Chase Your Dreams With Caution

Shakespearean actress Inga Tidblad joined us on this day in 1901.

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George Carlin's second wife said that when he was performing he had a crystal in his pocket so that he could draw from its strength. That sounds like the kind of New-Agey pseudo-psycho horseshit that would be made fun of by none other than George Carlin.

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Dave Chappelle doesn't think that George Carlin is funny. He thinks that he just worked out funny routines but that he's not a funny guy. That blew my mind. I think he's right.

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Apparently there's a battle over whether to count undated PA Republican governor ballots. The answer is simple. The point of an election is to discern the will of the voter, and that supersedes any technicality. That benefits one candidate and not the other, which might almost seem unfair, but it benefits the candidate more voters wanted to win.

May 29, 2022

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Movie stars.

May 29, 2019

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On this day in 1965, the Phillies 3B, Dick Allen, hit a 529ft home run over the left field roof of Connie Mack Stadium. WOW!

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Stevie Berryman- "Genuinely smart people look for answers from people who are smarter than themselves. Only ignorant people believe that their guess is as good as anyone else's."

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Daniel Boone's Great-Great-Great Nephew, Dennis Hopper left us on this day in 2010. Frank Booth in Blue Velvet, there's not a better performance in film history.

Frank Booth : Hey you wanna go for a ride?

Jeffrey Beaumont : No thanks.

Frank Booth : No thanks? What does that mean?

Jeffrey Beaumont : I don't wanna go.

Frank Booth : Go where?

Jeffrey Beaumont : For a ride.

Frank Booth : A ride! Now that's a good idea!

But did he really leave us?

https://youtu.be/bJtGCvKpEWM

If he never acted, he would be known as a photographer. Here's an article on his photograph, Double Standard.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-dennis-hopper-photograph-that-caught-los-angeles

Today:

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If I had to pick one person who I was surprised to see turn up in the Friends Reunion... definitely Malala.

May 29, 2021

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Mike Schmidt's Retirement Speech from this day in 1989

"I could ask the Phillies to keep me on to add to my statistics, but my love for the game won't let me do that." 

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Other notable birthdays- Josef von Sternberg (1894), Bob Hope (1903), John Hinckley Jr. (1955)

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Other notable deathdays- Mary Pickford (1979), Romy Schneider (1982), Barry Goldwater (1998), Doc Watson (2012)

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The pharmacist John Pemberton placed his first advertisement for Coca-Cola on this day in 1886.

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The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on this day in 2001 that the disabled golfer Casey Martin can use a cart to ride in tournaments.

George Carlin on golf: 

http://georgedpcarlin.blogspot.com/2012/03/george-carlin-on-golf.html

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16 Cognitive Distortions, Positive Psychology, by Courtney Ackerman

8. Emotional Reasoning

This may be one of the most surprising distortions to many readers, and it is also one of the most important to identify and address. The logic behind this distortion is not surprising to most people; rather, it is the realization that virtually all of us have bought into this distortion at one time or another.

Emotional reasoning refers to the acceptance of one’s emotions as fact. It can be described as “I feel it, therefore it must be true.” Just because we feel something doesn’t mean it is true; for example, we may become jealous and think our partner has feelings for someone else, but that doesn’t make it true. Of course, we know it isn’t reasonable to take our feelings as fact, but it is a common distortion nonetheless.

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We got a quote for central air conditioning maybe 10 years ago... about $10,000. Too much! I figured if we lived here 20 years, that would be the equivalent of me getting paid $500 per year to put our window units in and then take them out. If it takes an hour each time, it's like I'm getting paid $250/hr for the work. Pretty good, but there's one big problem- this year it became clear that one of these years this will kill me.

May 28, 2020

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Gangs of people in films through the decades.

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Woody Allen- "There's nothing wrong with science. Between air conditioning and the pope, I'll take air conditioning."

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Kelly Oxford- I judge a book by it's cover when the cover is a picture worth 1000 words.

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Gretel Clementine Athena Kreider- kind to animals.

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More proof of the decline of western civilization- I love going to the movies, and nearly halfway through the year there's been no reason to see a single one. Did I miss something?

May 29, 2010

*Quaint that THAT was proof of the decline!

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Sam Harris- "No rational atheist is dogmatically opposed to believing in God. It’s just that the evidence for His existence is terrible. It would be trivially easy, in fact, for an omniscient Being to write (or inspire) a book that would remove all doubt about Him. Neither the Bible nor the Qur’an is that sort of book. For instance, if the Old Testament contained a single chapter that resolved the deepest questions of 21st century science–rather than merely telling us how to sacrifice goats and when to stone our daughters to death–I, too, would be a believer."

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Ricky Gervais- "It’s almost as if the Bible was written by racist, sexist, homophobic, violent, sexually frustrated men, instead of a loving God. Weird."

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"If God needs money, why doesn’t he just write another Bible? The first one sold pretty well." -Homer Simpson

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So strange to think that in the present we can see something from 13 billion years ago. I guess that means that 13 billion years from now someone could look and see us.

May 29, 2016

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Washington Post- The fake news is coming from inside the White House

Excellent article hitting several nails on the head:

-When leaks (unnamed sources) are good for Trump, leaking is fine.

-When they are bad for Trump he goes ballistic.

-Bad news for Trump, "fake news." Good news for Trump, "news."

-He wants us to believe contradictory things- the leakers need to be caught, and the leaks are fake news.

-He's been caught in literally hundreds of lies, he's the fake news.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/05/29/the-fake-news-comes-from-within-the-white-house

May 29, 2017

Postscript- Fascinating to see all of the blind being open on this joker. Perfectly obvious in retrospect, but in the moment we had to make sense of all this garbage. A lot of it boils down to- He just spouts shit off. There's no more to it, or less to it, than that.

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From a The Hill article on conservative victimhood.

"Most masks and lockdown orders are primarily a way to protect others, not just yourself — which you would think would be exactly in line with purported conservative values of traditional masculinity. But facts have never stood in the way of the conservative persecution complex. Nothing gets their blood flowing like playing martyr before imaginary liberal tyranny. Casting oneself as Anne Frank for having to wear a two-dollar cloth mask at Walmart during the worst pandemic in a century would be a stretch for most people in the world, but not American movement conservatives."

May 29, 2020

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Einstein proved relativity on purely theoretical grounds. Years later, Arthur Eddington and Andrew Claude de la Cherois Crommelin, proved it empirically by taking a boat out into the ocean during a solar eclipse and measuring the light as the moon blocked it. That is the height of science, and it's a feat that is not performed by religion. You come up with a hypothesis, you prove it, you test it, and it works. Today is the anniversary of that experiment which took place in 1919. 

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Sherpa Tenzing Norgay what's the first person to reach the top of Mount Everest on this day in 1953, which happened to be his 39th birthday. Edmund Hillary tagged along.

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The Miss Sarajevo beauty pageant was held in war-torn Sarajevo on this day in 1993, drawing global attention to the plight of its citizens.

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Essayist, G. K. Chesterton, was born on this day in 1874.

"There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less."

He stole that from Thoreau, how about another?

"Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out."

I think he stole that too. 

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The sumo wrestler, Taihō Kōki, was born on this day in 1940. He was the 48th Yokozuna and the youngest ever at the time. He died in 2013 at the age of 72. I wonder what the average lifespan is for a sumo wrestler.

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Daniel Tosh was born on this day in 1975.

"One time I put a WWJD bracelet on my Jewish friend's wrist. It burned his skin. He threw it on the ground and it turned into a snake. We both laughed. We hate snakes. We think snakes are slimy, even though we know they're not."

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The English director, James Whale, committed suicide by drowning on this day in 1957. He had a four-year run of directing some of the best horror films in the history of film- Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

He was openly gay at a time when nobody in his position was openly gay. 

Suicide by drowning. Oh man.

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Jeff Buckley left us on this day in 1997: "Be the best. No negativity, No weaknesses, no acquiescence to fear or disaster, no errors of ignorance, no evasion from reality."

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Undoing Project, Michael Lewis

"Amos was not merely an optimist; Amos willed himself to be an optimistic, because he had decided pessimism was stupid. When you are a pessimist and the bad thing happens, you live it twice, Amos liked to say. Once when you worry about it, and the second time when it happens."

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Jesus Halladay Christ!

May 29, 2010

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On this day in 2010, Roy Halladay pitched the 20th perfect game in MLB history. I remember turning it on as they entered the 9th, saw what was going on, and immediately got sweaty all over. It's amazing how our bodily physiology can change in one second over something it's a frivolous in comparison to a tiger lunging to eat you 

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John F. Kennedy was born on this day in 1917. He said, “Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.”

Sure, but instead they might fail miserably! 

Maybe they had a well-intentioned but terrible idea to start with. Maybe they fell into some bad luck. Maybe they were just too dumb to pull it off and didn't realize it.

History doesn't record the failures, so chase your dreams with caution. That's what I say!

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NASA- Hubble Gets in on a Galactic Gathering

So strange to think that in the present we can see something from 13 billion years ago. I guess that means that 13 billion years from now someone could look and see us.

http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2016/hubble-gets-in-on-a-galactic-gathering

May 29, 2016

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Mundane things overheard at the dog park.

"What a majestic dog you have."

"Really?"

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"Max, no!"

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"Emerson... Emerson... Emerson."

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"He doesn't mind your pets, he doesn't want your platitudes, he wants your treats."

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She just picks one person and barks at them.

That last one was me.

May 29, 2023

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Nicolaus Copernicus- "To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge."

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Karl Popper- “Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.”

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Pythagoras- "Don't try to cover your mistakes with false words. Rather, correct your mistakes with the examination."

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Einstein- "Nationalism is an infantile thing. It is the measles of mankind."

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Emerson-"The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant."

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Seneca- "The greatest remedy for anger is delay."

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Dylan:

As some warn victory, some downfall

Private reasons great or small

Can be seen in the eyes of those that call

To make all that should be killed to crawl

While others say don’t hate nothing at all

Except hatred

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Henry David Thoreau, Walden- "I have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself."