forever drafting blueprints................

 The rulers of this world have not often regarded their subjects as being the best judges of their own happiness. In our own day, there are many who would willingly dictate to their fellows the way they should live and act…. To adapt the people to the plan rather than the plan to the people is not likely to cease to be a temptation.

-Lionel Robbins, as quoted here

 Politicians and bureaucrats – along with the hordes of campus and think-tank intellectuals who are forever drafting blueprints for how the state might engineer society into some heavenly condition – look upon the masses of ordinary men and women as lab rats upon whom politicians, bureaucrats, and intellectuals might practice experimentation and regimentation.

-Don Boudreaux, commenting on the quote above 

One reason I'm not retiring............

Believe it or not, most retirements fail for non-financial reasons, rather than for financial ones.

-Mike Drak, from this post

A few more snippets...................

 .....from Morgan Housel's The Psychology of Money:

History is littered with good ideas taken too far, which are indistinguishable from bad ideas.

What's often overlooked in finance is that something can be technically true but contextually nonsense.

Wealth is just the accumulated leftovers after you have spent what you take in.  And since you can build wealth without a high income, but have not chance of building wealth without a high savings rate, it's clear which one matters most.

If respect and admiration are your goal, be careful how you seek it.  Humility, kindness, and empathy will bring you more respect than horsepower ever will.

Controlling your time is the highest dividend money pays.

Planning is important, but the most important part of every plan is to plan on the plan not going according to plan.

Capitalism is hard.  But part of the reason this happens is because getting money and keeping money are two different skills.

algorithms......................

 

     My own squalid, but I suspect entirely typical, history as a Twitter junkie might serve as a case in point.  Even at the height of my dependency (I'm now in recovery), I rarely spent more that two hours a day glued to the screen.  Yet Twitter's dominion over my attention extended a great deal further than that.  Long after I'd closed the app, I'd be panting on the treadmill at the gym, or chopping carrots for dinner, only to find myself mentally prosecuting a devastating argument against some idiotic holder of Wrong Opinions I'd had the misfortune to encounter online earlier that day.  (It wasn't misfortune really, of course, the algorithm showed me those posts deliberately, having learned what would wind me up.)

-Oliver Burkeman,  Four Thousand Weeks:  Time Management for Mortals

Feeding time at the Layman's.....

 

A visual treat...................................

 My Sweetie and I took a field trip to Wilson's Garden Center this morning.  Always a treat!

300%......................................?

 . . . ultimately, all of us are at least 300% more effective if we focus on doing one task at a time.  Multiple, independent studies show this to be true.  Still don't believe me?  Just search online "multitasking is a myth" and read to your heart's content.  One study even tested a group of people that considered themselves "good" at multitasking.  The reality was that test subjects were about as effective at accomplishing simple tasks as members of the control group who were high on marijuana. 

-Mark Dolfini, The Time-Wealthy Investor 2.0

restore.......................

      The outer healing of the land will always be my and my family's work.  But our inner healing is even more important.  We see the world through inner frames.  Healing ourselves is as much a part of the restoration of the planet as building a place for elephants to walk to the mountains as ambassadors of peace.

     Maybe, like me, you also need to heal but you can't walk out into the wilderness this afternoon.  But you can look up at the sky or that tree poking through the concrete and know that there are thousands of other people who feel equally disconnected from their inner and outer worlds.  You can, from where you stand, make a decision to restore from within, even if your mind screams that it is not possible.  Whatever feels unresolved, the animal part of you is already tracking the healing you need.  Follow that trail; the medicine will feel like freedom.  In that moment, you'll become a part of restoring Eden.

-Boyd Varty, Cathedral Of The Wild

hard-won..........................

Among those dazzled by the Administration team was Vic-President Lyndon Johnson.  After attending his first cabinet meeting he went back to his mentor Sam Rayburn and told him with great enthusiasm how extraordinary they were, each brighter than the next, and that the smartest of them all was that fellow with the Stacomb on his hair from the Ford Motor Company, McNamara.  "Well, Lyndon," Mister Sam answered, "you may be right and they may be every bit as intelligent as you say, but I'd feel a whole lot better about them if just one of them had run for Sheriff once."  It is my favorite story in the book, for it underlines the weakness of the Kennedy team, the difference between intelligence and wisdom, between abstract quickness and verbal facility which the team exuded, and true wisdom, which is the product of hard-won, often bitter experiences.  Wisdom for a few of them came after Vietnam.

-David Halberstam, from his Introduction to The Best And The Brightest 

Wisdom ignored......................

In a deleted scene from We Were Soldiers, the actor playing Colonel Hal Moore offers some wisdom, ignored, to Secretary of Defense McNamara: