A radical idea in investing............

Charlie and I view the marketable common stocks that Berkshire owns as interests in businesses, not as ticker symbols to be bought or sold based on their “chart” patterns, the “target” prices of analysts or the opinions of media pundits. Instead, we simply believe that if the businesses of the investees are successful (as we believe most will be) our investments will be successful as well. Sometimes the payoffs to us will be modest; occasionally the cash register will ring loudly. And sometimes I will make expensive mistakes. Overall – and over time – we should get decent results. In America, equity investors have the wind at their back.

-Warren Buffett, from page 10 of this Berkshire Hathaway annual report

Timeless............................

Forecast for tomorrow.......................

Speaking of libraries.................

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

Peter, Paul and Mary.....................Leaving On A Jet Plane

Am I the only one.....................

................that thinks that Greg Mankiw is being a bit naive here?

Two such problems are global climate change from human carbon emissions and the looming fiscal imbalance as more baby boomers retire and start collecting Social Security and Medicare. These problems are hardly a secret, but few in Washington want to talk about them.

One approach is easy to envision. A tax on carbon emissions would encourage the movement toward cleaner energies and raise revenue for the public purse, helping address both problems.

Seeking.......................................

...........................................satisfaction, not happiness.

Not sure...............................

..............that I ever would have thought of classifying Catch-22 as a novel for leaders.  But, since Michael proposed it, I fetched an old copy off the shelves and started thumbing through it.  I think he has a point.  On about every other page there is a passage like this:

     Without realizing how it came about, the combat men in the squadron discovered themselves dominated by the administrators appointed to serve them.  They were bullied, insulted, harassed and shoved about all day long by one after the other.  When the voiced their objection, Captain Black replied that people who were loyal would not mind signing all the loyalty oaths they had to.  To anyone who questioned the effectiveness of the loyalty oaths, he replied that people who really did owe allegiance to their country would be proud to pledge it as often as he forced them to.  And to anyone who questioned the morality, he replied that "The Star Spangled Banner" was the greatest piece of music ever composed.  The more loyalty oaths a person signed, the more loyal he was;  to Captain Black it was as simple as that, and he had Corporal Kolodny sign hundreds with his name each day so that he could always prove he was more loyal than anyone else.

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

     True listening, total concentration on the other, is always a manifestation of love.  An essential part of true listening is the discipline of bracketing, the temporary giving up or setting aside of one's own prejudices, frames of reference and desires so as to experience as far as possible the speaker's world from the inside, stepping inside his or her shoes. . . . Since true listening is love in action, nowhere is more appropriate than in marriage.

-M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

Well, that explains a lot..................

As everyone from ancient times till today knows, clerks and accountants think in a non-human fashion.  They think like filing cabinets.  This is not their fault.  If they don't think that way their drawers will get all mixed up and they won't be able to provide the services their government, company or organisation requires.  The most important impact of script (writing) on human history is precisely this:  it has gradually changed the way humans think and view the world.  Free association and holistic thought has given way to compartmentalisation and bureaucracy. 

-Yuval Noah Harari,  Sapiens:  A Brief History of Humankind

Check.........................

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

Santana.................................................................Soul Sacrifice

About security............................

You have to understand that there are no guarantees in life, there is no absolute security, and there is usually no simple path to financial success.  It is going to take some effort.  For the  mind to chase after security is ludicrous:  It will never get it, and the irritation of constantly seeking security destroys what stability there is.
     It is simpler, therefore, to agree that one doesn't need security.  One doesn't even need a system that favors one.   All that is ever needed is what one already has, which is creativity and energy.  You don't have to become immortal to be safe.  All you have to do is to acknowledge that what you are right now is enough to keep you safe and more that enough to keep you in abundance for the rest of your days, in spite of circumstances.  You just need you, comfortable inside yourself.

-Stuart Wilde,  The Trick To Money Is Having Some

Rating this as "correct"...................

Finally, a goal-oriented mind-set can create a "yo-yo" effect.  Many runners work hard for months, but as soon as they cross the finish line, they stop training.  The race is no longer there to motivate them.  When all of your hard work is focused on a particular goal, what is left to push you forward after you achieve it?  This is why many people find themselves reverting to old habits after accomplishing a goal.
     The purpose of setting goals is to win the game.  The purpose of building systems is to continue to play the game.  True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking.  It's not about any single accomplishment.  It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement.  Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress.

-James Clear, Atomic Habits:  An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

But, incentives matter the most........

"The correct answer in economics generally is, before we look at all of the details, 'it depends'."

-Tim Worstall, as taken from here

   via

On Expectations for 2019.............

..............................................................Count on this one:

2.  Something will happen that doesn’t make any sense at all.

-Ben Carlson, from this list

(Ed. Note:  never forget the old Al Anon saying, " an unrealistic expectation is a premeditated resentment")

Different paradigms..........................

     I do not see how science and religion could be unified, or even synthesized, under any common scheme of explanation or analysis;  but I do not understand why the two enterprises should experience any conflict.  Science tries to document the factual character of the natural world, and to develop theories that coordinate and explain these facts.  Religion, on the other hand, operates in the equally important, but utterly different, realm of human purposes, meanings, and values—subjects that the factual domain of science might illuminate, but can never resolve.

-Stephen J. Gould, from his 1999 book, Rocks Of Ages:  Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life

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

At the bookstore..................................................................

She was so deeply imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise.  As soon as the last bell had sounded, I would rush off for home, wondering as I ran if I could possible make it to our apartment before she had succeeded in transforming herself.  Invariably she was already in the kitchen by the time I arrived, and setting out my milk and cookies.  Instead of causing me to give up my delusions, however, the feat merely intensified my respect for her powers.  And then it was always a relief not to have caught her between incarnations anyway - even if I never stopped trying;  I knew that my father and sister were innocent of my mother's real nature, and the burden of that betrayal that I imagined would fall to me if I ever came upon her unawares was more than I wanted to bear at the age of five.  I think I even feared that I might have to be done away with were I to catch sight of her flying in from school through the bedroom window, or making herself emerge, limb by limb, out of an invisible state and into her apron.

-Philip Roth, being the opening paragraph from Portnoy's Complaint

A few of my favorite things.......................

1.  Bertrand Russell's essay, An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish.  He begins like this:

Man is a rational animal-so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favor of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have searched in many countries spread over three continents. On the contrary, I have seen the world plunging continually further into madness. I have seen great nations, formerly leaders of civilization, led astray by preachers of bombastic nonsense. I have seen cruelty, persecution, and superstition increasing by leaps and bounds, until we have almost reached the point where praise of rationality is held to mark a man as an old fogey regrettably surviving from a bygone age. All this is depressing, but gloom is a useless emotion. In order to escape from it, I have been driven to study the past with more attention than I had formerly given to it, and have found, as Erasmus found, that folly is perennial and yet the human race has survived. The follies of our own times are easier to bear when they are seen against the background of past follies. In what follows I shall mix the sillinesses of our day with those of former centuries. Perhaps the result may help in seeing our own times in perspective, and as not much worse than other ages that our ancestors lived through without ultimate disaster.

2.  Christopher Hitchens' essay, On Becoming American.  Contains some interesting imagined responses to a Pat Buchanan question, but the money line may be:

What does it take for an immigrant to change from "you" to "we"?


3.  Charles Krauthammer's 1993 commencement address, "Beware the Study of Turtles." 

My friends, don't get lost in the study of turtles. Endless, vertiginous self-examination leads not only to a sterile moral life, but to a stilted, constricted intellectual life. Yes, examine. But do it with dispatch and modesty and then get on with it: Act and do and go and seek. Save the psychic impact report, the memoirs, and the motives for later. There will be time enough.

4.   Homelessness in Seattle: a growth industry?

If we want to break through the failed status quo on homelessness in places like Seattle—and in Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, too—we must first map the ideological battlefield, identify the flaws in our current policies, and rethink our assumptions.

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

Santana.....................................................................Evil Ways

On injury..............................

7.  Put from you the belief that "I have been wronged", and with it will go the feeling.  Reject your sense of injury, and the injury itself disappears.

-Marcus Aurelius,   Meditations, Book Four

nurture your nature..................

". . . do the maximum you can to nurture your nature; to develop yourself to be the best version of you that you can."

-Nicholas Bate

The power of acceptance..............

     In acceptance, we are now free to be in the present.  Once we have accepted our own true nature and the ways of the universe as they are reflected in our world, there is no longer regret about the past, nor is there fear of the future.  Fear of the future no longer exists when the past has been healed.  This is because in the usual ego-oriented state of consciousness, the ego tends to project the past upon the future, and a past that is viewed negatively becomes fearful when projected upon the imaginary future.  Our letting go of the lower energies of guilt, fear, anger, and pride has alleviated the weight of the past and cleared the clouds of the future.  We face today with optimism and are grateful to be alive.  We see that yesterday is gone, tomorrow has not yet come, and we have only today.

-David Hawkins, Letting Go:  The Pathway of Surrender

Harmonize..........................

      Not what he wishes and prays for does a man get, but what he justly earns.  His wishes and prayers are only gratified and answered when they harmonize with his thoughts and actions.

-James Allen, from As A Man Thinketh

A bit of Emerson.....................

     Insist on yourself;  never imitate.  Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous possession.  That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. . . . Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare.  Do that which is assigned to you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.

All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves.
     Society never advances.  It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other.  It undergoes continual changes;  it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is Christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration.  For everything that is given something is taken.  Society acquires new arts and loses old instincts.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, as culled from his Essay On Self-Reliance

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

The Fifth Dimension.................................Age of Aquarius

The heavy burden....................

....................................................of responsibility.

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

Zager & Evans..............................................In The Year 2525

Toughness and compassion..............

...............................................also known as leadership:

     But with the nation's economic travail continuing throughout McKinley's second term, the governor faced major civil disruptions in the form of labor strikes and threats of mob rule.  In April 1894 the United Mine Workers called on coal miners to walk off their jobs in what one Ohio publication called "one of the greatest strikes, in point of numbers, in the history of any country."  Some 200,000 miners went on strike in Ohio alone, along with many others in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, and elsewhere.  Civic tensions rand high, and the action devastated the regional economy as the strikes shut down railroads and factories fueled by coal.  Normal commerce ceased.  At the request of local sheriffs, McKinley sent out militia troops—some 3,000 in all—to restore and maintain order during the job action.  Later in the year he deployed troops to protect train service during a railroad strike.  When labor representatives suggested the governor's actions could harm him politically, he replied, "I do not care if my political career is not twenty-four hours long, these outrages must stop if takes every soldier in Ohio."
     As soon as the strikes were settled and order was restored, he turned his attention to getting funds and provisions distributed to areas where miners were suffering serious financial deprivation due to the strike.  The Cincinnati Enquirer wrote, "Praise for the prompt action of Governor McKinley is on every tongue among the distressed. . . . Every detail of the relief work is under the general supervision of the governor."  Reflecting both his natural inclinations and his political acumen, McKinley combined toughness in the face of disruption with compassion for those caught up in the struggle.

-Robert W. Merry,  President McKinley:  Architect of the American Century

One damn thing after another................

     By summer the storm had passed, and McKinley plunged into his next political adventures:  a second gubernatorial term and preparations for an 1896 presidential run.  But now the political landscape was entirely changed by economic hard times that hit with a fearsome force.  It began in the farm sector, where a real estate boom had drawn in thousands of Eastern investors beguiled by low interest rates and prospects for quick wealth.  A $200 investment in Western land had been know to return $2,000 in a few months, historian John D. Hicks reports, adding, "Small wonder that money descended like a flood upon those who made it a business to place loans in the West!"  Then came the drought of 1887, and the bubble burst.  Farmers couldn't produce sufficient crops to pay the mortgage;  money dried up;  banks and their borrowers went under.  In drought stricken Kansas, half the state's Western farmers pulled up stakes and fled.
     The Western farm bust soon undermined the industrial sector, particularly the railroad industry, and panic swept the country.  Railroads had been expanding on borrowed money and now couldn't cover the debt service as farm shipments dried up.  As railroads declined, so did the rest of industrial America and the big-city Eastern banks.  One result was falling stock prices, which precipitated a run on gold supplies as holders of securities cashed out of the market in exchange for gold.  By spring the Treasury's gold reserves had dropped below $100 million, considered a minimum confidence level.  By year's end, about the time of McKinley's reelection, some 500 banks had failed, more than five times the annual average of the previous five years, and a record 15,242 U. S. companies went bankrupt.  Unemployment soared.
   
-Robert W. Merry,  President McKinley:  Architect of the American Century

St. Paul and The Broken Bones.........?

.............................................................Jet Boy sure can pick 'em.

On the power of acceptance..............

     Life is difficult
     This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths.  It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it.  Once we truly know that life is difficult—once we truly understand and accept it—then life is no longer difficult.  Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.

-M. Scott Peck,  The Road Less Traveled:  A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth

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

Three Dog Night...................................................................One

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

20 And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:

21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

-The Holy Bible,  Luke 17:20-21

Risks...................................

    In the parable of the talents, the three servants are called to render an account of how they used the gifts entrusted to them.  The first two used their talents boldly and resourcefully.  The third, who prudently wraps his money and buries it, typifies the Christian who deposits his faith in an hermetic container and seals the lid shut.  He or she limps through life on childhood memories of Sunday school and resolutely refuses the challenge of growth and spiritual maturity.  Unwilling to take risks, this person loses the talent entrusted to him or her.  'The master wanted his servants to take risks.  He wanted them to gamble with his money.'

-Brennan Manning,  The Ragamuffin Gospel

Vessels.................................

     Our power as miracle-workers in the workplace is to pray that we be used — that our hands, our feet, our minds, and our behavior be of service to a greater good.  That we be empty vessels through which God will produce His extraordinary wonders.  We're simply here to serve a higher plan for the enlightenment of the world, and therein lie out happiness and success.

-Marianne Williamson,  The Law Of Divine Compensation

Counterintuitive....................

    Because here's the thing that's wrong with all of the "How to Be Happy" shit that's been shared eight million times on Facebook in the past few years—here's what nobody realizes about all of this crap:
          The desire for more positive experience is itself a 
          negative experience.  And, paradoxically, the 
          acceptance of one's negative experience is 
          itself a positive experience.

-Mark Manson,  The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*ck:  A Counterintuitive Approach To Living A Good Life

On leaving us alone...................

"Politics can oppress people, but it cannot make them wiser or more sensible, independent of mind, or just. Happiness in the older sense has never required “political action.” Instead, it takes joy in friendship and community."

-David Warren, from this blog post

Four Questions..............................

Every human being wants to be happy.  From the philosophical classics of Plato and Aristotle to the great texts of the world religions, to poetry and song-writing down to the present day, we find this permanent truth inscribed in the great works of men and women, because it's inscribed in our hearts.  America's Founding Father understood this.  A right to "the pursuit of happiness" was given by God, they wrote in the Declaration of Independence, and it can not be stripped away by any king or potentate who happens to wield the sword of state for a time.
     Happiness has never been easy to come by, let alone hold onto.  Even to say precisely what happiness is presents a challenge.  Nonetheless, when life brings us joy and contentment, we know it.  The question is whether we can play an active part in making it happen.
     Social scientists have identified four primary drivers of human happiness, which we can put in the form of four questions:

         1.  Do you have family you love, and who love you?
         2.  Do you have friends you trust and confide in?
         3.  Do you have work that matters—callings that 
              benefit your neighbors?
         4.  Do you have a worldview that can make sense
              of suffering and death?

Think of these four components as the legs of a chair.  When all four are in place, things are sturdy.  When one goes missing, your happiness begins to wobble.

-Ben Sasse,  Them:  Why We Hate Each Other—And How To Heal

Simple and binary...................

     As for the tariff, it was an ideal area of concentration for the young congressman, who possessed a highly absorbent mind but not a facile one.  His stolid intellect, without imagination but with a potent capacity for mastering masses of intricate detail.  Further, he tended to view public policy in simple, binary terms — the right way to do things and the wrong way.  For him, the right tariff policy was protectionism.  High tariffs, he once said on the House floor, helped shape America as a country "without a superior in industrial arts, without an equal in commercial prosperity, with a sound financial system, with an overflowing Treasury, blessed  at home and at peace with all mankind."
     By the late 1880s, McKinley had become a leading congressional expert on the country's multifarious tariff structure, which at one point encompassed some 1,524 separate tariffs on as many items, including iron and steel products, wool and woolens, various paint products, wallpaper, crockery, cutlery, glass and glassware, linens, soaps, starch, sugar, and many more,  McKinley knew them all, and so now, some twelve years after embracing Hayes's wise counsel, he was reaping the benefit of his years-long tariff preoccupation.

-Robert W. Merry,  President McKinley:  Architect of the American Century

Sober genuineness...................

     Inevitably McKinley's unyielding high-tariff advocacy, coupled with his often elaborate earnestness, stirred some free-trade adherents to ridicule.  Journalist Ida Tarbell would write that McKinley had "an advantage . . . which few of his colleagues enjoyed, — that of believing with childlike faith that all he claimed for protection was true."  But among the Major's Republican colleagues in Congress, and increasingly among protectionist leaders and voters around the country, his sober genuineness on the issue generated respect and admiration.  Clearly protectionism represented his ticket to national attention.

-Robert W. Merry,  President McKinley:  Architect of the American Century

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

Oliver..................................................Good Morning Starshine

Systems.................................

"Thinking in terms of systems, not goals; process, not outcomes; and philosophy, not tactics is how you can see lasting change in your habits, and hopefully your life."

-Ben Carlson, as he concludes this post

Brotherhood..............................

via

All you political junkies.....................

...................better find a comfortable chair, the coming years will be filled with excitement, if not much else.

The partial government shutdown is a prelude to an unpredictable two years of conflict, deadlock, breakdown, acrimony, dissatisfaction, and annoyance. At the end, Democrats will be reminded that, thanks to congressional delegation of authority, the House doesn't count for much. What matters is the presidency. Ask the GOP.

Even there, Republicans will tell you, be careful what you wish for.

via

Better and stronger..........................?

.........................................Help comes from the strangest places.

On the importance of dissent...........

     Hayek, on the other hand, argued in The Road to Serfdom that dissent from the consensus was necessary for the "life of thought."   So long as dissent is not suppressed, there will always be some who will query the ideas ruling their contemporaries and put new ideas to the test of argument and propaganda.   This interaction of individuals, possessing different knowledge and different views, is what constitutes the life of thought.  Hayek argued that the absence of  "different views" — that is, Myrdal's unanimity — in fact inhibits the progress of thought.  "The growth of reason is a social process based on the existence of such differences." 
     Hayek condemned those who wanted to suppress debate, what he called "the presumption of any group of people" — such as Myrdal's unanimous development experts — "to claim the right to determine what people out to think or believe."  The absence of dissent would "produce a stagnation of thought and a decline of reason."

-William Easterly,  The Tyranny Of Experts:  Economists, Dictators, And The Forgotten Rights Of The Poor

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

Mercy..............................................................................Fireball

The more things change..................

................the more they stay the same.  The year was 1885:

     Ohio's political parity rendered it imperative that each party consolidate its base, meaning minority segments with splinter-issue passions had to be accommodated.  Republicans needed to assuage the temperance movement so it wouldn't split off into a one-issue party and undermine Republican prospects.  But that meant fewer Democrats could be lured to the GOP in close elections.  Democrats had to conciliate populist dissidents demanding soft-money policies to aid debtors and slam elites.  That means, likewise, that few Republicans would rally to the Democrats.  The result was a precarious political environment for politicians of both parties.  McKinley's mercurial Seventeenth District was a case in point.

-Robert W. Merry, President McKinley:  Architect of the American Century

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

Let it be..........................

"Some of the most dangerous people are those who want to save the world."

-Michael Wade

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

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

At the newsstands......Look Magazine examines race in America

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

Not me, not yet..................

via

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

On management...................

"Forget time management, get great at choice management instead."

-Nicholas Bate

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

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.

May 2019 be a truly wondrous year.......

From our house to yours.....................

more new year's cartoons may be found here

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

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

Fleetwood Mac with Peter Green............. New Year's Eve 1968

Most likely.......................

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