June 13th, 2010

Quotes of the week

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. L. Mencken

A cat will look down to a man.  A dog will look up to a man.  But a pig will look you straight in the eye and see his equal. Unattributed Author, Psalms (l. 10)~

“For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.” –
Steve Jobs, in Commencement Address to Stanford students

Meditation of the week

I don't think you're suddenly going to begin to look at the world with new eyes when you're 80 if you haven't been doing it when you're 30.
--Janice Clark

We are creatures of habit as evidenced by our getting stuck in old viewpoints long after they have quit serving us. However, that fact doesn't restrict us for all time. Anytime we want to cultivate a new idea, an alternative approach to a situation, we are free to do so. Janice may be right regarding some people she has known, but we are capable of freshening our perspective at any age.

We have all known some elderly men and women who have the spirit and enthusiasm of the very young. Unfortunately, we have also known the reverse. How sad to observe the 40 or 50 year old person who has quit living. Their whining belies their age. Who will we be? The choice is always available to us. And we can remake it as often as we wish.

What a relief to know that if we're old and resentful today, we still have the opportunity to be young and full of laughter tomorrow. Maybe we can't do everything we used to do, but this decision is still in our power.

I will open my eyes to whatever I choose to see today. Yesterday's experiences have only the power I give them.

Poem of the Week

Judges in Summer

by Barry Spacks

Sometimes people who judge and judge
turn lovely in summer, with gin & tonics.

They shop at little roadside stands;
brood in a trance over silks of corn.

Lounging around, still starched from swimming,
they speak mild words in the evening air

and leave the work of keeping up standards
to bickering children, questions of worth

to the waves. In town, in handkerchief dresses,
rumpled white suits, they smile, they visit—

they water the garden; hum with the cat.
In shirt and jeans they climb the rocks

with wine in a thermos, a bag of bread
to throw to those ravenous muscles the gulls—

and there they offer a round of applause
(of the gentle sort once used watching tennis)

to see the fat sun dip away
through its showy orange time.

Videos of the week

I don’t think this is funny but I’m not sure

BP spills coffee (thanks Lee!)

Websites of the week

The Yes Men are a culture jamming activist-duo consisting of Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno^[1]. Through actions of tactical media, The Yes Men primarily raise awareness about problematic social issues; most frequently, attention is brought to situations in which a person or group benefits from the detriment of others. To date, the duo has produced two films: The Yes Men (2003) and The Yes Men Fix the World (2009)^[1]. In these films, they practice a concept they have coined as "identity correction", in which they impersonate entities that they dislike. The Yes Men operate under the mission statement of telling the truth and exposing lies. From their offices in Milwaukee, they create and maintain fake websites similar to ones they intend to spoof, which have successfully lead to numerous interview, conference, and TV talk show invitations. They express the idea that corporations and governmental organizations often act in dehumanizing ways toward the public. Elaborate props are sometimes part of the ruse (e.g. Survivaball), as shown in their 2003 DVD release The Yes Men. The Yes Men have collaborated with other groups of similar interest, including Improv Everywhere and Steve Lambert.^[2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yes_Men

http://www.nytimes-se.com/ an issue I can only hope for!

And finally, the culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which "people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it."^[1]

In the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. ”   — Bertrand Russell^[2][3]

June 6, 2010

Quotes of the week

Mark Twain on doing what you want to do. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

 Confucius on understanding. “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”

Gandhi on being human. “I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.”

It is clear the future holds opportunities - it also holds pitfalls. The trick will be to seize the opportunities, avoid the pitfalls, and get back home by 6:00.
--Woody Allen

Meditation of the week

“When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.” Ralph Waldo Emerson on facing your fear

From a distance and in your mind things may seem very difficult and frightening. But when you actually step up and take action I think many of us have been surprised of how the beard of that bully just comes off. Why is that?

Well, you can’t sit around thinking and waiting for courage and confidence to come knocking on the door. If you do, you may just experience the opposite effect. The more you think, the more fear you build within.

We often build scary monsters in our heads.

Maybe because of things we have learned from the news, the TV or the movies. Or we just think so much about something that our minds start to create totally unlikely horror scenarios of what may happen.

As you may have noticed in your own life, 80-90 percent of what we worry about never really comes into reality. Instead things can become anticlimactic when we take action. The beard of the bully comes off surprisingly easy if we just step up and take action.

And many times we get the courage we need after we have done what we feared. Not the other way around.

7 of My Favorite Timeless Tips from the Last 2500 Years from http://www.positivityblog.com

Poem of the Week

Dharma

by Billy Collins

The way the dog trots out the front door
every morning
without a hat or an umbrella,
without any money
or the keys to her dog house
never fails to fill the saucer of my heart
with milky admiration.

Who provides a finer example
of a life without encumbrance—
Thoreau in his curtainless hut
with a single plate, a single spoon?
Ghandi with his staff and his holy diapers?

Off she goes into the material world
with nothing but her brown coat
and her modest blue collar,
following only her wet nose,
the twin portals of her steady breathing,
followed only by the plume of her tail.

If only she did not shove the cat aside
every morning
and eat all his food
what a model of self-containment she would be,
what a paragon of earthly detachment.
If only she were not so eager
for a rub behind the ears,
so acrobatic in her welcomes,
if only I were not her god.

Ouch this made my brain hurt!

Your relationships are in your mind.

“As you think so shall you be! Since you cannot physically experience another person, you can only experience them in your mind. Conclusion: All of the other people in your life are simply thoughts in your mind. Not physical beings to you, but thoughts. Your relationships are all in how you think about the other people of your life. Your experience of all those people is only in your mind. Your feelings about your lovers come from your thoughts. For example, they may in fact behave in ways that you find offensive. However, your relationship to them when they behave offensively is not determined by their behavior, it is determined only by how you choose to relate to that behavior. Their actions are theirs, you cannot own them, you cannot be them, you can only process them in your mind.”
Wayne Dyer

Video of the week

some people are ahead of their times

Websites of the week

http://www.100facesofwarexperience.org/

scary good face painting

And finally, the culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor

A young cowboy from Wyoming goes off to college. Half way through the semester, he has foolishly squandered all his money. He calls home.

"Dad," he says, "You won't believe what modern education is developing! They actually have a program here in Laramie that will teach our dog, Ol' Blue how to talk!"

"That's amazing," his Dad says. "How do I get Ol' Blue in that program?"

"Just send him down here with $1,000" the young cowboy says. "I'll get him in the course."

So, his father sends the dog and $1,000.

About two-thirds of the way through the semester, the money again runs out. The boy calls home.

"So how's Ol' Blue doing son?" his father asks.

"Awesome, Dad, he's talking up a storm," he says, "but you just won't believe this - they've had such good results they have started to teach the animals how to read!"

"Read!?" says his father, "No kidding! How do we get Blue in that program?" 

"Just send $2,500, I'll get him in the class."
The money promptly arrives. But our hero has a problem. At the end of the year, his father will find out the dog can neither talk, nor read. So he shoots the dog.

When he arrives home at the end of the year, his father is all excited. "Where's Ol' Blue? I just can't wait to see him read something and talk!"

"Dad," the boy says, "I have some grim news. Yesterday morning, just before we left to drive home, Ol' Blue was in the living room, kicked back in the recliner, reading the Wall Street Journal, like he usually does. Then he turned to me and asked, "So, is your daddy still messing around with that little redhead who lives down the street?"

The father exclaimed, "I hope you shot that son of a bitch before he talks to your Mother!"

"I sure did, Dad!"

"That's my boy!"

The kid went on to law school, and now serves in Washington D.C. as a Congressman.