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

August 13,1859 was a hot day in Council Bluffs, Iowa.  The settlement was on the western boundary of the state, just across the Missouri River from the Nebraska village of Omaha.  A politician from the neighboring state of Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, went to Concert Hall to make a speech.  It attracted a big crowd because of Lincoln's prominence after the previous year's Lincoln-Douglas debates and the keen interest in the following year's presidential election.  Lincoln was a full-time politician and a candidate for the Republican nomination for president.  The local editor called Lincoln's speech - never recorded - one that "set forth the true principles of the Republican party."
-Stephen E. Ambrose, Nothing Like It In The World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869

Holmes on problem solving..............

It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.

In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backward. That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practise it much. In the everyday affairs of life it is more useful to reason forward, and so the other comes to be neglected. There are fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically.

Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.

I never guess. It is a shocking habit — destructive to the logical faculty.

You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear.

Education never ends Watson. It is a series of lessons with the greatest for the last.

It is quite a three pipe problem, and I beg that you won't speak to me for fifty minutes.

Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

You know my method. It is founded upon the observation of trifles.

"Data! Data! Data!" he cried impatiently. "I can't make bricks without clay."

Nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person.

There can be no question, my dear Watson, of the value of exercise before breakfast.

I'm off.  The game is afoot.

Ed. note:  Picture source here.  Choosing which Holmes to use was the challenge.  The three most recent ones are truly great, but, for me, Jeremy Brett is still the best match to Conan Doyle's work.  Feel free to disagree.

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

Charlie and Inez Foxx................................Mockingbird

Bound......................

"Sixty minutes of thinking of any kind is bound to lead to confusion and unhappiness."
-James Thurber

via

My Sweetie asked what we should do this weekend............

.........I'm thinking we should be going to a Tupperware Party.



thanks Gerard

Broaden your horizons................

.........by reading Walter Russell Mead on a regular basis.  To wit:

Policy needs to be about the future, but politics often reflects the patterns of the past.    Full essay here.

Corn-based ethanol fails every metric a fuel could hope to pass. It is the archetypal pig in green lipstick.  Full essay here. 

But it’s been clear from the beginning that this is the kind of thing you get with a massive, centralized health care “fix” like Obamacare: 15 unhappy people in a room making enormously important but impossible to predict decisions affecting a broad and diverse industry (not to mention the lives and health of millions). It’s hard to imagine a centralized approach getting all the nuances of health care right—and we certainly haven’t stumbled onto the miracle cure here.  Full essay here.

Poverty is getting richer all the time.  Full essay here.

Cynics, paranoids and conspiracy theorists—which is to say the Egyptian political and intellectual classes—may even be wondering if the military has allowed or even provoked the present violence precisely to check the Brotherhood’s power.  Full essay here.

Hmmmmm............................

via

1972 was a verrry different era...............

Jimmy Castor Bunch...................Troglodyte

Advice.........................

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

The Rockin Rebels........................Wild Weekend

What.........................?

Does feel that way.........................

thanks hugh

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

Life tips...................

A top ten list from Nicholas Bate.  Here is #9:

9.  1 or 2 or 3 dip recession? Doesn't matter: stay focused, work hard and delight customers.

New job descriptions all around..............

......Seth Godin knows that showing up is no longer enough

Meanwhile, while waiting at the grocery.......

.............Jeff wants to go a few rounds:
I didn’t have my gloves with me. Otherwise I would have challenged him right there. I shrugged it off – didn’t make sense without anyone to lay down a bet….I could’ve knocked him into next Thursday…

Hey Sweetie..............................

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

From the west-facing window of the room in which Meriwether Lewis was born on August 18, 1774, one could look out at Rockfish Gap, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, an opening to the West that invited exploration.  The Virginia Piedmont of 1774 was not the frontier - that had extended beyond the Allegheny chain of mountains, and a cultured plantation life was nearly a generation old - but it wasn't far removed.  Traces of the old buffalo trail that led up Rockfish River in the Gap still remained.  Deer were exceedingly plentiful, black bear common.  An exterminating war was being waged against wolves.  Beaver were on every stream.  Flocks of turkeys thronged the woods.  In the fall and spring, ducks and geese darkened the rivers.
-Stephen E. Ambrose, Undaunted Courage

Tuesday's poem................

Holy Sonnets 10

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then, from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke.  Why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more, Death, thou shalt die.

-John Donne

On the allocation of talent.............

...and why sending all the rocket scientists to Wall Street is not such a good idea.  Oh, and while you are at it, let failing banks fail.



thanks Maggie's Farm