Ah, science.......................

 The lesson, therefore, of the Covid pandemic is that the risk of a natural outbreak going global is probably much smaller than the risk of a lab-leak outbreak going global. And here is the greatest irony of all. If Covid began with a lab leak, it was not just caused by virology research: it was caused by virology research that was specifically intended to predict and prevent pandemics. Even if this time it was just a horrible coincidence, they were looking for a gas leak with a lighted match, as one scientist put it.

-Matt Ridley, from here

Remember.................

 

We’re not stuck in traffic, we are traffic. 

-Seth Godin, from this post

principles.................

 

In a democracy it is idle to praise the virtues of a statesman who can't persuade the public.  But we should not judge him entirely by that failure, either.  The voters turned against him, after all, for standing firm on the same beliefs he held when they elected him—sound money, freer trade, and limited government interference in the economy.  In some sense it was a testimony to his integrity: even at a moment of maximum political peril, Grover Cleveland's principles were not open for bidding.

-Troy Senik, A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland.

utilize.......................

High-hope people take every experience they have as a learning experience—no matter the experience.   Everything happens for them, not to them.  They utilize every experience to improve how they live and approach life.

-Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy, 10x Is Easier Than 2x

File under "good questions"................

 

   more fun here

Walking with joy..................

 

......................through the valley of the shadow. . .

One more thing he got right......................

 

The failure of Western governments to achieve their proclaimed objectives has produced a widespread reaction against big government. . . . The reaction may prove short-lived and be followed, after a brief interval, by a resumption of the trend toward ever bigger government.  The widespread enthusiasm for reducing government taxes and other impositions is not matched by a comparable enthusiasm for eliminating government programs—except programs that benefit other people.

-Milton & Rose Friedman, Free To Choose

quaked..................................

 

     How can I, hearing the sermon on the mount, not be earthquaked, mindquaked, lifequaked—hearing it, how can I not be quaked in depths below life and mind I had hitherto no inklings of?

-John Moriarty, Dreamtime

ephemeral.......................

 

Carpe Diem (seize the day) is best instantiated when one recognizes the ephemeral and finite nature of our existence.

-Gad Saad

Did I mention we just got back from Napa Valley?

The Fireballs......................................Bottle of Wine

 

Tough duty...........................

 There are prophets, there are guides, and there are argumentative people with theories, and one must be careful to discriminate between them.

-Peter Brook

via

It could have been worse........................

 

..........................as us Browns fans truly know.

Never let book-learning.............

 

.................................get in the way of your education.

I fell off the top....................

 

...............................of one of these things in third grade at Merion Elementary School.  Landed on my head.  Might explain a lot.

via

As investment advice goes...................

 

....................................it would be hard to improve on this list.   A wee sample:

To reap the biggest rewards you must be able to take the painful hits and keep moving forward. Which is why the ultimate superpower in investing is being good at suffering.

Just because........................

Manfred Mann............Doo Wah Diddy Diddy

genuine........................

 

Unless we, both as individuals and as a society, start to embrace a genuine existence that brings risks of failure, unpleasantness, and unpredictability as well as achievement, happiness, and love, we will eventually wind up in a very artificial and narrow existence: a prison cell of our own making.

-Michael Wade, as culled from here

Harder than it looks................

 

Our society is what we make it.  We can shape our institutions.  Physical and human characteristics limit the alternatives available to us.  But none prevent us, if we will, from building a society that relies primarily on voluntary cooperation to organize both economic and other activity, a society that preserves and expands human freedom, that keeps government in its place, keeping it our servant and not letting it become our master.

-Milton & Rose Friedman, Free To Choose: A Personal Statement

a product.......................

 

Material possessions can be here today and gone tomorrow, and if your happiness is tied up in them, it too can be here today and gone tomorrow.  But happiness, a product of a mindset that combines curiosity, the joy of perpetual intellectual discovery, and an appreciation of life's experiences, can be more lasting.

-Gad Saad,  The Saad Truth About Happiness

compulsive................

 

First Facebook, then the iPhone compulsive communicating and connecting—supported by mysterious, almost magical innovations in radio modulation and fiber-optic routing—swept our culture before anyone had the presence of mind to step back and re-ask Thoreau's fundamental question: To what end?

     The result is a society left reeling by unintended consequences.  We eagerly signed up for what Silicon Valley was selling, but soon realized that in doing so we were accidentally degrading our humanity.

-Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World

To your ownself be true....................

 

A talented person can quickly become mediocre when you force them to be someone they aren’t.

-Morgan Housel, from here

Don't ask the question if you can't handle the answer.....................

 I run into trouble when I ask myself why I’m doing things.

-Annie Mueller

goals..................

 

Seemingly impossible goals are more practical than possible goals because impossible goals force you outside your current level of knowledge and assumptions.

-Dan Sullivan with Dr. Benjamin Hardy, 10x Is Easier Than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More By Doing Less

encroachment..................

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial.  Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers.  The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. 

-Louis Brandeis

bad parenting........................

 

     However, government's responsibility for the depression was not recognized—either then or now.  Instead, the depression was widely interpreted as a failure of free market capitalism.  That myth led the public to join the intellectuals in a changed view of the relative responsibilities of individuals and government.  Emphasis on the responsibility of the individual for his own fate was replaced by emphasis on the individual as a pawn buffeted by forces beyond his control.  The view that government's role is to serve as an umpire to prevent individuals from coercing one another was replaced by the view that government's role is to serve as a parent charged with the duty of coercing some to aid others.

-Milton & Rose Friedman, Free To Choose: A Personal Statement

He is pretty focused..................

 

     The central focus of this book is to explore another set of pathogens that are potentially as dangerous to the human condition: parasitic pathogens of the human mind.  These are composed of thought patterns, belief systems, attitudes, and mindsets that parasitize one's ability to think properly and accurately.  Once these mind viruses take hold of one's neuronal circuitry, the afflicted victim loses the ability to use reason, logic, and science to navigate the world.  Instead, one sinks into an abyss of infinite lunacy best defined as a dogged and proud departure from reality, common sense, and truth.

-Gad Saad, The Parasitic Mind:  How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense

deprivation......................

 

Solitude Deprivation:  A state in which you spend close to zero time alone with your own thoughts and free from input from other minds.

-Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World

Checking in with...........................

 

...................................Edward Gibbon:

Conversation enriches understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.

We improve ourselves by victory over our self. There must be contests, and you must win.

The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.

All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.

History is indeed little more than the register of crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.

Every person has two educations, one which he receives from others, and one, more important, which he gives to himself

There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times.

It was an inflexible maxim of Roman discipline that good soldier should dread his own officers far more than the enemy.

Instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long.

Checking in with Will.......................

 

Toby.  Approach, Sir Andrew.  Not to be abed after midnight is to be up betimes; and "Deliculo surgere," thou know'st.*

Andrew.  Nay, by my troth, I know not, but I know to be up late is to be up late,

Toby.  A false conclusion; I hate it as an unfilled can.  To be up after midnight, and to go to bed then, is early; so that to go to bed after midnight is to go to bed betimes.  Does not our lives consist of the four elements?

Andrew.  Faith, so they say; but I think it rather consists of eating and drinking.

Toby.  Th' art a scholar!  Let us therefore eat and drink.  Marian I say, a stoup of wine!

-William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night,  Act II, Scene III

*Ed. Note:  Those of Shakespeare's time would have recognized Diluculo surgere saluberrimum est as "it is most beautiful to rise early.

Finding good advice where you can..........

 

     The popularity of health books or "dietaries" attested to people's concern bout personal health, as did the sections on home remedies for the sick to be found in many cookbooks.  The dietaries were comprised largely of advice on diet as related to health.  Every edible thing was analyzed with relation to its effect on health.  Those with "melancholicke" nature were advised to eat certain foods and avoid others; those of "cholericke" temperament were warned against foods that might increase their choler.  Some foods were dangerous because they caused "bad blood"; still others could fill the body and head with "evil vapours."  And some foods could "increase man's seed," a desirable thing, it may have seemed to many, since so many children died young.

-Madge Lorwin, Dining With Shakespeare:  Thirteen complete Shakespearean feast menus, spiced with essays and comments on the food and social customs of Elizabethan England