Who's your daddy............................?

The Zombies............................................Time of the Season

Peace, Harmony & Serenity......

My Sweetie suggested I play hooky from work on Thursday and travel with her to nearby Gambier, Ohio.  The plan was to enjoy the one-weekend-a-year-open-house at the fabulous Schnormeier Gardens.  As plans go,  it was a pretty good one.  The air was warm and the sky was blue.  A perfect day for a pathless ramble.  Water, rocks and sculpture abound.  The oriental influence is immediately felt.  The co-creators, (and owners/residents) of the property, Ted and Ann Schnormeier, mingled with the guests, taking time to share and explain.  Nice people. A great experience.  Put it on your calendar for next year.

To celebrate their 50th anniversary in 2007, Ted and Ann had
Alan Cottrill create this scupture

The Japanese Garden House overlooks the five upper ponds
and the Serenity Garden

About the only selfie you will ever see me take

Draco Terribilis, a 1996 steel sculpture by Lou Ferrario, guards
the Chinese Cup garden

"Beginnings", one of a series of bronze sculptures by Charles J. Reina
along the Stream Garden, represents emerging bulbs in the spring.

Looked for Monet, but didn't see him at any of the four lily pad
friendly ponds in the Meadow Garden

A sedge of herons

"Affirmation of Rejection"  by a 2002 steel sculpture by
Michael Kenneth Smith

"Fat Man Dancing" (hey, I didn't name these things)  A 1999 steel
sculpture by Michael Kenneth Smith

"Reflections of a Past Tense"   Michael Kenneth Smith's
steel sculpture influenced by Rodin's The Thinker

Jiku      Silicone Bronze sculpture by Richard Mayer
designed by Ted Schnormeier

The Quarry

The Buddha

There is just something......................

.....................................................about that shirt.

On moderation......................

Again and again the Master would be
seen to discourage his disciples
from depending on him, for this
would prevent them from contacting
the inner Source.

He was often heard to say. "Three
things there are that when too close
are harmful, when too far are useless 
and are best kept a middle distance:
fire, the government, and the guru."

-Anthony de Mello,  One Minute Wisdom

On saving money.............................

It's important.   A gaunt piggy bank is not a good thing.

Feedthepig.org, a partnership between the American Institute of CPA's and the Ad Council, has been buying billboards ads that encourage all of us to save some money.  This is known as "a good thing."

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

The Dave Clark Five..............................................Because

I don't know...........................

"It has long been said that the three hardest words to say in the English language are I love you.  We heartily disagree!   For most people, it is much harder to say I don't know.   That's a shame, for until you can admit what you don't yet know, it's virtually impossible to learn what you need to."
-as excerpted from Levitt and Dubner's Think Like A Freak

One of the things I like about........................

......summer is that Rob Firchau posts more often.  Do visit.

Coverage....................................

Joe Walsh..................................................Rosewood Bitters



Michael Stanley's original is here.  Apparently there is some Intertunnel controversy:  Did Walsh or Stanley write the song.  Our vote is with Stanley, but who knows?  Thanks Scott

On reason..............................

"So convenient a thing is it to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one had a mind to do."
-Benjamin Franklin

Now that school is out, let's spend the summer working on education reform. What...........? Oh. Never mind................

    "In our society, if someone wants to be a hairstylist or a kickboxer or a hunting guide - or a schoolteacher - he or she must be trained and licensed by a state agency.  No such requirement is necessary for parenthood.  Anyone with a set of reproductive organs is free to create a child, no questions asked, and raise them as they see fit, so long as there are no visible bruises - and then turn that child over to the school system so the teachers can work their magic.   Maybe we are asking too much of the schools and too little of our parents and kids?"

"In the U. S. push for education reform, theories abound as to the key factors:  school size, class size, administrative stability, money for technology, and yes, teacher skill."

"But a mountain of recent evidence suggests that teacher skill has less influence on a student's performance than a completely different set of factors:  namely, how much kids have learned from their parents, how hard they work at home, and whether parents have instilled an appetite for education."

-excerpts from Levitt and Dubner's Think Like A Freak

Priceless......................................

...................................................A list worth pondering.

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

Lesley Gore...............................................You Don't Own Me

One of the greatest......................

Cultural Offering has the story - here

One great song is here

And today's for sale
And it's all you can afford

Be wary of "totalization"............................

"Utopians...consider individual freedom as the stumbling block on which the grandiose idea of mankind’s totalization may flounder."
-Thomas Molnar

Models...................................

     "Like many economists we believed that if our models did not describe the world, the fault lay with the world, not the model."
-John Kay, as excerpted from the preface to Obliquity: Why our goals are best achieved indirectly

Hmmm.........................................

"Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future."
-attributed to Niels Bohr

Nifty....................................

Dean Martin and Paul Lynde having some fun....................

A few of my favorite things....................

From Jeff:    "we're doomed"

From David:   Magic

From Doug:   Ideas

From Jonco:   Billions

From John:   Worst question

"In the name of good intentions, you began to do me harm."

Switchback..................................................Bamboozled

Camouflage..............................

"Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power."
-Aldous Huxley   

Good intentions........................

From a commencement addressed never commenced:
      In a complicated world, good intentions can have terrible consequences. One hundred years ago, many well-intentioned people championed Communism. When Lenin took power in Russia in 1917, he actually believed that the economy would organize itself, and that without profits production would be more efficient and more equitable. When both his ideas and his leadership proved unpopular, he responded with ruthless tyranny. His took his self-righteousness to a mad extreme, but I am afraid that there is a little bit of Lenin lurking among all of those who are so certain that community service is morally superior to business.
-Arnold S. Kling, as excerpted from here

A night of dark intent..........................

The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God's last Put out the Light was spoken.

-Robert Frost, Once By The Pacific

photo via

Walter Russell Mead.......................

...........pens a thoughtful essay on the administration's foreign policy.  Full essay here.  Two wee excepts here:

"It was a beautiful plan, but it hasn’t worked out."

"But they also think that American policy is confused and narcissistic: that we proclaim ambitious goals because we like to flatter ourselves about our power and our nobility of character, but that we lack the resolution to achieve them."

Uh-oh.

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

Nina Simone...........................Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood



"But I'm just a soul whose intentions are good.  Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood."  Lyrics here.  Back story here.

So where is the "relentless scrutiny"..............?

"This is a generation weaned on Watergate, and there is no presumption of innocence and no presumption of good intentions. Instead, there is a presumption that, without relentless scrutiny, the government will misbehave."
-Dee Dee Myers

Concentrated......................................

"Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it."

-Milton Friedman

Ah, the wisdom of fortune cookies....................

Done ...

"fulfilling the dreams of ... curious economists everywhere who love it when cities turn themselves into living laboratories."

At last, a worthy reason for raising the minimum wage in Seattle to $15 per hour.  One man's take (and source of the quote) on the issue is here.  My money says the only winner in this experiment will be the law of unintended consequences.  Heads up folks.  The ride is about to get interesting.

A little slice of the summer of 1969...

The Youngbloods.......................................Let's Get Together

 

Hide my yearning..............................

The Youngbloods..............................Darkness, Darkness

To be robust, or to delegate, that is the question...

"A growing body of research suggest that even the smartest people tend to seek out evidence that confirms what they already think, rather than new information that would give them a more robust view of reality.
     "It is also tempting to run with the herd.  Even on the most important issues of the day, we often adopt the views of our friends, family, and colleagues.  On some level, this makes sense:  it is easier to fall in line with what your family and friends think than to find new family and friends!   But running with the herd means we are quick to embrace the status quo, slow to change our minds, and happy to delegate our thinking."
-as excerpted from Levitt and Dubner's Think Like A Freak

On dogma............................

On thinking...............................

"Few people think more than two or three times a year.   I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week."
-attributed to George Bernard Shaw

Thinking 14..................................

Balance of list is here.

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

The Beatles...................................................And I Love Her

"The last IS the worst"...................

.......By a factor of about 10 in my experience.  Full story here.

Hoping the next president finds a "middle way"...

courtesy of

But who's going to clean up the mess.....................

courtesy of

The hardest working man in show biz....................

See if you don't agree.   James Brown dances a bit...............

Twofer Tuesday....................................

The Beatles..............................................Back In The USSR




The Beach Boys..............................................California Girls

Learning a new word today...................

Hey, wait a minute................................

Unshakable...........................

      When asked to name the attributes of someone who is particularly bad at predicting,  Tetlock needed just one word.  "Dogmatism,"  he says.  That is, an unshakable belief they know something to be true even when they don't.  Tetlock and other scholars who have tracked prominent pundits find that they tend to be "massively overconfident," in Tetlock's words, even when their predictions prove stone-cold wrong.  That is a lethal combination - cocky plus wrong - especially when a more prudent option exists:  simply admit that the future is far less knowable than you think.
     Unfortunately, this rarely happens.  Smart people love to make smart-sounding predictions, no matter how wrong they may turn out to be.  This phenomenon was beautifully captured in a 1998 article for Red Herring magazine called "Why Most Economists' Predictions Are Wrong."  It was written by Paul Krugman, himself an economist, who went on to win the Nobel Prize.  Krugman points out that too many economists' predictions fail because they overestimate the impact of future technologies, and then he makes a few predictions of his own.  Here's one:  "The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in 'Metcalfe's law' - which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants - becomes apparent:  most people have nothing to say to each other!  By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than that fax machine's."

-as excerpted from Levitt and Dubner's Think Like A Freak

This just in..............................

..................................Paul Krugman is still not wrong.

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

Peter & Gordon.................................World Without Love

 

School's out for summer................

cartoons via

Life its ownself.............................

"Happiness is a journey not a destination.  For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life.  But there was always some obstacle in the way.  Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid.  Then life would begin.  At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.   This perspective has helped me to see there is no way to happiness.  Happiness is the way.   So treasure every moment you have and remember that time waits for no one.”
-attributed to Fr. Alfred D'Souza

Those pesky humans are at it again.......

From Via Meadia comes this interesting nugget:

"Water scarcity has long been a favorite topic for the Chicken Littles of the world. But doomsayers who predict a coming global shortage of freshwater fail to account for one of the strongest forces on our planet today: human ingenuity."

Full post on Israeli water desalination is here.

On sleep deprivation.....................

Not getting enough sleep?   Here is the abstract of a study from the Department of Behavioral Biology, Division of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research suggesting you may want to rethink that:

Relative to baseline, sleep deprivation was associated with lower scores on Total EQ (decreased global emotional intelligence),  Intrapersonal functioning (reduced self-regard, assertiveness, sense of independence, and self-actualization),  Interpersonal functioning (reduced empathy toward others and quality of interpersonal relationships),  Stress Management skills (reduced impulse control and difficulty with delay of gratification), and Behavioral Coping (reduced positive thinking and action orientation). 

Esoteric Thinking (greater reliance on formal superstitions and magical thinking processes) was increased.

Magical thinking.   Hmm, maybe I'll stay up all night blogging.