and then I laughed...........

  

                more fun here

Responsibility and accountability - oh, no......

 

If Congress wants to reclaim the power of the purse it so proudly declares its own, it must take its responsibilities more seriously. Americans are right to be upset at its routine failure to perform its constitutional duties. Appropriating money is only half the job. Anyone can swipe a credit card, but ensuring that the money is spent properly is the inescapable responsibility that comes with the power to spend. You can’t have one without the other. If Congress wants control over the purse strings, it has to own the duty of accountability that comes with it.

-Casey Burgat

Practices.......................

 

There is not a universal list of best daily practices.  But it is universal that the best have their list of daily practices.

-Paul Rabil, The Way of the Champion: Pain, Persistence, and the Path Forward

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

Tim Wheater/Michael Hoppè.....The Dreamer album

 

On toleration.................

 

Every organization should tolerate rebels who tell the emperor he has no clothes.

-Colin Powell

hello moon....................

The thinnest of slivers can come 
as a surprise some nights.
A girl leaving a restaurant
points up to show her friends.

And there is the full one,
bloated with light,
a bright circle over the city
keeping the dreamers from sleep.

But the moon tonight 
is crossed by a drift of clouds
and looks like a mug shot
of a criminal, a cornered man.

One of its seas forms a frown
that makes for a grudging look.

The last thing it ever wanted

was to end up being a moon.

It's the only light in the sky
save for a solitary star,

whose sisters and brothers
must be blinking somewhere afar,

leaving the moon and me
to circle in our turning places,
his face remote and cold,
mine warm but vexed by his troubles

-Billy Collins, Many Moons

a better sign..............

Humor means using your mind beyond necessity, beyond reality, for both noticing and imagining.  That's why we admire a quick wit.  It shows you quickly looked at something from many angles, found the one that amused you the most, and considerately expressed it to someone else.  Observation, creativity, and empathy, all in an instant.  What could be a better sign of a healthy mind.

-Derek Sivers, How to Live: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion

 

the more things change.........................

 

The invention of paper was decried by Socrates for degrading the faculty of memory . . .

-Scott H. Young, Get Better at Anything: 12 Maxims for Mastery

Ed. Note:  Wondering if Socrates really thought that way, the Intertunnel was consulted: one answer found here.

the small "s" self.................

 

     Much of our misery in this world, Bellamy thought, was caused by our misplaced emphasis upon selfhood, "this vicious habit of regarding the personality as an ultimate fact instead of a mere temporary affection of the universal."

-Wilfred M. McClay, The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America (1994)

Hide and seek..................

 

     Wakefulness is the Alpha and the Omega.  It is what we are running from.  It is also what we are seeking.  We are escaping from the very thing we're trying to get to.

-J Jennifer Matthews, Radically Condensed Instructions for Being Just as You Are

vexing.............................

 

Most of the issues that vex humanity daily—ethnic conflict, arms escalation, overpopulation, abortion, environment, endemic poverty, to cite several most persistently before us—cannot be solved without integrating knowledge from the natural sciences with that of the social sciences and humanities.  Only fluency across the boundaries will provide a clear view of the world as it really is, not as seen through the lens of ideologies and religious dogmas or commanded by myopic response to immediate need.

-Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

Thinking on paper......................

338:  The gaps between established truths are where a lot of action is. 

339:  Be wary whenever the eloquent become vague.

340:  Seek distance from coercive people, especially those who long to command you for your own good.

341:  Frequently tally up your assumptions.

342:  Don't look for magic bullets.

343:  The difficult path may be the fastest.

-Michael Wade, Random Thoughts: Brief Reflections and Moments of Clarity

nourishment.........................

 

In the kitchen, a monk is pulling down one small bottle after another, scattering spices across the communal meal he's preparing.  "I always get up early when it's my turn to cook," he says. "To think about color, think about texture."

    "I hadn't realized meals were so important."

    "It's a hard life." He looks straight at me. "The guys need something to brighten their day."

-Pico Iyer, Aflame

let things be.......................

 

     What I eventually figured out—not that it ever seems to get particularly easy—is that other people's negative emotions are ultimately a problem that belongs to them.  And you have to allow other people their problems.  This in one more area in which the best thing to do, as a finite human with limited control, is usually not to meddle, but to let things be.

-Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals

Many paths.............................

 

When people were committed to the idea that in the field of religion only one plan must be adopted, bloody wars resulted. With the acknowledgment of the principle of religious freedom these wars ceased. The market economy safeguards peaceful economic co-operation because it does not use force upon the economic plans of the citizens. If one master plan is to be substituted for the plans of each citizen, endless fighting must emerge. Those who disagree with the dictator's plan have no other means to carry on than to defeat the despot by force of arms.

-Ludwig Von Mises

Losing.....................

 

Our muscles are prompted to grow by failure,
healing from countless micro-injuries.

Our minds, science, and technology

are similarly nourished by defeat.

We are creatures born to thrive

on the borderlands of ruin.

Home is a valley between saw-toothed peaks of loss.

Here we sow failure and harvest miracles.

-Jarod K. Anderson

"money power".........................

 

This idea was at the core of Van Buren's worldview.  It would never change.  Collusion between government and private interests, he believed, would always enrich the few at the expense of the many.

-James M. Bradley, Martin Van Buren: America's First Politician

Pretty good question................

 

How much priority do your investors, clients and employees put on building processes that do well in chaos?

-Seth Godin

Opportunities will arise.................

 You are not your job title, you are your contribution.

-Nicholas Bate

their own sake.....................

 

By doing things for their own sake, I did them at their best.

-Naval Ravikant

Let...............................

 

Let your speech be better than silence, or be silent.

-attributed to Dionysius

Relatively wintry....................

 

On feedback..........................

 

.............................................learning.

Happy Anniversary Sweetie...........................

Eric Clapton........................Wonderful Tonight

 

Rascal Flatts..................Bless the Broken Road

a story to tell..................

To wit, people must belong to a tribe; they yearn to have a purpose larger than themselves.  We are obliged by the deepest drives of the human spirit to make ourselves more than animated dust, and we must have a story to tell about where we came from, and why we are here.

-Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

 

The very definition.............................

 

........................................of public service.

otherwise free.....................

 

 Still one thing more, fellow citizens, a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government; and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

-Thomas Jefferson, from his first Inaugural Address

Living better than the Royalty of old..........

 The great European cathedrals were built over generations by thousands of people and sustained entire communities. Similarly, the electric grid, the public-water supply, the food-distribution network, and the public-health system took the collective labor of thousands of people over many decades. They are the cathedrals of our secular era. They are high among the great accomplishments of our civilization. But they don’t inspire bestselling novels or blockbuster films. No poets celebrate the sewage treatment plants that prevent them from dying of dysentery. Like almost everyone else, they rarely note the existence of the systems around them, let alone understand how they work.

-from this Charles C. Mann essay

Fly Eagles Fly.................

 

    more fun here

Good to have goals............

 

Quickly becoming............................

 

................................a must want-to read.

 

at it's best your education's.............

 

..................main motive is to fuel your curiosity and teach you how to find out things for yourself. 

Be careful what you.......................

 

.................................................defend.

On social bonds.................

 

     Freedom and liberty always refer to interhuman relations.  A man is free as far as he can live and get on without being at the mercy of arbitrary decisions on the part of other people. In the frame of society everybody depends upon his fellow citizens. Social man cannot become independent without forsaking all the advantages of social cooperation.  The self-sufficient individual is independent, but he is not free.  He is at the mercy of everybody who is stronger than himself.  The stronger fellow has the power to kill him with impunity.  It is therefore nonsense to rant about an alleged "natural" and "inborn" freedom which people are supposed to have enjoyed in the ages preceding the emergence of social bonds.  Man was not created free; what freedom he may possess has been given to him by society.  Only societal conditions can present a man with an orbit within the limits of which he can attain liberty.

     Liberty and freedom are the conditions of man within a contractual society.

-Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics

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

                R. E. M..............the Reveal album

 

randomness...............

 

You'll be living a lesson that everyone should learn.  Random stuff happens.  All you can control is your response.  Every day, you'll practice how to react to chaos: with dignity, poise, and grace.

-Derek Sivers:  How To Live: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion

controlling.................

 

Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire.

-attributed to Epictetus

You don't need to be a weatherman......

 

Is there “right-wing misinformation”? Hell yes. It exists in every direction. But I grew up a Democrat and don’t remember being afraid of it. At the time, we didn’t need censorship because we figured we had the better argument.

Obviously, some of you lack that same confidence. You took billions from taxpayers and blew it on programs whose entire purpose was to tell them they’re wrong about things they can see with their own eyes.

-Matt Taibbi, from here

and no solution in sight.............

Politics is about power, and at the heart of the Abrahamic vision is a critique of power.  Power is a fundamental assault on human dignity.  When I exercise power over you, I deny your freedom, and that is dangerous for both of us.  The opening chapters of Genesis are about the abuse of power.   Cain murders his brother Abel, and two chapters later we read, "The Earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence" (Genesis 6:11).

      Abrahamic monotheism is based on the idea that the free God desires the free worship of free human beings.  The historical drama of the Bible turns on the question of how to translate individual freedom into collective freedom.  How do you construct a free society without the constant risk of the strong dominating and exploiting the weak?  That is the issue articulated by the prophets, and it was never completely solved. 

-Rabbi Jonathan Sacks,  The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning

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

Allman Brothers Band............Eat a Peach album

   

February 12, 1809.....................

  

..............Abraham Lincoln's birthday.

The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all working people, of all nations, and tongues, and kindreds. Nor should this lead to a war upon property, or the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor — property is desirable — is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.

Self-help............................

 

"Whenever you think that some situation or some person is ruining your life, it is actually you who are ruining your life.  It is such a simple idea.  Feeling like a victim is a perfectly disastrous way to go through life.  If you just take the attitude that however bad it is in any way, it's always your fault and you just fix it the best you can - the so-called "iron prescription" - I think that really works.

-Charlie Munger, as channeled by Peter Bevelin

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

 

I remember very well the time I was captured by the dream of unified learning.  It was in the early fall of 1947, when at eighteen I came up from Mobile to Tuscaloosa to enter my sophomore year at the University of Alabama.  A beginning biologist, fired by adolescent enthusiasm but short on theory and vision, I had schooled myself in natural history with field guides carried in a satchel during solitary excursions into the woodland and along the freshwater streams of my native state.  I saw science, by which I meant (and in my heart I still mean) the study of ants, frogs, and snakes, as a wonderful way to stay outdoors.

-Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

perspectives........................

 

The chief enemy of good decisions is a lack of sufficient perspectives on a problem.

-Alain de Botton

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

Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds........Fallin' In Love

 

artificial demands....................

 

     The artificial demands of outlines, graphic organizers, and panning often subvert the creative process and force would-be writers to think about what they are writing before a word even hits the page rather than allowing them to spill their guts and evaluate the material later.

-Matthew Dicks, Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling

possibility.......................

 

It's never possibility that's not present; only me.

-Pico Iyer, Aflame: Learning from Silence

fancier yarns...........................

 

A lot of fancier yarns come from people trying to tell the truth. It’s not easy once you’re out of the habit.

-Dashiell Hammett, channeling his inner Nick Charles

belief.............................

 Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue.

-Kurt Vonnegut

making lemonade...............

 

In 1819 Van Buren had read a series of pseudonymous articles from a western New York newspaper criticizing him.  He wasn't bothered by the attacks.  In fact, he was impressed by the author's writing skills, presentation of argument, and grasp of law and politics.  Van Buren inquired whose pen was behind the series and was told it was a young Federalist attorney from Oneida County named Samuel A. Talcott, a Connecticut native and a graduate of Williams College.  When Van Buren spotted him one day on a steamboat, he introduced himself, and they soon became friends.  Van Buren told Talcott, who had just turned thirty, that he was "misplaced in the political field" and that "his chances for fame and public usefulness would be increased by joining us."  Talcott accepted.  The Skinner council made him the new attorney general.

-James M. Bradley, Martin Van Buren: America's First Politician

maxims.........................

 

Unlike Clinton, who wasted precious capital after his 1817 landslide, Van Buren moved at once to consolidate his power.  "It was one of Mr. Van Buren's maxims," Hammond wrote, "that that which ought to be done, should be done quickly."

-James M. Bradley, Martin Van Buren:  America's First Politician

gather strength...........................

 

 I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.

-Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, 1776

consequences..................

 

You are free to do whatever you like.  You need only face the consequences.

-Sheldon B. Kopp

being finite.....................

 

Consequences aren't optional.  It's in the nature of being finite that every choice comes with some sort of consequences, because at any instant, you can only pick one path, and must deal with the repercussions of not picking any of the others.

-Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals:  Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts

bear...............................

 

To bear trials with a calm mind robs misfortune of its strength and burden.

-attributed to Seneca

escape...................

 

But we demand a belief when we want to escape from a fact into an unreality.

-J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

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

Earth, Wind & Fire..That's the Way of the World album

 

Connections...................

 

To love something, first you have to connect with it.
Give it your full attention.
Deliberately appreciate it.
Try this with places, art, and sounds.
Try this with activities and ideas.
Try this with yourself.

-Derek Sivers, How To Live: 27 conflicting answers with one weird conclusion

unswervingly.........................

 

18.  He who ignores what his neighbor is saying or doing or thinking, and cares only that his own actions should be just and godly, is greatly the gainer in time and ease.  A good man does not spy around for the black spots in others, but presses unswervingly on towards his mark.

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Four

Ah, planners.............................

 

.............Arnold Kling is feeling imposed upon:

What appalls me is the arrogance of the project to alter other people’s lifestyle. When people moved here, they showed a preference for living as we do. The plan replaces the preferences of the residents with the preferences of the planners.

If a developer came along and built a community where cars were disfavored, that he said would “repair past injustices that disproportionately affected people of color” and “reduce climate-related risks,” then people could decide whether or not to reside in that community. I have no problem with that. But to take a community that people chose to live in and completely remake it to suit the planners’ idea of utopia to me seems un-American.

hard truths .................................

 

....................................from Farnum Street:

The hardest truth about happiness is that it's a choice.

Watch how people discuss their problems. They'll spend hours explaining why things are terrible, how unfair life is, and how others need to change. But suggest they might have the power to improve things and they suddenly have countless reasons why that's impossible.

Self-pity feels safer than responsibility.

Financial advice................

 This was some good father-son financial advice on Landman:

You got two choices in life: Get really good at balancing a check book or make enough money that you don’t have to.

Most personal finance experts focus on the former while most people would be better off striving for the latter.

-Ben Carlson, from this list

My business partner and I decided a long time ago that one of our goals in business was to be able to out-earn our mistakes.  While it may not be a goal everyone would embrace, it's worked for us—so far.

Sorry Elon.....................

................but when he is right, he is right.

 

On getting the order...................

 

............................................right.

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

Super Bowl IX.......................Steelers vs Vikings

 

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

ABBA....................................................SOS

 

Pruning.................................

 

"units of cultural transmission".......

 

-from this Gaping Void post

serve.........................

 The world has need of a philosophy, or a religion, which will promote life. But in order to promote life it is necessary to value something other than mere life. Life devoted only to life is animal, without any real human value, incapable of preserving men permanently from weariness and the feeling that all is vanity. If life is to be fully human it must serve some end which seems, in some sense, outside human life, some end which is impersonal and above mankind, such as God or truth or beauty.

-Bertrand Russell, Principles of Social Reconstruction, 1916

He is writing about baseball...........

 

........but it is a more apt description of football:

Sport, they said, is morally serious because mankind’s noblest aim is the loving contemplation of worthy things, such as beauty and courage. By witnessing physical grace, the soul comes to understand and love beauty. Seeing people compete courageously and fairly helps emancipate the individual by educating his passions.

-George F. Will, Men At Work: The Craft of Baseball

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

Michael Hoppé and Tim Wheater............The Yearning: 

                                                       Romances for Alto Flute

 

Here be monsters..................

Musk had to be destroyed, or others might start to believe that they could also defy the groupthink. . . .

On a much higher level, Musk seems to have felt the same liberating aspects of being declared persona non grata. They turned Musk into the very monster they feared.

-Jonathan Turley

Can't wait to see what happens............

 

.................................next week.

more fun here

One upside...............................

 

.....................................of young children:

One of the best parts about having young children is so much of your time is devoted to their activities that you don’t have a lot of time to pay attention to the outside world. Some parents complain about being busy all the time but I find it to be a welcomed break from paying attention to all of the craziness this world has to offer.

On the uncomplifacation.................

 

..........................................of life its ownself.

The spirit..............................

 

..........................of life its ownself:

                             thanks Kurt

On free speech......................

 Whether Trump’s policies turn out to be right or wrong evidently matters. But the resumption of the great American debate, of speech that is unencumbered and unafraid, of a Jeffersonian open society, matters much more, since it will enable progress.

-Martin Gurri, from here

A strong foundation................

 

...............................will support a good life.

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

Ozark Mountain Daredevils...............Jackie Blue

 

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

 

At the bookstore.....The Eagle Has Landed

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

At the cinema........Gene Wilder in The Adventures of 

                                Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother

 

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

  

     At the newsstand.......TV Guide

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

 

On the TV....................Robert Blake as Baretta

 

landmines.......................

 Investing would be a lot easier if there were no uncertainty. If someone could just kindly tell you where all of the landmines are buried ahead of time, you could side them completely and go on with your life.

Life doesn’t work like that, unfortunately. Uncertainty is always at all-time highs because no one knows what’s coming next. The hard part is there is this human need for control in life, even if that control is an illusion.

You have no control over what happens with taxes, trade, tariffs, the Fed, interest rates, economic growth, inflation, earnings or stock market returns. None. So it’s really your reaction to the uncontrollable events that determines your success or failure as an investor.

-Ben Carlson, from here

man, this sounds familiar...............

 

     Williams also got the politicians.  The Junto consistently elected Federalists to local seats—often by playing dirty.  One corrupt practice of the era was called "making votes."  Since many people couldn't meet the state's stringent property requirements, Federalist attorneys created fake deeds that voters presented to poll inspectors. "In this cursed crooked world," Williams wrote Ebenezer Foote, "if our institutions are worth preserving, we must preserve them by use of such means as alone can sustain them."

-James M. Bradley, Martin Van Buren: America's First Politician

unflagging diligence...............

 

     Making votes was one example of how corruption evolved—one could even say became democratized—in post-Revolutionary New York.  Given that land was no longer the sole path to wealth, politics became another pipeline.  Elites funded newspapers that promoted their interests.  They bribed legislators in exchange for votes on banks, turnpikes, and chartered corporations.  Van Buren saw this "implied alliance" between monied interests and the state as a means of restoring colonial-era oligarchy under a different guise.  Columbia's "money power" was, he believed, the essence of Federalism, whose raison d'etre was to "combat the democratic spirit of the country . . . an object which it has pursued with unflagging diligence."

-James M. Bradley,  Martin Van Buren: America's First Politician

still.............................

 

     This idea was at the core of Van Buren's worldview.  It would never change.  Collusion between government and private interests, he believed, would always enrich the few at the expense of the many.

-James M. Bradley, Martin Van Buren: America's First Politician

separation..........................

 

    . . . Separation between God or reality and yourself is brought about by you, by the mind that clings to the known, to certainty, to security.  This separation cannot be bridged over, there is no ritual, no discipline, no sacrifice that can carry you across it; there is no savior, no Master, no guru who can lead you to the real or destroy the separation.  The division is not between the real and yourself; it is in yourself.

-J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

delight.........................

 

26. A man's true delight is to do the things he was made for.  He was made to show goodwill to his kind, to rise about the promptings of his senses, to distinguish appearances from realities, and to pursue the study of universal Nature and her works.

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations: Book Eight

Tariffs.............................

 

I'm probably wrong about all this, but methinks he mis-reads Trump.

Tariff wars are the measles of international economics—juvenile, contagious and inherently self-defeating.
-Roger Lowenstein, from here

A quick review of history shows Lowenstein is likely correct about tariff wars being bad from an economic perspective.  But....it looks to me that Trump is using his willingness to unilaterally impose tariffs - on our allies as well as our foes - to get his way in international politics.  Economics has nothing to do with it.  But, I'm probably wrong.

The Career Manifesto.................

 

9. Don’t expect to be perfect. Focus on doing right instead of being right. It will simplify the world enormously.

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

C. W. McCall......that's a big 10-4.......Convoy

 

On friendship...............

 

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit.

-attributed to Aristotle

Understanding the concept..............

 

..........................................of enough.

The perfect level of wealth is the one you’re content with.

-Ben Carlson

just do it..............................

Almost nobody wants to hear the real answer to the question of how to spend more of your finite time doing things that matter to you, which involves no system.  The answer is: you just do them.  You pick something you genuinely care about, and then, for at least a few minutes—a quarter of an hour, say—you do some of it.  Today.  It really is that simple.  Unfortunately, for many of us, it also turns out to be one of the hardest things in the world.

-Oliver Burkeman,  Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts

Die empty................................

 

The most valuable real estate in the world is the graveyard.  There lie millions of half-written books, ideas never launched, and talents never developed.  Most people die with everything still in them.

The way to live is to create.  Die empty.  Get every idea out of your head and into reality.

-Derek Sivers, How To Live: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion

nourish............................

 

He admonished "young men of genius and ambition" seeking fame, money, and power—men much like himself—to nourish the mind first.  Van Buren's successes "would have been much greater and more substantial if . . . I had first acquired a sound education and stored my mind with useful knowledge" as opposed to the lawyer's arsenal of facts, rulings, and precedents.

-James M. Bradley,  Martin Van Buren: America's First Politician

purpose........................

 

One day,
your story will end
and all the choices you made will be frozen
like an insect in the amber of history.

Friend, this isn't meant to be grim.

Just a reminder that you are building something that 

        will one day be 

whole and complete,

So, build with purpose.

Jarod K. Anderson, "End Point"