Never help a child with a task at which she feels she can succeed.
– Maria Montesorri
Category Archives: Thought for the Day
Thought for the Day: 29 September 2014
From Bill Moyers, “Buying the War“:
APRIL 25, 2007:
BILL MOYERS: [IN THE SPRING OF 2003] THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION TOOK LEAVE OF REALITY AND PLUNGED OUR COUNTRY INTO A WAR SO POORLY PLANNED IT SOON TURNED INTO A DISASTER. THE STORY OF HOW HIGH OFFICIALS MISLED THE COUNTRY HAS BEEN TOLD. BUT THEY COULDN’T HAVE DONE IT ON THEIR OWN; THEY NEEDED A COMPLIANT PRESS, TO PASS ON THEIR PROPAGANDA AS NEWS AND CHEER THEM ON.
SINCE THEN THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE HAVE DIED, AND MANY ARE DYING TO THIS DAY. YET THE STORY OF HOW THE MEDIA BOUGHT WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE WAS SELLING HAS NOT BEEN TOLD IN DEPTH ON TELEVISION. AS THE WAR RAGES INTO ITS FIFTH YEAR, WE LOOK BACK AT THOSE MONTHS LEADING UP TO THE INVASION, WHEN OUR PRESS LARGELY SURRENDERED ITS INDEPENDENCE AND SKEPTICISM TO JOIN WITH OUR GOVERNMENT IN MARCHING TO WAR.
OUR REPORT WAS PRODUCED AND DIRECTED BY KATHLEEN HUGHES AND EDITED BY ALISON AMRON.
Thought for the Day: 26 September 2014
My daughter is doing a mashup of Let it Go and the Mighty Machines theme song. It’s spectacular.
Thought for the Day: 23 September 2014
The Nobel Committee called. They want their Peace Prize back. (Could they do that?) Looking at his list of actions which seem a little short of Peace-Prize-worthy, it’s getting kind of long.
Clarification: I don’t mean to imply that Pres. Obama’s actions aren’t justifiable or that I agree or disagree with them, just that they seem to run contradictory to the intent of the Peace Prize:
With regard to the Peace Prize, [Alfred Nobel’s] will stipulated that it was to be awarded to the person “who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”
There is no Nobel Realpolitik Prize.
Thought for the Day: 17 September 2014
Thought for the Day: 3 September 2014
Pride in your work is a learned behavior, and the ways you learn it are twofold: first, you learn it through a sense that the people for whom you work value your craft as much as you value it, and you valued it enough to learn it in the first place, and second, you learn it from the other people around you, practicing the same craft, and the rising sense in yourself that you don’t want to do shoddy or careless work, not just because you might lose your job, and not just because something bad might happen out in the world if you do, but also because you don’t want to be the person who dishonors the craft practiced by the people around you.
Thought for the Day: 2 September 2014
If you store nude photos of yourself and/or your s.o. on “the cloud” then you are an idiot.
Thought for the Day: 18 August 2014
Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise.
– John Tukey
Thought for the Day – 5 August 2014
[By] running a high unemployment policy the government is transferring money from low and moderate income people to … higher income people. We could bring the unemployment rate down to 5.0 percent or possibly 4.0 percent with larger government deficits or a lower valued dollar, which would reduce the size of the trade deficit. The lower rate of unemployment would not only give millions more people jobs, it would also give workers in the bottom half of the wage distribution the bargaining power necessary to raise their wages. These workers would then have more money, while high income households would have to pay more for help.
Thought for the Day: 4 August 2014
If something can’t go on forever, it will stop.
(The context for his comment was government balance of payments deficits but the observation is generally applicable, e.g., consider human-induced climate change.)