The toughest question............

 

more fun here

Asking important questions..........

 

How Much Has the U.S. Government Borrowed to Pay Back What It Owes Itself?

-deficits matter if you plan on living past 2033

the critical path...............

 

This is why the discipline of asking “what is actually blocking me?” outperforms many productivity systems on the market.

Lists treat tasks as equals. The critical path treats them as a queue with one true bottleneck at the front.

Identify it. Work on it. Everything else, however satisfying, is decoration on a foundation that may not yet exist.

-Nicholas Bate

the important provinces..............

 

Like so many people wedded to the nineteenth-century view of science, Dawkins overlooks the nineteenth-century reaction—which said, "Wait a minute: science is not the only way to pursue knowledge.  There is moral knowledge too, which is the province of practical reason; there is emotional knowledge, which is the province of art, literature and music.  And just possibly there is transcendental knowledge, which is the province of religion.  Why privilege science, just because it sets out to explain the world?  Why not give weight to the disciplines that interpret the world and so help us to be at home in it?"

-Roger Scruton, On Human Nature

An interesting question................

 

more fun can be found here

a craft.....................

I start my valuation classes with a question of whether valuation is an art or a science, and I argue that it is neither; it does not have the precision that characterizes a science and unlike an art, it does come with principles that constrain you on what you can and cannot do. I describe valuation as a craft, where you learn as you value companies, and in the process, there are times where you question how it is practiced, and try to find ways to do it better. I have learned my share of lessons in the four decades that I have practiced valuation, and I have often abandoned standard practices, in the hope of developing better ones.

-Aswath Damodaran, from this episode

Interesting question...................

 

some thoughts on the question here.

The fundamental question..............

 National security, which this conference is largely about, is not merely series of technical questions – how much we spend on defense or where, how we deploy it, these are important questions.  They are.  But they are not the fundamental one.  The fundamental question we must answer at the outset is what exactly are we defending, because armies do not fight for abstractions.  Armies fight for a people; armies fight for a nation.  Armies fight for a way of life.  And that is what we are defending: a great civilization that has every reason to be proud of its history, confident of its future, and aims to always be the master of its own economic and political destiny.

-Marco Rubio, from this speech

thanks Kurt

To distracted to answer the question.......

 

Civil War historian Shelby Foote, when asked to cite anything about the American Civil War he did not understand, often replied, “I still don’t know how they did it… How does a starving man march 20 miles, then go into a 3-hour battle?”

That’s a great question. Each generation, in raising the next, has to wonder how much toughness to pass along and whether the deprivation of hardship is doing harm.

-Michael Wade, from this substack

Embracing uncertainty................

 

The nature of discoveries is that they are unexpected: they may not fit neatly into our existing edifice of knowledge. Although the research may be originally motivated by a perceived gap, the knowledge resulting from the discovery may in fact not complete any part of the wall but instead may lead to the construction of a completely new and unexpected area: we may be forced to build a new wall orthogonal to the first, or even to tear down parts of the existing structure. This is an uncomfortable concept for many of us, who would prefer a tidy and beautiful universe, where a rational process helps us to illuminate the world. And yet, the most interesting unknowns of science are unknown unknowns—gaps that we were not even aware of before chancing upon them.

-Itai Yanai and Martin Lercher.

via the wide wide world of Tim Ferriss

Good questions all....................

 

     How long will it be before we discover we cannot dazzle God with our accomplishments?

     When will we acknowledge that we need not and cannot buy God's favor?

     When will we acknowledge that we don't have it all together and happily accept the gift of grace?

-Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

peculiar............

 

     Back in 1975 the musician Brian Eno and the artist Peter Schmidt created a curious artifact, a set of cards containing peculiar instructions: "Honour thy error as a hidden intention." "Ask your body."  "Work at a different speed."  These were meant to help artists, especially musicians, who had come to an impasse in their work.  Eno and Schmidt call the card deck Oblique Strategies because they knew that when an artist is blocked, direct approaches meant to fix the problem invariably make it worse.  In a similar way, sometimes you can get better at thinking only by turning your attention to matters other than thinking.

-Alan Jacobs, How To Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds

a daily challenge........................

 

     Aristotle described virtue as a kind of craft, something to pursue just as one pursues the mastery of any profession or skill.  "We become builders by building and we become harpists by playing the harp," he writes.  "Similarly, then, we become just by doing just actions, temperate by doing temperate actions, brave by doing brave actions."

     Virtue is something we do.

     It's something we choose.

     Not once, for Hercules's crossroads was not a singular event.  It's a daily challenge, one we face not once but constantly, repeatedly.  Will we be selfish or selfless?  Brave or afraid? Strong or weak? Wise or stupid?  Will we cultivate a good habit or a bad one?  Courage or cowardice?  The bliss of ignorance or the challenge of a new idea?

     Stay the same . . . or grow?

     The easy way or the right way?

-Ryan Holiday, Wisdom Takes Work

seen and valued......................

  

So whether you're in retail, finance, real estate, education, health care, computer services, transportation, or communications, you have an incredible opportunity to be just as intentional and creative—as unreasonable—about pursuing hospitality as you are about every other aspect of your business.  Because whether a company has made the choice to put their team and their customers at the center of every decision will be what separates the great ones from the pack.

     Unfortunately, these skills have never been less valued than they are in our current hyperrational, hyperefficient work culture.  We are in the middle of a digital transformation.  That transformation has enhanced many aspects of our live, but too many companies have left the human behind.  They've been so focused on products, they've forgotten about people.  And while it may be impossible to quantify in financial terms the impact of making someone feel good, don't think for a second that it doesn't matter.  In fact, it matters more.

     The answer is simple, if not easy: create a culture of hospitality.  Which means addressing questions I've spent my career asking: How do you make the people who work for you and the people you serve feel seen and valued?  How do you give them a sense of belonging?  How do you make them feel part of something bigger than themselves?  How do you make them feel welcome?

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

Rooted............

 

The questions all humans will eventually ask—Who am I?  Where do I come from?—are at least partially answered by the country they find themselves part of.  Our national community gives us roots; to quote Simone Weil again, 'to be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul'.

-Paul Kingsnorth, Against the Machine

Good question.......................

 

The idea of caring that someone is making money faster [than you] is one of the deadly sins.  Envy is a really stupid sin because it's the only one you could never possibly have any fun at.  There's a lot of pain and no fun.  Why would you want to get on that trolley?

-Charlie Munger

Buckeyes have a bye.....................

 

..........but I suspect I'll watch some football anyway.

more fun here

Good questions all...................

 In your favour of April 8th, You “wonder for what good End the Sensations of Grief could be intended”? You “wish the Pathologists would tell Us, what the Use of Grief, in Our Œconomy, and of what good it is the Cause proximate or remote.” When I approach Such questions as this, I consider myself, like one of those little Eels in Vinaigre, or one of those Animalcules in black or red Peper or in the Horse radish Root, that bite our Tongues So cruelly, reasoning upon the το παν ["totality"].  Of what Use is this Sting upon the Tongue? Why might We not have the Benefit of these Stimulants, without the Sting? Why might We not have the fragrance and Beauty of the Rose without the Thorn?

-John Adams, from a letter to Thomas Jefferson, May 6, 1816

Yes..................

 

Isn't it essential precisely to refuse to embrace limitation, so as to surpass the status quo, to demolish the assumption that life as we know it is as good as we should ever expect it to get?

-Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals

As questions go.......................

........................................this is an important one.