What I know.....................................

George Harrison..................................................What Is Life




#3 on this list

Comes about...........................................

"What you think about, talk about, and get off your ass and do something about comes about."
-Larry Winget

Focus..............................................

"I live in the space of thankfulness - and for that, I have been rewarded a million times over.  I started out giving thanks for small things, and the more thankful I became, the more my bounty increased.  That's because - for sure - what you focus on expands.  When you focus on the goodness in your life, you create more of it."
-Oprah Winfrey

On understanding..................................

From the conclusion to this Arnold Kling post:

"I think that economists should be very modest and humble in claiming to understand inflation."

Your faithful editor thinks we should all be very modest and humble in claiming to understand just about anything.  Just saying,

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

At the movies.............................................Cheyenne Autumn

Too loud.............................................?

Jarod and Leslie Anderson have published a new book, 100 Prompts for Science Fiction Writers.  Prompt # 16 goes like this:

"Psychically sensitive aliens show up and complain that Earth is being too loud.  The are obviously more technologically advanced than us and more than a little intimidating.
    What is the discussion on Earth?  Do we meet their demands and try to be more neighborly?  What major changes would have to happen in society?  Are Zen Buddhists recruited to help quiet noisy minds?  Do people fight back to retain their freedom of thought?  What are the consequences if Earth doesn't quiet down?

If you struggle to "think outside the box,"  you might take a peek at this dandy little book.  It will get you thinking.

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

"Thirty-five years have passed since a senior American official last visited Iran.  It has changed.  Our special report in this issue describes a country whose revolutionary fire has been extinguished."

"Iran is not a straightforward dictatorship.  The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has the last word.  But his role is to adjudicate between the claims of an elite made up of thousands of politicians, clerics, generals, academics and business people.  They from a confusing and ever shifting pattern of competing factions and coalitions.  Although this hardly amounts to a democracy, it is a political marketplace and, as Mr. Ahmadinejad discovered, politics that tack away from the consensus do not last.  That is why last year Iran elected a president, Hassan Rohani, who wants to open up to the world and who has reined in the hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.  Mr. Rohani belongs to the establishment, naturally but it says a lot about today's Iran that his cabinet contains more doctorates from American universities than Barack Obama's."

-as excerpted from this The Economist essay

At this moment.....................................

"He who has gotten rid of the disease of 'tomorrow' has a chance of achieving what he is here for."
-George Gurdjieff

and as you shine on me..............................

Cream.....................................................................I Feel Free




#22 on this list

Quite an accomplishment.............

Mark Perry makes the case for capitalism as the ultimate anti-poverty program.  Full post is here.  Chart here:

Overlaying a chart on the relative decline of the American "middle class"  might be interesting.  That is, if you think there might be a correlation between the decline of both world poverty and the American middle class.  Do you?  Just wondering.

Speaking of correlations.........................

Let's all remember now that causation and correlation have very little to do with each other.  For instance, check out Tyler Vigen's Spurious Correlations.  In the installment pictured above, the rate of U. S. spending on science, space, and technology between 1999 and 2009 is highly correlated with the number of suicides by hanging, strangulation, and suffocation over the same time period.  Makes perfect sense to me.

Say what?.......................................

via

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

The Beatles......................................................Honey Don't

About truth.....................................................

"There's more to the truth than just the facts."
-Anon

cartoon via

In defense.............................................

..............................................................of a worthy idea.

Invictus.......................................

Out of the night that covers me,

      Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

      For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

      I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

      My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

      Looms but the horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

      Finds and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

      How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

      I am the captain of my soul.

-William Ernest Henley

A measure of success................................

"You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what you're doing is work or play."
-Warren Beatty

cartoon via

Works every time...................................

via

She carries the key......................................

Sarah Vaughan..............................Someone To Watch Over Me



#15 on this list

Stand................................................

Donnie McClurkin.......................................................Stand




     During difficult times I often turn to a gospel song called "Stand."  In it, songwriter Donnie McClurkin sings, "What do you do when you've done all you can, and it seems like it's never enough?  What do you give when you've given your all, and it seems like you can't make it through?"  The answer lies in McClurkin's simple refrain:  "You just stand."
     That's where strength comes from - our ability to face resistance and walk through it.
-Oprah Winfrey

The Troggs.......................................

..................................................................get 'em here.

The one..................................................

I am not I.
                     I am this one
Walking beside me whom I do not see,
Whom at times I manage to visit,
And at other times I forget.
The one who remains silent when I talk,
The one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,
The one who takes a walk when I am indoors,
The one who will remain standing when I die.

-Juan Ramón Jiménez

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

    The story that Jonathan Swift told is that he came into the world on November 30, 1667, in the house of his uncle Godwin Swift, in a little Dublin alley known as Hoey's Court.  He was born there because his father had recently died at the age of twenty-seven, and his mother, Abigail, had moved in with her Swift relatives.  The baby was named Jonathan, after his father.  Abigail also had an eighteen-month-old daughter, Jane, and hardly any money.
-Leo Damrosch,  Jonathan Swift:  His Life and His World

This isn't a view you get every day..................

larger image and back story here

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

The Beach Boys and the American Invasion.....................

Out damn spot.....................................!

Too busy to blog......................................?

................not really, but here's a story on competitive busyness.  You can go ahead and win.  It's alright by me.

Of note.................................................

Not sure...............................................

.....................................................how I missed this one.

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

Cliff Richards on stage.....................................................

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

Dave Berry................................................The Crying Game

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

Lyndon Baines Johnson swamps Barry Goldwater:

Ordered..........................................

"The ordered spinning of the planets in space, the arrangements of solar systems in the universe, the design of the atom, the deep and inscrutable mystery of animation;  surely we are blind if we fail to recognize the working of a supreme intelligence, guiding, molding, directing with purpose."
-U. S. Andersen

image via apod

Me either...............................

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

The Beach Boys in concert...................................................