverty was the cause; the poor woman found that she was unable, with her utmost efforts, to continue to pay for the tuition and books of her son, and so he, poor fellow! had been compelled to give up his schooling, and to return to labor for her support.
9.  The farmer's son, out of the allowance of pocket money which his father gave him, bought all the necessary books and paid for the tuition of his rival.  He also permitted him to be brought back again to the head of his class, where he continued for some time, at the expense of his generous rival.

     Definitions. - Em-u-la tion, rivalry, contest  1. Com-pe-ti tion, rivalry.  2.  Ex-celled, surpassed, exceeded in good qualities.  Ri-vals, those who pursue the same thing.   3.  An-ec-dote, a short story. 8.  Tu-i-tion, payment for teaching.

     Exercises. - What is the subject of this lesson?  What do you mean by emulation?  What is envy?  What story is told about the two rivals?  Is it right to envy any person?

All possible means...................

"I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back."
-Leo Tolstoy

Liberty......................















"Liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or human happiness or a quiet conscience."
-Isaiah Berlin

"He who desires in liberty anything other than itself is born to be a servant."
-Alexis de Tocqueville


For what it is worth, the inscription on The Statue of Liberty reads:

Give me your tired, your poor, 
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, 
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. 
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, 
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!


image via

Form............................

"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal."
-Aristotle

"We who are liberal and progressive know that the poor are our equals in every sense except that of being equal to us."
-Lionel Trilling

"THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General."
-Kurt Vonnegut, opening paragraph of his short story, Harrison Bergeron

Harrison Bergeron................

Kurt Vonnegut's Welcome to the Monkey House, a collection of his early short stories, is one of my favorite books.  As a public service, this blog offers those who have missed it the opportunity to read one of those (very short) classics - here.

Offends.......................


News alert.....................



















thanks jonco

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Owed to Paul.............

Mark Knopfler.......................Postcards from Paraguay

Of necessity..............
















"Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be
much arguing, much writing, many opinions;  for opinion in good
men is just knowledge in the making."
-John Milton

image via

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

"Early in the afternoon of December 16, 1850, Herman Melville looked at his timepiece.  He was in the midst of composing the novel we now know as Moby-Dick.  At that moment he was writing about how for thousands, even millions of years whales have been filling the atmosphere over the waters of the Pacific with the haze of their spouts - 'sprinkling and mystifying the gardens of the deep.'  It was then that he decided to record the exact time he was writing these words about whale spouts:  fifteen and a quarter minutes past one o'clock P. M. of this sixteenth day of December, A. D. 1850."
-Nathaniel Philbrick,  Why Read Moby-Dick?

Lasts............................


                               Autumn Movement

I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts. 

The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper 
      sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds. 

The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes, 
     new beautiful things come in the first spit of snow on the 

          northwest wind, 
     and the old things go, not one lasts

-Carl Sandburg

A fundamental truth................

Could also be titled, "why we the need to keep growing.".























courtesy of

40 things to say before you die.................

Full list is here.  Do check it out.  #33 here:



















Was going to label this.............

....."a sign of the times," but I suspect it has always been true.


Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Child of nature........................

Sugarloaf.........................................Green Eyed Lady

Dawes........................























Our Rotary club met at Dawes Arboretum yesterday.
Dawes is a true treasure for Licking County.  Not
only is it a beautiful place, but the folks there are
doing great work within our community.  Thanks Luke.

More on Dawes here and here and here.

Like................................


















thanks Tom

Unfortunately........................

...........the purpose of a good education is not to know the right answers, but to know the right questions.




Cultural Offering: Part 1................


The linchpin for my little corner of the blogosphere.  Bringing thoughtfulness, playfulness, creativity and uncommon sense to the Intertunnel since August 7, 2007.  Long may he blog!

C.O. Part 2: Teaching...........................

     Kurt offers an interesting reading list for a semester in High School, "A Civic Study Worth a Damn."  Over the years, but certainly not in high school, I've read most of them.   Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics has been sitting, unread, on the shelf for a long, long time.  Several are the times I picked it up only to say, "nope, not today."
    When I first got to know Kurt, our eldest sons were in the same Cub Scout pack.  We met in his basement to help the pack build, I think, pinewood derby cars.  I spent more time looking at Kurt's library than helping Dan with his car.  The breadth and depth of his collection of historical, political, and classical tomes took my breath away.  That will likely not surprise anyone who follows his blog.

Welcome to my world..............


Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Twofer................

Looking Glass....................Jimmy Loves Mary-Anne Looking Glass....................Brandy

A bio-mechanical check valve...........

Destin.......................................Smarter Every Day



thanks Maria

Some practical advice..............





















thanks mme scherzo

A gift that keeps on giving...............

Sipp riffs on gifts, kids, reading, Calvin and Hobbes, and a workable philosophy of life - all in 500 words or less.  Do go read it here.  Excerpt here:

"The vocabulary is quite challenging for a nine-year-old in C and H. We see him skip over to the computer and type a word into Google now and again when he's stumped. He gets it pronounced for him, too, which I was not aware you could do, but kids find what they need because they look everywhere for everything. You'd never find your car keys if they were on the roof of your house, because you'd never look there. You'd just look on top of your dresser over and over. A kid might start by looking on the roof.  Hey, you never know is a great way to go through life, even if it drills a lot of dry holes."

Rabbit holes.....................

















A Letter

Dear Hayden.
How good - how liberating! - to read
of your hatred of Alice in Wonderland.
I used to hear my mother reading it
to my sisters, and I hated it too,
but have always been embarrassed
to say so, believing that everybody else
loved it.  But who the hell wants to go
down a rabbit hole?  I like my feet best
when they're walking on top of the ground.
If I could burrow like a mole, I would,
and I would like that.  I would like
to fly like a bird, if I could.  Otherwise,
my stratum of choice is the the surface.
I prefer skin to anatomy, green grass
to buried rocks, terra firma to the view
from anywhere higher than a tree.
"Long live superficiality!" say I,
as one foot fares waywardly graveward.

-Wendell Berry


image via

College shopping.................

My Sweetie and I took our youngest to visit the University
of Cincinnati yesterday.  We were much surprised and very
pleased with the visit.  A beautiful school with beautiful
architecture in an urban setting. Think we will be visiting it again.

Your basis Bearcat mascot

Main Street














Alum Oscar Robertson    A great man and a pretty fair hoopster





















The very pretty McMicken Hall

The varsity getting ready for Saturday

How do you get Holy water.....?

Ray plays with words............here


Monday, October 8, 2012

I believe it's true................

Mountain...............................For Yasgur's Farm

Opening paragraphs....(a new Reacher)

"The eyewitness said he didn't actually see it happen.  But how else could it have gone down?  Not long after midnight a man in a green winter coat had gone into a small concrete bunker through its only door.  Two men in black suits had followed him in.  There had been a short pause.  The two men in black had come out again."
-Lee Child, A Wanted Man

Accumulates.............................


"Universities are full of knowledge;  the freshman bring a little in and the seniors take none away, so knowledge accumulates."
-Abbot Lawrence Lowell

Yep.......................................


Bored.............................?























"The effect of boredom on a large scale in history is underestimated.  It is a main cause of revolutions, and would soon bring to an end all the static Utopias and the farmyard civilization of the Fabians."
-William Ralph Inge

Ahhhh................................


















"The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy.  Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."
-John W. Gardner

Bet..............................


















"Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people."
-W. C. Fields

Bate............................



































Nicholas Bate:   Challenging, instructing, inspiring, and generously sharing since September 19, 2006.  Long may he blog!

Sunday, October 7, 2012

What's it all about...........................?

Yvonne Elliman......................I Don't Know How To Love Him

Dude..........................


A revisionist verse for Sunday................


Smarter............................


"But a high IQ means absolutely nothing in the stock market.  In fact, it may work against you because intelligence is usually coupled with ego and overconfidence.  Over the years, I've come to realize that ego is deadly in the market.  It's when people attempt to prove they're smarter than the market that they stop learning and close their minds to ways of doing things that are different from their comfortable habits and past patterns."
-William J. O'Neil,  24 Essential Lessons for Investing Success

A blogger's lament...............

     Dilemma

I want to be
            famous
so I can be
            humble
about being
            famous.

What good is my
            humility
when I am
            stuck
in this
            obscurity?

-David Budbill

Did I tell you we found a house that we like?



Understand........................






















via

Express..............................
















"Never express yourself more clearly than you can think."
-Niels Bohr