on looking at paintings...........

If people would just look at the paintings, I don't think they would have any trouble enjoying them. It's like looking at a bed of flowers, you don't tear your hair out over what it means.

-Jackson Pollock

searching.......................

 We tend to teach, and study, "Great Men."  All over the world, people are in search of figures who can lead them past crises and catastrophes.  Yet all over the world, people feel repeatedly let down by their leaders.  Perhaps that is why leaders from a supposedly glorious past continue to loom so large in the gloomy present.

-Moshik Temkin, Warriors, Rebels & Saints: The Art of Leadership from Machiavelli to Malcolm X

résumé.....................

 Your real résumé is just a catalog of your suffering.  If I ask you to describe your real life to yourself, and you look back from your deathbed at the interesting things you've done, it's going to be around the sacrifices you made, the hard things you did.

-Naval Ravikant

A quote for Labor Day...............

..........Actually, it is pretty good quote for any, even every, day.

Connections.........................

“No matter what you look at, if you look at it closely enough, you are involved in the entire universe.” 

-Michael Faraday

image via APOD

Funny, me too...............................

Scorpius...............................

From the wondrous APOD:

Explanation: If Scorpius looked this good to the unaided eye, humans might remember it better. Scorpius more typically appears as a few bright stars in a well known but rarely pointed out zodiacal constellation. To get a spectacular image like this, though, one needs a good camera, color filters, and a digital image processor. To bring out detail, the above image not only involved long duration exposures taken in several colors, but one exposure in a very specific red color emitted by hydrogen that brings out great detail. The resulting image shows many breathtaking features. Vertically across the image left is part of the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. Visible there are vast clouds of bright stars and long filaments of dark dust. Jutting out diagonally from theMilky Way in the image center are dark dust bands known as the Dark River. This river connects to several bright stars on the right that are part ofScorpius' head and claws, and include the bright star Antares. Above and right of Antares is an even brighter planet Jupiter. Numerous red emission nebulas and blue reflection nebulas are visible throughout the image. Scorpius appears prominently in southern skies after sunset during the middle of the year.

Time to recall the search party.........

"You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of.  You will never life if you are looking for the meaning of life."
-Albert Camus

The trick is in finding them..........

"Every flaw comes with its own compensation."
-David Brooks

Keep looking.........................................

“By the time the average person finishes college, he or she will have taken over 2,600 tests, quizzes, and exams. The right answer approach becomes deeply ingrained in our thinking. This may be fine for some mathematical problems where there is in fact only one right answer. The difficulty is that most of life isn’t this way. Life is ambiguous; there are many right answers - all depending on what you’re looking for. But if you think there is only one right answer, then you’ll stop looking as soon as you find one."
-Roger Von Oech

I don't choose to go there.............................

You'll look up and down streets.  Look 'em over with care.
About some you will say, "I don't choose to go there."
With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet,
you're too smart to go down any not-so-good street.

And you may not find any you'll want to go down.
In that case, of course,
you'll head straight out of town.

It's opener there
in the wide open air.

Hey, wake up...............................

via

Call off the search............................

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
-Albert Camus

via

Seeking.........................

"God often works more by the life of the illiterate seeking the things that are God's, than by the ability of the learned seeking the things that are their own."
-Saint Anselm of Canterbury

image via

More wine...........................

Assumptions...............

"When learning about life and people, make no more assumptions than are absolutely necessary.  Ask and observe."
-William of Occam

Just a matter of observation...........

Forget solving the mystery..............try to notice all 21 changes.
Tough duty.  Where's my photographic memory when I need it?



thanks

Abe...................

"In the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Stephen A. Douglas accused
Abraham Lincoln of being two-faced.
     'I leave it to you, my friends,' Lincoln retorted, turning
toward his audience.  'If I had two faces, would I be wearing
this one?'"
-James C. Humes, The Wit & Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln

image courtesy of

Sales the old fashioned way........

Nice to know that we're not the only ones using napkins.......

From Coy Davidson's The Tenant Advisor blog:


"The great problem solvers understand that face time with the client is critical because context is important.  I am as much of an early tech adopter as anyone in my industry, but technology is about efficiency not enhancing problem solving skills or developing a culture of collaboration.  I may be able to communicate with anyone, anywhere, anytime, but stuff still gets done on the back of a napkin over a cup of coffee."

The original instructor............

Close observation of a single subject, whether it is as small as Pasteur's microbes or as great as Einstein's universe, is the kind of work that happens less and less these days.  Glued to computer and TV screens, we have forgotten how to look at the natural world, the original instructor on how to be curious about detail.
-Jennifer New
as excerpted from How To Be An Explorer of the World

photo courtesy of mmescherzo