Restless dreams......................

Simon & Garfunkel.........................The Sound of Silence
    (as always, please click on through to the YouTube)

Me too.......................................

via

While playing tourist...............

.........in NYC over Labor Day weekend, we visited the World Trade Center site.  Not sure this photo was included in the pictorial posts of our tour:

In case you are wondering how this new World Trade Center building came into being, check this out:

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

"Jump!" shouted the boatman and on a chilly March morning in 1771 little Horatio Nelson leaped from the boat which had brought him out into the Medway, clutched at the gangway's hanging side ropes, so think that his childish hands could not close around them, and began an agile and eager assault on the towering side of the Raisonnable.  Up he scrambled, past the lower deck gun ports and an instant stink of stale humanity and bilge waters, past the main deck ports, until at last he hauled  himself on to the upper deck which suddenly appeared, smooth and shining white under its great banded masts and filigree rigging, the air heavy with the mingled aromas of wood, rope, tar, paint, and metal.  At twelve and a half years old he had entered the theatre of his life.
-Edgar Vincent,  Nelson:  Love & Fame

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

Del Shannon...................................Little Town Flirt

At last, equality.......................................

“While differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal.”
-Karl Popper

Good luck...............................

Woody Allen sure made a lot of movies....

Some were laugh-out-loud funny.  Most I haven't seen.  Somebody with too much time on their hands has ranked them by making apple-to-apple box office comparisons.  The scroll down memory lane is here.

thanks craig

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

"One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results."
-Milton Friedman

Waiting.........................................

The truth is that Republicans can only profit so much from Obama’s failures. Unless and until they start offering solid alternative policies backed up by a compelling narrative about America’s future, all the Obama disenchantment in the world won’t be enough to get them into office and keep them there. 
-Walter Russell Mead

Good luck.................................

Bruce Springsteen....................................Bobby Jean

Happy Paraskevidekatriaphobia Day.....................

All you triskaidekaphobics out there may not enjoy today.  I choose to believe it is a lucky day, thank you.

Luck......................................

Great moments in zoo advertising.....................

For the Copenhagen Zoo.....................

fourteen more zoo ads here

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

Nelson was a paramount naval genius and a natural born predator, and those who look to find a saint besides will miss the man.  The strength of mind is everywhere obvious.  He knew he was right, and in action was daring and direct.  His originality asserts itself again and again, and so does his quixotic generosity.  But in private life, as in war, he was ruthless whenever he had to be, and he could be pitiless.  He was a fanatic for duty, at times beyond all sense, and a royalist so infatuated with the divine right of kings that he began to see himself, in revolutionary times, as the instrument of God.  This made him a good hater.  He hated the American rebels of the thirteen colonies, and the harmless liberal rebels against the Bourbon king of Naples, as unforgivingly as he hated the revolutionary French and then Napoleon.
-Terry Coleman,  The Nelson Touch:  The Life and Legend of Horatio Nelson

Turn a blind eye...........................

"The phrase 'turn a blind eye' - often used to refer to a willful refusal to acknowledge a particular reality - dates back to a legendary chapter in the career of the British naval hero Horatio Nelson. During 1801’s Battle of Copenhagen, Nelson’s ships were pitted against a large Danish-Norwegian fleet. When his more conservative superior officer flagged for him to withdraw, the one-eyed Nelson supposedly brought his telescope to his bad eye and blithely proclaimed, 'I really do not see the signal.'  He went on to score a decisive victory. Some historians have since dismissed Nelson’s famous quip as merely a battlefield myth, but the phrase 'turn a blind eye' persists to this day."
-as excerpted from here

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

George Shearing...............................Try A Little Tenderness

Working on it...........................................

I found this to be true........................

43 questions..............................

Inquiring minds will, at least, want to ponder the answers to these questions.  As a parent, I always figured the best answer to a "Why" question was "Because."  Not sure the kids agreed with me.  Anyway, enjoy

Hear me cryin'.............................

Howlin' Wolf..................................Smokestack Lightning

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

Halley's Comet burned across the Mississippi night like a brakeman's lantern during June 1910, leading to suicides and whispers of Armageddon.  Up north in Hartford, the Connecticut Yankees were lamenting the recent passing of the brightest star in the American literary firmament, Mark Twain.  In New York City, W. E. B. Du Bois, anguished about race riots and lynchings around the nation, was preparing the first issue of The Crisis, the magazine of the new National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.  In Reno, Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champion, was training for his July 4th title bout defense against former champ Jim Jeffries, "The Great White Hope," a spectacle that would lead to more race riots.  In Washington, D. C., Congress was debating the Mann White Slave Traffic Act, which would ban "the interstate transportation of women for immoral purposes" - a law specifically targeted at Johnson that would soon send him to jail for traveling with his white girlfriend.
James Segrest and Mark Hoffman,  Moanin' At Midnight:  The Life and Times of Howlin' Wolf

Ideas.........................

"Also, let’s face it: I have never let worries about being perceived as unfeminine stop me from expressing an opinion. I can’t claim any feminist cred for this, I’m afraid, because it’s not a decision. It’s just how I’m built. If I get interested in an idea, I start talking, and if I think someone’s wrong, I’ll tell them they’re wrong. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten more tactful about it, but the basic constitutional impulse to argue about ideas remains. So I never retired from a classroom argument in order to preserve my dateability."
-Megan McArdle, as excerpted from this post

A war not worth fighting..................?

via Ka-Ching!

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

Lassie was on TV from 1954 until 1973.  Amazing.

Lassie.......................................

unattributed cartoons via

And he's a really good guy too............................

Congratulations to Andrew Guanciale!   Real Trends has identified Andrew as one of the top 1000 real estate agents in the good old U. S. of A.  From Newark, Ohio no less.  Being this successful as an individual agent requires lots of hard work, discipline, and an extreme focus on customer service.  Maturing youngsters like Andrew give me confidence in the future of our industry.

Head count..........................

"I think marches on Washington are good. It’s helpful to remind the political class that they are outnumbered."
-Glenn Reynolds, commenting on this biker rally 

Twice Shy.................................

Her scarf a la Bardot, 
In suede flats for the walk, 
She came with me one evening
For air and friendly talk.
We crossed the quiet river, 
Took the embankment walk.

Traffic holding its breath, 
Sky a tense diaphragm: 
Dusk hung like a backcloth
That shook where a swan swam, 
Tremulous as a hawk
Hanging deadly, calm.

A vacuum of need
Collapsed each hunting heart
But tremulously we held
As hawk and prey apart, 
Preserved classic decorum, 
Deployed our talk with art.

Our Juvenilia
Had taught us both to wait, 
Not to publish feeling
And regret it all too late -
Mushroom loves already
Had puffed and burst in hate.

So, chary and excited, 
As a thrush linked on a hawk, 
We thrilled to the March twilight
With nervous childish talk: 
Still waters running deep
Along the embankment walk. 

-Seamus Heaney

Not sure what he said, but I think I agree....

 Having spent enough decades on this planet to be much closer than many of you to my AARP card, I am well aware that trying to determine what that mythopoetic, monolithic assemblage entitled “Women” wants is not only a mug’s game, guaranteed to relegate one to sleeping in a real or metaphorical doghouse for a week, but also empirically and epistemologically unsound.

Full essay here.

Rise up.....................................

Bruce Springsteen.............................My City of Ruins

Words fail.................................

Real.................................

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what."
-Harper Lee, channeling Atticus Finch

Challenge......................................

“When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait."
-Paulo Coelho

via

Editor's Note:  Churchill quote has also been attributed to John F. Kennedy.  Sounds more like Churchill, but who knows.

Endure................................................

“Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.” 
-Victor Hugo

via

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

Bill Evans.....................................Stella by Starlight

Continue..............................

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” 
-Winston Churchill

Strong.........................

“Courage is almost a contradiction in terms.  It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die."
–G. K Chesterton

Struggle...................................

"Last, but by no means least, courage - moral courage, the courage of one's convictions, the courage to see things through.  The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave.  It's the age-old struggle - the roar of the crowd on one side and the voice of your conscience on the other."
-General Douglas MacArthur

My alma mater makes the news........................

......sort of.  Hard to believe The Onion is now stooping to sarcasm.     For those of you who have never heard of Denison, a Division III school with about 2,000 students, I can only attest that it was a fun place to be forty years ago.

Angel on the Right.....................

Jamie O'Neal....................................Devil on the Left

About that "settled science"..................

Somebody forgot to tell the Arctic.  Full post here.  Excerpt here:

"The rebound from 2012’s record low comes six years after the BBC reported that global warming would leave the Arctic ice-free in summer by 2013."

Important to remember.......................

"Objectives are not accomplishments."
-Dennis Gee (and a host of others)

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

     The Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore began to rise in 1296.  From father to son, to son again, the architects, stonemasons and artists of Florence labored with love and devotion to produce the greatest cathedral the world had ever known.  Pausing only for the black plague of 1348, the great cathedral grew until by 1418 all was complete but the dome.  In a fit of mad ambition and optimism the basic design set over 100 years earlier called for a dome higher and wider than any that had ever been built - either in 1296 or, as it turned out, in 1418.  Without a dome, 122 years of work threatened to be uncrowned.
-Alexander Tabarrok,  Launching The Innovation Renaissance:  A New Path to Bring Smart Ideas to Market Fast

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

Perry Mason was one of my Mom's two favorite TV shows (Maverick being the other), and one of the few TV shows I was allowed to watch.  It ran from 1957-1966.  Here is the intro from 1963:

A mild rant..........................

Fred Reed opines on a paradigm shift in culture.  Full post is here.  A paragraph is here:

"When the dominant culture doesn´t condone crime, there will be very little crime. This is why the European-American constitution of Tom Jefferson could specify trial by jury. A jury trial takes a lot of time and effort, which a society can afford only when there is little crime. Today we have trial by plea bargain because jury trials for our rate of crime would have the entire country empanelled constantly."

A bit more about culture...................

From Gene Callahan, writing about the unreasonable expectations placed on constitution writing in places like Egypt:

"A written constitution can be nice icing on the cake for a polity in which there is already general agreement on how things should proceed. The American Constitution mostly has worked because the American people already mostly wanted the sort of government which it sought to codify in law."

A few more thoughts on culture..............

"The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts."
-Charles Darwin

"It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious."
-Henry David Thoreau 

"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."
-Ray Bradbury 

"The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself."
-Daniel Patrick Moynihan 

"The lowest form of popular culture - lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people's lives - has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage."
-Carl Bernstein 

"The Law of Raspberry Jam: the wider any culture is spread, the thinner it gets."
-Alvin Toffler

"People don't want to embrace culture shifts because it's not going to happen in the next 20 minutes."
-Gary Vaynerchuk 

Imagine this...........................

And the Nobel Peace Prize goes to.....................

“'The decision to award the 2013 prize to Edward Snowden would - in addition to being well justified in itself - also help to save the Nobel Peace Prize from the disrepute that incurred by the hasty and ill-conceived decision to award U.S. President Barack Obama 2009 award,'  Svallfors said."

Ouch.   Full post, from whence the excerpt was taken, is here.

Thanks Ann

Friendship.............................................

B-b-b-b-bad...........................

George Thorogood ............................Bad To The Bone

Not holding my breath...........................

"We’re hoping the Good Foreign Policy Fairy comes along and waves her magic wand over this Syria mess and somehow helps the administration avoid the disaster it has struggled so hard to produce."
-Walter Russell Mead, as excerpted from this essay

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

In 1933 the first volume of Thomas Mann's Joseph and his Brothers was published - a tale, according to the author, of 'love and hate, blessing and curse, fraternal strife and paternal grief, pride and penance, fall and rise'.  An early admirer of the work was a young German banker named Siegmund Warburg, who read it while sailing from Hamburg to London - a journey into exile not dissimilar from the one Mann himself made later in the same year.  Warburg, it has been suggested, was struck by the parallel between his own family and Joseph's, with whom he himself clearly identified.  Of course, the parallel was not exact.  Unlike Joseph, Siegmund Warburg had no brothers; nor was he being driven into exile by members of his family - rather, by a regime bent on the expulsion and ultimately the destruction of all the descendants of Jacob.  Nevertheless, even a cursory glance at the genealogy of the Warburg family indicates why the parallel might have occurred to him.
-Niall Ferguson,  High Financier:  The Lives and Times of Siegmund Warburg

Probably not.....................................

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

Bill Evans......................................."Spartacus Love Theme"

Opinion..........................

"The usefulness of an opinion is itself a matter of opinion."
-John Stuart Mill

A bit on the hawkish side...............

Spengler wants to double down.............

"It’s time to play dirty and change the rules of the game."

Jake and Elwood......................

The Blues Brothers perform Soul Man, and more.  Enjoy.

For Ray............................................

Blackfoot.....................................The Highway Song

At odds............................................

via here and here

I was calm......................................

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

The TV show Laramie was a classic western series.  It ran from 1959 until 1963.  Here is the intro:

A few verses..............................

7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 

8  "For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

9 “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 

10  "Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?

11  "If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! 

12  "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets."

The Holy Bible

New International Version

Mathew 7: 7-12

Double-dog dare you to............................

via

Quiz time................................

Find out how much you really know about the news.  Mark Perry offers the link.  Not bragging, mostly because it doesn't seem like they were asking the right questions, but the score here was 11 out of 13 correct.