On conventions...........................

 “What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money … but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth … In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are ‘coins’ for real things.”

-Alan Watts

to flit.......................................

“He well knew his mind's natural tendency to be endlessly on a thousand subjects at once, to flit from this to that and to the next thing to no particular purpose--indeed, he called it his "butterfly mind.” 

-Eric Metaxas

image via

If you like strategery.....................

.................................this is a pretty good reading list.

Did you know..................

............that I once read on the Internet (so you know it must be true) that we should always accept the responsiblity for what happens to our ownselves?  Makes sense if you stop and think about it.  If the happening is my responsibilty, I can do something about it.  Fix it, accept it, change how I think about it, change my behavior, change my attitude, or make whatever other change might be necessary.  If the "fault" is outside of me, then I am merely a "victim," helpless to make meaningful change in my life.   Current societal fashion notwithstanding, there is no long-term power, glory, happiness, success, peace, or enlightenment in being a victim and blaming others.  The choice is ours.  Just saying.

via

On logic...............................

 “Logic is dull.”

-Alfred Hitchcock

Well, if you insist................................

Not a bad practice...............................

"... I try to be humble and keep an open mind because what looks like evidence today may appear laughable in the future."


-as culled from the conclusion to this post

Spengler has a bone to pick................

"Hell hath no fury like a self-designated elite scorned."

-as extracted from here

On unfolding..........................

"Everything under heaven is a sacred vessel and cannot be controlled. Trying to control leads to ruin. Trying to grasp, we lose. Allow your life to unfold naturally. Know that it too is a vessel of perfection. Just as you breathe in and breathe out, there is a time for being ahead and a time for being behind; a time for being in motion and a time for being at rest; a time for being vigorous and a time for being exhausted; a time for being safe and a time for being in danger.”


-Lao Tzu, as channeled by Wayne Dyer


via

On the dangers of crying wolf.................................

"I realize that all of this is going to make me sound like a crazy person and put me completely at odds with every respectable thinker in the media, but luckily, being a crazy person at odds with every respectable thinker in the media has been a pretty good ticket to predictive accuracy lately, so whatever."


-Scott Alexander, as culled from this post


thanks

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

     In the morning they gave Reacher a medal, and in the afternoon they sent him back to school.  The medal was another Legion of Merit.  His second.  It was a handsome item, enameled in white, with a ribbon halfway between purple and red.  Army Regulation 600-8-22 authorized its award for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services to the United States in a key position of responsibility.  Which was a bar Reacher felt he had cleared, technically.  But he figured the real reason he was getting it was the same reason he had gotten it before.  It was a transaction.  A contractual token.  Take the bauble and keep your mouth shut about what we asked you to do for it.  Which Reacher would have anyway.  It was nothing to boast about.  The Balkans, some police work, a search for two local men with wartime secrets to keep, both soon identified, and located, and visited, and shot in the head.  All part of the peace process.  Interests were served, and the region calmed down a little.  Two weeks of his life.  Four rounds expended.  No big deal.

-LeeChild,  Night School

On so many levels................

"Gratitude and empathy are far better choices than selfishness and judgment."

-Tony Isola, as culled from this post about Good Luck U.

The daily challenge........................

thanks hugh

Andrew Munro explains...................

............................a "diacope."  And then plays one of my all-time favorite songs.  Of course, we were all a lot younger back then.

First world solutions..........................

..............................................................to first world problems:

• The biggest risk at a conference itself, however, is a lack of plugs for cell phone chargers. This event was held at The Union League Club, which was a gorgeous old building. But there were very few outlets so people were scouring the walls for places to plug in. Cell phone companies should be sponsoring conferences all across the country with charging stations. Luckily, one of the reps from State Street was handing out sponsored back-up cell phone batteries, which was genius.

-as excerpted from this Ben Carlson post

to tie them..........................

"I am a biography nut myself.  And I think when you're trying to teach the great concepts that work, it helps to tie them into the lives and personalities of the people who developed them.  I think you learn economics better if you make Adam Smith your friend.  That sounds funny, making friends among 'the eminent dead,' but if you go through life making friends with the eminent dead who had the right ideas, I think it will work better for you in life and work better in education.  It's way better than just giving the basic concepts."

-Charlie Munger

Elections have consequences...........................?

...................Issue 64 approved by a wide margin in California

Freddie............................

............................offers some advice to the media:

People don’t seem to understand this: you need to adapt and change and look outside of your tiny enclaves not out of some moral obligation, but because you are losing on every imaginable front. You don’t have to get in touch with the rest of the country because that’s the right thing to do. You have to get in touch with the rest of the country because they’re kicking your ass. The Republicans will control the House, the Senate, and the presidency, have the chance to appoint at least one and probably several Supreme Court justices, run 68 out of 99 state legislative houses, and hold 31 gubernatorial seats. That is domination on an unimaginable level. Every minute you spend signal-boosting people who say that it’s Republicans who have to get on board with liberal values is a minute you’re not doing anything to change that condition.

Speaking of...........................

.........................................favorite TV commercials, from 1966:

A to-do list.........................

One constant in a changing world....

"There might be an objective reality in our world. But our brains didn’t evolve to be able to see it. Our brains only evolved to do the job of keeping us alive so we could procreate. That means the reality you see – the movie in your head – can be totally different from mine, and almost certainly is. Yet we can both get by in this world."

-Scott Adams, who has had a very interesting year

Gamification............................

"Unsuccessful people make decisions based on current circumstances while successful people make decisions based on where they desire to be."

-Benjamin P. Hardy, as excerpted from this post, wherein he offers strategies to make personal growth fun.

via

America..............it seems we hardly know you.....

One little-known element of that gap is that the white working class (WWC) resents professionals but admires the rich. Class migrants (white-collar professionals born to blue-collar families) report that “professional people were generally suspect” and that managers are college kids “who don’t know shit about how to do anything but are full of ideas about how I have to do my job,” said Alfred Lubrano in Limbo. Barbara Ehrenreich recalled in 1990 that her blue-collar dad “could not say the word doctorwithout the virtual prefix quack. Lawyers were shysters…and professors were without exception phonies.” Annette Lareau found tremendous resentment against teachers, who were perceived as condescending and unhelpful.

-Joan C. Williams, as excerpted from this read-worthy essay, "What So Many People Don't Get About the U. S. Working Class"

Thanks Michael

Such a willingness........................

"Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment instead. It is such a willingness to live with bewilderment that characterizes the true wise man."

-Richard Rohr, channeling his inner Rumi

Open to..............................

“Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting.” 

-Jack Kornfield

Well, this might explain a lot.........

....................................Why shutting down debate might be a bad idea.

This is likely true.........................

"We face a blooming, buzzing confusion of interpretive frameworks for the election. Because it is only one event, we are not going to be able to sort it out."

-Arnold Kling, as excerpted from here

Only Joe Biden..............................

....................................................knows how to be this much fun.

As well as anybody.........................

..................................................football coaches understand hurt.

About advice taking................

For no one can have lived in this world without realising that, when fortune smiles at them, the majority of men, even if quite unversed in affairs, are so abounding in wisdom that any advice offered to them is regarded as an affront, whereas in adversity they know not where to turn, begging for advice from any quarter; and then there is no counsel so foolish, absurd or vain which they will not follow.

-Baruch Spinoza,  Theological-Political Treatise, Second Edition per Samuel Shirley