Saturday, February 5, 2022

A sign of the times................


 more fun here

fun with the language here

A long time ago........................


 

Join.............................

 Join with those who have never said: "Right, that's it.  I'm going no further," because as sure as spring follows winter, nothing ever ends; after achieving your objective, you must start again, always using everything you have learned along the way.

     Join with those who sing, tell stories, take pleasure in life, and have joy in their eyes, because joy is contagious and can prevent others from becoming paralyzed by depression, loneliness, and difficulties.

-Paulo Coelho,  The Archer

Friday, February 4, 2022

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


The Moody Blues....................................For My Lady

 

abandoning representationalism.......



 

Too.................................

 Popular thinking is . . .

    -Too Average to Understand the Value of Good Thinking.

    -Too Inflexible to Realize the Impact of Changed Thinking.

    -Too Lazy to Master the Process of Intentional Thinking.

    -Too Small to See the Wisdom of Big-picture Thinking.

    -Too Satisfied to Unleash the Potential of Focused Thinking.

    -Too Traditional to Discover the Joy of Creative Thinking.

    -Too Naive to Recognize the Importance of Realistic Thinking.

    -Too Undisciplined to Release the Power of Strategic Thinking.

    -Too Limiting to Feel the Energy of Possibility Thinking.

    -Too Trendy to Embrace the Lessons of Reflective Thinking.

    -Too Shallow to Question the Acceptance of Popular Thinking.

    -Too Proud to Encourage the Participation of Shared Thinking.

    -Too Self-absorbed to Experience the Satisfaction of Unselfish Thinking, and

    -Too Uncommitted to Enjoy the Return of Bottom-Line Thinking.

-John C. Maxwell, How Successful People Think:  Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life

the tree of expertise........................?

 By its fruit the tree is known, and the tree of expertise hasn’t been doing well lately. As Nassim Taleb recently observed: “With psychology papers replicating less than 40%, dietary advice reversing after 30 years of fatphobia, macroeconomic analysis working worse than astrology, the appointment of Bernanke who was less than clueless of the risks, and pharmaceutical trials replicating at best only 1/3 of the time, people are perfectly entitled to rely on their own ancestral instinct and listen to their grandmothers.”

-Glenn Harlan Reynolds, as cut-and-pasted from here

In the background...................................


Grover Washington, Jr.....,...............the Winelight album

 

Covid as "mandatory panic".................

 It’s not just the serial overreactions, the threatening intensity, the constant reference to dramatically worse events supposedly yet to come. It’s the feeling of mandatory panic, the insistence that anyone who does not allow the crisis to dominate their internal life is somehow guilty of causing it, the desire to blame a disaster on people who are thought to not take it seriously enough.

-Freddie de Boer, as extracted from here

endless............................

 You can and should be interested in everything, the Stoics taught, because you can and should learn wisdom from everything.  The more you experience, the more you learn, and, paradoxically, the more humbled you are by the endless amounts of knowledge that remain in front of you.

-Ryan Holiday, Lives Of The Stoics:  The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius

Winter wonderland..................

 Considering all the hype this storm generated, our area escaped relatively unscathed.  Of course, it is still snowing.........



Thursday, February 3, 2022

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


The Moody Blues............,................Isn't Life Strange

 

Wished I could be in your heart
To be one with your love
Wished I could be in your eyes
Looking back there you were, and here we are

Isn't love strange
A word we arrange
With no thought or care
Maker of despair
Each breath that we breathe
With love we must weave
To make us as one
You know it makes me want to cry, cry, cry -

a very mean opinion of our understanding...

 For, I remember very well, in a discourse one day with the king; when I happened to say, there were several thousand books among us, written upon the art of government; it gave him (directly contrary to my intention) a very mean opinion of our understandings.  He professed both to abominate and despise all mystery, refinement, and intrigue, either in a prince or a minister.  He could not tell what I meant by secrets of State, where an enemy or some rival nation were not in the case.  He confined the knowledge of governing within very narrow bounds; to common sense and reason, to justice and lenity, to the speedy determination of civil and criminal causes; with some other obvious topicks which are not worth considering.  And, he gave it for his opinion; that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before; would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.

     The learning of this people is very defective; consisting only in morality, history, poetry and mathematicks . . .

-Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, from Chapter VII in A Voyage To Brobdingnag

How I came to be a writer......................

...................................Morgan Housel.

 So much of history is driven by chance, accident, and flukes. That’s true for the big stuff and the personal journeys.

Illusion............................



 -Charlie Mackesy, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse

Choices...............................

 Every day is the same if you let it.

Of course, spiders, dogs and walruses prefer if the world doesn’t change. But humans are different. Change is fuel for growth and possibility.

-Seth Godin, from here

Yes..............................

 














more fun here

Stringing words together ........

................in an interesting fashion:

 Just as the GOP in the U.S. is full of useless pontificating cocktail party cronies who powder themselves in the country clubs of Wall Street finance, so too does the Conservative Party of Canada follow the same political business model.

-as culled from here

In the background.................................


The Four Tops...........................The Ultimate Collection

 

It may be piling on, but I have to agree .....

The Washington Commanders is the single worst team name in all of pro sports. Try and think of a worse team name than the "Commies"- you won't be able to... 

-Chris Lynch