Thirty-nine years ago...................

The year was 1980...................................................

Michael Stanley Band.............................I'll Never Need Anyone
                                                      More (Than I Need You Tonight)

Words matter.................................

..............................Use them kindly, because they really matter.

All your questions.............................

....................................................................answered here.

Orwell or Huxley...................

...........................It almost feels like a perfect storm of both.

via

The view.............................

.......................................from Planet Earth:

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

The Grass Roots.......................................I'd Wait A Million Years

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

Tommy James & The Shondells..................Sweet Cherry Wine

This is me................................

..............................................................waving the white flag of surrender.  Michael Stanley's Stagepass makes my all-time great list.  While Making Movies is not my favorite Dire Straits album (Brothers in Arms is), it is pretty darn good.  Ditto U2's Boy.  1980 will no longer be found in the "so-so music" file.  There may be two lessons here:  first, don't argue music with Kurt Harden unless you're prepared to lose; second, if do you want to argue with Kurt, make sure bourbon and cigars are at hand - it makes the losing easier.

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

The Temptations..........................Run Away Child, Running Wild

Betting on the rocks..........................

“Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood.” 

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”

“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.” 


-Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

cartoon via

Pretty much true of real estate too..............

     Probably the biggest reason it's so hard to outperform the market, other than the fact that competition has heated up so much over the past few decades, is because most portfolio managers either don't have the requisite patience to think and act for the long term or their investors don't (it's kind of a chicken or the egg problem).  Academic research and real world results of many of the great investors of all-time show that there are strategies that beat the market over longer time frames.  It just takes extreme patience and discipline, something not enough investors have.

-Ben Carlson, A Wealth of Common Sense:  Why Simplicity Trumps Complexity In Any Investment Plan

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

     For most human beings, what to do with our hands is an issue.  Until we need an opposable thumb to pick something up, our hands have the social utility of an inflamed appendix.  Once upon a time we busied them by smoking.  Bogart and Bacall taught us how to do this with style.  Now that that has been declared unhealthy and a universal stigma, we employ our idle fingers fondling our cell phones.

-Steve Martini, Blood Flag

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

Stevie Wonder........................Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday

Hmmmm..........................

via

You only get one life...........................

..............................don't waste it comparing yourself to others:

There is one thing that you’re better at than other people: being you. This is the only game you can really win.

Althouse travels........................

............to a place where the times are "morally bewildering."

Is it okay to disagree with Kurt Harden?

....................In my wee corner of the blogosphere this might be considered risky, but I'm going out on the limb and say that 1980 was just a so-so year in the history of music.  Now 1969, that was something special!

Tony Isola..............................

.............................................................................convinces me.

Next time you hear a financial pundit predicting a market crash, depression, or impending armageddon because of some temporary event that’s commonplace in history, take a thoughtful pause.

There’s one constant in the prediction business – they’re almost always wrong.

Trust me, I’m an expert

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

Richie Havens...........................................Minstrel From Gault

There is a price.........................

To a distressed person who came to him for help the Master said, "Do you really want a cure?"

"If I did not, would I bother to come to you?"

"Oh yes.  Most people do."

"What for?"

"Not for a cure.  That's painful.  For relief."

To his disciples the Master said, "People who want a cure, provided they can have it without pain, are like those who favor progress, provided they can have it without change."

-Anthony de Mello,  One Minute Wisdom