Thursday, March 30, 2017



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


George McCorkle.......................................................Peace Stories




Came forth..........................




"E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle."
Then we came forth, to see again the stars.

-Dante Alighieri, the last line from The Inferno

image via

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


Jefferson Airplane..........................................She Has Funny Cars

Feeling failureish.........................?


......................................................................................Nope.

Mark Perry offers another one of his current event quizzes.  In the spirit of full confession, your faithful blogger only got 4 out of ten correct.  Since they were multiple-choice questions with four choices each,  and since most of the questions had a vaguely trivial feel to them, and since I guessed at all ten questions;  getting four correct actually doesn't feel all that bad.  I won't be studying any harder for the next quiz.

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

The art of the steak.....................


.......................................Full expose here.  Wee tidbit here:

 Season the steak aggressively with sea salt. Throw a handful over the tray of meat, and what sticks should be the correct amount. Avoid table salt, which contains anti-caking agents that are unsuited to steak.

Ofer...........................


Cultural Offering is almost halfway through posting 40 albums one should own.  So far, I am ashamed to admit, I possess none of them.  I do have other albums from six of his so-far-featured artists, so hopefully I can get some partial credit.  What I am really hoping is that, one of these wondrous spring days, Kurt walks up the lane with an extra copy of one of his famous compilation CDs in his hand.  Bloggers are never above begging.

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


Scott McKenzie.......................................Like An Old Time Movie

Belief...................................


“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.” 

-Robert FulghumAll I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts On Common Things

Depend.................................




“You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” 

-Mark TwainA Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court


via

I suspect it was intended as a compliment.....


“The best fiction is far more true than any journalism.” 

-attributed to William Faulkner

Fifty years ago


Jefferson Airplane................................................How Do You Feel

In fairness, this has only...................


........................recently become a problem.   Many of us never thought we'd live this long, much less that long:

The short answer is the average person has absolutely no clue on what it takes to have a successful 30-year retirement without running out of money.

-Tony Isola, as loaned from here

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

When a "slight edge".....................


...........................................becomes "accumulative advantage," and the Pareto Principle becomes the 1% Rule.   James Clear is on the case:

Mastery is not an accident. The people and organizations that spend their days accumulating small wins and compounding tiny improvements are the ones that experience massive success. Time and time again, the highest achievers are the ones who have the best habits.

Probably not a prescription for happiness.....














    via

Ah, childhood............................


...................................Danny Gregory offers his Top 12 smells.

I might add a few more:  Neatsfoot oil on my baseball mitt;  the musty canvass of the old army tent we would sleep in on a hot summer's eve;  the rotting leaves and grass in the compost pile my mom made me turn over;  the chlorine at the swimming pool we'd visit.

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


Bo Diddley (Ellas McDaniel)..............................does Ed Sullivan

Amongst...............................


The perfect mystic is not a ecstatic devotee lost in contemplation of Oneness, nor a saintly recluse shunning all commerce with mankind, but "the true saint" goes in and out amongst the people and eats and sleeps with them and buys and sells in the market and marries and takes part in social intercourse, and never forgets God for a single moment.

-attributed to Abu Sa'id Abul Khayr

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

...............who thinks that some Wikipedia entries need better editors?

AbÅ«-Sa'Ä«d insists that his teachings and Sufism as a whole are the true meaning of Islam. He based his teachings on the mystic interpretation of verses from Qur’an and some hadiths and was considered a learned Islamic scholar. Nevertheless, his interpretations of Qur’an were considered an ocean of knowledge in exegesis of the Quran.
To this day this has been one of the causes of criticizing him from a religious point of view. In general he was bold in expressing his mystic opinions as can be seen from his praise of Hallaj who was considered a heretic by most of the Pseudo-Sufis and most ignoramus laymen of the time due to irrelevant conclusions without a depth of support of the great majority of the Islamic scholars of the time and present modern era, although the common opinion about Hallaj changed in time.

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


Jefferson Airplane...............................................My Best Friend

It's been longer than that........


"The last year or so has been really hard on the notion that is a linear progression from darkness to enlightenment"
-Matt Levine, as taken out of context here

Monday, March 27, 2017

When black holes..............................



.........................................merge!  What's not to love about science?


via

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


Doc Watson............................................House Of The Rising Sun




Well, okay.........................



An assault on (intellectual) diversity........


The burning desire to paint a scarlet letter on the breast of those who fail to observe the officially sanctioned view of things has taken possession of many ostensibly liberal people in academe, which has tended more and more in recent years to resemble what the Yale English professor David Bromwich calls "a church held together by the hunt for heresies."

-Robert Boyers, as culled from this essay

via

The simple, but not easy.....................


............................necessity of saving more than a few dollars:

"If we’re rational, we would care more about the future when we’re younger, because there’s potentially so many years ahead of us. But ironically, it seems our concern for our future self grows as we get older."

-Jonathan Clements, as excerpted from here

A conundrum...........................


Put together these cultural traits and you end up ... with an economy that spends 1/6th of GDP on health care with nobody wanting to spend 1/6th of their income on it.

-Arnold Kling, full post is here

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


Jefferson Airplane..........................................................Today

Gumption...............................


........................................Our man in Maine offers a brief declamation on the subject.  While you are there, invest the 3:47 and watch the music video.

Sunday, March 26, 2017

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


Mary Travers...............................................Leaving On A Jetplane

Perception....................


6.  You respond to what you perceive, and as you perceive so shall you behave.  The Golden Rule asks you to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  This means that the perception of both must be accurate.  The Golden Rule is the rule for appropriate behavior.  You cannot behave appropriately unless you perceive correctly.  Since you and your neighbor are equal members of one family, as you perceive both so you will do to both.  You should look out from the perception of your own holiness to the holiness of others.

-The Course in Miracles, I:III:6

I'm sure there is some....................


..................evolutionary reason why this Northern Flicker spent a good bit of the morning pecking at the air conditioner cover.  Pecking occurs about the 25 second mark; easier to hear than see.


Careful..................................


9.  Verbal delusion arises when words do not conform to reality.

-from The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali:  How to Know God

Supple.................


      A man is born gentle and weak;
      at his death he is hard and stiff.
All things, including the grass and trees,
         are soft and pliable in life;
           dry and brittle in death.

 Stiffness is thus a companion of death;
        flexibility a companion of life.
          An army that cannot yield
                 will be defeated.
           A tree that cannot bend
             will crack in the wind.

       The hard and stiff will be broken
         the soft and supple will prevail.

-Tao Te Ching, Verse 76
as channeled by Wayne Dyer

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


Bobby Vee & The Strangers..........Come Back When You Grow Up