Lindsey Stirling.........................................What Child Is This

Christmas shopping................

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

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

Must be older...........................

Trans-Siberian Orchestra...............................Christmas Canon

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

The O'Kaysions.....................................................Girl Watcher

Not sure how I missed it..................

………….but yesterday marked the 85th anniversary of the end of Prohibition.  We have deferred our celebration until tomorrow night.

On Trump and Clinton......

The right level of analysis on Trump isn't Trump at all, but the public that endowed him with a radical direction and temper, and the decadent institutions that proved too week to stand in his way.


The US public, like the public everywhere, is engaged in a long migration away from the structures of representative democracy to more sectarian arrangements.  The public craves meaning and identity.  From its perspective, late modern society, including government, exists to frustrate this desire.  Caught in the collision between extraordinary personal expectations and feeble but intrusive political institutions, the nation-state, here and elsewhere, is splintering into sociopolitical shards that grow less intelligible to one another by the moment.  To a Hillary Clinton, peering down from the heights of a very steep pyramid, the distant mass of Trump supporters could only look like a "basket of deplorables."  Otherwise they were impossible to explain.


-Martin Gurri,   The Revolt Of The Public

Ego...........................

Jennifer Nettles...................................O Holy Night/Hallelujah

This is what.........................

................................................restless intelligence looks like.

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

Percy Sledge.......................................Take Time To Know Her

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

Reading this book made me realize that democratized information poses a dilemma for modern society.  If the public loses patience and respect for government, the result would be disintegration.  If elites choose to dig in, they are likely to resort to repression.

To avoid these extreme outcomes, both elites and the public will have to change.  Elites will have to cede authority and permit more local variation and experimentation.  The public will have to be more tolerant.  Imperfections and bad outcomes should not be taken as proof of conspiracy or evil intent.  We should pay less heed to those who can only pour out condemnation and blame.  We should show greater appreciation for those who make constructive attempts to experiment and fix.

-Arnold Kling, from his Foreword to  Gurri's The Revolt Of The Public

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

Most.......................

"Most beautiful and most bewilderingBecause it builds a framework out of freedom."
-Clive James, as excerpted from here
Thanks Michael

Bill Evans...........................................................'Round Midnight

Probably will wear out a highlighter.....

……………….....reading Martin Gurri's new book, The Revolt Of The Public:  And The Crisis Of Authority In The New Millennium.


From page 1:


"Should anyone care about this tangle of bizarre connections?  Only if you care how you are governed:   the story I am about to tell concerns above all a crisis of that monstrous messianic machine, the modern government."


"The moment tomorrow no longer resembles yesterday, we are startled and confused.  The compass cracks, by which we navigate.   We are lost at sea."

If you don't read anything else..............

………..today, read this Q & A with Camille Paglia.  Please.

Mannheim Steamroller...................Hark The Herald Angels Sing

surplus............................

56.  Take it that you have died today, and your life's story is ended; and henceforth regard what further time may be given you as an uncovenanted surplus, and live it out in harmony with nature.

57.  Love nothing but that which comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny.  For what could more aptly fit your needs?

-Marcus Aurelius,  Meditations, from Book Seven

thanks

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

The Doors..............................................The Unknown Soldier

Please, literally, please.................

Oh, the perils of speciesism........

Lots of fun to be had reading all the comments (including a phrase likely no one has ever said).  Enjoy.

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

Pentatonix..........................................Little Drummer Boy

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

At the dawn of the third millennium, humanity wakes up, stretching its limbs and rubbing its eyes.  Remnants of some awful nightmare are still drifting across its mind.  'There was something with barbed wire, and huge mushroom clouds.  Oh well, it was just a bad dream.'  Going to bathroom, humanity washes its face, examines its wrinkles in the mirror, makes a cup of coffee and opens the diary.  'Let's see what's on the agenda today.'
     For thousands of years the answer to this question remained unchanged.  The same three problems preoccupied the people of twentieth-century China, of medieval India and of ancient Egypt.   Famine, plague and war were always at the top of the list.  For generation after generation humans have prayed to every god, angel and saint, and have invented countless tools, institutions and social systems - but they continued to die in their millions from starvation, epidemic and violence.  Many thinkers and prophets concluded that famine, plague and war must be an integral part of God's cosmic plan or of our imperfect nature, and nothing short of the end of time would free us from them.
     Yet at the dawn of the third millennium, humanity wakes up to an amazing realization.  Most people rarely think about it, but in the past few decades we have managed to rein in famine, plague and war.  Of course, these problems have not been completely solved, but they have been transformed from incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces of nature into manageable challenges. ...

-Yuval Noah Harari,   Homo Deus:  A Brief History of Tomorrow

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

       "In a world where you can be anything - be kind"

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

   
     "Life is so simple, really.  Think through what people want, watch what others fail to give them, and provide it.  Then bill 'em."

-Stuart Wilde,   The Trick to Money Is Having Some

baby boy..............................

Pentatonix...............................................Mary, Did You Know?

Fun with statistics..................

    via

Some truth here..................

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

Simon & Garfunkel...................Save The Life Of My Child

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

"I used to say, 'I sure hope things will change.'  Then I learned that the only way things are going to change for me is when I change."

-Jim Rohn

Karma..................

      Because in deed and in truth we are all one, component parts of the living garment of God, you yourself will ultimately receive the same treatment that you mete out to others;  you will receive the same merciful help in your own hour of need from those who are farther along the path than you are.  Above all it is true that, in freeing others from the weight of your condemnation, you make it possible to absolve yourself from self-condemnation.

-Emmet Fox,  The Sermon On The Mount:  The Key To Success In Life

Careful............................

     Preoccupation with self is always a major component of unhealthy guilt and recrimination.  It stirs our emotions, churning in self-destructive ways, closes us in upon the mighty citadel of self, leads to depression and despair, and preempts the presence of a compassionate God.

-Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

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

     If you think of yourself as being at the effect of a random universe that does not care about you, then you will experience your life that way.  If you think of yourself as being at the effect of a loving universe that does care about you, then you will experience your life that way.
     No matter what is happening in our lives, we choose how we wish to think about it.  And the greatest gift we give ourselves is often our willingness to change our minds.  Despite what might seem to be the saddest and most intractable situation, we have the power to believe that something else is possible, that things can change, that a miracle can happen.

-Marianne Williamson, The Law of Divine Compensation

Rejoice, rejoice............................

Mindy Gledhill........................................................Patapan

More truth here.................

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

Clarence Carter......................................................Back Door Santa

 

It is not winter until...................

......................the Trans-Siberian Orchestra shows up:

TSO..............................O' Come All Ye Faithful/O' Holy Night

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

James Brown............................................Soulful Christmas

a continual cascading...............

“Another way to look at meditation is to view the process of thinking itself as a waterfall, a continual cascading of thought. In cultivating mindfulness we are going beyond or behind our thinking, much the way you might find a vantage point in a cave or depression in a rock behind a waterfall. We still see and hear the water, but we are out of the torrent.” 


-Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

Hoping to miss out on Step 4..................

      via

It's December. Let the Christmas music begin...

August Burns Red........................................Carol Of The Bells

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

Van Morrison........................................................Sweet Thing

Never is a long time.................

It is miraculous.............

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” 

-Albert Einstein

Failsafe..............................

     via

Worth re-reading from time to time....

On bubbles......................

“If possible, avoid being a bubble; for a bubble, even the gentlest touch is fatal.” 


-Mehmet Murat ildan

This has actually aged pretty well........

    "I don't know why the economy works, but I'm sure it isn't because brilliant people are managing it.  My guess is that if you sum up all the absurd activities of management, the idiocies somehow cancel out, thus producing cool things that you want to buy, such as Nerf balls and Snapple.  Add the law of supply and demand to the mix and you've pretty much described the whole theory of economics."

-Scott Adams, from his 1996 tome, The Dilbert Principle:  A Cubicle's-Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads & Other Workplace Afflictions

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

The Beatles.................................................................Hey Jude

It's puzzle time...................

What will it take to balance the last pairing?

Faithful readers will likely not need to be provided the answer.  On the off chance they might be interested in more puzzles (and answers), such will be found here.

Thanks Doug

Responsibility.................

“We cannot have a world where everyone is a victim. "I'm this way because my father made me this way. I'm this way because my husband made me this way." Yes, we are indeed formed by traumas that happen to us. But then you must take charge, you must take over, you are responsible.” 

-Camille Paglia

Gratitude.............................

“Thank God for the things that I do not own.”

-St. Teresa of Avila

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

At the cinema.....Dick Van Dyke in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

A recipe................................

If you want to be happy, forget yourself. Forget all of it—how you look, how you feel, how your career is going. Just drop the whole subject of you…People dedicated to something other than themselves—helping family and friends, or a political cause, or others less fortunate than they—are the happiest people in the world.

-Michael Crichton, as taken from here

With apologies to Queen.......

...........................................................Opinion Rhapsody

Good luck with this...................

" . . . advance the goals of “deliberative democracy” by incentivizing people to be flexible belief updaters whose views converge in response to facts, thus depolarizing unnecessarily polarized debates."

-as culled from here

A pretty exhaustive list.............

...............................................of things within my control:

via

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

The Beatles..................................................................Blackbird

never be thwarted.......................

34.   Press on steadily, keep to the straight road in your thinking and doing, and your days will ever flow on smoothly.  The soul of man, like the souls of all rational creatures, has two things in common with the soul of God:  it can never be thwarted from without, and its good consists in the righteousness of character and action, and in confining every wish thereto.

-Marcus Aurelius,  Meditations, from Book Five

Truth telling.....................

        via

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

The Beatles............................................................I'm So Tired

Better....................

"For the most part we make better "things" nowadays but I wonder if we are making better people."

-Michael Wade

     We practice the Three Dharma Seals to realize liberation.  If you memorize a 5,000 page book on the Three Dharma Seals but do not apply the teachings during your daily life, the book is of no use.  Only by using your intelligence and putting the teachings into practice can they bring you happiness.  Please base your practice on your own life and your own experiences - your successes and your failures.  The Buddha's teachings are jewels, but we have to dig deep in order to touch them fully.

-Thich Nhat Hanh,  The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching:  Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy and Liberation 

On blaming the wrong person........

"And then I started to cry, too, because I was thinking of Michael and what was lost, and Kevin and what I hope won’t be lost. And because, more and more, it seems that Donald Trump’s genius for hate and division has driven us all into a canyon that we won’t easily be able to climb out of."

"I worry that it will be a long time before we can talk across our jangly, angry chasms. "


 Don't indulge in the off-loading of your estrangement onto Donald Trump. There will always be political figures out there, setting us off, stirring up hostility and anxiety. Find the estrangement that originates in you, and take care of that.  "Just remember, when you really need somebody, the only one that’s going to be compelled to run toward you is your family...."


-Ann Althouse, from this post in which she quotes Maureen Dowd

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

……………………………………………………...gratitude.

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

The Beatles....................................................Martha My Dear

Happy Thanksgiving.........................!

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

The Beatles............................................All You Need Is Love

Reckon up......................

27.  Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours.  At the same time, however, beware lest delight in them leads you to cherish them so dearly that their loss would destroy your peace of mind.

-Marcus Aurelius,  Meditations, from Book Seven

I'm so old, I remember when it was respected...

"It is a mistake, however, to put so much trust in the rational individual."

-Yuval Noah Harari

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

The Beatles....................The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill

Own it...............................

All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts.  In a justly ordered universe, where loss of equipoise would mean total destruction, individual responsibility must be absolute.  A man's weakness and strength, purity and impurity, are his own, and not another man's;  they are brought about by himself, and not by another;  and they can only be altered by himself, never by another.  His condition is also his own and not another man's.  His suffering and his happiness are evolved from within.  As he thinks, so he is; as he continues to think, so he remains.

-James Allen, As A Man Thinketh

Let's dance...................

People don't believe what you believe.
     They don't know what you know.
     They don't want what you want.
     It's true, but we'd rather not accept this.
     Sonder is defined as that moment when you realize that everyone around you has an internal life as rich and as conflicted as yours.
     Everyone has noise in their heads.
     Everyone thinks they are right, and that they have suffered affronts and disrespect at the hands of others.
     Everyone is afraid.  And everyone realizes that they are also lucky.
     Everyone has an impulse to make things better, to connect and to contribute.
     Everyone wants something that they can't possibly have.  And if they could have it, they'd discover that they really didn't want it all along.
     Everyone is lonely, insecure, and a bit of a fraud.  And everyone cares about something.
     As a marketer, then, we have little chance of doing marketing to others, in insisting that they get with our program, that they realize how hard we've worked, how loud the noise is in our heads, how important our cause is . . .
     It's so much more productive to dance with them instead.

-Seth Godin, from This Is Marketing:  You Can't Be Seen Until You Learn to See

A much needed...........................

……………………………………………..pep talk.

Maybe part of the problem is........

..........not acknowledging that scientific truth is fairly elusive:

Religious and ideological dogmas are still highly attractive in our scientific age precisely because they offer us a safe have from the frustrating complexity of reality.  As noted earlier, secular movements have not been exempt from this danger.  Even if you start with a rejection of all religious dogmas and with a firm commitment to scientific truth, sooner or later the complexity of reality becomes so vexing that you might be driven to fashion a doctrine that shouldn't be questioned.

-Yuval Noah Harari,  21 Lessons for the 21st Century

On dogma

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

The Beatles.....................................................Wild Honey Pie

On being careful what you wish for......

Military power and idealism about bringing perceived civilization to others are a prescription for frequent conflict in any age - and no ancient state made war more often than did 5th Century imperial Athens. ...
     Consequently, many have carefully read Thucydides in just that historicist context.  Our leaders and pundits are eager to learn from the Athenians' mistakes and successes.  They are unsure whether the fate of Athens is to be our own, or whether Americans can yet match the Athenians' civilization and influence while avoiding their hubris.  Perhaps never has the Peloponnesian War been more relevant to Americans that to us of the present age.  We, like the Athenians, are all-powerful, but insecure, professedly pacifist yet nearly always in some sort of conflict, often more desirous of being liked than being respected, and proud of our arts and letters even as we are more adept at war. ...
      Most wars do not end as they start.

-Victor Davis Hanson, A War Like No Other:  How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War

Unfortunately, scientists and pundits....

.......................also seem to be captured by "communal groupthink"

The world is becoming ever more complex, and people fail to realize just how ignorant they are of what's going on.  Consequently, some people who know next to nothing about meteorology or biology nevertheless propose polices regarding climate change and genetically modified crops, while others hold extremely strong views about what should be done in Iraq or Ukraine without being able to locate these countries on a map.  People rarely appreciate their ignorance, because they lock themselves inside an echo chamber of like-minded friends and self-confirming news feeds, where their beliefs are constantly reinforce and seldom challenged.
     Providing people with more and better information is unlikely to improve matters.  Scientists hope to dispel wrongs view by better science education, and pundits hope to sway public opinion on issues such as Obamacare or global warming by presenting the public with accurate facts and expert reports.   Such hopes are grounded in a misunderstanding of how humans really think.  Most of our views are shaped by communal groupthink rather than individual rationality, and we hold on to these views due to group loyalty.

-Yuval Noah Harari,  21 Lessors for the 21st Century

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

The Beatles...........................................Back In The U.S.S.R.

Reasons why I like living in.........

..........................................Newark and Licking County: 

Reason #37:   The Granville Turkey Trot

So my Sweetie has been a part of the organizing committee for the Granville Turkey Trot.  Held annually (for 13 years now) on Thanksgiving morn, this 5K run/walk raises funds (over $625,000 so far) for the Food Pantry Network of Licking County.   It is a tremendously fun family event with over 2,500 participants of all ages.

Three Tigers Brewing is helping out this year with their creation of  Tater Trot, a sweet potato brown ale.  A bit of every glass sold will be donated to the Turkey Trot.  I suspect much fun was had in both brewing the Tater Trot and making this video.  Bottoms up!

Just kidding.....................

Ten Rules..........................

.............applicable for both Thanksgiving and Life Its Ownself.

pure talent........................

I would certainly classify Prince as a major artist of the late twentieth century, but I must admit some disappointment with how this brilliant career developed or failed to develop over time.  His great period was his early one, from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, when he created a brand-new sonic landscape and used the emergent genre of music videos as a flamboyant medium of performance art.  Musically, he downscaled Rick James' massive macho funk chords into a bewitching web work of intricate rhythm, intimate and sensual.  As a sexual persona, he borrowed transgender motifs from Little Richard and Jimi Hendrix and refashioned himself first as a half-naked s&m rent boy and then as an aristocratic dandy, dripping silk and lace. ...

     The news about Prince's death two weeks ago was announced while my "Art of Song Lyric" course was meeting.  We were in fact doing the period from James Brown through soul, disco, and funk.  I was incredulous when I got back to my office and saw the shocking headline on the Drudge Report.  At our next class, I immediately showed Prince's "Kiss" video (1986) to demonstrate what pure talent looks like.  What a low-budget masterpiece that beautifully edited video is - nothing but dance, gesture, seductive rhythm, and witty warmth.

-Camille Paglia, The Death of Prince from Provocations:  Collected Essays

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

Jack Reacher caught the last of the summer sun in a small town on the coast of Maine, and then, like the birds in the sky above him, he began his long migration south.  But not, he thought, straight down the coast.  Not like the orioles and the buntings and the phoebes and the warblers and the ruby-throated hummingbirds.  Instead he decided on a diagonal route, south and west, from the top right-hand corner of the country to the bottom left, maybe through Syracuse, and Cincinnati, and St. Louis, and Oklahoma City, and Albuquerque, and onward all the way to San Diego.  Which for an army guy like Reacher was a little too full of Navy people, but which was otherwise a fine spot to start the winter.
     It would be an epic road trip, and one he hadn't made in years.
     He was looking forward to it.
     He didn't get far.

-Lee Child, Past Tense

Work (and life its ownself).....................

"The answer to just about every question about work is really the question, 'Who can you help?'"

-Seth Godin

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

The Beatles............................................Baby You're A Rich Man

I guess that explains it........................

Thirty years ago, during my second year of teaching humanities at the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts (1985-86, I created an elective two-semester course called "Lyric" that began with ancient Greek poetry and ended with modern song lyrics, from Broadway musicals to folk-rock. ...

     While Joan Baez has unfailingly impressed, her colleague and sometime flame Bob Dylan has not.  To my dismay, Dylan was a very hard sell in my classes throughout the 1980s.  His voice struck many students as thin and grating, while the hyper-verbalism and attack style of his protest songs seemed out of sync.  That thankfully changed in the 1990s, probably because of aggressively political rap, which had become hugely popular among white male teenagers trapped in the blandness and materialism of suburban shopping-mall culture.  Dylan's message-heavy intensity seemed relevant again, a recovered stature happily sustained in the new century.

-Camille Paglia, from her essay Art of Song Lyric


Joan Baez.................................................................Silver Dagger

Don't sing love songs, you'll wake my mother
She's sleeping here right by my side
And in her right hand a silver dagger
She says that I can't be your bride

"All men are false", says my mother
"They'll tell you wicked, lovin' lies
The very next evening, they'll court another
Leave you alone to pine and sigh"

My daddy is a handsome devil
He's got a chain five miles long
And on every link a heart does dangle
Of another maid he's loved and wronged

Go court another tender maiden
And hope that she will be your wife
For I've been warned, and I've decided

To sleep alone all of my life

Bob Dylan.................................................Desolation Row

They're selling postcards of the hanging, they're painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors, the circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner, they've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker, the other is in his pants
And the riot squad they're restless, they need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight, from Desolation Row

Cinderella, she seems so easy, "It takes one to know one, " she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he's moaning. "You Belong to Me I Believe"
And someone says, "You're in the wrong place, my friend, you'd better leave"
And the only sound that's left after the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up on Desolation Row

Now the moon is almost hidden, the stars are beginning to hide
The fortune telling lady has even taken all her things inside
All except for Cain and Abel and the hunchback of Notre Dame

Everybody is making love or else expecting rain
And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing, he's getting ready for the show
He's going to the carnival tonight on Desolation Row

Ophelia, she's 'neath the window for her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday she already is an old maid
To her, death is quite romantic she wears an iron vest
Her profession's her religion, her sin is her lifelessness
And though her eyes are fixed upon Noah's great rainbow
She spends her time peeking into Desolation Row

Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood with his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago with his friend, a jealous monk
Now he looked so immaculately frightful as he bummed a cigarette
And he when off sniffing drainpipes and reciting the alphabet
You would not think to look at him, but he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin on Desolation Row

Dr. Filth, he keeps his world inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients, they're trying to blow it up
Now his nurse, some local loser, she's in charge of the cyanide hole
And she also keeps the cards that read, "Have Mercy on His Soul"
They all play on the penny whistles, you can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough from Desolation Row

Across the street they've nailed the curtains, they're getting ready for the feast
The Phantom of the Opera in a perfect image of a priest
They are spoon feeding Casanova to get him to feel more assured
Then they'll kill him with self-confidence after poisoning him with words
And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls, "Get outta here if you don't know"
Casanova is just being punished for going to Desolation Row"

At midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders and then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles by insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping to Desolation Row

Praise be to Nero's Neptune, the Titanic sails at dawn
Everybody's shouting, "Which side are you on?!"
And Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them and fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much about Desolation Row

Yes, I received your letter yesterday, about the time the doorknob broke
When you asked me how I was doing, was that some kind of joke
All these people that you mention, yes, I know them, they're quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces and give them all another name
Right now, I can't read too good, don't send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them from Desolation Row

Total agreement here......................

"... I personally would trust more in those who admit ignorance that in those who claim infallibility."

-Yuval Noah Harari

Give him an "A"................

........................................for strategic use of weasel words:

"Every religion, ideology, and creed has its shadows, and no matter which creed you follow you should acknowledge your shadow and avoid the naive reassurance that "it cannot happen to us."  Secular science has at least one big advantage over most traditional religions - namely, that it is not inherently terrified of its shadow, and it is in principle willing to admit its mistakes and blind spots."

-Yuval Noah Harari,  21 Lessons for the 21st Century

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

The Beatles...................................................Eleanor Rigby



for all the purists out there, I know this tune was first released as a single and on Revolver in 1966.  But, it also was featured in their 1968 movie, Yellow Submarine

Meanwhile, only 5,000 light years away......

enlargeable photo and back story here

On rhetorical battles.........................

....................if you want a reason to smile today, read this one.

Like zombies and Russian spies, there are more economists among us than you might think. This can be dangerous because studies show that economists are more likely than normal people to graze their goats too long on the town commons, to rat out their co-conspirators in jailhouse interrogations, and to show up drunk on their last day at a job. This appears to be both because unethical people are drawn to economics and because economics itself teaches people to be both untrusting and untrustworthy. This feedback loop has led to the creation of famously difficult economists like John Stuart Mill and….well, it’s a long list. Like halitosis and comb-overs, the problem is worse in Washington.

-William Carrington

To think that occasionally..............

.....................................academic researchers get something right?

7. What is your response to the academic research that people are terrible at forecasting future behavior?

-Question culled from this Barry Ritholtz post

Wishful thinking.......................

"... an outcome that allows, for one night at least, the faintest hope that the crazy train of American politics over the past two years may be slowing to a more sensible pace."

-Eric Boehm, as cut from here

And now a word....................

.......................................................from Seth Godin:

"An idea shared is more powerful than one that’s hidden." 

Ray is actually.......................

..................................one of those rekindling kind of people.