Run away..............................

The Seekers...................................Georgy Girl

Spontaneous............................

"Despite being a denizen of the digital world, or maybe because he knew too well its isolating potential, Jobs was a strong believer in face-to-face meetings.  'There's a temptation in our networked age to think ideas can be developed by email and iChat,' he said.  'That's crazy.  Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions.  You run into someone, you ask what they're doing, you say 'Wow,' and soon you're cooking up all sorts of ideas."
-Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs

The blessings of no "Turkey Czar".......

From Carpe Diem...................

"Like in previous years, most of you probably didn’t call your local supermarket ahead of time and order a Thanksgiving turkey this year. Why not?  Because you automatically assumed that a turkey would be there when you showed up, and it probably was there when you showed up “unannounced” at your local grocery store and selected your Thanksgiving bird.

"The reason your Thanksgiving turkey was waiting for you without an advance order? Because of the economic concepts of “spontaneous order,” “self-interest,” and the “invisible hand” of the free market.  Turkeys appeared in your local grocery stores primarily because of the “selfishness” and “self-interest” (maybe even greed in some cases) of thousands of turkey farmers, truckers, and supermarket owners who are complete strangers to you and your family.  But all of those strangers throughout the turkey supply chain co-operated on your behalf and were led by an “invisible hand” to make sure your family had a turkey on the table to celebrate Thanksgiving this year.  The “invisible hand” that was responsible for your holiday turkey is just one of millions of everyday examples of the “miracle of the marketplace” where “individually selfish decisions must lead to a collectively efficient outcome,” as economist Steven E. Landsburg observed."

Full post is here

Proud...................................

"Indeed, even at this stage, I predict a time when there will be mathematical investigations of calculi containing contradictions, and people will actually be proud of having emancipated themselves from consistency."
-Ludwig Wittgenstein

A faster horse...........................

      "Some people say, 'Give the customers what they want.'  But that's not my approach.  Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do.  I think Henry Ford once said, 'If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, 'A faster horse!' '  People don't know what they want until you show it to them.  That's why I never rely on market research.  Our task to to read things that are not yet on the page."
-Steve Jobs

He must be a VERY good speaker................

Bill Clinton rakes it in.   With this sort of income potential why do we bother giving them a pension?

     "The former president had his most lucrative year yet in 2011, CNN reports, earning $13.4 million in speech fees -- exceeding his previous record by some 25%."

    "All total, Clinton has earned $89 million from paid speeches since leaving the White House in January 2001.

I always thought that Clinton gave a good speech.   I thought George Bush gave at least one great speech, but he must be pretty good too.........

"The Center for Public Integrity estimated in a report last year that former president George W. Bush had delivered almost 140 paid speeches for at least $15 million in his first two-and-a-half years after leaving the White House."

Quotes excerpted from this post.

Imagine my relief.....................

"Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical.  Consequently we cannot give any answer to questions of this kind, but can only establish that they are nonsensical.  Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand the logic of our language.
     (They belong to the same class as the question whether the good is more or less identical than the beautiful.)
     And it is not surprising that the deepest problems are in fact not problems at all.
-Ludwig Wittgenstein

Less.............................

“It’s your life — but only if you make it so. The standards by which you live must be your own standards, your own values, your own convictions in regard to what is right and wrong, what is true and false, what is important and what is trivial. When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else or a community or a pressure group, you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.”
- Eleanor Roosevelt

quote provided by Swissmiss

Trying to simplify.........................

thanks hugh

Scrounging.........................

Bob Dylan...............................Like A Rolling Stone

On paradox.......................

"This is what I understand by a paradox:  an apparently unacceptable conclusion derived by apparently acceptable reasoning from apparently acceptable premises.  Appearances have to deceive, since the acceptable cannot lead by acceptable steps to the unacceptable.  So, generally, we have a choice:  either the conclusion is not really unacceptable, or else the starting point, or the reasoning, has some non-obvious flaw."
-R. M. Sainsbury

Thanks for the help....................

larger image available here

Banish.............................

"One of the first things Jobs did during the product review process was ban PowerPoints.  'I hate the way people use slide presentations instead of thinking,' Jobs later recalled.  'People would confront a problem by creating a presentation.  I wanted them to engage, to hash things out at the table, rather than show a bunch of slides.  People who know what they're talking about don't need PowerPoint.'"
-Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs

Accentuating the positive....................

Architecture billings are moving on up.   Why do we care?  We care because nothing big (or medium for that matter) happens in the development of real estate until the architects have finished their drawings.  Increased architecture billings means that projects are moving through the pipeline and that the construction trades and suppliers will soon be busier.  In our world this is known as a "good thing".

thanks as always to Calculated Risk for the chart and analysis.

About once a month...................

............I agree with something Paul Krugman writes.  Here he praises Bill McBride's Calculated Risk blog.  Couldn't agree more.
"CR is an example of the sort of economic reporting and analysis people would be following if they really wanted to know what was happening, rather than 'reporting' that reinforces their prejudices."

Savor...........................

"Ultimately, time is all you have and the idea isn't to save it but to savor it."
-Ellen Goodman

Walking........................

St. Luke's Episcopal Church sponsored their seventh annual Turkey Trot yesterday.  The Granville Turkey Trot is a fund raising 5K walk/race that kicks off at 9:30 Thanksgiving morning.  The proceeds from the event go to the Licking County Food Pantry Network.  Last year's donation was about $30,000.  This year it should be  higher.  It tends to be a family affair and all six of us joined in the fun.  I walked.  Estimated turn out was 2,000 friendly folks.  Come join us next year.

Rules..................

Michael Wade offers Ten Rules for Thanksgiving:

10.  Thou shalt be thankful. You're above ground and functioning in an extraordinary place at an extraordinary time. Many people paid a very heavy price (and I'm not talking about groceries) to give you this day. Take some time to think of them and to express gratitude to your friends and relatives. Above all, give special thanks to the divine power who blesses you in innumerable ways.

Gratitude....................

Thanksgiving....................

Happy Thanksgiving.........................

Awful strong............................

The Angels................................My Boyfriend's Back

I doubt his conclusion.......................

S. Peter Davis/Three Minute Philosophy.........Epicurus and Zeno

Apparently there is a big football game this weekend..............................

One of the fine traditions of the Newark Rotary is to have a teeny percentage of TBDBITL show up and play loud music at our meeting prior to the Ohio State/Michigan game. Being all brass and percussion, the Ohio State Marching Band can make some sweet noise.  Year in and year out, these bright and talented students put on a good show.  Go Bucks.

Mother, may I......................?

Carl Schramm laments the intrusion of knowing-what's-best governmental decision making into the routine nooks and crannies of life.  And he points to some unpleasant-for-the-future consequences.  Full essay is here.  Excerpt here:

Unimaginably, America, the land of the rugged individualist of old, has become a “Mother, may I?” society.

There is a hidden and profound danger that such permission-seeking inflicts on America’s famed individual creative capacity. The impulse for individual freedom that animated our revolution resulted in the most creative economic society ever imagined, one built on individual risk taking and performance. Freedom to think the unthinkable brought forth unimagined innovation. American innovations in pharmaceuticals, construction, transportation, and housing have lengthened life and improved living standards. Exported, copied, and emulated, American creativity — expressed in revolutionary new products and services — inarguably has bettered the lives of billions of people around the world.

thanks craig

Apathy...................

"Apathy can only be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal that takes the imagination by storm; second, a definite, intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice."
-Arnold Toynbee

Cronyism is not capitalism..................

Definition of "Crony Capitalism":  A description of capitalist society as being based on the close relationships between businessmen and the state. Instead of success being determined by a free market and the rule of law, the success of a business is dependent on the favoritism that is shown to it by the ruling government in the form of tax breaks, government grants and other incentives.

"Accumulated error".....................

The Furniture Guy imparts some serious wisdom:

"Do your best to not let the errors accumulate; make only one mistake at a time."

The context for the quote is his response to a reader asking how to make all four legs of a four-legged table come out the same size so the table won't wobble.  Greg answers as only Greg can - here

Changing it is always an option.................

courtesy of mischa richter and the New Yorker

Thanks Jetboy.................

Fastball..................................The Way

Aptitude...............................

"The true riches of a nation lie not in its gold or silver but in its aptitude to educate itself and in the degree of integrity possessed by its children."
-Kahlil Gibran

Hedges..........................

"Gold was selling for $34 an ounce and silver was trading at 90 cents an ounce in 1935.  Gold's rise to $1,800 and ounce and silver's rise to $33 an ounce 77 years later make for a compounded annual return of less than 5.5 percent (5.29% if I'm doing my sums correctly).  It doesn't take an Einstein to figure our that in the same time frame, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index and the Dow Jones Industrial Average produced better results of 8.4 percent in compounded annual returns.  Even beetleheads know that 20th century paintings by Warhol, de Kooning, Pollack, Kandinsky, Malevich and Rothko have outpaced inflation at the speed of light.  Classic cars, handguns - such as Lugers, Colts, and Thompsons - rare coins, rare stamps, old maps, photographs by Stieglitz, Adams and Stichen, and sculptures by Saint-Gaudens, Remington, and Calder have proved to be superior to gold and silver as inflation hedges."
-Malcolm Berko (excerpted from here)

Restless.....................................

     "Western rational thought is not an innate human characteristic; it is learned and is the great achievement of Western civilization.  In the villages of India, they never learned it.  They learned something else, which is in some ways just as valuable but in other ways is not.  That's the power of intuition and experiential wisdom.
     "Coming back after seven months in Indian villages, I saw the craziness of the Western world as well as its capacity for rational thought.  If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is.  If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there's room to hear more subtle things - that's when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more.  Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment.  You see so much more than you could see before.  It's a discipline; you have to practice it."
-Steve Jobs, as quoted by Walter Isaacson in Steve Jobs

About as expected........................

As the residential construction market slowly improves, our old friend supply and demand is rearing its head in the lumber market. The next thing we will be reading about is the looming shortage of skilled tradesmen.  Many went out of business, or retired, or returned to their country of origin during the recent severe downturn.  Not sure there will be enough workers to meet the demands of 2013-14.   If you are thinking about building, sooner is going to be better than later.  (And don't forget, we have fabulous building lots available.)

Confusion.............................

Whose risk.............................?

"Across the nation, tens of billions of tax dollars have been spent on subsidizing coastal reconstruction in the aftermath of storms, usually with little consideration of whether it actually makes sense to keep rebuilding in disaster-prone areas."

Full essay here.

thanks Tyler

Cheap medicine...........................

Amen.....................................

"... the connection with another human being has an incredible amount of power. Never underestimate it."
-Jeff Kopito  (context for the quote is here)

If I could................................

Spanky and Our Gang................Like To Get To Know You

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

"Mma Ramotswe had a detective agency in Africa, at the foot of Kgale Hill.  These were its assets:  a tiny white van, two desks, two chairs, a telephone, and an old typewriter.  Then there was a teapot, in which Mma Ramotswe - the only lady private detective in Botswana - brewed redbush tea.  And three mugs - one for herself, one for the secretary, and one for the client.  What else does a detective agency really need?  Detective agencies rely on human intuition and intelligence, both of which Mma Ramotswe had in abundance.          No inventory would ever include those, of course."
-Alexander McCall Smith,  The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

Inching our way back up................

This blog has long been a proponent of "slow and steady" growth.  Booms tend to be unsustainable and lead to busts.  If one takes the long view, it would seem that 1,200,000 new housing starts nationally per year meets the test for sustainability.  Calculated Risk's latest chart would indicate we are about half way there, steadily trending in the healthy direction.

And if you needed a reminder, we have some fabulous building lots available for sale.

Bond...........................James Bond

My Sweetie and I went to the cinema to take in the latest Bond movie.  A good decision.  Daniel Craig is Bond.  Do go see it.

Boredom.....................

"A certain power of enduring boredom is essential to a happy life.  The lives of most great men have not been exciting except at a few great moments.  A generation that cannot endure boredom will be a generation of little men."
-Bertrand Russell

Leave.....................................

"The most pleasant and useful persons are those who leave some of the problems of the universe for God to worry about."

-Don Marquis

image via

Any suggestions.........................?

Thanks to Doug and Kurt for their kind notices.  While we have some ideas, we are not entirely sure what to do with this.  55,000 square feet of space on three floors.  Includes one very old gymnasium (right out of the movie Hoosiers) that holds significant and historical community memories.  Creative and constructive ideas are always appreciated.

Conquering......................

"Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone.  The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials."
-Lin Yutang

A plan.......................................

How long..............................

U2...................................Sunday Bloody Sunday

Lunch with God......................

.................Ray has the story.......here

Benefits....................?

via