The stars were bright above....................

Fred Parris and the Satins...............In The Still Of The Night

Wishful thinking..................................

      By the 1750's the Enlightenment had become the continent's child as well, but it had been Britain's baby.  Issac Newton's revelation in Principia Mathematica (1687) that the universe is rational, obeying fixed and predictable laws, had changed the way that people perceived the universe.  God was no longer the interfering, jealous God of the Old Testament nor the loving God of the New, but God the Clockmaker, setting the universe of a course governed forever after by mathematically perfect immutable laws.  If only mortals had enough data, they could predict everything that happened, and the tool whereby they could do this in a clocklike universe was reason.  Reason, sweet and infallible, should be brought to bear on hoary traditions that governed the pursuit of knowledge, relationships between the sexes and the social classes, standards of art and music, and the exercise of political power.
-Charles Murray, Human Accomplishment:  The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950

Stuff you almost never think of................

"Without a massive planet like Jupiter nearby, whose gravity will draw away asteroids, a thousand times as many would hit Earth’s surface."
-thanks David

On leadership..................................

3.  The Master said, Govern the people by regulations, keep order among them by chastisements, and they will flee from you, and lose all self-respect.  Govern them by moral force, keep order among them by ritual and they will keep their self-respect and come to you of their own accord.
-Book II, The Analects of Confucius


6.  The Master said, If the ruler himself is upright, all will go well even though he does not give orders.  But if he himself is not upright, even though he gives orders, they will not be obeyed.
-Book XIII, The Analects of Confucius

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

A long time between drinks......................................

Playing with matches........................

“There are men running governments who shouldn't be allowed to play with matches.”
-attributed to Will Rogers

Worth remembering................................

      Famines subsided along with the plague.  It is hard to realize today, but famine was a common European phenomenon through 18C.  France, for example, among the richest of the European countries, experienced 13 general famines in 16C, 11 in 17C, and 16 in 18C, plus hundreds of local famines that affected a single town or region.  The explanation for the famines was simple.  The yields from cereal grains were low and the capacity to store reserves primitive.  Two bad harvests in a row, and people starved.  It was during 18C that technological progress in agriculture began to break the grip of that brutal arithmetic.
-Charles Murray,  Human Accomplishments:  The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950

The bile of Seneca...........................

From then onwards no mansion would be complete without its library of shelves or cupboards for collection of many-coloured rolls.  Then, as now, rich men with not real literary interests bought libraries for show, only to incur the scorn of philosophers like Seneca, who, himself a millionaire, preached modesty and restraint to others, denouncing those who 'lacking the most elementary culture, possess books not for study but as decorations for their dining-rooms'.  No house of any pretentions, he said, lacked 'its library with shelves of rare cedar wood and ivory from floor to ceiling as well as its hot and cold bathing rooms'.  It stirred his bile to see 'the works of divine genius bought merely for show to decorate a wall'.  Despite such lashing, the newly rich continued the practice and thereby kept many an honest bookseller active from whose industry real scholars were also able to benefit.
-F. R. Cowell, Life in Ancient Rome

About role models................................

12.   The Financial Times wrote, "In 2008 the three most admired personalities in sport were probably Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong and Oscar Pistorius." The same falls from grace happen in investing. Chose your role models carefully. 
-from this list of 122 Things Everyone Should Know About Investing and The Economy

Love the technology...................................

The Diamonds...................................................Little Darlin'

Thanks......................................

"If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is 'Thank you,'  that would suffice."
-attributed to Meister Eckhart

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

All he could see, in every direction, was water.
      It was late June 1943.  Somewhere on the endless expanse of the Pacific Ocean, Army Air Forces bombardier and Olympic runner Louie Zamperini lay across a small raft, drifting westward.  Slumped alongside him was a sergeant, one of his plane's gunners.  On a separate raft, tethered to the first, lay another crewman, a gash zigzagging across his forehead.  Their bodies, burned by the sun and stained yellow from the raft dye, had withered down to skeletons.  Sharks glided in lazy loops around them, dragging their backs along the rafts, waiting.
-Laura Hillenbrand, from the Preface to Unbroken

My sweetie and I took the family to see the movie Unbroken last evening.  We suggest you see it.  After you do, if you are curious what post-traumatic stress can look like, read the book.  Powerful stuff.  A trailer for the movie is here.

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

via

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

Bobby Vee............................The Night Has A Thousand Eyes

Home is.............................................

...............................................................where the hearth is.

Let me paint.............................................

...........................................you a picture of true leadership.

I wonder if...............................................

..................I can use this as an excuse to get out of jury duty.

Fun stuff to remember...............................

     The most striking difference for a modern observer visiting -8000 would have been the scarcity of humans.  People lived just about everywhere, from the farthest southern reaches of today's Chile to the Norse tundra, but they would have been hard to find, living in small and isolated bands.  They had to be scattered, because the human animal is a carnivore by preference, and large carnivores surviving off the land require a large range - about 5,000 acres per person, in the case of carnivore Homo sapiens.  Depending on local conditions, a band of just 25 hunter-gatherers could require more than a thousand square miles.  The world of -8000 probably supported fewer than 4 million human beings, roughly the population of contemporary Kentucky.
-Charles Murray,  Human Accomplishments, The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950

Extreme playing.....................................

via

Merry Christmas

11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord

-The Holy Bible, Luke 2:11
King James Version