First Blog

This is a short post.  Only two thoughts today.  Two thoughts on any given day is something like a bonanza.  Most days there are no thoughts whatever.  Drama.   This is a cinematic venue that depends on dialogue - occasionally style or setting.  There are two successful forms. The first is to have a reasonable story with enough action to keep the guys awake.  The second is to have a superlative script you might listen to even without the film.  The later is very, very rare.  There are countless unsuccessful attempts to achieve either. Dramas usually have a short longevity. The Kiss .    Such an intimate expression of humanity this is. Many forms of the kiss there are, just a lite touch of the familial.  Yet so very close.   The kiss of death, of love, of fortune, of resignation or revelation, of the future or past, of betrayal, of finality, of life. It can be carnal, or tender, or continuing of relationship.   An osculation is something like a kiss though in generic terms and inter

How to run a city. This power model is a for a city, with a mayor, division chiefs, and political operatives.  In a previous blog we described a number of ways leadership manifests itself in our lives.  This is copied below.  The nature of this type of city leadership involves at least six components, with the mayor as its center.  All are important, and all are essential. 1. A quiescent public .  The public must be mollified to inaction on most issues.  They will only become involved, not when the wheels of power are wobbly, but when the wheels have actually fallen off. 2. A cooperative press . The press needs to focus on ancillary matters, distractions, deceptions, and diversions. It must not be investigative about any aberrations of city command. The press acts in the public interest only when the issue or story is unavoidable, and likely when it is pressed by the outside. The press is essential in its willingness to broadcast only "selected truths." 3. A single pa

Boxes. Things I've learned about people and their boxes.  The box metaphor for thought is well described and most appropriate.  Most people do live in some kind of box, though few will admit it. a. Some people cannot think outside the box; moreover they can't think inside the box either. b. Before one can think out of the box, he/she must first learn to think inside it.  c. Some people think only inside the box. Indeed, they live in their box with the lid tightly closed. A thought-box is a shield from unwanted ideas and thoughts. It protects and maintains a personal security. For many, it is a needed construct for day-to-day living. It provides the type of life assurance only babies have. Some people construct a big, a huge box for thinking. It resembles a cathedral, with a foundation and floor, with walls, with buttresses, topped off with a cupola, and protected by a wide moat. This makes their thought free from assault by new ideas or even old ideas. Usually, there are

Leadership is an aspect of your life, in almost every way.     It is important for yourself, in your family, your business, in your city, state and country.   Leadership is critical and crucial in sustaining and promoting a proper social world.  Personal leadership is important for animals of all kinds - us included.  In this brief post, let’s look at just four types of leadership.  These cover more than you might think. ·          Leadership of oneself .   You must first and foremost lead yourself by making frequent life’s decisions.   You must be in charge of what you do, how you look, how you behave, and how you project yourself to others.   Most of us can do this.   Some cannot.   Some cannot make even simple decisions about the regulation of their lives, daily, weekly, annually.   Prisons are full of people that cannot make even the simplest personal decisions; the prison provides needed personal regulation.   Please do not underestimate or dismiss this, the most basic type of

We are a nation of heaps.  We live in heaps.  We respond only to issues when they become heaps - and then rarely.  So, what’s a heap? The heap paradox comes from rather vague predicates.  You’ve often heard of a heap of sand or a heap of trouble.  What this means is roughly we cannot distinguish individuals (such as grains of sand from a pile) from the others.  In fact, it is more complicated.  The ancient interpretation of this paradox (also called the sorites paradox ) is to resolve the question as to when, by removal of individual grains of sand, it is no longer a heap?  In this note, we look at heaps from the reverse perspective.  For example, when we add grains of sand to a collection, when does the collection cease being a collection and becomes a heap?  Of course, this paradox has no real resolution, but the word “heap” does seem to apply to many issues of the day. The (reverse) heap paradox is a key social and political situation in the USA.  At