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

Rare Earth...............................................................Get Ready

Do yourself a favor.............

 "Put down your cell phones, put everything away, and feel your blood pulsing in you, feel your creative impulse, feel your own spirit, your heart, your mind. Feel the joy of being alive and free."

-Patti Smith, as lifted from the essential blog where cool is the only rule

On habits..................

Every single qualification for success is acquired through habit. Men form habits and habits form futures. If you do not deliberately form good habits, then unconsciously you will form bad ones. You are the kind of man you are because you have formed the habit of being that kind of man, and the only way you can change is through habit. 

-Albert E. N. Gray, from his speech, The Common Denominator of Success

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

Guess Who...........................................................No Sugar Tonight

On letting go..................

     God is life.  God is life in action.  The best way to say, "I love you, God," is to live your life doing your best.  The best way to say, "Thank you, god," is by letting go of the past and living in the present moment, right here and now.  Whatever life takes away from you, let it go.  When you surrender and let go of the past, you allow yourself to be fully alive in the moment.  Letting go of the past means you can enjoy the dream that is happening right now.

-Don Miguel Ruiz,  The Four Agreements:  A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

Execute......................

I am consistently amazed and disappointed at the small number of people willing to execute the simple daily self-disciplines needed to reach higher levels of success.  They know it will bring them the success they dream about, yet they fail to execute. . . .
The victory we call success goes to the best prepared, self-believing, right associated, self taught, responsible person, who sees the opportunity and is willing to take a risk to seize it - sometimes a big risk.

-Jeffrey Gitomer, from his Little Red Book of Selling

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

Simon & Garfunkel..................Bridge Over Troubled Water

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

Many people seem to be wondering what will become of the human soul in another world.  I am wondering what has become of the human mind in this world.

-Gilbert Keith Chesterton, from his 1928 essay, The Rout of Reason

A bias for action....................

     Favoring action over inaction, even in the face of uncertainty, is generally a good approach to life.  The world rewards energy, and it even rewards failure by teaching you valuable lessons and expanding your network of contacts.

-Scott Adams,  Loserthink:  How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America

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

The Marmalade..................................Reflections Of My Life



Released in November, 1969, this tune was a Top 10 hit for 1970

About the mind.........................

      Just as it is the nature of fire to burn, it is the nature of the mind to think and wander all the time.  The mind is comprised  of thoughts and doubts.  It constantly casts up dreams and fantasies, creating its own world and then destroying it.  It builds thought castles in the sky and then gets entangled in its own creation.  In this way, it creates its own suffering and undergoes the consequences.  Some modern psychologists believe that the mind can be satisfied if you let it run free, if you let it have whatever it wants.  But this is not the case.  The mind can never be satisfied in this way;  it will always create a mountain of desires.

-Swami Muktananda,  Mystery of the Mind

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

Eddie Holman......................Hey There Lonely Girl



Released in December of 1969, this tune peaked as a Billboard #2 in 1970

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

The Jaggerz.........................................................The Rapper

On the virtue of being not stupid..........

Because we are so wrong, so often, and because avoiding error provides more benefit than being right does, when we have the choice between being right and being kind, we should choose kind. Every. Single. Time.

-Robert P. Seawright (a long time Cleveland Browns fan) as he ends this essay

On major vs. minor......................

"If there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals it is the modern strengthening of minor morals. . . . A man's minor actions and arrangements ought to be free, flexible, creative;  the things that should be unchangeable are his principles, his ideals."

-Gilbert Keith Chesterton, as culled from his essay On Lying In Bed

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

The Blues Image..........................................Ride Captain Ride

As compared to what......................?

     "People who have been trained in decision-making understand that you can't evaluate things in isolation. . . . If you have a strong opinion about a proposed plan but you have not compared it to the next best alternative, you are not part of a rational conversation."

-Scott Adams, Loserthink:  How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America

All things in moderation................

     The archer who overshoots the target misses as much as the one who does not reach it.  Any my eyes trouble me as much when I raise them suddenly to a strong light as when I drop them into the shadow.  Callicles, in Plato, says that the extremity of philosophy is harmful, and advises us not to plunge into beyond the limits of profit; that taken with moderation, it is pleasant and advantageous, but that in the end it makes a man wild and vicious, disdainful of common religions and laws, an enemy of social intercourse, an enemy of human pleasures, incapable of any political administration and of helping others of himself, fit to be slapped with impunity.  He speaks truly, for in its excess it enslaves our natural freedom and, by importunate subtlety, leads us astray from the fine and level road that nature has traced for us.

-Michel De Montaigne, from his essay, Of Moderation

In the background....................

Santana....................................................the Inner Secrets album

no anxiety.....................

"The solar system has no anxiety about its reputation . . ."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay, Worship

Non-prediction predictions............

All ten of these will likely be true over the course of 2020.  A sample or three:

2. Something will happen that doesn’t make any sense at all. There’s sure to be something that catches investors off-guard in 2020. Something is bound to defy expectations whether it involves geopolitics, irrational market movements, corporate takeovers, huge gainers, huge losers, or any number of crazy news, events, or performance moves. I’ve learned I’ll almost always be surprised by markets to some degree. So the trick is to not be surprised that you’re surprised because these things can be completely random at times.

4. There will be other people getting richer than you. Fear and greed often influence investors into making mistakes with their money. But envy is probably a more destructive force. Seeing your peers, friends, or even perfect strangers making money faster than you can cause some strange emotions and reactions. This is true in down markets as well. Someone is bound to put on the right hedge or trade at an opportune time. When that happens you will always regret not doing the same

10. Everything will look obvious after the fact. The fact that stocks have rocketed higher and interest rates fell like a rock in 2019 feels pretty obvious in hindsight. Who couldn’t have seen this coming what with all the central bank easing? Hindsight makes the past look more explainable than it actually was while uncertainty seems to always be at an all-time high about what’s going to happen in the future. But that’s always been the case and will always be the case. No one can predict the future but we can all craft beautiful narratives about the past. Whatever 2020 has in store for us, it will only be clear with the benefit of hindsight.

What if............................

A small, inconsequential experiment. But I wonder: If instead of giving speeches, making promises, or berating opponents during their town hall meetings and political rallies, what if our politicians asked the question: “What are your hopes for America for 2020?”

And then listened to the answers.

-as cut-and-pasted from here

Possibilities for greatness.............

-     Don't be in the business of playing it safe.  Be in the business of creating possibilities for greatness.

-     If you walk down the halls constantly telling people "the sky is falling," a sense of doom and gloom will, over time, permeate the company.  You can't communicate pessimism to the people around you.  It's ruinous to morale.  No one wants to follow a pessimist.

-     Optimism emerges from faith in yourself and in the people who work for you.  It's not about saying things are good when they're not, and it's not about conveying some blind faith that 'things will work out."  It's about believing in your and others' abilities.

-Robert Iger, as parceled out from his list of 45 Lessons To Lead By, found at the conclusion of The Ride of a Lifetime:  Lessons Learned From 15 Years As CEO of  The Walt Disney Company

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

George Harrison...............................................My Sweet Lord

As resolutions go........................

             via

In the background...................

Stan Getz's album.....................................More Getz For Lovers
(with Dizzy Gillespie adding his horn on this track)

Mindset.........................

-     I talk a lot about "the relentless pursuit of perfection."  In practice, this can mean a lot of thing, and it's hard to define.  It's a mindset, more than a specific set of rules.  It's not about perfectionism at all costs.  It's about creating an environment in which people refuse to accept mediocrity.  It's about pushing back against the urge to say that "good enough" is good enough.

-     Take responsibility when you screw up.  In work, in life, you'll be more respected and trusted by the people around you if you own up to your mistakes.  It's impossible to avoid them; but it is possible to acknowledge them, learn from them, and set an example that it's okay to get things wrong sometimes.

-     Ask the questions you need to ask, admit without apology what you don't understand, and do the work to learn what you need to learn as quickly as possible.

-Robert Iger, as culled from his list of 45 Lessons To Lead By, found at the conclusion of The Ride of a Lifetime:  Lessons Learned From 15 Years As CEO of  The Walt Disney Company

Good systems........................

Leaders understand that a good system involves doing something on a regular basis to improve your odds of good outcomes, even if you don't know exactly what the outcome will be. . . .   
     When it comes to your personal life, business life, and political opinions, it makes sense to favor systems over goals whenever that is practical.  A goal gives you one way to win, whereas a system can surface lots of winning paths, some of which you never could have imagined.

-Scott Adams,  Loserthink:  How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America

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

The Temptations.............................................Ball of Confusion

Tom Paine was an interesting man.........

Whether that state that is proudly, perhaps erroneously, called civilization, has most promoted, or most injured, the general happiness of man, is a question that may be strongly contested. –On one side, the spectator is dazzled by splendid appearances; on the other he is shocked by extremes of wretchedness; both of which he has erected. The most affluent and the most miserable of the human race are to be found in the countries that are called civilized. 

-Thomas Paine, from his essay, AGRARIAN JUSTICE:  OPPOSED TO AGRARIAN LAW,AND TO AGRARIAN MONOPOLY BEINGA Plan for meliorating the Condition of Man, in which he offers a plan to make God's creation happy.  The view here from the cheap seats is that the "general happiness of man" is beyond the capacity of the State.  Your results may vary.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T....................

     "A little respect goes a long way, and the absence of it is often very costly.  Over the next few years, as we made the major acquisitions that redefined and revitalized the company, this simple. seemingly trite idea was as important as all of the data-crunching in the world.  If you approach and engage people with respect and empathy, the seemingly impossible can become real.

-Robert Iger,  The Ride Of A Lifetime:  Lessons Learned From 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company

In the background.................

Top of the Stax:  Twenty Greatest Hits

The magic.............................

....................that is Jet Boy (with a nod to Skip for his worries).

Discipleship....................

     Effective management is putting first things first.  While leadership decides what "first things" are, it is management that puts them first, day-by-day, moment-by-moment.  Management is discipline, carrying it out.
     Discipline derives from disciple—disciple to a philosophy, disciple to a set of principles, disciple to a set of values, disciple to an overriding purpose, to a superordinate goal or a person who represents that goal.
     In other words, if you are an effective manager of your self, your discipline comes from within; it is a function of your independent will.  You are a disciple, a follower, of your own deep values and their source.  And you have the will, the integrity, to subordinate your feelings, your impulses, your moods to those values.

-Stephen R. Covey, as taken from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

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

Dave Mason.......................................Look At You Look At Me
Mason starts a guitar solo at about the 4:55 mark.  One of the finest ever recorded.  Just saying.

which matter........................

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

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A common denominator................

The common denominator of success --- the secret of success of every man who has ever been successful --- lies in the fact that he formed the habit of doing things that failures don't like to do.

- Albert E.N. Gray, as excerpted from this address

the absurd temerity...........

"It is a dangerous and fateful presumption, besides the absurd temerity that it implies, to disdain what we do not comprehend."

-Michel de Montaigne, from his essay It Is Folly . . .

On the proper harnessing of ambition..........

You can't let ambition get too far ahead of opportunity.  I've seen a lot people who had their sights set on a particular job or project, but the opportunity to actually get that thing was so slim.  Their focus on the small thing in the distance became a problem.  They grew impatient with where they were.  They didn't tend enough to the responsibilities they did have, because they were longing so much for something else, and so their ambition became counterproductive.  It's important to know how to find the balance—do the job you have well; be patient; look for opportunities to pitch in and expand and grow;  and make yourself one of the people, through attitude and energy and focus, that your bosses feel they have to turn to when an opportunity arises.  Conversely, if you're a boss, these are the people to nurture—not the ones who are clamoring for promotions and complaining about not being utilized enough but the ones who are proving themselves to be indispensable day in and day out.

-Robert Iger,  as culled from The Ride of a Lifetime:  Lessons Learned From 15 Years As CEO of the Walt Disney Company

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

Diana Ross................................Ain't No Mountain High Enough

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

37.  Asteyapratisthayam sarvaratnopasthanam

    To one established in non-stealing, all wealth comes

     If we want to become the world's richest people, this is a very simple way.  There's no need to get into the stock market or even to go to work.  Just practice non-stealing.  All of us are thieves.  Knowingly and unknowingly, we steal things from nature.  With every minute, with each breath, we pick nature's pocket.  Whose air do we breathe?  It is nature's.  But that doesn't mean we should stop breathing and die.  Instead, we should receive each breath with reverence and use it to serve others;  then we are not stealing.  If we accept it and don't give anything in return, we are thieves. . . .
     If we are completely free from stealing and greed, contented with what we have, and if we keep our minds serene, all wealth comes to us.  If we do not run after it, before long it runs after us.  If nature knows we aren't greedy, she gains confidence in us, knowing we will never hold her for ourselves.

-Sri Swami Satchidananda,  The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Book 2

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

Edwin Star......................................................................War

Some pretty good writing................

     The group containing Duffield was emanating an almost magnetic force over the room.  Strike saw it in the sneaking sidelong glances other occupants were shooting at them; in the respectful space left around them, a wider orbit than anybody else had been granted.  Duffield and his cohort's apparent unselfconsciousness was, Strike recognized, nothing but expert artifice;  they had, all of them, the hyper-alertness of the prey animal combined with the casual arrogance of predators.  In the inverted food chain of fame, it was the big beasts who were stalked and hunted;  they were receiving their due.

-Robert Galbraith, as excerpted from the Cuckoo's Calling

But, but, but........................

"Recyclers in the U.S. are now awash in dirty plastic, with no outlet for their commodity. Much of that is headed for landfills."

-as culled from here

Even in little Newark, Ohio this is a real thing.  Two months ago, we were prepared to bid on a local 90,000 square foot abandoned industrial building.  On a price per square foot basis the building was ridiculously cheap.  One catch.  The previous owner, who was walking away from the building, stocked the whole place with giant bales of compacted dirty "recycled" plastic.  The buyer of the building also got the bales.  We had several quotes for hauling the dirty plastic to the landfill - there being no other use for it.  That cost changed the building from ridiculously cheap to a bit too risky for our taste.

There is no doubt that many of our fellow citizens feel virtuous when they carefully sort their trash and take their recyclables to a recycling center.   Not sure that feeling is warranted.

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

The buzz in the street was like the humming of flies.  Photographers stood massed behind barriers patrolled by police, their long-snouted cameras poised, their breath rising like steam.  Snow fell steadily on to hats and shoulders, gloved fingers wiping lenses clear.  From time to time there came outbreaks of desultory clicking, as the watchers filled the waiting time be snapping the white canvas tent in the middle of the road, the entrance to the tall red-brick apartment block behind it, and the balcony on the top floor from which the body had fallen.

-Robert Galbraith,  The Cuckoo's Calling

Being exposed to other folk's reading lists is one of the side benefits to this blogging gig.  Patrick Rhone offers his 2019 list here.   I like " a good whodunnit", so I took his advice and started in on Robert Galbraith's Cormoran Strike series. So far, amazingly good.  Not ashamed to say that part of the lure being Galbraith is J. K. Rowling.  Doesn't matter what you call her, she can flat out write.  Thanks Patrick.

No limits.........................

via

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

Our meeting was not contrived.  Not by me, not by Ed, not by any of the hidden hands supposedly pulling at his strings.  I was not targeted.  Ed was not put up to it.  We were neither covertly nor aggressively observed.  He issued a sporting challenge.  I accepted it.  We played.  There was no contrivance, no conspiracy, no collusion.  There are events in my life - only a few these days, it's true - that admit of one version only.  Our meeting was such an event.  My telling of it never wavered in all the times they made me repeat it.

-John Le Carré,  Agent Running In The Field

we make it so.......................

"It's not at all that we have too short a time to live, but that we squander a great deal of it.  Life is long enough, and it's given in sufficient measure to do many great things if we spend it well.  But when it's poured down the drain of luxury and neglect, when it's employed to no good end, we're finally driven to see that it has passed by before we recognized it passing.  And so it is—we don't receive a short life, we make it so."

-Seneca,  De Brevitate Vitae, from the 12/26 entry in The Daily Stoic

In the background......................

Richie Havens....................................his album grace of the sun

The psychology of prediction...........

     As the new year looms and the prediction industry gears up, you might consider reading this Morgan Housel essay with 12 noteworthy points on the subject. 

"But prediction is hard. Either you know that or you’re in denial about it.  A lot of the reason it’s hard is because the visible stuff that happens in the world is a small fraction of the hidden stuff that goes on inside people’s heads. The former is easy to overanalyze; the latter is easy to ignore."

If you say so.......................

A supernova remnant:

Explanation: What has this supernova left behind? As little as 2,000 years ago, light from a massive stellar explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) first reached planet Earth. The LMC is a close galactic neighbor of our Milky Way Galaxy and the rampaging explosion front is now seen moving out - destroying or displacing ambient gas clouds while leaving behind relatively dense knots of gas and dust. What remains is one of the largest supernova remnants in the LMC: N63A. Many of the surviving dense knots have been themselves compressed and may further contract to form new stars. Some of the resulting stars may then explode in a supernova, continuing the cycle. Featured here is a combined image of N63A in the X-ray from the Chandra Space Telescope and in visible light by Hubble. The prominent knot of gas and dust on the upper right -- informally dubbed the Firefox -- is very bright in visible light, while the larger supernova remnant shines most brightly in X-rays. N63A spans over 25 light years and lies about 150,000 light years away toward the southern constellation of Dorado.

Otherwise.............................

       via

Test time.................................

In the background.....................

Stan Getz.................and his album What The World Needs Now

The world's first blogger............

     We labor only to fill out memory, and leave the understanding and the conscience empty.  Just as birds sometimes go in quest of grain, and carry it in the beak without tasting it to give a beakful to their little ones, so our pedants go pillaging knowledge in books and lodge it only on the end of their lips, in order merely to disgorge it and scatter it to the winds.
      It is wonderful how appropriately this folly fits my case.  Isn't it doing the same thing, what I do in most of this composition?  I go about cadging from books here and there the sayings that please me, not to keep them, for I have no storehouses, but to transport them into this one, in which, to tell he truth, they are no more mine than in their original place.  We are, I believe, learned only with present knowledge, not with past, any more than with future.

-Michel De Montaigne, from his essay Of Pedantry, from The Complete Works

Everything...........................

"Only be training ourselves to calm down and listen can we begin to recognize the word of God in everything, even the most mundane utterances of life."

-The Monks of New Skete:  In the Spirit of Happiness

About the future......................

"Remember, there's no greatness in the future.  Or clarity.  Or insight.  Or happiness.  Or peace.  There is only this moment.

-Ryan Holiday,  Stillness Is The Key

Love thy neighbour.......................

     We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbour.  Hence he comes to us clad in all the careless terrors of nature;  he is as strange as the stars, as reckless and indifferent as the rain.  He is Man, the most terrible of the beasts.  That is why the old religions and the old scriptural language showed so sharp a wisdom when they spoke, not of one's duty to humanity, but one's duty towards one's neighbour.  The duty towards humanity may often take the form of some choice which is personal or even pleasurable.  That duty may be a hobby;  it may even be a dissipation.  We may work in the East End because we are peculiarly fitted to work in the East End, or because we think we are;  we may fight for the cause of international peace because we are very fond of fighting.   The most monstrous martyrdom, the most repulsive experience, bay be the result of choice or a kind of taste.  We may be so made as to be particularly fond of lunatics or specially interested in leprosy.  We may love negroes because they are black or German Socialists because they are pedantic.  But we have to love our neighbor because he is there—a much more alarming reason for a much more serious operation.  He is the sample of humanity which is actually given us.  Precisely because he may be anybody he is everybody.  He is a symbol because he is an accident.

-G. K. Chesterton, from his 1905 essay On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family

In the background

Earlier Fleetwood Mac........................the Mystery To Me album

And I don't even watch the news...........

And the question arose...........

........................................................"How much should we know?"  And the answer gently wafted by, " Not so much."

Explanation: Beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 6744 is nearly 175,000 light-years across, larger than our own Milky Way. It lies some 30 million light-years distant in the southern constellation Pavo and appears as only a faint, extended object in small telescopes. We see the disk of the nearby island universe tilted towards our line of sight in this remarkably detailed galaxy portrait, a telescopic view that spans an area about the angular size of a full moon. In it, the giant galaxy's elongated yellowish core is dominated by the light from old, cool stars. Beyond the core, grand spiral arms are filled with young blue star clusters and speckled with pinkish star forming regions. An extended arm sweeps past a smaller satellite galaxy (NGC 6744A) at the lower right. NGC 6744's galactic companion is reminiscent of the Milky Way's satellite galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud.

      "The simplicity of the universe is very different from the simplicity of a machine.  He who sees moral nature out and out, and thoroughly knows how knowledge is acquired and character formed is a pedant.  The simplicity of nature is not that which may easily be read, but is inexhaustible.  The last analysis can no wise be made.  We judge of a man's wisdom by his hope, knowing that the perception of the inexhaustibleness of nature is an immortal youth.  The wild fertility of nature is felt in comparing our rigid names and reputations with our fluid consciousness."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his 1841 Spiritual Laws essay

Plus, it's not difficult....................

"If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters."

-Epictetus

In the background...................

The Rippingtons...........................................Deep Powder

Marcus says........................

". . . nothing can be good for a man unless it helps to make him just, self-disciplined, courageous, and independent; and nothing bad unless it has the contrary effect."

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Eight, 1.

Merry Christmas........................

O holy night, the stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of the dear Saviour’s birth;
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
'Till he appeared and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn;

Fall on your knees, Oh hear the angel voices!
O night divine! O night when Christ was born.
O night, O holy night, O night divine.

Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is Love and His gospel is Peace;
All chains shall he break, everyone is our brother,
And in his name all oppression shall cease,
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful Chorus raise we;
Let all within us praise his Holy name!

Fall on your knees, Oh hear the angel voices!
O night divine! O night when Christ was born.
O night, O holy night, O night divine.

Whether I am on it, or not..........

“To ensure that there are as few interruptions as possible, immense quantities of electricity are deployed to keep everything running with precision and perfection and permanence.  2 percent of America’s electricity now goes to keeping the Internet cool, to keeping the link unbroken, for America and for the world.”


-Simon Winchester, The Men Who United the States: America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible

Now here's...........................

...........................................................a tradition worth emulating.

He recommends keeping score......

     
     One thing I find helpful is growing old.  It's a slow process, but totally worth it compared to dying.  Oldsters such as myself have vastly more experience than the young at being simultaneously wrong and also surprised about it.  In time, we come to understand how easy it is to be confident in our opinions and yet spectacularly wrong.  Or at least we do if we have been keeping score.  And that's exactly what I recommend doing.  Make a mental note every time you find yourself being wrong about something you thought you couldn't possibly be wrong about.  Focusing on your track record can prime you to understand that there can be lots of different explanations for a set of facts, and you can't always think of them all

-Scott Adams,  Loserthink:  How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America

In the background........................

Enya..........................................................A Day Without Rain

Engage........................

Lose this day loitering—twill be the same story
To-morrow—and the next more dilatory;
Each indecision brings its own delays,
And days are lost lamenting o'er lost days,

Are you in earnest? sieze this very minute—
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Only engage, and then the mind grows heated—
Begin it, and then the work will be completed!

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,  Lose This Day Loitering

recurrence to the harmony..................

11.  When force of circumstance upsets your equanimity, lose no time in recovering your self-control, and do not remain out of tune longer than you can help.  Habitual recurrence to the harmony will increase your mastery of it.

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Six

Face to face............................

In human relations, risk avoidance means the avoidance of accountability, the refusal to stand judged in another’s eyes, the refusal to come face to face with another person, to give oneself in whatever measure to him or her, and so to run the risk of rejection. Accountability is not something we should avoid; it is something we need to learn. Without it we can never acquire either the capacity to love or the virtue of justice. Other people will remain for us merely complex devices, to be negotiated in the way that animals are negotiated, for our own advantage and without opening the possibility of mutual judgment. Justice is the ability to see the other as having a claim on you, as being a free subject just as you are, and as demanding your accountability. To acquire this virtue you must learn the habit of face-to-face encounters, in which you solicit the other’s consent and cooperation rather than imposing your will. The retreat behind the screen is a way of retaining control over the encounter, while minimizing the need to acknowledge the other’s point of view. It involves setting your will outside yourself, as a feature of virtual reality, while not risking it as it must be risked, if others are truly to be encountered. To encounter another person in his freedom is to acknowledge his sovereignty and his right: it is to recognize that the developing situation is no longer within your exclusive control, but that you are caught up by it, made real and accountable in the other’s eyes by the same considerations that make him real and accountable in yours.

-Roger Scruton, from this New Atlantis essay, Hiding Behind The Screen

Just because..............................

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

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

Despite evidence to the contrary, we all use our brains.  but most of us have never learned how to think effectively.  I'm not talking about IQ or other measures of intelligence, which matter in their own way, of course.  I'm talking about thinking as a learned skill.  We don't teach thinking in schools, and you can see the results of that nearly every day.  If you use social media, or you make the mistake of paying attention to to ther people's opinions in any form, you are probably seeing a lot of absurd and unproductive reasoning that I call loserthink.
     Loserthink isn't about being dumb, and it isn't about being underinformed.  Loserthink is about unproductive ways of thinking.  You can be smart and well informed while at the same time being a flagrant loserthinker.  That is not only possible; it's the normal situation.  My observation, after several decades on this planet, is that clear thinking is somewhat rare.  And there's a reason for that.  No matter how smart you are, if you don't have experience across multiple domains, you're probably not equipped with the most productive ways of thinking.

-Scott Adams,  LOSERTHINK:  How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America

Can't have too much Emerson..............

"The farmer imagines power and place are fine things.  But the President has paid dear for his White House."

"Every act rewards itself . . ."

"Every opinion reacts on him who utters it."

"a man often pays dear for a small frugality."

"If you are wise, you will dread a prosperity which only loads you with more.  Benefit is the end of nature.  But for every benefit you receive, a tax is levied.  He is great who confers the most benefits."

"The law of nature is, Do the thing, and you shall have the power:  but they who do not the thing have not the power."

"it is impossible to get any thing without its price. . ."

"On the other hand, the law holds with equal sureness for all right action.  Love, and you shall be loved."

"The good are befriended even by weakness and defect.  As no man had ever a point of price that was not injurious to him, so no man ever a defect that was not somewhere made useful to him."

"The soul is."

"There can be no excess to love; none to knowledge; none to beauty, when these attributes are considered in the purest sense.  The soul refuses limits, and always affirms an Optimism, never a Pessimism."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, all quotes lifted from his 1841 essay, Compensation

the rare and supremely agreeable condition....

     Altogether it takes 7 billion billion billion (that's 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, or 7 octillion) atoms to make you.  No one can say why those 7 billion billion billion have such an urgent desire to be you.  They are mindless particles, after all, without a single thought or notion between them.  Yet somehow for the length of your existence, they will build and maintain all the countless systems and structures necessary to keep you humming, and to make you you, to give you form and shape and let you enjoy the rare and supremely agreeable condition known as life.
     That's a much bigger job than you realize.  Unpacked, you are positively enormous.  Your lungs, smoothed out, would cover a tennis court, and the airways within them would stretch nearly from coast to coast.  The length of all your blood vessels would take you two and a half times around the earth.  The most remarkable part of all is your DNA (or deoxyribonucleic acid).  You have a meter of it packed into every cell, and so many cells that if you formed all the DNA in your body into a single strand, it would stretch ten billion miles, to beyond Pluto.  Think of it: there is enough of you to leave the solar system.  You are int the most literal sense cosmic.

-Bill Bryson, The Body:  A Guide for Occupants

In the background.............

Sir Colin Davis.........Moussorgsky's Pictures At An Exhibition

At least not likely......................

"It is impossible that happiness, and yearning for what is not present, should ever be united."

-Epictetus

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

Pharoah Sanders.........................................................Colors

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

Miles Davis..................................................In A Silent Way

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

John Coltrane................................................My Favorite Things



Purists might note that this was recorded in 1963.  It was also released on the Selflessness album in 1969.

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

The Grass Roots.......................................................Bella Linda

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

Cream......................................................................Crossroads

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

Bill Deal & The Rhondels...What Kind Of Fool Do You Think I Am

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

Jerry Butler.................................What's The Use Of Breaking Up

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

Wilson Pickett................................................................Hey Jude

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

Underground Sunshine............................All I Want Is You

Highly recommended...................

     "On the whole, I disliked school, sitting in class, receiving instruction;  information seemed to go in one ear and out the other.  I could not be passive—I had to be active, learn for myself, learn what I wanted, and in the way that suited me best.  I was not a good pupil, but I was a good learner, and in the Willesden library—and all the libraries that came later—I roamed the shelves and stacks, and had the freedom to select whatever I wanted, to follow paths that fascinated me, to become myself.  At the library I felt free—free to look at the thousands, tens of thousands, of books; free to roam and to enjoy the special atmosphere and the quiet companionship of other readers, all, like myself, on quests of their own."

Oliver Sacks, excerpted from the chapter "Libraries" in Everything In Its Place:  First Loves and Last Tales

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

Johnny Taylor................................Take Care Of Your Homework

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

Glen Campbell........................................Try A Little Kindness

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

The Bee Gees....................................................................Words

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

Neil Diamond...............Brother Love's Travelling Salvation Show

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

Edwin Hawkins Singers...............................................Oh Happy Day

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

Isaac Hayes.......................................................Walk On By

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

Eddie Holman...........................................Hey There Lonely Girl

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

Sonny Charles and the Checkmates........................Black Pearl

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

The Moments......................................Love On A Two Way Street

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

Roberta Flack...............................First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

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

Three Dog Night..................................................Easy To Be Hard

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

Mel & Tim.......................................................Backfield in Motion