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

     Once upon a time in the mid-eighth century, an intrepid young man named Abd al-Rahman abandoned his home in Damascus, the Near Eastern heartland of Islam, and set out across the North African desert in search of a place of refuge.  Damascus had become a slaughterhouse for his family, the ruling Umayyads, who had first led the Muslims out of the desert of Arabia into the high cultures of the Fertile Crescent.  With the exception of Abd al-Rahman, the Umayyads were eradicated by the rival Abbasids, who seized control of the great empire called the "House of Islam."  This sole survivor was undoubtedly too young - he was in his late teens or early twenties - to be terrified at the odds against him, nor was his flight westward, towards what was the farthest frontier of the Islamic territories, as arbitrary or hopeless as it might have seemed.  The prince's mother was a Berber tribeswoman from the environs of today's Morocco, which Arab conquerors had reached some years before.  From this place, which the Muslims called the Maghrib, the "Far West," the descendants of the Prophet and his first followers had brought women such as Abd al-Rahman's mother back east as brides or concubines for the highest-ranking families, to expand and enrich the bloodlines.

-Maria Rosa Menocal,  The Ornament Of The World:  How Muslims, Jews, And Christians Created A Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain

Some sentences...................

.....................................................just have to be repeated:

"Narcissistic self-immolation is the ideal form of suicide for an industry distrusted by the public but thirsty for post-election content."

-David Uberti, as culled from 86 pieces of journalism wisdom published in the month since the election.

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Dispensing with.................................

........................................................foregone conclusions:

Ten Crucial Decisions That Re-Shaped America.

On the importance of....................

..................................................making time for play:

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This particular file.....................

..............................................................................is rather large:

 “things I know and choose to ignore”

-back story here

All I want for Christmas...............

Chuck Berry.................................................Run Run Rudolph

Devoted...................................

“If there is one thing I’ve learned in my years on this planet, it’s that the happiest and most fulfilled people I’ve known are those who devoted themselves to something bigger and more profound than merely their own self interest”


-attributed to John Glenn

Optimism.............................

“For myself I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use to be anything else.”  


-attributed to Winston Churchill

One way to solve..............................

................the problem of high priced Washington, D. C. real estate:  move federal offices elsewhere.   Senator Robert Byrd was the master at this, as a trip of any length through West Virginia will make evident.  Glenn Reynolds is pushing the idea.  Now Matt Yglesias is jumping on the bandwagon.  If shrinking is impossible (probably not Yglesias's first choice), dispersal might be a great option.   Real estate is mighty affordable here in Central Ohio.  I love the part where Yglesias encourages Donald Trump to "take a little time to think bigger."  As they say, read the whole thing.  A wee excerpt follows:

There must have been some magic.......

The Ronettes.................................................Frosty the Snowman

Mystery and paradoxes..................

“Abandon the urge to simplify everything, to look for formulas and easy answers, and to begin to think multidimensionally, to glory in the mystery and paradoxes of life, not to be dismayed by the multitude of causes and consequences that are inherent in each experience -- to appreciate the fact that life is complex.” 

-attributed to Scott Peck

Gone, but not forgotten...................

   wiki here

Paraprosdokian.......................

....................................look it up your ownself.

I’m great at multitasking; I can waste time, be unproductive, and procrastinate all at once.

More samples here.  Thanks Ray.

The glory of elections.........................

Having the White House alternate between two wealthy, familiar political families may reassure corporate lobbies, Wall Street banks, and billionaire donors, but it turns out that this modified version of hereditary monarchy has very little appeal among American voters.


The voters, we have learned, have a different conception of democracy than the donor class. Ordinary Americans think of elections not as chances to passively ratify the candidates already chosen by party elites, but as opportunities to choose the candidates they prefer. Where this populist idea of genuine voter power came from is not clear, but it now seems to be widespread.


-Michael Lind, as excerpted from here


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Seems like it..........................

   via

But remember the kids who got nothin'..........

The Kinks.........................................................Father Christmas

It's my superpower too....................

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Welcome to 2016...................................

"If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you do read it, you're misinformed"

-Denzel Washington, as quoted here


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On learning........................

     "After years of working with students at both ends of the achievement spectrum, I now have a distinctly different view of school reform.  The problem, I think, is not only the schools but also the students themselves.  Here's why:  learning is hard.  True, learning is fun, exhilarating, and gratifying - but it is also often daunting, exhausting, and sometimes discouraging.  By and large, students who no longer want to learn, who don't think they can learn, and who don't see any point in learning simply won't - no matter how wonderful the school or teacher...
     To help chronically low-performing but intelligent students, educators and parents must first recognize that character is at least as important as intellect."

     "Underachievement among American youth is often blamed on inadequate teachers, boring textbooks, and large class sizes.  We suggest other reasons for students falling short of their intellectual potential:  their failure to exercise self-discipline...We believe that many of America's children have trouble making choices that require them to sacrifice short-term pleasure for long-term gain, and that programs that build self-discipline may be the royal road to building academic achievement."

-Angela Lee Duckworth, as excerpted from Martin E. P. Seligman's Flourish:  A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being

No cause.......................

There is no "cause" of emotions except from within.  To see this fact results in empowerment, autonomy, and release from the illusion of victimhood.

     Inner peace automatically arises out of our willingness to give up certain positionalities, such as judging others and making them "wrong".  Willingness stems from a forgiving, understanding position.  Judgmentalism does not really solve anything but instead adds to the problem.  Making others wrong results in a world of lose-lose.

-David R. Hawkins, as extracted from Healing and Recovery

On paying attention....................

Scrutinize the Scorpion constellation
and see where a hook of stars
ends with a lonely star.

Go to the grey sea horizon
and ask for a message
and listen and wait.

See whether the conundrums
of a heavy land fog
either sing or talk.

Let only a small cry come
in behalf of a clean sunrise:
the sun performs so often.

Speak to the branches of spring
and the surprise of blossoms:
they too hope for a good year.

Search the first winter snowstorm
for a symphonic arrangement:
it is always there.

Take an alphabet of gold or mud and spell
as you wish any word:  kiss me, kill me,
love, hate, ice, thought, victory.

Read the numbers on your wrist watch
and ask:  is being born, being loved, 
being dead, nothing but numbers?

-Carl Sandburg, Almanac

Scorpius...............................

From the wondrous APOD:

Explanation: If Scorpius looked this good to the unaided eye, humans might remember it better. Scorpius more typically appears as a few bright stars in a well known but rarely pointed out zodiacal constellation. To get a spectacular image like this, though, one needs a good camera, color filters, and a digital image processor. To bring out detail, the above image not only involved long duration exposures taken in several colors, but one exposure in a very specific red color emitted by hydrogen that brings out great detail. The resulting image shows many breathtaking features. Vertically across the image left is part of the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. Visible there are vast clouds of bright stars and long filaments of dark dust. Jutting out diagonally from theMilky Way in the image center are dark dust bands known as the Dark River. This river connects to several bright stars on the right that are part ofScorpius' head and claws, and include the bright star Antares. Above and right of Antares is an even brighter planet Jupiter. Numerous red emission nebulas and blue reflection nebulas are visible throughout the image. Scorpius appears prominently in southern skies after sunset during the middle of the year.

The secret to living well................

Everybody's singin'.........................

Tom Petty & pals...................................Christmas All Over Again

Is that all it takes.........................?

"When the cravingness, desiringness, obsession, compulsion, and addiction to the wantingness and cravingness of this physicality dissipate, we are at peace."

-David R. Hawkins,  Healing and Recovery

I'm sure that this act...........

...............................will get old and tired soon, but for now, it's kind of fun to watch.  Piers Morgan has the story:

Since the election, Trump has continued to Tweet away. He's called for Hamilton to be boycotted and flag-burning to be criminalised, and every time the same 10-part pattern unfolds and the whole thing starts again.

Each episode followed a familiar 10-part pattern:

1) Trump posts an inflammatory, highly opinionated tweet.

2) The media goes nuts.

3) Trump’s tweet then dominates the news all day.

4) The media demands he stops tweeting because it’s ‘un-presidential.’

5) Trump ignores them.

6) Conventional politicians demand he stops tweeting because it’s un-presidential.’

7) Trump ignores them too.

8) Trump wakes up next morning to every paper and cable news show talking about his tweet.

9) Trump chuckles to himself.

10) Trump tweets again.

Repeat.

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Not sure that this is the MSM's conclusion....

...........................but it makes sense to me:

I am exhausted with folks talking about some fundamental political shift to a white male resurgence, or whatever.  There was no shift.  Trump got about the same number of votes as Romney and McCain.  He won no more white male votes than those guys and if anything performed better than them in traditional Democratic categories like single women and blacks.  The reason Trump won is because Clinton had 10 million fewer votes than Obama had in his first win.  Traditional Democratic supporters were unenthusiastic about Clinton and stayed home.

-Warren Meyer, as extracted from here

The Adams Law of Slow Moving Disasters...

When we see a disaster coming – as we do with climate science – we have an unbroken track record of avoiding doom.

-Scott Adams, as culled from here

I'm only a blogger, and mostly a cut and paste one at that, so take what I say with a grain of salt - but no one has had a better 2016 than Scott Adams.

Adams recently opened up the comments section of his blog.  Loved this one:

Climate models, by and large, say more about the modelers than they do the climate

On correspondence........................

We begin in infancy by establishing correspondence of eyes with eyes.  We recognized that we could do the same things with them.  We went on to the visible motion of the lips - smile answered smile....So far so good.  From here all the wonder grows.  It has been said that recognition in art is all.  Better say correspondence is all.  Mind must convince mind that it can uncurl and wave the same filaments of subtlety, soul convince soul that it can give off the same shimmers of eternity.  At no point would anyone but a brute fool want to break off this correspondence.  It is all there to satisfaction; and it is salutary to live in the fear of its being broken off.

-Robert Frost, from his introduction to E. A. Robinson's 1935 poem, King Jasper

thanks David

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

     Sitting in his lab, Marion D. Ford entered a numerical password and watched a hooded man execute three hostages with a ruby-handled knife.  Different victims, different locations, and months apart, but always the same knife, never pausing to sharpen the blade.

-Randy Wayne White,  Deep Blue

Beware............................

     Therefore, in a system of multiple models across multiple disciplines, I should add as an extra rule that you should be very wary of heavy ideology.

     You can have heavy ideology in favor of accuracy, diligence, and objectivity.   But a heavy ideology that makes you absolutely sure that the minimum wage should be raised or that it shouldn't - and it's kind of a holy construct where you know you're right - makes you a bit nuts.

     This is a very complicated system.  And life is one damn relatedness after another.  It's all right to think that, on balance, you suspect that civilization is better if it lowers the minimum wage or raises it.  Either position is OK.  But being totally sure on issues like that with a strong, violent ideology, in my opinion, turns you into a lousy thinker.  So beware of ideology-based mental misfunctions.

-Charles T. Munger,  Poor Charlie's Almanack:  The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger

'Tis the season.........................

George Thorogood & Friends....................Rock And Roll Christmas

Never alone...........................

Jim Brickman and Lady Antebellum...............Never Alone

May the angels protect you
Trouble neglect you
And heaven accept you when it's time to go home
May you always have plenty
The glass never empty
Know in your belly
You're never alone

May your tears come from laughing
You find friends worth having
As every year passes
They mean more than gold
May you win and stay humble
Smile more than grumble
And know when you stumble
You're never alone

lyrics via           thanks

The science is settled...................

On this date......................

...........in 1933, Prohibition came to an end.  Let's drink to that!

On radical generosity...............

...........................................................This is a very cool story.

“Basically,” he says. “I throw pebbles into still pools.”

via

One thing at a time..................

I am under the covers
waiting for the heat to come up
with a gurgle and hiss
and the banging of the water hammer
that will frighten the cold out of the room.

And I am listening to a blues singer
named Precious Bryant
singing a song called "Fool Me Good."

If you don't love me, baby, she sings,
would you please try to fool me good?

I am also stroking the dog's head
and writing down these words,
which means that I am calmly flying
in the face of the Buddhist advice
to do only one thing at a time.

Just pour the tea,
just look into the eye of the flower,
just sing the song -
one thing at a time

and you will achieve serenity
which is what I would love to do
as the fan-blades of the morning begin to turn.

If you don't love me, baby,
she sings
as a day-moon fades in the window
and the hands circle the clock,
would you please try to fool me good?

Yes, Precious, I reply.
I will fool you as good as I can,
but first I have to learn to listen to you
with my whole heart,
and not until you have finished

will I put on my slippers,
squeeze out some toothpaste,
and make a big foamy face in the mirror,

freshly dedicated to doing one thing at a time -
one note at a time for you, darling,
one tooth at a time for me.

-Billy Collins,  Fool Me Good, from Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems

When calmer heads prevail..............

“If you thought that science was certain - well, that is just an error on your part.” 

-Richard Feynman

On that faulty progressivist self-image.........

"The assumption that humans of the Stone or Bronze Age would have had only the most primitive knowledge of nature may be flattering to our progressivist self-image. But it has little plausibility since Stone Age humans were already fully developed members of the species Homo sapiens, and it is incompatible with recent research. The environmental and societal problems that the early Homo sapiens had to face were incomparably greater than the challenges facing our contemporary scientists. These problems has to be solved with the most primitive means, often without any division of labor or specialized skills, and the solutions arrived at indicate a level of intelligence and sensitivity that is clearly not inferior to ours." 

-Paul Feyerabend, Philosophy Of Nature

plagiarized from here

A favorite.............................

Mannheim Steamroller..................................................Pat a Pan

Consistency....(and compounding).......

"The prosaic reality: For the vast majority of Americans, the only sure road to riches is socking away one dollar after another, month after month, year after year. Nobody’ll pay you $25,000 to deliver that seminar. But it’s the truth."

-Jonathan Clements

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The year was 1952..............................

     His first challenge was to give voters a reason to invest in a new senator.  After years of war, American had settled into a self-satisfied prosperity - one in which three of five families owned a car, two of three had a telephone, and the average household earned $3,900 a year, which wasn't bad since the average new home cost $9,050, gas was twenty cents a gallon, and a postage stamp could be had for three cents.  The men and women of Massachusetts were equally content with themselves and their existing senator.  On the main issues of the day, there was little to distinguish the moderate Kennedy from the moderate Lodge.  Both wanted the United States engaged with the world and Russia contained.  Both favored unions but thought they needed reforming.  Both liked budgets that balanced and smaller government.  Each had earned a Harvard degree, bore the chiseled countenance of a statesman, and came wrapped in a compelling story of wartime gallantry.  What set his brother apart, Bobby realized earlier than anyone else, was Jack's ineffable magnetism - his quiet persuasiveness, idealism without ideology, and the sense that he represented something better without his having to say specifically what.  Those were precisely the qualities that had hypnotized young Bobby when the brothers summered together on Cape Cod, and that Bobby wouldn't realize until years later that he possessed, too.  The press called it Kennedy magic.  By comparison, Lodge seemed too high-society and too yesterday; he was, after all, fifteen years older and had roots that ran back to the Puritans.  Kennedy hadn't just gotten off the boat - his family had been here for two generations.  But more recent arrivals like him - Irish and Italian, Jews and Slavs - far outnumbered Mayflower Yankees in the Bay State.

-Larry Tye,  Bobby Kennedy:  The Making of a Liberal Icon, as excerpted from the passage describing Bobby's running his brother's 1952 Senatorial campaign against Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.

The second Sunday in Advent............

Prepare Ye (The Way of The Lord) ..............................Godspell



Matthew 3: 1-6

Verse................................

     Learn to yield and be soft
If you want to survive.

     Learn to bow
And you will stand in your full height.

     Learn to empty yourself and be filled by the Tao
The way a valley empties itself into a river.

     Use up all you are
And then you can be made new.

     Learn to have nothing
And you will have everything.

Sages always act like this,
and are Children of the Tao.

Never trying to impress, their being shines forth
Never saying "this is it", people see what the truth is

Never boasting, they leave the space they can be valued in
And never claiming to be who they are, people can see them

And since they never argue, no one argues with them either

So the ancient ones say "Bend and you will rule".

Is this a lie?  You'll find it true.

Be true to yourself, and all will go well with you.

-Tao Te Ching, Verse 22