Michael Faraday..........................

Michael Faraday      oil painting by Thomas Phillips    1842                        

Michael Faraday (1791-1867) is credited with helping create the science of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.  Mostly self taught, Faraday made himself into a scientist's scientist. From our friends at Wikipedia comes this, "At fourteen he became the apprentice to George Riebau, a local bookbinder and bookseller in Blandford Street.^[10] During his seven-year apprenticeship he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. At this time he also developed an interest in science, especially in electricity. Faraday was particularly inspired by the book Conversations on Chemistry by Jane Marcet.^[11][12] 
 Read more about him here and here and here.  A few quotes follow, just to give you a glimpse at the man:

"Bacon in his instruction tells us that the scientific student ought not to be as the ant, who gathers merely, nor as the spider who spins from her own bowels, but rather as the bee who both gathers and produces."

“It is right that we should stand by and act on our principles; but not right to hold them in obstinate blindness, or retain them when proved to be erroneous.” 

"The secret is comprised in three words — Work, finish, publish."

"Among those points of self-education which take up the form of mental discipline, there is one of great importance, and, moreover, difficult to deal with, because it involves an internal conflict, and equally touches our vanity and our ease. It consists in the tendency to deceive ourselves regarding all we wish for, and the necessity of resistance to these desires."

"Occasionally and frequently the exercise of the judgment ought to end in absolute reservation. It may be very distasteful, and great fatigue, to suspend a conclusion; but as we are not infallible, so we ought to be cautious; we shall eventually find our advantage, for the man who rests in his position is not so far from right as he who, proceeding in a wrong direction, is ever increasing his distance."

"But still try, for who knows what is possible..."

"I have far more confidence in the one man who works mentally and bodily at a matter than in the six who merely talk about it — and I therefore hope and am fully persuaded that you are working."

“There’s nothing quite as frightening as someone who knows they are right.”

"It is the great beauty of our science, chemistry, that advancement in it, whether in a degree great or small, instead of exhausting the subjects of research, opens the doors to further and more abundant knowledge, overflowing with beauty and utility."

The usefulness test....................................

Back in the old days..............................

...............like fifth and sixth grade, we spent months, and months, and months on the multiplication tables.  Drill, drill, and drill some more.   The test was up at the blackboard, with no place to hide - quick, do the 8's, now the 9's, now the 6's.  I hated the eights.  I hated the drills.  But, fifty-two years later, having forgotten vast amounts of what I have been taught, I can still rattle off the multiplication tables.
     Flash forward to about ten years ago, my kids spent two days on the multiplication tables.  What?  I grant you that calculators have changed many things, but being able to do basic numbers in your head is a serious advantage in this world.  No way you can gain mastery, or basic competency, on such a subject in TWO days.  For the only time in their lives, my kids got home schooled.  Dad Xeroxed about 200 copies of blank tables, and every night for a month they filled in three or four tables. Improving speed and accuracy was all I asked.   Haven't checked on them lately, but my guess is that they can tell you right off that 8 x 7 is 56 and 8 x 9 is 72.
     What brought all this to mind is the latest post from our friend Greg at Sippican Cottage.  His kids appear to be living evidence of the goodness that flows from both parental attention and the mantra - Drill, Drill, Drill.  See for yourself.

Every once in a while you just have to watch this...

The world welcomes Susan Boyle........................

On growing up...................................

Challenges..........................................

     "Each of us, as the hero of our own life, faces different earthly and spiritual challenges from which we learn lessons that allow us to evolve different, increasingly higher, qualities of power.  All problems, all stresses present an opportunity for spiritual learning in which you can gain insight into the use, misuse, or misdirection of your personal power."
Caroline Myss, as excerpted from Invisible Acts of Power:  Personal Choices That Create Miracles

Miracles........................................

"There are only two ways to live your life.  One is as though nothing is a miracle.  The other is as if everything is."
-Albert Einstein

Uh-oh.................................

......................................moving down the check list.

From the Heartland....................

John E. Smith offers his thoughts on losing and winning - here.  A bit of excerpting here:

"The fatal mistake is to confuse the temporary state of winning with the permanent state of being human."

"Negative feelings are understandable, especially those related to disappointment and regret.  However, the tenure of those emotions should be short.  After all, the rest of your life is waiting without predestined outcomes."

"Trying to operate in a perpetual state that relies on winning will not suffice.   Life does not work that way.  We don’t always win, winning is not everything, and even winners sometimes quit."

"Above all, be gracious, generous, and humble."

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

The Four Seasons.................................Silence is Golden

Are you listening to me.............................?

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

     We were half a mile high in a bright Everglades sky, on the trail of five Navy torpedo bombers that vanished in 1945, yet my friend Tomlinson remained fixated on the fate of our marina's cat, which had gone missing only two days earlier.
     The curse of obsession is one of the few qualities my hipster neighbor and I share.
-Randy Wayne White,  Night Moves

Truth............................................

"A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is 'merely relative,' is asking you not to believe him. So don't."
-Roger Scruton

Want........................................

“Those people cannot enjoy comfortably what God has given them because they see and covet what He has not given them. All of our discontents for what we want appear to me to spring from want of thankfulness for what we have.” 
-Daniel Defoe

How can you tell..................................?

"Men and melons are hard to know."
-Ben Franklin

Four friends having fun......................

Frank, Dean, Sammy, & Johnny doing what they do best

... the wind, the sun, or the rain...........

Blue Oyster Cult............................Don't Fear The Reaper

Dreams.......................................

Trying........................................

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.” 
-Henry Ford

It's the unlearning part that's difficult.................

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. ”

-Alvin Toffler

Beware the unintended consequence..................

"Nobody in politics can foresee the consequences either of what he destroys, or of what he constructs."
-Don Colacho, aphorism 2,978

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

The Beatles......................I'm Happy Just To Dance With You

The Execupundit.................................

.....................................................cuts to the chase.

Stray.....................................

“Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these.”
-Susan B. Anthony

The helping hand........................................

"Be ready to help people when they need it most. Get ready to yank them out of a hole. The glad hand is alright in sunshine, but it’s the helping hand on a dark day that folks remember to the end of time."
-A. P. Giannini

On impulses..........................

"The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest."

-Bertrand Russell

Vintage...............................

Dean Martin........................Everybody Loves Somebody

Aging like a fine wine...........................

Eric Burdon and the Animals..............House of the Rising Sun




version from fifty years ago is here

Seriously, now..................................

“Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.” 
-G.K. Chesterton

Flat tax anyone..............................?

A miscalculation nonetheless..........................

"That is silly. World War I did not occur because the European powers miscalculated, but because they each believed rationally that their interests were best served by fighting."
-David Goldman, channeling Spengler, as excerpted from here

Escape..............................

"The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from the old ones."
-John Maynard Keynes

On the proper use of time.........................

“God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today.   Have you used one to say thank you?” 
-William Arthur Ward

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

The Beatles.............................................Please Please Me



studio (mono) version is here

Ruckert's Law......................................

"There is nothing so small that it can't be blown out of proportion."

Who..........................................

"Who has deceiv'd thee so oft as thy self?"
-Benjamin Franklin

Noticing the difference................

...................Walter Russell Mead opines on "smart diplomacy" and the news media.

"But luckily for Team Obama, the mainstream press would rather die than subject liberal Democrats to the critiques it reserves for the GOP. So instead, as Libya writhes in agony, reputations and careers move on."

No wonder they get paid so much......................

"The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality."
-Max Depree

Life is beautiful...................

via

Shine on..................................

Three things...............................

One of these days........................

via

Our national pastime................

via

Take along my love with you..................

Billy Joel channeling Brian Wilson.............Don't Worry Baby

Interesting paragraphs....................

      In recording his musings, Marcus sometimes speaks of God, sometimes of the gods.  Is there inconsistency here?  Not necessarily.  For him, as we have seen, the world was governed by a cosmic consciousness which was a single immanent spirit.  But that world was also a congeries of differing areas and elements and activities, and it was natural enough that the Greeks, whom the Romans followed in such matters, should think of these separate components as governed by specialized deities.  Poseidon, the Roman's Neptune, was lord of the waters;  Apollo was god of the sun and the realm of light;  Demeter, or her Roman equivalent, Ceres, was goddess of the earth and harvests and fertility.  Of these gods there was no fixed number, and as the empire expanded it took in, with a curious religious democracy, the gods of its new subjects.  In this respect, Marcus was a singularly catholic theologian.  Did he believe that all these motley figures, often beautifully embodied in Greek and Roman statuary, were real existences?  Officially he did, for he was not only Emperor but Pontifex Maximus, the head of the Roman religion, who presided at celebrations of these deities and sacrifices to them.  But one can only suspect that he did so with tongue in cheek.  To a mind as sophisticated as his, these lesser deities were probably symbols of the one divine activity, which manifested itself throughout all these domains.  If he insisted, as he did, on retaining old forms of Roman worship, it was probably because he saw that myth, besides being a powerful preservative of people's unity, may carry a truth in metaphorical form that the more correct philosophic formulae may fail to convey.
-Brand Blanshard, as excerpted from his essay on Marcus Aurelius in Four Reasonable Men:  Marcus Aurelius, John Stuart Mill, Ernest Renan, Henry Sidgwick

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

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Notions................................

The tiny particles which form the vast
universe are not tiny at all.
Neither is the vast universe vast.
These are notions of the mind,
which is like a knife, always
chipping away at the Tao, trying
to render it graspable 
and manageable.

But that which is beyond form is
ungraspable, and that which is
beyond knowing is unmanageable.
There is, however, this consolation:
She who lets go of the knife will find
the Tao at her fingertips.

-Hua Hu Ching:  The Unknown Teachings of Lao Tzu
Verse 13
Brian Browne Walker

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

The Kingsmen.....................................................Louie Louie



Faithful readers will remember that this song was also featured as one of 2013's Fifty Years Ago entries.  Released in May of 1963 by The Kingsmen, this Richard Berry written tune,  had enough staying power to close out 1964 at #99 on Billboards Hot 100 Singles.

On book reports...............................

     In junior high school, I  hated writing "book reports."  Now, I enjoy reading them.  Especially useful ones.  Among the reasons I follow David Merkel's The Aleph Blog is that he regularly offers useful reviews on books about investing and the "market."  His latest review, on Panic, Prosperity, and Progress:  Five Centuries of History and the Markets, is typical.  Two excerpts:

What Could Have Made the Book Better

"Financial crises don’t appear out of nowhere.  Leaving aside war on your home soil, plague, famine, communism, etc., there is usually a boom that gives way to a bust.  In some of his chapters, he could have spent more time describing the boom that led to the bust.  This is important, because readers need to learn intuitively that the boom-bust cycle is normal. NORMAL!

"Ignore the economists who think they can control the economy.  They can’t do it, and this book helps to say that.  Economists are always behind the curve.  Politicians are even further behind the curve.  Regulators are still further behind the curve, and usually do the wrong thing during crises as a result."

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

Quibbles

On pages 421-422, he shows that he doesn’t get securitization, and blames the rating agencies, who were forced to rate novel debt for which they did not have a good model because the regulators outsourced credit risk measurement to them.

Learned something new today.  Full book review is here.  

Oops......................................

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

     By the summer of 2009 the line had a life of its own, and two thousand men were digging and boring the strange home it needed to survive.  Two hundred and five crews of eight men each, plus assorted advisors and inspectors, were now rising early to figure out how to blast a hole through some innocent mountain, or tunnel under some riverbed, or dig a trench beside a country road that lacked a roadside - all without ever answering the obvious question:  Why?  The line was just a one-and-a-half-inch-wide hard black plastic tube designed to shelter four hundred hair-thin strands of glass, but it already had the feeling of a living creature, a subterranean reptile, with its particular needs and wants.  It needed its burrow to be straight, maybe the most insistently straight path ever dug into the earth.  It needed to connect a data center on the South Side of Chicago to a stock exchange in northern New Jersey.  Above all, apparently, it needed to be a secret.
-Michael Lewis,  Flash Boys:  A Wall Street Revolt

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

   
                        The Oak and the Reeds

A very large oak was uprooted by the wind and thrown across a stream.  If fell among some Reeds, which were thus addressed:  "I wonder how you, who are so light and weak, are not entirely crushed by these strong winds."  They replied, "You fight and contend with the wind, and consequently you are destroyed;  while we on the contrary bend before the least breath of air, and therefore remain unbroken, and escape."

Moral:   Stoop to conquer.

Aesop's Fables as channeled by George Fyler Townsend

Mark Knopfler and friends...............................

The Notting Hillbillies........................Your Own Sweet Way

A lost art.....................................

EAT,  v.i.  To perform successively (and successfully) the functions of mastication, humectation, and deglutition.
     "I was in the drawing-room, enjoying my dinner," said Brillal-Savarin, beginning an anecdote.  "What!" interrupted Rochebriant;  "eating dinner in a drawing-room?"  "I must beg you to observe, monsieur," explained the great gastronome, "that I did not say I was eating my dinner, but enjoying it.  I had dined an hour before."

-Ambrose Bierce,  The Devil's Dictionary

Learned new words today.........................

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...differing opinions make a market......................

     Extreme price swings are the norm in financial markets - not aberrations that can be ignored.  Price movements do not follow the well-mannered bell curve assumed by modern finance;  they follow a more violent curve that makes an investor's ride much bumpier.  A sound trading strategy or portfolio metric would build this cold, hard fact into its foundations.  Exactly how depends on the resources, talents and stomach for risk of the individual;  as ever, differing opinions make a market.  But already, the mere knowledge that markets vary wildly is useful.
-Benoit Mandelbrot and Richard Hudson, excerpted from The (Mis)Behavior of Markets:  A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin & Reward

Shouldn't most of the responsibility for..........

.........................................climate change be assigned here?

much larger photo and back story are here.

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

The Four Tops.................................................Call On Me



The "B" side of Baby I Need Your Loving

This disposition......................................

     "This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean conditions, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.  That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue;  and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is often most unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists of all ages."
-Adam Smith,  as excerpted from The Theory of Moral Sentiments

On balance..................................

358.   Man is neither angel nor brute, and the unfortunate thing is that he who would act the angel acts the brute.

359.  We do not sustain ourselves in virtue by our own strength, but by the balancing of  two opposed vices, just as we remain upright amidst two contrary gales.  Remove one of the vices, and we fall into the other.

-Blaise Pascal,  Pensees

Uh-oh.........................................

"You can learn a great deal about people when you discover what they read for pleasure in high school."
-Michael Wade, as excerpted from his latest "Random Thoughts"

Mystery of the missing................

..........Courthouse clock hands has been solved.  Story here.

Chicago...............Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

Does anybody really know what time it is...?

Suddenly, the hands on the Courthouse clock have gone missing.

To own......................................

“A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.”

-Alexander Pope

Belief...................................

All the best people.......................

“Mad Matter: "Have I gone mad?" 

Alice: "I'm afraid so. You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are.” 

-Lewis Caroll, Alice in Wonderland

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

The Searchers...........................When You Walk In The Room

Simple..............................

“I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit. When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all incumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run. ” 

"Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion."

-Henry David Thoreau

Rumi...................................

"Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment;
Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition."

"Reason is like an officer when the King appears;
The officer then loses his power and hides himself.
Reason is the shadow cast by God;  God is the sun."

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. 
Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”

“The garden of the world has no limits, except in your mind.” 

-Rumi

On slack.............................................

"But if diverse people are to be bound together, the must be given plenty of slack."
-as excerpted from this The Economist essay on the looming independence vote in Scotland.

Between.......................................

"Between goals and achievement are discipline and consistency."
-Denzel Washington, as excerpted from here

thanks doug

Where the air is fine..............................

The Cowsills................................................Indian Lake

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

     When Congressman Charlie Wilson set off for a weekend in Las Vegas on June 27, 1980, there was no confusion in his mind about why he had chosen to stay at Caesars Palace.  He was a man in search of pure decadent pleasure, and the moment he walked into the hotel and say the way the receptionists were dressed, he knew he had come to the right place.  No doubt there were other members of the Ninety-sixth Congress who fantasized about orgies and altered states.  But had any of them chosen to take the kind of plunge that Charlie Wilson had in mind, you can be sure they would have gone to some trouble to maintain a low profile, if not don a disguise.
-George Crile,  Charlie Wilson's War:  The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times

A few quotes from Charlie Wilson...........

Charlie Wilson,  member of the House of  Representatives
from Texas's 2nd Congressional District, 1973-1996

"You know you've reached rock bottom when you're told you have character flaws by a man who hanged his predecessor in a military coup."

"Soon God will be on both sides of this War."

Question:  Why is Congress saying one thing and doing nothing?

Charlie Wilson's answer: "Well, tradition mostly."

"These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world...and then we fucked up the end game." 

Back story and wiki on Charlie Wilson (1933-2010)

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

Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas.........................Bad To Me




If this sound vaguely Beatlesish, well, John Lennon wrote it for Kramer.  It was released in the U.K. in 1963 and in the USA shortly thereafter.  It ended 1964 as #97 on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles for 1964.

Next stop: Lightheartedness........................

61.   Laughter doesn't just heal. It allows you to glimpse a version of you with no cares at all.

-Nicholas Bate, from his Pause & Consider 101

On the WHY of it all..........................

"He who had a strong enough why can bear any how."
-Friedrich Nietzsche

"When the why gets stronger, the how gets easier."
-Jim Rohn

"I think of this as home therapy.  There is nothing better for all ailments.  This is what it is all about.  It is why we do everything else."
-Kurt Harden, as excerpted from this blog post

On compromising....................................

"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."
-Barry Goldwater, circa 1994

Later still..............................

Later.........................

An iron gate around me with a wide open door...

Ryan Tennis.............................................Sunlight and Shade

An oddity..........................

112.   Inconstancy. - Things have different qualities, and the soul different inclinations;  for nothing is simple which is presented to the soul, and the soul never presents itself simply to any object.  Hence it comes that we weep and laugh at the same thing.

-Blaise Pascal,  Pensees

Insatiable....................................

     The poets have numbered among the felicities of the golden age, an exemption from the change of seasons, and a perpetuity of spring;  but I am not certain that in this state of imaginary happiness they have made sufficient provision for that insatiable demand of new gratifications, which seems particularly to characterise the nature of man.
-Samuel Johnson,   as excerpted from The Rambler

Change.......................

How little I know in my widest
waking, held there by the making
of days, days of work, days,
fewer, of rest, suffering myself
to be made by days that cannot
be helped or changed or stopped,
and so I wait to be changed
by work, by rest, by what
I know into what I know not.

-Wendell Berry
Sabbaths,  2009 IV

Verse........................

     Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples,

     2  Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat:

    3  All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do;  but  do not ye after their works:  for they say, and do not.

    4  For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders;  but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.

    5  But all their works they do for to be seen of men:  they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments,

    6  And love the upper most rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues,

    7  And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi.

    8  But be not ye called Rabbi:  for one is your Master, even Christ;  and all ye are brethren.

    9  And call no many your father upon the earth;  for one is your Father, which is in heaven.

    10  Neither be ye called masters:  for one is your Master, even Christ.

    11  But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.

    12  And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased;  and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.

The Jefferson Bible
LIII.  Precepts, Pride, Hypocrisy, Swearing

back story on The Jefferson Bible is here

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

The Shangri-Las..............Remember (Walking In The Sand)

Religion.........................

     "Adam Smith gave what is still the best description of the role of religion in an open society.  Smith ... argued in The Wealth of Nations that religion, even fanatical religion, is necessary to the health and happiness of society, and that free competition among religions is the best way to achieve the benefits of religion at the lowest possible cost."
-Walter Russell Mead, as excerpted from God and Gold:  Britain, American, and the Making of the Modern World

May I get an Amen.......................................?

"...purchasing print books in a brick-and-mortar building is something of a lost art, like taking snuff or drinking brandy after dinner. Which is not to say that it's not worth doing. Quite the opposite. Buying books in a bookstore is one of life's great, quiet pleasures."

Jeff Kopito, a great lover of small, independent book stores, points to the article from whence this quote was taken.

Vive la Revolution...........................

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