Time stood still............................

Alan Jackson.............................................Remember When

On measuring........................

"The only man who behaves sensibly is my tailor;  he takes my measurement anew every time he sees me, while all the rest go on with their old measurements, and expect them to fit me."
-George Bernard Shaw

Ex-slackers of the World, Unite....Part 2

A week or so ago, we noted this Megan McArdle post on the importance of hiring "slackers."  As someone who skipped more than the appropriate number of 1:30 Modern European History classes to finish up lunch time euchre games at the fraternity house, I have a soft spot in my heart for "ex-slackers."  One of my favorite writers in the Intertunnel is The Epicurean Dealmaker.  He weighs in on the subject here.   His classic take on recent graduates with a perfect 4.0 grade point average and perfect resumes with perfect lists of extracurricular activities is here:

Most of them, if they ever had a personality or original thought in their head in the first place, have hammered it down so deep into their subconscious they couldn’t summon it on pain of death. Their résumés, their bearing, and their polished interview patter render them about as distinguishable and interesting to talk to as Brooks Brothers mannequins. Nothing in their conversation or revealed background indicates any appetite for adventure, risk, or enlightenment. Nothing they can relate indicates they have tried something they didn’t know they could succeed at, risked failure for a good reason (or any reason at all), or simply gave themselves up to powers greater than themselves—love, fate, chance—just because. They haven’t lived at all. They’ve followed a career path.

I call them carbon sinks.²

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

Napoleon Bonaparte was born on 15 August 1769 at Ajaccio on the island of Corsica.  It is a paradox that this man who thought in terms of conquering entire continents should have had his life bounded by three islands:  Corsica, less than half the size of Wales, no bigger than Vermont;  Elba, much smaller, where a parody of his glory was enacted;  and Saint Helena, a mere speck on the ocean, his death prison.   It was a vintage time to be born:  1769 was also the birth year of Bonaparte's nemesis, the duke of Wellington, and the politician who backed him, Viscount Castlereagh;  and in and around this date were born many of the greatest spirits of the coming age:  Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael, two more of Bonaparte's dedicated enemies;  Wordsworth and Coleridge, who cursed him in prose and verse;  Beethoven, who dedicated his Eroica Symphony to the First Consul, then tore out the page in anger when he became emperor;  and a host of others - Hegel and Schlegel,  Andrew Johnson and John Quincy Adams, George Canning, Metternich, and Sir Walter Scott.
-Paul Johnson,   Napoleon

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

Chris Montez..................................................Let's Dance




All you purists out there who want to remind me that this song dates from fifty-two years ago can relax.  I'm going with the idea that, judging from clothing styles, haircuts, and the dancing itself,  the video dates to early 1964.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Some sweet writing......................

     On the 29th of April, as I was fishing from the bank of the river near the Nine-Acre-Corner bridge, standing on the quaking grass and willow roots, where the muskrats lurk, I heard a singular rattling sound, somewhat like that of the sticks which boys play with their fingers, when looking up, I observed a very slight and graceful hawk, like a night-hawk, alternately soaring like a ripple and tumbling a rod or two over and over, showing the underside of its wings, which gleamed like a satin ribbon in the sun, or like the pearly inside of a shell.   This sight reminded me of falconry and what nobleness and poetry are associated with that sport.  The Merlin it seemed to me it might be called:  but I care not for its name.  It was the most ethereal flight I have ever witnessed.  It did not simply flutter like a butterfly, nor soar like the larger hawks, but it sported with proud reliance in the fields of air;  mounting again and again with its strange chuckle, it repeated its free and beautiful fall, turning over and over like a kite, and then recovering from its lofty tumbling, as if it had never set its foot on terra firma.  It appeared to have no companion in the universe, - sporting there alone, - and to need none but the morning and the ether with which it played.  It was not lonely, but made all the earth lonely beneath it.  Where was the parent which hatched it, its kindred, and its father in the heavens?   The tenant of the air, it seemed related to the earth but by an egg hatched some time in the crevice of a crag; - or was its native nest made in the angle of the cloud, woven of the rainbow's trimmings and the sunset sky, and lined with some soft midsummer haze caught up from earth?   Its eyry now some cliffy cloud.
-Henry David Thoreau,  Walden (as excerpted from Spring)

It was mighty fine.............................

via

Music Central................................

...............................................here.

Spending 90 minutes or so with the Count......

Count Basie.................................................Basie Boogie

Influx of better thoughts.......................

     A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener.   So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts.  We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty.  We loiter in winter while it is already spring.
-Henry David Thoreau,  as excerpted from Walden

Success vs. Happiness.................

Thriving on.............................

..................................................our drug of choice.

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

     Maybe this will help.   For years I have been stalked by a bad reputation.  Actually I have been pursued by people who regard me as the Death and Dying Lady.  They believe that having spent more than three decades in research on death and life after death qualifies me as an expert on the subject.  I think they miss the point.
     The only incontrovertible fact of my work is the importance of life.
-Elisabeth Kubler-Ross,   The Wheel of Life:  A Memoir of Living and Dying

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

The Dovells..................................One Potato, Two Potato



In many ways, 1964 was a simpler time.  The Dovells were a Philly group, perhaps best know for the Bristol Stomp.   This video comes for an April 1964 American Bandstand show with Dick Clark

A matter of context.......................

"Lots of people think, well, we're humans;  we're the most intelligent and accomplished species;  we're in charge.  Bacteria may have a different outlook:   more bacteria live and work in one linear centimeter of your lower colon than all the humans who have ever lived.  That's what's going on in your digestive tract right now.  Are we in charge, or are we simple hosts for bacteria?   It all depends on your outlook."
-Neil deGrasse Tyson

cartoon via

Confusopoly..............................................

Scott Adams on "How the Robots Will Take Over" in 7 easy steps:

Step one in the computer's mission to control the environment is moving all money into a digital currency that humans can't fully understand and computers can manipulate. This is similar to how cellphone companies use complexity to prevent consumers from comparing products, also known as a confusopoly. The first post-singularity computer would recognize the pattern and its success and presumably borrow the idea.

As excerpted from this blog post

I especially liked this comment::

The old classics.........................

Ricky Nelson, Dean Martin, Walter Brennan....Cindy Cindy

Friends worth having...................

They went to church or to the temple and although they didn't always agree with what was said, they were serious about the larger message. They could yell and they could cry and one of their glances could convey more than the average college professor does in a week of lectures. They had jobs, not careers, and you rarely found one with the smooth ruthlessness that emerges from today's pool of management interns. 
-as excerpted from the Execupundit

On right and wrong................................

"Right is right, even if nobody does it.  Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong about it."
-G. K. Chesterton

all cartoons except baloo from here

THE To-Do list........................

The good news is that Nicholas Bate has generously shared his 101 Secrets of Success.  The bad news is that we are responsible for handling each and every one of 101 steps - one day at a time.

#14:  Drive (all day if necessary) until you find a light pollution free area. Stare at the night sky and remind yourself: what a fu**ing gift to have received! Don't waste it.

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

Beach Boys.........................................Little Honda

Science to the rescue................

Grilling meat gives it great flavor.  This taste, though, comes at a price, since the process creates molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHS) which damage DNA and thus increase the eater's chances of developing colon cancer.  For those who think barbecues one of summer's great delights, that is a shame.  But a group of researchers led by Isabel Ferreira of the University of Porto, in Portugal, think they have found a way around the problem.  When barbecuing meat, they suggest, you should add beer.
-full story here

Beyond................................

From the A Source of Inspiration blog............

                     How big is big, or even small?
                     A stone, rock, mountain, star.
        Universes beyond what we can comprehend.
                     How big is big or even small?
     We perceive so little, yet think we know so much.
             Until we understand we are One with All.
                     How big is big, or even small?
                     A stone, rock, mountain, star.

And it is a feast...........................!

Always giving, never asking back...

Alison Krauss............................................Simple Love




#29 on the essentially eudaimonic list

The wonder of it all.........................

thanks joe

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

In the summer of the Roman year 699, now described as the year 55 before the birth of Christ, the Proconsul of Gaul, Gaius Julius Caesar, turned his gaze upon Britain.   In the midst of his wars in Germany and in Gaul he became conscious of this heavy Island which stirred his ambitions and already obstructed his designs.  He knew it was inhabited by  the same type of tribesmen who confronted the Roman arms in Germany, Gaul, and Spain.  The Islanders had helped the local tribes in the late campaigns along the northern coast of Gaul.  They were of the same Celtic stock, somewhat intensified by insular life.  British volunteers had shared the defeat of the Veneti on the coast of Brittany in the previous year.  Refugees from momentarily conquered Gaul were welcomed and sheltered in Britannia.  To Caesar the Island now presented itself to be and integral part of his task of subjecting the Northern barbarians to the rule and system of Rome.  The land not covered by forest or marsh was verdant and fertile.  The climate, though far from genial, was equable and healthy.  The natives, though uncouth, had a certain value as slaves for rougher work on the land, in mines, and even about the house.   There was talk of a pearl fishery, and also of gold.  "Even if there was not time for a campaign that season,  Caesar thought it would be of great advantage to him merely to visit the island, to see what the inhabitants were like, and to make himself acquainted with the lie of the land, the harbours, and the landing-places.  Of all this the Gauls knew next to nothing."  Other reasons added their weight.  Caesar's colleague in the Triumvirate, Crassus, had excited the imagination of the Roman Senate and people by his spirited march towards Mesopotamia.  Here, at the other end of the known world, was an enterprise equally audacious.  The Romans hated and feared the sea.  By a supreme effort of survival they had two hundred years before surpassed Carthage upon its own element in the Mediterranean, but the idea of Roman legions landing in the remote, unknown, fabulous Island of the vast ocean of the North would create a novel thrill and topic in all ranks of Roman society.
-Winston S. Churchill,   The Birth of Britain

Two...............................

Thanks Todd

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

The Rolling Stones........................................Walking The Dog

Wrong...................................

"We spend the first year of a child's life teaching it to walk and talk and the rest of its life to shut up and sit down.  There's something wrong there."
-Neil deGrasse Tyson

SNAFU........................

Given that, the US and the EU are likely to continue wandering in a maze of illusion and wishful thinking. Western policy will likely continue to feature a depressingly weak-minded mix of highfalutin rhetoric and half-hearted policy steps.
-Walter Russell Mead, as excerpted from this essay, which is worth reading if only for his detailing the awful last 100 years of the Ukrainian people.

Pin the tail on Ukraine.......................

We found that only one out of six Americans can find Ukraine on a map, and that this lack of knowledge is related to preferences: The farther their guesses were from Ukraine’s actual location, the more they wanted the U.S.  to intervene with military force.

Full post is here

thanks tyler

Eudaimonically yours..............

David Sanborn..................................Love and Happiness



#20 on the list

Battle of the bands....................................

The Girl from Ipanema...............................

Getz and Gilberto:


Unorganized Hancock:


Sinatra and Jobim:

Pessimists may get all the headlines, but............

...the smart way to bet (for the past 300 years anyway) is on the optimists.   If the question is, "Are things likely to get better?"   The answer is, "Yes!"    Joel Mokyr tells us why in this recent essay.  Excerpt here:

If this historical model holds some truth, the best may still be to come for modern societies. Only in recent decades has science learned to use high-powered computing and the storage of massive amounts of searchable (and thus accessible) data at negligible costs. The vast array of instruments and machines that can see, analyze, and manipulate entities at the sub-cellular and sub-molecular level promise advances in areas that can be predicted only vaguely. But these tools, to beat Cowen’s metaphor into the ground, allow us to build taller ladders to pick higher-hanging fruit. We can also plant new trees that will grow fruits that no one today can imagine.

thanks craig

I'm fine................................

thanks jessica

Not all of them anyway....................

via

Can I get an Amen.............................?

"With automatic spell checkers running unleashed over what we compose, our era is that of correctly spelled typos."
-Neil deGrasse Tyson

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

Jerry Lee Lewis.......................................Mean Woman Blues

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

      Another season was ending.  The mid-May sun had a tropic sting against my bare shoulders.  Sweat rand into my eyes.  I had discovered an ugly little pocket of dry rot in the windshield corner of the panel of the topside controls on my houseboat, and after trying not to think about it for a week, I had dug out the tools, picked up some pieces of prime mahogany, and excised the area of infection with a saber saw.
-John D. MacDonald,   Bright Orange For The Shroud

The beautiful moments in between........

This may be the best TED talk you will ever see ... A cello?  Enjoy!

thanks peter

A stack of projects........................

A problem might seem ominous or threatening, but if we call it "a project" instead, our approach to it changes;  we view it as something that has a solution - a solution we are engaged in finding.  In the same way, we can remind ourselves that our opportunities are often in exact proportion to our problems.   Polio was a problem worldwide, but to Dr. Jonas Salk and his fellow researchers it was a project on which they were working and which they were successful in solving ... When we have a pressing problem - and who is without one for long - I think we need to take this intelligent attitude toward it.  This is not a Pollyanna attitude, unless you want to call all the people who have been solving human problems for centuries Pollyannas.  It is, rather, a very human, intelligent attitude.
-Earl Nightingale

Finding his happy place..............

The perfect "work out" regimen...........Dance Walking

via

One of the glories of the Intertunnel....

........is its ability to open new doors. One of the regular stops in my little corner of the blogosphere is Jade Page Press. Nan likes her music and much of it I haven't heard before - like Lake Street Drive.  Do visit.

 

Funny, I don't remember it that way....

"Let us not fool ourselves into thinking we went to the Moon because we are pioneers, or discoverers, or adventurers.   We went to the Moon because it was the militaristically expedient thing to do.
-Neil deGrasse Tyson

Tyson was nine years old that July day in 1969 when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the moon.  I was seventeen.  It felt to me that, while competition with the U.S.S.R. was certainly a factor, our main drivers were a lot more idealistic than simple Cold War competition.  I don't care what the historical revisionists come up with, we were pioneers, discoverers and adventurers.   Successful ones at that. And, damn, but it felt good.

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

Our long months of preparation and planning for the greatest amphibious operation in history ended on D-Day, June 6, 1944.   During the preceding night the great armadas of convoys and their escorts sailed, unknown to the enemy, along the swept channels from the Isle of Wight to the Normandy coast.  Heavy bombers of the Royal Air Force attacked enemy coast-defence guns in their concrete emplacements, dropping 5200 tons of bombs.  When the dawn broke, the United States Air Force came on the scene to deal with other shore defences, followed by medium and fighter bombers.  In the twenty-four hours of June 6 the Allies flew over 14,600 sorties.  So great was our superiority in the air that all the enemy could put up during daylight over the invasion beaches was a mere hundred sorties.   From midnight three airborne divisions were alighting, the British 6th Airborne Division northeast of Caen to seize bridgeheads over the river between the town and the sea, and two American airborne divisions north of Carentan to assist the seaborne assault on the beaches, and to check the movement of enemy reserves into the Cotentin peninsula.  Although in places the airborne divisions were more widely scattered than had been intended, the object was in every case achieved.
-Winston Churchill,  Triumph and Tragedy

thanks doug

The key...............................

thanks Todd

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

The Escorts.................................................Dizzy Miss Lizzy

 

The only path to financial independence.....

Save then spend: wealth is your personal balance sheet (assets less liabilities) not simply your salary, T/O nor billing rate.
-as culled from Nicholas Bate's Secrets of Success 101

A patron saint in plumb..................

"Angels fly because they take themselves lightly."  One of Chesterton's most famous lines.  One of his other most famous lines is, "If  a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."  But we should hasten to point out that he was talking about amateurs.  This line does not apply to professionals.  And he says that while every professional calling has its drudgery and details to attend to, there is an ideal connected to the calling, an ideal that one strives for or aspires to.  That is why the classic professions, such as soldiers or doctors, have patron saints who represent that ideal.  However, in our modern world, says Chesterton, it is a serious calamity that no such ideal exists for the vast number of honorable trades and crafts on which the existence of a modern city depends.  There should be, for instance, a patron saint of plumbers.  "This," says Chesterton, "would alone be a revolution, for it would force the individual craftsman to believe that there was once a perfect being who did actually plumb."
Dale Alhquist,  Common Sense 101:  Lessons From G. K. Chesterton

Almost everything you need to know about music...

Can be found right here.   Personally, I'm looking forward to the essential country rock mix.

On the problems with central planning....

My favorite optimist, Matt Ridley, reviews The Tyranny of Experts - here.  Wee excerpt here:

The story of the West’s rise, the roaring of the east Asian tigers and of China’s sudden growth surge are actually cases of spontaneous order, unplanned innovation and liberation from top-down rule, not central planning.

Scott is back in the business......................

....of dispensing sensory stimuli.   Stop by and tell him hello.

Not a day goes by.................................

Robert Cray..............................................Consequences

 

Songs you don't hear on the local radio station...

Jetboy............opening musical doors since 2010.   Do visit.

The View From the Ledge.............

Spend some time,
save some time,
waste some time
take some time
pick up some time

time after time
time waits for no one
time has come today
time is on your side
(yes it is)

it’s time
it’s not time
yet

soon…

- J.

Poetry courtesy of Jeff Kopito

Time has come today......................

The Chambers Brothers version....(trigger warning:  psychedelia)

Have a nice day......................

"In five billion years, the sun will expand and engulf our orbit as the charred ember that was once Earth vaporizes.  Have a nice day."
-Neil deGrasse Tyson

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

Brian Hyland.....................................Sealed with a Kiss




Editor's Note:   Some of you are thinking, "Hmmm, 1962 isn't fifty years ago."  Rest assured that this video is not from 1962.  The Beatles brought the trend of longer hair to the United States circa 1963, but the dancers make one think late 1964 (or potentially 1965).  Anyway, this is from about 50 years ago.  Enjoy.

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

via

Verse.....................

19   Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: 

20   But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

21   For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

22  The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

23  But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!

24  No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

25  Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

26  Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

27  Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?

28  And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

29  And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

30  Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

31  Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?

32  (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

33  But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

34  Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

-Matthew 6: 19-34

The Holy Bible

King James Version

Tao......................................

Faithful readers will know that the Tao Te Ching holds an attraction for me.  Yesterday friend David posted Chapter 9:

Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people’s approval
and you will be their prisoner.

Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity


One of the glories of the Tao is the variations between translations into the English language.  For instance:

Instead of keeping a bow taut while holding it straight,
       better to relax.
You may temper a sword until it is razor sharp,
       but you cannot preserve the edge for long.
When gold and jade fill your rooms,
       no one will be able to guard them for you.
If wealth and honor make you haughty,
       you bequeath misfortune upon yourself.
To withdraw when your work is finished,
       that is the way of heaven.
-Tao Te Ching,  Lao Tzu, as translated by Victor Mair



Hold yourself back from filling yourself up,
or you'll tip off your stand.

You can hammer a blade until it's razor-sharp
and in seconds, it can blunt.

You may amass gold and jade in plenty
but then the more you have, the less safety . .

Are you strutting your wealth like a peacock?
Then you've set yourself up to be shot.
You bring about your own disaster
Because you've got too much.

Let go, when your work is done.

That is the Way of Heaven.
-The Illustrated Tao Te Ching, a new translation by Kwok, Palmer and Ramsay


Instead of pouring in more
better stop while you can
making it sharper
won't help it last longer
houses full of treasure
can never be safe
the vanity of success
invites its own failure
when your work is done retire
this is the way of heaven
-Lao-tzu's Taoteching, translated by Red Pine


To keep on filling
is not as good as stopping.
Overfilled, the cupped hands drip,
better to stop pouring.

Sharpen a blade too much
and its edge will soon be lost.
Fill your home with jade and gold
and it brings insecurity.
Puff yourself with honor and pride
and no one can save you from a fall.

Retire when the work is done;
this is the way of heaven.
-Wayne W. Dyer,   Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life:  Living the Wisdom of the Tao

The immortal power............................

"If you have a good heart you will always have some lightness of heart;  you will always have the power of enjoying special human feasts, and positive human good news.  But the heart which is there to be lightened will also be there to be hurt;  and really if you only want to be happy, to be steadily and stupidly happy like the animals, it may be well worth your while not to have a heart at all.  Fortunately, however, being happy is not so important as having a jolly time.  Philosophers are happy;  saints have a jolly time.  The important thing in life is not to keep a steady system of pleasure and composure (which can be done quite well by hardening one's heart or thickening one's head), but to keep alive in oneself the immortal power of astonishment and laughter and a kind of young reverence."
-G. K Chesterton, as excerpted from Common Sense 101:  Lessons from G. K. Chesterton