Scott Blitstein,....................

..............................................our friend from Sensory Dispensary, has a new outlet.   Check it out.

Reasons why I like living in Newark and Licking County.......

Reason #73.............................................The Newark Skate Park

Thanks to collaboration between two local philanthropic foundations and the City of Newark, we are blessed by the $2,000,000 re-imagining and rejuvenation of Everett Park.  Today was the ribbon cutting ceremony for the cornerstone of this project - the Newark Skate Park,  The skate park is clearly a world-class facility.   Free for kids of all ages.  Amazing:

Ground Rules.........................

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

Smith.....................................................I Don't Believe (I Believe)

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

The Zombies........................................................Friends of Mine

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

Janis Joplin...........................................................Summertime

Corrective...........................

“Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.” 


-Henri Bergson

Checking in with...................

..............................................................................Ziggy:

Pretty good advice..........................

“My advice, as in everything, is to read widely and think for yourself.  We need more dissent and less dogma.” 

-Camille Paglia

Why on earth not.....................?

“I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.” 


-Ludwig Wittgenstein

Pretending.....................................?

“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.” 

-Bertrand Russell

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

Jefferson Airplane.................Somebody To Love & White Rabbit

Yep.........................

Eleven Universal Laws of the World.........

………………………..can be found here.  Ignore them at your own risk.  Here are two, just to whet the appetite:

1. Littlewood’s law: We can expect “miracles” to happen regularly, because in a world with 7 billion people the odds of a one-in-a-billion event are pretty good.

7. Wiio’s laws: “Communication usually fails, except by accident.”

via

Value...............................

The value people place on free things is zero, though they may riot if the giveaways stop. When they must actually pay, or make other sacrifices, they value what they have obtained. This is human nature. It does not change when technology changes; it cannot ever be suppressed for long. But it can be corrupted.

-David Warren, from this disquisition

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

Creedence Clearwater Revival.....................................Proud Mary

Wow, here's a great idea................

I think conservative intellectuals should not try to build an ideological scaffolding around the Trump presidency. Just focus on trying to bring rigor back into academia.

-Arnold Kling

Ravikant..................

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

Creedence Clearwater Revival.......................Born On The Bayou

Well, fifty years ago anyway...................

“Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.”

-Will Durant

Eternally............................

Everything goes, everything comes back; eternally rolls the wheel of being. Everything dies, everything blossoms again; eternally runs the year of being. Everything breaks, everything is joined anew; eternally the same House of Being is built. Everything parts, everything greets every other thing again; eternally the ring of being remains faithful to itself. In every Now, being begins; round every Here rolls the sphere There. The center is everywhere. Bent is the path of eternity.

-Friedrich Nietzsche,  Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Nice..........................

“Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.” 

-Henri Bergson

Paying attention.......................

     . . .in Egyptian monasticism, enormous stress is laid on the virtue of humility.  As Evagrius says, 'asceticism with humility is valuable, but asceticism without humility is extremely dangerous'.  And another Father said, 'It is better to fail with humility that to succeed with pride.'
     Above all else the Egyptian monks emphasised  self-knowledge.  The one practice which they harp on over and over again is 'paying attention to yourself', and going with this, they highlight the virtue of 'discernment', but which they mean an ability to diagnose exactly what is going on at any given moment.
     This explains why sometimes the Desert Fathers seem to be rather casual about morality.  Their concern is not that people should behave correctly according to the rules, but rather that people should be able to see their situation clearly for what it is. and so become free of the distorting perspective which underlies all our sins.
     Thus we hear of a fornicating monk, who kept a woman in his cell so indiscreetly that word got around about it.  The neighboring monks resolved to drive the monk away, and abba Ammonas, who happened to be visiting there was asked to go with them.  The offending monk heard them coming and hid his woman in a large jar.  Ammonas saw her at once, but 'hid the affair for the sake of God'.  He sat down on the jar, and then told the other monks to search the cell.  They, of course, found nothing and went away again abashed and apologetic.  Ammonas then took the culprit's hand and simply said to him, 'Brother, pay attention to yourself,' and went out.

-Simon Tugwell, Ways of Imperfection:  An Exploration of Christian Spirituality

Ryan Holiday on....................

........................................................................doing your job:

"Everything we do matters — whether it’s making smoothies to save up money or studying for the bar — even after we’ve already achieved the success we sought. Everything is a chance to do and be our best. Only self-absorbed assholes think they are too good for whatever their current station requires."

--------------------------------------------------------------

"The great psychologist Viktor Frankl, survivor of three concentration camps, found presumptuousness in the age-old question: “What is the meaning of life?” As though it is someone else’s responsibility to tell us. Instead, he said, the world is asking you that question. And it’s our job to answer with our actions.

"In every situation, life is asking us a question, and our actions are the answer. Our job is simply to answer well."

Entrench.........................

     via

Today...........................

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

Creedence Clearwater Revival.....................I Put A Spell On You

Getting a head start on 2020.......

...............I started thumbing through the newest Almanac (for farmers & city folk).  Among the tidbits of interesting things, this was found:

     Lemmings are not suicidal!  Filmmakers in Disney's 1958 nature film, "White Wilderness" pushed dozens of lemmings off a cliff while cameras rolled, for dramatic effect—thereby staging a lemming death plunge.  This deliberate fraud started the myth.

Finding it difficult to fathom that Disney would ever release a film that wasn't the gospel truth, the Oracle Google was consulted.  Google clearly backs up the Farmer's Almanac on outing this fraudulent film.  Amazing.  How come I never knew this?