dreamingspires posterous

60 Minutes Correspondent Andy Rooney on Women over 40

60 Minutes Correspondent Andy Rooney (CBS)    

"As I grow in age, I value women over 40 most of all.  Here are just a few reasons why:  

A woman over 40 will  never wake you in the middle of the night and ask, 'What are you  thinking?'  She doesn't care what you think.  If a woman over  40 doesn't want to watch the game, she doesn't sit around  whining about it.   She does something she wants to do,  and it's usually more interesting.    Women over 40 are  dignified.  They  seldom have a screaming match with you  at the opera or in the middle of an expensive  restaurant.  Of  course, if you deserve it, they won't hesitate to shoot  you if  they think they can get away with it.   Older women are  generous with praise,  often undeserved.   They know what  it's like to be unappreciated. Women get  psychic as they age.   You never have to confess your sins to a woman over  40.  Once you get past a  wrinkle or two, a woman over 40  is far sexier than her younger counterpart. Older women are forthright  and honest.  They'll tell you right off you are a jerk if  you are acting like one.   You don't ever have to wonder  where you stand with her.  Yes, we praise women over 40 for a  multitude of reasons.  Unfortunately, it's not  reciprocal.  For every stunning, smart, well-coiffed, hot  woman over 40, there is a  bald, paunchy relic in yellow pants  making a fool of himself with some 22-year old waitress.  Ladies, I apologize.  

For all those men who say, 'Why buy the  cow when you can get the milk for free?', here's an update for you.    Nowadays 80% of women are against marriage.  Why? Because women realize it's not worth buying an entire pig  just to get a little sausage!"

The World as I see it - an essay by Albert Einstein

'How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving...

'I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -- this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts -- possessions, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.

'My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude...'

"My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized... the led must not be coerced, they must be able to choose their leader. In my opinion, an autocratic system of coercion soon degenerates; force attracts men of low morality... The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.

'This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!

'The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man... I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence -- as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.'

For the full essay and others by Albert Einstein see the American Institute for Physics

Sydney Fireworks - Happy New Year

Christmas in Sydney: oysters, prawns, champagne of course

Stand By Me - completely unknown artists

Untangling the Net; Mandatory Internet Filtering - Prof Catharine Lumby

UNSW's Professor Catharine Lumby, co-author of a new report on Australian Government plans to introduce mandatory internet filtering, says a wide range of material may disappear from our computer screens.

BBC is desperately Seeking sounds

i hope

in the very near future we can have a discussion on why people vote for those who are so plainly false and untrustworthy

i am genuinely perplexed.  don't people follow their conscience at some level? explain how it benefits them when the person they are voting for is so embarrassingly disingenuous?

disappointed, I wonder how I can mis-predict human nature so badly, again.

my human compass is out of kilter and I wonder if I am really a male seahorse in human form

You betrayed me!

P2 - easy group interactions for your WP blog

P2 allows threaded comments and interactions - if you are running groups who need to interact via your blog this is good.

For more info read P2: The New Prologue
You can find P2 in wordpress admin interface under appearance, themes.

Thanks to @wordpressguy for a heads up on this one