The basic...................................

 

................................................basics.

stumped.....................

 I’ve always been stumped by people’s naivety, or willingness to accept for others what they themselves would never abide.

-Joel Hirst, from here

Back...........................................

 ...................................to the basics.

Opening paragraphs.............

 It is sometimes said, either irritably or with a certain satisfaction, that philosophy makes no progress.  It is certainly true, and I think this is an abiding and not a regrettable characteristic of the discipline, that philosophy has in a sense to keep trying to return to the beginning: a thing which it is not at all easy to do.  There is a two-way movement in philosophy, a movement towards the building of elaborate theories, and a move back again towards the consideration of simple and obvious facts.

-Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good

The basic guidelines

 ............................................of investing.

A pretty good primer..........................

             more wisdom here

The basics......................

Plan-do-review. Review last week. Plan next week. Then the doing will be so much easier.

-Nicholas Bate

The basic Basics.....................

.....................................................................from Nicholas Bate.

Basic................................

.................................................................Wisdom from Nicholas Bate:

3.   Play Beat the Robot by being excellent in your field. The 'OK' will be outsourced and/or replaced by robot.

Worth remembering....................

“America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination, and unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.”

-Attributed to Harry S. Truman

Indispensable...................

"Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom."
-Benjamin Cardozo

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Teaching...............................

..............................................................the old-fashioned way.

About that foundation.....................................

"It's easy to defend the status quo, except when the very foundation you've built everything on disappears. Incrementalism ceases to be a good strategy when there's a cliff on the route."
-Seth Godin

As the old coach said......................

.....................it is all about blocking and tackling - the basics.  Friend Spengler believes we have lost our way, and the Chinese have found it.  Full post here.  A few interesting bits here:

China is succeeding despite many problems (including authoritarian administration) because the Chinese are working very hard ... And they have an army of millions of highly competent people coming into the labor market. That’s what we should worry about ... The Chinese work much, much harder than we do and learn more math and science (not to mention classical music: an estimate 50 million Chinese kids learn instruments).

We no longer have a tech sector: we have consumer electronics monopolies run by patent trolls whose job is to crush innovation. 

 Don’t get me wrong: I think America is best in the world at what we do, when do we it, that is, which we aren’t doing now. 

A few of my favorite things.............

From Michael Hyatt:   A book review (Essentialism) so good, you probably don't need to buy the book.  One of his seven take-aways:   #7 The liberating possibility of no. Saying no to the many trivial requests, Essentialists are really saying yes to what matters most in their lives: their faith, their family, their health, their calling.

From Kids Prefer Cheese:   Monday's Child is full of links

From Pat Guanciale:  Taking refuge

From Newmark's Door:   The real villain is crony capitalism (which is a vastly different thing than capitalism)

From the View From the Ledge:  A properly placed book can be an effective weapon.

Time to reflect...........................................

From Nicholas Bate

So............................

..............how are your plans for 2014 working out?

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"No plan of battle ever survives contact with the enemy."
-Helmuth von Moltke, the elder

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Truthiness...................

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