Chill............................................

David Sanborn....................................................Pearls

Rise up singing.............................

Booker T. & The MG's.............................................Summertime

Ripples......................................

This book has a strange message, that practically all human misery and serious emotional turmoil are quite unnecessary - not to mention unethical.  You, unethical?  When you make yourself severely anxious or depressed, you clearly are acting against you and being unfair and unjust to yourself.
     Your disturbance also badly affects your social group.  It helps to upset your relatives and friends and, to some extent, your whole community.  The expense of making yourself panicked, enraged, and self-pitying is enormous.  In time and money lost.  In needless effort spent.  In uncalled-for mental anguish.  In sabotaging others' happiness.  In foolishly frittering away potential joy during the one life - yes, the one life - you'll probably ever have.
     What a waste.  How unnecessary!
-Albert Ellis,  How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything (Yes, Anything!)

Personal Finance 101................................

"In personal finance, you have to develop good habits early, and learn that life isn’t about how much you spend."

"In finance, you have to focus on what you can control.  You have reasonable control over ordinary spending.  You have less control over what you earn, and almost no control over accidents and investment returns.  Thus the first bit of advice is to live below your means and save."

-David Merkel, as excerpted from this blog post

A fair piece of writing............................

      By nature Sir Oliver was a shrewd fellow ("cunning as twenty devils," is my Lord Henry's phrase) and he was also a man of some not inconsiderable learning.  Yet neither his natural wit nor his acquired endowments appear to have taught him that of all the gods that rule the destinies of mankind there is non more ironic an malicious than that same Dan Cupid in whose honor, at it were, he was now burning the incense of that pipe of his.  The ancients knew that innocent-seeming boy for a cruel, impish knave, and they mistrusted him.  Sir Oliver either did not know or did not heed that sound piece of ancient wisdom.  It was to be borne in upon him by grim experience, and even as his light pensive eyes smiled upon the sunshine that flooded the terrace beyond the long mullioned windows, a shadow fell athwart it which he little dreamed to be symbolic of the shadow that was even then falling across the sunshine of his life.
-Rafael Sabatini,  The Sea-Hawk

reference for Dan Cupid here

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

The Four Seasons....................................Girl Come Running

I better get busy....................................

36 books recommended by the leading lights on Wall Street.  I've read six of them and have several more on the shelves.  Currently resisting the urge to splurge on Amazon.  We will see.

Exactly when was it that climate didn't change....?

via

For the love of.....................................

................................................roller skating?   Totally Free

The mathiness of it all.................................

via courtesy of

Chill.....................................................

John Klemmer............................................................Touch

This one is for Michael...........................

context here

I wanted you more................................

Ryan Tennis and the Club House Band............Sunlight and Shade

Function........................................

"I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers."
-Ralph Nader

Talking about wine..................................

I’d be remiss if before proceeding I didn’t first apologize profusely for having taking an interest in and in having actual opinions of wine. It is, after all, only a $300 billion dollar a year industry which also happens to be an integral part of the cultural, social and religious traditions of at least half the nations on earth.
-Sarah Miller, as excerpted from this essay, Cheap Wine Sucks:  A Manifesto

via

Some one has been reading their Sun Tzu....

.........................................or, mischief making via the Intertunnel.

For those not familiar with Sun Tzu (shame on you), here are a couple of nuggets from the first chapter of his The Art of War:

All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.  

If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.

via

Interesting paragraphs..................................

In January 1941 the fate of Europe and the world seemed to be sealed.  Only the deluded could still think that Germany would not win;  the stolid English "had not noticed that they had lost the game," and obstinately resisted under the bombings; but they were alone and suffered bloody losses on all fronts.  Only a voluntarily deaf and blind man could have nay doubts about the fate reserved for the Jews in a German Europe;  we had read Feuchtwanger's Oppermanns smuggled secretly in from France, and a British White Book, which arrived from Palestine and described the "Nazi atrocities";  we had only believed half of it, but that was enough.  Many refugees from Poland and France reached Italy, and we had talked with them:  they did not know the details of the slaughters that were taking place behind a monstrous curtain of silence, but each of them was a messenger, like those who run to Job to tell him, "I alone have escaped to tell you the story."
-Primo Levi,  The Periodic Table

George Will delivers.....................................

................a commencement address suitable only for YouTube.

thanks Mark

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

Shirley Ellis..................................................The Puzzle Song



Oops.  Sorry.  Try listening in here.

Ouch.............................................