Goo goo g'joob......................(and for all these years I thought they were singing Coo Coo Kachoo).....

The Beatles.................................I Am The Walrus



wonderful lyrics here.  Still don't know what it all means.

What's your problem?.........................

John from the Heartland talks fixes.................here

So there!..............................

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Mencken on government.................

1. The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Mark Perry provides 10 handy Mencken quotes (and points to some others) here.

Fifty years ago.........................

Jan and Dean.............................Surf City

(love the suits, for better audio you might go here)

Top 40....................................

.....................ways to increase happiness - here.  Combined, mixed and matched, or just by themselves, these easy practices will make you just about as happy as you decide to be.

thanks

Don't know if I should laugh or cry............

 A 2012 survey by Bowker Market Research revealed that just 16% of Americans have actually purchased an e-book and that a whopping 59% say they have "no interest" in buying one.

So says this WSJ article on the staying power of the real printed-on-paper books.  Now, if only there was a good book store in town, I'd be a happy boy.

thanks

Proper preparation....................

And we were better off for it too................

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As the Prophet Jagger once said...........

The Rolling Stones.........You Can't Always Get What You Want




cheers E

Spell................................

Santana.......................................Black Magic Woman

Using money....................

Maria suggests it is the way we use money, rather than its mere possession, that may actually increase happiness.

Out of whack.........................

Long time readers may remember that this blog is a huge fan of community banks and community bankers.  For those who agree, the pie chart below can only be described as "troubling."   Source and accompanying essay is here.

Fifty years ago..........................

Dale and Grace...............I'm Leaving It Up To You

And stop that multi-tasking....................

AsapSCIENCE offers increased productivity in two minutes and forty nine seconds.  Sometimes simpler is better.

A bit too clever............................

A brief story about outsourcing:  A $250,000 per year software engineer hired a Chinese engineer to do his work for him - and paid him $50,000 per year - so he could spend "his workday checking sites such as Reddit, Ebay, Facebook and LinkedIn and watching cat videos."   Full entrepreneurial story is here.  Conclusion here:

By all account, the Chinese contractor did an excellent job and until then it reflected well on Bob. “His code was clean, well-written, and submitted in a timely fashion,” Mr. Valentine noted. “Quarter after quarter, his performance review noted him as the best developer in the building.”

So why did they fire the guy?

thanks greg

What, no ice..............................?

Another, un-supersized, commercial from the early 1960's.

Single dads raising daughters.............Part 1

thanks jonco

One of the all-time great songs.................

The Eagles.................................Hotel California

On dying happy..........................

Greg Sullivan, dba Sippican Cottage, talks fatherhood, discipline, pride, and the every wish of parents.  Do visit him regularly (here), but especially today - here.  You may want to start with this:

The Serenity Prayer.....................

Originally penned by Reinhold Niebuhr, an abbreviated version of his Serenity Prayer acts as the backbone of the 12-Step movement.  The full version, with commentary straight from the Heartland, is here.

                  Living one day at a time
                  Enjoying one moment at a time
                  Accepting hardship as the pathway to peace.............

They left a few out................

A list of the twenty-seven most important books on finance and investing is here.  An interesting list.  Got quite a few of them on my shelves, even read some of them.  Still, no list of important books on investing is complete without these two:

George Clason's Richest Man in Babylon

Fred Schwed, Jr.'s Where Are The Customer's Yachts?

Fifty years ago.....................

Nino Tempo and April Stevens..........Deep Purple




for not-quite-as-good audio but way better video, go here

Hmmmmmm...............................

Great TV ads....................................1962

Wham-O......................Slip n Slide and the Water Wiggle

Dreaming of summer

Volume up.................................

Marshall Tucker and Charlie Daniels..........24 Hours at a Time

On paying attention.....................

Thanks Eric.   For more fun with awareness, go here.

It's a tad cold out, maybe we'll splurge and turn up the heat a bit tonight................

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Improbable..............................

    The bleak message of the stars in their overwhelming infinitude is that we are nothing.  It is hard to argue with 500 billion galaxies, each with a billion stars.  In the midst of the endless cosmos, our brief blink in an obscure corner is nothing at all.
     Yet the fact that there is something in one corner that sustains itself against the starry vastness, the fact that there is anything bootstrapping at all, is an argument against the nihilism of the stars.  The smallest thought could not exist unless the entire universe and the laws of physics were in some way encouraging it.  The existence of a single rosebud, a single oil painting, a single parade of costumed hominins strolling down a street of bricks, a single glowing screen waiting for input, or a single book on the nature of our creations requires life-friendly attributes baked deeply into the primeval laws of being.  "The universe knew we were coming," says Freeman Dyson.  And if the cosmic laws are biased to produce on bit of life and mind and technology, then one bit will flow after another.  Our immense journey is a trace of tiny, improbable events stacked into a series of inevitabilities.
-Kevin Kelly, What Technology Wants

image via APOD

Speaking of nihilism.................

Heads up, kids........here is an interesting trend....

sourced

51 tips.........................

Alvin says:

"A simple life is not seeing how little we can get by with - that’s poverty - but how efficiently we can put first things first"

The all-swagga blog offers 51 tips on living the simple life.  It's worth the read - here.  Last three tips here:

49. Don’t make promises when you’re happy

50. Don’t reply when you’re angry

51. Don’t decide when you are sad

Yes, dear................................

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Once upon a time I was obsessed with this song...

Marshall Tucker Band.................Running Like the Wind

There are times, like now, when the best choice....

..........is to just re-run some Calvin and Hobbes cartoons:

Fifty years ago.........................

Jimmy Gilmer and The Fireballs..................Sugar Shack

Wish I'd known this sooner...........

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Important things you should know...................

TASER is an acronym.   What do the letters stand for?

Answer is here (#25).  Back story is here.

Give yourself a gold star if you already knew the answer.

Free........................

"Free from clutching at themselves, the hands can handle;  free from looking after themselves, the eyes can see;  free from trying to understand itself, thought can think."
-Alan Watts

Special..........................?

George Carlin riffs on the self-esteem movement:

Have you ever been driving down the road......

......minding your own business, when you slowly become aware of some song on the radio that you've never  ever heard before.........and you start praying for the disc jockey to tell you the artist's name and song title?  Here is one of those songs:

Bachman-Turner Overdrive........................Blue Collar

Fifty years ago....................

The Tymes...........................So Much In Love

Grasped............................

"The totality of the psyche can never be grasped by the intellect alone."
-Carl Jung

image via

The price.........................

"Alas, there isn't a pain-free way to achieve your goals."
-Seth Godin

R.E.M..........................................The One I Love

Catch-22............................

   "You're wasting your time," Doc Daneeka was forced to tell him.
   "Can't you ground someone who is crazy?"
   "Oh, sure.  I have to.  There's a rule saying I have to ground anyone who's crazy."
   "The why don't you ground me?  I'm crazy.  Ask Clevinger."
   "Clevinger?  Where is Clevinger?  You find Clevinger and I'll ask him.
   "Then ask any of the others.  They'll tell you how crazy I am."
   "They're crazy."
   "Then why don't you ground them?"
   "Why don't they ask me to ground them?"
   "Because they're crazy, that's why."
   "Of course they're crazy," Doc Daneeka replied.  "I just told you they're crazy, didn't I?  And you can't let crazy people decide whether you're crazy of not, can you?"
   Yossarian looked at him soberly and tried another approach, "Is Orr crazy?"
   "He sure is," Doc Daneeka said.
   "Can you ground?"
   "I sure can.  But first he has to ask me to.  That's part of the rule."
   "Then why doesn't he ask you to?"
   "Because he's crazy," Doc Daneeka said.  "He has to be crazy to keep flying combat missions after all the close calls he's had.  Sure I can ground Orr.  But first he has to ask me to."
   "That's all he has to do to be grounded?"
   "That's all.  Let him ask me."
   "And then you can ground him?" Yossarian asked.
   "No.  Then I can't ground him."
   "You mean there's a catch?"
   "Sure there's a catch," Doc Daneeka replied.  "Catch-22.  Anybody who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy."
   There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind.  Orr was crazy and could be grounded.  All he had to do was walk in and ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions.  Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them.  If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to, but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
   "That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.
   "It's the best there is,"  Doc Daneeka agree.

-Joseph Heller, as excerpted from Catch-22

All.............................

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
-George Bernard Shaw

Got that right............................

image via

The quick version.....................

Creation until today in one minute or so.  It's a wonder.  Enjoy.

Meet the day.............................

Cash and Kristofferson................Sunday Morning Coming Down

Resilience.............................

"We require from buildings, as from men, two kinds of goodness:  first, doing their practical duty well; then, that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it."
-John Ruskin  c. 1851

photo via

Uh-oh............................

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Behind the firehouse................

R.E.M..................................Odd Fellows Local 151

Meek............................

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Good advice; not always followed.................

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