Another trait of leadership that should be well learned is delegation.

Everything should be delegated, even things that you are better at than everyone else.

If you practice doing nothing you will automatically rise to the top.

Especially if your work vacuum is then filled with good humor, vaguely intelligent contributions to strategy meetings, and tons of networking.

The troops will take care of themselves so long as you make sure your delegates hire and fire aggressively and build a meritocracy.

Perfume, a blood substitute that smells nice and a nasal decongestant.

I am raising an alchemist.

I noticed two Double Bay dames parking their Audi near Danks Street (arguably the interior accessories capital of Sydney).

They were out with their tape measure, lining up their car.

Curious, I looked into the matter and this is what I found…

I sent an email to a mate in the gub’ment in which I swore and I swear I did not make up this response:

“This notice advises that your email to [deleted]@austrade.gov.au was captured by Austrade’s email protection system and was not delivered. The profanity filter checks the contents of the email message and any attachments, and word/s in your message were deemed inappropriate.

Please amend your message and resend if required.

Please do not respond to this advisory as this mailbox is not monitored.”

Pain shared is pain diminished, according to some.

I suspect it is just pain, multiplied.

But we can’t ignore the fact the ‘fellow traveler’ effect may be quite an effective placebo.

But as I told Lola ‘Go and practice on the cat – I am not a crash test dummy’.

One aspect of the art of leadership is knowing that panic simply accelerates the the rush to the inevitable.

She who panics last, laughs last.

I believe that it’s really worth while inserting a lucidity pause into your sentience prior to asserting anger.

Be the change that I wish to see in the world.

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

What starts out as a great insight is debased into a Facebook cliche.

Unless of course the change that you want to see is is everyone with a cliched Facebook posting.

Seriously though, because our emotions are being continuously manipulated by sophisticated marketing campaigns we are becoming immune to the message. Any message

Its called survival.

A lot of people are asking me for the ‘narrative’ these days on subjects that I didn’t even know had one.

I think it’s hipster-speak for the ‘vibe of the thing’, derived from marketing types over-doing the party drugs in the company of their barista mates.

It has no actual meaning that is related to its vernacular currency. The bard would have been proud.

However it’s use is becoming uncool literally seconds after it emerged from the Surry Hills (or maybe that was Brooklyn) slime because of its instant over-use by all sorts of less than super-cool suburban tree-people.

For prayer, I wonder how many ways there are to point to Mecca?

Considering that the earth is an eccentric sphere you could start out in any direction in a linear fashion and eventually get there.

The Muslims do have a Quibla compass but that seems a little agricultural for my liking.

Let’s hope there is an app which uses one’s GPS position to give the exact direction of the shortest overland route (post note; there are a few but they give worryingly different answers).

The smartphone selfie is now the subject of essays, blogs and even a selfie olympics (trade mark ignored, I am sure).

Technically, a selfie is a relatively low resolution image taken at no more than an arm’s length away (unless it’s a mirror rebound effort) by a low-tech (front-facing) fixed focus lens and sensor (combined, a camera). It is a technical challenge to make this work, and an art form in itself.

One saving grace is that users can actually see the image they are about to take and adjust the positioning and lighting accordingly.

This is done by moving the body and arm simultaneously, relative to the surroundings and light sources. This requires a combination of both artistic/aesthetic and kinaesthetic intelligences; possibly one of the few activities that uses just these two.

Given this, I think the art form that is the selfie is much under-appreciated. Training the use of these two rarely co-joined intelligences might have amazing beneficial side effects. I have no idea what these might be though.

Images below; mirror rebound (controversial whether this is a true selfie), true selfie, selfie plus extra, selfie failure, selfie with unsuspecting bystander.

What’s at the end of the bridge? Or, more precisely, who is under it?

I just calculated that I can buy 200 grams of smoked salmon at Aldi (near my office) using the proceeds of about two minutes of my work compensation.

My grandkids will not believe this.

There is nothing to get…

A supercritical fluid is a dense gas which has enough short range molecular interactions to be a solvent.

Most lay scientists accept stuff like this simply because they are familiar with it – that is, it is ‘knowledge’.

A higher level of ‘understanding’ is an abstraction, via linear thinking, to another level of ‘knowledge’ (e.g. in the case of a supercritical fluid, a thermodynamic model of the molecular interactions).

But there are always more levels one can go to, e.g. statistical thermodynamic model, or a quantum level approach.

But by going to these deeper levels all one is doing is taking the mystery to another level where one simply have to accept another bunch of assumptions as truths.

There is no end point

Therefore its easier to think of it in the Newtonian scale – i.e. a supercritical fluid is a dense gas which has enough short range interactions to be a solvent.

Its a two-edged sword, is jealousy.

On one hand it is a display of love.

And on the other it’s a display of fear.

As with all emotions the trick is not to delete it, but also not to let it delete you.

I also think it is important not, through your jealousy, to set a higher standard of behavior than you practice yourself. The more jealous someone is by nature, the more they break this rule.

Jealousy is like disappointment – the best way to deal with it is to slowly roast it, juice it up, and then eat it slowly, savoring ever mouthful until it’s gone.

I just had a realization that this blog is my notes for the book that I am going to write one day.

The working title is the ‘A Philosophy of Life, the Universe and Everything’.

That way I can fulfill the old Czech proverb and go to my grave a content person.

When someone gets cross with a friend or relative what they are doing is a bit of Pavlovian training (reference to Pavlov’s Dogs).

You can teach a dog to sit and lie and wait by getting cross with it (amongst other things), but you shouldn’t do it with people.

If you try this on people that you are supposed to love then you are really just treating them like dogs.

You might get your way, and your life might be a tad easier. But there is a lot to lose in this approach.

What you will find is the that obedient person has to kill something inside of themselves to quell the anger. And that thing is somewhere in the bit of the mind that allows them to love; to love you and to love themselves.

My mum has been a very linear thinker.

I think she suffered some childhood psycho-traumas and reacted by adopting a Socratic view on life and mind methodologies.

She very much over-did it and it has been sort of painful to be brought up by someone who is so one-sided, and rabidly so.

However, in her mid-seventies there are signs that, finally, the left brain linear domination is weakening. She is letting go of the forced linear disciplines.

And she is a much nicer person for it too.

I guess you could say that this blog is a collection of linear-thinking written communications based upon a diverse set of non-linear thoughts and accompanied by a group of non-linear photos that are designed to lead the linear viewer to the more insightful constellation of non-linear positions.

What is abstract thinking? Well you would think (in a very linear fashion) that abstract thinking would come out of an abstract brain, which has been described to me as non-linear and sometimes non-verbal and also something that I display in bucket loads.

Well most thinking is non-verbal except for the most plodding of the plodders who have to spell it out step by step. So I will pass over this one.

I found (through Google) that linear thinking is ‘a process of thought following known cycles or step-by-step progression where a response to a step must be elicited before another step is taken’. The Socratic method follows on from this.

I also found that non-linear thinking is ‘human thought characterized by expansion in multiple directions, rather than in one direction, and based on the concept that there are multiple starting points from which one can apply logic to a problem’. This means nothing to me (no joke intended) other than a restatement of the question. All this describes is the everyday set of complex problems that we face and the exact reason why linear thinking was invented; that is to have a uniform and agreed method of making decisions that can be effectively communicated between different people.

My view is that all people have non-linear thinking going on; this is because the brain is a huge non-linear computer. Dreams are a clear example of non-linear thinking that we all have.

I recently ran into a cousin of mine having a quiet smoke after a busy day – he was deep in contemplation, a form of less-conscious non-linear thinking, and when I interrupted him and asked what was on his mind he had already forgotten because he has no mechanism to link his ‘daily’ brain with the guts of his brain.

The difference between the majority and the minority (of people) is that the former do not have a conscious manifold connecting their everyday more-linear GUI brain to their non-linear core. Their loss.

The trick of course is to run both linear and non-linear processes simultaneously and have your own Rosetta Stone so that there is a very efficient and effective transfer of information between the two. I solve problems in both parts of my brains but it is far more effective to dress up the chook in linear feathers (i.e. pretend the thought came solely from linear thinking) before trying to flog it to the general public.

Except of course if you are an artiste. Then you can do what the hell you like and sometimes even pretend to have a linear part of your brain when, for example, discussing why a piece of art is a social commentary on some matter or other.

One problem with our education systems is that they almost entirely focus on teaching the ‘non-natural’ linear thinking approaches to such an extent that many people come out of school with a disregard for their non-linear functions. The non-linear part of the brain is not exercised or given nutrition and we end up with a bunch of people who make all their decisions with their linear GUI brain. Think of the single Sydney girls with their lists of things they want to have in a partner. The disconnection between the real non-linear core and the artificial (but very useful) linear GUI has to lead a bunch of the psychological issues that we see in society these days.

And after that little discourse on non-linear and abstract thinking and brains I suppose I can see why someone might think that my brain is abstract. Abstract not in it’s internal workings (but probably so) but in its appearance to others. I try to look linear (except in this ‘hidden’ blog where I couldn’t give a rat’s) but you can’t fool all the people.

Looking through my archives I note that I started taking photos when I got my first digital camera in 2002 or so. Back then it was a means to keep me busy during extended travelling holidays; I get bored easily.

In 2006 it looks like I got my first smartish phone with a camera in it. At that time I started taking daily pictures with an active editing and filtering (of the good from the bad) process.

Which means I have been a ‘photographer’ for 8 years or so.

I can now flip through 8 years of photos and, because of the high frequency of effort, I have a visual mud-map which triggers recall of the whole time-frame (or at least the bits worth capturing). This is pretty handy to say the least.

For almost a year now I have been pairing photos with blog entries. Initially I dug back into my back catalog of entries but now I pretty much exclusively use new images that I take around the same time as the blog entry. Which means I have to match the frequency of blog entries with good and relevant photos.

Writing the blog has taken ‘pressure’ off me to take great photos since my focus is on the written word and the image is there simply to engage the appropriate part of the brain that is not usually engaged during reading and contemplation. I do this pretty much subconsciously or in a Gestaltian fashion; I don’t over-think it – I go with gut instinct.

I think that the photos have got better since they have become a second priority, again because I am not over-thinking them and just going with my gut.

One of my skills that I don’t use is that I absolutely know how software engineers think.

To wit, I can manouevre around any software with ease simply by guessing how the fuckers were thinking when they wrote the stuff. I do this without effort.

Just very occasionally you see the hand of a sane manager that can control the buggers and enforce their will on them. In these cases the software is odd.

Apple is an example. Which is why I avoid Apple products; they force me to think and learn.

Life isn’t bigger than you and you are me. This I haven’t forgotten.

Situation: I still have to work to eat. Well sort of and mostly and kind of.

Complication: I am finding it harder and harder to get interested in work. There are just so many other things that I find more interesting.

Resolution:By the end of this year I need to figure out how I can spend my days thinking, writing and discussing matters of interest with interesting people.

Now there’s a challenge.

This from wiki ‘The islands saw no more Europeans until missionaries arrived from England in 1821. Christianity quickly took hold in the culture and many islanders continue to be Christian believers today.’

I wonder how and why the missionaries could work their magic so quickly? This I will have to investigate. Thoughtfully Amazon has just provided my Kindle with this title for the grand total of 93 cents, ‘Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?’

On my way.

Maybe the ancient gods were just people with a genetic abnormality that left them with an abundance of stem cells in all their cell tissues, making them immortal (except to accidents and predation).

The early homo sapiens probably ate them to gain their mojo. Just like the fairies in True Blood.

After watching all the little Ned Kelly’s in Surry Hills for a couple of years I belatedly discover that they are Brooklyn Hipsters.

Just about every barista and waiter sports a long beard, short hair, black horn rimmed glasses, tight jeans usually rolled up at the bottom and worn slightly low, with individualism expressed through the personal choice of vintage shirts or T’s. They mostly commute via single speed pushies.

According to the Americans this movement started in Brooklyn. Maybe it did but these days there are enough people everywhere for most to believe that they are at the epicenter of all things cultural.

I suppose that for our hipsters it just doesn’t matter which pack they follow or where the movement came from. They are predisposed to conform anyway so they would not be embarrassed by not being at the center of their own universe.

Hydras are a genus of simple, freshwater animals that do not undergo senescence, and, as such, are biologically immortal.

Many animals have one or more tissues that are self-renewing, e.g. the skin of humans. These tissues consist of stem cells with a large or indefinite capacity for cell division. In humans only some of our bits have this stem cell driven renewal capacity whereas in hydras all tissues are self-renewing, that is all of their cells are part of one or another stem cell system.

It would appear to me that population control is taken care of by evolution. Birth, death, accidents, starvation and predators – all these things must be balanced to allow for short-term and long-term variations and stability in population control and survival.

A small handful of organisms, like the hydras, go for the rather eccentric solution to this set of kinetic equations, i.e. extremely long life. Probably because they have an unusual set of kinetic inputs (e.g. unlimited food or an ability to hibernate, no predators – not even themselves, a choice of sexual and asexual reproduction, etc).

The ‘thermodynamic’ driving forces behind the kinetic solutions for all organisms on this planet must be the same, i.e. abstracted and closed-system limiting cases of the physical thermodynamic laws of enthalpy and entropy.

(Therefore the governing equations for life of each organism are like a set of Fokker-Plank equations).

Humans, of course, are trying to figure out how hydras do it in order to copy them. I can guarantee you that if we are successful then our goose is cooked on this planet.

The latest word in my silly attempt to catch up with the bard; peppernaut.

I have no idea what it means but I like the sound of it.

A friend has suggested that it describes men who have gone through male menopause and have no sperm left. I like that.

The manufacturing incumbents see the fourth industrial revolution as automated customer-driven product customization in their factories. This is really the industrial revolution 3.b, improved by IT, in order to reduce costs and expand product ranges.

I see a fork in the path here where end-customers attempt to cut out the manufacturers altogether. That is, design and fabrication occurs anywhere and the machines to do so can be self-replicating. This is the true industrial revolution 4.0.

Let’s label the industrial revolution 4.0 as distributed ‘complex’ fabrication, in order to differentiate it from pre-industrial revolution distributed ‘crafty’ fabrication.

I feel an essay coming on.

Found on an Otago farm.

The current IT age in the west (apparently, and according to Forbes) is a people-based and knowledge-based economy which emphasizes social intelligence.

This supposedly gives women a natural advantage over men. Thus it also drives feelings of emasculation amongst the latter, which was previously (until this hypothesis was postulated) being erroneously attributed to the action of feminists (wtf?).

But only in America and also ignoring the data, such as the glass ceiling in corporations and partnerships. And that they are hundreds of other potential hypotheses. Plus there is no data that demonstrates that there is an uptick in the feeling of emasculation.

Any sense of the dumbing down of public discourse in America and the west?

I have just had two depressing discussions with two old mates, one male and one female.

It appears that people get boring, not sex. That is, they are both still very interested in sex but just not with each other.

Bugger Viagra and Lybrido, all we need is a sexual amnesia pill to sort this one out.

There are differences between equality and fairness. I prefer the sound of the latter since it is harder to argue against.

I wonder if FDR called called his time at Camp David a ‘retreat’. I doubt it.

To survive and enjoy you have to be either an optimist or an idiot.

The state does not see. People may be citizens. Commodities are consumed. Survive, if you can.

Just visited Steampunk HQ. It’s either reality denial or art or both.

I repeat it when I hate myself.

I am reading ‘what happened to Goldman Sachs’ by Steven C. Mandis, an insider’s view of drift in  organizational culture.

So far my take home message is that these guys can have their money and (self scaffolded) status; they lead no life that I recognize.

It’s a pretty conservative organization so they don’t even do the rich bad boy thing in New York. Poor bastards.

Accorded to Alexander Tytler from the 1700’s but tracked back to H. W. Prentis in 1943.

“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to complacency; From complacency to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”

Where are we now?

I now wish that I had always kept a written journal. They are well worth the investment of time.

I particularly dislike Queenstown, NZ.

Take a beautiful spot and dump a Darling Harbour onto it. If you can imagine that, you have Queenstown.

All it has is mindless and pointless consumption of food, alcohol, clothes, household decorative items, and adventure experiences, complete with tourists and backpackers from the world over. And that’s it.

Hell on earth. And back again.

Advice to Maria at 22:

Don’t waste too much time wondering how you might live your life because you don’t have that much time to waste.

Maria has fallen far from the tree, values-wise, so she will need to spend a decade adjusting to her own reality.

But that isn’t really time lost for someone with a pure heart.

Gates that never close
A community that never meets
Fears that never abate
The gated community

The noun declarative has one sense;
a mood that represents the act or state as an objective fact.

We the it’s do declare.

Conversation today: supposedly there is an anti-correlation between mental illness and the belief that one can mold the world to one’s own view or ambition.

That is, the unbalanced are defenseless against the reality that they perceive. Whereas the well-adjusted simply change any realities that they don’t like.

Some marketing lies are outrageously annoying and some are simply funny.

This has no punch line. But I just caught my first barracuda, out on the Foveaux strait. Exciting.

Fourteen in and fourteen out but at least it’s not raining.

‘Food supplement’ is an oxymoron.

Truth /truːθ/ (noun); There is no beauty in knowledge but your faith may deny this.

Every mouthful of water that we drink has a least one molecule of water that passed through Julius Caesar.

Lend me your ears and your eyes. So long as you are listening I fear not the passage of the message.

From here to there, or there to here.

What do you call a hand-brake that is foot operated?

No, not a foot brake. That term is reserved for your main brake.

It’s a foot operated hand-brake.

Or in German the fuß-feststellbremse betätigt.

I think there needs to be a few insertions into the marriage vows just before the ‘so long as you both shall live’ bit.

One outlawing all acts of hostility.

A second pointing out that the ideals just sprouted by the priest/celebrant are guidelines (lassie).

And an explicit  acknowledgment that neither party has any requirement to freeze their world view at the time of the wedding.

Maybe a sunset clause could be added to the government contract where at, say, fixed 7 year intervals, either party has the right to discontinue the contract with one months notice.

That would make the divorce process a lot less traumatic but also force people to wait until the divorce windows was open, thus enforcing a review period.

Of course you would have to modify the vows to ‘… as long you as you both shall live or while the marriage contract is in force’. Not quite as romantic, that.

I just listened to a story told by women about women.

The consensus was that daughter-in-laws and mothers invariably end up competing for control of the husband/son.

I suggested that the primary problem was women trying to control men.

Icy stares all round.

All you have to do to get this synthetic lifestyle is wander into the shop and buy something.  Easy really!

Heaven on earth today.

St Clair beach, Dunedin. The salt water ocean pool is heated to 28 degrees!

Other than that it’s just like Sydney without the people or traffic, but it’s winter in summer.

It might be worth the trade off.

The ad up the road says ‘KFC opposite the Thai’.

Just lately I have been carefully observing old people, ones that I know.

Very few seem to enjoy life past 75 or 80. Around this age many also seem to lose a grip on their ameliorating social skills and revert closer to their core prejudices and characters.

I have been told by a psychologist that the best way to find out what a person will be like once the social veneer has been removed in old age is to get them very drunk, and observe.

Something to look forward to!

I have found that the best way to get through to climate change denialists is to point out that their insurance companies are factoring climate change into all their future planning and current pricing.

For some reason this gets through to all but the thickest flat earthers.

Is there anything worse than a ungracious host?

Craft involves the creation of objects of utility that also appeal to one or more of the senses

The role of art, on the other hand, is to evoke emotions and thoughts that would not otherwise be imagined. And it’s not necessary for the artist to have a plan either; many of them are working instinctively with barely a grasp on what their art will do to the recipients.

Art is filtered through the senses but processed in the mind. And this processing is unique as compared to other functions of the mind and possibly also quite different between individuals.

You can see therefore why art is so much more subjective than craft.

I can say this about art though; if you hate it, then it worked.

It keeps happening to me … I get talking to people who get all defensive when I have an opinion that differs from theirs.

You’d think they would want to know why my opinions are different just in case I know something they don’t.

Buy no, they generally just don’t want to hear it.

One admittedly dodgy hypothesis that floats around my head has to do with affluence.

I reckon men have fared worse than women under the influence of affluence.

This is because men have gone from projects to purchases.  Way back when, even hunting was a project. It just isn’t the same thing when you instantly get something for seemingly no effort.

Women have gone from collecting and  organizing to collecting and organizing. Much less of a jump.

I hate massive generalizations like this because I know of dozens of exceptions without even thinking hard.

But I can’t help thinking that building a shed is actually pleasurable whereas buying one and getting it installed is rather  emasculating. But only for men. And only some men at that…

Is there even a female equivalent to ’emasculate?

Google says “William Safire in The San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 16,1986, discusses the possible opposites for emasculate. He concludes that defeminate is best, after also considering effeminate, spay, hysterectate, demulierize, gyneclate, degynify, and exogynate.” He forgot menopause.

But better still…”associating an abstract noun like ‘power’ with gender is what forms the nonsensical basis of the misogynist word ’emasculate’ “. There you see, I knew it along, this idea is rubbish even if it makes sense.

Back to the Czechs…they have an old proverb that a man must do three things in his life; build a house, have a child and write a book.

For the women in the audience; I have been thinking about this and I believe that it’s pretty spot-on. And here is why:

The ‘having a child’ bit covers off a few things. Firstly, the ability to get into emotionally stable relationships. Secondly, the capability of being a provider of sorts. And finally the satisfaction of completing our genetic ‘responsibility’ (the true purpose of life according to some).

Building a house requires mastery of manual dexterity. This assumes the Czechs don’t mean hiring an architect and a builder to build a house; I think they mean using your own nous and hands. It also requires a man to have project and planning skills, the ability to find bits and pieces, and all sorts of other useful skills. Most importantly a man who builds his own house gets satisfaction out of the process or he wouldn’t do it, and this satisfaction is a sign of a content and mature man. Building a house is also part of being a ‘provider’ for the family.

‘Writing a book’ is a very clever insertion and the least obvious here. But it implies a nurtured intellect and a control of basic instincts. Also, and again, the ability to plan a project and see it through. A sense of ‘contribution’ is also required; that is, a contribution to society. The respect of a peer group, probably of men, is also required and this is very important to men, no matter how how trivial or important the peer group is. Those without it suffer.

I fear that many modern men are being dragged further and further away from activities that lead them to outcomes commensurate with the Czech proverb’s targets.

My message to the women out there is that if you want happy partners that you like being with, then corral them into activities aligned with those described in this missive; even if at times this seems counter to your own desires, needs and emotions. You won’t regret it.

My daughter’s mother asked me to get her a book for Christmas, “decoding your 21st century daughter”.

I took a peek before ‘wrapping’ the thing and there isn’t a single word in there that isn’t deadly obvious. Almost to the point of condescension.

My explanation? One or more of (a) uncertainty looking for confirmation bias, (b) ignorance looking for education, (c) peer group pressure, and (d) a weird missive to me.

My personal view is that if you are that anxious then don’t have kids.

Can an iconoclast be the source of hagiology?

Back to the prophets…

Imagine how many the imaginary god must have sent down over the years in order for a handful to stick?

Most of them probably ended up as the village drunk sprouting gibberish that no one listened to.

It’s a sad day when you lose a favorite sock.

This is the first mountain I have ridden up since 2012.

At 1000 meters the body is complaining but I am taking no notice.

OK I just had to take a lie down on a flat surface to iron out the cramps. Done.

Hooning across the summit road and apparently all those razor wire gates that I am going through represent a road closed due to earthquake-induced rockfalls. No bother, I like cyclocross.

And finally down the other side with a flat white in hand (having given up on Kiwi macchiatos, I have discovered I need a small flat white in a tulip cup) I am happy.

According to wiki the Koran states that Jesus was a true prophet but his message was lost, and the Christians are following a cobbled-together facsimile.

Which is why God sent Mohammed, to fix up the mess. He did a great job eh?

You could blame them both for the chaos they have created. However without the internet or even the printing press it was a tough gig, to say the least.

It is very likely that one of the prophets got it wrong. Probably both. History doesn’t record whether either of these gentlemen was truly mad and believed the prophet of God business

Apparently Japan has a Minister of Hypocrisy. And China is a pot.

If there is a fork in the road with two paths of roughly equivalent facility I always choose the first one that invades my perception.

One habit that is worth unpicking is the almost universal tendency to privately critique friends and family.

Nine tenths of such efforts are gratuitous. Just about all have no positive outcomes.

Worse still, it can be a spiral. Downwards. The portents of which can be observed by others upon the busy bits of your thermo-nuclear protective shell.

Wisdom is the sequestration of useful truths from the orchard of even sweeter lies.

Wisdom isn’t achieved; it is chased. In order to keep chasing the bugger you have to keep taking risks.

The minute you think you are wise you have (a) stopped learning, and (b) crystallized your residual stupidity.

Always check your pockets especially in clothes that you haven’t worn for ages.

You may be pleasantly surprised.

When you can smell your own socks it’s time to change them.

In conversation I listen intently for new information or insight, although often it might not seem so to the casual observer.

It is amazing the number of people that I converse with that clearly don’t listen to anything except the echo of their own voices.

My blogs are actually generalizations not personalizations so they shouldn’t be taken as such.

Usually a personal event or conversation triggers the thought; but that is it.

Thereafter I rely on a lifetime of observations and considerations.

Today I have been practicing the emotional circuit breaker.

When other people lose control of their emotional faculties, normally to the negative, you can either join them or try to bring them back.

Of course this is much harder when you know them well because you are hardwired to feel what they feel.

In fact, the application of will power to engage the circuit breaker is an act of emotional disengagement.

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

I think everyone likes flirting. This is human nature.

However as you age you can see it for what it is and control it. Better than being controlled by it me-thinks.

Just as an aside, women get very confused by men who are not slaves to flirting.

The cat and the unicorn. There is no good explanation.

Sanity is simply the ability to sufficiently attenuate your madness in order to create the semblance of normality.

‘Normality’ since everyone else is doing the same and it’s only those those at the back end of the Bell curve that fail in their efforts.

I seriously hate shopping malls, even more than I hate shopping. Fortunately  there are still real shops left. And there is the internet.

One hundred years of technology development has led to the current design of the malls.

Which is the cheapest possible way to extract as much money as they can from the addicts. There is total deprivation of senses to the outside world and a total overload of sensory input.

I see malls pretty much the same way as I see pokies.

Serious is, serious does.

For some reason I can’t smile in a selfie. If I try it looks like I am grimacing.

There must be some interesting psychology behind that.

I have to settle for ‘enigmatic’ or ‘smart-arse’, depending on the audience.

The Japanese have miniaturized Lego.

Of course they have.

A great test of Lola’s manual dexterity and my aging short-haul vision.

And our collective ability to interpret the crap Japanese instructions. Crap as in logically complete yet psychologically deficient.

I keep on doing it but it doesn’t work…

“I can think away but it doesn’t change what I feel”.

Il n’a jamais été va être assez.

The Kiwis can’t make macchiatos. Over extracted and not enough foam and without the drop of milk, their offerings are awful.

And they don’t have those little take away cups so your coffee gets cold in thirty seconds.

They can do a mean latte though.