A little Alt music for Saturday night............

Sugar.......................................................A Good Idea



Scott Blitstein recommends Sugar's Copper Blue.  Here is one of the cuts.  Do visit Sensory Dispensary.  As the man says, “Come as you are, leave different”

Isn't it rich........................................

Frank Sinatra.........................................Send In The Clowns

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

The physicist Richard Feynman once remarked that every time a colleague from the humanities department complained that his students couldn't spell a common word like seize or accommodate, Feynman wanted to reply, "Then there must be something wrong with the way you spell it."
-Bill Bryson, from the Introduction to Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words:  A Writer's Guide To Getting It Right

Commerce as art...............................

"Commerce is the mother of the arts, the sciences, the professions, and in this twentieth century has itself become an are, a science, a profession.   As it plays with a fine touch on the strings of human nature the world over, and makes happier by its fairness the youth of today and the man of tomorrow, it is an art."
-Harry Gordon Selfridge,  Mr. Selfridge's Romance of Commerce

From the Archives

Apparently I am not the only one rummaging around in the Eclecticity archives.   No surprise to me.  When our friend Doug says he hasn't posted on the heavy blog since November of 2013, his politely ignoring the fact that he periodically goes over there and changes his blog header.  Perhaps tomorrow we will have another retrospective on such creativity.  Meanwhile:

from the Archives

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

I actually remember, twelve-year old me, sitting on the couch in our den watching this game.  It was the first of a double header, Phillies versus the Mets at Shea Stadium in New York.   Jim Bunning, later to be a Senator from Kentucky,  pitched a perfect ballgame, the first in the National League for some 84 years.  Baseball at its best.



All you trivia buffs probably know this, but the Phillies' rookie Rick Wise, pitched and won the second game of the double header.

More on being judgmental..........

"How shall I forgive others?"

"If you never condemned, you would never need to forgive."

-Anthony de Mello,  One Minute Wisdom

Guanciale.................................

..........................................................is on a roll.

Sometimes......................

"One can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place."
-Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Number 99..............................

Scott dispenses with his ninety-nine favorite albums.  There is much to like on his list, as well as much to explore. Don't be surprised if some new music shows up on these pages.   My guess is we will just agree to disagree about Hotel California.

Couple of guys messing around on guitars...

Mark Knopfler and Chet Atkins having a good old time........

And now a word from our sponsor.....

Actually, I think he has confused............

...............a democracy and a republic, but that is fairly common.  Still, the point holds:

     "Democracy is always imperfect, and always in need of repair.  But it is preferable to all other forms of government because it is built on a simple insight:  That we, the people, should constantly tighten the binds that tie our masters."
-Robert Guest

We forget this at our own peril.  Full essay here

Self................................

     "Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.   Their whims, fancies, and ambitions are thwarted at every step, but their inmost thoughts and desires are fed with their own food, be it foul or clean.  The 'divinity that shapes our ends' is in ourselves;  it is our very self.  Man is manacled only by himself:  thought and action are the gaolers of Fate - they imprison, being base;  and they are also the angels of Freedom - they liberate, being noble.  Not what he wishes and prays for does a man get, but what he justly earns.  His wishes and prayers are only gratified and answered when they harmonize with his thoughts and actions."
-James Allen, as excerpted from As A Man Thinketh

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

Wayne Newton...................................................Only You

All I remember from History 230 was..............

.........that Europe had a lot of it and it was mostly messy.  That being said, I like having majored in History.  I'm not the only one:

"When I was young and foolish, I thought I could learn all of history and have it all available in my head, or at least a lot of European history, or at least a lot of English history. Now I know that almost all this stuff will fall right back out of my head again. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not worth doing. There is another kind of knowledge building up, a synoptic sense of what people have done and will do, what sorts of organizations have succeeded, what sorts have failed, and some of the common notions of why. It’s all terribly vague and unsatisfactory, and the more you read the more you realize how variable and subjective the notions are, but as it accumulates I find that I’m far less likely to be fooled by the demagogues and politicians of the moment. I’m no better at predicting the future than anyone else, but I recognize the rashness of betting on my predictions better than most. History has a way of wriggling out of what people expect."

-Dale Favier, as excerpted from this Andrew Sullivan post

On being a little judgmental....

From Seth Godin, a story from thirty years ago.............

I loved this. These people, these lookers, not buyers, were identifying themselves to us from a distance. The little Kraco man on the shoulder meant, "I am here to waste your time, I am not a professional, what will you give me that's free?" We quickly began identifying anyone with one of these on their shoulder as a Kraco, someone not worth an investment of focus and energy or free stuff.

Full story here.

What is work..................?

thanks todd

I felt the same way about "Black List"....

via

Oh, no...........................................

The Beatles.................................................Hello Goodbye

Rules........................

"Perhaps the most important rule in management is 'Get the incentives right.'"
-Charles T. Munger, as excerpted from The Psychology of Human Misjudgment

Sincerity.........................

" A candour affected is a dagger concealed."
-Marcus Aurelius as channeled by Andrew Munro.  Balance of quote is here.

Suppose.................................

"Belief in the inevitable always presupposes a sort of vacuum in which forces are working.  The moves in a game of chess are mathematical facts, but suppose you prophesy that one player in a certain game will checkmate his opponent in a number of moves.  He may go crazy, or kick over the board in rage, or in a spirit of compassion make all his moves the wrong ones.  All predictions are like that.  They presuppose that the rules will be kept to, but suppose they are not?"
-Gilbert Keith Chesterton, as excerpted from here

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

The Beatles......................................I Should Have Known Better

Leadership...............................

thanks Todd

Sometimes it just works out that way........

"........my enemy's enemy is my enemy."
-Thomas L. Friedman, as excerpted from here

It's Quiz Time again...........................

You have twenty seconds to identify the number of the parking space the car is parked in.  Go.

thanks craig

Hint:  This is not a math problem

The second REALLY big mistake............

......................that George W. Bush made can be found here.

The Beach Boys share the studio..............

...........with Willie Nelson,  Lorrie Morgan, and Tammy Wynette

This news just in from the "What Doesn't Kill Us Makes Us Stronger Department"............

.....................Patent Medicine recipes of yore.

Can't find a suitable elixir at your favorite store?   The History Blog provides the necessary recipes.  Notice the significantly high proportion of "grain alcohol."  Good luck.

Jumped..................................

     I was greatly helped in my quest by two turns of mind.  First, I had long looked for insight by inversion in the intense manner counseled by the great algebraist, Jacobi:  "Invert, always invert."   I sought good judgment mostly by collecting instances of bad judgment, then pondering ways to avoid such outcomes.  Second, I became so avid a collector of instances of bad judgment that I paid no attention to boundaries between professional territories.  After all, why should I search for some tiny, unimportant, hard-to-find new stupidity in my own field when some large, important, easy-to-find stupidity was just over the fence in the other fellow's professional territory?  Besides, I could already see that real-world problems didn't neatly lie within territorial boundaries.  They jumped right across.
-Charles T. Munger, as excerpted from The Psychology of Human Misjudgment

Stuff you always wanted to know............

Why do Americans call the beautiful game "soccer" instead of "football"?  Read this article and you will know more about the subject, and get a short history lesson as part of the bargain.

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

The Marvelettes..........................Too Many Fish In The Sea

On positive signs..........................

 
    Joel Kotkin, a writer/thinker who has been down on California lately, has taken a second look.  For all the problems, he finds some positive signs.  I liked this one in particular:

"But equally important has been the entrepreneurial growth among Latinos, who became the state’s largest ethnic group in 2014, according to demographers, and could be close to 50 percent of the population by 2050. Indeed, a recent study of Latino business found that Hispanic entrepreneurs have more than tripled since 1990, from 577,000 to more than 2 million. Not only did this growth outpace that of the overall population increase among Hispanics, but at a rate of increase far above the national average."

Kotkin's full post is here.  His conclusion is here:

"...we need to recognize that you cannot support an ever-expanding welfare state or do much of anything about climate change simply by chasing people and individuals elsewhere. We need to start developing policies that exploit our advantages and not rest on our glorious past. We need to see, as Charlie would say, that decline is not inevitable, but only a choice that too many in the state seem determined to embrace."
     

Wisdom...............................

"... but when it comes to warning systems, I suggest paying attention to the primal."
-Michael Wade

Another history lesson...................

Note the album cover in his hands.  It is #8 on this list.

Cartoon by

"it was the weight of too much imagination ... "

Jeff goes on an archaeological dig.........at home, and finds a blessing instead of a disaster.

Haunting.............................

R. Carlos Nakai.........................................Desert Song




Thanks Kurt

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

The not-so-simple Village Undertaker:  On the spirit of Father's Day.  “All the goodies in life go to the lover”, (meaning that the joy is in the giving, not only the receiving).

Nicholas Bate on Life in the Gaps:  Trade-offs are hard, very hard because they are rarely perfectly resolved.

From Eclecticity Light:  Those are not my friends.

"Busy is a decision" at the Brain Pickings blog:  The Theology of Rest.

From the Journal of a Nobody:   Living in a four room house.

The house band at Sippican Cottage.........................

Unorganized Hancock............................One Note Samba




Back story here.   Antonio Carlos Jobim's version here:



Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd's version here.

Ella Fitzgerald's contribution is here.

Dizzy Gillispie gives it a try here.

Schooling.......................................

"There are certain basic needs of every individual who has to cope as effectively as possible with the future.  An individual needs to be a free man, a convertible worker, a continuing student, a creative spirit, and a Believer in a Power greater than himself....His mind must be free - free externally from demands for the orthodox and denial of access to information, free externally from situations imposed by ignorance and inadequate thought process....His basic education should be of such broad applicability that he can enter a variety of occupations and be in a position to profit from additional training if the need arises....equipped to learn on his own and aware of the necessity of doing so.  As Margaret Mead said, 'In today's world, no one can complete an education.'"
-Peter Richmond, as excerpted from here

God love the old stuff..............................

"Management gurus may tell people to bow down before the great god of disruptive innovation.   But some companies are cheerfully doing the opposite - preserving or resuscitating traditional technologies and business models."

-As excerpted from this Schumpeter essay in The Economist

The "Truth In Advertising Act of 2014".............

I'm hoping H.R. 4341 dies from lack of interest.

"Please check your totalitarian instincts before forwarding terrifying legislation like this. I beg you for the sake of the Republic."

-as excerpted from this post at Euvoluntary Exchange

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

Frank Sinatra..................................Softly, As I Leave You

A daunting task............................

...................Cultural Offering offers the 100 greatest albums

The breadth of his music is amazing.  Plus, lots of Beatles.  One could quibble, but why.  Just enjoy!

Truth.........................................

"The truth of something is not to be found in the assemblage of facts."
-Peter Richmond, as excerpted from here

At random...........................................

One of the best things about the Intertunnel is that it allows Michael Wade shares his "Random Thoughts" with the world.  His latest installment is here.  Cherry picking here:

One of my goals is to be an ambitious 85-year-old ... I suspect that most of us draw greater pleasure from the moments when we said "No" and stuck to it than from the times when we gave a reluctant "Yes ... Productive and worthless activities like to mingle.

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

From Michael Hyatt:   A book review (Essentialism) so good, you probably don't need to buy the book.  One of his seven take-aways:   #7 The liberating possibility of no. Saying no to the many trivial requests, Essentialists are really saying yes to what matters most in their lives: their faith, their family, their health, their calling.

From Kids Prefer Cheese:   Monday's Child is full of links

From Pat Guanciale:  Taking refuge

From Newmark's Door:   The real villain is crony capitalism (which is a vastly different thing than capitalism)

From the View From the Ledge:  A properly placed book can be an effective weapon.

One of my favorites.............................

Kathy Troccolli and the Beach Boys..........I Can Hear Music

Patterns in the patternless.........................

     Patterns are the fool's gold of financial markets.  The power of chance suffices to create spurious patterns and pseudo-cycles that, for all the world, appear predictable and bankable.  But a financial market is especially prone to such statistical mirages.  My mathematical models can generate charts that - purely by the operation of random processes - appear to trend and cycle.  They would fool any professional "chartist."  Likewise, bubbles and crashes are inherent to markets.  They are the inevitable consequence of the human need to find patterns in the patternless.
-Benoit Mandelbrot and Richard Hudson,  The Misbehavior of Markets:  A Fractal View of Financial Turbulence  

Finding patterns in the patternless......Part 2

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

When Richard Newman died in Los Angeles in 1997, his body was taken to the county coroner's office for a routine autopsy.  Two years later, Newman's father learned that during the autopsy the coroner had removed his son's corneas without asking the family's permission.  At the time, this was the office's normal practice.  It was the product of both high and low motives.  There was a desperate shortage of corneas for transplant, and corneas must be transplanted very soon after death, often too soon to obtain the consent of the next of kin.  On the other hand, this same shortage made the corneas a valuable commodity, and the coroner's office earned $250 per pair by selling them to an eye bank.  Newman's father sued the coroner's office for damages.  The basis for the suit was that the coroner had violated the constitutional rights of Newman and his father by depriving them of property without due process of law.  But were Newman's corneas a kind of property?  And if they were, who was their owner once Richard Newman was dead?
-Stuart Banner, from the introduction to American Property:  A History of How, Why and What We Own

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

Jay and the Americans....................Come a Little Bit Closer

Why I wish Greg Sullivan would write more....

..................................................................stuff like this:

My experience has been that there are only two kinds of people in any room, and some face one way, and others face the other way, and that's that. If the people on the stage try to sit in the audience, they implode, and if the people in the audience try facing the other way on the stage, they explode. I call it the Theory of Natural Self-Selection. Well, I just did, anyway.

Careful what you wish for...............................

"Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell."
-Karl Popper

Quiet storm..................................

Sade..............................................The Sweetest Taboo

Jetboy keeps opening doors..............................

John Hiatt and Sonny Landreth................................Circle Back



Two kids up and at 'Em
One more left at home
She's a spark plug, a real fire cracker
And in four years she'll be gone

They just blow through your life
Like the wind on the plains
Like the dust that covers everything
'Til the rivers fill with rain

full lyrics here    Jetboy's music is here

Thank you, for everything............................

Happy Fathers Day!

Whole...................................

God, how I hate the names
of the body's chemicals and anatomy,
the frore and glum department
of its parts, each alone in the scattering
of the experts of Babel.
                                         The body
is a single creature, whole,
its life is one, never less than one, or more,
so is its world, and so
are the two bodies in their love for one another
one.  In ignorance of this
we talk ourselves to death.

-Wendell Berry
Sabbaths,  2005  XVI

So, tenure is "unconstitutional".........?

While we can argue the pluses and minuses of tenure - well, actually we should argue about such things, Megan McArdle suggests we should avoid the "temptation to airdrop in a judge to kill the thing off with some lightning-fast verbal jujitsu."  Full post here.  Additional excerpt here: 
Political partisans on both sides tend to treat "unconstitutional" as a synonym for "things I think oughtn't to be allowed." This is not correct, and moreover, it is profoundly destructive. 

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

The Beatles.......................................................She Loves You



Released in 1963, ended up #2 on Billboards 1964 Hot 100 Singles

Beauty......................................

Proportion................................

It always pleased the Master
to hear people recognize
their ignorance.

"Wisdom tends to grow in
proportion to one's awareness
of one's ignorance," he claimed.

When asked for an explanation,
he said, "When you come to see
you are not as wise today as you
thought you were yesterday, you 
are wiser today."

-Anthony de Mello

Say it isn't so..........................

I guess Circuit City and Best Buy already knew this, but I didn't.  "People are buying more electronics than anything else on Amazon ... ."   One version of the story here.

thanks craig