Choose wisely......................

We are not our thoughts. Nope, quite the opposite.

We have a constant stream of thoughts meandering through our minds. That’s part of being human. However, we get to choose which of those to engage with.

Author and blogger Pam Grout has a brilliant analogy for thoughts: They’re like a line of ants marching across your picnic blanket. You can choose to observe them as they keep on marching straight off the other side of the blanket and disappear, or you can choose to scoop them up and interact with them. Make them your focus. Fuss over them. And they’ll probably bite you too.

But there’s your power: It’s your choice.

You decide which thoughts you pay attention to.

Because thoughts come and go. All the time. And that’s normal.

-as liberated from here

Yeah, but tell us how you really feel.......

Piers Morgan weighs in on the latest great book:

By the time I'd finished wading through Hillary's absurdly self-indulgent tome, I felt like I'd been lowered into a large vat of violently indignant, furiously self-justifying, boiling mad spittle.

Wisdom........................

 "Never defer life. Live it now."

-Nicholas Bate, as taken from here

Happy 137th Birthday...........

.........................................to Henry Louis Mencken.   Unfortunately, his writing has aged well.  To wit:

"Civilization, in fact, grows more and more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary."

Sooner or later.................

Part of this Power Point

wiki for Jim Rogers is here

A short "to do" list...................

     via

Imagine that..............................

     Richard Wiseman, a professor at the University of Hertfordshire, did a study of lucky and unlucky people to see if it was just random chance, spooky magic ... or if there were real differences that caused such different results in life.  It turns out luck isn't just serendipity or due to the paranormal.  A lot of it is about the choices people make.
     Studying over a thousand subjects, Wiseman found that lucky people maximize opportunities.  The study showed that they are more open to new experiences, more extroverted, and less neurotic.  They listen to their hunches.   Most of all, Wiseman says, lucky people just try stuff.


-Eric Barker, Barking Up The Wrong Tree:  The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong

On counting the cost.....................

"The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run."


-Henry David Thoreau

Ah, the experts. They've had........

.......................................a few bad decades.  Almost, but not quite, makes one feel sorry for them.  Regardless, Scott Adams is on their case.

"And this brings me to my topic of the day: How do you know when to trust experts? My hypothesis is that people who have the most experience in the real world trust experts the least. To make that point, allow me to give you a brief tour of my experience with experts."

On creating your own Mongol horde....

     The Great Khan has had twenty-two sons by his four legitimate wives, the eldest of whom, named Chinghis, was designed to inherit the government of the empire; and this nomination was confirmed by him during the life-time of his father.  But, as it came to pass he died and left a son, whose name is Themur.  He, as the representative of his father, is to succeed to the dominion.  The disposition of this prince is good, and he is endowed with wisdom and valour;  of the latter he has given proofs in several successful battles.
     Besides these, his majesty has twenty-five sons by his concubines, all of them brave soldiers, having been continually employed in the military profession.  These he has placed in the rank of nobles.  Of his legitimate sons, seven are at the head of extensive provinces and kingdoms, which they govern with wisdom and prudence, as might be expected of the children of one whose great qualities have not been surpassed, in the general estimation, by any person of the Tartar race.

-The Travels of Marco Polo, from his chapter on Kublai Khan

Vernon Johns.........................

More quotes from Vernon Johns:

"You should avoid hedging, at least that's what I think.  You should be ashamed to die until you've made some contribution to mankind."

"The blundering genius for expression, which was the virtue of Simon Peter, would save us from the folly of applying ostrich wisdom to vital prob­lems. If we had the courage to talk frankly concern­ing our problems, there would be less occasion to fight about them."

"It is good to be the possessor of some mountain-top experience.  Not to know life on the heights, is to suffer an impoverishing incompleteness. To be sure, there is better opportunity for practical pursuits in the valley regions, and life is easier and safer there: but views are possible from the mountain top which are not to be had in the vale."

"Jesus kindled the consciousness of human brother­hood in the most self-conscious and provincial of all races. His character was so dramatically free from all class and national and racial hatreds and preju­dices that no follower could long mistake him. To mistake him would have been to cease following! “There is no difference between Jew and Greek, Bar­barian, Scythian, bond or free, but all are one in Christ Jesus.” “I perceive that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation they that fear God and work righteousness are acceptable with him.” “Out of one blood hath God created all nations to dwell upon the face of the earth.” This is the lan­guage of men who had kindled their lives at the feet of Jesus for the wise and noble adventure in human brotherhood."

the last three quotes are from this sermon

Complicated......................

Vernon Johns was merely another invisible man to nearly all whites, but to the invisible people themselves he was the stuff of legend.  The deepest mysteries of existence and race rubbed vigorously within him, heating a brain that raced constantly until the day he died.  His ancestry was a jumble of submerged edges and storybook extremes.  During slavery, his father's father was hanged for cutting his master in two with a scythe, and even eighty years later it was whispered in the Johns family that the hunting dogs would not approach the haunted spot where the murder had occurred.

     Johns maternal grandfather was a white man named Price, of Scottish descent, who maintained two entirely separate families - one white, one Negro.  This type of bi-patriarchy, though fairly widespread, was never publicly acknowledged in either culture.  The Negro children handed down stories about how Price became one of the first inmates at the new Virginia State Penitentiary for killing another white man he caught trying to rape his slave mistress.  He protected the mistress "just like she was a white woman."  For this he was admired by some Negroes, but he was by nature a mean, violent, complicated man.  When his Negro wife died in the 1870s, he took all of his Negro children into the other household to be raised by his childless white wife, "Miss Kitty."    Vernon Johns's mother, Sallie Price, made this transfer as a little girl, and years later she told her family how the taboos had been respected against all opposing reality, even in the intimacy of the home.  She never called her father "father," for decency required the Negro children to be orphans and the white couple to be missionary dispensers of foster care.  When Price died about 1900, Sallie Price Johns went to the funeral with her young son Vernon and her husband Willie, son of a hanged slave, and sat through the burial service in a separate-but-equal family section, just across the gravesite from Miss Kitty and the white relatives.

     Willie Johns died not long afterward, and in due course Sallie Johns married her dead husband's younger brother.  So Vernon Johns finished his youth as the stepson of his uncle, and grandson of a slave who killed his master and of a master who killed for his slave.  Only in the Bible did he find open discussion of such a tangle of sex, family, slavery, and violence.

-Taylor Branch,  Parting The Waters:  America In The King Years  1954-63

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

At the movies: Bond, James Bond.................You Only Live Twice

 

There was a time in my life..........

...........................when I had mastered this one:

3. The ability to be comfortable being miserable.

-One of The Four Fundamental Skills Of All Investing.

via

Unleash..................................

"By bringing our dreams into contact with reality, we can unleash our greatest energies and make the most progress in our lives."

-Gabriele Oettingen, as culled from this Don't Think Too Positive essay

via

Central Licking County........................

................could double in size, and we could finally sell all of those wondrous wooded home sites we have available!    A fellow can dream, can't he?

A quick primer on thriving...........

"Do not spend your resources surrounding yourself with comfort and things – surround yourself with opportunity and purpose."

-Steven Novella, as he concludes this blog post

Speaking of making music.................

Robin Williams and Bobby McFerrin and George Martin

On getting a degree in Musicology............

For music lovers everywhere:  Kurt Harden has embarked on his "Record Year" project.  It is a amazingly generous gift. Tune in, follow along, expand your horizons, enjoy!

Ah, sales the old-fashioned way..........................

   -as taken from the May/June issue of the Commercial Investment Real Estate magazine

I'm hoping to be part of the other 25%...................

     The U. S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics reports that millennials are the largest age group in the workforce and will comprise approximately 75% of the workforce by 2030.
     The millennial mindset differs from their predecessors in several ways.  First, today's millennials place a greater value on a company's culture and demand creative environments to support them in their personal and professional growth.  Second, they are more entrepreneurial in spirit and constantly seek new opportunities for growth.


-Adam Robinson, as culled from here


Sure hope that last sentence is true.

Scott sure can pick 'em..............................

.......................The Pretty Reckless (with Warren Haynes sitting in).

The truth of...........................

.........................................“We don’t know yet.”

Scott Adams tackles hurricanes and climate change.

Degree of Difficulty...........3.5

thanks Rob

degree of difficulty scale here

I beg to differ.......................

“Philosophers get attention only when they appear to be doing something sinister--corrupting the youth, undermining the foundations of civilization, sneering at all we hold dear. The rest of the time everybody assumes that they are hard at work somewhere down in the sub-basement, keeping those foundations in good repair. Nobody much cares what brand of intellectual duct tape is being used.” 

-Richard Rorty

Recently stumbled across Rorty's Achieving Our Country.   I am willing to admit that I don't get out much and had not heard of Rorty.  A quick check of  Rorty's Goodreads quotes makes me think I will not be acquiring his books.  Still, it doesn't hurt to read what's on the other guy's mind.

Humbling, but true...............

"We are mere participants in natural cycles, not the kings of them."

-Jim Harrison, from his five rules for a zesty life

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

The Everly Brothers..............................................A Voice Within

I knew there was a reason I liked him....

"I grew up as a Roy Rogers fan, of course."

-Phil Everly

more information than you want on Roy Rogers is here.

Ponder on this one for a while..........

“To seek 'causes' of poverty in this way is to enter an intellectual dead end because poverty has no causes. Only prosperity has causes.” 

-Jane Jacobs, The Death And Life Of Great American Cities

On government-centricism..................

     Last week, the Congress of the United States, this time under Republicans - not that you can tell the difference - passed a health care bill that no one had read, was not scored by the Congressional Budget Office, and was debated for a grand total of three hours.  This is what you get when you live in a society that is increasingly government-centric.  I was going to bring you the Senate immigration bill from 2008, but it's too heavy - 1,197 pages.   It has to be big because the senators know everything.
    They know for example -it's in the bill - that the proper 2016 hourly wage of an immigrant animal sorter is $8.94, 20 cents more than the proper wage, according to the United States Senate, of an immigrant nursery worker.  They don't need markets to tell them - they just know these things.  The immigration bill, by the way, said that Nevada is a border state.  If you believe your lying eyes, it tells you that the southern tip of Nevada is 164 miles north of the border.  But, because Harry Reid of the great state of Nevada was the majority leader, and he wanted Nevada to be eligible for some of the 20 billion  more dollars in border pork, they just declared it a border state.
     The danger is that the more we interfere with the voluntary, spontaneous order of a free society, and a free world order, the more we consign ourselves to slow growth.  And the more we consign ourselves to slow growth, the more we consign ourselves to serious consequences.

- George Will, as culled from this July, 2017 speech

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

Chuck Berry..................................................Bring Another Drink

 

Nope............................

...........................and not being able to has caused us some stress over the past 35 years.

Yep..............................

.................(although I might have swapped "partly" for "mostly")

"for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts"

-as liberated from this post at David Kanigan's wondrous blog

Enough.......................

“He has his wish, whose wish can be to have what is enough.” 

-Cleanthes

cartoon via

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

Tim Buckley...................................................Goodbye and Hello

 

Shhhhhh.............................

The primary virtue is: hold your tongue; who knows how to keep quiet is close to God.

-Cato the Younger

cartoon via

Watch your.............................

Thanks Jan

Civilized...................................

“To accept injury without a spirit of savage resentment - to show ourselves merciful toward those who wrong us - being a source of good hope to them - is characteristic of a benevolent and civilized way of life.” 

-Gaius Musonius Rufus

cartoon via

Generally speaking............................

"Generally speaking, I believe Costco does more for civilization than the Rockefeller Foundation,” he said at a 2010 speech at the University of Michigan. “You get a bunch of very intelligent people sitting around trying to do good, and I immediately get kind of suspicious and squirm in my seat… I’ve seen so much folly and stupidity on the part of our major philanthropic groups, including the World Bank, that I really have more confidence in building up the more capitalistic ventures like Costco.”

-Charlie Munger

Library porn............................

...............................................it's enough to take your breath away.

Amen..................................

thanks Kurt

Obliged........................

We will freedom for freedom’s sake, in and through particular circumstances. And in thus willing freedom, we discover that it depends entirely upon the freedom of others and that the freedom of others depends upon our own. Obviously, freedom as the definition of a man does not depend upon others, but as soon as there is a commitment, I am obliged to will the liberty of others at the same time as my own. I cannot make liberty my aim unless I make that of others equally my aim.

-John-Paul Sartre

That "requires interpretation"......

.......................part is where it gets interesting:

All social values - liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect  - are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these values is to everyone's advantage. Injustice, then, is simply inequalities that are not to the benefit of all. Of course, this conception is extremely vague and requires interpretation.

-John Rawls,  culled from The Main Idea Of The Theory Of Justice

Testing................................

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

“Whether you experience heaven or hell, remember that it is your mind which creates them.” 

-Timothy Leary

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

There can be only one permanent revolution — a moral one; the regeneration of the inner man.
How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself.

-Leo Tolstoy

On change...............................

via

Broken rules......................................

     If a complete book of surfing's rules could be written, it wouldn't necessarily help unless you could also learn the "know-how" that comes in faithful practice. You could read and understand all of its instructions, grasp them intellectually, and still not know how to put any rule into action.  As a new wave situation presents itself, you have to know how to go on in the next moment.  To borrow from Ludwig Wittgenstein, the enigmatic early mid-twentieth-century philosopher, if rules were all you had to go by, they couldn't tell you how to "go on" from what came before, even with suggestive coaching.  Given only rules, with no further sense of how to apply them to a fresh particular moment, you'd have to look to further rules to tell you which rules to follow and when.  But then you'd also need rules for following those rules, and so on, without end, ad infinitum, all the way up.   Which is absurd, or impossible, or just not what we do in learning to surf.


-Aaron James,   Surfing With Sartre:  An Aquatic Inquiry Into A Life Of Meaning

On "catching"...........................

Even during the depths of the depression, there were still people who became wealthy and even millionaires.  The thought of poverty was "catching" in those days, but somehow those people did not buy into it;  therefore, it did not apply to them.  For negativity to apply to our life, we must first subscribe to it and, secondly, give it the energy of belief.  If we have the power to make negativity manifest in out life, obviously our mind also has the power to make its converse come true.


-David R. Hawkins,   Letting Go:  The Pathway of Surrender

Growing up with Willie.......................

     Music in the blood.  Music in the house and music in the fields.  Music in the air, in the songs sung by the birds flying through the clear blue Texas sky, in the sound of the wind and the thundering rain.  Music in the heart of my father, a fine fiddler, and my mother, a beautiful singer, who gave birth first to my sister, Bobbie, and wonder child of music, before two years later giving birth to me.
     Mother was Myrle, three-quarters Cherokee Indian, who'd traveled down from dirt-poor Arkansas with Ira, my father, who had followed his father, Alfred, and his mother, Nancy, to Abbott, Texas, where the land was dark and fertile and the farmland offered a degree of hope.
     When I came into this world on April 29, 1933, hope was a sparse commodity.  The Great Depression had hit the homeland hard.  As an adult, I realized that I had grown up in rural Texas during one of the worst periods in American economic history.  But that was something I learned out of books.  What I learned out of life was something entirely different.  What I learned was love.  Like music, love was everywhere I looked and everything I felt.  Fact is, I equated music with love, 'cause to hear or play or sing a song put me in a loving mood.

-Willie Nelson,  It's A Long Story:  My Life

Nature's way..........................

Well, isn't it..............................

Nowadays, in our more leisurely style of capitalism, the workaday surfer can be found at surf breaks the world over, stoked in gushing exuberance about the better waves of the day, feeling lighter about the stresses of work, acting as if the whole meaning of human existence can be found in the simple act of riding a wave.

-Aaron James,  Surfing With Sartre:  An Aquatic Inquiry Into A Life Of Meaning

Surf's up...................................

The Chantays..................................................................Pipeline

Child-like...............................

     The Warrior of the Light behaves like a child.

People are shocked;  they have forgotten that a child needs to have fun and to play, to be slightly irreverent and to ask awkward, childish questions, to talk nonsense that not even he believes in.

And they say, horrified: "So this is the spiritual path, is it?  He's so immature!"

The Warrior feels proud of such comments.  And he remains in touch with God through his innocence and his joy, without ever losing sight of his mission.

-Paulo Coelho,  Warrior Of The Light:  A Manual

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

     A song is a short story.  It might have been my buddy Harlan Howard, a writer I met in Nashville in the sixties, who first said a song ain't nothing but three cords and the truth.
     Well, songs come easy to me.  I've written hundreds of them.  I see them as little stories that fall out of our lives and imaginations.  If I have to struggle to write a song, I stop before I start.  I figure if it don't flow easy, it's not meant to be.
     The truth should flow easy.  Same for songs and stories.  If you overanalyze or torture yourself to bring them to life, something's wrong.  Just the way a mountain stream, bubbling with fresh clean water, keeps flowing, stories need to flow free and easy.  The source of water, like the source of the songs, comes from on high.  It's a natural thing.  It's a beautiful thing.

-Willie Nelson, It's A Long Story:  My Life

The world's done gone crazy...............

Willie Nelson.........................................Come On Back Jesus



Come on back Jesus (Come on back Jesus)
Come on back Jesus
And pick up John Wayne on the way
The world's done gone crazy,
And it seems to get worse everyday
So come on back Jesus,
And pick up John Wayne on the way

Time to take off the glove
They just don't respect peace anymore
But if we have old John Wayne
We know he can swing from the floor
While he kicks their butt
We'll just stand there and watch him and pray

So come on back Jesus,
And pick up John Wayne on the way

Come on back Jesus (Come on back Jesus)
Come on back Jesus
And pick up John Wayne on the way
The world's gettin' crazy,
And it seems to get worse everyday
So come on back Jesus,
And pick up John Wayne on the way

It's getting real hairy
If only old duke man was here
He'd call me old bastard
From out past the atmosphere
Lord the news looked so scary
When I glanced at the paper today

So come on back Jesus,
And pick up John Wayne on the way

Come on back Jesus (Come on back Jesus)
Come on back Jesus
And pick up John Wayne on the way
The world's gettin' crazy,
And it seems to get worse everyday
So come on back Jesus,
And pick up John Wayne on the way
Come on back Jesus, come on back Jesus
Come on back Jesus
And pick up John Wayne on the way

Choose wisely.............................

     One of the laws of consciousness is:  We are only subject to a negative thought or belief if we consciously say that it applies to us.  We are free to choose not to buy into a negative belief system.

-David Hawkins

On the importance of a culture............

     The first thing to understand is that the public peace - the sidewalk and street peace - of cities is not kept primarily by police, as necessary as police are.  It is primarily kept by an intricate, almost unconscious, network of voluntary controls and standards among the people themselves, and enforced by the people themselves.  In some city areas - older public housing projects and streets with very high population turnover are often conspicuous examples - the keeping of public sidewalk law and order is left almost entirely to the police and special guards.  Such places are jungles.  No amount of police can enforce civilization where the normal, casual enforcement of it has broken down.

-Jane Jacobs,  The Death And Life Of Great American Cities,  1961

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

At the movies.............................................................Jungle Book

Or you could just follow this blog...........

a blog to follow

Fish evolution......................

Friend Bilbo has fish on his mind

God love Randall Munroe..........

wiki here

Me too..................................

Rare Earth ...............................................I Just Want To Celebrate

Wisdom...........................

1.  Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

2.  When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.

3.  Follow the three Rs:
     - Respect for self
     - Respect for others
     - Responsibility for all your actions.

4.  Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

5.  Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.


6-18 may be found here.


Thanks Michael

face the fact........................................

“Why do we love the idea that people might be secretly working together to control and organise the world? Because we do not like to face the fact that our world runs on a combination of chaos, incompetence, and confusion.”


– attributed to Jonathan Cainer


via

Might be the news media's main goal as well...

My sense is that we have seen a decline in thinking about politics as a tool for problem-solving. Instead, we act as if our main goal in politics is anger validation.


-Arnold Kling, as excerpted from here

I don't always read David Brooks..............

..................................but when I do, it is usually because he has written something like this:


But throughout history the wiser minds have understood that anger and moral posturing are not a good antidote to rage and fanaticism. Competing vitriols only build on each other.


In fact, the most powerful answer to fanaticism is modesty. Modesty is an epistemology directly opposed to the conspiracy mongering mind-set. It means having the courage to understand that the world is too complicated to fit into one political belief system. It means understanding there are no easy answers or malevolent conspiracies that can explain the big political questions or the existential problems. Progress is not made by crushing some swarm of malevolent foes; it’s made by finding balance between competing truths — between freedom and security, diversity and solidarity. There’s always going to be counter-evidence and mystery. There is no final arrangement that will end conflict, just endless searching and adjustment.


-as culled from his August 15th op-ed in the NYT

For Michael...............................just because

Hey Sweetie..........................

Oh, it's a long, long while 
From May to December 
But the days grow short, 
When you reach September. 
When the autumn weather 
Turn leaves to flame 
One hasn't got time 
For the waiting game. 

Oh the days dwindle down 
To a precious few . . . 
September, November . . . 
And these few precious days 
I'll spend with you. 
These precious days 
I'll spend with you.

Oh the days dwindle down 
To a precious few . . . 
September, November . . . 
And these few precious days 
I'll spend with you. 
These precious days 
I'll spend with you.
These precious days 
I'll spend with you.

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

watch some wondrous lip syncing, before it gets disappeared....

On seeking answers.....................

     How about the experts?  Their confusion is more sophisticated, wrapped in impressive jargon and elaborate mental construction.  They have predetermined belief systems into which they try to squeeze you.  It seems to work for a while and, then, it is just back to one's original state.
     It used to be that we could count on social institutions, but they have had their day;  nobody trusts them anymore.  We now have more watchdogs than institutions.  The hospitals are monitored by multiple agencies.  Nobody has time for the patients, who get lost in the shuffle.  Look down the corridors.  There are no doctors or nurses.  They are in the offices doing paperwork.  The whole scene is dehumanized.
     "Well,"  you say, "there have to be some experts who have the answers."  When upset, you go to a doctor or a psychiatrist, an analyst, a social worker, or an astrologer.  You take up religion, get philosophy, take the Erhard Seminars Training, tap yourself with EFT.  You get your chakras balanced, try some reflexology, go for ear acupuncture, do iridology, get healed with lights and crystals.
     You meditate, chant a mantra, drink green tea, try the Pentecostals, breathe in fire, and speak in tongues.  You get centered, learn NLP, try actualizations, work on visualizations, study psychology, join a Jungian group.  You get Rolfed, try psychedelics, get a psychic reading, jog, jazzercise, have colonics, get into nutrition and aerobics, hang up-side down, wear psychic jewelry.  Get more insight, bio-feedback, Gestalt therapy.
     You see your homeopath, chiropractor, naturopath.  You try kinesiology, discover your Enneagram type, get your meridans balanced, join a consciousness-raising group, take tranquilizers.  You get some hormone shots, try cell salts, have your minerals balanced, pray, implore, and beseech.  You learn astral projection.  Become a vegetarian.  Eat only cabbage.  Try macrobiotics, go organic, eat no GMO.  Meet up with Native American medicine men, do a sweat lodge.  Try Chinese herbs,  moxiocombustion, shiatsu, acupressure, feng shui.  You go to India.  Find a new guru.  Take off your clothes.  Swim in the Ganges.  Stare at the sun.  Shave your head.  Eat with your fingers, get really messy, shower in cold water.
     Sing tribal chants.  Relive past lives.  Try hypnotic regression.  Scream a primal scream.  Punch pillows.  Get Feldenkraised.  Join a marriage encounter group.  Go to Unity.  Write affirmations.  Make a vision board.  Get re-birthed.  Cast the I Ching.  Do the Tarot cards.  Study Zen.  Take more courses and workshops.  Read lots of books.  Do transactional analysis.  Get yoga lessons.  Get into the occult.  Study magic.  Work with a kahuna.  Take a shamanic journey.  Sit under a pyramid.  Read Nostradamus.  Prepare for the worst.
     Go on a retreat.  Try fasting.  Take amino acids.  Get a negative ion generator.  Join a mystery school.  Learn a secret handshake.  Try toning.  Try color therapy.  Try subliminal tapes.  Take brain enzymes, anti-depressants, flower remedies.  Look into strange fermented oddities from faraway places.  Hold hands in a circle and get high.  Renounce sex and going to the movies.  Wear some yellow robes.  Join a cult.
     Try the endless varieties of psychotherapy.  Take wonder drugs.  Subscribe to lots of journals.  Try the Pritikin diet.  Eat just grapefruit.  Get your palm read.  Think New Age thought.  Improve the ecology.  Save the planet.  Get an aura read.  Carry a crystal.  Get a Hindu sidereal astrological interpretation.  Visit a transmedium.  Go for sex therapy.  Try Tantric sex.  Get blessed by Baba Somebody.  Join an anonymous group.  Travel to Lourdes.  Soak in the hot springs.  Join Arica.  Wear therapeutic sandals.  Get grounded.  Get more prana and breathe out that stale black negativity.  Try golden needle acupuncture.  Check out snake gallbladders.  Try chakra breathing.  Get your aura cleaned.  Meditate in Cheops, the great pyramid in Egypt. ...
     Intuitively, we know that somewhere there is an ultimate answer.  We stumble down dark byways into cul-de-sacs and blind alleys;  we get exploited and taken, disillusioned, fed up, and we keep on trying.
     Where is our blind spot?  Why can't we find the answer? ...
     Maybe the solution is not "out there," and that's why we can'f find it.  Maybe we have so many belief systems that we are blinded to the obvious.

-David R. Hawkins,   Letting Go:  The Pathway Of Surrender

Ed Note:  Only tried twenty out of the more than 140 - so far.

Trying my best........................

“Every advance in information technology involves choosing what you want to preserve and what you want to ditch. Scanning rare books on to microfilm is a costly business. The library won't let you do it yourself - they decide first which books should be scanned and which should just rot away in the basement.   Against that eventuality, people should start hoarding the kind of books committees of rational people will decide against scanning into a database.” 

-Robert Twigger

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

Interstellar Overdrive.....................................................Pink Floyd
                                     Probably should post the psychedelia warning.

When she is right, she is right...............

This intense policing of the virtue of others — it's not even virtuous. 

-Ann Althouse, from this post

It is actually our salvation........

And if we were all perfectly rational beings who have no behavioral flaws whatsoever...

But…

WE. ARE. NOT. RATIONAL.

-culled from this Investing in Yourself (Even When It Seems Irrational) post by Ben Carlson

Got this one mastered..................

5.  A challenge: Create time and space this weekend to do nothing.

-from this 25 x 5 from Nicholas Bate

Some good advice..............................

“Here's some advice. Stay alive.” 

-Suzanne Collins

advice via

Seriously....................................

The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously.  The first is imperative and the second is disastrous.

-Margot Fonteyn

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

At the book store....................................................

“I'm in a constant process of thinking about things. ” 
-Richard Brautigan

A likely path to happiness...........

rainbow photo via Man in The Wind

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

Scott Adams knows a thing or two.....

If you are outside the mass hysteria bubble you might have noticed that President Trump never campaigned to be our moral leader. He presented himself as – in his own words “no angel” – with a set of skills he offered to use in the public’s interest. He was big on law and order, and equal justice under the law. But he never offered moral leadership. Voters elected him with that knowledge. Evidently, Republicans don’t depend on politicians for moral leadership. That’s probably a good call.

When the horror in Charlottesville shocked the country, citizens instinctively looked to their president for moral leadership. The president instead provided a generic law and order statement. Under pressure, he later named specific groups and disavowed the racists. He was clearly uncomfortable being our moral lighthouse. That’s probably why he never described his moral leadership as an asset when running for office. We observe that he has never been shy about any other skill he brings to the job, so it probably isn’t an accident when he avoids mentioning any ambitions for moral leadership. If he wanted us to know he would provide that service, I think he would have mentioned it by now.

-as culled from this blog post