Archive for Wisdom
December 21, 2007
Rethinking The Oscar Yet?
6:39 pm | News | Wisdom | Comments: 5
The school system of England has declared Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” to be propaganda and is shown in school with a warning message in front of it making viewers aware of this fact. Still, the self-serving and hypocritical Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided that the film warranted its highest honor, which actually (prior to this past year) used to mean something. On top of that, the self-serving and hypocritical Norwegian Nobel Institute decided to award Gore its highest honor for the same reasons and with the same effect.
I stick to my belief that think what you will about man-made global warming, you can’t prove that it’s a fact. People trumpeting the “consensus of the scientific community” are full of crap, and now we have (more) proof of this fact. I refer you to a stunning new report by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, which shatters the myth that there is any kind of agreement within the scientific community about this issue. Good read.
December 12, 2006
Paths Crossing
11:45 pm | My Life | Wisdom | Comments: 5
I had some great advice from a retired Marine colonel on Thanksgiving day. It basically amounted to this: if you want to do something, do it now. If you need to get anything out of the way first, start now. The advice itself seems quite obvious, but it’s something that I personally need to hear pretty often. In my current state of not really knowing what I want to do in life as far as career is concerned, it’s become apparent that I have to pick something and go for it. Whether it’s technology, military, music, or something completely different, the key is to pick one and go. That’s what the Bible means by “man devises his way”. Included in that thought is more than just laying plans; executing those plans is also necessary. The Lord promises to direct our steps; however, we must take those first steps ourselves.
September 25, 2006
So That’s What the Poets Meant
4:02 pm | My Life | Wisdom | Comments: 5
Life is a constant stream of decisions. These range in significance from the small (should I write a weblog post today?) to the large (to which pipe on the fuel filter should I connect this tube?). The ability to make good decisions will greatly help you in life, and if you can make them quickly you’ll really be able to get a leg up on the pile.
Decisiveness and Indecisiveness gets talked about alot in our culture. The fact is that there are many people out there of the indecisive variety, many of them young adults. Perhaps my least favorite leisure-time activity is to follow somebody into a movie rental place only to trudge up and down the aisles at a snail’s pace, waiting for whoever I’m with (Dude A) to decide what they want to see, only to decide (after 30 minutes) that they cannot decide on what movie to watch. The problem with such a decision is that you’re now at an impasse. Stage 2 in this scenario is when the decisive (or irritated) dude (Dude B) starts throwing out suggestions, standing around in a very impatient way, and threatening Dude A with death. This never helps, because it’s not getting at the root problem: the inability of Dude A to come to a full understanding of the nature of the “just choose one” concept. At this point, the 2 recourses at Dude B’s disposal are 1) follow through on the death threats immediately, or 2) find an acceptable film, rent it, and go sit in the car. Another dynamic here is that movie rental places are 99% crap these days and only the most discerning and astute filmanschauers can pick out the wheat from the chaff.
In the interest of shortening long stories, my advice to people young and old is to make decisions, make right decisions, and make them quickly.
June 10, 2006
I’ve Looked at Life from Both Sides Now
11:28 am | SIO | Weblogging | Wisdom | Comments: 7
Allow me to be the first to wish SIO a very happy second birthday. The festivities this year are somewhat subdued in comparison with last year, but the party hat is back! This past year has brought many moments of various emotional extremity: joy, love, melancholyitude, and sheer terror. College has passed; the long, dark winter of work awaits me. The lines go very deep now; I always try to think 12-15 moves ahead. Many, many moves are to be made in the near future, all leading to the ultimate goal. Not killing kings and queens and bishops, though that might seem desirable for the moment. What’s the goal, you ask. Isn’t that the question mankind has been asking since we all became enemies of God? I think it is, though I have the answer. Tell me, Mr. Deadman, do you have the answer? Repent and believe! Glorify God and enjoy him forever. Life isn’t so complicated when you look at it though the lenses of eternity. If this is a recurring theme in my weblog posts, then I have been successful. Many happy returns.
April 26, 2006
The Wisdom of George S. Patton, Jr.
12:04 pm | War | Wisdom | Comments: 3
“Anyone in any walk of life who is content with mediocrity is un-true to himself and to American tradition.”
“Discipline must a habit so ingrained that it is stronger than the excitement of battle or the fear of death.”
“Any soldier who surrenders with arms in his hands is not doing his duty to his country and is selling himself short because the living conditions of the Prisoner of War are extremely bad.”
“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.”
“There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to change. It is to so use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wounds, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum time.”
“A pint of sweat saves a gallon of blood.”
“Catch the enemy by the nose with fire and kick him in the pants with fire emplaced through movement.”
“All human beings have an innate resistance to obedience. Discpline removes this resistance and, by constant repetition, makes obedience habitual and subconscious.”
“Our mortars and our artillery are superb weapons when they are firing. When silent, they are junk–see that they fire!”
“No bastard ever won a war by dieing for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country.”
November 15, 2005
Walking In a Winter Wonderland
4:55 pm | Culture | Wisdom | Comments: 32
Normally, I avoid addressing topics that everybody else in the Webrogosphere (and other spheres) is currently addressing. I’m making an exception today because it’s something that must be dealt with. I was nearly beside myself with irritation today when I walked into the 4 Mile Valueland greeted by “Jingle Bells” blaring over the speaker system, followed by a nice female voice announcing the evil intention of the radio station involved to play continuos Christmas music, presumably until immediately after Christmas.
What’s wrong with this picture? It’s only November 15; Thanksgiving is still a full week away. It’s not a Winter Wonderland! It’s rainy, cloudy, cold, and crappy outside! There are no bells to be jingled as only a the most dedicated and hardcore rubes would dare to be out in a freaking sleigh at this time of year. I don’t want to hear that Dean Martin will be home for Christmas. I don’t like chestnuts (certainly not those of the roasted variety). Does anybody care that SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN? OH WOW SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN, GUYS! I have news, clowns. Santa Claus ISN’T coming to town. Maybe if he actually was he could go bar-hopping with Dean Martin on the big day and pick up some chicks, or maybe roast some reindeer over an open hall decked with jingle bells. EVERYBODY KNOWS they’ll both be home for Christmas, if only in the dreams of soul-less hippies that actually like this brand of trash music.
November 5, 2005
Flashback
1:17 pm | Sport | Wisdom | Comments: 19
On this day in 1935, Parker Brothers launched the game of Monopoly. Just about everybody at some stage in their life has played this game. Most people have no clue how to play it, either. I thought I would talk some Monopoly strategy here for you folks who constantly find yourself landing on your buddy’s Hotel-festooned Pennsylvania Avenue with only 150 bucks left to your sorry name.
Monopoly, like other great games such as Risk, is at its core a game of chance. You could be the greatest player in the world’s history and land on nothing but railroads and utilities until all legitimate properties are owned by other players, perhaps managing to scrape together the light blues and maybe Marvin Gardens. The difference between a winner and a loser in Monopoly many times will be how the dice rolls, but often the outcome of the game can be decided by effective decision-making.
The first decision you should make is to buy every property you land on, EXCEPT the railroads and utilities. I should stress this. You will NEVER win the game by owning railroads and utilites. Feel free to pick them up after you’ve made some decent purchases, but remember you’ll only be throwing them around as leverage in deals for real properties later on. Just save your money in case you land on something useful.
Obviously, the idea is to get sets and build on them. At the stage in the game where people are beginning to compile sets, the trade-making process will kick into high gear. Let’s talk about trades for a bit. What makes a valuable trade? Not the original or mortgage cost of the property, nor is it the amount of cash involved; the value of a trade comes in whether or not you or your opponent will achieve a set as a result of the trade. If both of you will benefit in this manner from the trade, you can then start looking at property values and cash. This is a point in the game where everybody will gang up on the perceived leader and chant that nobody should trade with him without such a trade being stacked ridiculously in favor of whoever isn’t the perceived leader. This is not how the game works, people. If you just simply stonewall any attempt to allow the game to progress to the next stage, the game becomes very dull. This is also the part where would-be economists start their mantra about supply-and-demand, a concept which doesn’t rationally apply to Monopoly because there’s only one of everything, which means everything is essentially equally available, in that everything is equally unavailable. But I digress.
The game goes in stages. First stage is buying, second stage is bargaining, third stage is building. The building stage is where you really need to balance your cash on hand and your developments, because what good are 3 hotels on the oranges when you can’t even pay the $50 rent for Boardwalk (not that anybody ever lands on Boardwalk - we’ll talk about that later). Remember that buildings can only be sold back to the bank at half-price, so you will lose 50% of an investment if you carelessly sink all your money into it. That being said, the sooner you can get your properties developed the better.
And that’s it, really. Buy good properties, make good bargains, and build safely and swiftly. So what are good properties? My favorite set is the oranges. I can’t explain why, but they always seem to get me tons of cash. I can also often be found developing the purples (Mediterranean and Baltic), which for $500 will have hotels and will sap opponents of their Go money. Never - unless you find yourself with no alternative, or with an obscene abundance of cash available to you - develop Boardwalk and Parkplace. As for the rest, it all depends on what your savings will allow.
Finally, remember those house rules you always played with? Forget about them. Most notably a Free Parking lottery. I usually play with the Free Parking lottery because everybody else wants to, but it has the potential (which is almost always realized at some point) to completely throw off the balance of the game. Some folks also play with 100% building sell-back return; this encourages rash development decisions as you can always just sell it off if you need the money. For a real game of Monopoly, play the real game. Oh, and don’t cheat.
November 2, 2005
Weblogging Analysis
12:25 pm | Weblogging | Wisdom | Comments: 16
My would-be evil genius of a sister Evie reminded me of one of my father’s most oft-repeated sayings of his father, which goes as follows:
“Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.”
This is a great rule for weblogs. Just replace “minds” in the statement with “weblogs” (and “small” with the word “crappy”), and badda-boom badda-bing betty-boop you have yourself a great way of determining how good a weblog is. You might disagree. And I might want a million bucks. So what?
Here’s why discussing ideas is preferable to discussing people and events. It stretches your mind. A monkey with a typewriter will eventually be able to type the words “Today is Halloween”, but he will not be able to tell you the origin of All Hallows’ Eve and why he thinks that the day we know as Halloween is perfectly ridiculous, and furthermore that he thinks it to be terribly amusing how people go around in silly costumes making fools of themselves (although, if you put enough monkeys in a room with typewriters, eventually they will compose a treatise much to that effect).
This is not to say that it’s wrong or in bad taste to talk about events and people. In fact, a vast amount of intellectual content is based on events and people. The intent of the saying is to relate that it is alway helpful to go beyond events or people and think about the meaning, significance, context, ramifications, and just random ideas relevant to the topic. It’s also alot more interesting.
October 31, 2005
Three Tests, or are they?
3:27 pm | Thoughts | Wisdom | Comments: 10
Ever since I was a mere lad, my dad has been quoting age-old sayings of wisdom which were quoted to him by his father. These little sayings are repeated in the hopes of building a little character here and there among the offspring. Here are some good examples:
“My father used to say, always observe the Indian’s prayer: Oh Great Spirit, never let me criticize a man until I have walked a mile in his moccasins.”
“My father used to say, if you can’t bump, don’t knock.”
“My father used to say, there are red lights as well as green along the road of life.”
He is often found quoting the Three Tests, which you’re supposed to apply to something you want to say - before you say it. The Three Tests are as follows: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary? If something passes the tests, you can jolly well go ahead and say it. I take issue with the concept of the three tests. Not that any are terribly irrelevant or excessive, but rather that not all three have equal bearing on whether or not you should say things.
It seems to me that necessity comes first. If it is necessary for you to say something, you should say it, whether it’s kind or true, or not. It’s possible to argue about what your criteria for necessity are, but a necessary thing is just that - necessary. Since reporting dictionary definitions of words makes one look studious, I shall report to you that the definition of the word necessary is along the lines of “absolutely essential”, or “indispensible”, depending on which dictionary you read.
The Three Tests are great for non-critical thinkers. You’ll end up refraining from saying alot of silly and possibly hurtful things. However, I would propose the “Two-Tests-Which-If-You-Pass-The-First-Test-Becomes-Three-Tests”, where you ask yourself, is it necessary? If so, you say it. If not, you then determine if it is both true and kind, and if it is you may then proceed to say whatever it is you had on your mind at the time. Alternatively, you can just simply blitherblather about whatever pops up and hope for the best.
September 6, 2005
Balance
11:18 pm | Thoughts | Wisdom | Comments: 17
Today I pulled up behind a vehicle at a red light the driver of which, like myself, was turning left. This, however, was no ordinary vehicle. My attention was drawn immediately to the turn signal, blinking at the precise tempo of my own. I switched mine on and off a few times, and shortly achieved the great goal - perfectly synchronized turn signals. Rarely will you ever experience this in the world. It seems that there is almost complete heterogeneity of turn signal tempos. Interestingly, the vehicle in question was of a completely different make and model of my own. Perhaps the irony is fitting.
