If only all that previous competence & expertise..

........................................ had shown some actual competence:

President Barack Obama seemed to appreciate behavioural economics and gave Thaler’s co-author, Cass Sunstein, a senior appointment. The Trump administration, observes Thaler, has no interest in behavioural economics. “Look, there’s no demand for expertise of any sort . . . The lack of competence and expertise is like nothing anyone has ever seen.”

-as extracted from this post

A fundamental truth..................

My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) … the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.

-James Ronald Reuel Tolkien

On powerful legacies...................

............................................................and "no regrets."

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

Small Faces............................................................I Can't Make It

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

Small Faces.................................................................Tin Soldier

Free speech..................

..............what follows is a longish excerpt from a read-worthy Jason Richwine essay on the subject:

Presumably, the founders believed open debate is essential to a free society, and the threat of government persecution would discourage that debate. Of course, the First Amendment restrains only the government, but if we take the wisdom of it seriously we should value its principles more broadly. After all, if open debate is truly desirable, we should be concerned not just about government suppression of unpopular views, but about non-governmental suppression. As chilling effects go, “I would speak out, but I don’t want to risk going to jail” is not all that different from “I would speak out, but I don’t want to risk losing my friends and my livelihood.” The end result is the same—less speech, less debate, less openness.

Some people assume non-governmental censorship limits only a vitriolic fringe. I see no evidence of this. James Damore hardly expressed a fringe or hateful perspective when he internally criticized Google’s diversity ethos, but the company fired him anyway. Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich donated to a ballot initiative against same-sex marriage that won, but he lost his job anyway. The message from both companies was that people with contrary views—even widely-held contrary views—should get with the ideological program or lose their jobs.

Another misleading assumption is that private-sector censorship is only about defending the powerless from harassment. Actually, it’s often about defending the powerful from criticism. CNN once threatened to dox a blogger who had created a pro-Trump meme mocking the network. It backed down only on the condition that the blogger apologize and promise never to do it again. Who exactly was the powerless one in that situation? Dr. Noah Carl was fired by St. Edmund’s College because his research on group differences was “problematic,” but the administration cited no actual errors in his work. Was the university speaking truth to power, as the saying goes—or speaking power to truth?

via

Parenting...................................

Thanks David

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

Small Faces.................................................................Hey Girl



Originally released in 1966, this song appears on their 1969 double album release, The Autumn Stone

As tie-breakers go....................

....................................................................this is a great one.

Realism....................

A gambler once said to the Master, "I was caught cheating at cards yesterday, so my partners beat me up and threw me out of the window.  What would you advise me to do?"

The Master looked straight through the man and said, "If I were you, from now on I would play on the ground floor."

This startled the disciples.  "Why didn't you tell him to stop gambling?" they demanded.

"Because I knew he wouldn't," was the Master's simple and sagacious explanation.

=Anthony de Mello,  One Minute Wisdom

A quick visit.......................

..................................with David Kanigan:

50,000 light-year wide close-up....

The question was posed, "How much should we know?" and the answer gently wafted by, "Not so much."

Messier 61 Close Up Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble, ESO, Amateur Data; Processing & Copyright: Robert Gendler & Roberto Colombari
Explanation: Image data from the Hubble Space Telescope, the European Southern Observatory, and small telescopes on planet Earth are combined in this magnificent portrait of face-on spiral galaxy Messier 61 (M61). A mere 55 million light-years away in the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies, M61 is alsoknown as NGC 4303. It's considered to be an example of a barred spiral galaxy similar to our own Milky Way. Like other spiral galaxies, M61 also features sweeping spiral arms, cosmic dust lanes, pinkish star forming regions, and young blue star clusters. The bright galactic core is offset to the left in this 50 thousand light-year wide close-up.

from the Astronomy Picture of the Day

Life Tips 101.......................

........................Here's a great tip:  Invest a few minutes everyday reading something from Nicholas Bate. 

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

Small Faces......................................Wham Bam, Thank You Mam

Worry is not mandatory.....................

"There will always be something to worry about because good news is gradual while bad news is a headline."

-Ben Carlson, from here

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

......................................................................Søren Kierkegaard:

The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.

A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it's a joke.

There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.

One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical…for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity.

Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.

What looks like politics, and imagines itself to be political, will one day unmask itself as a religious movement.

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!

Ah, humanity.......................

..................................................Nothing wrong with The World today that more things like this couldn't fix:



thanks

On the bright side....................

via

Flourish............................

via

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

Small Faces............................................................Itchycoo Park

Purists would be correct in noticing that this tune was first released in 1967, but it also appears on The Autumn Stone double album put out in the fall of 1969

Life its ownself.........................

The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.


-George Santayana

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

The night the Djellabas came to Duk Payuel, I remember that I had been feeling tense all over, as it my body were trying to tell me something.  I could not sleep.
     It was a dark night, with no moon to reflect off the standing water that pooled beside our huts.  My parents and the other adults were sleeping outside, so the children and elderly could all be inside, away from the clouds of biting insects.  My brothers and sisters and I, as well as about a dozen refugees from other villages in southern Sudan, stretched out on the ground inside a hut that had been build especially for kids.  I lay in the sticky heat, tossing and turning on a dried cowhide, while others tried to sleep on mats of aquot, a hollow, grasslike plant from the wetlands that women of my Dinka tribe stitch together.  Our crowded bodies seemed to form their own patchwork quilt, filling every square foot with arms and legs.

-John Bul Dau, from the Introdution to God Grew Tired Of Us:  A Memoir

Eight simple virtures.................

Helen Keller, the deaf and blind activist, was asked by a journalist what she thought would be worse than being born blind. She replied without missing a beat, ‘to have sight and no vision.’

-from this Farnam Street post listing the eight simple virtues in  David Ogilvy's The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness:  Being Very Good Is No Good, You Have To Be Very, Very. Very, Very, Very Good

Old dog, new tricks.......................

Thanks Kurt

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

..................................................................Charles Handy:

We cannot wait for great visions from great people, for they are in short supply. It is up to us to light our own small fires in the darkness.


The moment will arrive when you are comfortable with who you are, and what you are- bald or old or fat or poor, successful or struggling- when you don't feel the need to apologize for anything or to deny anything. To be comfortable in your own skin is the beginning of strength.


We need to have faith in the future to make sense of the present.


It is tempting to call for better leadership, but we probably expect too much from the leaders of the nations. Those nations are too big, the connections not strong enough, the commitment to the future not long enough. It is better to look smaller, to our now-smaller organisations, to local communities and cities, to families and clusters of friends, to small networks of portfolio people with time to give to something bigger than themselves. We have to fashion our own directions in our own places.

To learn anything other than the stuff you find in books, you need to be able to experiment, to make mistakes, to accept feedback, and to try again.  It doesn't matter whether you are learning to ride a bike or starting a new career, the cycle of experiment, feedback, and new experiment is always there.

Anything that takes us out of our comfort zones for a while can act as a reminder that the past we are used to may not be our best future.

thanks to The Sovereign Professional

Really......................................?

Adulting for many young people has gotten put on the backburner (and I don’t really blame them).

Millennials are more highly educated. A big reason young people are getting married later in life is that they’re better educated than previous generations.  More young people going to school for longer means more people that put off adult responsibilities:

-Ben Carlson, as cut and pasted from this post

Am I the only one wondering about the quality of education received here of late?

a "beautiful mess"........................

Another big issue with what passes for modern-day wellness is that it creates the impression that everyone is happy all the time and that you should be, too. But like selective sharing on social media, this is not the reality of being human.

People get sad. Psychologists tell us that hiding and repressing that only makes it worse. Studies show that the more you hold something back or try to force it away, the stronger it becomes. On the contrary, the more vulnerable you are—both with yourself and others—the better. Researchers at the University of Mannheim, in Germany, call this the “beautiful mess effect.” Through multiple experiments, they’ve found that even though sharing your feelings may seem like a weakness to you, to others it seems courageous and builds trust and connection. In other words: stop trying so damn hard to be invincible, and just be yourself. Most people will be receptive and caring. And those who aren’t? Screw ’em. 

-Brad Stulberg, as excerpted from this essay, We've Reached Peak Wellness.  Most of It Is Nonsense

thanks Tony

Enough already....................................

“If you wish to make Pthocles rich, do not add to his store of money but subtract from his desires.”

-Seneca

Mission: Impossible....................

...........................................Of course, if anyone can do it, he can.

A quote for Labor Day...............

..........Actually, it is pretty good quote for any, even every, day.

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

Sam & Dave..................................Hold On, I'm Coming
(Originally released in 1966, this is from their 1969 Best of)



with a big thanks to Jet Boy

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

25  When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved?

26  But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.

The Holy Bible, King James Version,  Matthew 19:25-26

21st century problems..................

from the wonder that is xkcd

Dance...............................

Labour is blossoming or dancing where

The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,

Nor beauty born out of its own despair,

Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.

O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,

Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,

How can we know the dancer from the dance?

William Butler Yeats

from his poem, Among School Children

If we must have rules...........

.............these three (from James Altucher) are pretty good:

I have three rules that I try to live by each day:

• improve my RELATIONSHIPS with the people around me. Be around people I love and support, who love and support me. Get rid of toxic people.
• improve at CREATIVITY. Improve at the things I love. If I study something I love and feel I am getting better at it, then I know that will compound into “life abundance”.
• improve at my feeling of FREEDOM in life. If every day, I can take more actions that are MY decisions versus the descisions of others, then I know I will have freedom in life.

thanks Chris

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

Paul Revere & The Raiders..........................Mr. Sun, Mr. Moon

Never thought of.........

...........................................Seth Godin as a pessimist, but this feels dangerously pessimistic:

Because even though it doesn’t make compelling TV, the long-term challenges ahead of us aren’t going to respond to politics.

The Blue Ribbon........................

...........................................................................pie is right here. 

The eggplant at the farmers' market looked too good to pass up.  Slated for Sunday supper.  Any recipe suggestions?

Consider the possibilities.............

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

The Beach Boys..................................................All I Wanna Do

Experiment (life long learning)....

…………………………....with what works for you.   Scott Adams helps us remember that our own happiness is our own responsibility.

Us self-employed types.................................

………………...have only passing familiarity with this concept of "paid time off."  I think the last paycheck I received, that wasn't signed by me, was in February of 1977.  Still, reading Althouse is such a delight:

Not one word about the environment in that article. Why not celebrate the status quo? If we were traveling, WaPo should shame us for the impact on climate change, so why is the failure to travel treated like a problem? Maybe people like their day-to-day life — working, living at home, near friends and family, doing what is familiar. Isn't that what most people have done throughout human history and prehistory? 

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

Sammy Davis Jr..................................................I've Gotta Be Me

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

Tony Joe White................................................Polk Salad Annie

The private world.................

Our work for peace must begin within the private world of each one of us. To build for man a world without fear, we must be without fear. To build a world of justice, we must be just. And how can we fight for liberty if we are not free in our own minds? How can we ask others to sacrifice if we are not ready to do so?

-Dag Hammarskjold

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

...............................................Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.

The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.

If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.

Know thyself? If I knew myself, I'd run away.

A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.

We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.

Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.

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

The Lettermen..........................................................Hurt So Bad

By blogging........................................?

Concerning magnification.................

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

On the TV................................Dick Clark's American Bandstand

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

Marvin Gaye.......................Too Busy Thinking 'Bout My Baby

Time: the great leveler.....................

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said:  Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias

Better than not doing any at all...........

             via

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

Gestures are all that I have;  sometimes they must be grand in nature.  And while  I occasionally step over the line and into the world of melodramatic, it is what I must do in order to communicate clearly and effectively.  In order to make my point understood without question.  I have no words I can rely on because, much to my dismay, my tongue was designed long and flat and loose, and therefore, is a horribly ineffective tool for pushing food around in my mouth while chewing, and an even less effective tool for making clever and complicated polysyllabic sounds that can be linked together to form sentences.  And that's why I'm here now waiting for Denny to come home—her should be here soon—lying on the cool tiles of the kitchen floor in a puddle of my own urine.
      I'm old.  And while I'm very capable of getting older, that's not the way I want to go out.  Shot full of pain medication and steroids to reduce the swelling of my joints.  Vision fogged with cataracts.  Puffy, plasticky packages of Doggy Depends stocked in the pantry.  I'm sure Denny would get me one of those little wagons I've seen on the streets, the ones that cradle the hindquarters so a dog can drag his as behind him when things start to fail.  That's humiliating and degrading.  I'm not sure if it's worse than dressing up a dog for Halloween, but it's close.  He would do it out of love, of course.  I'm sure he would keep me alive as longs as he possible could, my body deteriorating, disintegrating around me, dissolving until there's nothing left but my brain floating in a glass jar filled with clear liquid, my eyeballs drifting at the surface and all sorts of cable and tubes feeding what remains.  But I don't want to be kept alive.  Because I know what's next.  I've seen it on TV.  A documentary I saw about Mongolia, of all places.  It was the best thing I've ever seen on television, other than the 1993 Grand Prix of Europe, of course, the greatest automobile race of all time in which Ayrton Senna proved himself to be a genius in the rain.  After the 1993 Grand Prix, the best thing I've ever seen on TV is a documentary that explained everything to me, made it all clear, told the whole truth:  when a good is finished living his lifetimes as a dog, his next incarnation will be as a man.

-Garth Stein,  The Art Of Racing In The Rain

Recommended..................

At the cinema....................................The Art of Racing in the Rain

Rx: Banjo music..............................

Add caption

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

The 1910 Fruitgum Company..............................Indian Giver

Scott Blitstein,....................

..............................................our friend from Sensory Dispensary, has a new outlet.   Check it out.

Reasons why I like living in Newark and Licking County.......

Reason #73.............................................The Newark Skate Park

Thanks to collaboration between two local philanthropic foundations and the City of Newark, we are blessed by the $2,000,000 re-imagining and rejuvenation of Everett Park.  Today was the ribbon cutting ceremony for the cornerstone of this project - the Newark Skate Park,  The skate park is clearly a world-class facility.   Free for kids of all ages.  Amazing:

Ground Rules.........................

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

Smith.....................................................I Don't Believe (I Believe)

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

The Zombies........................................................Friends of Mine

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

Janis Joplin...........................................................Summertime

Corrective...........................

“Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.” 


-Henri Bergson

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

..............................................................................Ziggy:

Pretty good advice..........................

“My advice, as in everything, is to read widely and think for yourself.  We need more dissent and less dogma.” 

-Camille Paglia

Why on earth not.....................?

“I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.” 


-Ludwig Wittgenstein

Pretending.....................................?

“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.” 

-Bertrand Russell

Fifty years ago....................At Woodstock

Jefferson Airplane.................Somebody To Love & White Rabbit

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

Eleven Universal Laws of the World.........

………………………..can be found here.  Ignore them at your own risk.  Here are two, just to whet the appetite:

1. Littlewood’s law: We can expect “miracles” to happen regularly, because in a world with 7 billion people the odds of a one-in-a-billion event are pretty good.

7. Wiio’s laws: “Communication usually fails, except by accident.”

via

Value...............................

The value people place on free things is zero, though they may riot if the giveaways stop. When they must actually pay, or make other sacrifices, they value what they have obtained. This is human nature. It does not change when technology changes; it cannot ever be suppressed for long. But it can be corrupted.

-David Warren, from this disquisition

Fifty years ago..................at Woodstock

Creedence Clearwater Revival.....................................Proud Mary

Wow, here's a great idea................

I think conservative intellectuals should not try to build an ideological scaffolding around the Trump presidency. Just focus on trying to bring rigor back into academia.

-Arnold Kling

Ravikant..................

Fifty years ago.........................at Woodstock

Creedence Clearwater Revival.......................Born On The Bayou

Well, fifty years ago anyway...................

“Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.”

-Will Durant

Eternally............................

Everything goes, everything comes back; eternally rolls the wheel of being. Everything dies, everything blossoms again; eternally runs the year of being. Everything breaks, everything is joined anew; eternally the same House of Being is built. Everything parts, everything greets every other thing again; eternally the ring of being remains faithful to itself. In every Now, being begins; round every Here rolls the sphere There. The center is everywhere. Bent is the path of eternity.

-Friedrich Nietzsche,  Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Nice..........................

“Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.” 

-Henri Bergson

Paying attention.......................

     . . .in Egyptian monasticism, enormous stress is laid on the virtue of humility.  As Evagrius says, 'asceticism with humility is valuable, but asceticism without humility is extremely dangerous'.  And another Father said, 'It is better to fail with humility that to succeed with pride.'
     Above all else the Egyptian monks emphasised  self-knowledge.  The one practice which they harp on over and over again is 'paying attention to yourself', and going with this, they highlight the virtue of 'discernment', but which they mean an ability to diagnose exactly what is going on at any given moment.
     This explains why sometimes the Desert Fathers seem to be rather casual about morality.  Their concern is not that people should behave correctly according to the rules, but rather that people should be able to see their situation clearly for what it is. and so become free of the distorting perspective which underlies all our sins.
     Thus we hear of a fornicating monk, who kept a woman in his cell so indiscreetly that word got around about it.  The neighboring monks resolved to drive the monk away, and abba Ammonas, who happened to be visiting there was asked to go with them.  The offending monk heard them coming and hid his woman in a large jar.  Ammonas saw her at once, but 'hid the affair for the sake of God'.  He sat down on the jar, and then told the other monks to search the cell.  They, of course, found nothing and went away again abashed and apologetic.  Ammonas then took the culprit's hand and simply said to him, 'Brother, pay attention to yourself,' and went out.

-Simon Tugwell, Ways of Imperfection:  An Exploration of Christian Spirituality