The Shadows............................................Apache
Saturday, February 1, 2014
When does education stop..................?
It doesn't, provided you scroll through The Execupundit blog on a regular basis. Michael has been on a hot streak here of late.
Just your routine Friday morning..........
The Licking County Chamber of Commerce sponsors an annual Groundhog's Day breakfast. Somewhere between 650 and 700 friendly folks rise extra very early and gather for breakfast, an economic update, and an inspirational speaker. Along the way, they might get a hug from a fairly furry Groundhog.
The economic news for our County looks fairly positive. As they say, "good stuff is happening." Our inspirational speaker was Jane Grote Abell the CEO of Donato's Pizza. To say her talk was great would be to understate it by a factor of about 10. She was amazing
As for the Groundhog.....................
The economic news for our County looks fairly positive. As they say, "good stuff is happening." Our inspirational speaker was Jane Grote Abell the CEO of Donato's Pizza. To say her talk was great would be to understate it by a factor of about 10. She was amazing
As for the Groundhog.....................
 |
| Trial run. Learning how to see again |
 |
| A hug with a very most important person |
 |
| Unveiling |
 |
| Does this suit make me look fat? |
 |
| Making no promises about the weather |
Fifty years ago.......................................
New Christy Minstrels............................................Today
For a better audio version, try this
For a better audio version, try this
Isn't.........................................
"Optimists are the elixir of life. They constantly remind the pessimists that life isn't as hopeless as they think. They are the extra ingredient that makes life bubble."
-Sara Henderson
Hopes.............................
"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes to us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday."
-John Wayne
Friday, January 31, 2014
Rooting for inflation...............................
Actions taken over the past seven years by the Fed, designed to insure the liquidity of our financial system, seemed certain to spur that old economic bogeyman, Inflation. Still hasn't happened. According to the article cited below, deflation is as much, or more, of a threat than inflation. As an owner of mortgaged real estate investments, I hope you won't mind if I express a strong preference for inflation rather than deflation. It's almost enough to make one nostalgic for Gerald Ford's W(hip) I(nflation) N (now) campaign, and the subsequent 10% + inflation during the Carter years.
Half the world economy is one accident away from a deflation trap. The International Monetary Fund says the probability may now be as high as 20pc.
It is a remarkable state of affairs that the G2 monetary superpowers - the US and China - should both be tightening into such a 20pc risk, though no doubt they have concluded that asset bubbles are becoming an even bigger danger.
"We need to be extremely vigilant," said the IMF's Christine Lagarde in Davos. "The deflation risk is what would occur if there was a shock to those economies now at low inflation rates, way below target. I don't think anyone can dispute that in the eurozone, inflation is way below target."
Fifty years ago....................................
Four Seasons..................................................Ronnie
"fumbling around with the most misnamed thing in the history of the universe, the smartphone"
If you admire style in writing, stop by Sippican Cottage. Greg's got style in spades............
"In my heart I knew my Palm Pilot couldn't do anything a geezer's battered daytimer and a pencil couldn't do -- except run out of batteries. A variation on a theme isn't an invention. But variation is all that matters now. Google's just the Yellow Pages, with those nasty ads from the back page of the indie newspaper thrown in. Craigslist is just the classifieds. Facebook is just a dry-erase clipboard on some college girl's dorm room door, writ large, and with about as many emoticons. Come on, if you don't remember hearts over the "i"s and little kitties in the margins on the " I've gone to the mixer" message on her door, you haven't lived."
"In my heart I knew my Palm Pilot couldn't do anything a geezer's battered daytimer and a pencil couldn't do -- except run out of batteries. A variation on a theme isn't an invention. But variation is all that matters now. Google's just the Yellow Pages, with those nasty ads from the back page of the indie newspaper thrown in. Craigslist is just the classifieds. Facebook is just a dry-erase clipboard on some college girl's dorm room door, writ large, and with about as many emoticons. Come on, if you don't remember hearts over the "i"s and little kitties in the margins on the " I've gone to the mixer" message on her door, you haven't lived."
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Connect with Nicholas Bate.............
Invest the 5:20. Be Bold 101 may be the best thing you do today.
Hardly nippy at all................................
The weather trend is looking pretty good from this vantage point. A month ago, our local TV weather people would suffer mass hysteria at the prospects of 2"-3" of snow. As winter progresses, they appear to have mellowed a bit. Maybe I'm fooling myself, but it now seems they are dealing with typical winter weather with the matter-of-factness that it deserves. It is cold and it snows. It's winter. That's what happens in the winter. It's a blessing.
Never enough....................................
Pousette Dart Band.................................Cold Outside
The boy sells himself short..........................
David Kanigan, whose very excellent blog gets read everyday in this neck of the woods, wrongly doubts his wordsmithing. The boy has his own admirable writing style, and he executes it admirably. Anyway, yesterday he offered a sumptuous spread of mellifluous words, which, when conflated, imbue us bucolic Licking Countians with the propinquity to endure this scintilla of evanescent arctic air that has recently come calling. Just keep doing what you do David. It's plenty good.
Watch the scale..........................
"All crises have involved debt that, in one fashion or another, has become dangerously out of scale in relation to the underlying means of payment."
-J. K. Galbraith
-J. K. Galbraith
Fifty years ago............................
Dave Clark Five..................Can't You See That She's Mine
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
For all those birthday people out there today .........................and you know who you are......
Sir Paul and friends.........................................Birthday
Cannot resist..................................
"Laughter has something in it common with the ancient winds of faith and inspiration: it unfreezes pride and unwinds secrecy; it makes men forget themselves in the presence of something greater than themselves; something that they cannot resist."
-G. K. Chesterton
cartoon via
Thin line.....................................
“There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.”
-Erma Bombeck
All purpose.........................
"Laughter can relieve tension, soothe the pain of disappointment, and strengthen the spirit for the formidable tasks that always lie ahead."
-Dwight D. Eisenhower
cartoon via
Geniuses.........................................
“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”
-Carl Sagan
cartoon via
Fifty years ago..............................
The Reflections............................Just Like Romeo and Juliet
When.........................................
“Laugh whenever you can. Keeps you from killing yourself when things are bad. That and vodka.”
-Jim Butcher
cartoon via
Re-evaluation....................................
"A complete re-evaluation takes place in your physical and mental being when you've laughed and had some fun."
-Catherine Ponder
cartoon via
Impossible......................................
"It's impossible to speak highly enough of the virtues, the dangers and the power of shared laughter."
-Francoise Sagan
cartoon via
Ability.....................................
“Yet the best determining factor of how comfortable we are with ourselves, is our ability to laugh at ourselves.”
-Wes Adamson
cartoon via
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Thanks for the reminder Ray.......................
Pousette Dart Band.......................................County Line
Fullness......................................
“You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.”
-Kahlil Gibran
Ironically.................................
“Acknowledge the complexity of the world and resist the impression that you easily understand it. People are too quick to accept conventional wisdom, because it sounds basically true and it tends to be reinforced by both their peers and opinion leaders, many of whome have never looked at whether the facts support the received wisdom. It's a basic fact of life that many things "everybody knows" turn out to be wrong.”
-Jim Rogers
cartoon via
He's doing it again........................
The Execupundit (the gold standard for blogging in my wee corner of the blogosphere) has issued another post of "Random Thoughts." I'm hoping he eventually publishes his whole collection. A taste of the latest installment:
"Seek distance from coercive people, especially those who long to command you for your own good. Frequently tally up your assumptions. Don't look for magic bullets.The difficult path may be the fastest. If you could travel to the next decade, which of our present practices would cause you to wonder, "How could they have ever thought that would work?" If you were a stock, would you be a Buy, Hold or Sell? An easy self-development plan: Read the biography of an extraordinary person every month."
"Seek distance from coercive people, especially those who long to command you for your own good. Frequently tally up your assumptions. Don't look for magic bullets.The difficult path may be the fastest. If you could travel to the next decade, which of our present practices would cause you to wonder, "How could they have ever thought that would work?" If you were a stock, would you be a Buy, Hold or Sell? An easy self-development plan: Read the biography of an extraordinary person every month."
Fifty years ago.................................
Bobby Goldsboro........................See The Funny Little Clown
Well, Okay.................................
"The first rule of life is to have a good time. There is no second rule."
-Brendan Gill
-Brendan Gill
The most true thing.....................
............................that I have ever read in the Intertunnel:
"I have come to learn that if the women in my life (wife and daughters for the record) are happy, then I have a reasonable chance of the same."
-Ray Visotski
"I have come to learn that if the women in my life (wife and daughters for the record) are happy, then I have a reasonable chance of the same."
-Ray Visotski
Monday, January 27, 2014
When videos don't match the lyrics.........Fun
The Beatles...................................................No Reply
Good News 101..............................
7. Libraries are full of free books which are full of brilliant ideas.
18. Life is not an emergency.
27. Laughter will repair damage.
46. Politeness is the forgotten superpower.
Suppose.................................
"The universe is not only queerer that we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."
-J. B. S. Haldane
And just in case you think you understand the universe, check out the latest word on "black holes" from Stephen Hawking. Feel free to explain.
image via
-J. B. S. Haldane
And just in case you think you understand the universe, check out the latest word on "black holes" from Stephen Hawking. Feel free to explain.
image via
Where does he find this stuff...........?
Bloggery at its finest from The Mighty E.
“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
-Marcel Proust
Fifty years ago........................
Margaret Chase Smith, the Republican Senator from Maine, became, on January 27, 1964, a candidate for the President of the United States. The full text of her speech before the National Women's Press Club in which she announces her very interesting and different candidacy can be found here.
After months of denying rumors that she would seek the top of the Republican ticket or the vice presidential nomination, Senator Margaret Chase Smith announced her run for President in January 1964. "I have few illusions and no money, but I'm staying for the finish," she noted, "When people keep telling you, you can't do a thing, you kind of like to try."24 Smith embarked on her typical grass–roots campaign—losing every primary but picking up a surprising high of 25 percent of the vote in Illinois.25 At the 1964 Republican Convention, she became the first woman to have her name put in for nomination for the presidency by a major political party. Receiving the support of just 27 delegates and losing the nomination to Senate colleague Barry Goldwater, it was a symbolic achievement.
-as excerpted from here
“The argument contends that I would be pioneering the way for woman in the future - to make her more acceptable - to make the way easier - for her to be elected President of the United States. Perhaps the point that has impressed me the most on this argument is that women before me pioneered and smoothed the way for me to be the first woman to be elected to both the House and the Senate - and that I should give back in the return that which had been given to me.”
-Margaret Chase Smith, in her speech announcing her candidacy for the U.S. Presidency, 1964
After months of denying rumors that she would seek the top of the Republican ticket or the vice presidential nomination, Senator Margaret Chase Smith announced her run for President in January 1964. "I have few illusions and no money, but I'm staying for the finish," she noted, "When people keep telling you, you can't do a thing, you kind of like to try."24 Smith embarked on her typical grass–roots campaign—losing every primary but picking up a surprising high of 25 percent of the vote in Illinois.25 At the 1964 Republican Convention, she became the first woman to have her name put in for nomination for the presidency by a major political party. Receiving the support of just 27 delegates and losing the nomination to Senate colleague Barry Goldwater, it was a symbolic achievement.
-as excerpted from here
“The argument contends that I would be pioneering the way for woman in the future - to make her more acceptable - to make the way easier - for her to be elected President of the United States. Perhaps the point that has impressed me the most on this argument is that women before me pioneered and smoothed the way for me to be the first woman to be elected to both the House and the Senate - and that I should give back in the return that which had been given to me.”
-Margaret Chase Smith, in her speech announcing her candidacy for the U.S. Presidency, 1964
 |
| "There is nothing more effective than a handshake and a little conversation." |
The zen of self and old-school bloggery......
..........with Will Wilkinson:
"A blog is a sort of history of one’s mind, like a diary or a journal, but it’s public and that makes a huge difference. I think the public existence of my blog stabilizes my sense of self. The idea that the self is an “illusion” tends to be grounded on the false assumption that if the self is anything at all, it must be a stable inward personal quiddity available to introspection. But of course there is no such thing. The Zen masters are right. There is nothing in there, and the deeper you look the less you find. The self is more like a URL. It’s an address in a web of obligation and social expectation."
Full blog post is here
via
"A blog is a sort of history of one’s mind, like a diary or a journal, but it’s public and that makes a huge difference. I think the public existence of my blog stabilizes my sense of self. The idea that the self is an “illusion” tends to be grounded on the false assumption that if the self is anything at all, it must be a stable inward personal quiddity available to introspection. But of course there is no such thing. The Zen masters are right. There is nothing in there, and the deeper you look the less you find. The self is more like a URL. It’s an address in a web of obligation and social expectation."
Full blog post is here
via
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
