A behavior modification technique...........

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A child.....................................................

Johnny Mathis............................Do You Hear What I Hear?

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

      Before human accomplishment could begin, we had first of all to become human.  It took a long time.  Bipedality came first, somewhere in the vicinity of five million years ago.  After bipedality, about two and a half million years passed before the animal that walked on two legs learned to make crude tools.  The taming of fire required another one and a half million years.
      Even then, after those unimaginably long spans of time, the creature was still Homo erectus, of formidable talents compared to other animal but still not yet recognizably human.  With his beetled visage and lumbering gait, Homo erectus did lot look human.  More to the point, he did not think like a human.  Homo erectus had a cranial capacity averaging only two-thirds of ours, and his mind was inhumanly slow.
      The animal that the paleo-anthropologists call Homo sapiens and that we identify as human appeared about 200,000 years ago.  It is sometime after this point that human accomplishment begins.  But when?  Shall we mark the beginning at the moment when a human first spoke a word?  Drew an image?  Sang a song?  Choosing a precise moment is, of course, as subjective as trying to specify exactly when human being stopped being Homo erectus and started being Homo sapiens.  But if one were forced to mark the dawn of human accomplishment, the year -8000 has much to recommend it.
-Charles Murray,  Human Accomplishment:  The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Science, 800 B.C to 1950

Still more to accomplish...................................?

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A hopeful heart....................................

      Golf isn't important, but there's value in taking unimportant things seriously and serious things lightly.  So let's not play golf in order to get better at it.  Don't make it into another striving, another activity stuffed into an already overstuffed life, something else to "work at".
     "Let's not be busy this Orkney summer," I say.
      On the gearstick her hand drops lightly on mine.

-Andrew Greig,  Preferred Lies:  A Journey to the Heart of Scottish Golf

Ta-da............................................

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

Lon Chaney, Jr........................................Monster Holiday

For the want..............................................

"A great deal of talent is lost to the world for the want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves a number of obscure men who have only remained obscure because their timidity has prevented them from making a first effort."
-Sydney Smith

Never abandon your search for truth and beauty.

More Random Thoughts from Michael Wade:

"Not a week goes by without someone declaring that an apple is an orange. Those who vow to fight to the death for a particular principle often have schedule-conflicts on the day of the battle."

Wouldn't surprise me if it was $80 by February...

"If this rate of sell-off is sustained," said trader continued wryly, "oil will be free by mid-January."
-as excerpted from this Megan McArdle post

My only problem gas prices is that when we had long car trips scheduled the price was $3.60 plus.  Now we're staying at home and its $2.20 a gallon.  I'm trying not to take it personally, but how did they know?

Time............................................

For goodness sake..................................

The Boss and his mates........Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

The Mad Farmer's Love Song................

O when the world's at peace
and every man is free
then will I go down unto my love.

O and I may go down
several times before that.

-Wendell Berry

Mindfulness................................

"The coffee is carefully made. It is sipped as the day's plans are slowly written on an index card. I pause and listen to the sounds of the heater, some distant birds, and the dog stretching in the other room. Ideas stagger in with sleep in their eyes. I'd forgotten they were invited but am glad they made it before I went out the door. 

"If I'd rushed I would have missed them."
-Warren Buffett Michael Wade

Because you always wanted to know.....

                    The Taming of the Wild Chile

     Paleoethnobotanists, the scientists who study the plants used by ancient civilizations, have theorized that chiles were first used as "tolerated weeds."  They were not cultivated but rather collected in the wild when the fruits were ripe.  The wild forms had small, erect fruits that were deciduous, meaning that they separated easily from the calyx and fell to the ground.  During the collection process, whether consciously or unconsciously, the pre-Columbian farmers selected seeds from plants with larger, non-deciduous, and pendant fruits.  The reasons for those selection criteria are a greater yield from each plant and protection of the pods from chile-hungry birds.  The larger the pod, the greater its tendency to become pendant rather than to remain erect.  Thus the pods became hidden amid the leaves and did not protrude above them as beacons for birds.  The selection of varieties with the tendency to be non-deciduous ensured that the pods remained on the plant until fully ripe and thus were resistant to dropping off as a result of wind or physical contact.  The domesticated chiles gradualy lost their natural means of seed dispersal by birds and became dependent upon human intervention for their continued existence.
-Dave DeWitt,  Precious Cargo:  How Foods From The Americas Changed The World

Context:  In the year 595 (+/-?) a volcanic eruption in El Salvador buried a Mayan farming village under twenty feet of lava, ash, and rock.  In 1978, the site was discovered and excavation begun.  It has been a treasure trove for scientists.  "We had no idea that people in the region lived so well fourteen centuries ago."

Hmmm...................................

"Allah will not be merciful to those who are not merciful to people."
-Sahih al-Bukhari

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

Steve Lawrence/Eydie Gorme...............That Holiday Feeling

Learning Chinese the easy way.................

............by visiting The Borderline Sociopathic Blog for Boys.

Scottish Presbyterian Zen golf....................

     But we're here, now, which is all we'll ever be as Jenny runs her tee shot right onto the green, looks delighted then embarrassed as we congratulate her.  Mike tops his into horrible rough;  I drag mine into a greenside bunker, and we all set off in pursuit of the consequences of our actions.  Golf is a Scottish Presbyterian karma game.  You pay for what you get, and what you get is what you did.  It's also somehow finally God's Will and out of your control, so don't rail against it.
-Andrew Greig,  Preferred Lies:  A Journey to the Heart of Scottish Golf

About 50 million light years away................

More about NGC 7331, a spiral galaxy a long, long way from home, can be found here.  Looking at the photo, the question arose:  What is at the center of our "Milky Way" galaxy?  The Oracle Google was consulted.  Not sure I understood what I was reading, but it doesn't sound friendly.