On consistency and rationality..........

But much of what is described as ‘irrationality’ is simply a manifestation of the coping strategies humans have developed over millennia to deal with complex situations of which they can have only limited understanding or knowledge.

-John Kay writes a bit on the topic

Am I the only one......................

.................................who thinks that Scott Adams is have an extraordinary year?  It continues here.

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

Jeff Healey..............................................................Angel Eyes

Scrapping by on $500,000 per year....

This is one reason why I don’t trust a lot of these so-called experts, because they are so incredibly stupid in very basic life matters.

-full, highly judgmental, post here

via

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

Jay & The Techniques.................Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie

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

Ray Charles........................................................Hit The Road Jack

Was it ever a "profession"..............?

"... they argue that fact-checking is a dying profession,..."


-as liberated from this wondrously whimsical site

On doing it all.............................

..........................................and speaking the truth at the same time.

On bean counting..................

..............................................Seth Godin asks a good question:

In a competitive environment, the key question is: What would happen if we did a little better? 

full post here

A reminder...................

“When you judge others, you do not define them, you define yourself.” 
-Earl Nightingale

Not sure what he has against bellhops....

Fred Reed takes a hard look at the wide world of columnists:

In Washington, where the rice paddies of self-importance are nourished with the night soil of mendacity, columnists are viewed with the seriousness properly reserved for lung cancer. This is ridiculous. Columnists, the rodent class of journalism, have the dignity of carney barkers and merit the social standing of bellhops. It’s a living. For most of us, barely.

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

Stevie Wonder...........................................I Was Made To Love Her

but not................................

“The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.” 

-Jim Rohn

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

Jan Berry.....................................................The Universal Coward

Not so sure........................

“Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore” 

-Leonard Cohen

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

Royal Guardsmen..................................Snoopy vs The Red Baron

To the glory................................

.....................................................................that is INK.

Rivalry.....................................

Mankind does nothing save through initiatives of inventors, great or small, and the imitation by the rest of us.  Individuals show the way, set the patterns.  The rivalry of the patterns is the history of the world.


-William James (1908)

On creeptitude................................

......................................Our man in Maine has a few thoughts:


Twitter is really, really creepy. Uber was creepy long before you found out exactly how it was creepy. The only human thing about anyone who worked there was their hamhanded attempts to grope the help, now that I think of it. When that's the top of your interpersonal heap, Dante Alighieri should write your yearly reports. Facebook, and the avaricious little twerp that runs it, is the creepiest thing I've ever encountered on this world, and I've renovated apartments that had a dead body in them. Google is creepy turtles, all the way down.

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

Bobby Hatfield..............................................................My Prayer

Balance................................

......................................................................is the key to power.

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

Engelbert Humperdinck.................................................Release Me

The future's so bright.......................

“Headlines, in a way, are what mislead you, because bad news is a headline, and gradual improvement is not.”

-attributed to Bill Gates

source and larger image are here

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

Brownie McGhee.................................. Livin' With The Blues

Holy Mackeral..............................

Yoga pants are destroying the oceans?  Beware the microfiber.

via

The never-ending beauty and wonder.....

........that is the Astronomy Picture of the Day site - do visit often

An important question....................

 When does the wisdom of crowds become the madness of crowds? He says that a necessary condition for wisdom of crowds is diversity of opinion. The crowd is most at risk of going wrong when there is what he calls a “diversity breakdown,” and everyone is thinking alike.

-Arnold Kling, as cut and pasted from here

Parenting matters...............

.............................Six lessons taught by his depression-era parents.

"They didn't tell me their stories to nag me or to exalt themselves. They just wanted to teach me valuable lessons that books could never tell."

thanks

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

The Supremes.............................................................The Happening

On the "best and the brightest".......

"By its fruit the tree is known, and the tree of expertise hasn’t been doing well lately."

-Glenn Reynolds, as extracted from "The Suicide of Expertise."

Scott's feeling a bit cranky today.......

Today I declare the phone companies to be enemies of the state. They are ruining everything you love, and everything you care about. And they are doing it right in front of you. 

-Scott Adams, as extracted from here

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

Sonny Terry................Hooray, Hooray, These Women Is Killin' Me

Giving "free trade" a bad name.......

Monitoring TTIP as a member of the European Parliament, I saw plainly enough what was going on: Big multinationals in Europe were getting together with big multinationals in the U.S. and lobbying for more regulation. By combining the most restrictive rules in the EU and the U.S., they aimed to raise barriers to entry and to give themselves an effective monopoly.

-Daniel Hannan, as culled from here

Spring.............................

Handmaiden..........................

     And thus I doubt.  Doubt to me is the handmaiden to faith, its cop, the one that keeps faith straight.  To doubt is an indication of freedom and a guard against fanaticism.  But it is also so easy to doubt, so easy to be cynical, that the job appears to be to enlarge the part that believes, but only to enlarge it by taking a path made painful by doubt and with the integrity born of the doubt rather than the inflation born of sentiment, heightened emotion, or the sometimes false camaraderie of a faith community.

-Nora Gallagher,  Things Seen And Unseen:  A Year Lived in Faith

On becoming epic..........................

............................................................through personal connection.

Making the case.................

via

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

Sam & Dave..............................................................Soul Man

Unfortunately..............................

“Man is not an omipotent master of the universe, allowed to do with impunity whatever he thinks, or whatever suits him at the moment. The world we live in is made of an immensely complex and mysterious tissue about which we know very little and which we must treat with utmost humility.”

-Vaclav Havel 

On dogmaticism......................

“Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty.” 

-attributed to Stephen Jay Gould

some dogmatic cartoons may be found here

Complicated contraptions...........

“And what we students of history always learn is that the human being is a very complicated contraption and that they are not good or bad but are good and bad and the good comes out of the bad and the bad out of the good, and the devil take the hindmost.” 

-Robert Penn Warren

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

Chuck Berry.........................................No Particular Place To Go



You can find about 10,000 tributes to Chuck Berry in the Intertunnel today.  None better than this one.

The Oak Ridge Boys.................

My Sweetie has fond memories of the night her father took her to see the Oak Ridge Boys at the Ohio State Fair, circa 1982.  The wondrous Midland Theatre hosted the Oak Ridge Boys last night.  We went.  Not sure which is more amazing:  the quality and professionalism of their show, or the fact that is is the same four Oak Ridge Boys that she saw perform some thirty-five years ago.  It was fabulous.  If you get a chance to see them, do.

Asking the right questions helps..........

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

The Tremeloes..............................................Here Comes My Baby