idealized...........................

      The school did not teach science but did give classes in freehand drawing and also technical drawing, a subject that provided Dirac with one of the foundations for his unique way of thinking about science. . . . Technical drawing, used by engineers to render three-dimensional objects on a flat piece of paper, is now taught at very few English junior schools, and rarely at senior level.  Yet, in the early twentieth century, it was a compulsory subject for half the pupils: for a few lessons each week, the class would be split into two: the girls studied needlework, while the boys were taught technical drawing.  In these classes, Dirac learned to make idealized visualisations of various manufactured products by showing them from three orthogonal points of view, making no allowance for the distortions of perspective.

-Graham Farmelo, The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom

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

 It was possible, Sofia Ravello would tell the Carabinieri later that day, to spend the majority of one's waking hours in another man's home, to prepare his meals and wash his sheets and sweep his floors, and to know absolutely nothing about him.  The officer from the Carabinieri, whose name was Caruso, did not take issue with her statement, for the woman who had shared his bed for the last twenty-five years was at time a perfect stranger to him.  He also knew a bit more about the victim than he had thus far revealed to the witness.  The man was a murder waiting to happen.

-Daniel Silva, The Collector

Impossible.............................

Gioacchino Rossini........................William Tell Overture (the fun starts at 8:45)

 

cartoon from here

Is this a great country, or what.............?

 more fun here

Having fun with the HOA...................

 

more birding fun here

Life Its Ownself.......................

 ...........the joys of parenting — and grandparenting:

Should you choose (or decide)..............

...................... a tutorial from Nicholas Bate.

The Luckiest Generation......................

 Ben Carlson posts on the amazing investment returns (in all investment categories) available over the last 40 years and opines that the world will never see the like again.  Us Boomers have been lucky, plain and simple.  Too be fair, Carlson also points out that it wasn't always smooth sailing and beds of roses and that significant perils had to be faced along the way.  Won't be challenging his perception of us Boomers being lucky, but he left out our most important piece of luck - the people we were parented by,

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

Michael Franks..............................Michael Franks

 

unconventional analysis......................

. . . you can design an organization while thinking of the history of Arabia and Indochina.

-Michael Wade

lifelong skepticism................

      Like Churchill, Orwell saw little of his father, who traveled from Burma to visit his family in 1907, and then moved in with them when he retired in1912. "I barely saw my father before I was eight," Orwell noted.  By that time, the boy had been shipped off to boarding school.  The distant figure of Orwell's father "appeared to me simply as a gruff-voiced elderly man forever saying 'Don't.'"  So began Orwell's lifelong skepticism of authority.

-Thomas E. Ricks, Churchill & Orwell: The Fight for Freedom

Home......................

 

Some people become depressed at the scale of the universe, because it makes them feel insignificant.  Other people are relieved to feel insignificant, which is even worse.  But in any case, these are mistakes.  Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same logic as feeling insignificant for not being a cow.  Or a herd of cows.  The universe is not there to overwhelm us; it is our home, and our resource.  The bigger the better.

-David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

image via

churning..............................

 Both Tim Ferriss and Naval Ravikant have spoken of the need to quiet their "monkey mind." This is an ancient Buddhist description of the churning of the ego. Makes a lot of sense when seen in that light.

-Chris Lynch

Two down.........................

more fun here 

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

 It would be to Adams' detriment as president that he would not be able to lead so well as his predecessor did.  Washington understood, as Adams did not, that especially in a new republic, these large gestures would resonate with the people.  In this nation, the people were not the governed, they were sovereign, which meant their needs must be addressed.  Adams never liked that fact or even really understood it, and that failure would haunt his presidency.

-Thomas E. Ricks, First Principles

The core............................

 The core here is realizing that people are not spreadsheets. They are emotional, hormonal, misinformed, status-seeking, insecure creatures trying their best to make it through the day. So if you have to choose between understanding how the world should work in theory vs. how it actually works in practice, lean towards the latter. It’s like historian Will Durant once said: “Logic is an invention of man and may be ignored by the universe.” That is so smart.

-Morgan Housel, from here

supposes..........................

 Excessive obedience supposes ignorance in the person that obeys: the same it supposes in him that commands, for he has no occasion to deliberate, to doubt, to reason; he has only to will.

-Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu