Scott McKenzie.....................................San Francisco
Saturday, November 9, 2013
Opening paragraphs.................
What matters? Lives of the good and the great, the innocence of dogs, the cunning of cats, the elegance of nature, the wonders of space, the perfectly thrown outfield assist, the difference between historical guilt and historical responsibility, homage and sacrilege in monumental architecture, fashions and follies and the finer uses of the F-word.
-Charles Krauthammer, Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes, and Politics
-Charles Krauthammer, Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes, and Politics
Cognitive flaws............................
Tyler Cowen, in his book Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond The Age Of The Great Stagnation, spends a interesting chapter thinking and writing about the intuitive algorithms behind computer dating and about how top-flight chess has become more computer-like. "Machines have no fear of the unfamiliar." He comes to some conclusions about our decision making processes:
1. Human strengths and weaknesses are surprisingly regular and predictable.
2. Be skeptical of the elegant and intuitive theory.
3. It's harder to get outside your own head than you think.
4. Revel in messiness.
5. We can learn.
I'm good with #4.
1. Human strengths and weaknesses are surprisingly regular and predictable.
2. Be skeptical of the elegant and intuitive theory.
3. It's harder to get outside your own head than you think.
4. Revel in messiness.
5. We can learn.
I'm good with #4.
Fifty years ago...........................
An early super group? This version of the Journeymen toiled on the folk music circuit from 1961 to 1964. The trio was John Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas fame; singer and songwriter Scott McKenzie of San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair) notoriety; and singer, banjoist, writer, and teacher Dick Weissman. Enjoy.
The Journeymen.....................No One To Talk My Troubles To
The Journeymen.....................No One To Talk My Troubles To
Lessons..............................
One of the key lessons that I taught my students is that poor people and rich people have wildly different philosophies. For example, here's the philosophy that ensures poverty: spend your money and invest what is left. The bottom line is that this strategy will make you poor.
On the flip side, here is the philosophy that will make you rich: invest your money and spend what is left. You can have the same amount of money, but thanks to a difference in philosophy, you can achieve dramatically different results.
-Jim Rohn
On the flip side, here is the philosophy that will make you rich: invest your money and spend what is left. You can have the same amount of money, but thanks to a difference in philosophy, you can achieve dramatically different results.
-Jim Rohn
Friday, November 8, 2013
When the fog horn blows...............
Van Morrison.......................................Into the Mystic
Possibility......................................
“The war of ideas is a Greek invention. It is one of the most important inventions ever made. Indeed, the possibility of fighting with with words and ideas instead of fighting with swords is the very basis of our civilization, and especially of all its legal and parliamentary institutions.”
-Karl Popper
image via
-Karl Popper
image via
A poem for Jeff........................
Reader
Looker, gazer, skimmer, skipper,
thumb-licking page turner, peruser,
you getting your print-fix for the day,
pencil-chewer, note taker, marginalianist
with your checks and X's
first-timer or revisiter,
browser, speedster, English major,
flight-ready girl, melancholy boy,
invisible companion, thief, blind date, perfect stranger -
that is me rushing to the window
to see if it's you passing under the shade trees
with a baby carriage or a dog on a leash,
me picking up the phone
to imagine your unimaginable number,
me standing by the map of the world
wondering where you are -
along on a bench in a train station
or falling asleep, the book sliding to the floor.
-Billy Collins
photo via
Opening paragraphs......................
Thomas Jefferson was a man with a lifelong fascination with trees. He thought of them as his favorite kind of plants, wrote of them as his pets, and went to much effort and expense to place those he liked best around the great west lawn of Monticello, the house he made for himself in the foothills of the mountains of Albemarle County, Virginia.
-Simon Winchester, The Men Who United The States: America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics, and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible
-Simon Winchester, The Men Who United The States: America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics, and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible
Fifty years ago.................................
Al Martino.........................................Living A Lie
The kids will be just fine............................
Lessons learned along the way....................
Ripples.............................
Lindbergh's flight, it has been calculated, spurred as much as $100 million in aviation investments in America. In the mid-1920's, Boeing, a small manufacturer of airplanes in Seattle, had so little work that it sometimes built furniture just to keep going. Within a year of Lindbergh's flight it employed a thousand people. Aviation became to the 1930's what the radio was to the 1920's.
-Bill Bryson, One Summer: America, 1927
-Bill Bryson, One Summer: America, 1927
Attract..............................
Here is the core of the philosophy. It all boils down to this: if you work hard on your job, you make a living. If you work hard on yourself, you can make a fortune. What is the reason for this truth? Success is not something you pursue. Success is something you attract by becoming an attractive person. The way you become rich is not by wishing your life were easier, but instead by focusing on making yourself better.
-Jim Rohn
-Jim Rohn
Thursday, November 7, 2013
Long versions................................
Back in yesteryear, there was often the "album" version and the "top 40 radio" version of hit songs. The difference was typically about seven minutes of music. Here, for your listening pleasure is the long version of:
The Temptations..........................Papa Was A Rolling Stone
The Temptations..........................Papa Was A Rolling Stone
"Hope is not a strategy”.........................
The Aleph Blog tells you all you need to know about co-signing for a loan:
"I am here to tell you never to co-sign for a loan. There are no exceptions. None. Nada. Zero. Zilch. Null. Nil. Zilde."
"I am here to tell you never to co-sign for a loan. There are no exceptions. None. Nada. Zero. Zilch. Null. Nil. Zilde."
Opening lines.............................
"I've watched through his eyes. I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one. Or at least as close as we're going to get."
"That's what you said about the brother."
"The brother tested out impossible. For other reasons. Nothing to do with his ability."
"Same with the sister. And there are doubts about him. He's too malleable. Too willing to submerge himself in someone else's will."
"Not if the other person is his enemy."
"So what do we do? Surround him with enemies all the time?"
"If we have to."
"I thought you said you liked this kid."
"If the buggers get him, they'll make me look like his favorite uncle."
"All right. We're saving the world, after all. Take him."
-Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
"That's what you said about the brother."
"The brother tested out impossible. For other reasons. Nothing to do with his ability."
"Same with the sister. And there are doubts about him. He's too malleable. Too willing to submerge himself in someone else's will."
"Not if the other person is his enemy."
"So what do we do? Surround him with enemies all the time?"
"If we have to."
"I thought you said you liked this kid."
"If the buggers get him, they'll make me look like his favorite uncle."
"All right. We're saving the world, after all. Take him."
-Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
The set of the sail.........................
"Economic disaster begins with a philosophy of doing less and wanting more."
-Jim Rohn
-Jim Rohn
Over The Edge.............................
To tell a girl you loved her - my God! -
that was a leap off a cliff, requiring little
sense, sweet as it was. And I have loved
many girls, women too, who by various fancies
of my mind have seemed loveable. But only
with you have I actually tried it: the long labor,
the selfishness, the self-denial, the children
and grandchildren, the garden rows planted
and gathered, the births and deaths of many years.
We boys, when we were young and romantic
and ignorant, new to mystery and the power,
would wonder late into the night on the cliff's edge:
Was this love real? Was it true? And how
would you know? Well, it was time would tell,
if you were patient and could spare the time,
a long time, a lot of trouble, a lot of joy.
This one begins to look - would you say? - real?
Taking the bureaucracy to task...................
Via Meadia opines that, regardless what size government you favor, the government you have must be effective. Blog post is here. Two excerpts here:
"Obama made many mistakes in the roll out of his health care law, but one of the biggest may be that he overestimated the quality of our country’s public service system."
".....we’ve been so focused on using government jobs as a solution to social ills that we’ve forgotten that the government actually needs, well, to get things done."
"Obama made many mistakes in the roll out of his health care law, but one of the biggest may be that he overestimated the quality of our country’s public service system."
".....we’ve been so focused on using government jobs as a solution to social ills that we’ve forgotten that the government actually needs, well, to get things done."
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
A jam for Jetboy..........................
War with Eric Burdon...............................Paint It Black
Let others...........................
"Let others lead small lives, but not you. Let others argue over small things, but not you. Let others cry over small hurts, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else's hand, but not you.
-Jim Rohn
-Jim Rohn
Victor Davis Hanson.....................
.....a student of history and no fan of President Obama, suggests that the administration's "neo-isolationism" in the Middle East will be interesting, if not fun, to watch:
"In sum, the American people think the Middle East is, well, the Middle East: support democracy and we are derided as cultural chauvinists, Western interventionists, and clueless about the nuances of Arab culture. Support the existing status quo, and we care only about oil, not the masses, and geopolitics rather than democratic reform. Stay out entirely and we have abdicated moral responsibility. Intervene and we are “nation-building” in the old colonial fashion."
"But now the U.S. and North America are nearing self-sufficiency in oil and gas production. The United States soon will not need much Middle East or Mediterranean oil. Perhaps the oil-hungry Chinese and Europeans can deal better with Sunnis, Shiites, Baathists, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the theocrats in Iran, Bashir Assad, the coup in Egypt, and whoever is rioting, blowing themselves up, or storming an embassy this week."
"Obamism could not have happened to a nicer region."
I wish........................
.........Execupundit.com had a search feature. Michael Wade recently posted "Random Thoughts." Priceless observations from a very wise man. There is this vague memory twitch that says he has done this sort of thing before. Wish I could easily find them. Anyway, here is a wee sample of his latest collection:
One wonders what is being taught in journalism schools. Cars need housekeepers. A dental appointment is more enjoyable than a legislative hearing. For a better week, carve out some time to walk and some time to read. Every home should have at least one extremely comfortable chair.
One wonders what is being taught in journalism schools. Cars need housekeepers. A dental appointment is more enjoyable than a legislative hearing. For a better week, carve out some time to walk and some time to read. Every home should have at least one extremely comfortable chair.
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
More than anything.............................
The Animals.....................................Don't Bring Me Down
Lasting legacies...........................
Ed. Note: For previous coverage of the Great Flood of 1927, go here.
Out west, the good weather was the best possible news, for the waters of the Mississippi were finally receding, if slowly. One and a half million acres were still underwater as July began, but the worst was over and Herbert Hoover was at last able to leave the day-to-day running of relief efforts to others.
For Hoover, the Mississippi flood relief was a personal triumph. He was especially proud that the federal government had provided no financial assistance at all. All the money for relief efforts came in the form of donations from private citizens and organizations like the Red Cross and the Rockefeller Foundation. "But those were the days," Hoover noted with a certain misty fondness in his memoirs thirty years later, "when citizens expected to take care of one another in time of disaster and it had not occurred to them that the Federal Government should do it." In fact, the support provided for those trying to get back on their feet was hopelessly inadequate. Hoover helped push through the creation of a $13 million loan fund to help flood victims, which sounds reasonably generous, but worked out to just $20 per victim, and was, for all that, only a loan, hardly useful to even the poorest person who had lost everything.
The great Mississippi flood of 1927 had two lasting legacies. First, if accelerated the movement of blacks out of the South in what is known as the Great Migration. Between 1920 and 1930, 1.3 million southern blacks moved north in the hopes of finding better-paying jobs and more personal liberty. The movement transformed the face of America in a decade. Before the Great Migration, only 10 percent of blacks lived outside the South. After the Great Migration, half did.
The other important effect of the Mississippi flood was that it forced the Federal government to accept that certain matters are too big for the states to handle alone. For all of Hoover's proud reminiscence of how relief efforts were entirely private, it was widely recognize that government could not stand by when disaster struck. 1928, Calvin Coolidge reluctantly signed into law the Flood Control Act, which appropriated $325 million to try to avert future disasters. It was, in the view of many, the birth of Big Government in America. Coolidge hated the idea and refused to have any kind of ceremony to celebrate the passing of the act. Instead, he signed the bill in private, then went to lunch.
-Bill Bryson, One Summer: America, 1927
Out west, the good weather was the best possible news, for the waters of the Mississippi were finally receding, if slowly. One and a half million acres were still underwater as July began, but the worst was over and Herbert Hoover was at last able to leave the day-to-day running of relief efforts to others.
For Hoover, the Mississippi flood relief was a personal triumph. He was especially proud that the federal government had provided no financial assistance at all. All the money for relief efforts came in the form of donations from private citizens and organizations like the Red Cross and the Rockefeller Foundation. "But those were the days," Hoover noted with a certain misty fondness in his memoirs thirty years later, "when citizens expected to take care of one another in time of disaster and it had not occurred to them that the Federal Government should do it." In fact, the support provided for those trying to get back on their feet was hopelessly inadequate. Hoover helped push through the creation of a $13 million loan fund to help flood victims, which sounds reasonably generous, but worked out to just $20 per victim, and was, for all that, only a loan, hardly useful to even the poorest person who had lost everything.
The great Mississippi flood of 1927 had two lasting legacies. First, if accelerated the movement of blacks out of the South in what is known as the Great Migration. Between 1920 and 1930, 1.3 million southern blacks moved north in the hopes of finding better-paying jobs and more personal liberty. The movement transformed the face of America in a decade. Before the Great Migration, only 10 percent of blacks lived outside the South. After the Great Migration, half did.
The other important effect of the Mississippi flood was that it forced the Federal government to accept that certain matters are too big for the states to handle alone. For all of Hoover's proud reminiscence of how relief efforts were entirely private, it was widely recognize that government could not stand by when disaster struck. 1928, Calvin Coolidge reluctantly signed into law the Flood Control Act, which appropriated $325 million to try to avert future disasters. It was, in the view of many, the birth of Big Government in America. Coolidge hated the idea and refused to have any kind of ceremony to celebrate the passing of the act. Instead, he signed the bill in private, then went to lunch.
-Bill Bryson, One Summer: America, 1927
Acquainted with the night...........
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain - and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
A luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
-Robert Frost
image via
On why it is such an interesting time to be alive....
The middle of the twentieth century was about masses. Mass consumption. Mass production. Mass warfare. Mass destruction. Mass politics. We are not in the middle of the twentieth century any more.
-Arnold Kling, as excerpted from here
via
-Arnold Kling, as excerpted from here
via
Well, yeah............................
But modern casino revenue comes mostly from slot machines, and the relationship between them and some of their patrons is voluntary in only the most superficial sense...... According to slot designers and casino managers surveyed in the book, the mission of these machines is simple: to separate patrons from their money in the most ruthlessly efficient - yet psychologically agreeable - ways possible.
-Robert H. Frank, as excerpted from here
thanks greg
Fifty years ago............................
A Swedish lesson plus ten minutes of the Beatles............
When I become king..........................
..........any law or regulation that Congress exempts itself from shall become null and void for the rest of us too.
The problem with socialism (cf. Detroit to Athens) is not just that it destroys individual initiative and creates a dispirited and montonous sameness to everything, but that its architects usually find exemption from the ramifications of their own ideology and thereby are more emboldened to implement it.
-Victor Davis Hanson, as excerpted from this essay
thanks craig
The problem with socialism (cf. Detroit to Athens) is not just that it destroys individual initiative and creates a dispirited and montonous sameness to everything, but that its architects usually find exemption from the ramifications of their own ideology and thereby are more emboldened to implement it.
-Victor Davis Hanson, as excerpted from this essay
thanks craig
Wishes..............................
"Don't wish it was easier; wish you were better. Don't wish for less problems; wish for more skills. Don't wish for less challenges, wish for more wisdom.'
-Jim Rohn
-Jim Rohn
Monday, November 4, 2013
Put the load.........................
Live from Daryl's house..............................The Weight
Opening paragraphs.......................
Neville Chamberlain had taken far too long, some said, to admit failure. So they gave him a hard push. Britain's prime minister imagined that he had appeased Hitler. He may have deterred him, but only for a brief time. He did not dissuade, disarm, or destroy him. Hitler took the Sudetenland and dismembered Czechoslovakia; he had conquered his piece of Poland and allowed Stalin to grab the rest; he had invaded Denmark and Norway, "fascinated, browbeaten, cajoled and then garotted." The way was open to France, and everyone, or nearly everyone, knew it. In May 1940, Europe was again at war. And in Britain, Chamberlain got the blame.
-Kenneth Weisbrode, Churchill and The King: The Wartime Alliance of Winston Churchill and George VI
-Kenneth Weisbrode, Churchill and The King: The Wartime Alliance of Winston Churchill and George VI
Chamberlain..............................
Much of the story I learned in school about Neville Chamberlain came to us through the pen of Winston Churchill. Chamberlain, the "great appeaser," has not been treated kindly by such history. It is probably more complicated than that. I suspect that absent the infamous 1938 "peace with honour...peace for our time" quote, school boys would have had more respect for him. Feel free to study the cliff notes on Chamberlain - here. The quotes below, from the run up to the Second World War, have been attributed to Chamberlain.
In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers.
-July 3, 1938
Armed conflict between nations is a nightmare to me, but if I were convinced that any nation had made up its mind to dominate the world by fear of its force I should feel it should be resisted.
-September 26, 1938
How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing. It seems still more impossible that a quarrel which has already been settled in principle should be the subject of war.
-September 27, 1938
This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine.... We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.
-September 30, 1938
My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.
-September 30, 1938
I often think to myself that it's not I but someone else who is P.M. and is the recipient of those continuous marks of respect and affection from the general public who called in Downing Street or at the station to take off their hats and cheer. And then I go back to the House of Commons and listen to the unending stream of abuse of the P.M., his faithlessness, his weakness, his wickedness, his innate sympathy with Fascism and his obstinate hatred of the working classes.
-May 28, 1939
This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note, stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received and that consequently this country is at war with Germany. ... It is evil things that we will be fighting against—brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution—and against them I am certain that the right will prevail.
-September 3, 1939
I stick to the view I have always held that Hitler missed the bus in September 1938. He could have dealt France and ourselves a terrible, perhaps a mortal, blow then. The opportunity will not recur.
-December 30, 1939
 |
| Chamberlain, holding the Munich "Agreement," on his return to England |
In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers.
-July 3, 1938
Armed conflict between nations is a nightmare to me, but if I were convinced that any nation had made up its mind to dominate the world by fear of its force I should feel it should be resisted.
-September 26, 1938
How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing. It seems still more impossible that a quarrel which has already been settled in principle should be the subject of war.
-September 27, 1938
This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine.... We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.
-September 30, 1938
My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.
-September 30, 1938
I often think to myself that it's not I but someone else who is P.M. and is the recipient of those continuous marks of respect and affection from the general public who called in Downing Street or at the station to take off their hats and cheer. And then I go back to the House of Commons and listen to the unending stream of abuse of the P.M., his faithlessness, his weakness, his wickedness, his innate sympathy with Fascism and his obstinate hatred of the working classes.
-May 28, 1939
This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note, stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received and that consequently this country is at war with Germany. ... It is evil things that we will be fighting against—brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution—and against them I am certain that the right will prevail.
-September 3, 1939
I stick to the view I have always held that Hitler missed the bus in September 1938. He could have dealt France and ourselves a terrible, perhaps a mortal, blow then. The opportunity will not recur.
-December 30, 1939
You can go home again......................
The not-so-simple village undertaker shares a story and a journey. Distance and family. I've done that. Ray's doing it, quite well I might add: "There has never been a time that we were closer than we are today. Each, ongoing day is a true gift from God."
Tucked away in Ray's story is a link to a post from two and a half years ago. It was powerful at first reading. It still retains its power today. If you ever question the power of a choice, read this.
Tucked away in Ray's story is a link to a post from two and a half years ago. It was powerful at first reading. It still retains its power today. If you ever question the power of a choice, read this.
Fifty years ago................................
JFK.......The "dictabelt" re: the coup in South Vietnam/Parenting
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