Rarest............................

They say miracles are past, and we have our philosophical persons, to make modern and familiar, things supernatural and causeless.  Hence it is, that we make trifles out of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.  Why, 'tis the rarest argument of wonder that hath shot out in our latter times.

-Lafeu, as channeled by Wm. Shakespeare in Act Two Scene Three of All's Well That Ends Well

The rugged individual....................

“We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and—in spite of True Romance magazines—we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely—at least, not all the time—but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.”

-Hunter S. Thompson

photo via

So call me Steve..................

Public Service Announcement.......................

Fifty years ago..................at Woodstock

Mountain...............,,,,,,,,......Theme From An Imaginary Western

Yea, but this sounds really hard.........

The way to rob the narrative managers of their ability to manipulate our sense of normalcy is to create an image of a sane and healthy world for ourselves to hold onto at all times, and to make that image into our own personal sense of what normal is. By having a vivid picture of what a sane and healthy world would look like in your mind, the false normal that the propagandists are trying to sell you will have no purchase.

-as culled from here

And don't forget, as we've said here many times before, normalcy is merely the psychosis of the majority.

Who am I...............................

I am your constant companion. I am your greatest helper or your heaviest burden. I will push you onward or drag you down to failure. I am completely at your command. Half the things you do, you might just as well turn over to me, and I will be able to do them quickly and correctly.  I am easily managed; you must merely be firm with me.  Show me exactly how you want something done, and after a few lessons I will do it automatically.

I am the servant of all great men.  And, alas, of all failures as well.  Those who are great, I have made great.  Those who are failures, I have made failures.  I am not a machine, though I work with all the precision of a machine.  Plus, the intelligence of a man. You may run me for profit, or run me for ruin; it makes no difference to me. Take me, train me, be firm with me and I will put the world at your feet.  Be easy with me, and I will destroy you.
Who am I?  I am a habit!

-The intertunnel is conflicted on who said this.  I found it here.

Remedies................................

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
Which we ascribe to heaven.  The fated sky
Gives us free scope;  only doth backward pull
Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.

-Helena, as channeled by Wm. Shakespeare in Act One Scene One of All's Well That Ends Well

Interwoven.............................

“The misconception which has haunted philosophic literature throughout the centuries is the notion of 'independent existence.' There is no such mode of existence; every entity is to be understood in terms of the way it is interwoven with the rest of the universe.” 


-Alfred North Whitehead

thanks David

Fifty years ago.....................at Woodstock

Paul Butterfield Blues Band....................................Drifting Blues

More fun............................

..................................................with the language.

On worry..................

Most of us are consumed by worry. It may be acute anxiety because of an immediate crisis, or it may be caused by chronic anxiety due to a lingering worry that rears its head only occasionally. Either way, worry too easily consumes us. We take vacations to try to get away from it all, but find ourselves needing a vacation from our vacation. We tell ourselves if we had enough money all our worries would disappear. Watch the news just one evening and you’ll find that being rich and famous aren’t solutions to worry.

-culled from this A Potter's View post

Thanks Ray

Off track..............................

“The problem with long-term investing is the short term. Nothing destroys a good long-term plan like extreme short-term volatility. That throws people off track, and they often do things that are emotional rather than rational.” 

-Richard Ferri

Philosophy acts as the glue.............

It's not always easy to define yourself as an investor.  There are so many labels out there that it can be hard to keep up—value investor, short-term trader, index investor, active investor, diversified asset allocator, buy, hold, and rebalance, trend follower, tactical, quantitative/systematic, technical analysis, risk parity, and the list could go on.   There's no right or wrong answer for every single individual.  What matters is what works for you.
     There's never going to be a one-size-fits-all investment philosophy for every person.  We all have different strengths and weaknesses.  You have to find a belief system that fits your own personality.  You can't force a square peg through a round hole just because you want to make something work for you.  This will only compound your issues. . . .
     Regardless of the strategy you implement, the true test of your beliefs will always come at those times when it's not working.  These are the times when you investment philosophy should help.
     Inventor and author Rick Ferri summed this up nicely when he said, "Philosophy is universal; strategy is personal; and discipline is required.  Philosophy acts as the glue that holds everything together.  Philosophy first, strategy second and discipline third.  These are the key to successful  investing."

-Ben Carlson, as extracted from A Wealth of Common Sense

I went out too far.........................

     One came, finally, against the head itself and he knew that it was over.  He swung the tiller across the shark's head where the jaws were caught in the heaviness of the fish's head which would not tear.  He swung it once and twice and again.  He heard the tiller break and he lunged at the shark with the splintered butt.  He felt it go in and knowing it was sharp he drove it in again.  The shark let go and rolled away.  That was the last shark of the pack that came.  There was nothing more for them to eat.
     The old man could hardly breathe now and he felt a strange taste in his mouth.  It was coppery and sweet and he was afraid of it for a moment.  But there was not much of it.
     He spat into the ocean and said, "Eat that, galanos.  And make a dream you've killed a man."
     He knew he was beaten now finally and without remedy and he went back to the stern and found the jagged end of the tiller would fit in the slot of the rudder well enough for him to steer.  He settled the sack around his shoulders and put the skiff on her course.   He sailed lightly now and he had no thoughts nor any feelings of any kind.  He was past everything now and he sailed the skiff to make his home port as well and as intelligently as he could.  In the night the sharks hit the carcass as someone might pick up crumbs from the table.  The old man paid no attention to them and did not pay any attention to anything except steering.  He only noticed how lightly and how well the skiff sailed now there was no great weight beside her.
      She's good, he thought.  She is sound and not harmed in any way except for the tiller.  That is easily replaced.
      He could feel he was inside the current now and he could see the lights of the beach colonies along the shore.  He knew where he was now and it was nothing to get home.
      The wind is our friend, anyway, he thought.  Then he added, sometimes.  And the great sea with our friends and enemies.  And bed, he thought.  Bed is my friend.  Just bed, he thought.  Bed will be a great thing.  It is easy to know when you are beaten, he thought.  I never knew how easy it was.  And what beat you, he thought.
     "Nothing," he said aloud.  "I went out too far."

-Ernest Hemingway,  The Old Man and the Sea

photo via

Respect thyself.......................

     "Always do the affairs of man change and improve because keen-minded men seek greater skill that they may better serve those upon whose patronage they depend.  Therefore, I urge all men to be in the front rank of progress and not to stand still, lest they be left behind. . . .
     "Thus the seventh and last remedy for a lean purse is to cultivate thy own powers, to study and become wiser, to become more skillful, to so act as to respect thyself to achieve thy carefully considered desires."

-Arkad, as channeled by George S. Clason in The Richest Man In Babylon

Fifty years ago..................At Woodstock

Ten Years After................................................I'm Going Home

Fifty years ago.......................At Woodstock

Sha-Na-Na....................................................The Duke of Earl

(audience facial expressions are priceless)

Jamie Varon says....................

courtesy of Swiss Miss

A deficit most serious.....................

Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that conducts public opinion polls and social science research and informs the public about issues, attitudes, and trends shaping the world. The organization recently published a new report called Trust and Distrust in America, which reveals that Americans think declining trust in the government and in each other is making it harder to solve important problems.

-culled from this Zero Hedge post

Shards.............................

The decisive endeavor of our moment – far surmounting, I believe, any specific policy call – is the re-establishment of trust in the institutions of representative democracy.  Only after the system has been reformed and the public has been reconciled to it can we again talk about truth as a self-evident proposition.  Until then, all we will have is perspectives – fragments of truth circling, randomly, the gravitational power of some opinion.  Appealing to tribal identity only compounds the fragmentation.  Fighting imaginary fascists and Nazis can be no more rewarding than hugging an imaginary friend.  What we need is a rhetoric aimed at the whole and persuasive to the whole – and for that to be possible, the public must be heard, and its perspectives, in their multiple and contradictory reality, must be taken seriously.

-Martin Gurri keeps banging his drum

Fifty years ago.............At Woodstock

Paul Butterfield Blues Band...Everything Gonna Be Alright

Unexpectedly..............................

"The problem for me was not ignorance; it was pre-conceived ideas."

-Hans Rosling, from this TED talk

Checking in with Eric Arthur Blair.............

"Perhaps a man really dies when his brain stops, when he loses the power to take in a new idea."

"It is not possible for any thinking person to live in such a society as our own without wanting to change it."

"So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot."

"Either we all live in a decent world, or nobody does."

". . . there is the fact that the intellectuals are more totalitarian in outlook than the common people."

"The relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion. The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them."

-all quotes lifted from here

About failure.......................

Failure hurts so much that we, as a society, have tried to minimize its impact.  Kids are told that it's okay to fail.  We read how great men and women failed time and again.  We're told that failure is a part of life and it's nothing to get upset about.  At the same time, we're told to learn from our mistakes.  How can we learn from our failures and mistakes if we're told that they're no big deal?
     You can't really have it both ways.  It is the pain that makes failure a step toward success.  By trying to hide your failure or minimize it, what you're really doing is protecting your own ego at the expense of improvement.  We don't get stronger by giving our muscles a little bit of a workout—nothing too painful, nice and steady.  We get stronger when we literally shred our muscle fibers, so that when they grow back, they grow back larger.  It's the trauma, the pain, that builds our bodies.  It's no different when we're going after our dreams.  Experiencing the pain of failure helps us grow.

-Akbar Gbajabiamila, Everyone Can Be A Ninja:  Find Your Inner Warrior And Achieve Your Dreams

Fifty years ago.................At Woodstock

Sly & The Family Stone........................Dance To The Music

Time is of the essence.................

17.  Live not as though there were a thousand years ahead of you.  Fate is at your elbow;  make yourself good while life and power are still yours.

-Marcus Aurelius,  Meditations, Book Four

Unchanged..............................

      Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.  Aristocracy ruins itself by limiting too narrowly the circle within which power is confined;  oligarchy ruins itself by the incautious scramble for immediate wealth.  In either case the end is revolution. . . .
     But even democracy ruins itself by excess—of democracy.  Its basic principle is the equal right of all to hold office and determine public policy.  This is at first glance a delightful arrangement; it becomes disastrous because the people are not properly equipped by education to select the best rulers and wisest courses. . . . Mob-rule is a rough sea for the ship of state to ride;  every wind of oratory stirs up the waters and deflects the course.  The upshot of such a democracy is tyranny or autocracy;  the crowd so loves flattery, it is so "hungry for honey," that at last the wiliest and most unscrupulous flatterer, calling himself the "protector of the people" rises to supreme power. . . .
     . . ."Like man, like state"; "governments vary as the characters of men vary; . . . states are made out of the human natures which are in them", the state is what it is because its citizens are what they are.  Therefore we need not expect to have better states until we have better men; till then all changes will leave every essential thing unchanged.

-Will Durant, once again quoting Plato in The Story of Philosophy

An indictment......................

. . .why is it that these Utopias never arrive upon the map?
     He answers, because of greed and luxury.  Men are not content with a simple life:  they are acquisitive, ambitious, competitive, and jealous;  they soon tire of what they have, and pine for what they have not; and they seldom desire anything unless it belongs to others.  The result is the encroachment of one group upon the territory of another . . .

-Will Durant,  The Story of Philosophy:  The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers, from his chapter on Plato

Fifty years ago.......................At Woodstock

Sly & The Family Stone...........,.......................Everyday People