People don't talk like this much anymore.....

 I preach to you, then, my countrymen, that our country calls not for the life of ease but for the life of strenuous endeavor. The twentieth century looms before us big with the fate of many nations. If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world. Let us therefore boldly face the life of strife, resolute to do our duty well and manfully; resolute to uphold righteousness by deed and by word; resolute to be both honest and brave, to serve high ideals, yet to use practical methods. Above all, let us shrink from no strife, moral or physical, within or without the nation, provided we are certain that the strife is justified, for it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness.

-Theodore Roosevelt, as he concludes this speech

Watson observes.............

 "What a very attractive woman!" I exclaimed, turning to my companion.

He had lit his pipe again and was leaning back with drooping eyelids.  "Is she?" he said languidly; "I did not observe."

"You really are an automaton—a calculating machine," I cried. "There is something positively inhuman in you at times."

He smiled gently.  "It is of the first importance," he said, "not to allow your judgment to be biased by personal qualities.  A client is to me a mere unit, a factor in a problem.  The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning.  I assure you that the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance money, and the most repellent man of my acquaintance is a philanthropist who has spent nearly a quarter of a million upon the London poor."

-Arthur Conan Doyle, channeling his inner Holmes in The Sign of Four

On peace and happiness........

In my own personal experience, the place I end up the most is wanting to be at peace.

Peace is happiness at rest, and happiness is peace in motion.  You can convert peace into happiness anytime you want.  But peace is what you want most of the time.  If you're a peaceful person, anything you do will be a happy activity.

Today, the way we think you get peace is by resolving all your external problems.  But there are unlimited external problems.  The only way to actually get peace on the inside is by giving up this idea of problems.

-Naval Ravikant

in an unknowable world............

 Bridge requires a continual effort to assess probabilities in at best marginally unknowable situations, and players need to make hundreds of decisions in a single session, often balancing expected gains and losses.  But players must also continually make peace with good decisions that lead to bad outcomes, both one's own decisions and those of a partner.  Just this peacemaking skill is required if one is to invest wisely in an unknowable world.

-Richard Zeckhauser

In praise of cash reserves...............

      Any sudden event which creates a great demand for actual cash may cause, and will tend to cause, a panic in a country where cash is much economised, and where debts payable on demand are large.  In such a country an immense credit rests on a small cash reserve, and an unexpected and large diminution of that reserve may easily break up and shatter very much, if not the whole, of that credit.  Such accidental events are of the most various nature: a bad harvest, an apprehension of foreign invasion, the sudden failure of a great firm which everybody trusted, and many other similar events, have all caused a sudden demand for cash.  And some writers have endeavoured to classify panics according to the nature of the particular accidents producing them.  But little, however, is, I believe, to be gained by such classifications.  There is little difference in the effect of one accident and another upon our credit system.  We must be prepared for all of them, and we must prepare for all of them in the same way—by keeping a large cash reserve.

-Walter Bagehot, from his 1873 classic, Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market

On courtiers...................

      One day the Emperor Julian's courtiers were praising him for being so just.  "I would readily take pride in these praises," he said, "if they came from people who dared to accuse or dispraise my unjust actions, if there should be any."

-Michel de Montaigne,  The Complete Works, Book 1, Chapter 42

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

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band & Friends/Orange Blossom Special

 

Checking in...........................

 .................................with Doug Savage:

for the love of the game types...........

 More broadly, our society needs many more Charlie Watts’ and should do what it takes to create them. Fewer thieves, militarists, spreadsheet jockeys, influencers, celebrities, administrators: More musicians, painters, photographers, world-builders, model railroaders, knitters, gamers, welders, winemakers, and “for the love of the game”-types generally.

-Lambert Strether, as culled from here

Not to worry..................

Missing out on some opportunity never bothered us.  What's wrong with someone getting a little richer than you?  It's crazy to worry about this.

-Charlie Munger 

Escape....................

 “Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”

-John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Except for books and single malt scotch...........

 The man who can buy anything he covets, without any consultation with his banker, values nothing that he buys.

-William Dawson

via

On charity...................

 A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog when you are just as hungry as the dog.

-Jack London

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

  One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. 

-Martin Luther King, Jr., as excerpted from his Letter from Birmingham Jail

You are missing a lot.................

 ..............if you don't check in with The Hammock Papers on a regular basis.

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

The Rolling Stones...................................How Can I Stop

 

Fifty years ago

Bruce Springsteen............................Spirit in the Night

 

a fingertip.........................

 The genuine love for reading itself, when cultivated, is a superpower.  We live in the age of Alexandria, when every book and every piece of knowledge ever written down is a fingertip away.  The means of learning are abundant—it's the desire to learn that is scarce.

-Naval Ravikant

Of course they do...................

 Men of refinement shrink from the House of Representatives as from a parish vestry.

-Walter Bagehot from this +/- 1859 essay

certain affinities......................

      Flawed or not, Burr shared certain affinities with Jackson.  Both speculated in land, engaged in duels, and championed the interests of a growing West.  Importantly, they also resided outside of the prevailing American power structure.  Neither, in other words, were Virginians.  Jackson's refusal to join his congressional colleagues and laud Washington is on par with Burr's cutting insistence that the great general lacked completely "independence of character" and managed to somehow become a national hero "without talent."  Men on the make, they would have to make their own opportunities.

-David S. Brown,  The First Populist: The Defiant Life of Andrew Jackson

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

Bruce Springsteen.........................................Magic

It is early in the game, but "Unprecedented" has jumped to an enormous lead to be 2023's "Word of the Year".........

 We live in unprecedented times. The recession in 2020 was not so much a recession as it was a lockdown. Using “normal words” to describe the economy in the last 3 years, we believe, does not make sense. 

-Brian Wesbury

Whither the market in 2023.......?

 The only Wall Street strategist-type forecast I’m willing to make is this: The stock market will have a correction in 2023.

I’m not exactly going out on a limb here for one simple reason — the stock market has a correction every year.

My work shows over the past 100 years or so just 5% of all trading days experience an all-time high for the U.S. stock market. Invert that data and that means 95% of the time as a stock market investor is spent in a state of drawdown from an all-time high.

The stock market cannot go up every single day. In fact, historically the stock market is only up on roughly 55% of all days that it’s open and down on the other 45% of days.

-Ben Carlson

A simple equation......................

 Life Fulfillment = Time + Health + Money.

Apply this equation to creating meaningful experiences. Rinse and repeat.

Money isn’t last in the formula by accident. A billion dollars isn’t enough to overcome poor health and to starve yourself of meaningful experiences. Conversely, a modest sum of money goes a long way, combined with optimal health and strong social connections.

Many investors ignore this logic at their peril. Obsessing over money and letting it supersede time and health is the path to anxiety and disappointment, no matter how “rich” a person is perceived.

-Tony Isola

Putting 2022 to good use...............

 ..................................20 lessons learned.

4. If you have a problem with them, and them, and them, and them, the problem is probably you.

5. Failure is the tuition you pay for success.

10. Task yourself with a huge must-do project that has a deadline far out enough that you can safely procrastinate on it for a day or two. Watch your productivity on every other possible thing go way up to avoid that one.

17. One day, I hope not to measure my days in minutes or hours, but in miles walked and pages read.

1. 
   

Traveling to Mars..................

...............or not?   Here's a fun-to-read essay suggesting it would be folly to send live humans to explore the red planet.

 "When you hold on to a belief so strongly that neither facts nor reason can change it, what you are doing is no longer science, but religion."

via

Maybe some good will come..................

................from all the drama over the Speakership:

According to ZeroHedge, here is a list of concessions McCarthy had to make to secure the votes of some Representatives.  This one caught my eye:

4.   Bills presented to Congress will be single subject, not omnibus with all the attendant earmarks, and there will be a 72-hour minimum period to read them.

We will see.

more cartoons here

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

 I know I'm in trouble on the run down towards Shuttlecock, but I am laughing—I don't care.

     I am once again riding in a Grand National, the first time in nearly eight years, but this isn't the four-and-a-half-mile steeplechase over the thirty fences of Aintree Racecourse.  This Grand National is a different type of race altogether—a never-jangling, teeth-rattling, buttock-clenching, roller-coaster ride sown the three-quarter-mile long ice chute—the Cresta Run in the Swiss town of St. Moritz.

-Felix Francis, Iced: A Dick Francis Novel

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

Procul Harum...............................Grand Hotel album

 

intuit.........................

 All species struggle to survive and strive to reproduce.  A chance mutation about 200,000 years ago made early Homo sapiens more sensitive to social information.  This mutation increased the number of oxytocin receptors in the brain's frontal lobe, enabling out ancestors to not only understand what others were doing cognitively, but also experience the emotions of others.  This helped early humans survive by enabling them to draw on social resources more effectively.

Over time the mutation spread.  Rather than being limited to living in small bands of kin-based groups as our genus had for millions of years, Homo sapiens could live in increasingly larger and more complex societies because they could intuit others' intentions.  The most basic social information is the intention to help or harm.  As culture flourished, societies developed norms in which helpers were embraced and the selfish and violent were ostracized. . . .

We truly became social creatures when the brain network that oxytocin activates allowed us to determine who to trust.  Knowing when to trust strangers led to large-scale societies.  In these communities, an individual's survival depended on many others.  Cooperation among nonkin provided social insurance against a bad crop or an unsuccessful hunt.  Communities began to function like superorganisms in which each segment nourished the other parts.

Paul J. Zak,  Immersion:  The Science of The Extraordinary and the Source of Happiness

If only...............................

      Walter Bagehot's father showed more confidence in his son that Walter did in himself.  In preparation for joining the family bank, the refugee from the law lived in Langport to make a study of double-entry bookkeeping.  He admitted that the theory of accounting "is agreeable and pretty, but the practice perhaps as horrible as anything ever was."  The student who had kept up with the pyrotechnical intellect of Augustus De Morgan at University College could not seem to add or subtract.  "If only," Bagehot playfully moaned to a school friend, "my relations would admit that sums are matters opinion."

-James Grant, Bagehot: The Life and Times of the Greatest Victorian

Escape...........................

 Another tweet I had that is worth weaving in, but didn't do into the "How to Get Rich" tweetstorm, was very simple: "Escape competition through authenticity."  Basically, when you're competing with people, it's because you're copying them.  It's because you are trying to do the same thing.  But every human being is different.  Don't copy.

-The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

A realist.................

     In dealing with the world, Washington was an utter realist.  He always sought, as he put it in 1775, at the outset of the war against Britain, to "make the best of mankind as they are, since we cannot have them as we wish." . . .

     If any single person was responsible for establishing the young Republic on a firm footing, it was Washington.  He was nearly as much of an aristocrat as the United States ever produced, in his acceptance of social hierarchy and in his belief that some were born to command and most to obey.  Although he trusted the good sense of the people in the long run, he believed that they could easily be misled by demagogues.  He was a realist who had no illusions about human nature.  "The motives which predominate most human affairs," he said, "are self-love and self-interest."  The common people, like the common soldiers in his army could not be expected to be "influenced by any other principles than those of interest."

- Gordon S. Wood, Revolutionary Characters:  What Made The Founders Different

On appropriateness..................

      It is a kind of mockery and insult to praise a man's worth for qualities unbecoming his rank, though they be otherwise laudable, and for qualities also which ought not to be his principal ones; as if you praised a king for being a good painter, or a good architect . . . 

     The companions of Demosthenes in the embassy to Philip praised that prince as being handsome, eloquent, and a good drinker.  Demosthenes said that those were praises more appropriate to a woman, a lawyer, and a sponge, than a king.

-Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Works, Book 1, Chapter 40

Celestial.............................

 ...................................Pac-man?

    back story and enlargeable photo here

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

Elton John.....................Candle In The Wind

   

Goodbye Norma Jeane
Though I never knew you at all
You had the grace to hold yourself
While those around you crawled
They crawled out of the woodwork
And they whispered into your brain
They set you on the treadmill
And they made you change your name

And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a candle in the wind
Never knowing who to cling to
When the rain set in
And I would've liked to known you
But I was just a kid
Your candle burned out long before
Your legend ever did

Loneliness was tough
The toughest role you ever played
Hollywood created a superstar
And pain was the price you paid
Even when you died
Oh the press still hounded you
All the papers had to say
Was that Marilyn was found in the nude

And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a candle in the wind
Never knowing who to cling to
When the rain set in
And I would've liked to known you
But I was just a kid
Your candle burned out long before
Your legend ever did

Goodbye Norma Jeane
Though I never knew you at all
You had the grace to hold yourself
While those around you crawled

Goodbye Norma Jeane
From the young man in the twenty second row
Who sees you as something as more than sexual
More than just our Marilyn Monroe

And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a candle in the wind
Never knowing who to cling to
When the rain set in
And I would've liked to known you
But I was just a kid
Your candle burned out long before
Your legend ever did

Depends on whether ice cream is also involved?

 . . . in the battle between the dieter and the brownie, the brownie always wins . . .

-via

Retain the optimism................

 There is always something to be pessimistic about. Usually dozens of things. But it’s often like being on a flight that’s delayed, and the food is awful, and the turbulence is frightening, and they lose your bags, and the guy sitting next to you is snoring.  Yes, that’s miserable.  But are the engines roaring? Are the wings intact? Are the pilots capable?  OK, well that’s all you need.  You’ll get to your destination.  You should remain an optimist.

-Morgan Housel, from here

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

 The Human Riff was actually explaining to me about the synthesis of hillbilly and black music that customized the recipe for rock 'n' roll, putting a match to the kindling for the nascent Rolling Stones and the generation of hopeful oiks they represented.  But that payoff line has always felt like a playfully succinct overview of the man who sat behind him for 58 years.  In parallel timeline, you could imagine Wolfgang Amadeus looking up to Charlie Watts.  Everyone else did.

-Paul Sexton, Charlie's Good Tonight: The Life, the Times, and the Rolling Stones

a good drummer.................

 Mozart knew what he was talking about.  But he should have had a good drummer.

-Keith Richards

Fun with politics..................

 

Our magnificent Elites...........

They are the best—and if you have any doubt, they will explain to you why. For example, ask Anthony Fauci and he will tell you, “I represent science.” Ask a high-flying U.N. undersecretary with a degree in journalism and she will say, “We own the science and the world should know about it.” Think of how amazing that is! To be an elite is to hold a 30-year mortgage on science, zero interest, payment infinitely deferred.

They are also the smartest. In fact, the elites resemble those science fiction beings with enormous brains and thoughts too complex for normal communication. They keep trying to explain the meaning of everything, but all that ordinary people hear is a series of dull clicks and buzzes. That leaves the elites frustrated and sad. They are often misunderstood by the public because—as a French parliamentarian put it—their ideas are “too intelligent, too subtle, too technical.”

Here’s another way to detect an elite: They are “I” while the rest of us are “them.” The difference in character is not subtle. For “I,” think Mahatma Gandhi or St. Francis of Assisi—for “them,” the Beast of the Apocalypse. Let the ever-helpful Anthony Fauci illustrate the point: “I’m going to be saving lives,” he said, “and they’re going to be telling lies.”

You can know the elites by their ownership of reality. Jesus might have said, “I am the truth and the life,” but Jacinda Ardern, prime minister of New Zealand, prefers to be a little more exclusive: “We continue to be your single source of truth … Unless you hear it from us it is not the truth.” To protect the truth, the elites have hired gangs of roving bouncers to usher out of the building any would-be Pontius Pilates who ask, “What is truth?” (That question, like all of science, is settled.) For unknown reasons, these elite enforcers call themselves “fact-checkers.”

So elite-spotting can be a fun and profitable activity. Elites talk like one another and dress like one another. They are all over TV and the internet—and, since they are barely aware of our existence, we can observe them in the wild, as they really are! Anyone who still has trouble spotting them should remember that the elites are always ahead and above us. Like certain species of baboons, they can be identified by their posteriors.

-Martin Gurri, as cut-and-pasted from here

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

 

Pink Floyd.............................................Breathe

 

a sharp uncertainly...............

 The newly anointed Hero of New Orleans seemed almost eager to endanger his sudden rise in public esteem.  Two days after the battle, with rumors and jittery reports of tall British ships cannonading in the area, Jackson ordered an officer on the west bank to solidify his defenses by demolishing private property—never a popular move among property owners.  "Set fire to and destroy every house," he commanded.  "Altho I feel great pain at the . . . infliction of individual injury, yet when the imperious dictates of public duty require the sacrifice I am not allowed to hesitate."  Governor Claiborne, the state legislators, and a good many living and working in the city grew concerned that Jackson might soon sacrifice all of New Orleans rather than permit enemy troops to pass through its gates.  No doubt the high tensions brought about by weeks of gossip, military preparations, and martial law produced a sharp uncertainty only imperfectly punctured by the recent British defeat.  The city badly needed a cooling-off period, but what it got was Andrew Jackson.

-David S. Brown, The First Populist: The Defiant Life of Andrew Jackson

On questions and answers........

 To the dumb question "Why me?" the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?

-Christopher Hitchens, from this Vanity Fair essay

a two-minute warning.................

      It is interesting to watch football teams on a Sunday afternoon.  They spend the first fifty-eight minutes routinely following the game plan they thought would result in victory.  Then something rather remarkable happens.  An official walks onto the center of the field and announces what has become known as the "Two-Minute Warning."

      What happens in the next one hundred and twenty seconds is frequently awesome.  We often witness more intensity, more cleverness, more expended energy, and more action compacted into those two final minutes than occurs in the previous fifty-eight.

      Why?

      A sudden awareness of the sense of imminent defeat, and a birth of a new and sharpened sense of urgency.  The participants know that the clock will show no favoritism.  The clock will merely do what clocks are supposed to do:  they will tick away the seconds until the game is finally over. 

      The team that finds itself on the threshold of defeat night have shown an extraordinary level of ingenuity and intensity at any time throughout the game.  They had the potential and the opportunity to outscore their opponents early in the game.  But sometimes, despite their intentions, the players make only an average effort until it is too late.  Sometimes the blowing of the whistle announcing the two-minute warning is merely a formality signifying the probability of impending and irreversible defeat.

      And so it is with the individual human life.

-Jim Rohn, The Five Major Pieces To The Life Puzzle

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

Eumir Deodato.....................Also sprach Zarathustra

So far so good with our real estate...............

      The plunging markets are the result of a decades-old macroeconomic regime falling apart.  High inflation, not seen in the rich world since the 1980s, is back, which in turn has brought to an end ten years of near-zero interest rates.  As a result, the rule book of investing is being rewritten.  Protecting portfolios from inflation, once a peripheral concern, is now a prime consideration.  Rising government-bond yields, meanwhile, make riskier assets less desirable.

-The Economist, from this Briefing

a naive confidence......................

 But he suffered from a naive confidence in the power of reason and a few good men to arrange complex matters.  As late as 1775 he was still persuaded that the issues separating Britain and the colonies were "a mere Matter of Puncitilo, which Two or three reasonable People might settle in half an Hour."  He had little or no comprehension of the structural forces and the popular passions that limited individual action.  In the end he was convinced that the glorious empire to which he had devoted so much of his life was broken by "the mangling hands of a few blundering ministers."

-Gordon S. Wood, from the chapter "The Invention of Benjamin Franklin" in his book, Revolutionary Characters: What Made The Founders Different

In praise of apathy......................

      Democracy cannot work without a fair level of political and social stability.  This implies a certain level of political apathy.  Anything resembling fanaticism, a domination of the normal internal debate by "activists" is plainly to be deplored.

-Robert Conquest, The Dragons of Expectation: Reality and Delusion in the Course of History

Would Boone's Farm Apple wine in the 70's count?

 via

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

The Allman Brothers...............................Ramblin' Man

"Renegade liberals"....................

 He defines them, with characteristic felicity, in the unused preface to Animal Farm, as those who hold that "defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought."

-------

Elsewhere (in his "The Prevention of Literature") he comments, "When one sees highly educated men looking on indifferently at oppression and persecution, one wonders which to despise more, their cynicism or their shortsightedness."

-Robert Conquest, channeling George Orwell

focus........................

 "narrow your focus to broaden your possibilities."

-Jon Hanson

Remember: Always bet on the optimist...............

.........................Kevin Kelly TED talks the future

 

Good advice...........................

 

Be there................

 So that was why I was in the city that day. Not to just teach my class or network or catch up with clients. Not to get a free dinner or a lead on another deal down the road.

Just to be there. To connect with someone. To share the least marketable part of me - my silly sense of puns - and to make someone laugh a little. To break tension and restore some hope.

-Matthew Ferrara, the rest of the story here

You just never know..................

 2023 predictions from "America's Newspaper of Record".  My favorite is the one for November 25th.  

There are many paths to.................

 .................................wealth.

Gone but not forgotten...............

 

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

The Doobie Brothers..........................Long Train Running

 

Get lucky............................

 

 via

Twists..................

  However, I only have one goal for the coming new year. Staying alive, and smiling no matter what. The toughest time to find joy is when fate isn't kind. So, call me anything but serious. If you aren't laughing at the twists fate brings us, you aren't living.

-Rick Georges

Asking the important questions.................

 

via

Ah, science.........................

However frustrating this debate may be for all participants – and I imagine it can be very frustrating at times – to me it is an excellent example of the dynamic process of the scientific method. Claims are advanced, they are robustly criticised, and additional evidence is brought forward to refute the critiques. Bit by bit, the field advances in its understanding.

-as extracted from here

thanks

Haven't played this in a while...............

U2.........................................New Year's Day

Me thinks....................

 ............................DRY has many meanings.

A new year recommendation:

 To experience the world in a useful way.

-Seth Godin

magic and dreams

 

-as cut and pasted from this wondrous blog

My Sweetie and I.................................

 ...........................will be watching this one again!

A worthy suggestion ...................

 We have to come up with a new word for "reporters" because they are not "reporting" the news but instead spinning propaganda - so calling them reporters becomes Orwellian. How about calling them "liberal artists?"

-as culled from here

Nourishment...............................

  I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them lovingly, I feed on the food that alone is mine and that I was born for. 

-via

Surprise surprise..................

  “It’s OK to be surprised. The world is a surprising place. Just don’t be surprised that you’re surprised about what happens . . ."

-Ben Carlson, from here

If the past few years have taught anything.....

 ............it is do not trust the "fact-checkers."

via

Ah, history...............................

 It has been known for millennia that any understanding of the future is only possible if it includes a reasonable understanding of the past. Thucydides already saw history as, in part, "an aid to the interpretation of the future."

     For humanity, as it exists now, is a product of the past—of the intricate, interweaving complexities of recent, and of less recent, history or histories.  The psychological, as well as physical, conditions we thus inherited must be considered with as much care and clarity as can be attained.  This should, of course, include a proper understanding of backgrounds—so different in different cultures and countries.

     Our current confrontations with the enemies of our civilization are in some ways unlike the earlier threats we faced over much of the twentieth century.  The West prevailed then but was much hampered by misevaluations of the hostile motivations of the other side, which diverted our citizens' attention from the realities.  Writing in the early nineteenth century, Thomas Macaulay expressed the hope that in the future our crises would be handled by people "for whom history has not recorded the long series of human crimes and follies in vain."

     Do our countries today meet Maccaulay's standard?  Alas, no.  Both the actions and intentions of the adversaries and the supporters of a plural society are still being misrepresented by some of those responsible for the transmission of Maccaulay's message.

-Robert Conquest, The Dragons of Expectation:  Reality and Delusion in the Course of History

Lagging indicators......................

 Success as a lagging indicator is a phenomenon that holds true across most areas in life. . . .

When I look in the mirror and I’m a little flabby, that is a lagging indicator that, for weeks and months, I’ve slacked on eating healthy and exercising. . . .

Nothing comes from nowhere. Not success. Not inspiration. Not the muses. Not writer’s block. Everything is a lagging indicator. Of whether or not you did the work.

-as culled from this Ryan Holiday post

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

Tumbling Dice.............................The Rolling Stones

 

Oneself..............................

 The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.

-Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Works, Book 1, Chapter 39

hegemony.........................

      One way to understand Jackson's unconventional courtship of Rachel is to see it as part of a broader personal approach by which he reckoned with the world.  Over a long public service career, he was occasionally accused of skirting legal niceties in the name of expediency.  While president he controversially removed federal deposits from the country's National Bank (thus earning a Senate censure for "assuming upon himself authority and power not conferred by the constitution"), and in another episode he tacitly supported southern postmasters who, in direct opposition to postal law, refused to deliver abolitionist materials.  Jackson, and indeed much of the political movement he headed, believed the country too confined by treaties and technicalities, the kind of formalities and piddling points that easterners presumably used to maintain hegemony over westerners.  In a similar vein, he believed his marriage to Rachel legal in the only sense meaningful to him, showing little concern for the lack of a contract.  In both contexts, in and out of power, he demonstrated a tendency for the intuitive, the immediate, and the practical.  This attitude no doubt reveals something about his personality and temperament, though it is almost certainly indicative as well of the frontier's mounting pressure upon older American institutions, practices, and protocols.

-David S. Brown:  The First Populist: The Defiant Life of Andrew Jackson

True Customer Obsession............

 There are many ways to center a business.  You can be competition focused, you can be product focused, you can be technology focuses, you can be business model focused, and there are more.  But in my view, obsessive customer focus is by far the most protective of Day 1 vitality.

    Why?  There are many advantages to a customer-centric approach, but here's the big one: customers are always beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied, even when they report being happy and business is great.  Even when they don't yet know it, customers want something better, and your desire to delight customers will drive you to invent on their behalf.  No customer ever asked for Amazon to create the Prime membership program, but it sure turns out they wanted it, and I could give you many such examples.

     Staying in Day 1 requires you to experiment patiently, accept failures, plant seeds, protect saplings, and double down when you see customer delight.  A customer-obsessed culture best creates the conditions where all of that can happen.

-Jeff Bezos, Invent & Wander:  The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

Checking in .........................

....................................with Jim Nantz. 

 For an interesting exposition on "goal minded lifestyles" make sure you listen a few moments after the 3:00 minute mark as Jim Nantz chats with Dave Lapham.

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

Samuel Adams delivered what may count as the most remarkable second act in American life.  It was all the more confounding after the first:  he was a perfect failure until middle age.  He found his footing at forty-one, when, over a dozen years, he proceeded to answer to Thomas Jefferson's description of him as "truly the man of the Revolution."  With singular lucidity Adams plucked ideas from the air and pinned them to the page, layering in moral dimensions, whipping up emotions, seizing and shaping the popular imagination. On a wet 1774 night when a group of Massachusetts farmers settled in a tavern before the fire, and pipes in hand, discussed what had driven Bostonians mad—reasoning that Parliament might soon begin to tax horses, cows, and sheep; wondering what additional affronts could come their way; and concluding that it was better to rebel sooner rather than later—it was because the long arm of Samuel Adams had reached them.  He muscled words into deeds, effecting, with various partners, a revolution that culminated, in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence.  It was a sideways, looping, secretive business.  Adams steered New Englanders where he was certain they meant, or should mean, to head, occasionally even revealing the destination along the way.  As a grandson acknowledged: "Shallow men called this cunning, and wise men wisdom."  The patron saint of late bloomers, Adams proved a political genius.

-Stacy Schiff,  The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams

Sounds like a fun place.........

      Langport was a scrum of contending Christian faiths when Walter was going to school.  More than one family was split as the Bagehots were, with adherents of the established church lined up against dissenters.  Walter, attending Unitarian services with this father in the morning and Anglican services with his mother in the afternoon, favored the Church of England.  The town made room for Baptists, Wesleyans, Plymouth Brothers and Sisters, and members of the Home Missionary Society.  It set a place for heathens, too. "From time immemorial," contended James Moreton, a dissenting minister, "Langport was a stronghold of the powers of darkness, proverbial for ignorance of spiritual things, prejudice and wickedness."

-James Grant, Bagehot: The Life and Times of the Greatest Victorian

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

Miles Davis......................................Porgy and Bess

 

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

................................Alan M. Webber

 It's not credentials that count.  It's character.

The world is hungry for heart and for effectiveness.  Not one at the expense of the other, but both together.

We're all simultaneously living at the center of the world.

Don't ignore the emotional side of business.

Most things, from the telephone to the laser to the Internet, don't get used for the purpose for which they were invented.  The inventor creates the technology, and then we find uses for it.

Start small.  Do what you can with something you care about so deeply that you simply can't not do it.

If you don't watch the news regularly and get into a shouting match with your TV set, you're not practicing.  They're not telling you the news; they're telling you how they see the news.  You're entitled to tell them back.

Each of us is brand, and every choice we make communicates what our brand it.

Every leader I've ever met, from politics to business, shares on overriding attribute:  they're all control freaks.  They all think they're in control.  Which is undoubtedly the biggest illusion of our time.

Good question.............

      "I guess maybe it's because I don't know the answer to this question," I said and pointed at the menu.  "Without knowing exactly why I am here, and what I want to do, I just kind of do the things most people are doing."

      "In your experience, does doing what 'most people' are doing help fulfill your Purpose For Existing?" she asked.

-John P. Strelecky, The Why Café

Judging.............

 I do not share that common error of judging another by myself.

-Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Works, Book 1, Chapter 37

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

      The wind whistled down the frozen run of Shasta Creek, between the blacker-than-black walls of pine.  The thin naked swamp alders and slight new birches bent before it.  Needle-point ice crystals rode it, like sandpaper grit, carving arabesque whorls in the drifting snow,

     The Iceman followed the creek down to the lake, navigating as much by feel, and by time, as by sight.  At six minutes on the luminous dial of his dive watch, he began to look for the dead pine.  Twenty seconds later, its weather-bleached trunk appeared in the snowmobile headlights, hung there for a moment, then slipped away like a hitchhiking ghost.

     Now. Six hundred yards, compass bearing 270 . . .

-John Sandford, Winter Prey

 

Mannheim Steamroller...........................Pat a Pan

Whence comes Santa Claus............

The shrouds of time are pretty good at hiding things. This fun post seeks reasonable explanations:

The traditional culture of those early Finns, known as the Sámi, was shamanistic. They believed that the Amanita muscaria that brought the reindeer its sustenance also brought wisdom to humans. At the time of the celebration of the Winter Solstice, the Sámi’s shamans would consume the drug and then visit prominent Sámi households to pass along the insights that they achieved through their hallucinogenic trips. In honor of the mushroom, they would dress in its likeness, in a red and white costume. The Sámi lived in yurts, which, at that time of the year, were often snowed in. So, the shamans would often pop in through the hole in the roof that served as the yurt’s chimney, bearing the gifts of their psychedelically inspired wisdom.

Cracking the code..................?

 Me thinks the project came first and then they rationalized it.  Or, maybe they're correct.  In my limited experience though, it seems more than a few retiring baby boomers are following their kids (and grandkids).

Back story here.  Wee excerpt here:

Many developers are betting that over the coming decades, more seniors will shun traditional suburban retirement communities and demand to live where there are lots of dining, entertainment and shopping choices nearby. As a result, a plethora of projects, many with rooftop pools, celebrity chefs and spa-style wellness centers, are planned for major U.S. cities.

Longing for the day..............

 ..........when good news isn't bad news:

via

Everything you ever wanted to know about...

.............................Jorma Kaukonen 

 Hot Tuna......................................Water Song