The joys (and agony) of parenting.............

 Sometimes you provide the most help with the assistance you withhold.

-Morgan Housel

teachings...........................

 The worst lesson that can be taught a man is to rely upon others and to whine over his sufferings. . . .

It is both foolish and wicked to teach the average man who is not well off that some wrong or injustice has been done him, and that he should hope for redress elsewhere than in his own industry, honesty and intelligence.

-Teddy Roosevelt, from this 1897 essay

Umm.................no

 

Often, I’m waiting for the biggest Jackpot of all: the spontaneous remission of all my problems without any required effort. Someone suggests a way out of my predicament and I go, “Hmm, I dunno, do you have any solutions that involve me doing everything 100% exactly like I’m doing it right now, and getting better outcomes?”

-Adam Mastroianni, as quoted here

As a once-upon-a-time history major........

 

.........I am a firm believer in The Great Man Theory.

Spend it wisely.............................

 

......................a wee excerpt from Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s recent annual report to shareholders:

However, as Charlie and I have always acknowledged, Berkshire would not have achieved its results in any locale except America whereas America would have been every bit the success it has been if Berkshire had never existed. 

                                 * * * * * * * * * * * *  

So thank you, Uncle Sam. Someday your nieces and nephews at Berkshire hope to send you even larger payments than we did in 2024. [To be precise, Berkshire last year made four payments to the IRS that totaled $26.8 billion.]  Spend it wisely. Take care of the many who, for no fault of their own, get the short straws in life. They deserve better. And never forget that we need you to maintain a stable currency and that result requires both wisdom and vigilance on your part.

via

In the backgound.........................

Barenaked Ladies.....all their greatest hits...Disc One

  

story telling......................

 

Nature and her secrets must be as stimulating to the imagination as are poetry and fables.  To that end, Bacon advised us to use aphorisms, illustrations, stories, fables, analogies—anything that conveys truth from the discoverer to his readers as clearly as a picture.  The mind, he argues, "is not like a wax tablet.  On a tablet you cannot write the new till you rub out the old; on the mind you cannot rub out the old except by writing in the new."

-Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

idols of the mind...............

Through light shed on the mental process, Bacon wished to reform reasoning across all the branches of learning.  Beware, he said, of the idols of the mind, the fallacies into which undisciplined thinkers most easily fall.  They are the real distorting prisms of human nature.

-Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge 

On moving fast and breaking things............

 But the argument I have heard recently that is more likely to resonate with the Democrat's traditional (read: sane) base is something like "we are all for explorations of government efficiency but think it needs to be done in a much more measured and careful way." Unfortunately, for anyone with any experience in organizational cost cutting, a "measured pace" is another way of saying "let's move slow enough so the antibodies in the system have time to kill us." As a result, if anything, I think DOGE is moving too slow.

-Warren Meyer, at the Coyote Blog

Can I get an Amen.......................?

 

On one thing, the president’s supporters and detractors can agree: Donald Trump is a disruptor. 

-from The Front Page

all too human.......................

 It seems to me scientific thinking about human behavior comes with great difficulty to most people. But moralistic thinking — identifying enemies, choosing sides — comes easily and naturally.

-Jason Manning, as culled from here

In the background...................

             The Band............................Greatest Hits

 

Ah, history............................

 

Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.

-attributed to Marcus Aurelius

sever........................

 

     The only obstacle to effectual praying, in this world of spiritual fellowship, would be individual selfishness.  To want to get just for one's own self, to ask for something which brings loss and injury to others, would be to sever one's self from the source of blessings, and to lose not only the thing sought but to lose, as well, one's very self.

-Rufus Jones, The Double Search: Studies in Atonement and Prayer

the rebirth of................................

 

.........................................science?

just another day...............

 

Now it sounds like Donald Trump to merge the US Postal Service as a subordinate service to the Commerce Department. This would have been a big deal in any other administration but just another day in Trump world...

-Chris Lynch

Choosing..................

 If you’re trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right.

-Paul Graham