Wait for it, wait for it, wait...............

via

Drink to thee.............................

Blur.........................................................The Wassailing Song

A Happy, Merry and a Wonderful.................

Unorganized Hancock...............................Generic Christmas Song

Holiday spirit............................

On political campaigning......................

Having learned my lesson, I've decided not to criticize the obscene amounts of money being spent by both sides to buy the presidency. Instead, I thought I might suggest a few alternative ways to improve the quality, if not the funding, of presidential campaigns. Here are four ideas ...

1. Instead of debates, require candidates to engage in UFC-style cage fights ... all proceeds would be used to cover campaign debts.

1a. Candidates incurring injuries in these fights would be required to obtain treatment via the healthcare.gov website, like Real People.

-As extracted from Bilbo's Random Thoughts.  Hard to disagree with his other suggested improvements.

Calvin is not always right.................

"The future is made of the same stuff as the present."
-Simone Weil

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

Burl Ives......................................Have A Holly Jolly Christmas

Even this........................

Arp 87: Merging Galaxies from Hubble 

"Everything in life is just for a while."
-Philip K. Dick

More fun with the language..............

Your basic buzzer beater.................

thanks craig

Too warm for the fireplace tonight, but still............

Liz Story.....................................................Greensleeves



#16 on this list (same song, different album)

Make my wish come true.....................

Mariah Cary...............................All I Want For Christmas Is You

On obstacles...............................

      All great victories, be they in politics, business, art, or seduction, involved resolving vexing problems with a potent cocktail of creativity, focus, and daring.  When you have a goal, obstacles are actually teaching you how to get where you want to go - carving you a path.  "The Things which hurt," Benjamin Franklin wrote, "instruct."
      Today, most of our obstacles are internal, not external.  Since World War II we have lived in some of the most prosperous times in history.  There are fewer armies to face, fewer fatal diseases and far more safety nets.  But the world still rarely does exactly what we want.
      Instead of opposing armies, we have internal tension.  We have professional frustration.  We have unmet expectations.  We have learned helplessness.  And we still have the same overwhelming emotions humans have always had:  grief, pain, and loss.
      Many of our problems come from having too much:  rapid technology disruption, junk food, traditions that tell us the way we're supposed to live our lives.  We're soft, entitled, and scared of conflict.  Great times are great softeners.  Abundance can be its own obstacle....

-Ryan Holiday, as excerpted from The Obstacle Is The Way:  The Timeless Art of Turning Trials Into Triumph

Steady now....................................

Can I get an Amen.............................?

The fact that so many past predictions missed the mark is a nice reminder that over-confident statements about the future are often a bad idea.
-as excerpted from this Vox post on the end of "peak car."   This handy chart tells much of the story:

thanks craig

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

Gary Lewis & the Playboys....................................Just My Style

Fun with the language........................

      The passions of mankind have boiled over into all areas of political life, including its vocabulary.  The words most common in politics have become stained with human hurts, hopes, and frustrations.
All of them are loaded with popular opprobrium, and their use results in a conditioned, negative, emotional response.  Even the word politics itself, which Webster says is "the science and art of government," is generally viewed in a context of corruption.  Ironically, the dictionary synonyms are "discreet, provident, diplomatic, wise."
-Saul Alinsky, as excerpted from Rules For Radicals:  A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals

Being a fan of irony, your faithful blogger consulted his edition of Webster's New World College Dictionary (which was published twenty-four years after Alinsky's book).  While the definition matches, no synonyms were listed for "politics."  However, under the word "politic," the following definitions were provided:  2 having practical wisdom; prudent; shrewd; diplomatic  3 crafty; unscrupulous.   So........being "crafty" and "unscrupulous" equates to "having practical wisdom"and being "prudent"?  Is there any wonder why we sometimes have communication problems?  Is there any wonder why our language confuses people?  Just wondering.

Which means..............................

On a benefit of commerce (and diversity).......

Take a view of the Royal Exchange in London, a place more venerable than many courts of justice, where the representatives of all nations meet for the benefit of mankind. There the Jew, the Mahometan, and the Christian transact together, as though they all professed the same religion, and give the name of infidel to none but bankrupts. There thee Presbyterian confides in the Anabaptist, and the Churchman depends on the Quaker’s word. At the breaking up of this pacific and free assembly, some withdraw to the synagogue, and others to take a glass. This man goes and is baptized in a great tub, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: that man has his son’s foreskin cut off, whilst a set of Hebrew words (quite unintelligible to him) are mumbled over his child. Others retire to their churches, and there wait for the inspiration of heaven with their hats on, and all are satisfied.
If one religion only were allowed in England, the Government would very possibly become arbitrary; if there were but two, the people would cut one another’s throats; but as there are such a multitude, they all live happy and in peace. -Voltaire, from Letter VI, Letters on the English Ed. Note:  "The Royal Exchange in London was founded in the 16th century by the merchant Thomas Gresham to act as a centre of commerce for the City of London."

Be here with me...........................

Darlene Love.................Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)

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

The Beatles.....................................................Think For Yourself

All I want for Christmas...............

Chuck Berry.............................................Run Rudolph Run

The Banker..............................

......................tells the tale of his family's "spiritual Christmas."  If you are tired of the over-commercialization of the season, you might choose to read it.  Wee excerpt:

The only stipulation for the one gift was that it must be primarily home-made. The essence of the gift could not be bought anywhere. ... My brother wrote an emotional letter to my father, comparing him to a high-end bottle of scotch. I know that sounds very WASPy, but believe me, it was awesome. He said all the things you’d typically hear in a eulogy, but my Dad was able to hear it. A distinct advantage, by the way.

Speaking of Christmas gifts.............

.................give yourself one by taking the time (about three minutes) to read (re-read?) O Henry's The Gift of the Magi.   He concludes:

The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

On being merry and happy..........................

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

On the TV....................................A Charlie Brown Christmas

Not sure this fits the narrative..................

via

On tolerable levels of terrorism.................

"Like his French counterpart Francois Hollande, Obama thinks that a certain level of terrorism is tolerable, and far preferable to the bloody and difficult work of rooting out jihadist terrorism entirely. There is something to be said for the notion of a tolerable level of terrorism, but neither Obama nor Hollande are likely to achieve this as matters stand."
-Spengler, as excerpted from here.

I was going to make some comment about the strangeness of the current times, but then the history major in me reminded that people have always been strange, and times have usually been difficult and dangerous.  Lest you doubt me, enjoy this photo of grade school children in the 1950s (of which I was one) doing the "duck and cover" drill, or seeking shelter from a nuclear blast by getting under our desks.  (To be fair, the adults were probably trying to protect us from flying shards of glass, not the bomb itself).

Or, if you would prefer, watch this Lyndon Johnson attack ad against Barry Goldwater from the 1964 presidential campaign.  Terror indeed.

On being skeptical about "safety".......

Arnold Kling reviews Greg Ip's Foolproof:  Why Safety Can Be Dangerous and How Danger Makes Us Safer.  An excerpt:

One, which I call the engineers, seeks to use the maximum of our knowledge and ability to solve problems and make the world safer and more stable; the other, which I call the ecologists, regards such efforts with suspicion, because given the complexity and adaptability of people and the environment, they will always have unintended consequences that may be worse than the problem we are trying to solve.

As your faithful blogger loves to point out, the Law of Unintended Consequences reigns supreme.  It is unbreakable.

Imbibing...............................

.........................her first legal adult beverage.  Our youngest turns 21.

eyes full of tinsel and fire.................

Greg Lake................................I Believe In Father Christmas



I wish you a hopeful christmas
I wish you a brave new year
All anguish pain and sadness
Leave your heart and let your road be clear
They said there'll be snow at christmas
They said there'll be peace on earth
Hallelujah noel be it heaven or hell
The christmas you get you deserve
 

My dream headline reads.................

Structured Procrastination:  Do Less, Deceive Yourself, And Succeed Long-Term.

"This is the essence of what I call structured procrastination, an amazing strategy I have discovered that converts procrastinators into effective human beings, respected and admired for all that they can accomplish and the good use they make of time. All procrastinators put off things they have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this bad trait work for you."
-John Perry, as extracted from here.
Genius.
via

Soon to be appearing......................

....................................................under our Christmas Tree:

What would we do without Amazon?

And therein lies the problem................

Today’s Western elites, in the U.S. as much as in Europe, have never been so self-confident. Products of meritocratic selection who hold key positions in the social machine, the bien-pensant custodians of post-historical ideology—editorial writers at the NY Times, staffers in cultural and educational bureaucracies, Eurocratic functionaries, much of the professoriat, the human rights priesthood and so on—are utterly convinced that they see farther and deeper than the less credentialed, less educated, less tolerant and less sophisticated knuckle-dragging also-rans outside the magic circle of post historical groupthink.
-as culled from this The American Interest post

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

The Temptations........................................Since I Lost My Baby

Gotta get me one.......................

via

Oh, okay................................

Opening paragraphs..................

My father was the best bartender who ever lived.  No one really questioned that in a town like Gros Ventre, glad of any honor, or out in the lonely sheep camps and bunkhouses and other parched locations of the Two Medicine country, where the Medicine Lodge saloon was viewed as a nearly holy oasis.  What else was as reliable in life as sauntering into the oldest enterprise for a hundred miles around and being met with just the right drink whisking along the polished wood of the prodigious bar, along with a greeting as dependable as the time of day?  Not even heaven promised such service.  Growing up in back of the joint, as my father always called it, I could practically hear in my sleep the toasts that celebrated the Medicine Lodge as an unbeatable place and Tom Harry as perfection of a certain kind behind the bar.

-Ivan Doig,   The Bartender's Tale

and angels sing..............................

Harry Belafonte.........................................Mary's Boy Child

The "iron prescription"................

"Whenever you think that some situation or some person is ruining your life, it is actually you who are ruining your life.  It is such a simple idea.  Feeling like a victim is a perfectly disastrous way to go through life.  If you just take the attitude that however bad it is in any way, it's always your fault and you just fix it the best you can - the so-called "iron prescription" - I think that really works."
-Charlie Munger

Wisdom.................................

...................................................found here.   As it often is.

Yes, it is...............................

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

Andy Williams.................................Some Children See Him

The compensating advantage...........

"I have as much difficulty as ever in expressing myself clearly and concisely;  and this difficulty has caused me a very great loss of time;  but it has had the compensating advantage of forcing me to think long and intently about every sentence, and thus I have been led to see errors in reasoning and in my own observations or those of others."
-Charles Darwin

Life is........................................

"Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum."

-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.” 
-Allen Saunders

"Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them - that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like."

-Lao Tzu

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” 
-Albert Einstein

"Life is a travelling to the edge of knowledge, then a leap taken."

-D. H. Lawrence

"Life is a roar of bargain and battle, but in the very heart of it there rises a mystic spiritual tone that gives meaning to the whole. It transmutes the dull details into romance. It reminds us that our only but wholly adequate significance is as parts of the unimaginable whole. It suggests that even while living we are living to ends outside ourselves."

-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

"Life is a lot like jazz... it's best when you improvise."

-George Gershwin

“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” 
-George Bernard Shaw

"Life is a song - sing it.  Life is a game - play it.  Life is a challenge - meet it.  Life is a dream - realize it.  Life is a sacrifice - offer it.  Life is love - enjoy it"

-Sai Baba

A little harmony......................

Pentatonix...............................................Little Drummer Boy



thanks maggie

Insatiable curiosity..................

What made him special was his insatiable curiosity about inventions.  He began to read every new patent issued.  "You read everything - that's part of the job," he said.  "You accumulate all this trivia, and you hope that someday maybe a millionth of it will be useful."
-as written about Jack Kilby (who won a Nobel Prize in physics in 2000) in Walter Isaacson's The Innovators:  How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

Interested in increasing......................

.................................................your understanding of physics?

Then check out Theories of Everything, Mapped.  It is very cool.

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

The Ray Conniff Singers...............O Little Town of Bethlehem

I'm trying.................................

"Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely."
-Auguste Rodin

Fundamentally..................

"In ideologies there is not Jesus: in his tenderness, his love, his meekness. And ideologies are rigid, always. Of every sign: rigid. And when a Christian becomes a disciple of the ideology, he has lost his faith: he is no longer a disciple of Jesus, he is a disciple of this attitude of thought."
-Pope Francis, as excerpted from this read-worthy homily

thanks gene

Mannheim Steamroller...........................................Gagliarda

In Excelsis Deo...............................

Ella Fitzgerald..........................Angels We Have Heard On High

Lest you long for the "good old days"......

     William Shakespeare was born into a world that was short of people and struggled to keep those it had.  In 1564 England had a population of between three million and five million - much less than three hundred years earlier, when plague began to take a continuous,  heavy toll.  Now the number of living Britons was actually in retreat.  The previous decade had seen a fall in population nationally of about 6 percent.  In London as many as a quarter of the citizenry may have perished.
     But plague was only the beginning of England's deathly woes.  The embattled populace also faced constant danger from tuberculosis, measles, rickets, scurvy, two types of small pox (confluent and hemorrhagic), scrofula, dysentery, and a vast amorphous array of fluxes and fevers - tertian fever, quartian fever, puerperal fever, ship's fever, quotidian fever, spotted fever - as well as "frenzies," "foul evils," and other peculiar maladies of vague and numerous type.  These were, of course, no respecters of rank.  Queen Elizabeth herself was nearly carried off by smallpox in 1562, two years before William Shakespeare was born.

-Bill Bryson,  Shakespeare:  The World as Stage

On daring greatly........................

It is not the critic who counts;  not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.  The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. 

-Teddy Roosevelt, as excerpted from this speech delivered at the Sorbonne in 1910.

This quote was brought to mind by this post about the $20 Billion real estate development project at the Hudson Yards in Manhattan.  Breathtaking vision combined with incredible ambition.   Do scroll through it.

thanks craig

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

Dorothy Kirsten........................................I Wonder As I Wander

We never wore headgear.....................

Twenty-three other images, some of which may have had some bearing on your faithful blogger's mostly successful college career.

Thank you, thank you, thank you........

It only took me 63 years to learn that "once removed" means "one generation removed".  Larger image may be found here.

Beauty...................................

Mannheim Steamroller......................................Greensleeves

Sprinkly things on top..........................

George Strait....................................................Christmas Cookies

Beauty................................

The Licking County Courthouse is all dressed up for Christmas.

One thing's for certain............................

....................guilty or not-guilty, it will be a thoughtful verdict.

Just start dancing..............................

...........................so, let's dance:

extra bonus:  The Gentrys Keep On Dancing

thanks Brian

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

The Ronnettes..........................................................You Baby

The antidote for this.................

................................................may be as simple as this:

Sing along with Alfred E. Neuman here

thanks jess

The kids will be just fine....................

Ben Carlson opines that the "Millennials" may be better than advertised:

"They’re entrepreneurial. They have great ideas. They want to make things better. They want to work with the right people. And they want to be able to go to bed at night with a clear conscience."

I'm guessing (and at the same time, hoping) he is correct.

Magical reinventors......................

"Living things tend to change unrecognizably as they grow.  Who would deduce the dragonfly from the larva, the iris from the bud, the lawyer from the infant?  Flora or fauna, we are all shape-shifters and magical reinventors.   Life is really a plural noun, a caravan of selves."
-Diane Ackerman

Let nothing you dismay.......................

Mannheim Steamroller...............God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

Ageless......................................

Mannheim Steamroller.....................................Pat A Pan



Wiki on Patapan may be found here.

A lesson to be learned........................

Crosby, Stills & Nash...........................Just A Song Before I Go

In Between.............................

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.
-attributed to Confucius

Other stuff attributed to Confucius may be found here.

Growing up, I always thought that part of the story was a bit confusing.......................

via

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

The Beatles.......................................................Ticket To Ride

Learning.................................

thanks John E.

So, relax already.............................

“Taking a break. Been working solid for the last few hours, as opposed to working liquid, which is more drinkable. Can I pour you a glass of productivity?” 
-Jarod Kintz

“Work. Don't Think. Relax.” 
-Ray Bradbury

“Relax and be free. You don't have to prove anything.” 
-Marty Rubin

“The light music of whisky falling into glasses made an agreeable interlude.” 
-James Joyce

“Rest and peace should not be left until you're deceased. They are two vital life incredients everybody needs and seeks.” 
-Rasheed Ogunlaru

“Your calm mind is the ultimate weapon against your challenges. So relax.” 
-Bryant McGill

"The time to relax is when you don't have time for it."
-Sydney J. Harris

"We're making the same mistakes we made 1,000 years ago. So they must be the right ones. So relax."
-Chuck Palahniuk

cartoon via

On dogs teaching humans to share.........

via

When in doubt.........................

.....................................always bet on the optimist.  Primarily because of their faith in human ingenuity.   Bill Gates is willing to make a rather large bet on that ingenuity.   God gave us fertile brains.  For the past eight hundred or so years, we have been using those brains to consistently invent a new world.  Would you bet against it happening again?  Not me.

via

And so it begins.........................

TSO...............................................Carol of the Bells et. al.

Admire..................................

    "It's not complicated.  Ben Graham did it.  Ben Franklin did it.  And nothing could be more simple than to try and figure out what you find admirable and then decide that the person you really would like to admire is yourself.  And the only way you're going to do it is to take on the qualities of other people you admire."
-Warren Buffett

Just a question............

After reading this quote from one of my heroes, the thought arose:   "Didn't science seem a lot more important back in the days before it became all politicized?"

The prisoner..............................

"It's natural that you'd have more brains going into money management. There are so many huge incomes in money management and investment banking -- it's like ants to sugar. There are huge incentives for a man to take up money management as opposed to, say, physics, and it's a lot easier."

"I think it's inevitable but terrible -- a disaster for the wider civilization. I'm somewhat ashamed… That I've profited from being shrewd with money is not by itself satisfying to me. To atone, I teach and try to set an example. I would hate it if the example of my life caused people to pursue the passive ownership of pieces of paper. I think lives so spent are disastrous lives. I think it's a better career if you help build something. I wish I'd built more, but I was cursed at being so good at stock picking. 'The man is the prisoner of his talents.' You can laugh, but I'll bet this room is full of people who are prisoners of their talents. It tends to be the human condition."

-Charlie Munger, as excerpted from here

Right and wrong...............

"No number of experiments can prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."
-Albert Einstein

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

The Ventures.......................................................Sleigh Ride

The Woodrow Wilson brouhaha...........

..............at Princeton University certainly is interesting to watch.   Us history majors know several things for certain; one is that context matters, another is that humans have the demonstrated capacity for tremendous good, as well as tremendous evil.  Sometimes even within the same individual.   It is not something we should forget.

If you are new to the story, this post from The American Interest is a decent starting point.

Life its ownself............................

So in this sense, life is not like a novel. It’s not a movie. It’s a mess.

Unfiltered by social media, life is real. It is what it is.

It is also awesome.

We’ve just forgotten.

-as excerpted from this Ryan Holiday post on the "performance bias" of social media

Life.................................forty some years ago

via

When horns talk........................

Louis Armstrong.....................On The Sunny Side Of The Street

Can I get an Amen.....................................?

Every person reading this today has access to more wealth than the last King of France did. An astounding array of choices, a bounty of available connections and emotions.

Don't let someone else scam you into being unhappy.

-Seth Godin, as excerpted from here

Ten Commandments....................

.............................of investing can be found here.

Like the original, there are eight saying "thou shall not" and only two saying "thou shall."  From the cheap seats, it strikes me the two most important investing commandments are:

1.  Just do it; and,
2.  Start doing it as early as possible.

via

Life its ownself...............................

"The problem isn’t that life is unfair – it’s your broken idea of fairness."   Oliver Emberton challenges us to  re-think our notions of "fairness" and to align ourselves with how the world really works.  Full post is here.  Fun drawings here:

He concludes: "Most of us get so hung up on how we think the world should work that we can’t see how it does. But facing that reality might just be the key to unlocking your understanding of the world, and with it, all of your potential."

thanks stuart

The stiffest headwind.........................

If you are one of those folks who seek to understand why things are the way things are, and if you do not study up on "demographics,"  your understanding will likely be incomplete.  One version of the tale may be found here.  Enjoy.

via

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

The Who...............................................Please, Please, Please




Please, Please, Please was written (in part) by James Brown and released in 1956.  Surely you want to watch a 1964 video of one of the all-time great performers in the history of performing sing his own song.