A view of life and commercial real estate from Newark and Licking County, Ohio
It’s tempting to want to find the one big skill that will set you apart. But most incredible things come from compounding, and compounding isn’t intuitive because the incremental inputs are never exciting on their own. . . . Most things that look like superpowers are just a bunch of ordinary skills mixed together at the right time.
-Morgan Housel
We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality.
-attributed to Ayn Rand.
. . . the only questions on anybody’s mind now are “What is the Market Up To?” and “Why?”
Don’t look to Television for your answers: This morning, the chyron read “Ukraine, Fed Hikes, Uncertainty drive stock rout” when markets were down 3%; after the losses were recovered, the chyron read “Stocks close higher in wild day.”
TV chyrons know everything and nothing…
-Barry Ritholtz, from this post
I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho' not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Breman, who settled first at Hull. He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer, but in the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called, nay we call our selves, and write our Name Crusoe, and so my Companions always call'd me.
-Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
All that remains is for you to choose:
Will you accept a narrative where everything is broken and wrong?
Will you accept the signs that things are far better than ever?
...................Warren Weaver's right now:
Because scientists are reasonably accurate, unselfish, and objective when they are in their laboratories, there is a danger that we forget that scientists are only men, subject to the same hopes and fears, the same aches and joys, as the rest of us, and that they are often especially illogical and unscientific when they get outside the field of their own technical competence. And, accordingly, there is a real danger in the idea—which one actually hears defended—that almost any situation of social, economic, political, or national emergency would automatically be solved if "the scientists" were only put in charge.
No, science is not gadgetry, not technology, not "development," not magic; it is not a universal intellectual snake oil which will cure all diseases; it is not the mysterious black box our of which man can get a gadget to meet every emergency of his life, every need of his soul. What, then, is science?
Science is the activity whereby man discovers the basic laws which govern the constitution and functioning of physical matter and of all living things. It is a way of solving problems—not all problems, but, nevertheless, a large class of important and practical problems; namely, those in which the predominant factors are subject to the basic laws of logic and are usually quantitative in character. Science is a way of organizing reproducible knowledge about such problems, of focusing and disciplining imagination, of weighing evidence, of deciding what is relevant and what is not, of impartially testing hypotheses, of ruthlessly discarding what proves to be inaccurate or inadequate, of facing facts, and of interpreting facts and of making the facts of nature the servants of man.
This, it seems to me, is enough for science to be! Such a science is not an arrogant dictator in the whole arena of life, but rather a democratic companion of philosophy, of art, or religion, and of other valid alternative approaches to reality.
-Warren Weaver, Science and Imagination (1967)
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference
-Robert Frost
David Orr points out that the standard reading of that poem –
about choosing the "road less travelled", spurning convention and
doing something extraordinary with your life – is repeatedly undermined by the
poem itself. For one thing, the speaker admits that the two roads in question
look equally well-travelled, really. For another thing, how could he possibly
know that the path he chose "has made all the difference," since he
never got to try the other one?
A sly alternative reading of the poem is that this is exactly the
point. We constantly have to make such choices; there's often not much to
choose between them; and we can never really be sure we made the right
ones. Even so, we have to choose. Making a choice – sometimes virtually
any choice at all – is what gets you on your way. If the speaker in "The
Road Not Taken" hadn't made some choice, he'd still be standing
at that fork in the path, frozen in ambivalence, waiting for something to
happen.
Knowing others is wisdom;
4 Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice.
5 Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand.
6 Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.
7 And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
8 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
-The Holy Bible, Philippians 4:4-8, King James Version
You must not expect anything from others. It’s you, of yourself, of whom you must ask a lot. Only from oneself has one the right to ask everything and anything. This way it’s up to you – your own choices – what you get from others remains a present, a gift.
-attributed to Albert Schweitzer
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