“Respect is sweeter when you earn it; you loose respect when you demand respect.”
-Aniekee Tochukwu
“I’ve demanded of myself to be more demanding of others.”
-Jarod Kintz
A handy list of demands from our college campuses may be found here.
via
Monday, November 30, 2015
Demands.............................
“Respect is sweeter when you earn it; you loose respect when you demand respect.”
-Aniekee Tochukwu
“I’ve demanded of myself to be more demanding of others.”
-Jarod Kintz
A handy list of demands from our college campuses may be found here.
via
"Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon."
-attributed to Winston Churchill
Uh-oh...................................
"The intellectual and social climate needed to allow entrepreneurship to thrive will not exist in advanced capitalism."
-Joseph Schumpeter
Sunday, November 29, 2015
While sitting by the fireplace.............
George Winston.................................Prelude/Carol of the Bells
An Advent Chant..........................
The Congregation of St. Lazarus Autun...............Ad Te Levavi
On tired and overworked brains......
I’ve found that making fewer decisions is one of the most important things you can do as an investor because the brain can get tired and overworked just like any other muscle in the body. Decision fatigue is a huge cause of unnecessary risk and avoidable mistakes in the market.
-Ben Carlson, as excerpted from here
cartoon via
The 100 most important..................
14. You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it.
-Charles Buxton
32. One meets his destiny often in the road he takes to avoid it.
-French proverb
52. Don’t worry about what other people think; they don’t do it very often.
-Anon
76. When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
-Eric Hofer
Fifty years ago.........................
The Rolling Stones...............................The Spider and The Fly
On idealizing.........................
I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy — I don't disparage envy but I don't accept it as legitimately my master.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Saturday, November 28, 2015
At least once a year........................
Iron Butterfly..........................................In A Gadda Da Vida
Close only counts in...................
.................................................horse shoes and hand grenades. Or, why we spend $100 at the carnival to win a $10 stuffed animal:
"We want and place value on something when we almost have it and lose it. Charlie Munger says, 'One reason why horse races, bingo and these things have always been so popular is because of all the near misses.' Frequent near nisses are like small reinforcements and make us want to try again and again.
-Peter Bevelin, Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin To Munger
On doing.........................
"Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done whether you like it or not. It is the first lesson that ought to be learned and however early a person's training begins, it is probably the last lesson a person learns thoroughly."
-Thomas Henry Huxley
Fifty years ago.............................
The Temptations........................................................My Baby
Illusions..........................
"The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their manster; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim."
-Gustave Le Bon
On changing one's mind....................
"There is nothing wrong with changing a plan when the situation has changed."
-Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday."
-Jonathan Swift
"When somebody persuades me that I am wrong, I change my mind. What do you do?"
-John Maynard Keynes
cartoon via
Friday, November 27, 2015
Can you see me................
Loggins and Messina............................................Angry Eyes
The muses dance and sing...........
Yes.....................................................................Roundabout
On the diversifier's fallacy,..............
................the winner's curse, and other stuff you should think about.
"The diversifier’s fallacy is a generalisation of the Peter Principle: individuals rise within an organisation until they are given a job they are not competent to do. Companies diversify until they are engaged in businesses in which they have a competitive disadvantage relative to incumbents. This seems particularly common among financial companies."
-John Kay, as culled from here
Fifty years ago.......................
Donovan.........................................................Catch The Wind
Consider yourself warned,............
........................a La Niña lurks and it won't be pretty. The fun thing about making weather predictions about next summer, instead of climate predictions about ten years from now, is that they are easier to remember. Full story, with some advice mixed in, here.
via
Aquarians are pretty cool folk..................
If you doubt that, check out friend Bilbo's list of irrational fears by zodiac sign.
Aquarius (January 20 - February 18): Arachibutyrophobia, the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth.
Thursday, November 26, 2015
A little moved...........................
Adam Sandler..........................................The Thanksgiving Song
For those of you expecting Alice's Restaurant, go here.
Fifty years ago (give or take)............
The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade..........................
A vision of genuine Thanksgiving......
I hope that as a society we are better than that narrow, stunted celebration of what really could be a beautiful day. A day without stress. A day without tension. A day to celebrate with your whole heart those things for which you are TRULY thankful with the people who TRULY make you grateful to be in their lives. Eating the food for which you’re TRULY appreciative, wherever and however you want. In other words, keep the tradition of thankfulness – just lose the empty pretense. Free yourselves from the chains of obligation and tradition and, in my humble opinion, you’ll finally learn what it feels like to celebrate a day of genuine thanksgiving.
-Gina, as excerpted from here
Wednesday, November 25, 2015
the juke box's blowin' a fuse........
Electric Light Orchestra......................Roll Over Beethoven
Gonna write a little letter gonna mail it to me local D.J.
it's a jumpin little record I want my jockey to play
Roll Over Beethoven, gotta hear it again today
My temperature's risin, the juke box's blowin a fuse
My heart's beatin a rhythm, singin out rhythm and blues
Roll Over Beethoven, they're rockin in two by two
Well if you feel you like it, go get your lover and reel and rock it
roll it over and move on up now, go for cover and reel and rock it
roll it over, Roll Over Beethoven, tell Tchaikovsky the news
Early in the mornin I'm a givin you the warnin,
don't you step on my blue suede shoes
hey diddle diddle gonna play my fiddle,
I ain't got nothing to lose
Roll Over Beethoven, tell Tchaikovsky the news
She wiggles like a glow-worm, dances like a spinning top
she got a crazy partner, you should have seen her reel and rock
long as she got a dime, the music will never stop
Well if you feel you like it, go get your lover and reel and rock it
roll it over and move on up now, go for cover and reel and rock it
roll it over, Roll Over Beethoven, dig these rhythm and blues
Roll Over Beethoven, Roll Over Beethoven,
Roll Over Beethoven, Roll Over Beethoven,
Roll Over Beethoven, dig these rhythm and blues?
Believe it or not, the system actually works...
"Way back when Jimmy Carter was telling us to turn down the thermostats and put on our cardigan sweaters, those of us on the free market side of the so-called energy shortage debate said the best cure for high oil prices is high prices. Now we know."
-David Stockman, as excerpted from here
Good to know........................
"The American consumer is astute and far more intelligent than they are given credit for. "
-Scott Rothbort, as culled from this post on "the death of the American mall."
Fifty years ago...........................
The Beatles.........................................Run For Your Life
Disbelief...................................
My favorite optimist is also a humanist. Full story here, excerpt here:
The fastest growing belief system in the world is non-belief. No religion grew nearly as fast over the past century. Whereas virtually nobody identified as a non-believer in 1900, today roughly 15 per cent do, and that number does not include soft Anglicans in Britain, mild Taoists in China, lukewarm Hindus in India or token Buddhists in Japan. Even so, the non-religious category has overtaken paganism, will soon pass Hinduism, may one day equal Islam and is gaining on Christianity. (Of every ten people in the world, roughly three are Christian, two Muslim, two Hindu, 1.5 non-religious and 1.5 something else.)
This is all the more remarkable when you think that, with a few notable exceptions, atheists or humanists don’t preach, let alone pour money into evangelism. Their growth has come almost entirely from voluntary conversion...
Dwight Eisenhower was a smart man........
Eisenhower's fear:
As it turned out, however, there was a virulent threat to peace still lurking on the Potomac. The great general and president, Dwight Eisenhower, had called it the “military-industrial complex” in his farewell address, but that memorable phrase had been abbreviated by his speechwriters, who deleted the word “congressional” in a gesture of comity to the legislative branch.
Today's reality:
Needless to say, the sudden end to 20th century history posed an existential threat to Imperial Washington. A trillion dollar complex of weapons suppliers, warfare state bureaucracies, intelligence and security contractors, arms exporters, foreign aid vendors, military bases, grand poobahs and porkers of the Congressional defense committes, think tanks, research grants and much more——were all suddenly without an enemy and raison d’etre.
As it has happened, Imperial Washington did find its necessary enemy in the rise of so-called “global terrorism”.
-As excerpted from this David Stockman essay. Do read it.
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
Singing songs of love.......................
Donovan...........................................................Hurdy Gurdy Man
Opening paragraphs..................
Spiritual formation begins with the gradual and often painful discovery of God's incomprehensibility in the face of life's great mysteries and limitations. We might be competent in many subjects, but we cannot become an expert in the things of God. God is greater than our minds and cannot be caught within the boundaries of our finite concepts. Thus, spiritual formation leads not to a proud understanding of the divinity, but to docta ignorantia, an "articulate not-knowing."
-Henri Nouwen, Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of The Spirit
Opening sentences...........................
Before he came into a lot of money in 1839, Richard Plantagenet Temple Nugent Brydges Chandos Grenville, second Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, led a largely uneventful life.
-Bill Bryson, Shakespeare: The World as Stage
Fifty years ago.........................
The Temptations.................................The Girl's Alright With Me
Climate fun.............................
.............................................or, taking the really long view.
from the minds at xkcd
Monday, November 23, 2015
Ramify.......................................
The composition of this book has been for the author a long struggle of escape, and so must the reading of it be for most readers if the author’s assault upon them is to be successful,— a struggle of escape from habitual modes of thought and expression. The ideas which are here expressed so laboriously are extremely simple and should be obvious. The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.
-John Maynard Keynes, as extracted from his Preface to The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money - which, amazingly, you can own right now by sending $1 to our friends at Amazon.
Snares................................
There must certainly be a vast fund of stupidity in human nature, else men would not be caught as they are, a thousand times over, by the same snare, and while they yet remember their past misfortunes, go on to court and encourage the causes to which they are owing, and which will again produce them.
-Marcus Porcius Cato
Fifty years ago..........................
Gary Lewis & the Playboys.....................Save Your Heart For Me
On projections...........................
I have no use whatsoever for projections or forecasts. They create an illusion of apparent precision. The more meticulous they are, the more concerned you should be. We never look at projections, but we care very much about, and look very deeply at, track records. If a company has a lousy track record, but a very bright future, we will miss the opportunity.
I do not understand why a buyer of a business looks at a bunch of projections put together by a seller or his agent. You can almost say that it's naive to think that those projections have any utility whatsoever. We're just not interested.
If we don't have some idea ourselves of what the future is, to sit there and listen to some other guy who's trying to sell us the business or get a commission on it tell us what the future's going to be - like I say, it's very naive.
-Warren Buffett
Sunday, November 22, 2015
Round and round..............................
The Ink Spots.....................................................If I Didn't Care
thanks Ann. Ink Spots wiki here
Adjustments......................
"... think of all recessions as adjustment problems."
-Arnold Kling, as excerpted from here (and here). If you want something to ponder today, consider his list of the adjustments required by the Great Depression. Have a great day.
On the lust for respectability................
"There is the, usually droll, question, “What would Jesus do?” Right question, perhaps, but in the wrong tone. Better would be, “What would Christ have me do?” For his Life was not a catalogue of situations and responses, and God did not create us to do what has already been done. He did not make us for statistical purposes. Instead He made each to be a new Saint, providing each with the light to show his steps forward, like the lantern on a miner’s hat — not towards, but away from the light of this world, by which we are dazzled."
-David Warren, as excerpted from here
Fifty years ago....................
Roy Head........................................................Just A Little Bit
Marinating.............................
"It took me years of writing on the Internet to learn what is nearly an iron law of commentary: The better your message makes you feel about yourself, the less likely it is that you are convincing anyone else. The messages that make you feel great about yourself (and of course, your like-minded friends) are the ones that suggest you’re a moral giant striding boldly across the landscape, wielding your inescapable ethical logic. The messages that work are the ones that try to understand what the other side is thinking, on the assumption that they are no better or worse than you. So if you are actually trying to help the Syrian refugees, rather than marinate in your own sensation of overwhelming virtue, you should avoid these tactics."
-Megan McArdle, as excerpted from this post on "refugee policy"
Speaking of Vonnegut................
“If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC”
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC”
When I become King........................
.............everbody who spouts off about equality this and equality that will just have to go sit in a corner and read Kurt Vonnegut's masterful short story, Harrison Bergeron. It begins:
The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the Law, they were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody wass stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.
Follow the link to an on-line version of the whole tale.
Saturday, November 21, 2015
down on my knees.......................
Heart..............................................................Barracuda
Fifty years ago.....................
Manfred Mann........................................................Sha-La-La
Ed. Note: For those of you noting that 1964 was 51 years ago, this tune was released as a 45 in November of 1964. It was still charting in 1965.
Friday, November 20, 2015
Hurting my head.............................
The Bee Gees..................................................I Started A Joke
On practice..................................
"Seekers continue to practice all kinds of self-torture without realizing that such ‘spiritual practice’ is a reinforcement of the very ego that prevents them from their natural, free state."
-Ramesh Balsekar
cartoon via
On maintenance..................
“Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.”
-Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus
On seeking..............................
“Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside.”
-Ramana Maharshi
cartoon via
He cracks my head up............
"Black Friday does not mean shopping; it means we watch the first Christmas movies of the year - Die Hard, followed immediately by Die Hard II - "
-full post is here
Fifty years ago..........................
The Bee Gees..................................,,,,,,,.......Claustrophobia
The gold standard................
The Execupundit, who knows a thing or two, takes a gimlet eye to the leadership example of Winston Churchill:
"He was not denying what people could see with their own eyes nor was he operating with a view of history that seemed more attuned to someone who has just fallen, as the expression goes, off the turnip truck."
Thursday, November 19, 2015
Some nights only the Beatles will do.....
The Beatles.....................................................From Me To You
Knowledge is good.....................
..................Providing context for knowledge is even better.
Graeme Wood pens an essay trying to make sense out of ISIL. It is a worthy read.
Thanks Doug
The road............................
“Once you realize that the road is the goal and that you are always on the road, not to reach a goal, but to enjoy its beauty and its wisdom, life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple, in itself an ecstasy.”
-Nisargadatta Maharaj
Play.......................................
“It is interesting that Hindus, when they speak of the creation of the universe do not call it the work of God, they call it the play of God, the Vishnu lila, lila meaning play. And they look upon the whole manifestation of all the universes as a play, as a sport, as a kind of dance — lila perhaps being somewhat related to our word lilt”
-Alan W. Watts, Zen and the Beat Way
APOD site, description and enlargeable photo here
One idea...........................
“Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life; dream of it; think of it; live on that idea. Let the brain, the body, muscles, nerves, every part of your body be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, and this is the way great spiritual giants are produced."
-Vivekananda
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
Dukes indeed................................
The Dukes of September...........................................Lowdown
Boz Scaggs, Michael McDonald and Donald Fagen. Nice.
Thanks Greg
We nourished your extremism............
An interesting take on the "endless capacity for masochism and self-loathing" that some tribes revel in can be found here.
Maybe he should talk to....................
...........................his Department of Education. In this interview, the President comes out against "a recipe for dogmatism." Louder please.
Ed Note: my favorite dogma cartoons are here.
Fifty years ago..........................
Edwin Starr...........................................Agent Double-O Soul
This may be the smartest thing..............
..................................................................I've read today:
"I see elements of wishful thinking there, but that is hard to avoid when coming up with an endgame for the Middle East that sounds positive."
-Arnold Kling, as excerpted from here
Here's a good idea..................
"Decision makers should be held accountable for the consequences of their decisions. In The Case for Modern Man, American philosopher Charles Frankel defines responsibility: 'A decision is responsible when the man or group that makes it has to answer for it to those who are directly or indirectly affected by it." Charles Munger adds, 'An example of a really responsible system is the system the Romans used when they build an arch. The guy who created the arch stood under it as the scaffolding was removed. It's like packing your own parachute.' "
-Peter Bevelin, Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Pour yourself a glass..................
Tom Barabas.............................................................Free Spirit
Hungry for that guitar.......................
Jimi Hendrix................................................Hey Joe/Purple Haze
Not the happiest of tunes (we won't be posting the lyrics), but around the 1:40 mark Jimi plays with his teeth. Why? Why not?
Blind wishing....................................
The cities subject to the Athenians, hearing of the gentleness of Brasidas, felt most strongly encouraged to change their condition, and sent secret messages to him, begging him to come to them; each wishing to be the first to revolt. Indeed, there seemed to be no danger in so doing; their mistake in their estimate of the Athenian power was as great as that power afterwards turned out to be, and their judgment was based more upon blind wishing than upon any sound prediction; for it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not desire.
-Thucydides, as excerpted from here
Bending over backwards........................
But this long history of learning how to not fool ourselves—of having utter scientific integrity—is, I’m sorry to say, something that we haven’t specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope you’ve caught on by osmosis.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.
I would like to add something that’s not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you’re talking as a scientist. I’m not trying to tell you what to do about cheating on your wife, or fooling your girlfriend, or something like that, when you’re not trying to be a scientist, but just trying to be an ordinary human being. We’ll leave those problems up to you and your rabbi. I’m talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you’re maybe wrong, that you ought to do when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.
-Richard Feynman, as excerpted from his 1974 Caltech commencement address
Fifty years ago..........................................
Buddy and Stacey (is that really Jimi Hendrix)................Shotgun
Belief.......................................
No mainstream current of Christianity or Judaism promises that the prayers of the pious always will be answered. The Book of Job is there to instruct Christian and Jew that God’s purposes are so obscure to us as to make pointless the attempt to justify them. But the belief that there exists an ultimate purpose is high motivation to take a chance on the strength of our own efforts. If we do not see God’s purpose in our isolated corner of the battlefield, our children will, or our children’s children. Even if death closes out our part in the drama, God will redeem us from death. People of faith tend to have children; those who are persuaded of the randomness of existence tend not to. I cannot prove the validity of the point of view of faith, but it is instructive to consider the alternatives.
-David P. Goldman, as excerpted from this Spengler post
Trust............................................
 |
| AE Aurigae and the Flaming Star Nebula |
“I promise you that the same stuff galaxies are made of, you are. The same energy that swings planets around stars makes electrons dance in your heart. It is in you, outside you, you are it. It is beautiful. Trust in this. And you your life will be grand.”
-Kamal Ravikant, Live Your Truth
enlargeable photo and explanation via apod
Transformative.............................
“This I know: the mind, left to itself, repeats the same stories, the same loops. Mostly ones that don't serve us. So what's practical, what's transformative, is to consciously choose a thought. Then practice it again and again. With emotion, with feeling, with acceptance. Lay down the synaptic pathways until the mind starts playing it automatically. Do this with enough intensity over time and the mind will have no choice. That's how it operates. Where do you think your original loops came from?”
-Kamal Ravikant
thanks Nicholas #65 on this list
Monday, November 16, 2015
Smile, and hold my hand...............
Classics IV.................................................................Spooky
Definiteness..........................
One's dominating desires may be crystallized into their physical equivalents through definiteness of purpose backed by definiteness of plans, with the aid of nature's law of hypnotic rhythm and time!
-Napoleon Hill
Snowflakes of the World, Unite...............!
...................................We know this is parody (only) because Matt Walsh is writing it, but still..................
Dear Walmart, Someone Insulted Me In One of Your Stores. Your CEO Must Now Resign.
Full rant is here.
Fifty years ago...........................................
The Beatles...............................................Rock n Roll Music
Pondering this one..............
"Unlike any other type of society, capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest."
-Joseph Schumpeter
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