Allman Brothers............................Jessica
Saturday, February 23, 2013
The Brain Pickings blog........................
......has a feature story up on Bertrand Russell's Education and the Good Life. If you don't follow Maria Popova's blog, well, you should. Her post on Russell is here. Some additional fun quotes from Bertrand Russell are here:
We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think — in fact they do so.
The widespread interest in gossip is inspired, not by a love of knowledge but by malice: no one gossips about other people's secret virtues, but only about their secret vices. Accordingly most gossip is untrue, but care is taken not to verify it. Our neighbour's sins, like the consolations of religion, are so agreeable that we do not stop to scrutinise the evidence closely.
The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one — particularly if he plays golf, which he usually does.
The fundamental defect of fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them.
I think people who are unhappy are always proud of being so, and therefore do not like to be told that there is nothing grand about their unhappiness. A man who is melancholy because lack of exercise has upset his liver always believes that it is the loss of God, or the menace of Bolshevism, or some such dignified cause that makes him sad. When you tell people that happiness is a simple matter, they get annoyed with you.
All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things. That it is better to be alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than a slave. Many people desire those things only for themselves and their friends; they are quite content that their enemies should suffer. These people can only be refuted by science: Humankind has become so much one family that we cannot ensure our own prosperity except by ensuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.
We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think — in fact they do so.
The widespread interest in gossip is inspired, not by a love of knowledge but by malice: no one gossips about other people's secret virtues, but only about their secret vices. Accordingly most gossip is untrue, but care is taken not to verify it. Our neighbour's sins, like the consolations of religion, are so agreeable that we do not stop to scrutinise the evidence closely.
The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one — particularly if he plays golf, which he usually does.
The fundamental defect of fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them.
I think people who are unhappy are always proud of being so, and therefore do not like to be told that there is nothing grand about their unhappiness. A man who is melancholy because lack of exercise has upset his liver always believes that it is the loss of God, or the menace of Bolshevism, or some such dignified cause that makes him sad. When you tell people that happiness is a simple matter, they get annoyed with you.
All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things. That it is better to be alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than a slave. Many people desire those things only for themselves and their friends; they are quite content that their enemies should suffer. These people can only be refuted by science: Humankind has become so much one family that we cannot ensure our own prosperity except by ensuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.
Prologue..............................
He had seen everything, had experienced all emotions,
from exaltation to despair, had been granted a vision
into the great mystery, the secret places,
the primeval days before the Flood. He had journeyed
to the edge of the world and made his way back, exhausted
but whole. He had carved his trials on stone tablets,
had restored the holy Eanna Temple and the massive
wall of Uruk, which no city on earth can equal.
See how its ramparts gleam like copper in the sun.
Climb the stone staircase, more ancient than the mind can
imagine,
approach the Eanna Temple, sacred to Ishtar,
a temple that no king has equaled in size or beauty,
walk on the wall of Uruk, follow its course
around the city, inspect its mighty foundations,
examine its brickwork, how masterfully it is built,
observe the land it encloses: the palm trees, the gardens,
the orchards, the glorious palaces and temples, the shops
and marketplaces, the houses, the public squares.
Find the cornerstone and under it the copper box
that is marked with his name. Unlock it. Open the lid.
Take out the tablet of lapis lazuli. Read
how Gilgamesh suffered all and accomplished all.
-Gilgamesh, as translated by Stephen Mitchell
Ed. Note: For some quick info on Uruk, go here. For a
brief description of lapis lazuli, go here
from exaltation to despair, had been granted a vision
into the great mystery, the secret places,
the primeval days before the Flood. He had journeyed
to the edge of the world and made his way back, exhausted
but whole. He had carved his trials on stone tablets,
had restored the holy Eanna Temple and the massive
wall of Uruk, which no city on earth can equal.
See how its ramparts gleam like copper in the sun.
Climb the stone staircase, more ancient than the mind can
imagine,
approach the Eanna Temple, sacred to Ishtar,
a temple that no king has equaled in size or beauty,
walk on the wall of Uruk, follow its course
around the city, inspect its mighty foundations,
examine its brickwork, how masterfully it is built,
observe the land it encloses: the palm trees, the gardens,
the orchards, the glorious palaces and temples, the shops
and marketplaces, the houses, the public squares.
Find the cornerstone and under it the copper box
that is marked with his name. Unlock it. Open the lid.
Take out the tablet of lapis lazuli. Read
how Gilgamesh suffered all and accomplished all.
-Gilgamesh, as translated by Stephen Mitchell
Ed. Note: For some quick info on Uruk, go here. For a
brief description of lapis lazuli, go here
Opening paragraphs................
 |
| The finished product |
September 25, 1987: Bulldozers hit the job site. There was no groundbreaking ceremony for the Crawfordsville Project, no time for that, this was an emergency. The Nucor Corporation, the ninth largest steel company in the United States, had purchased a square mile of cornfields south of the town of Crawfordsville, Indiana, a blank piece of Hoosier farmland upon which Nucor intended to restore American steel to its former greatness. At the southern border of Nucor's greenfield site, the bulldozers pushed up a wall of earth near the hamlet of Whitesville, to protect a farmhouse and a couple of bungalows from the thunder of melting steel.
-Richard Preston, American Steel
Friday, February 22, 2013
Confusion............................
Dave Mason..............................All Along the Watchtower
Foreshadowing................
You can't build something these days without a permit or two or three. You can't get a permit without having (at least in our neighborhood) stamped architectural drawings. You can't get a stamped architectural drawing (at least in our neighborhood) without generating a bill from said architect. Ergo, weak architectural billing foreshadows a bleak time for the development/construction businesses. Fortunately...............this handy chart would indicate that bleakness is not in our future. Good thing. And, as always, please remember that we have some dandy development land for sale.
thanks for the chart Mark
thanks for the chart Mark
Opening paragraphs..................
She took the corner too fast, and it was definitely not much of a road. She drifted it through the corner on the gravel, with one hell of a drop at our left, and then there was a big rockslide where the road should have been. She stomped hard and the drift turned into a rough sideways skid, and I hunched low, expecting the white Alpine to trip and roll. But we skidded all the way to the rock and stopped with inches to spare and a great big three feet between the rear end and the drop-off. The skid had killed the engine.
-John D. MacDonald, A Purple Place For Dying
-John D. MacDonald, A Purple Place For Dying
A few one-liners from Earl Nightingale....
“Our attitude toward life determines life's attitude towards us.”
“You become what you think about.”
“A person who does not read is no better than one cannot read.”
“We are all self-made, but only the successful will admit it.”
“Your world is a living expression of how you are using and have used your mind.”
“Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become reality.”
“Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal.”
“All you need is the plan, the road map, and the courage to press on to your destination.”
"People are where they are because that is exactly where they really want to be - whether they will admit that or not."
You can read about Earl Nightingale here. You can listen to his classic 1950 recording The Strangest Secret here.
“You become what you think about.”
“A person who does not read is no better than one cannot read.”
“We are all self-made, but only the successful will admit it.”
“Your world is a living expression of how you are using and have used your mind.”
“Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become reality.”
“Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal.”
“All you need is the plan, the road map, and the courage to press on to your destination.”
"People are where they are because that is exactly where they really want to be - whether they will admit that or not."
You can read about Earl Nightingale here. You can listen to his classic 1950 recording The Strangest Secret here.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Checking in with Walter Russell Mead.........
"Too many American debates are between true blues who want to shovel more money into badly designed institutions and grim reds who are more focused on cutting costs than on getting the important jobs done. Both sides need to take their blinkers off and begin thinking creatively about new solutions." - full essay on higher education reform is here.
"The core problem with Obamacare is that it depends on ripping off the young and healthy to subsidize the old and infirm. On the one hand, we’re glad that young people are able to escape the clutches of this trap, but we can’t help but notice that their escape will bankrupt the system. It’s almost as if the politicians didn’t read the law before they passed it, and had no idea how its various provisions would cause car crashes as they tried to roll it out." - full essay on another crack in Obamacare is here.
"This story is also further evidence that Malthusianism is nonsense. Human ingenuity keeps finding new methods in agriculture and other fields of endeavor. There are no signs that this process is nearing an end." - full essay on a new farming revolution in India generating world-record yields is here.
"The core problem with Obamacare is that it depends on ripping off the young and healthy to subsidize the old and infirm. On the one hand, we’re glad that young people are able to escape the clutches of this trap, but we can’t help but notice that their escape will bankrupt the system. It’s almost as if the politicians didn’t read the law before they passed it, and had no idea how its various provisions would cause car crashes as they tried to roll it out." - full essay on another crack in Obamacare is here.
"This story is also further evidence that Malthusianism is nonsense. Human ingenuity keeps finding new methods in agriculture and other fields of endeavor. There are no signs that this process is nearing an end." - full essay on a new farming revolution in India generating world-record yields is here.
"Consumers want and need new houses, cars, computers, tablets, refrigerators, you name it. Business wants to gear up to supply these and other needs. Central banks are printing money.
"People want to make money. The economy wants to grow. Politicians are making this as hard as possible, but at some point the sheer dynamism of capitalism seems likely to put us on course for another solid expansion." - full essay on booming and busting is here
A thought for the day................
"It is a lot easier to get older than it is to get wiser."
-Denny Hesselgesser
-Denny Hesselgesser
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