Searching the archives...................

Ram Jam....................................Black Betty

Might as well hunt for unicorns...........

Walter Russell Mead joins the crowd in favor a "simpler tax code."  Post here.  Excerpts here:


In terms of inefficiency, the U.S. tax code stands as one of humanity’s most monumental accomplishments............................A simpler code without the fancy social engineering bells and whistles is what this country needs. But to get that, we need something else: an honest and competent Congress that puts the public interest first.

As a public service..........

Ambrose Bierce once wrote a handbook, Write It Right.  It was subtitled A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults, and its purpose was to "teach precision in writing."  A small sample:


Continually and Continuously.  It seems that these words should have the same meaning, but in their use by good writers there is a difference.  What is done continually is not done all the time, but continuous action is without interruption.  A loquacious fellow, who nevertheless finds time to eat and sleep, is continually talking; but a great river flows continuously.

Essential for Necessary.  This solecism is common among the best writers of this country and England.  "It is essential to go early"; "Irrigation is essential to cultivation of arid lands," and so forth. One thing is essential to another thing only if it is of the essence of it - an important and indispensable part of it, determining its nature; the soul of it.

Moneyed for Wealthy.  "The moneyed men of New York."  One might as sensibly say, "The cattled men of Texas," or, "The lobstered men of the fish market."

Anticipate Expect more of this.

Transitional.........................

"When an age is in throes of profound transition, the first thing to disintegrate is language."
-Rollo May

On rare occasions.............

Squander.........................

Inheritance.........................

"We are born animals; we become human.  We have humanity thrust upon us through hundreds of channels whereby the past pours down into the present that mental and cultural inheritance whose preservation, accumulation and transmission place mankind today, with all its defectives and illiterates, on a higher plane than any generation has reached before."
-Will Durant, The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time

Thanks Mom

thanks craig

She moved better on wine......

Mountain.............................................Mississippi Queen

Albert Schweitzer's piano....................

     "I have no intention of dying." he once told his staff, "so long as I can do things. And if I do things, there is no need to die.  So I will live a long, long time."
     And he did - until he was ninety-five.
     Like his friend Pablo Casals, Albert Schweitzer would not allow a single day to pass without playing Bach.  His favorite piece was the Toccata and Fugue in D. Minor.  The piece was written for the organ,  But there were no organs in Lambarene.  There were two pianos, both uprights, both ancient.  The one in the staff dining room was the more battered of the two.  The equatorial climate, with its saturating humidity, had vanquished it almost beyond recognition.  Some of the keys had no ivories; others were yellowed and cracked.  The felt on the hammers had worn thin and produced harsh, twanging sounds.  The instrument had not been tuned in years; even if it had been, the improvement would have been short lived.  On my first visit to the hospital, I wandered into the dining room, sat down to play, then drew back abruptly at the caricatured tones.  Yet the amazing thing was that Schweitzer could play hymns on it at dinner each evening and the piano somehow lost its poverty in his hands.
-as excepted from Norman Cousin's Anatomy of an Illness

Back to work......................

Playfulness.......................

"The ability to play is one of the principal criteria of mental health." 
-Ashley Montagu

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

"You don't get paid for the hour.  You get paid for the value you bring to the hour."
-Jim Rohn

The existential Hobbes...................

No harm...................

    Lysimachia Nummularia


It is called moneywort
for its "coinlike" leaves
and perhaps its golden flowers.
I love it because it is
a naturalized exotic
that does no harm,
and for its lowly thriving,
and for its actual
unlikeness to money.

-Wendell Berry

Entrepreneurs...........................

"We have lived through the age of big industry and the age of the giant corporation, but I believe that this is the age of the entrepreneur, the age of the individual.  That's where American prosperity is coming from now, and that's where it's going to come from in the future."
-Ronald Reagan,  1985

Haunting.....................

Renaissance............................................Ocean Gypsy

It's still a good question................

More fun with words..............

Whose Line Is It?...............................

Frack baby frack....................

From the MoneyIllusion blog:

So let’s review the facts:

1.  America is reducing greenhouse gas emissions faster than 

anywhere else because Bush/Cheney ignored environmentalists 

and went with the “drill baby drill” strategy.

2.  Europe is switching to coal because gas is too expensive.  But 

wait; doesn’t Europe also have lots of shale gas?  They do. But they 

listened to the environmentalists, and have all but banned fracking.

(a more readable drawing of Ohio's Utica Shale formation 

can be found at the Ohio Department of Natural Resources

site:  here)