Progress.......................

 

     Exactly when the first beer was brewed is not known.  There was almost certainly no beer before 10,000 BCE, but it was widespread in the Near East by 4000 BCE, when it appears in a pictogram from Mesopotamia, a region that corresponds to modern-day Iraq, depicting two figures drinking beer through reed straws from a large pottery jar.  (Ancient beer had grains, chaff, and other debris floating on its surface, so a straw was necessary to avoid swallowing them.)

-Tom Standage, A History of the World in Six Glasses

the initiative individual...........

 

      Here the initiative individual—the "great man," the "hero," the "genius"—regains his place as a formative force in history.  His not quite the god that Carlyle described, he grows out of his time and land, and is the product and symbol of events as well as their agent and voice; without some situation requiring a new response his new ideas would be untimely and impractical.  When he is a hero of action, the demands of his position and the exaltation of crisis develop and inflate him to such magnitude and powers as would in normal times have remained potential and untapped.  But he is not merely an effect.  Events take place through him as well as around him, his ideas and decisions enter vitally into the course of history.  At times his eloquence, like Churchill's, may be worth a thousand regiments: his foresight in strategy and tactics, like Napoleon's, may win battles and campaigns and establish states.  If he is a prophet like Mohammed, wise in the means of inspiring men, his words may raise a poor and disadvantaged people to unpremeditated ambitions and surprising power.  A Pasteur, a Morse, an Edison, a Ford, a Wright, a Marx, a Lenin, a Mao Tse-tung are effects of numberless causes, and causes of endless effects.

-Will & Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History

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

George Winston.........................Plains album

 

Winging it.................

 

Checking in with wee Robbie Burns........

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And auld lang syne!

     Chorus:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
     For auld lang syne.
     We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
     For auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint stowp!
And surely I’ll be mine!
And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

     Chorus

We twa hae run about the braes,
And pou’d the gowans fine;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,
Sin’ auld lang syne.

     Chorus

We twa hae paidl’d in the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
Sin’ auld lang syne.

     Chorus

And there’s a hand, my trusty fere!
And gie’s a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak a right gude-willie waught,
For auld lang syne.

     Chorus

On discovering P. G. Wodehouse......

     I know I am late to the party where Wodehouse (1881-1975) is concerned, but then better late than never.  Was recently gifted a copy of fore!, the best of Wodehouse on Golf.  (Thanks David).  What a hoot!   Here is a wee excerpt:

We of the present day, living in the midst of a million marvels of a complex civilization, have learned to adjust ourselves to conditions and to take for granted phenomena which in an earlier and less advanced age would have caused the profoundest excitement and even alarm. We accept without comment the telephone, the automobile, and the wireless telegraph, and we are unmoved by the spectacle of our fellow human beings in the grip of the first stages of golf fever. Far otherwise was it with the courtiers and officials about the Palace of Oom. The obsession of the King was the sole topic of conversation.

Every day now, starting forth at dawn and returning only with the falling of darkness, Merolchazzar was out on the Linx, as the outdoor temple of the new god was called. In a luxurious house adjoining this expanse the bearded Scotsman had been installed, and there he could be found at almost any hour of the day fashioning out of holy wood the weird implements indispensable to the new religion. As a recognition of his services, the King had bestowed upon him a large pension, innumerable kaddiz or slaves, and the title of Promoter of the King’s Happiness, which for the sake of convenience was generally shortened to The Pro.

At present, Oom being a conservative country, the worship of the new god had not attracted the public in great numbers. In fact, except for the Grand Vizier, who, always a faithful follower of his sovereign’s fortunes, had taken to Gowf from the start, the courtiers held aloof to a man. But the Vizier had thrown himself into the new worship with such vigour and earnestness that it was not long before he won from the King the title of Supreme Splendiferous Maintainer of the Twenty-Four Handicap Except on Windy Days when It Goes Up to Thirty⁠—a title which in ordinary conversation was usually abbreviated to The Dub.

All these new titles, it should be said, were, so far as the courtiers were concerned, a fruitful source of discontent. There were black looks and mutinous whispers. The laws of precedence were being disturbed, and the courtiers did not like it. It jars a man who for years has had his social position all cut and dried⁠—a man, to take an instance at random, who, as Second Deputy Shiner of the Royal Hunting Boots, knows that his place is just below the Keeper of the Eel-Hounds and just above the Second Tenor of the Corps of Minstrels⁠—it jars him, we say, to find suddenly that he has got to go down a step in favour of the Hereditary Bearer of the King’s Baffy.

Wishing you the happiest New Year possible....

 

currency...............

 

History worth looking at...........

 

 Franklin’s central point was that everyone needed to adjust their expectations, that neither political perfection nor moral purity was ever in the cards at the Constitutional Convention.

-Joseph Ellis, The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding

via

About those free lunches...........

 

Improved confidence in the future is a good thing in and of itself, since it surely promotes greater saving and investment, which ultimately translate into more and better-paying jobs and higher living standards. On the other hand, finding good values in a period of tranquility becomes harder, and the market becomes more susceptible to disappointments. There's no free lunch, but things could certainly be a lot worse than they are today.

-Scott Grannis, from this post

blessed...................

 

We bless this year for all we learned,

For all we loved and lost

And for the quiet way it brought us

Nearer to our invisible destination.

-John O'Donohue

the free efforts..............

 

The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men's fatal striving to control society—a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.

-F. A. Hayek, as he concludes this "The Pretense of Knowledge" lecture

Crystal ball time........................

 

Bull markets can last longer than you think but we can’t have above-average returns forever.

Therein lies the biggest risk in 2026…or 2027 or 2028 or some undetermined year in the future.

Eventually, above-average returns lead to below-average returns. Sometimes the biggest reason for bad returns is because good returns lasted for so long.

Predictions are hard.

Inching our way.......................

 

The customer is always right...........?

 

more fun here

a difference maker..........

 

     The way you do anything is the way you do everything, and we found, over and over, that precision in the smallest of details translated into precision in bigger ones.

----------------

Remember: there's often a brilliant idea right behind a bad one.

----------------

     He discovered that when he gave the teams responsibility, they became more responsible; elevated by his trust in them, they stepped up into the role.

----------------

     I've made it my mission to help the people who work for me see what's important about what they do.  Even at MoMA, we didn't see our guests as a bunch of customers looking for lunch; we saw them as museumgoers—people on an adventure, realizing their dream of being inspired at one of the greatest modern art museums on earth.  That simple shift had an automatic and profound impact on how our teams acted, and on the hospitality our guests received. . . .It's the difference between coming to work to do your job and coming to work to be a part of something bigger than yourself.

     Without exception, no matter what you do, you can make a difference in someone's life.  You must be able to name for yourself why your work matters.  And if you are a leader, you need to encourage everyone on your team to do the same.

-Will Guidara, a few excerpts from Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect

Not much improved....................

 

     Technology is fine, but the scientists and engineers only partially think through their problems.  They solve certain aspects but not the total, and as a consequence it is slapping us back in the face very hard.

-Evelyn Fox Keller, A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock, 1983

hard enough to control your own.................

 

      The fact is, it is impossible to control someone else's thoughts.  Therefore, fearing what other people think, or trying to control their thoughts, is a complete waste of your time.

     You will never feel in control of your life, your feelings, your thoughts, or your actions until you stop being consumed with or trying to control what other people think about you.

-Mel Robbins, The Let Them Theory

Alexander.......................

 

The boy-emperor, barbarian though he remained after all of Aristotle's tutoring, had yet learned to revere the rich culture of Greece, and had dreamed of spreading that culture through the Orient in the wake of his victorious armies. . . .But he had underrated the inertia and resistance of the Oriental mind, and the mass and depth of Oriental culture.  It was only a youthful fancy, after all, to suppose that so immature and unstable a civilization as that of Greece could be imposed upon a civilization immeasurable more widespread, and rooted in the most venerable traditions.  The quantity of Asia proved too much for the quality of Greece.  Alexander himself, in the hour of his triumph, was conquered by the soul of the East; he married (among several ladies) the daughter of Darius; he adopted the Persian diadem and robe of state; he introduced into Europe the Oriental notion of the divine right of kings; and at last he astonished a sceptic Greece by announcing, in magnificent Eastern style, that he was a god.  Greece laughed; and Alexander drank himself to death.

-Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy

This is just.............................

 

..............................................bananas.

Our guiding star....................

 

...............................has turned twenty!