Rescued me...........................................

U2 and BB King.............................When Love Comes To Town

Political Science for Dummies..............

.......................and more than you wanted to know about cows.   Since I am trying to keep up with modern society, I'll tell you I was a tad bit offended by the Polish one.

“I could dance with you till the cows come home. Better still, I'll dance with the cows and you come home."
-Groucho Marx

the relay-race of life..................................

If parody is your thing, if a sense of the absurd gets you through the day, do visit Godfrey Elfwick's twitter page.  You've been warned.

Highlights.......................................

via

You can travel many a mile..........................

................and explore many nooks and crannies in the Intertunnel and not find a better collection of blogs than are found on my Everyday Reading list.   Just saying.

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

Beach Boys.................................................Girl Don't Tell Me

Well, yeah.....................................

via

No, not really......................................

via

Pray continue........................................

“Poirot," I said. "I have been thinking."
"An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it.” 
-Agatha Christie

Something about human nature..........................

"The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior "righteous indignation" — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats."
-Aldous Huxley, Chrome Yellow (published in 1921)

Kindled................................................

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” 

-Plutarch

Chill.....................................................

John Klemmer...............................................Barefoot Ballet

Can you dig it......................................

Gene Chandler...............................................Groovy Situation

Reasons why I like living in Newark and Licking County......................

Reason #47:  The anti-flooding totem pole.  You just can't be to careful.

My adopted hometown, Newark, Ohio, was seriously impacted by a great flood on a cold winter's day in 1959.   I wasn't here then, but they say that an enormous amount of rain fell on snow-covered and frozen ground.  The rivers and normal drainage outlets were unable to do much in the way of carrying the waters away.  Ergo, much of the town went under water.  We have not had a similar flood since.  Perhaps this is the reason:

The sign reads:
      TO PREVENT A RECURRENCE
OF THE GREAT FLOOD  JAN. 21, 1959
      DEDICATED JUNE 1, 1962
BY THE RISING RIVER ASSOCIATION
THIS PLAQUE POSITION DESIGNATES
←   HIGH WATER LEVEL

The local legend is that the "Rising River Association" hired a shaman from the Great Northwest to create a totem pole that would protect the area from another catastrophic flood.  (Perhaps they added the fence and barbed wire to keep evil spirits from tampering with the positive energy of the totem pole.)  So far I'd say they've gotten their monies worth.

I would concur.................................

"A mind at liberty to reflect on its own observations, if it produce nothing useful to the world, seldom fails of entertainment to itself."
-George Berkeley

via

From your pen to God's ear................

But, increasingly, it appears that global yields are telling us that the threat of deflation is receding, and receding more rapidly than many, myself included, would have expected.
-as excerpted from here

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

Ronnie Dove................................One Kiss For Old Times' Sake

It is a dilemma...............................

So as Obama's critics shout about the president putting politics, and legacy, ahead of security, the truth is that his ambivalence reflects the collective churning of the American gut. We think we've seen this movie before, and we didn't like the ending.  
-as excerpted from this Kristin Roberts essay on ISIS

Chill.........................................

The Dave Brubeck Quartet.........................Strange Meadowlark

Just get on board.......................................

The Chambers Brothers.................................People Get Ready

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

     It may well be true that successful entrepreneurs possess perseverance and leadership skills, of course.  What is less obvious - and much less boring - is what the speaker neglected to mention:  that those traits are likely to be the characteristics of extremely unsuccessful people, too.  "Think about it," Denrell observed afterwards, "Incurring large losses requires both persistence ... and the ability to persuade others to pour their money down the drain." ... It seems likely that the very successful and the very unsuccessful might actually have rather similar personalities.  The only indisputable difference between the two is the the very unsuccessful are much, much less frequently interviewed by management scholars who are studying the causes of success.
-Oliver Burkeman,  The Antidote:  Happiness For People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking

If you try..........................................................

Santana...................................................................Move On

Technically correct..................................

via

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

Bob Dylan..................................................Like A Rolling Stone

the awakening................................

For many students, being required to produce critical thought in front of a class is a new sensation, often a not very pleasant one ... To create what is, for most of us, that “new sensation,” you need a professor who provokes and a student who stops slumbering. It is the responsibility of colleges and universities to place students in environments that provide these opportunities. It is the responsibility of students to seize them. Genuine education is not a commodity, it is the awakening of a human being.

-Hunter Rawlings, as excerpted from this essay

via

Leaders damn the world and roar........................

Tim Buckley.................................No Man Can Find The War

Thank God.......................................

thanks Todd

Here's one for Jetboy and Skip....................

Taj Mahal................................................................Cruisin'

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

Blind..................................................

It is an illusion to believe that any solution is beneficial for all people and all times;  no human achievement cam be taken as the final word.  Jefferson's uncomfortable dictum "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" applies outside the fields of politics as well;  it means that we must constantly reevaluate what we do, lest habits and past wisdom blind us to new possibilities.
-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,  Flow:  The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Liking the alternative.............................

      Mr Obama stands accused, at home and abroad, of having no strategy to deal with the mess.  Jeb Bush, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, accuses the president of alienating America's friends and failing to inspire fear in its enemies.  Critics say Mr Obama is so keen on his "pivot" to a security policy focused on East Asia that he neglects the Middle East - or he is simply to gutless to act.
      The alternative is to see Mr Obama's position on the sidelines as a deliberate choice.  For a president elected to extricate America from its wars in the region it makes sense to commit American forces only in circumstances of great need and on a limited scale.  In general he will intervene only when convinced that to do so will not make things worse - which is to say, in the Middle East, rarely.

-As excerpted from this The Economist essay, A dangerous modesty

Well, why didn't you just say so............

Learned a new word today.  Probably will never use it.

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

Wayne Fontana & The Mindbenders....................Game of Love

Well, that's pretty cool........................

A whole bunch more interesting ideas here

Sad, but true........................................

On Lindsey Graham.................................

The really inspiring thing about Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who on June 1st announced his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, is "his message that the whole world is going down the tubes".  That was the slightly bleak endorsement offered by Stephen Young, a retired business-owner looking on when the senator launched his campaign in Central, the blink-and-you-miss-it country town where he grew up.
------------------------------------------------------ 
      Mr Graham's survival in South Carolina offers several lessons.  The first is that even deeply conservative places are not monolithic.  South Carolina peach-farmers, for instance, are both powerful and desperate for migrant labour, because their delicate fruit cannot be picked by machine (and locals dislike the work).  In recent years some evangelical Christian pastors have joined business leaders in publicly backing immigration reform, citing biblical injunctions to welcome strangers and preserve families.  Most voters in South Carolina had the idea of rewarding law-breakers.  But most also know that 11m people cannot be rounded up and deported without turning the country into a "concentration camp", says Dale Sutton, a Southern Baptist pastor who has spoken out for reform.  Thus they know that some sort of compromise is unavoidable.

-Two excerpts from this The Economist essay, "Why Lindsey Graham matters"

Chill..................................................

Lee Ritenour.....................................................This Is Love

Come with me..................................

Ryan Tennis & The Clubhouse Band...................Waking Dream

Using honesty to make sense of.............

What do you do when you don’t understand something, don’t have the right words to try to explain it? 
-Scott, sharing a piece of his story

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

found regularly at Radiating Blossom

Uh-oh......................................................

“The death of the spirit is the price of progress. Nietzsche revealed this mystery of the Western apocalypse when he announced that God was dead and that He had been murdered. This Gnostic murder is constantly committed by the men who sacrificed God to civilization. The more fervently all human energies are thrown into the great enterprise of salvation through world–immanent action, the farther the human beings who engage in this enterprise move away from the life of the spirit. And since the life the spirit is the source of order in man and society, the very success of a Gnostic civilization is the cause of its decline."

"A civilization can, indeed, advance and decline at the same time—but not forever. "

-Eric Voegelin,  as excerpted from here

Contradictions....................................

original copy here

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

Bobby Goldsboro............................................Voodoo Woman

Sometimes you just have to engage........

via

The will to lead.......................................

 “They’ll figure that if a general is going in, it can’t be that rough.”
-Teddy Roosevelt, Jr, securing the beachhead at Normandy

I've long been fascinated by the choices and actions of sons and daughters of famous/dominant fathers.  Do read about Teddy, Jr.   It is quite the story.

via

Wings to fly..........................................

The Allman Brothers Band........Ain't Wasting Time No More

Real risk..................................................

"Some people think self-employment is risky, but the real risk lies in deriving your security from an external source."
-Chris Guillebeau, as excerpted from here

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

"life doesn't stay fixed."
-happiness myths here

With choice comes.................................

With choice comes freedom, and therefore optimism about our possibilities for the future.  With choice also comes responsibility, which allows us to hold people accountable for their actions.
-Steven Pinker, as excerpted from here

Into............................................

      Without enjoyment like can be endured, and it can even be pleasant.  But it can only be so precariously, depending on luck and the cooperation of  the external environment.  To gain personal control over the quality of experience, however, one needs to learn how to build enjoyment into what happens day in, and day out.
-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, as excerpted from Flow:  The Psychology of Optimal Experience

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

Dobie Gray.......................................................The In Crowd

The sequence.....................................

Don't look nor wait for 'luck', 'a break', or a kind investing angel.  Work hard, very hard and you'll get really lucky.  Always happens.  But that's the sequence.
-Nicholas Bate, #27 on this list

Sequence.....................................Part 2

Just a reminder for many of us.......................

-full quote here, thanks David

Damned lucky.......................................

We do largely create our own feelings, and we do so by learning (from our parents and others) and by inventing (in our own heads) our own sane and foolish thoughts.
     Create?   Yes, we create.  We consciously and unconsciously choose to think, to feel, and to act in certain self-helping and self-harming ways.
     Not totally.  Not all together.  Not by a long shot!  For we have great help, if you want to call it that, from both our heredity and our environment.
     No, we are hardly born with specific thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.  Nor does our environment directly make us act or feel.  But our genes and our social upbringing give us strong tendencies to do (and enjoy) what we do.  And although we usually go along with (or indulge in) these tendencies, we don't exactly have to.  We definitely don't.
     Not that we have unlimited choice or free will.  Heck, no.  We can't, no matter how hard we try, flap our hands and fly.  We can't easily stop our various addictions to such substances as cigarettes, food, and alcohol, or to habits such as procrastination.  We have one hell of a time changing any of our fixed habits.  Alas, we do!
     But we can choose to change ourselves remarkably.  We are able to alter our strongest thoughts, feelings, and actions.  Why?  Because unlike dogs, monkeys, and cockroaches, we are human.  As human beings, we are born with (and can escalate) a trait that other creatures rarely possess:  the ability to think about our thinking.  We are not only natural philosophers, we can philosophize about our philosophy, reason about our reasoning.
     Which is damned lucky!

-Albert Ellis, as excerpted from here