metal Christmas.....................

August Burns Red................................Jingle Bells

How to have a plyometric breakdown................

Life in the fast (and healthy) lane, with the always interesting Penelope Trunk.

Nary a commission-based job on the list........

A list for "12 fast-growing and high-paying jobs in 2014" is here.  Maybe this is just my bias, but the really good jobs don't pay by the hour.  Just saying.

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

Sonny Rollins et. al...................There Will Never Be Another You

Preference....................................

"Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have."
-Harry Emerson Fosdick

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics....................

Manipulate the data all you want, but the numbers themselves tend not to lie.

thanks craig

The Execupundit..................................

.................................goes all zen on us.

When snowmen go bad.................

for the rest of Bilbo's "cartoon saturday," go here.

I don't want a lot....................................

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

Opening paragraphs...........Part One

In May 1966 Henry R. Luce - cofounder of what became the largest and most influential magazine empire in America - agreed to participate in an exclusive television interview for the first time in his life.  Luce was then sixty-eight years old and had retired as editor in chief of Time Inc. two years earlier.  But he remained a figure of fascination to many Americans - all the more so because he was so seldom seen by the many people who were influenced, fascinated, and sometimes outraged by the contents of his magazines.
-Alan Brinkley, from the Preface to The Publisher:  Henry Luce and His American Century

Opening paragraphs..............Part the Second

In the beginning they were a tiny vanguard, clinging precariously to the rim of the great Chinese landmass - a few earnest, lonely, often frightened men and women engaged in an almost entirely futile enterprise.  They lived among Western merchants but shared little with them.  For their task was not to build trade.  It was to save souls.
-Alan Brinnkley,  The Publisher:  Henry Luce and His American Century

A worthy vision.............................

“To see life;  to see the world;  to eyewitness great events;  to watch the faces of the poor and the gestures of the proud;  to see strange things-machines, armies, multitudes, shadows in the jungle and on the moon;  to see man's work-his paintings, towers, and discoveries;  to see things thousands of miles away, things hidden behind walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to;  the women that men love and many children; to see and take pleasure in seeing;  to see and be amazed;  to see and be instructed...”
-Henry Luce

Fifty years ago................Wow!

Judy Garland......................Battle Hymn of the Republic

Stronger.............................

thanks todd

If I had to guess.............................

.........I'd say this near-perfect plasma sphere has far more to say about global warming and cooling than anything us humans do.  Just a guess though.

It's your lucky day......................

In a perfect world........................

.......................we'll be trimming the tree tonight!

James Taylor..........................................Deck the Halls

Opening paragraphs.............Part the First

In the four years that Abraham Lincoln would be president, the American public would gradually discover, much to its collective astonishment, that this unprepossessing Illinois politician had remarkable abilities as a writer.  In that brief period, and in the midst of a relentless siege of crises and distractions, he would produce not one or two examples of provocative writing (which would itself be more than most presidents could manage) but a whole series of unmistakably impressive documents.  Even though confined to such unpromising formats as ceremonial speeches, messages to Congress, proclamations, and public letters in newspapers, Lincoln's presidential writing proved to be timely, engaging, consistently lucid, compelling in argument, and most important of all, invested with memorable and even inspiring language.  Eventually it began to be recognized that Lincoln's unsuspected literary talent was having a decisive effect in shaping public attitudes and was a telling factor in the success of his policies.  Only with his death, however, did it begin to dawn on his contemporaries that Abraham Lincoln's words were destined to find a permanent place in the American imagination.
-Douglas L. Wilson,  from the Prologue to Lincoln's Sword:  The Presidency and the Power of Words

Opening paragraphs.........Part the Second

On the day before his fifty-second birthday, February 11, 1861, President-elect Abraham Lincoln boarded a train in Springfield, Illinois, and set off for Washington.  Before leaving his hometown, he had said a series of good-byes.  Ten days earlier he had paid an emotional visit to his aged stepmother and visited the grave of his father.  He had hosted a public reception, personally greeting the hundreds of well-wishers who streamed into and out of his house at Eighth and Jackson.  The day before, he had made a final, nostalgic visit to his law office and his law partner of sixteen years, William H. Herndon.  Inside the Great Western Railway station, just prior to his train's departure, he gravely shook hands with the loyal contingent of close friends who had braved an early morning hour and drizzling rain to see him off.  Ordinarily a man of remarkable self-control, Lincoln was unable to disguise his feelings.  As he shook hands with his friends, according to a reporter on the scene, "his face was pale and quivered with emotion so deep as to render him almost unable to utter a single word."
-Douglas L. Wilson, Lincoln's Sword:  The Presidency and the Power of Words

Expectations..................................

“Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you’re a good person is like expecting a bull not to attack you because you’re a vegetarian.” 
-Dennis Wholey