Many paths up the mountain...

Can it be any clearer?

DEMOCRATIC
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
Barbra Streisand sings for you.

REPUBLICAN
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation
and go to the grave with the song still in them.

- Henry David Thoreau

Dogs look up to you.
Cats look down at you.
Give me a pig - they look you in the eye!

- Winston Churchill

You'll find most people who reject you for what you do and how you live don't like what they do or how they live themselves.

Some people hate a person who smiles; they assume they've gotten away with something.

The meditation word for today is...smile

I'd really like to discuss this...

Sex is just another form of communication.

If your partner doesn't know how to talk, chances are they don't know how to make love, either.

The meditation word for today is...communication

Depends on your perspective...

The water buffalo hates the tiger with an endless hate,

but the tiger loves the water buffalo.

Pshhhhhtt! glug, glug, glug....ahhhhhhhh!

Beer is better when drunk.

- tag line on a Playa forum

countdown to Playa - 5 days

About books...

"Books to the ceiling, books to the sky.
My piles of books are a mile high.
How I love them!
How I need them!
I’ll have a long beard by the time I read them"
- Arnold Lobel

The meditation word for today is...bibliophilia

The Parable of the Fisherman

The American businessman was at the pier of a small South Pacific Island village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked.

Inside the small boat was a dorrado and several large grouper. The American complimented the Islander on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

The Islander replied, "Only a little while."

The American then asked why didn't he stay out longer and catch more fish?

The Islander said he had enough to support his family's immediate needs.

The American then asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"

The fisherman said, "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a late afternoon nap with my wife, Helia, stroll into the village each evening where I sip rum and play guitar with my friends, I have a full and busy life."

The American scoffed, "I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats.

Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution.

You would need to leave this small fishing village and move to Australia, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise."

The South Seas fisherman asked, "But, how long will this all take?"

To which the American replied, "15 to 20 years."

"But what then?"

The American laughed and said that's the best part. "When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions."

"Millions, really? Then what?"

The American said, "Then you would retire. Move to a small fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a late afternoon nap with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings here you could sip rum and play your guitar with your friends."

Ever get the feeling that you are focusing on the wrong thing?

The timeless dilemma...

[Man and younger woman in passionate embrace]

Girl: "I love you so much!"
Man: "I love YOU!"
Girl: "Mmm, I'm so alive"
Man: "That's the word - ALIVE - I've never been so alive until now!"
Girl: "Until now!"
Man: "I worry about our age difference."
Girl: "What is age? It's a state of mind!"
Man: "That's how I feel!"
Girl": "Who cares that when I hit my sexual peak you'll be seventy?"
Man: "I know! It's Bogey and Bacall!"
Girl: "Who?"

from Bowfinger

I never figured out why she went away,
but I did figure out this -
love is a promise delivered already broken.

- Steve Martin, in Picasso at the Lapin Agile

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

- Aristotle

Oooooo, been there, done that, too!

No matter how good she looks,
some other guy is sick and tired
of putting up with her .

Been there...done that...

Visit xkcd.com for more!

"A man who views the world the same at fifty, as he did at twenty, has wasted thirty years"

- Mohamed Ali

We all need dreams...

Dr. Kelso: "Son, are you an idiot?"

JD: "No sir...I'm a dreamer"

The meditation word for today is...dreamer

When life hands you lemonade...

DJ (noticing Ted pouring vodka into his picnic lemonade): "Thirsty, huh?"

Ted (the loveable loser attorney): "It helps the tears taste less bitter."

The truth about a long dry spell of intimacy..

We are all God's children in the dark...

- Turk on Scrubs

An attitude of gratitude..

“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.”

- Meister Eckhart

Be Thankful
Be thankful that you don’t already have everything you desire,
If you did, what would there be to look forward to?

Be thankful when you don’t know something
For it gives you the opportunity to learn.

Be thankful for the difficult times.
During those times you grow.

Be thankful for your limitations
Because they give you opportunities for improvement.

Be thankful for each new challenge
Because it will build your strength and character.

Be thankful for your mistakes
They will teach you valuable lessons.

Be thankful when you’re tired and weary
Because it means you’ve made a difference.

It is easy to be thankful for the good things.
A life of rich fulfillment comes to those who are
also thankful for the setbacks.

GRATITUDE can turn a negative into a positive.
Find a way to be thankful for your troubles
and they can become your blessings.
~ Author Unknown ~

This may be true (but I have my doubts...)

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

- Bertrand Russell

Deep Thoughts...

Some people are like slinkies...
not really good for anything,
but you can't help laughing when you push them down the stairs

Deep Thoughts...

I usually don't think about the future....

Let's face it, you can't predict what's going to happen.

But sometimes, the thing you didn't expect is what you wanted after all.

Maybe the best thing to do is to stop trying to figure out where you're going...

and just enjoy where you are at.

- J.D. on Scrubs

Live the life you love,

Love the life you live,

Don't be a poser.

The artist's lament...

If you're not appearing, you're disappearing

- Art Blakey

What about making the complicated complicated?

Making the simple complicated is commonplace;

Making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity

- Charles Mingus

On public speaking...

"One of the things I learned about in the formative stages of my career was public speaking. I learned by watching lots of presentations, and one thing I figured out early on is that most CFO-level speakers — particularly CEOs, particularly male CEOs—really suck as speakers. They're boring; they're long; they wander around. I saw speech after speech, and I discovered that if there's anything worse than a speaker who sucks, it's a speaker who sucks and you have no idea how much longer he or she is going to suck. That's a horrible feeling.

To prevent you from getting that feeling, I've developed a Top 10 format. All of my speeches are in Top 10 format, because if you think I suck, I at least want you to be able to track my progress through the speech so that you know approximately know how much longer I'm going to suck.

- Guy Kawasaki

I Dreamed...

I dreamed she'd be born beautiful and healthy.
She was.

I dreamed she'd tell me that she loves me.
She tells me every day.

I dreamed she'd be bright and funny.
She is - her humor is wonderful.

I dreamed she'd jump a rope, catch a ball and tease her little brother.
She does and her brother loves it.

I dreamed she'd have big birthday parties, with friends and cake and presents.
She's had fourteen.

I dreamed she'd one day get on a bus and go to school.
She did it yesterday - my heart full of love and my eyes full of tears.

I dreamed she'd make us proud.
She has and she's inspired us.

Katie has Down Syndrome.

I never dreamed that.

- adapted from a poem by Amy W. Opalk

Prayer to Practice the Golden Rule

May I be an enemy to no one and the friend of what abides eternally.
May I never quarrel with those nearest me, and be reconciled quickly if I should.
May I never plot evil against others, and if anyone plot evil against me, may I escape unharmed and without the need to hurt anyone else.
May I love, seek and attain only what is good.
May I desire happiness for all and harbor envy for none.
May I never find joy in the misfortune of one who has wronged me.
May I never wait for the rebuke of others, but always rebuke myself until I make reparation.
May I gain no victory that harms me or my opponent.
May I reconcile friends who are mad at each other.
May I, insofar as I can, give all necessary help to my friends and to all who are in need.
May I never fail a friend in trouble.
May I be able to soften the pain of the
grief stricken and give them comforting words.
May I respect myself.
May I always maintain control of my emotions.
May I habituate myself to be gentle, and
never angry with others because of circumstances.
May I never discuss the wicked or what they have done, but know good people and follow in their footsteps.

- Eusebius of Caesarea

The complexity of relationships...

"I used to sit around and wonder why others weren't trying to destroy each other, like we were.

"And here it turns out that the answer is pretty simple...they weren't unhappy...we were."

Dr Cox, on Scrubs, talking about his failed marriage.

Why read the Classics?

"Somebody who reads only newspapers and at best the books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely nearsighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else. And what a person thinks on his own without being stimulated by the thoughts and experiences of other people is even in the best case rather paltry and monotonous.

"There are only a few enlightened people with a lucid mind and style and with good taste within a century. What has been preserved of their work belongs among the most precious possessions of mankind.

"Nothing is more needed than to overcome the modernist’s snobbishness."

- Albert Einstein

Nintendo Surgeon

I never had a Nintendo, but I totally get this! Visit xkcd.com for more!

The difference...

These great comics are from xkcd.com . (Warning! Don't ingest fluids while reading them...you may spew onto you monitor!)

Max Roach and the Wonder Years...

When I was in 3th or 4th grade, I got a record player for Christmas. It was made of plastic and had a lid that could close, with a built-in handle so you could haul it around. I thought it was so cool.

I was very interesting in the drums (just waiting for 5th grade band) and my dad gave me a record of a drum battle between Buddy Rich and Max Roach....Rich vs. Roach - Sing Sing Sing (with a Swing).

The liner notes said that Buddy was on one channel and Max was on the other...I didn't know what they were talking about, and the fact that my record player was mono didn't help matters!

The album cover had them facing each other sitting on their drum kits, beads of sweat on their brows. I stared at that cover for hours, looking at the tilt of their drums and the height of their cymbals. It was the first time I had seen a set of drums!

A digression...I had earlier (maybe even that year) received a snare drum for selling Christmas cards...plastic sparkle! with a paper head(!) and plastic rims(!), and my friend and I had been listening to a 45 of the Monkees I'm a Believer. I looked at that single drum, and heard all the different drum sounds on the record and I wondered, "How do they get all those sounds from one little drum?" We decided that they get different sounds by hitting different parts of the head and also by throwing the snare strainer on and off! [ I learned a few years back that Hal Blaine played drums on that tune, and he was the master at oddball percussion sounds...I still can't make out a traditional rock and roll beat on I'm a Believer.

So imagine my surprise when I saw that album cover and these guys had all sorts of drums and shiny things ("What are these, Dad?" "They're called cymbals, Son."). No wonder they could make all those different drum sounds!

The album had a melted spot near the spindle hole...Dad said that, during a party (before the kids came along), he was changing records, and placed the album on the nearest flat space - the top of a lamp shade! He'd forgotten about it (could alcohol been involved?....nah!) and the heat from the light bulb had softened the vinyl and it had drooped causing a warp in the record that got progressively worse as the needle moved toward the center of the record. So only the first couple of songs on either side were listenable (listenable?).

My dad liked Buddy Rich, so I liked Buddy Rich, and since this was a battle, I rooted for Buddy Rich. Although I couldn't tell the left channel from the right channel, the liner notes said that Buddy took the first solo on Sing, Sing, Sing (with a swing), so I mentally kept track of the solos, and cheered for Buddy when I thought it was him playing. After a while I felt sorry for Max Roach and cheered for him, too, but I secretly wanted Buddy to win.

I must have listened to that warped record about a thousand times...for a good while, that album and the Monkees 45 were all I had to play on the record player. Maybe because of that, I've always had a soft spot for Max Roach. Several years ago, I got into Clifford Brown, and Max was a big part of that sound.

So I was saddened to hear of his passing. I think I'll go home and listen to some bebop with Max tonight. And maybe I'll poke around the iTunes store and see if Rich vs.. Roach is still available.

Mundane vs. Virulent Ignorance

This concept taken from a speech I recently saw on CSpan, given by Ed Brayton:

"In my speech at YearlyKos I'm going to address the problem of virulent ignorance, which is distinguishable from the sort of mundane ignorance that we all have about a great many subjects. Mundane ignorance is a mere lack of knowledge; we are all ignorant of far more subjects than we are knowledgeable of. Ask me about how to fix a car or about the history of choral music in Eastern Europe and I'm as clueless as can be.

"But because I know that I'm ignorant about those subjects, if someone were to ask my opinions about them I would say, "I'm the wrong person to ask, I don't know anything about it." Ask me whether one European soccer team plays better defense than another and I'm not even going to attempt an answer; I simply don't know anything about it and wouldn't be able to distinguish good defense from bad defense even if I spent the next 72 hours watching soccer games. That's mundane ignorance.

"Virulent ignorance, on the other hand, is when someone thinks they know something about a subject when they don't. Virulent ignorance is when someone has absorbed a set of platitudes or claims that they presume to be true without any real ability to evaluate whether they are or not. This type of ignorance is the brass ring of politics, the thing that all political movements strive to inculcate in as many people as possible.

"A politician or a political movement is most successful when they are able to replace the mundane ignorance of a large group of people with a set of pre-formed conclusions that they can offer as opinions without bothering to go through any rational process to reach those conclusions. This gives their followers a set of responses that they presume to be true and gives them the illusion of knowledge. It's what makes people offer opinions to poll takers on subjects that they know virtually nothing about.

The Allotment...

For the truth is that I already know as much about my fate as I need to know. The day will come when I will die. So the only matter of consequence before me is what I will do with my allotted time. I can remain on shore, paralyzed with fear, or I can raise my sails and dip and soar in the breeze.

- Richard Bode

The meditation phrase for today is...allotted time

The more things change...

"I think for us to get American military personnel involved in a civil war inside Iraq would literally be a quagmire. Once we got to Baghdad, what would we do? Who would we put in power? What kind of government? Would it be a Sunni government, a Shia government, a Kurdish government?

"Would it be secular, along the lines of the Baath party? Would it be fundamentalist Islamic?

"I do not think the United States wants to have U.S. military forces accept casualties and accept responsibility of trying to govern Iraq. It makes no sense at all."

Dick Cheney (then defense secretary in the first Bush administration), March 1991, when was asked on ABC-TV why Operation Desert Storm had not gone all the way to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

You can't lay on the beach and drink rum all day...

...if you don't start in the morning!

Some things never change...

Q: How many Republicans does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Nobody knows! They won't release that information!

Q: How many Democrats does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: They never change anything. They just cry over the broken bulb!

Yikes!!!

A man meets a beautiful woman at a bar. At the end of the evening, they go up to her apartment.

After a long night of lovemaking, he notices a photo of another man on her nightstand by the bed.

He begins to worry.. "Is this your husband?" he nervously asks.

"No, silly," she replies, snuggling up to him.

"Your boyfriend, then?" he continues.

"No, not at all," she says, nibbling away at his ear.

"Is it your dad or your brother?" he inquires, hoping to be reassured.

"No, no, no! You are so hot when you're jealous!" she answers.

"Well, who in the hell is he, then?" he demands.

"That's me before my surgery."

Don't give up your day job!

Question:
What is the difference between a Blues musician and a Jazz musician?

Answer:
A Blues musician plays 3 chords in front of 1000 people.

A Jazz musician plays 1000 chords in front of 3 people.

The Golden Rule of Negotiation

Experienced negotiator Eric Sink says there's only one thing you need to know about effective negotiation, whether it's for a lower car price or a higher salary:

In negotiation, the one thing that really strengthens your position is the ability to walk away from the deal.

Negotiating from a position of real need is a bad, bad situation. You are almost certainly going to lose. The other party will push until they find your threshold of pain.

The meditation word for today is...negotiation

How to leave a voice mail

Very few people of any age leave good voicemails. The purpose of a voicemail is to make progress towards along a continuum whose end is getting what you want. A long voice mail isn’t going to zip you along to the end point of this decision.

A good model is to think of a voicemail as an oral version of a compelling five-sentence email; the optimal length of a voice mail is fifteen seconds.

Two power tips:

First, slowly say your telephone number once at the beginning of your message and again at the end. You don’t want to make people playback your message to get your phone number, and if either of you are using Cingular, you may not hear all the digits.
Second (and this applies to email too), always make progress. Never leave a voicemail or send an email that says, “Call me back, and I’ll tell you what time we can meet.” Just say, “Tuesday, 10:00 am, at your office.

How to run a meeting

First you need to understand that the primary purpose of a business meeting is to make a decision. It is not to share experiences or feel warm and fuzzy.

With that in mind, here are five key points to learn about running a meeting:

Start on time even if everyone isn’t there because they will be next time;
Invite the fewest people possible to the meeting;
Set an agenda for exactly what’s going to happen at the meeting;
End on time so that everyone focuses on the pertinent issues;
Send an email to all participants that confirms decisions reviews action items.

There are more power tips for running good meetings, but if you do these five, you’re ahead of 90 percent of the world.

The Tetrad Concept

I came across an interesting idea recently, called the tetrad concept, from a book called "The Global Village" by Marshall Macluhan. Here's a link to quick explanation:

http://www.anthonyhempell.com/papers/tetrad/concept.html

Macluhan's idea is that every artifact (or technology) goes though four phases, or produces four effects:

it enhances something
it obsolesces something
it brings back something that was obsolete
and lastly, when pushed to it's limits it produces it opposite.

Money is a typical example used to explain the tetrad concept. It enhances speed of transaction, obsolesces barter, brings back excessive consumption, and pushed to its limits becomes electronic transfer and credit, or non-money.

Or at least that's how this example is typically given. I'm not sure excessive consumption has ever been obsolete in human history, so I'm not sure how it could have been brought back. And in general I find the third dynamic of the tetrad, bringing back something that was obsolete, to be the most difficult to apply.

But if you want a picture of what lies ahead for any technology, the tetrad concept is a good place to start.

Drop by drop an ocean is formed...

As the old man walked the beach at dawn, he noticed a young man ahead of him picking up starfish and flinging them into the sea. Finally catching up with the youth, he asked him why he was doing this. The answer was that the stranded starfish would die if left until the morning sun.

"But the beach goes on for miles and there are millions of starfish," countered the other. "How can your effort make any difference?"

The young man looked at the starfish in his hand and then threw it to safety in the waves. "It makes a difference to this one," he said."

Choosing a wife...

A man wanted to get married. He was having trouble choosing among three likely candidates. He gives each woman a present of $5,000 and watches to see what they do with the money.

The first does a total make over. She goes to a fancy beauty salon gets her hair done, new make up and buys several new outfits and dresses up very nicely for the man. She tells him that she has done this to be more attractive for him because she loves him so much.

The man was impressed.

The second goes shopping to buy the man gifts. She gets him a new set of golf clubs, some new gizmos for his computer, and some expensive clothes. As she presents these gifts, she tells him that she has spent all the money on him because she loves him so much.

Again, the man is impressed.

The third invests the money in the stock market. She earns several times the $5,000. She gives him back his $5000 and reinvests the remainder in a joint account. She tells him that she wants to save for their future because she loves him so much.

Obviously, the man was impressed.

The man thought for a long time about what each woman had done with the money he'd given her.

Then he married the one with the biggest boobs.

Clarke's Laws

Arthur C. Clarke formulated the following three "laws" of prediction:

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Endurance...

Those who do not create the future they want,
Must endure the future they get.
- Draper L. Kauffman, Jr.

(I know that I've posted this before, but it needs to be restated.)

Not beer and chicks?

Intelligence plus character -

That is the goal of true education.

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Ever know one of these guys?

In my neighborhood, there was a fellow who had this unnerving habit of acting so...damn...happy.

Over time, though, I kept watching this cheery guy, and nothing horrible ever happened to him. He got a few promotions; his kids grew up and went to good schools; he took fabulous second and third honeymoons with his wife. In fact, he just kept on acting happy. And the weird thing is, I think he knew a secret: If you act happy, you'll be happy.

- from an editorial in Maxim

From the 43Folders Web Site...

So how does Getting Things Done work?

This is a really summarized version, but here it is, PowerPoint-style:

identify all the stuff in your life that isn’t in the right place (close all open loops)
get rid of the stuff that isn’t yours or you don’t need right now
create a right place that you trust and that supports your working style and values
put your stuff in the right place, consistently
do your stuff in a way that honors your time, your energy, and the context of any given moment
iterate and refactor mercilessly

So, basically, you make your stuff into real, actionable items or things you can just get rid of. Everything you keep has a clear reason for being in your life at any given moment—both now and well into the future. This gives you an amazing kind of confidence that a) nothing gets lost and b) you always understand what’s on or off your plate.

Reducing the bookshelf clutter...

Questions to ask yourself when you finish reading a book:

Is this a reference book (dictionary, thesaurus, parenting guide, etc.) that I will refer to often? Will it contain accurate content for at least a year? Is the reference book better and more useful to me in printed form than a digital version that I can access from my computer?
Is this one of my favorite books? Will I honestly re-read it again at several times in the next few years?
Is this book signed by the author and/or dedicated to me? Am I acknowledged by name in the author’s acknowledgment section?
Is this a children’s book for my child that she will ask me to re-read to her again tomorrow night? Has my child decided that this book is more important than vegetables?
If I keep this book, are there two books (or more) that I can get rid of when I put this on the shelf?

If you answered “yes” to the relevant questions above, keep the book. Otherwise, get rid of it by either passing it along to a friend or family member, selling it to a used book store, or donating it to a charity or a local school or public library.

From unclutterer.com

Hang, in there, man...

My project is a big, steaming pile of failure... -Dilbert

The meditation word for today is...resilience.

An Ojibawa koan

Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while a great wind carries me across the sky.

The meditation phrase for today is...resilience

When it all comes down to it...

I am a man who has consciously decided to become unconscious.
- Bret

The meditation word for today is...detachment

Hey! If the government says it, it must be true!

Pesticide means any substance or mixture of substances intended for preventing, destroying, repelling, or mitigating any pest [40 CFR 152.3].

An organism is a pest under circumstances that make it deleterious to man or the environment if it is "any vertebrate animal other than man" [40 CFR 152.5].

This regulation would logically include Democrats.