My Spare Brain

FOCUS: St. Patrick's Day

2011-03-17T11:58:00.002-05:00

Irish Blessings
"May the Lord keep you in His hand, and never close His fist too tight."

"May you have warm words on a cold evening, a full moon on a dark night, and a smooth road all the way to your door."

"May you always have walls for the winds, a roof for the rain, tea beside the fire, laughter to cheer you, those you love near you, and all your heart might desire."

"May the road rise to meet you. May the wind always be at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, the rains fall soft upon your fields, and, until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand."

An Irish Curse
"May the curse of Mary Malone and her nine blind illegitimate children chase you so far over the hills of Damnation that the Lord himself can't find you with a telescope."

Irish Proverbs
"Don't be breaking your shin on a stool that's not in your way."

"You've got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was."

"Better fifty enemies outside the house than one within."

"It is easy to halve the potato where there's love."

"It's no delay to stop to edge the tool."

"It’s no use going to the goat's house to look for wool."

"Snuff at a wake is fine if there's nobody sneezing over the snuff box."

"Though honey is sweet, do not lick it off a briar."

"Everyone lays a burden on the willing horse."

"Never scald your lips with another man's porridge."

"You'll never plough a field by turning it over in your mind."

"You must cut your coat according to your cloth."

"Your son is your son until he marries, but your daughter is your daughter until you die."

"You are not a fully fledged sailor unless you have sailed under full sail, and you have not built a wall unless you have rounded a corner."

"'Tis better to buy a small bouquet and give to your friend this very day, than a bushel of roses white and red to lay on his coffin after he's dead."

Irish Toasts
"Here's to a long life and a merry one. A quick death and an easy one. A pretty girl and an honest one. A cold beer-and another one!"

"Saint Patrick was a gentleman
Who through strategy and stealth
Drove all the snakes from Ireland
Here's a drinkee to his health!
But not too many drinkees
Lest we lose ourselves and then
Forget the good Saint Patrick
And see them snakes again!”

Paddy at the Pub
Paddy had been drinking at his local Dublin pub all day and most of the night celebrating St. Patrick's Day.

Mick, the bartender says, " You'll not be drinking anymore tonight Paddy."

Paddy replies, "OK Mick, I'll be on my way then."

Paddy spins around on his stool and steps off. He falls flat on his face. "Shoite," he says and pulls himself up by the stool and dusts himself off. He takes a step towards the door and falls flat on his face, "Shoite, Shoite!"

He looks to the doorway and thinks to himself that if he can just get to the door and some fresh air he'll be fine. He belly crawls to the door and shimmies up to the door frame. He sticks his head outside and takes a deep breath of fresh air, feels much better and takes a step out onto the sidewalk and falls flat on his face. "Bi'Jesus... I'm fockin' focked," he says.

He can see his house just a few doors down, and crawls to the door, hauls himself up the door frame, opens the door and shimmies inside. He takes a look up the stairs and says "No fockin' way."

He crawls up the stairs to his bedroom door and says "I can make it to the bed."

He takes a step into the room and falls flat on his face. He says "Fock it," and falls into bed.

The next morning, his wife, Jess, comes into the room carrying a cup of coffee and says, "Get up Paddy. Did you have a bit to drink last night?"

Paddy says, "I did Jess. I was fockin' pissed. But how'd you know?"

"Mick phoned. You left your wheelchair at the pub."

To Heaven
Father Murphy walks into a pub in Donegal, and says to the first man he meets, "Do you want to go to heaven?"

The man said, "I do Father."

The priest said, "Then stand over there against the wall."

Then the priest asked the second man, "Do you want to go to heaven?"

"Certainly, Father," was the man's reply.

"Then stand over there against the wall," said the priest.

Then Father Murphy walked up to O'Toole and said, "Do you want to go to heaven?"

O'Toole said, "No, I don't Father."

The priest said, "I don't believe this. You mean to tell me that when you die you don't want to go to heaven?"

O'Toole said, "Oh, when I die, yes, but I thought you were getting a group together to go right now."

Malachy McCourt, The Hypocrisy of St.Patrick's Day

Celtic Fans, You'll Never Walk Alone

FOCUS: The Addiction Abyss

2011-03-10T10:16:00.000-06:00

Recovery & Redemption or Death
"When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"You can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug, especially when it's waving a razor sharp hunting knife in your eye." - Hunter S. Thompson

"Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death." - Jean Cocteau

"I am not being flippant when I say that all of us suffer from addiction. Nor am I reducing the meaning of addiction. I mean in all truth that the psychological, neurological, and spiritual dynamics of full-fledged addiction are actively at work within every human being. The same processes that are responsible for addiction to alcohol and narcotics are also responsible for addiction to ideas, work, relationships, power, moods, fantasies, and an endless variety of other things. We are all addicts in every sense of the word. Moreover, our addictions are our own worst enemies." - Gerald May, Addiction and Grace

“Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.” - Carl Jung

"From the first moment I looked into that horror on September 11, into that fireball, into that explosion of horror, I knew it. I recognized an old companion. I recognized religion." - Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete

"An Addict is an Addict. It doesn't matter whether the Addict is white, black, yellow or green, rich or poor or somewhere in the middle, the most famous Person on the Planet or the most unknown. It doesn't matter whether the addiction is drugs, alcohol, crime, sex, shopping, food, gambling, television, or the fucking Flintstones. The life of the Addict is always the same. There is no excitement, no glamour, no fun. There are no good times, there is no joy, there is no happiness. There is no future and no escape. There is only an obsession. To make light of it, brag about it, or revel in the mock glory of it is not in any way, shape or form related to its truth, and that is all that matters, the truth." - James Frey, A Million Little Pieces

"If an addict who has been completely cured starts smoking again he no longer experiences the discomfort of his first addiction. There exists, therefore, outside alkaloids and habit, a sense for opium, an intangible habit which lives on, despite the recasting of the organism. The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house." - Jean Cocteau

"I admire addicts. In a world where everybody is waiting for some blind, random disaster or some sudden disease, the addict has the comfort of knowing what will likely wait for him down the road. He's taken some control over his ultimate fate, and his addiction keeps the cause of his death from being a total surprise. In a way, being an addict is very proactive." - Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

"Whether you sniff it smoke it eat it or shove it up your ass the result is the same: addiction." - Wm. Burroughs

"The Moth don't care when he sees The Flame.
He might get burned, but he's in the game.
And once he's in, he can't go back, he'll
Beat his wings 'til he burns them black...
No, The Moth don't care when he sees The Flame. . .
The Moth don't care if The Flame is real,
'Cause Flame and Moth got a sweetheart deal.
And nothing fuels a good flirtation,
Like Need and Anger and Desperation...
No, The Moth don't care if The Flame is real. . . "
- Aimee Mann

"You cannot put a cheap band-aid on a sacred wound; there is no way through pain but to walk through it." - Robin Smith

"Coyote is always out there waiting, and Coyote is always hungry." - Native American Saying

William Cope Moyers, Broken

From FORA.tv
A Conversation with Andre Agassi: Reflections on Tennis, Addictions, and Life (Video)

From FORA.tv
David & Nic Sheff: A Father & Son's Journey in Addiction (Video)

From C-SPAN
Methland:The Death and Life of an American Small Town by Nick Reding (Video)

From YouTube
A Young Woman's Story of Self-Injury (Video)

From The Los Angeles Times
The Heroin Road: Part One - A Lethal Business Model Targets Middle America by Sam Quinones

The Heroin Road: Part Two - Black Tar Moves in and Death Follows by Sam Quinones

The Heroin Road: Part Three: The Good Life in Xalisco Can Mean Death in the United States by Sam Quinones

Living on Black Tar Heroin (Slideshow)

MASTERMIND: John O'Donohue

2011-03-03T14:00:00.000-06:00

John O'Donohue was an Irish poet and philosopher who lived in a small cottage in the West of Ireland. He wrote several books including Anam Cara: The Book of Celtic Wisdom and Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong. John passed away on January 3, 2008. He was 52 years old. You can access his website to learn more about John and his work.

John appeared in the 2004 Masters Forum. He spoke of many deep and important things. Some are noted here.

On the Importance of Approaching Others
"One of the nice dimensions of Celtic thinking was that significant occasions or encounters should be appropriately framed. In our times, one of the things that we’re exceptionally coarse and vulgar at is the art of approaching. We have lost all sense of the reverence of approach, and many very significant things decide, I believe, not to approach us because our approach lacks expectation, appropriateness, and reverence."

On the Spirit of Approaching Others -
Beannacht: A Blessing
"On the day when the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the gray window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green
and azure blue,
come to waken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the curach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
and the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life."

On Wholesomeness
"The heart of the talk I want to give this morning is about wholesomeness. And the axiom is really that to awaken wholesomeness is to become fully alive, and that in turn animates all those around you. And it seems to me that the imagination is the human faculty that has a priority of loyalty to wholesomeness. Your mind splits things all the time. The mind and the understanding can’t bring together things that have been split apart, but the imagination actually can. And when your imagination comes alive, you begin to enter into your own wholesomeness."

On Imagination
“No matter how much we might deny it in the daylight world, each of us lives from our imagination. So the only difficulty, then, is in awakening the imagination, and an awakened imagination gives you entry to an enriched world of possibility. Because imagination is the great friend of possibility. Where the imagination is alive, possibility is available and active and ready to be awakened."

"It’s interesting to look back along your life and ask yourself, 'What happened to the lives I had before me once but that I didn’t choose? Where do they actually live?' One of my theories is that in some secret way your unchosen lives live themselves out, and that maybe death only comes to us, not alone when we have completed the visible life that we think we have, but that somehow the other, unchosen lives have also come to fulfillment. But that’s the magic of the imagination; the imagination can go from the facts down into the matrix of deeper possibility."

On Imagination and Leadership
"In terms of leadership, that’s what’s absolutely necessary, because a leader that doesn’t have imagination and doesn’t have access to that world of possibility always gets stuck on the surface of a given situation, whereas the leader is one who has a vision and can always see the unattended-to possibilities in a situation. Always we tend to equate the limit with the limits of what’s possible, but it never is. If you could look at limits in a creative way, the limit would always be the invitation to the beyond that you don’t know yet."

On the Qualities of a Leader

The first quality that I would like is that a leader would have an inner life – the person wouldn’t be just an outside, external functionary.

Secondly, they would have a quality of vulnerability. I don’t mean vulnerability in the sense that they are assailable from every corner, but when you’d look in their eyes, you would know that they knew what it was like to be vulnerable.

A third thing I like a leader to have is a bit of solitude, a very rare thing in our times. It’s hard to find it, and a lot of people are terrified of it, and they’ll run from it, but a person that can’t endure their own demons or know them, or have a secret place where they can meet them, can’t be trusted fully in the interaction of combat, where power is the question.

A fourth thing I like in a leader is imagination and vision. Vision is vital. A vision is something that links together the gift of your own individuality with the need that is where you are, it links gift and hunger together in a way that links the best in you toward the best in them. Vision can only be developed if you are awake to the blessings and the potential of their own mind.

Fifth, a leader has to have character. A person who has character is someone who is not a prisoner of their own ego and limitations.

Sixth, a leader is someone who has the gift of compassion as well as the ministry of encouragement . . . It’s amazing when you think of some of the gifts and abilities that you have, if you hadn’t got that old praise or recognition or encouragement, you might never have crossed over into your own gift.

The last thing I think a leader should have is the quality of listening. Heidegger said that true listening is worship, and it’s amazing, actually. It’s amazing to be listened to. When you’re truly listened to, a burden and all kinds of old false layering falls away from you completely.

On Birth, the Feminine and Creativity -
Nativity
No man reaches where the moon touches a woman.
Even the moon leaves her when she opens
Deeper into the ripple in her womb
That encircles dark, to become flesh and bone.

Someone is coming ashore inside her,
A face deciphers itself from water,
And she curves around the gathering wave,
Opening to offer the life it craves.

In a corner stall of pilgrim strangers,
She falls and heaves, holding a tide of tears.
A red wire of pain feeds through every vein,
Until night unweaves and the child reaches dawn.

Outside each other now, she sees him first,
Flesh of her flesh, her dreamt son safe on earth.

A Page of Lost Questions

Is there someone walking home this evening through the streets of Leningrad that you have never met and never will meet, but whose life has had an incredible interest on yours?
At the angel bar, what stories does your one tell about you?
Supposing you were to take your heart away on your own for a day out, and that you really decided to listen to your heart, what do you think your heart would say to you?
If you were in a conversation with your heart, and you told it how actually, factually short your life is, what would your heart make you stop from doing right now?

On Friendship
"Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. Friendship is always an act of recognition. ...in the moment of friendship, two souls suddenly recognize each other. It could be a meeting on the street, or at a party or a lecture, or just a simple, banal introduction, then suddenly there is the flash of recognition and the embers of kinship grow. There is an awakening between you, a sense of ancient knowing."

"We are not as near each other as we would like to imagine. Words create the bridges between us. Without them we would be lost islands. Affection, recognition and understanding travel across these fragile bridges and enable us to discover each other and awaken friendship and intimacy. Words are never just words. The range and depth of a person's soul is inevitably revealed in the quality of words she uses. When chosen with reverence and care, words not only describe what they say but also suggest what can never be said."

On Fear and Truth
"The opposite of fear is truth. And always at the heart of a fear, if you sit down with it and give it a chance to meet you and talk to you, you’ll find a truth that you’re trying to avoid. And when you enter into that level of conversation, what you’re doing is you’re trusting the wholesomeness of yourself to be able to go through this door of fear, not into destruction, but actually into a possibility that you would never otherwise have entered."

On Identity
"Identity is being reduced to biography, whereas in actual fact identity is a far more sublime, substantial, and sophisticated concept. Meister Eckhart says, 'There’s a place in your soul that neither time nor space not no creator’s thing has ever touched.' There’s a place inside you where no one has ever got to you, where no one has ever damaged you, where you have a niche of tranquility and natural serenity, and a courage and a hope that can never be taken from you. And I think that the intention of prayer, creativity, and true leadership is to somehow bring you into that place within you. This is summarized wonderfully in four lines by William Stafford in a poem from his book, Crossing Unmarked Snow:

"The things you do not have to say, make you rich.
Saying the things you do not have to say, weakens your talk.
Hearing the things you do not need to hear, dulls your hearing.
The things you know before you hear them, these are you and this is the reason that you are in the world."

From CMED Institute
A Presentation at Entering the Castle Workshop by John O'Donohue (Video)

From American Public Broadcasting
The Landscape of Inner Beauty: John O'Donohue Resources Page (Audio, Interviews & More)

A Reading of Beannacht by John O'Donohue (Slide Show)

From Harper Collins
A Reading Guide to Anam Cara

A Reading Guide to Eternal Echoes

From Personal Transformations
The Presence of Compassion: An Interview with John O’Donohue by Mary NurrieStearns

ODDS & ENDS: The Road , Darkness, Showing Up, Diversity, Learning the Hard Way, Lying, Love & Kisses, Good & Evil,

2010-09-07T11:29:00.002-05:00

On the Road
"The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began
Now far ahead the Road has gone
And I must follow, if I can
Pursuing it with eager feet
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet
And whither then? I cannot say."
- J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

On Darkness
"And it rained a sickness. And it rained a fear. And it rained an odor. And it rained a murder. And it rained pale eggs of the beast. Rain fell on the towns and the fields. It fell on the tractor sheds and the labyrinth of sloughs. Rain fell on toadstools and ferns and bridges. It fell on the head of John Paul Ziller. Rain poured for days, unceasing. Flooding occurred. The wells filled with reptiles. The basements filled with fossils. Mossy-haired lunatics roamed the dripping peninsulas. Moisture gleamed on the beak of the Raven. Ancient shamans, rained from their homes in dead tree trunks, clacked their clam shell teeth in the drowned doorways of forests. Rain hissed on the Freeway. It hissed at the prows of fishing boats. It ate the old warpaths, spilled the huckleberries, ran in the ditches. Soaking. Spreading. Penetrating. And it rained an omen. And it rained a poison. And it rained a pigment. And it rained a seizure…" - Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction

On Showing Up
"It was much later that I realized Dad’s secret. He gained respect by giving it. He talked and listened to the fourth-grade kids in Spring Valley who shined shoes the same way he talked and listened to a bishop or a college president. He was seriously interested in who you were and what you had to say." - Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Respect

On Diversity
"Diverse groups of problem solvers - groups of people with diverse tools - consistently outperformed groups of the best and the brightest. If I formed two groups, one random (and therefore diverse) and one consisting of the best individual performers, the first group almost always did better. Diversity trumped ability." - Scott Page, The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies Diversity

On Learning the Hard Way
"The native Americans have a magnificent tradition about scars. I have heard the tradition said this way: 'When you die, you meet the Old Hag, and she eats your scars. If you have no scars, she will eat your eyeballs, and you will be blind in the next world.' That story moves awfully fast but it certainly defends the value of scars." - Robert Bly

On Lying
"Above all, I would teach him to tell the truth. Truth-telling, I have found, is the key to responsible citizenship. The thousands of criminals I have seen in 40 years of law enforcement have had one thing in common: Every single one was a liar." - J. Edgar Hoover

"It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place." - H. L. Mencken

"The liar’s punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else." - George Bernard Shaw

On Love & Kisses
"The decision to kiss for the first time is the most crucial in any love story. It changes the relationship of two people much more strongly than even the final surrender; because this kiss already has within it that surrender." - Emil Ludwig

On Good & Evil
"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Robert Sapolsky, The Uniqueness of Humans

From FORA.tv
Niall Ferguson & Peter Schwartz: On Human Progress (Video)

From Jewish World Review
The Other Evil Eye by Yaffa Ganz

From Scientific American
Does Falling in Love Make Us More Creative by Nira Liberman and Oren Shapira

MASTERMIND: Dr. George Friedman

2010-08-31T06:28:00.000-05:00

Dr. George Friedman is the founder and head of Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (Stratfor). His organization, which provides geopolitical intelligence to businesses, government agencies, and other clients, has been hailed by ABC News as "often able to uncover the globe's best kept secrets and predict world-changing events in ways that no one else can." Barron’s says, "Stratfor has enjoyed an increasing vogue in recent years as a result of its heady geopolitical forecasts and many news breaks." He is the author of a recently released book, The Next Hundred Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century.

Dr. Friedman appeared at the Masters Forum in early 2006. Here are his comments on many and varied subjects.

On American Business
"The single greatest weakness of the American business community is that it does not take seriously the exogenous event. . . The world is infinitely more complex than American businesspeople like to think."

On the Folly of Extrapolation
"It is a grave mistake to try to forecast the future by extrapolating from the present."

In 1900, Europe was generally prosperous, at peace, and highly interdependent (thirty percent of France’s capital, for example, came from Germany). To most observers, that meant that war was nearly impossible. Books were written saying that no war in Europe could last more than six weeks.

By 1920, war had shattered Europe, killing millions. Everything that once was solid now was gone. A communist regime ruled Russia. It had taken a million American soldiers in Europe to end the war. Germany was destroyed. Observers saw no possibility that war could reappear.

By 1940, Germany had conquered all of continental Europe. The Nazis were allied with the Soviets and Italy. To all observers it was clear that 'the fat lady had sung' – the war was over and Germany had won.

By 1960, Germany had lost the war. The US and the USSR were facing off in Europe, and nuclear war between those superpowers seemed practically inevitable. Since the US had never been defeated in war, it was assumed that such a conflict would be 'won' by the US.

By 1980, the US had lost a war – in Vietnam. The US was a declining power, and the Soviets were pressing everywhere. The one thing we know in 1980 is that the US has got to make an agreement with the Soviet Union; there has to be a nuclear freeze; the United States cannot keep up this competition, its economy will collapse.

By 2000, the Soviet Union had collapsed and the US was undergoing the largest economic expansion in its history.

"Common sense doesn’t work. You cannot extrapolate. Anyone who says that twenty years from now everything’s going to be the same only more so is going to be wrong."

On the US Economy
"It’s always a claim that in twenty years the US is going to be a third-rate power. You go back in any time frame, and the one certain common-sense conclusion is the US is finished. It never is, but it’s a conviction."

"The one striking thing about the world, particularly since 1980, is that where everyone else is in a short cycle of economic well-being, military power, and so forth, the US is in a deep, long cycle, and that cycle is ever upward."

"Go out to the Mississippi. Look at it and see the foundation of American power. This incredible river system meant that the farmers in the American Midwest didn’t have to be subsistence farmers ."

"You need a bigger framework than economics. It is useful, but it is a severely limited tool. Purely economic thinking is irrational and empirically false."

"From 1991 to 2001 there was an 'optical illusion' that the world was generally at peace, everyone could 'become an American' – the 'giddy springtime of the bourgeoisie.' But the reality was that the force field that was holding the world together, created by the influences of the US and the USSR, had collapsed."

On the US - Jihadist War
"After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the US was unprepared to respond because its military had been downsized and intelligence was sorely lacking. So President Carter arranged for counterinsurgency efforts by the mujahadeen against the USSR in Afghanistan to be funded by Saudi Arabia, using primarily Saudi fighters, and be housed in Pakistan, with training from American military specialists and the CIA. Osama bin Laden was invented by Jimmy Carter, and that’s just a small exaggeration."

"The Saudis recruited ultra religious militants to conduct the guerrilla war in Afghanistan. They became the core of Al Qaeda. Once the USSR was defeated, they perceived an opportunity to recreate the once-enormous, once-powerful Islamic empire, the Caliphate. To do that, they intended to create Islamist uprisings to overthrow Muslim governments allied with the United States. To demonstrate the weakness of those governments, they intended to show that the United States was both weak and hostile."

"September 11 was a superbly executed covert operation to strategically destabilize the United States. It could be carried out because of bin Laden’s deep understanding of how the CIA works, which he gained in Afghanistan. That put the United States in a position that required military retaliation, which was bin Laden’s goal. He wanted to give the United States a shot that it couldn’t ignore, because he wanted an American response."

"The US war in Afghanistan was arranged through key alliances: Russia provided bases in Central Asia and arranged for the US to 'rent' the Northern Alliance as its principal fighting force; Iran agreed to provide Shiite support in western Afghanistan. The Taliban was never defeated, but in most ways the first round went to the United States."

After Afghanistan
"Now there's another problem: There is a legitimate fear of nuclear attack on the US from a suitcase bomb. So what do you do? The US plan became to simultaneously attack Al Qaeda operatives throughout the world. But the US did not have the intelligence information to launch such strikes."

"To understand how Iraq comes up, you have to understand the desperation in the spring of 2002. All the good options are gone. You have to either stand and hope or do something else."

"The necessary intelligence about Al Qaeda exists, among the Pakistanis and the Saudis. Pakistan can be coerced into some cooperation, but Saudi Arabia cannot see cooperation as being in its best interests, among other reasons because it has seen the US back away from long-term engagements and Al Qaeda, which has shown its durability, has considerable support within Saudi Arabia. For the Saudis, backing the United States is backing a loser. It has to worry about Al Qaeda; it doesn’t have to worry about the US. Cooperation with the United States is too dangerous."

"So the center of gravity of the problem becomes getting the Saudis to cooperate with intelligence about Al Qaeda. In a more general sense, the US realizes that it must demonstrate more military resolve, that it must put Saudi Arabia into a strategic bind, and it must take control of the most strategic country in the region if it intends to fight a long-term war. That country, because of its borders and its air bases, is Iraq. If we take Iraq, we can own the region."

Explaining US Policy
"Here is where everything goes wrong. It’s hard to explain this policy; it’s hard to go on TV and say, 'We’re attempting to blackmail the Saudis.' So WMD was chosen as the explanation to give the American public. And in fact, everyone thought Saddam had WMD. Even Saddam thought he had WMD because he was being deceived by his scientists. He thought he had nukes."

"Further, the US did not anticipate Saddam’s follow-on war plan, which included full preparations for a guerrilla war, and the US did not – because of CIA failures compounded by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s intransigence – respond to that plan for three crucial months."

A Deal with Iran Made and Broken
"Since the US did not have enough forces to deal with the problem on the ground in Iraq, it turned to Iran, which had a lot of influence on Iraq’s Shiites. A deal was struck in which Iran kept the Shiites from rising up against the Sunnis and split them off from the jihadists. The US promised, 'In the end, we will leave you with a Shiite-dominated government.' For three years, that was our position: we were in alliance with Iran."

"And then, as the situation started to stabilize, the US 'double-crossed' Iran by backing Sunni demands in Fallujah and then by cutting a deal with Sunni elders to participate in the elections and distance themselves from the jihadists."

Iran and Nukes
"Becoming desperate as it saw its strategy of the past three years going down the drain, Iran decided it needed a strategy related to nuclear weapons for leverage against the US. Iran cannot accept a return to power of the Sunni former Baathists in Iraq, which is what the US is currently facilitating. Iran does not really seek nuclear weapons, and it knows it will not be permitted to get them, but it believes that going after them will assure American attention. Now the Iranians are pushing toward some unspecified line that would be a flash point for a crisis, trying to stay on the safe side of that line while waving their arms to convince the world they’re insane so the US will negotiate with them. The US does not want to attack Iran, so negotiations are likely."

"We could of course just give Iraq to the Iranians. What do we care who has Iraq? But the Saudis would go absolutely ballistic, because the Saudis are the mortal enemies of the Iranians."

"So it gets complicated and complicated. We want a compromise in Iraq; the Iranians want a compromise in Iraq. It’s tilted differently: we’re using as our nukes the Sunnis; they’re using as their nukes, nukes."

The US Politics of Iraq
"President Bush is unable to defend his complex strategy regarding Iraq in part because he started off with a simplistic explanation. The idea that we are fighting to bring democracy to Iraq, if by democracy you mean something like Minnesota, is kind of a whacked-out notion."

"In combination with his problems justifying his Iraq strategy, Bush almost lost his presidency after Katrina because his approval fell so low that it showed his own party was turning against him. An approval rating below 35% leads to a failed presidency. Although the President has recovered, he still faces significant challenges to his approval ratings on many fronts."

As Things Stand in Early 2006

"Iraq is chaotic but contained: the malignant possibility of a complete breakdown into a total guerilla war against the US is gone."

"Al Qaeda is a shattered organization: the intelligence for counteracting real terrorist threats is coming from Saudi Arabia."

"Anti-Americanism does not translate into strategic terrorism. They hate us in the Islamic world . . . but terrorism is hard to do, and most of the trained ones are dead."

"Iran is now a serious threat, but even the Iranian problem is containable."

"Islam will be a problem, but not the central problem. The idea that our geopolitics will be defined ad infinitum by this 'clash of civilizations' is not true."

George Friedman, America's Domination in the 21st Century

George Friedman, Interview from Avid Reader Brisbane - Part 1

Interview from Avid Reader Brisbane - Part 2 (Video)
Interview from Avid Reader Brisbane - Part 3 (Video)
Interview from Avid Reader Brisbane - Part 4 (Video)
Interview from Avid Reader Brisbane - Part 5 (Video)
Interview from Avid Reader Brisbane - Part 6 (Video)
Interview from Avid Reader Brisbane - Part 7 (Video)

From Stratfor
The Next 100 Years Overture by George Friedman

Friedman on Geopolitics (Free Articles)

Burton and Stewart on Security (Free Articles)

Stratfor Video Center (Free)

FOCUS: The Sixties

2010-08-24T14:26:00.001-05:00

"We stand today on the edge of a new frontier -- the frontier of the 1960s, a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils, a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats. The new frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises - it is a set of challenges." - John F. Kennedy

"All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, 'Ich bin ein Berliner'." - John F Kennedy, speaking to the citizens of West Germany, June 26, 1963

"The real 1960s began on the afternoon of November 22, 1963. It came to seem that Kennedy's murder opened some malign trap door in American culture, and the wild bats flapped out." - Lance Morrow

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." - Martin Luther King, August 28, 1963

"That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." - Neil Armstrong, when taking
his first steps on the Moon, July 21, 1969

"It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era — the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run... but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant...History is hard to know, because of all the tired bullshit, but even without being sure of 'history' it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time — and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened. My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights — or very early mornings — when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour... booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turnoff to take when I got to the other end... but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: no doubt at all about that...There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning...And that, I think, was the handle — that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply PREVAIL. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave...So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back." - Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

"If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair." - Scott MacKenzie

"I still have trouble when I think about Chicago (68'). That week at the Convention changed everything I'd ever taken for granted about this country and my place in it... Everytime I tried to tell somebody what happened in Chicago I began crying, and it took me years to understand why...Chicago was the End of the Sixties, for me. The hippies, who had never really believed they were the wave of the future anyway, saw the election results as brutal confirmation of the futility of fighting the establishment on its own terms. The thrust is no longer for 'change' or 'progress' or revolution,' but merely to escape, to live on the far perimeter of a world that might have been. - Hunter S. Thompson

"He is the Willy Loman of Generation X, a traveling salesman who has the loyalty of a lizard with his tail broken off and the midnight taste of a man who'd double date with the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart." - Hunter S. Thompson, describing Bill Clinton in BBC News America

"For me, the lame part of the Sixties was the political part, the social part. The real part was the spiritual part." - Jerry Garcia, The Grateful Dead

"The '60s are gone, dope will never be as cheap, sex never as free, and the rock and roll never as great." - Abbie Hoffman

"People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around - the music and the ideas." - Bob Dylan

"The trauma of the Sixties persuaded me that my generation's egalitarianism was a sentimental error. I now see the hierarchical as both beautiful and necessary. Efficiency liberates; egalitarianism tangles, delays, blocks, deadens." - Camille Paglia

I Have a Dream, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

From FORA.tv
Don Lattin: The Harvard Psychedelic Club (Video)

From FORA.tv
Tom Brokaw, Boom! Voices of the Sixties (Video)

From FORA.tv
Vincent Bugliosi, Reclaiming History (Video)

From Hillsdale College
Vietnam and the Rise of the New Left with Michael Medved (Video)

From The Commonwealth Club
On the Kennedy Years with David Talbot (Video)

From The Institute of Ideas
Radicalism Then and Now: The Legacy of 1968, Panel Discussion (Video)

From Grace Cathedral
Echoes of the 60s with Dr. Kathleen Frydl (Video)

From Hillsdale College
Lessons from the TET Offensive with Victor David Hanson (Video)

From C-SPAN
The Weather Underground with William Ayers and Don Strickland (Video)

ODDS & ENDS: Traveling, Ithaca, Dependency, Learning from Others, Getting Stated, Moving Along, Dreams, Colons, Simon Says, Rule of High School

2010-08-17T09:00:00.007-05:00

Traveling
"I've seen it all through the yellow windows of the evening train." - Tom Waits

"'Sherpa' means 'Easterner' in Tibetan; and the Sherpas who settled in Khambu about 450 years ago are a peace-loving Buddhist people from the Eastern shore of the plateau. They are also compulsive travelers; and in Sherpa-country every track is marked with cairns and prayer-flags, reminding you that Man's real home is not a house, but the Road, and that life itself is a journey to be walked on foot." - Bruce Chatwin, What Am I Doing Here?

Ithaca
When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road’s a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the angry Poseidon -- do not fear them:
You won’t find them on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty and a fine
emotion touches your spirit.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you won’t encounter them,
unless you carry them within your soul.

Pray that the road is long.
May there be many a summer morning, when,
with such pleasure, with such joy
you enter ports seen for the first time;
stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
visit many Egyptian cities,
to discover new things and to learn from scholars.

Always keep (your home in) Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to finally arrive at the island when you are old,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca to make you rich.

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, filled with so much experience,
you will finally understand what an Ithaca means.
- Constantine Cavafy

"Every journey has a secret destination of which the traveler is not aware." - Martin Buber

"Of the gladdest moments in human life, methinks is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of Habit, the leaden weight of Routine, the Cloak of many Cares and the Slavery of Home, one feels once more Happy. The blood flows with the fast circulation of childhood. A journey, in fact, appeals to Imagination, to Memory, to Hope – the three Sister Graces of our moral being.” - Sir Richard Burton

"My town had grown and changed and my friend along with it. Now returning, as changed to my friend as my town was to me, I distorted his picture, muddied his memory. When I went away I had died, and so became fixed and unchangeable. My return caused only confusion and uneasiness. Although they could not say it, my old friends wanted me gone so that I could take my proper place in the pattern of remembrance - and I wanted to go for the same reason." - John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley

"Cigars had burned low, and we were beginning to sample the disillusionment that usually afflicts old school friends who have met again as men and found themselves with less in common than they had believed they had." - James Hilton, Lost Horizon

"Your old home town's so far away, but inside your head there's a record that's playing, a song called 'Hold On'" - Tom Waits

On Dependency
"Our dependency makes slaves out of us, especially if this dependency is a dependency of our self-esteem. If you need encouragement, praise, pats on the back from everybody, then you make everybody your judge." - Fritz Perls

On Learning from Others
"Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them - if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry." - J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

On Getting Started
"It's like making a movie: All sorts of accidental things will happen after you've set up the cameras. So you get lucky. Something will happen at the edge of the set and perhaps you start to go with that; you get some footage of that. You come into it accidentally. You set the story in motion, and as you're watching this thing begin, all these opportunities will show up." - Kurt
Vonnegut

On Moving Along
"Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.” - Anne Lamott

Sean Connery, A Narration of Ithaca

Randy Pausch, Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

From Point Loma Nazarene University
An Evening with George Plimpton

From MiamiHerald.com
A Journey into My Colon . . . and Yours by Dave Barry

From the Daily Mail
A Letter to My Younger Self by Simon Cowell

From Seth Godin's Blog
The Rule of High School

FOCUS: The Universe

2010-08-10T08:16:00.006-05:00

On the Known and Unknown Universe
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." - H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu

"When the cartographers of the Middle Ages came to the end of the world as they knew it, they wrote: 'Beware: Dragons Lurk Beyond Here.'" - William Manchester, A World Lit Only By Fire

"The scientist, Roger Pemrose, was walking with some friends and talking animatedly. He fell silent only in order to cross the street. 'I remember that - as I was crossing the street - an incredible idea came to me,' Pemrose said. 'But, as soon as we reached the other side, we picked up where we left off, and I couldn't remember what I thought of just a few seconds earlier.' Late in the afternoon, Pemrose began to feel euphoric - without knowing why. 'I had the feeling that something had been revealed to me,' he said. He decided to go back over every minute of the day, and - when he remembered the moment when he was crossing the street - the idea came back to him. This time, he wrote it down. It was the theory of black holes, a revolutionary theory in modern physics. And it came back to him because Pemrose was able to recall the silence that we always fall into as we cross a street." - Paulo Coelho

"In 1964, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, Bell Lab scientists, were modifying a radio antenna so it could be used to receive signals from an early communications satellite. They tried to eliminate sources of background radio signals, but no matter what they did, they still heard residual static-like ‘noise.’ Their genius was to make the connection between the noise and new theories about big bang. They became the first people to hear the birth of the universe, winning Nobel prizes in the process." - Rick Harriman, Synectics Inc.

"A man said to the universe: 'Sir, I exist!' 'However,' replied the universe, 'That fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.'" - Stephen Crane

"Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy." - Albert Einstein

"I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown." - Woody Allen

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rich Cook

"The wise man can pick up a grain of sand and envision a whole universe. But the stupid man will just lay down on some seaweed and roll around in it until he's completely draped in it. Then he'll stand up and go hey, I'm Vine Man." - Jack Handey

"If there really is a God who created the entire universe with all of its glories, and He decides to deliver a message to humanity, He will not use, as His messenger, a person on cable TV with a bad hairstyle." - Dave Barry

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of –
Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence.
Hovering there
I've chased the shouting wind along and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up along delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
Where never lark, or even eagle flew;
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
John Gillespie Magee, Jr., High Flight

The Known Universe

Neil deGrasse Tyson, The Pluto Files

From FORA TV
The Dance of the Universe: Are We Alone with Father George Coyne & Lynn Rothschild (Video)

From FORA TV
The Black Hole War with Leonard Susskind (Video)

From FORA TV
Death by Black Hole with Neil deGrasse Tyson (Video)

From FORA TV
Confessions of an Alien Hunter with Seth Shostak (Video)

From FORA TV
God and the Universe with Ian Morison (Video)

From The New York Times
Heaven and Nature by Russ Douthat

From NASA
Cosmology: The Study of the Universe (PDF)

MASTERMIND: Rick Warren

2010-08-03T18:37:00.000-05:00

"I did a series of lectures for the faculty in the Kennedy School ... I started with this quote from Peter Drucker: 'The most significant sociological phenomenon of the first half of the 20th century was the rise of the corporation. The most significant sociological phenomenon of the second half of the 20th century has been the development of the large pastoral church - of the mega-church. It is the only organization that is actually working in our society.' Now Drucker has said that at least six times. I happen to know because he's my mentor. I've spent 20 years under his tutelage learning about leadership from him, and he's written it in two or three books, and he says he thinks it's [the mega-church] the only thing that really works in society." - Rick Warren

"A critical question for leaders is, 'When do you stop pouring resources into things that have achieved their purpose?' The most dangerous traps for a leader are those near-successes where everybody says that if you just give it another big push it will go over the top. One tries it once. One tries it twice. One tries it a third time. But, by then it should be obvious this will be very hard to do. So, I always advise my friend Rick Warren, 'Don't tell me what you're doing, Rick. Tell me what you stopped doing.'" - Peter Drucker, Forbes, November 19, 2004

"Lessons from business books never stick. Much better learning tools are novels, history books and biographies. For me, at least, these can really teach. Why? I suppose it's because when your imagination is engaged, when you dig the lessons out yourself and connect them to your own life, the learning goes much deeper. With that said, I give you the best book on entrepreneurship, business and investment that I've read in some time. It's not new and it's not a business book. It was written in 1995 and comes from the field of religion. It's titled The Purpose-Driven Church and was penned by Rick Warren. Warren - in 1980 and from scratch - launched Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif. Under his leadership, the church has become the fastest-growing one in America. Weekends bring in an average of 15,000 worshipers. Saddleback has spawned dozens of so-called daughter churches throughout the country. Were it a business, Saddleback would be compared with Dell, Google or Starbucks. The Purpose-Driven Church has sold more than 1 million copies. Its sequel, The Purpose-Driven Life, has sold 12 million copies. Whatever you think about Warren or his religious beliefs, he has discerned a consumer need out there." - Rich Karlgaard, publisher, Forbes Magazine (Read the rest of the article here.)

Rick Warren, Big Think Interview
How Do You Organize a Mega-Church?

What Is a Purpose Driven Life?

Other Questions from the Big Think Interview (Video)

From TED
Rick Warren, A Life of Purpose (Video)

From The New Yorker
The Cellular Church: How Rick Warren Built His Ministry by Malcolm Gladwell

FOCUS: Great Questions

2010-07-27T10:29:00.000-05:00

Some Thoughts on Questions
"A very powerful question may not have an answer at the moment it is asked. It will sit rattling in the mind for days or weeks as the person works on an answer. If the seed is planted, the answer will grow. Questions are alive." - Fran Peavey

"The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions." - Anthony Jay

"The answers you get depend upon the questions you ask." – Thomas Kuhn

"The first people had questions and they were free. The second people had answers and they became enslaved." - Wind Eagle, Native American Chief

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Never lose a holy curiosity." - Albert Einstein

"I'm much more interested these days in having debates about what the questions should be than I necessarily am about the solutions." - Tim Brown, IDEO CEO, The New York Times

"If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?" - Scott Adams

Some Questions
“Customer satisfaction is best measured by one simple question, 'How likely are you to recommend ____ to a friend?' - Fred Reichheld, Bain & Company

"If you weren't already in a business, would you enter it today? And if the answer is no, what are you going to do about it?" - Peter Drucker to Jack Welch, 1981

"Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?" - Steve Jobs

"Would you want your wife to pee in this place?” - Paco Underhill, Why We Buy

“The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question 'How can we eat?' the second by the question 'Why do we eat?' and the third by the question 'Where shall we have lunch?'" - Douglas Adams

Scanning the Periphery
From a Masters Forum Presentation, Roch Parayre, DSI

What have been our past blind spots?
What is happening there now?
Is there an instructive analogy from another industry?
Who in your industry is skilled at picking up weak signals and acting on them ahead of competition?
What important signals are you rationalizing away?
What are your mavericks and authors saying?
What are peripheral customers and competitors really thinking?
What future surprises could hurt or help us?
What emerging technologies could change the game?
Is there an unthinkable scenario?

Questions of the Year
From TED Global 2009 by Chris Anderson

What is an accomplished life?
Which universe do we live in?
Is life a mathematical equation?
Where does motivation come from?
Who's defining the new geopolitical map?
How can we observe what we can't see?
Can we design the air we breathe?
What's the economic impact of terrorism?
Should we fear faith?
What makes big cities function?
What do top-secret places look like?
What's the true nature of modern crime?
Can a solar-powered plane fly?
What's the power of music?
Can we put biodiversity in a bank?
How does the brain create the mind?

Who Are We . . . Really?
From No Easy Victories by John Gardner

What things are forgotten in the heat of battle?
What values get pushed aside in the rough-and-tumble of everyday living?
What are the goals we ought to be thinking about and never do?
What are the facts we don’t like to face?
What are the questions we lack the courage to ask?

Jack Welch, Q & A with Alex D'Arbeloff

From the Harvard Business School
Scanning for Threats and Opportunities by George S. Day & Paul J.H. Schoemaker

From Knowledge@Wharton
Vigilant vs. Operational Leaders (PDF)

From Bowling Green State University
A Lifetime List of Dialogue Questions by Walter Maner

ODDS & ENDS: Gifts, Country Music, Language

2010-07-20T12:20:00.000-05:00

On Gifts
"Johnny Cash sang like he meant business. He didn't get fancy and he didn't send his voice on missions it could not complete, but there was an urgency in his best songs that pounded them home. When he sang something, it stayed sung." - Roger Ebert

On Country Music
"Country music is three chords and the truth." - Harlan Howard

"Country music has always been the best shrink that 15 bucks can buy." - Dierks Bentley

"There is a general place in your brain, I think, reserved for 'melancholy of relationships past.' It grows and prospers as life progresses, forcing you finally, against your better judgment, to listen to country music." - Kary Mullis, Nobel Prize lecture, December, 1993

"I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means put down." - Bob Newhart

"Country songs have always told the best stories and no one - really, no one - has ever done it better than Nashville. All my life I've admired guitarists like Chet Atkins and Roy Clark who touched me through their sound, but it was those Nashville songwriters who got to me through their words." - B.B. King, blues guitarist and singer-songwriter

On Language
"Language etches the grooves through which your thoughts must flow." - Noam Chomsky

"Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind." - Wade Davis, speaking at The Long Now Foundation

"I have stolen more quotes and thoughts and purely elegant little starbursts of writing from the Book of Revelation than anything else in the English language - and it is not because I am a biblical scholar, or because of any religious faith, but because I love the wild power of the language and the purity of the madness that governs it and makes it music." - Hunter S. Thompson, Generation of Swine

"Everything that we have so far seen to be true of language points to the fact that it is the most significant and colossal work that the human spirit has evolved. Language is the most massive and inclusive art we know, a mountainous and anonymous work of unconscious generations." – Edward Sapir, Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech

"And one thing we have lost – the courage to make new words or combinations. Somewhere that old bravado has slipped off into a gangrened scholarship. Oh! you can make words if you enclose them in quotation marks. This indicates that it is dialect and cute." – John Steinbeck, Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters

"The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others." - Alain de Botton, On Love

"Speech is the mother, not the handmaid, of thought." - Karl Kraus

"That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts." - Nietzsche

Johnny Cash, The Man in Black

From Academy of Achievement
Music's Man In Black: An Interview with Johnny Cash

From FORA.tv
A.C. Grayling & Don Watson, It's All Gone to the Dogs - Video

From FORA.tv
Roy Blount Jr., The Sounds, Roots, and History of Words - Video

From YouTube
Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature - Video

MASTERMIND: Thomas Sowell

2010-07-13T08:32:00.000-05:00

"Much of the self-righteous nonsense that abounds on so many subjects cannot stand up to three questions: 1) Compared to what? 2) At what cost? and 3) What are the hard facts?" - Thomas Sowell

"One of the great meaningless phrases of our times is: 'I take full responsibility.' This does not mean that you are prepared to pay the consequences for what you have done. On the contrary, this statement is usually offered instead of taking the consequences." - Thomas Sowell

"Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good." - Thomas Sowell

"No individual and no generation has had enough personal experience to ignore the vast experience of the human race that is called history. Yet most of our schools and colleges today pay little attention to history. And many of our current policies repeat mistakes that were made, time and again, in the past with disastrous results." - Thomas Sowell

"Not only does the passage of time produce knowledge, it also produces ignorance. As the passage of time removes people with first-hand knowledge of an earlier era, they are replaced by people ignorant of those times and therefore easy targets for demagogues." - Thomas Sowell

"Nearly two hundred years ago, the great economist David Ricardo said: 'I wish that I may never think the smiles of the great and powerful a sufficient inducement to turn aside from the straight path of honesty and the convictions of my own mind.'" - Thomas Sowell

"Some people are so busy being clever that they don't have time enough to be wise." - Thomas Sowell

"Talkers are usually more articulate than doers, since talk is their specialty." - Thomas Sowell

"Perhaps the scariest aspect of our times is how many people think in talking points, rather than in terms of real world consequences." - Thomas Sowell

"In this era of political correctness, some people seem unaware that being squeamish about words can mean being blind to realities." - Thomas Sowell

"The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling." - Thomas Sowell

"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong." - Thomas Sowell

"You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing." - Thomas Sowell

"One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain." - Thomas Sowell

"There was once a time when parents pointed out bums on the streets and told their children that this was what could happen to you if you didn't bother to learn the things you needed to know, and do the things you needed to do, to make it in life. Today, children are taught to be 'non-judgmental' and the media keep saying that these drug-ridden derelicts are 'people just like us' who happened to fall on hard times." - Thomas Sowell

"What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long." - Thomas Sowell

"One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them." - Thomas Sowell

"If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win." - Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals & Society: Part One - Introduction

Intellectuals and Society: Part Two - Economics (Video)
Intellectuals and Society: Part Three - Vision (Video)
Intellectuals and Society: Part Four - War (Video)
Intellectuals and Society: Part Five - The Rest of Us (Video)

Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions

From the Jewish World Review
Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell (Column)
Intellectuals and Society: Part II by Thomas Sowell (Column)

From The Orange County Register
Thomas Sowell Dissects Intellectuals by Mark Landsbaum (Editorial)

ODDS & ENDS: Beliefs, History Lessons, Gettysburg Address, Conflict, Overcoming Disappointment

2010-07-06T12:14:00.000-05:00

Beliefs and Credos
"I am a singer and a songwriter, but I am also a father - four times over. I am a friend to dogs. I am a sworn enemy of the saccharine, and a believer in grace over karma. I talk too much when I'm drunk and sometimes even when I'm not." - Bono, lead singer, U2

"There is great tension in the world, tension toward a breaking point, and men are unhappy and confused. At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?" - John Steinbeck, East of Eden

"Belief? What do I believe in? I believe in sun. In rock. In the dogma of the sun and the doctrine of the rock. I believe in blood, fire, woman, rivers, eagles, storm, drums, flutes, banjos, and broom-tailed horses." - Edward Abbey, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto): Notes from a Secret Journal

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge,
That myth is more potent than history,
That dreams are more powerful than facts,
That hope always triumphs over experience,
That laughter is the only cure for grief,
And I believe that love is stronger than death.
- Robert Fulghum, The Storyteller's Creed

"What I'm suggesting is, stand for yourself, be for something and the hell with it. Because the hand-wringers and the editorialists and the sigh-and-pontificate crowd will be against you, whatever you do." - James Carville

“Every man gives his life for what he believes. Every woman gives her life for what she believes. Sometimes people believe in little or nothing. Nevertheless, they give up their life to that little or nothing. Our life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it and then it is gone. But to surrender what you are…and live without belief…that’s more terrible than dying…more terrible than dying young.” - Maxwell Anderson, Joan of Lorraine

History Lessons
"Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. When it is dark enough, you can see the stars." - Charles A. Beard, All the Lessons of History in Four Sentences

"Our generation is realistic for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who has invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who has entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or Shema Yisrael on his lips." - Victor Frankl

"History gives us a kind of chart, and we dare not surrender even a small rushlight in the darkness. The hasty reformer who does not remember the past will find himself condemned to repeat it." - John Buchan

"If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern which shines only on the waves behind us." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

On The Gettysburg Address
"Abraham Lincoln did not go to Gettysburg having commissioned a poll to find out what would sell in Gettysburg. There were no people with percentages for him, cautioning him about this group or that group or what they found in exit polls a year earlier. When will we have the courage of Lincoln?" - Robert Coles

"The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dishwatery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States." - Chicago Times, commenting on Lincoln's Gettysburg Address the next day

Robert Coles: Children Consider Human Conflict

From FORA.tv
Rabbi Harold Kushner, Overcoming Life's Disappointments (Video)

From Scott London
A Way of Seeing: The Work of Robert Coles (Essay)

From Google Books
The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination by Robert Coles

FOCUS: Education

2010-06-29T10:00:00.000-05:00

"But do not despise the lore that has come down from distant years; for oft it may chance that old wives keep in memory word of things that once were needful for the wise to know." - J.R.R. Tolkien

"I’ve been making a list of the things they don’t teach you at school. They don’t teach you how to love somebody. They don’t teach you how to be famous. They don’t teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don’t teach you how to walk away from someone you don’t love any longer. They don’t teach you how to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind. They don’t teach you what to say to someone who’s dying. They don’t teach you anything worth knowing." - Neil Gaiman

"One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to come up to you and show you a nice brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken, and this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the Jack of Spades jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not bet this man, for as sure as you are standing there, you are going to end up with an earful of cider." - Damon Runyon

"A university is a reading and discussion club. If students knew how to use the library, they wouldn't need the rest of the buildings. The faculty's job, in great part, is to teach students how to use a library in a living way. All a student should really need is access to the library and a place to sleep." - John Ciardi, Ciardi Himself

"I want to give you a yardstick, a gold standard, by which to measure good schooling. The Shelter Institute in Bath, Maine, will teach you how to build a three thousand square-foot, multi-level Cape Cod home in three weeks’ time, whatever your age. If you stay another week, it will show you how to make your own posts and beams; you’ll actually cut them out and set them up. You’ll learn wiring, plumbing, insulation, the works. Twenty thousand people have learned to build a house there for about the cost of one month’s tuition in public school." - John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher

"Education either functions 1) as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or 2) it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world." - Paulo Freire

"The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life - by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort." - Ayn Rand

"If we make money the object of man training, we shall develop money makers but not necessarily men; if we make technical skill the object of education, we may possess artisans but not, in nature, men. Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work of the schools - intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it - this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must underlie true life." - W.E.B. Du Bois

"What usually happens in the educational process is that the faculties are dulled, overloaded, stuffed and paralyzed so that by the time most people are mature they have lost their innate capabilities." – Buckminster Fuller

"In a completely rational society, teachers would be at the top of the pyramid, not near the bottom. In that society, the best of us would aspire to be teachers, and the rest of us would have to settle for something less. The job of passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor anyone could have." - Lee Iacocca, Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

Bill Strickland, Changing the World with a Slide Show

Sir Ken Robinson, Changing Paradigms

Sir Ken Robinson, The Element

Peter Yarrow, A Tribute to the Teachers of America (Interview with Mark Malaro)

QUICK TAKE: On Learning

2010-06-26T16:20:00.000-05:00

Bring on the Learning Revolution
Sir Ken Robinson

MASTERMIND: Alain de Botton

2010-06-22T16:00:00.000-05:00

"The house has grown into a knowledgeable witness. It has been party to early seductions, it has watched homework being written, it has observed swaddled babies freshly arrived from hospital, it has been surprised in the middle of the night by whispered conferences in the kitchen. It has experienced winter evenings when its windows were as cold as bags of frozen peas and midsummer dusks when its brick walls held the warmth of newly baked bread. It has provided psychological sanctuary. It has been a guardian of identity. Over the years, its owners have returned from periods away and, on looking around them, remembered who they were." - Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness

"In medieval Japan, poets and priests directed the Japanese toward cherry blossoms, deformed pieces of pottery, raked gravel, moss, rain falling on leaves, autumn skies, roof tiles and unvarnished wood. A word emerged, wabi, of which no Western language, tellingly, has a direct equivalent, which identified beauty with unpretentious, simple, unfinished, transient things. There was wabi to be enjoyed in an evening spent alone in a cottage in the woods hearing the rain fall." - Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness

"In our playpens and high chairs, we are rarely far from displaying either hysterical happiness or savage disappointment, love or rage, mania or exhaustion – and, despite the growth of a more temperate exterior in adulthood, we seldom succeed in laying claim to lasting equilibrium. Our innate imbalances are further aggravated by practical demands. Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored." - Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness

"It is books, poems and paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge. Oscar Wilde referred to this phenomenon when he quipped that there was no fog in London before Whistler started painting the Thames." - Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness

"Because the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not." - Alain de Botton, How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel

"Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The first - the story of our quest for sexual love - is well known and well charted, its vagaries form the staple of music and literature, it is socially accepted and celebrated. The second - the story of our quest for love from the world - is a more secret and shameful tale. If mentioned, it tends to be in caustic, mocking terms, as something of interest chiefly to envious or deficient souls, or else the drive for status is interpreted in an economic sense alone. And yet this second love story is no less intense than the first, it is no less complicated, important or universal, and its setbacks are no less painful. There is heartbreak here too." - Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety

"All societies have had work at their centre; ours is the first to suggest that it could be something much more than a punishment or a penance." - Alain de Botton, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

"What makes the prospect of death so distinctive in the modern age is the background of permanent technological and sociological revolution against which it is set, and which serves to strip us of any possible faith in the permanence of our labours." - Alain de Botton, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

"The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others." - Alain de Botton, On Love

Alain de Botton, Philosophy: Shopenauer on Love

Philosophy: Shopenauer on Love - Part 2 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Shopenauer on Love - Part 3 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Neitzsche on Hardship - Part 1 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Neitzsche on Hardship - Part 2 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Neitzsche on Hardship - Part 3 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Socrates on Self-Confidence - Part 1 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Socrates on Self-Confidence - Part 2 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Socrates on Self-Confidence - Part 3 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Epicurus on Happiness - Part 1 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Epicurus on Happiness - Part 2 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Epicurus on Happiness - Part 3 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Montaigne on Self-Esteem - Part 1 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Montaigne on Self-Esteem - Part 2 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Montaigne on Self-Esteem - Part 3 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Seneca on Anger - Part 1 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Seneca on Anger - Part 2 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Seneca on Anger - Part 3 of 3 (Video)

From TED 2009
A Kinder, Gentler Philosophy of Success by Alain de Botton (Video)

From FORA.tv
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton (Video)

From City Journal
The Consolations of Pessimism by Alain de Botton (Essay)

From The Atlantic
The Status-tician by Adam Baer (Interview with Alain de Botton)

From The Guardian
On The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Lynn Barber (Interview with Alain de Botton)

From The Independent
Philosopher King by Katy Guest (Interview with Alain de Botton)

ODDS & ENDS: Human Imagination, Celebrity, Measuring What Matters, On Perspective, On Walking, On Smoking, On Genius

2010-06-15T11:04:00.000-05:00

On Human Imagination
"Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other peoples minds, imagine themselves into other peoples places. Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise. And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are….If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better." - J.K. Rowling, 2008 Commencement Address at Harvard University

On Celebrity
"Celebrity, even the modest sort that comes to writers, is an unhelpful exercise in self-consciousness. Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. As soon as one is aware of being 'somebody,' to be watched and listened to with extra interest, input ceases, and the performer goes blind and deaf in his overanimation. One can either see or be seen. Most of the best fiction is written out of early impressions, taken in before the writer became conscious of himself as a writer. The best seeing is done by the hunted and the hunter, the vulnerable and the hungry; the 'successful' writer acquires a film over his eyes. His eyes get fat. Self-importance is a thickened, occluding form of self-consciousness. The binge, the fling, the trip—all attempt to shake the film and get back under the dining room table, with a child's beautifully clear eyes." - John Updike

On Perspective
"Something of the sense of holiness on islands comes, I think, from this strange, elastic geography. Islands are made larger, paradoxically, by the scale of the sea that surrounds them. The element which might reduce them, which might be thought to besiege them, has the opposite effect. The sea elevates these few acres into something they would never be if hidden in the mass of the mainland. The sea makes islands significant." – Adam Nicolson, Sea Room

"In the perspective of every person lies a lens through which we may better understand ourselves." - Ellen J. Langer, The Power of Mindful Learning

On Walking
"When you walk, you are massaging and honouring the earth. In the same way, the earth is trying to help you to balance your organism and mind. Understand this relationship and try to respect it – may your steps have the firmness of a lion, the elegance of a tiger and the dignity of an emperor.” - Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist Monk

"There are some good things to be said about walking. Not many, but some. Walking takes longer, for example, than any other known form of locomotion except crawling. Thus it stretches time and prolongs life. Life is already too short to waste on speed. I have a friend who's always in a hurry; he never gets anywhere. Walking makes the world much bigger and thus more interesting. You have time to observe the details. The utopian technologists foresee a future for us in which distance is annihilated. To be everywhere at once is to be nowhere forever, if you ask me." - Edward Abbey, The Journey Home

"Traveler, there is no path. Paths are made by walking." - Antonio Machado

On Smoking
"Three of the four elements are shared by all creatures, but fire was a gift to humans alone. Smoking cigarettes is as intimate as we can become with fire without immediate excruciation. Every smoker is an embodiment of Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and bringing it on back home. We smoke to capture the power of the sun, to pacify Hell, to identify with the primordial spark, to feed on the marrow of the volcano. It's not the tobacco we're after but the fire. When we smoke, we are performing a version of the fire dance, a ritual as ancient as lightning." - Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

J.K. Rowling, Harvard Commencement Address, 2008

From FORA.tv
Dan Roam: The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures - Video

From FORA.tv
David Shenk, The Genius in All of Us - Video

QUICK TAKE: On Gaming

2010-06-14T12:51:00.001-05:00

Work Sucks - Games Are Great: Part One
Byron Reeves, Stanford University

Work Sucks - Games Are Great: Part Two
Byron Reeves, Stanford University

QUICK TAKE: Biological Roots of Human Behavior

2010-06-06T14:23:00.003-05:00

Lionel Tiger, Professor of Anthropology, Rutgers University, Big Think Interview

ODDS & ENDS: Criminal Minds Quotes, BTK Killer Speaks, Green River Killer

2010-05-25T17:21:00.000-05:00

Criminal Minds - Season 3

"Let your heart feel for the afflictions and distress of everyone." - George Washington

"He who controls others may be powerful but he who has mastered himself is mightier still." - Lao Tzu

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do." - Eleanor Roosevelt

"Nothing is easier than to denounce the evil doer; nothing more difficult than understanding him." - Fyodor Dostoevsky

"Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed." - G.K. Chesterton

"Now what else is the whole life of mortals, but a sort of comedy in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each ones part until the manager walks them off the stage?" - Erasmus

"An earthly kingdom cannot exist without inequality of persons. Some must be free, some serfs, some rulers, some subjects." - Martin Luther

"Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters." - Francis Goya

"Love all. Trust a few. Do wrong to none." - William Shakespeare

"No man or woman who tries to pursue an ideal in his or her own way is without enemies." - Daisy Bates

"For we pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won." - Lucy Maud Montgomery

"...within the core of each of us is the child we once were. This child constitutes the foundation of what we have become, who we are, and what we will be." - Dr. R. Joseph

"There is no formula for success except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings." - Arthur Rubinstein

"The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering." - Ben Okri

"A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ." - John Steinbeck

"We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered." - Tom Stoppard

"There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses." - George Bernard Shaw

"If we knew each other's secrets, what comforts we should find." - John Churton Collins

"No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities." - Christian Nestell Bovee

"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves. We must die to one life before we can enter another." - Anatole France

A&E Documentary Special - The BTK Killer Speaks - Part 1

A&E Documentary Special - The BTK Killer Speaks - Part 2
A&E Documentary Special - The BTK Killer Speaks - Part 3
A&E Documentary Special - The BTK Killer Speaks - Part 4
A&E Documentary Special - The BTK Killer Speaks - Part 5

A&E Cold Case Files Number 100 - Obsession: Dave Reichert and the Green River Killer - Part 1

Cold Case Files Number 100 - Obsession: Dave Reichert and the Green River Killer - Part 2
Cold Case Files Number 100 - Obsession: Dave Reichert and the Green River Killer - Part 3
Cold Case Files Number 100 - Obsession: Dave Reichert and the Green River Killer - Part 4
Cold Case Files Number 100 - Obsession: Dave Reichert and the Green River Killer - Part 5

MASTERMIND: Nassim Nicholas Taleb

2010-05-17T08:53:00.000-05:00

On Black Swans
"Our human race is affected with a chronic underestimation of the possibility of the future straying from the course initially envisioned.” - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"A black swan is an outlier, an event that lies beyond the realm of normal expectations. Most people expect all swans to be white because that's what their experience tells them; a black swan is by definition a surprise. Nevertheless, people tend to concoct explanations for them after the fact, which makes them appear more predictable, and less random, than they are." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"Much of the research into humans' risk-avoidance machinery shows that it is antiquated and unfit for the modern world; it is made to counter repeatable attacks and learn from specifics. If someone narrowly escapes being eaten by a tiger in a certain cave, then he learns to avoid that cave. Yet vicious black swans by definition do not repeat themselves. We cannot learn from them easily." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

On Skeptical Empiricism
"The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a larger personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with 'Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have your read?' And the others – a very small minority – who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allow you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an anti-library. We tend to treat our knowledge as personal property to be protected and defended. It is an ornament that allows us to rise in the pecking order. So this tendency to offend Eco’s library sensibility by focusing on the known is a human bias that extends to our mental operations. People don’t walk around with anti-resumes telling you what they have not studied or experienced (it’s the job of the competitors to do that), but it would be nice if they did. Just as we need to stand library logic on its head, we will work on standing knowledge itself on its head. Note that the Black Swan comes form our misunderstanding of the likelihood of surprises, those unread books, because we take what we know a little too seriously. Let us call an anti-scholar – someone who focuses on the unread books and makes an attempt not to treat his knowledge as a treasure, or even a possession, or even a self-esteem enhancement device – a skeptical empiricist." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb, from The Black Swan

Life Tips, The Sunday Times, 6/1/2008

Skepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be skeptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.
Go to parties. You can’t even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues.
It’s not a good idea to take a forecast from someone wearing a tie. If possible, tease people who take themselves and their knowledge too seriously.
Wear your best for your execution and stand dignified. Your last recourse against randomness is how you act — if you can’t control outcomes, you can control the elegance of your behaviour. You will always have the last word.
Don’t disturb complicated systems that have been around for a very long time. We don’t understand their logic. Don’t pollute the planet. Leave it the way we found it, regardless of scientific ‘evidence’.
Learn to fail with pride — and do so fast and cleanly. Maximise trial and error — by mastering the error part.
Avoid losers. If you hear someone use the words ‘impossible’, ‘never’, ‘too difficult’ too often, drop him or her from your social network. Never take ‘no’ for an answer (conversely, take most ‘yeses’ as ‘most probably’).
Don’t read newspapers for the news (just for the gossip and, of course, profiles of authors). The best filter to know if the news matters is if you hear it in cafes, restaurants... or (again) parties.
Hard work will get you a professorship or a BMW. You need both work and luck for a Booker, a Nobel or a private jet.
Answer e-mails from junior people before more senior ones. Junior people have further to go and tend to remember who slighted them.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, A Crazier Future

From Comedy Central
The Colbert Report with Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Video)

From edge.org
Reflections on a Crisis: A Conversation in Munich with Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Daniel Kahneman (Video)

From RSA Events
David Cameron in Conversation with Nassim Taleb (Video)

From The Sunday Times
Nassim Nicholas Taleb: The Prophet of Boom and Doom by Bryan Appleyard

From The New Yorker
BLOWING UP: How Nassim Taleb Turned the Inevitability of Disaster into an Investment Strategy, by Malcolm Gladwell (PDF)

From The Financial Times
Ten Principles for a Black Swan-Proof World by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (PDF)

From the Foreword of Lecturing Birds How to Fly
History Written by the Losers by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (PDF)

From NPR
'Black Swans' and the Problems of Probability by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Audio, Transcript, Book Excerpt)

From edge.org
The Fourth Quadrant: A Map of the Limits of Statistics by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

From Change This Manifestos
Few and Far Between: Black Swans and the Impossibility of Prediction by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (PDF)

Nassim Nicholas Taleb's WEBSITE

QUICK TAKE: On Validating Others

2010-05-13T18:56:00.000-05:00

Validation
Davis Communications

QUICK TAKE: On the Future

2010-05-05T16:38:00.000-05:00

Can You Imagine the Next 60 Years?
Chris Luebkeman

ODDS & ENDS: Faces, Spaces, Places, Measuring What Matters, Hiding Our Best Self, Bright-Sided, Tuesdays with Morrie

2010-04-27T11:35:00.000-05:00

On Faces
"I only know that when I make eye contact with one (black widow spiders), I feel a deep physical shudder of revulsion, and of fear, and of fascination; and I am reminded that the human style of face is only one accidental pattern among many, some of the others being quite drastically different. I remember that we aren’t alone. I remember that we are the norm of goodness and comeliness only to ourselves. I wonder about how ugly I look to the spider." - David Quammen, Flight of the Iguana

"I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts." - John Steinbeck

On Spaces
“Periods of recovery are likewise intrinsic to creativity and to intimate connection. Sounds become music in the spaces between notes, just as words are created by the spaces between letters. It is in the spaces between that love, friendship, depth and dimension are nurtured.” - Jim Loehr

On Places
"You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bowl, but on a candlestick; and it gives light to all that are in the house." – Jesus, Matthew 5

"A city man is at home anywhere, for all big cities are much alike. But a country man has a place where he belongs, where he always returns, and where, when the time comes, he is willing to die." - Edward Abbey, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto): Notes from a Secret Journal

"The megacities, like cancer, have appeared with their great extremes of poverty and wealth, their isolation from what was called the natural world with its rivers, forests, silent dawns and nights. The new populations will live in hives of concrete on a diet of film, television and the Internet. We are what we eat. We are also what we see and hear. And we are in the midst of our one and only life." – James Salter, Once Upon a Time, Literature. Now What?

"In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed – they produced Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock." - Orson Wells, The Third Man

"The thought was banal, and yet somehow, as happened every now and then, it took him by surprise and profoundly disappointed him. It was absurd, but underlying his experience of the world, at some deep Precambrian stratum, was the expectation that someday – but when? – he would return to the earliest chapters of his life. It was all there – somewhere – waiting for him. He would return to the scenes of his childhood, to the breakfast table of the apartment of the Graben." - Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

On Measuring What Matters
"Grown-ups like numbers. When you tell them about a new friend, they never ask questions about what really matters. They never ask: 'What does his voice sound like?' 'What games does he like best?' 'Does he collect butterflies?' They ask: 'How old is he?' 'How many brothers does he have?' 'How much does he weigh?' 'How much does his father make?' Only then do they think they know him. If you tell grown-ups, 'I saw a beautiful red brick house, with geraniums at the windows and doves on the roof,' they won't be able to imagine such a house. You have to tell them 'I saw a house worth a hundred thousand francs.' Then they exclaim, 'What a pretty house!' That's the way they are. You must not hold it against them. Children should be very understanding of grown-ups." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

On Hiding Our Best Self
"That which you or I think is most unique about ourselves we hide. In ordinary discourse, in the normal state, we share our common self, our superficial self. Yet what is most unique about us is what has the greatest potential for bonding us. When we share our uniqueness, we discover the commonality in greatness that defines everyone on the planet." - Robert E. Quinn

"Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. there is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there." - Henry Miller, Sexus

Barbara Ehrenreich, Bright-Sided

Mitch Albom at Black & Blue Bash 2007

From Jewish World Review
What the Chicago Olympic Failure Must Teach Jewry by Joseph Aaron

From Forbes.com
The Most Painfully Annoying Business Jargon by Christopher Steiner

From Cluetrain.Com
The Cluetrain Manifesto by Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, David Weinberger (Entire text)

ODDS & ENDS: Driving-Thinking, Caveman Empathy, Night, Farting Around, Duty-Honor-Country, Our Way of Life, Faith-Reason, Cartooning

2010-04-11T10:29:00.000-05:00

On Driving and Thinking
"If one has driven a car over many years, as I have, nearly all reactions have become automatic. One does not think about what to do. Nearly all the driving technique is buried in a machine-like unconscious. This being so, a large area of the conscious mind is left free for thinking. And what do people think of when they drive? I can only suspect that the lonely man peoples his driving dreams with friends, that the loveless man surrounds himself with lovely, loving women, and that children climb through the dreams of the childless driver. And how about the area of regrets? If I had only done so-and-so, or not done such-and-such – my God, this damn thing might not have happened. Finding this potential in my own mind, I can suspect it in others, but I will never know, for no one ever tells." - John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley

On Caveman Empathy
"I suppose one night hundreds of thousands of years ago in a cave by a night fire when one of those shaggy men wakened to gaze over the banked coals at his woman, his children, and thought of their being cold, dead, gone forever. Then he must have wept. And he put out his hand in the night to the woman who must die some day and to the children who must follow her. And for a little bit next morning, he treated them somewhat better, for he saw that they, like himself, had the seed of night in them." - Ray Bradbury

On Night
"It is night now, no longer evening but fully night, as in 'black as,' if not precisely, 'dead of.' Evening usually has the afternoon hanging on its coattails, has actual flecks of daylight clinging like lint to its lapels, but night is solitary, aloof, uncompromised, extreme. The safe margins of the day, still faintly visible during eventide, have been erased by night’s dense gum, obscured by its wash of squid squirtings, pajama sauce, and the blue honey manufactured by moths. Is the night a mask, or is day merely night’s prim disguise? Most of us are born in the night, and by night most will die. Night, when tangos play on the nurse’s radio and rat poison sings its own hot song behind the cellar door. Night, when the long snake feeds, when the black sedan cruises the pleasure districts, when neon flickers 'Free at Last' in a dozen lost languages, and shapes left over from childhood move furtively behind the moon-dizzy boughs of the fir." - Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas.

On Farting Around
"Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore." - Kurt Vonnegut, on PBS, 2005

On Duty, Honor, and Country
"The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished, tone and tint. They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears, and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen vainly, but with thirsty ears, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll. In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my memory, always I come back to West Point. Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honor, Country. Today marks my final roll call with you, but I want you to know that when I cross the river my last conscious thoughts will be of The Corps, and The Corps, and The Corps. I bid you farewell." - General Douglas MacArthur, in remarks to the cadets at West Point, 1962,

On Our Current Way of Life
"We are an exceptional model of the human race. We no longer know how to produce food. We no longer can heal ourselves. We no longer raise our young. We have forgotten the names of the stars, fail to notice the phases of the moon. We do not know the plants and they no longer protect us. We tell ourselves we are the most powerful specimens of our kind who have ever lived. But when the lights are off we are helpless. We cannot move without traffic signals. We must attend classes in order to learn by rote numbered steps toward love or how to breast-feed our baby. We justify anything, anything at all by the need to maintain our way of life. And then we go to the doctor and tell the professionals we have no life. We have a simple test for making decisions: our way of life, which we cleverly call our standard of living, must not change except to grow yet more grand. We have a simple reality we live with each and every day: our way of life is killing us." - Charles Bowden, Blood Orchid

Sam Harris, The Clash Between Faith and Reason

Robert Mankoff, Cartoon Editor New York Magazine

ODDS & ENDS: Criminal Minds Quotes, Why Can't We Be Good?, Jeffrey Dahmer, Pit Bulls and Profiling

2010-04-07T10:49:00.000-05:00

Criminal Minds - Season 2
"The defects and faults of the mind are like wounds in the body. After all imaginable care has been taken to heal them up, still there will be a scar left behind." - Francois de la Roche Foucauld

"It has been said that time heals all wounds. I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue, and the pain lessens, but it is never gone." - Rose Kennedy

"The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children." - Dietrich Boenhoffer

"Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls. The most massive characters are seared with scars." - Khalil Gibran

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." - Oscar Wilde

"The ultimate choice for a man, in as much as he is given to transcend himself, is to create or destroy, to love or to hate." - Erich Fromm

"Crime butchers innocents to secure a prize. And innocence struggles with all its might against the attempts of crime." - Maximilien Robespierre

"If men could only know each other, they would neither idolize nor hate." - Elbert Hubbard

"Remember that all through history, there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they seem invincible. But in the end, they always fall. Always." - Mahatma Gandhi

"Some of the best lessons are learned from past mistakes. The error of the past is the wisdom of the future." - Dale Turner

"Between the desire and the spasm, between the potency and the existence, between the essence and the descent, falls the shadow. This is the way the world ends." - T.S. Eliot

"Evil brings men together." - Aristotle

"There is not a righteous man on Earth who does what is right and never sins." - Ecclesiastes 7:20

"From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate." - Socrates

"If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace." - Thomas Paine

"Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live." - Robert Kennedy

"The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul." - John Calvin

"Happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." - Leo Tolstoy

"Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity, nothing exceeds the criticisms made of the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed." - Herman Melville

"Nothing is permanent in this wicked world. Not even our troubles." - Charles Chaplin

Jacob Needleman, Why Can't We Be Good

Stone Phillips, Jeffrey Dahmer Interview: Segment 2-Part 1

Stone Phillips, Jeffrey Dahmer Interview: Segment 2 - Part 2 (Video)
Stone Phillips, Jeffrey Dahmer Interview: Segment 2 - Part 3 (Video)
Stone Phillips, Jeffrey Dahmer Interview: Segment 2 - Part 4 (Video)
Stone Phillips, Jeffrey Dahmer Interview: Segment 2 - Part 5 (Video)
Stone Phillips, Jeffrey Dahmer Interview: Segment 2 - Part 6 (Video)

From The New Yorker
Troublemakers: What Pit Bulls Can Teach Us About Profiling by Malcolm Gladwell

MASTERMIND: Warren Buffett

2010-03-21T12:51:00.000-05:00

Learning from Warren Buffett
"While much of Mr. Buffett's methods can't be duplicated - genius is genius, after all - The Snowball usefully emphasizes a few core Buffett imperatives: taking a close look at an investment's intrinsic value, making a brutal evaluation of its risks, and calculating a margin of safety. The book also underscores the importance of learning from failures. The Buffett-Munger approach is to invert, always invert. Turn a situation or problem upside down. Look at it backward. What's in it for the other guy? What happens if all our plans go wrong? Where don't we want to go, and how do you get there? Instead of looking for success, make a list of how to fail instead." - Paul B. Carroll, Why Panic Passes Him By: All You Wanted to Know About Warren Buffett and More, The Wall Street Journal, October 15, 2008

"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently." - Warren Buffett

"The business schools reward difficult, complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective." - Warren Buffett

"In a difficult business, no sooner is one problem solved than another surfaces - never is there just one cockroach in the kitchen." - Warren Buffett

"The investor of today does not profit from yesterday’s growth." - Warren Buffett

"A public opinion poll is no substitute for thought. - Warren Buffett

"Never ask the barber if you need a haircut." - Warren Buffett

"A pin lies in wait for every bubble and when the two eventually meet, a new wave of investors learns some very old lessons." - Warren Buffett

"Coca-Cola was Roberto Goizueta’s painting. It was never finished, and he was never totally satisfied with it. But he had the Sistine Chapel in his head, and he was always working on it." - Warren Buffett

"Our prototype for occupational fervor is the Catholic tailor who used his small savings of many years to finance a pilgrimage to the Vatican. When he returned, his parish held a special meeting to get his first-hand account of the Pope. 'Tell us,' said the eager faithful, 'just what sort of fellow is he?' Our hero wasted no words. 'He’s a forty-four medium.'" - Warren Buffett

"A good managerial record (measured by economic returns) is far more a function of what business boat you get into than it is of how effectively you row. Should you find yourself in a chronically-leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks." - Warren Buffett

"When the whorehouse burns down, even the pretty girls have to run out." - Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, Keeping America Great

Transcript: Keeping America Great with Warren Buffett and Bill Gates (PDF)

From Berckshire Hathaway, Inc.
Warren Buffett's Annual Letter to Shareholders: 1977-2008

ODDS & ENDS: Warriors, Fear, The Bible, Wisdom, Spiritual Evolution, Happiness

2010-03-13T17:21:00.000-06:00

On Warriors
"The most effective way to live is as a warrior. A warrior may worry and think before making any decision, but once he makes it, he goes his way, free from worries or thoughts; there will be a million other decisions still awaiting him. That’s the warrior’s way." - Carlos Castaneda

"The humbleness of a warrior is not the humbleness of the beggar. The warrior lowers his head to no one, but at the same time, he doesn’t permit anyone to lower his head to him. The beggar, on the other hand, falls to his knees at the drop of a hat and scrapes the floor for anyone he deems to be higher; but at the same time, he demands that someone lower than him scrape the floor for him." - Carlos Castaneda

"The Indian did not think of the wolf as a warrior in the same sense as he thought of himself as a warrior, but he respected the wolf’s stamina and stoicism and he encouraged these qualities in himself and others. The wolf, therefore, was incorporated into the ceremonies and symbology of war." - Barry Lopez, Of Wolves and Men

On Fear
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
- Bene Gesserit, Dune

"Never turn your back on fear. It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed." -Hunter S. Thompson

"True terror is to wake up one morning & discover that your high school class is running the country." - Kurt Vonnegut

On the Bible
"And the truth I see is that the Bible is populated with people like you and me. People who are flawed and imperfect. People who have crooked teeth and bad skin. Who have stinky breath and dirty feet. Who don't always know the difference between right and wrong. Who are self-serving and capricious. People caught in the conflict and dichotomy between good and evil, between the sacred and the profane, between beauty and ugliness, and between the bright and the moronic. People who hope - and many believe - that they are made in the very image of God." - Barry Moser

"I think when people have illustrated the Bible, most of them have been devout Christians. Because they're devout Christians they can't separate themselves from the work. They get mired in piety, so they can't see the darkness. They only see the light of salvation. But if you don't have the darkness to contrast with the light, then what are you offering but cotton candy for Sunday school children? I think that some of the images in this Bible will be disturbing to a lot of people. The Bible is a very disturbing book." - Barry Moser

"I have stolen more quotes and thoughts and purely elegant little star-bursts of writing from the Book of Revelation than anything else in the English language - and it is not because I am a biblical scholar, or because of any religious faith, but because I love the wild power of the language and the purity of the madness that governs it and makes it music." - Hunter S. Thompson, Generation of Swine

"I have spent a lot of time searching through the Bible for loopholes." - W.C. Fields

"There's nothing written in the Bible, Old or New testament, that says, 'If you believe in Me, you ain't going to have no troubles.' " - Ray Charles

"I've read the last page of the Bible. It's all going to turn out all right." - Billy Graham

Wade Davis, The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World

Barry Schwartz, Practical Wisdom and the Remoralization of Professional Life

George Vaillant, Spiritual Evolution

From TED
Technology and Faith with Billy Graham (Video)

From The Atlantic
What Makes Us Happy by Joshua Wolf Shenk (Article on George Vaillant)

FOCUS: Life Lessons from the Poker Table

2010-03-09T15:23:00.000-06:00

Life as Poker. Poker as Life.
"Never play poker with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called 'Mom's.' Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own." - Nelson Algren, Algren's Law

"You got to know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away and know when to run. You never count your blessings when you're sittin' at the table, there'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done." - Kenny Rogers, The Gambler

"The poker player learns that sometimes both science and common sense are wrong; that the bumblebee can fly; that, perhaps, one should never trust an expert; that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by those with an academic bent." - David Mamet, Writing in Restaurants

"Poker reveals to the frank observer something else of import - it will teach him about his own nature. Many bad players do not improve because the cannot bear self-knowledge." - David Mamet, Writing in Restaurants

"Limit poker is a science, but no-limit is an art. In limit, you are shooting at a target. In no-limit, the target comes alive and shoots back at you." - Jack Strauss

"Industry executives and analysts often mistakenly talk about strategy as if it were some kind of chess match. But in chess, you have just two opponents, each with identical resources, and with luck playing a minimal role. The real world is much more like a poker game, with multiple players trying to make the best of whatever hand fortune has dealt them." - David Moschella

"It never hurts for potential opponents to think you’re more than a little stupid and can hardly count all the money in your hip pocket, much less hold on to it." - Amarillo Slim

"Look around the table. If you don't see a sucker, get up, because you're the sucker." - Amarillo Slim

"No matter what our character, no matter what our behavior, no matter if we are ugly, unkind, murderers, saints, guilty sinners, foolish, or wise, we can get lucky." - Mario Puzo

"Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died." - Steven Wright

Jim McManus, Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker

Annie Duke, Professional Poker Player, Interview

From USA Today
Know Yourself, Know Your Rival by Annie Duke

From the Harvard Business Review
Are “Great” Companies Just Lucky? by Michael E. Raynor, Mumtaz Ahmed, and Andrew D. H enderson

From Deloitte
The Persistence Project: Discovering the Causes of Superior Corporate Performance

From The Boston Globe
Luck Inc., The 7 Secrets of Really, Really Lucky Companies by Drake Bennett

From The Economist
The Three Habits of Highly Irritating Management Gurus by Schumpeter

MASTERMIND: Clayton Christensen

2010-03-05T22:03:00.000-06:00

The Innovator's Dilemma
"The innovator's dilemma is in his head. Well, first it's in his eyes: not seeing what you don't believe is possible is the first problem; not believing what you're seeing is the second; not being able to imagine it as a threat is the third; not responding to it in time is the fourth." - Clayton Christensen

Different Takes on the Innovator's Dilemma
"The lion does not turn around when a small dog barks." - African Proverb

“As the doctors say of a wasting disease, to start with it is easy to cure but difficult to diagnose. After a time, unless it has been diagnosed and treated at the outset, it becomes easy to diagnose but difficult to cure.” - Machiavelli, The Prince

"Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility." - Pablo Picasso

"The journey is hard, for the secret place where we have always been is overgrown with thorns and thickets of ideas, of fears and defenses, prejudices and repressions." - Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard

"The best swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the things he ought to do, and so the expert is not prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do and it often catches the expert out and ends him on the spot." - Mark Twain

"Genuinely believing that your enemy is irrational, as opposed to pretending to do so for propaganda purposes, will almost certainly ensure that you cannot defeat him. You can only defeat an antagonist whose ways of seeing things you can make sense of. Some of the British People may have believed that the IRA had no goals other than to maim and slaughter, but British Intelligence took a different view. There is nothing irrational, as opposed to morally repulsive, about killing people to achieve your political ends. It is not on the same level as believing that you are Marie Antoinette. If one’s enemy really is metaphysically evil, then the chances of defeating him look rather small. Not even the SAS can stand up to Satan." - Terry Eagleton, Holy Terror

"The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity. Haunted by wrong turns and roads not taken, we pursue images perceived as new but whose providence dates to the dim dramas of childhood, which are themselves but ripples of consequence echoing down the generations. The quotidian demands of life distract from this resonance of images and events, but some of us feel it always." - William Faulkner

"The future enters into us in order to transform itself into us… long before it happens." - Rainer Maria Rilke

“Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it's the only one you have.” - Emil' E Chartier

"The laws of life and death are as they should be. The laws of matter and force are as they should be, and if death ends my consciousness, still is death good. I have had life on those terms, and somewhere, somehow, the course of nature is justified. I shall not be imprisoned in a grave where you are to bury my remains. I shall be diffused in great nature, in the soil, in the air, in the water, in the sunshine, in the hearts of those who love me, in all the living and flowing currents of the world, though I may never again in my entirety be embodied in a single human being. My elements and my forces go back into the original sources out of which they came, and these sources are perennial in this vast, wonderful, divine cosmos." - John Burrough, Accepting the Universe

Clayton Christensen, The Innovator's Dilemma

From MIT World
The Innovator's Prescription: A Disruptive Solution to the Healthcare Crisis, Clayton Christensen (Video)

From The Gartner Fellows
Interview with Clayton Christensen - Part One

Interview with Clayton Christensen - Part Two
.

FOCUS: Tips for Working and Living Fruitfully

2010-02-15T15:50:00.000-06:00

"Yes, a Jedi's strength flows from the Force. But beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression; the dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan’s apprentice." - Yoda

"Daniel-san, must talk. Man walk on road. Walk left side, safe. Walk right side, safe. Walk down middle, sooner or later, get squished just like grape. Same here. You do karate ‘yes,’ or do karate ‘no.’ You do karate ‘guess so,’ you get squished. Understand?" - Mr. Miyagi, The Karate Kid

"It does not do you good to leave a dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - J.R.R. Tolkien

"The man who carries a cat by the tail learns something that can be learned in no other way." - Mark Twain

"There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go." - Tennessee Williams

"Go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both yes and no." - J.R.R. Tolkien

"Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don't want it. What appears bad manners, an ill temper or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone." - Miller Williams.

"He who promotes his own honor at the expense of his neighbor's has no portion in the World to Come." - Rabbi Yehudah ben- Chanina, Jewish World Review, 5/28/09

"For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." - 1 Corinthians 13:12

"Remember the scene in Cat Ballou where a very drunk Lee Marvin goes from unconscious to ranting to triumphant to roaring to weeping defeat and then finally passes out? One of the men watching him says, with real awe, 'I never seen a man get through a day so fast.' Don't let this be you." - Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

"If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones." - John Steinbeck

Matt Weinstein, What Bernie Madoff Couldn't Steal From Me

Jacob Needleman, What Is God?

From FORA TV
On Life, Cheerfulness and Aging by Garrison Keillor (Audio)

From MiamiHerald.com
A Journey into My Colon . . . and Yours by Dave Barry

From Psychology Today Online
Recipe for Maintaining Inspiration: Conversations, Random People, and Big Ideas by David Rock

FOCUS: The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

2010-02-10T14:48:00.000-06:00

Speaking in Public
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want. Everything else is secondary." - Steve Jobs, commencement address, Stanford, June, 2005

“Almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” - Steve Jobs

On Speaking in Public
"It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance. It's the dream afraid of waking that never takes the chance." - Bette Midler, The Rose

"I try to follow the advice that a university president once gave to a prospective commencement speaker. 'Think of yourself as the body at an Irish wake,' he said. 'They need you in order to have the party, but nobody expects you to say much.'" - Anthony Lake

"In seeking wisdom the first step is silence, the second: listening, the third: remembering, the fourth: practicing, the fifth: teaching others." - Rabbi Shlomo ibn-Gavirol

"Speech is the mother, not the handmaid, of thought." - Karl Kraus

"The louder he talks of honor, the faster we count our spoons." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I learn by comparing the speech I was going to give with the one I gave, and then comparing that to the one I'd give if I could do it again." - Larry Wilson

Carmine Gallo, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

View more presentations from Carmine Gallo.

Steve Jobs at Macworld 2008

Steve Jobs, Commencement Address, Stanford University, 2005

From CIO Magazine
Q & A with the Author of "The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs"

ODDS & ENDS: Criminal Minds Quotes, What Makes Us Moral?, Jeffrey Dahmer, Criminal Profiling

2010-02-05T14:58:00.000-06:00

Criminal Minds - Season 1
"All secrets are deep. All secrets become dark. That’s in the nature of secrets." - Cory Doctorow

"The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary. Men alone are quite capable of every wickedness." - Joseph Conrad

"When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself." - William Faulkner

"There are certain clues at a crime scene which by their very nature do not lend themselves to being collected or examined. How's one collect love, rage, hatred, fear...? These are things that we're trained to look for." - James Reese

"Don't forget that I cannot see myself -- that my role is limited to being the one who looks in the mirror." - Jacques Rigaut

"The irrationality of a thing is not an argument of its existence, rather, a condition of it." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"With foxes, we must play the fox." - Thomas Fuller

"There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough, and liked it, never really care for anything else." - Ernest Hemingway

"A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses. It is an idea that possesses the mind." - Robert Oxton Bolton

"Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together." - Eugene Ionesco

"The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone." - Harriet Beecher Stowe

"Evil is always unspectacular and alway human. And shares our bed...and eats at our table." - W.H. Auden

"Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves." - Confucius

"What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world, remains and is immortal." - Albert Pine

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"It is better to be violent if there is violence in our hearts than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence." - Mahatma Gandhi

"A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know." - Diane Arbus

"Other things may change us, but we start and end with family." - Anthony Brandt

"The house does not rest on the ground, but upon a woman." - Mexican proverb

"There are some that only employ words for the purpose of disguising their thoughts." - Voltaire

"We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end, we become disguised to ourselves." - Francois de la Roche Foucald

"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods." - Albert Einstein

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell

Elie Wiesel, What Makes Us Moral?

Stone Phillips, Jeffrey Dahmer Interview: Segment 1 - Part 1

Stone Phillips, Jeffrey Dahmer Interview: Segment 1 - Part 2 (Video)
Stone Phillips, Jeffrey Dahmer Interview: Segment 1 - Part 3 (Video)
Stone Phillips, Jeffrey Dahmer Interview: Segment 1 - Part 4 (Video)
Stone Phillips, Jeffrey Dahmer Interview: Segment 1 - Part 5 (Video)
Stone Phillips, Jeffrey Dahmer Interview: Segment 1 - Part 6 (Video)

From The New Yorker
Dangerous Minds: Criminal Profiling Made Easy by Malcolm Gladwell