Friday, January 4, 2019
Now, go outside and play...............
Taleb opens the book with a poetic image that should speak to all parents. He notes that wind extinguishes a candle but energizes a fire. He advises us not to be like candles and not to turn our children into candles: "You want to be the fire and wish for the wind."
The foolishness of overprotection is apparent as soon as you understand the concept of antifragility. Given that risks and stressors are natural, unavoidable parts of life, parents and teachers should be helping kids develop their innate abilities to grow and learn from such experiences. There's an old saying: "Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child." But these days, we seem to be doing precisely the opposite: we're trying to clear away anything that might upset children, not realizing that in doing so we're repeating the peanut-allergy mistake. If we protect children from various classes of potentially upsetting experiences, we make it far more likely that those children will be unable to cope with such events when they leave our protective umbrella.
-Lukianoff and Haidt, The Coddling Of The American Mind: How Good Intentions And Bad Ideas Are Setting Up A Generation For Failure
Thursday, January 3, 2019
No...........................
One of the hardest things to do in life is to say 'No." To invitations, to requests, to obligations, to the stuff that everyone else is doing. Even harder is saying no to certain time-consuming emotions: anger, excitement, distraction, obsession, lust. None of these impulses feels like a big deal by itself, but run amok, they become a commitment like anything else.
If you're not careful, these are precisely the impositions that will overwhelm and consume your life. Do you ever wonder how you can get some of your time back, how you can feel less busy? Start by learning the power of "No!" — as it "No, thank you." and "No, I'm not going to get caught up in that," and "No, I just can't right now." It may hurt some feelings. It may turn people off. It may take some hard work. But the more you say no to things that don't matter, the more you can say yes to the things that do. This will let you live and enjoy your life — the life that you want.
-Ryan Holiday, from today's entry in The Daily Stoic
I share your concern............................
But it turns out that fascination with surface glitter has obscured our view to what is transpiring in the depths. There, human beings interact with platforms and information, and are changed by the interaction, and the accumulated changes have shaken and battered established institutions from companies and universities to governments and religions. The view from the depths is of a colossal many-sided conflict, the outcome of which, for good or evil, remains uncertain. In fact, the outcome will largely depend on us. And because we still think in categories forged during the industrial age — liberal and conservative, for example, or professional and amateur — our minds are blind to many of the clashes and casualties of this underground struggle. . . .
My thesis is a simple one. We are caught between an old world which is decreasingly able to sustain us intellectually and spiritually, maybe even materially, and a new world that has not yet been born. Given the character of the forces of change, we may be stuck for decades in this ungainly posture. You who are young today many not live to see its resolution.
Famous landmarks of the old regime, like the daily newspaper and the political party, have begun to disintegrate under the pressure of this slow-motion collision. Many features we prized about the old world are also threatened: for example, liberal democracy and economic stability. Some of them will emerge permanently distorted by the stress. Others will just disappear. Many attributes of the new dispensation, like a vastly larger sphere for public discussion, may also warp or break from the immoveable resistance of the established order.
In this war of the worlds, my concern is that we not end up with the worst of all possible worlds.
-Martin Gurri, The Revolt Of The Public
Gerrymandering in the year 1882..........
In the end he captured the nomination without difficulty, but the general election proved more troublesome. The initial vote count gave him a victory of just eight votes, and he headed to Washington as an incumbent. But well into his new term, a review panel dominated by Democrats awarded the seat to his opponent. So he returned to Canton a defeated politician. On top of that, the Democratic legislature once again reconstituted his district, giving Democrats an estimated registration advantage of some 900 votes.
-Robert W. Merry, President McKinley: Architect of the American Century
Fifty years ago...................
Elvis Presley......................................................Suspicious Mind
Systems............................
Achieving a goal only changes your life for the moment. That's the counterintuitive thing about improvement. We think we need to change our results, but results are not the problem. What we really need to change are the systems that cause those results. When you solve problems at the results level, you only solve them temporarily. In order to improve for good, you need to solve problems at the systems level. Fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves.
-James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
eternal spiritual currency...........
As the world careens through a yang expansion it cannot sustain, you will see sorrow and sadness grip the global mind like never before — people's psyches will be rattled, and it will become more difficult to sustain your own balance if you are out of control, overextended, or if you have lost yourself in the sea of sludge that makes for the global marketplace. Markets will whip around, so opportunities will abound — you could become very rich quickly. But in that accumulation, develop a strategy that includes you and your nearest and dearest and the real things of life, and don't eat people as you go along, for love is the only eternal spiritual currency. If you don't love and you are not loved, you are bankrupt.
-Stuart Wilde, The Trick to Money Is Having Some
Wednesday, January 2, 2019
As the new year dawns.................
.......it wouldn't hurt to remind ourselves that the veneer of civilization is very thin:
The large societies found in some other species, such as ants and bees, are stable and resilient because most of the information needed to sustain them is encoded in the genome. A female honeybee larva can, for example, grow up to be either a queen or a worker, depending on what food it is fed. Its DNA programmes the necessary behaviours for whatever role it will fulfil in life. Hives can be very complex social structures, containing many different kids of workers, such as harvesters, nurses and cleaners. But so far researchers have failed to locate lawyer bees. Bees don't need lawyers, because there is no danger that they might forget or violate the hive constitution. The queen does not cheat the cleaner bees of their food, and they never go on strike demanding higher wages.
But humans do such things all the time. Because the Sapiens social order is imagined, humans cannot preserve the critical information for running it simply by making copies of their DNA and passing these on to their progeny. A conscious effort has to be made to sustain laws, customs, procedures and manners, otherwise the social order would quickly collapse.
-Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
By-products..........................
A mind that is concentrated on a positive thought has the power to increase the likelihood that the positive thought will materialize in the world of events. The most successful people in the world are those who hold in mind the highest good of all concerned, including themselves. They know that there is a win-win solution to every problem. They are at peace with themselves, which allows them to be supportive of the potential and success of others. They do work which they love, and so they feel continually inspired and creative. They do not seek happiness; they have discovered that happiness is a by-product of doing what they love. A feeling of personal fulfillment comes naturally from their positive contributions to the lives of others, including family, friends, groups, and the world at large.
-David Hawkins, Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender
Fifty years ago................................
At the book store..............................................................
All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true. One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn't his. Another guy I knew really did threaten to have his personal enemies killed by hired gunmen after the war. And so on. I've changed all the names.
-Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., this being the opening paragraph from Slaughterhouse-Five
Rather...................
I will greet this day with love in my heart.
And most of all I will love myself. For when I do I will zealously inspect all things which enter my body, my mind, my soul, and my heart. Never will I overindulge the requests of my flesh, rather I will cherish my body with cleanliness and moderation. Never will I allow my mind to be attracted to evil and despair, rather I will uplift it with the knowledge and wisdom of the ages. Never will I allow my soul to become complacent and satisfied, rather I will feed it with meditation and prayer. Never will I allow my heart to become small and bitter, rather I will share it and it will grow and warm the earth.
I will greet this day with love in my heart.
-Og Mandino, The Greatest Salesman In The World
Opening paragraphs...........................
The prominent Massachusetts minister and physician Manasseh Cutler captured the optimism of Americans at the dawn of their republic when he described the territory between Lake Erie and the Ohio River as "the garden of the world, the seat of wealth, and the centre of a great Empire." In these lands, he mused, "the arts and sciences will be planted; the seeds of virtue, happiness, and glory be firmly rooted and grow up to full maturity." It's worth noting that, when he wasn't ministering to his New England flock or tending to his patients, Cutler speculated in Western lands and dreamed of wealth, and no doubt there was some marketing hyperbole in his lyrical description of territory so far from American civilization. Indeed, that expanse struck most Easterners at the time as hopelessly inaccessible — on the far side of the merciless Appalachian Mountains, bordered on the north by British Canada and the south by Spanish Louisiana, peopled with hostile natives bent on protecting their homeland through whatever savage methods they could devise.
But Cutler understood the new republic's expansionist impulse. When he died in Massachusetts in 1923, those lands of his vision, now roughly the state of Ohio, boasted the country's fifth-largest population, with 581,434 residents. These were young and hearty folk — 64 percent of them under the age of twenty-five — and by 1830 they had subdued nearly all the state's land suitable for cultivation. By midcentury Ohio led the nation in production of corn, much of it transformed into whiskey and hogs for easy transport, and a decade later the state's population of 2,339,502 trailed only those of New York and Pennsylvania. As a later historian put it, "Ohio recapitulated the history of colonial encounter, conquest, and postcolonial development with breathtaking speed."
-Robert W. Merry, President McKinley: Architect of the American Century
Fifty years ago........................
The Rolling Stones.........You Can't Always Get What You Want
Likely true.......................
Normative sociology, which looks at what some people want to be the causes of social problems, is quite harmful.
-Arnold Kling, as he concludes this post
Tuesday, January 1, 2019
thy lover true........................
Mannheim Steamroller......................................Greensleeves
Echo.................................
I will greet this day with love in my heart.
And how will I confront each whom I meet? In only one way. In silence and to myself I will address him and say I Love You. Though spoken in silence these words will shine in my eyes, unwrinkle my brow, bring a smile to my lips, and echo in my voice; and his heart will be opened. . . .
I will greet this day with love in my heart.
-Og Mandino, The Greatest Salesmen In The World
Opening paragraphs........................
President William McKinley arrived in Buffalo, New York, on the evening of September 4, 1901, intent on deflection history with a speech. The Ohio politician's shiny and luxurious presidential train crawled into the city's Terrace Station at six-thirty that evening, and the presidential party moved quickly toward waiting carriages near the north gate of the Pan-American Exposition, and attention-grabbing extravaganza that opened its doors on May 20. It featured exhibits, spectacles, musical performances, athletic events, and more — most notably, displays of the latest technological wonders, including an X-ray machine and the startling advent of alternating current, allowing the efficient transmission of electricity through lone-distance power lines. This promising advance brought enough power to Buffalo from Niagara Falls turbines, twenty-five miles away, to illuminate the entire exposition grounds in a a nighttime display of electrical wizardry.
This was just the kind of marvel to capture the imagination of a nation on the move, pushing into the twentieth century as it had pushed westward across North America during the previous hundred years — with resolve, confidence, and disregard for accompanying hazards. Now, under McKinley, America was developing and harnessing technology like no other nation, generating unparalleled industrial expansion and wealth, moving beyond its continental confines and into the world. It wasn't surprising that Americans would flock to the Buffalo exposition — an estimated eight million or mover over six months — to bask in their country's promise, or the Exposition leaders would designate a special day to honor the president. Neither was it surprising that McKinley would choose that day to summon support for a major policy departure for American — and for himself. The Pan-American Exposition represented a fitting convergence of the man, the event, and the era.
-Robert W. Merry, from the Introduction to President McKinley: Architect of the American Century
The obligatory...........................
U2.....................................................................New Year's Day
Fifty years ago...................
The Beatles...........................................................Come Together
It would be nice if we........................
15. Frequently paused to appreciate the mind-boggling miracle of life.
The rest of The Execupundit's wish list is here. I'm working on #12 today.
Monday, December 31, 2018
As years go.............
.....................it could have been better and it could have been worse, but it's hard to see how it could have been more interesting.
Be generous with change...................
........................and brave with your business.
Generosity in terms of free work, constant discounts, and plenty of uncompensated overtime isn't really generous. Because you can't sustain it. Because soon you'll be breaking the promises you made.
On the other hand, showing generosity with your bravery, your empathy, and your respect is generous indeed.
What you customers want from you is for you to care enough to change them.
To create tension that leads to forward motion.
To exert emotional labor that will open them up to what's possible.
And if you need to charge a lot to pull that off, it's still a bargain.
-Seth Godin, This Is Marketing: You Can't Be Seen Until You Learn To See
M.I.A..........................................?
In the right relationship between elites and the public, the former acts as exemplars to the latter. They embody and live out the master narratives. We can think of George Washington returning to his farm after the Revolution as a striking example. Abe Lincoln in his childhood log cabin and Tom Edison chasing the perfect filament also fit the type. It almost didn't matter what these historic figures were like in person: whether they were lovable or jerks. The outline of their lives had displayed magnificently admirable traits, and previous generations of Americans agreed with Ortega on the power of exemplarity to raise human life to a higher plane.
The quality that sets the true elites apart -- that bestow authority on their actions and expressions -- isn't power, or wealth, or education, or even persuasiveness. It's integrity in life and work. A healthy society is on in which such exemplary types draw the public toward them purely by the force of their example. Without compulsion, ordinary persons aspire to resemble the extraordinary, not superficially but fundamentally, because they will to partake of superior models of being or doing. The good society, Ortega concluded, was an "engine of perfection."
-Martin Gurri, The Revolt of the Public
Dig...................................
I will great this day with love in my heart.
And how will I speak? I will laud mine enemies and they will become friends; I will encourage my friends and they will become brothers. Always will I dig for reasons to applaud; never will I scratch for excuses to gossip. When I am tempted to criticize I will bite my tongue; when I am moved to praise I will should from the roofs.
Is it not so that birds, the wind, the sea, and all nature speaks with the music of praise for their creator? Cannot I speak the same music to his children? Henceforth will I remember this secret and it will change my life.
I will great this day with love in my heart.
-Og Mandino, The Greatest Salesman In the World
Sunday, December 30, 2018
Biggitude...............................
"M100 is appropriately known as a grand design spiral galaxy. It is a large galaxy of over 100 billion stars."
All the information you want (and a larger photo) is here
If you are interested in the "are there more stars in the sky or grains of sand on the beach" question, you can pursue answers here.
Verse............................
27 But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,
28 Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.
29 And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat also.
30 Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again.
31 And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.
32 For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them.
33 And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same.
34 And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again.
35 But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.
36 Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.
37 Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven:
38 Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.
-The Holy Bible, Luke 6:27-38
Just because.....................
John Coltrane.................................................................Equinox
Charitable..................
When your tribal mindset takes over, you demonize the other side and never question your own beliefs. I think we need to do the opposite. We need to take the most charitable view of those with whom we disagree. And we need to examine our own views critically, as if we were trying to knock them down.
-Arnold Kling, as culled from here
-
Fifty years ago............................
Gladys Knight & The Pips................The End Of Our Road
Saturday, December 29, 2018
On the dissipation of certainty............
“But so long as men are not trained to withhold judgment in the absence of evidence, they will be led astray by cocksure prophets, and it is likely that their leaders will be either ignorant fanatics or dishonest charlatans. To endure uncertainty is difficult, but so are most of the other virtues. For the learning of every virtue there is an appropriate discipline, and for the learning of suspended judgment the best discipline is philosophy.
“But if philosophy is to serve a positive purpose, it must not teach mere skepticism, for, while the dogmatist is harmful, the skeptic is useless. Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or of ignorance.”
-Bertrand Russell, as culled from his essay, Philosophy For Laymen
Greet................................
I will greet this day with love in my heart.
And how will I do this? Henceforth will I look on all things with love and I will be born again. I will love the sun for it warms my bones; yet I will love the rain for it cleanses my spirit. I will love the light for it shows me the way; yet I will love the darkness for it shows me the stars. I will welcome happiness for it enlarges my heart; yet I will endure sadness for it opens my soul. I will acknowledge rewards for they are my due; yet I will welcome obstacles for they are my challenge.
I will great this day with love in my heart.
-Og Mandino, The Greatest Salesman In The World
Opening paragraphs...............
Charles Bukowski was an alcoholic, a womanizer, a chronic gambler, a lout, a cheapskate, a deadbeat, and on his worst days, a poet. He's probably the last person on earth you would ever look to for life advice or expect to see in any sort of self-help book.
Which is why he's the perfect place to start.
-Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*uck: A Counterintuitive Approach To Living A Good Life
On switching to lobster..............
listen, he said, you ever seen a bunch of crabs in a
bucket?
no, I told him.
well, what happens is that now and then one crab
will climb up on top of the others
and begin to climb toward the top of the bucket,
then, just as he's about to escape
another crab grabs him and pulls him back
down.
really? I asked.
really, he said, and this job is just like that, none
of the others want anybody to get out of
here. that's just the way it is
in the postal service!
I believe you, I said.
just then the supervisor walked up and said,
you fellows were talking.
there is no talking allowed on this
job.
I had been there for eleven and one-half
years.
I got up off my stool and climbed right up the
supervisor
and then I reached up and pulled myself right
out of there.
it was so easy it was unbelievable.
but none of the others followed me.
and after that, whenever I had crab legs
I thought about that place.
I must have thought about that place
maybe 5 or 6 times
before I switched to lobster.
-Charles Bukowski, The Great Escape
Fifty years ago...........................
Eddie Floyd..I've Never Found A Girl (To Love Me Like You Do)
Friday, December 28, 2018
I really like Ben Carlson...............
....If you aren't reading his blog, well, feel free to start now. Here is a for instance of his common sensical thinking:
5. There isn’t just one reason. Narratives about what caused the market correction can be fun to argue about but there’s never just one reason for something like this. The president or the Fed or the tariffs or algorithmic trading strategies or the month of December or Taylor Swift’s deafening silence on the trade war didn’t cause this downturn.
Markets are made up of millions of investors, all with different goals, objectives, time horizons, risk profiles, and temperaments. No one person or office or investment strategy can control these millions of moving parts.
The poet Frank Bidart once wrote, “Insanity is the insistence of meaning.” He may have been talking about the movements of the stock market.
So many opportunities to learn.......
"One of my proofs of a loving God, is in the provision of catastrophes, especially those man-made through lapses of prudence. We learn from experience. Or we don’t learn, in which case we have the benefit of catastrophe, again. One generation replaces another, and perhaps we never learn; but the potential is always there."
-Richard Warren, from this anti-bot post
Checking in with Steinmetz..............
"There are no foolish questions and no man becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions."
"In this country all a man need to do is to attain a little eminence and immediately he begins to talk. Usually his eminence is financial, and the greater this eminence the more he talks and the further his voice reaches. I don't blame the rich people for talking; many of them don’t know what else to do with themselves. The fault is with these who listen. If no one would listen no harm would he done. But the American people are willing to listen to any one who has attained prominence. The main fact is that we've heard a man's name a great many times; that makes us ready to accept whatever he says. … We listen to the one who talks the most and loudest."
-Charles Proteus Steinmetz, 1865-1923
Fifty years ago.............................
Glen Campbell................................................Wichita Lineman
On coincidences.......
"The most astonishingly incredible coincidence imaginable would be the complete absence of all coincidences."
-John Allen Paulos
Concerted action.........................
The quality of your "concerted action in the marketplace" is really dominated by the force, or lack thereof, of your intention. Most people think that intention just means saying, "I'll do my best." When people say that to me, I run a mile. "I'll do my best," is the mind's way of saying, "I'll trot out there and play around doing busy work for an hour or two, and when the project doesn't succeed or realize its full potential, I'll be okay because I have my excuse already pinned on the wall."
Your mind is your best friend, but it's also an enemy. Not only because it has a vested interest in limiting what you believe you can do, but also because it has a way of selling you short. Isn't it interesting that whenever a group of people set out to develop a project, that project usually falls short of everyone's expectations? In real life, things never quite pan out the way one thinks they ought to. Why is that? Because the ego-personality is happy to spend four hours in a meeting talking about building apartments on the beach, but it isn't at all happy spending eight hours actually hauling cement or delivering sales pitches to prospective buyers. Imagination and "concerted action" live in different neighborhoods.
-Stuart Wilde, The Trick to Money Is Having Some
Thursday, December 27, 2018
While............................
17. Live not as though there were a thousand years ahead of you. Fate is at your elbow; make yourself good while life and power are still yours.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 4
Leaning............................
Several years ago, after one of my talks, a man came up to me and said, "All this 'lean on God' stuff isn't me." I told him that, in my own life, whenever I haven't leaned on God, I've found myself leaning on something or someone I'd have been better off not leaning on!
-Marianne Williamson, The Law Of Divine Compensation
A standing ovation..................
A story is told about Fiorello LaGuardia, who, when he was mayor of New York City during the worst days of the Great Depression and all of World War II, was called "the Little Flower" by adoring New Yorkers because he was only five foot four and always wore a carnation in his lapel. He was a colorful character who used to ride the New York City fire trucks, raid speakeasies with the police department, take entire orphanages to baseball games, and wherever the New York newspapers were on strike, he would go on the radio and read the Sunday funnies to the kids.
One bitterly cold night in January of 1935, the mayor turned up at a night court that served the poorest ward of the city. LaGuardia dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself. Within a few minutes, a tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. She told LaGuardia that her daughter's husband had deserted her, her daughter was sick, and her two grandchildren were starving. But the shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, refused to drop the charges. "It's a bad neighborhood, Your Honor," the man told the mayor. "She's got to be punished to teach other people around here a lesson."
LaGuardia sighed. He turned to the woman and said, "I've got to punish you. The law makes no exceptions -- ten dollars or ten days in jail." But even as he pronounced the sentence, the mayor was already reaching into his pocket. He extracted a bill and tossed it into his famous sombrero, saying, "Here is the ten dollar fine, which I now remit; and furthermore I am going to fine everyone in this courtroom fifty cents for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. Mr. Bailiff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant."
So the following day the New York City newspapers reported that $47.50 was turned over to a bewildered old lady who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving grandchildren, fifty cents of that amount being contributed by the red-faced grocery store owner, while some seventy petty criminals, people with traffic violations, and New York City policemen, each of whom had just paid fifty cents for the privilege of doing so, gave the mayor a standing ovation.
-Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel
Fifty years ago..........................
Merle Haggard.......................The Legend Of Bonnie & Clyde
Opening paragraphs..................
I'm dying, Spenser," the man said.
I nodded, not knowing what else to say. An early-summer rain beaded down my office window, dark gray skies hovering over Berkeley and Boylston as afternoon commuters jockeyed for position out of the city. Their taillights cast a red glow on slick streets. Somewhere a prowl car hit a siren, heading off to another crime. The man sitting before me smiled and nodded, his hands withered and liver-spotted. His name was Locke.
"How long have we known each other?" Locke asked.
"A long time."
-Ace Atkins, channeling Robert B. Parker in the Spenser novel, Old Black Magic
On certainty and security................
“Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.”
Wednesday, December 26, 2018
Another piece of advice..................
.........................................to avoid frustration, ponder, from time to time, the value to others of your output.
And at work, plenty of us, because we’re ambitious or frustrated or just because we live in a capitalist society where our worth is determined by our output, are hoping to get more done in 2019. Luckily, the Twitter feed for Inc. magazine is here for you, as earlier this week the magazine recirculated a 2017 story about getting a “fast start to your day,” gleaned from the wisdom of billionaire tech entrepreneurs. Their advice: Wake up before dawn and sacrifice your mornings to the gods of productivity.
-Rachelle Hampton, excerpted from here
Fifty years ago..........................
Manfred Mann....................................................Mighty Quinn
On the stories we tell ourselves............
"My narrative is simply my narrative, and if it's not working, it's arrogant to insist on it."
-Seth Godin, from here
Truth.............................
"No one today likes truth: utility and self interest have long ago been substituted for truth."
-Nikolai Berdyaev
Tuesday, December 25, 2018
Faulty parenting.................
Neither of my two adult children will accept the fact the Die Hard is a Christmas movie, even after we watched it, as a family, this evening.
I feel like such a failure.
And, lo..........................
8 And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
9 And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.
10 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
15 And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.
-The Holy Bible, King James Version, Luke 2:8-15
Monday, December 24, 2018
Glories stream............................
Jennifer Nettles...........................................Silent Night
Merry Christmas.............
..........................................................from our house to yours.
Fifty years ago............................
Perry Como.........................................................Christmas Eve
Duty...........................
“Fear is never a good counselor and victory over fear is the first spiritual duty of man.”
-Nicolas Berdyaev, philosopher
thanks Tony
Sunday, December 23, 2018
Dreaming.........................
Ella Fitzgerald.................................................White Christmas
KPIs...................................
46. Value wisdom over stuff, stillness over babble, investment over the quick-fix.
-Nicholas Bate from this Complete Two Score and Ten
Compound............................
"Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. Getting 1 percent better every day counts for a lot in the long run. Habits are a double-edged sword. They can work for you or against you . . . If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.
-James Clear, Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results
Fifty years ago.......................
Tony Bennett.....................Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
In praise of stress...................
But teaching kids that failures, insults, and painful experiences will do lasting danger is harmful in and of itself. Human beings need physical and mental challenges and stressors or we deteriorate.
-Lukianoff and Haidt, The Coddling Of The American Mind: How Good Intentions And Bad Ideas Are Setting Up A Generation For Failure
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