Friday Filosophy v.02.25.2022

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Friday Filosophy v.02.25.2022

Augustine of Hippo (13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Africa. His writings influenced the development of Western philosophy and Western Christianity, and he is viewed as one of the most important Church Fathers of the Latin Church in the Patristic Period. His many important works include The City of God, On Christian Doctrine, and Confessions.

After his conversion to Christianity and baptism in 386, Augustine developed his own approach to philosophy and theology, accommodating a variety of methods and perspectives. Believing the grace of Christ was indispensable to human freedom, he helped formulate the doctrine of original sin and made significant contributions to the development of just war theory. When the Western Roman Empire began to disintegrate, Augustine imagined the Church as a spiritual City of God, distinct from the material Earthly City. His thoughts profoundly influenced the medieval worldview. The segment of the Church that adhered to the concept of the Trinity as defined by the Council of Nicaea and the Council of Constantinople closely identified with Augustine’s On the Trinity.

Augustine is recognized as a saint in the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Anglican Communion. He is also a preeminent Catholic Doctor of the Church and the patron of the Augustinians. In the East his teachings are more disputed, and were notably attacked by some, but other theologians and figures of the Eastern Orthodox Church have shown significant approbation of his writings. The most controversial doctrine associated with him, the filioque, was rejected by the Orthodox Church. Other disputed teachings include his views on original sin, the doctrine of grace, and predestination. Nevertheless, though considered to be mistaken on some points, he is still considered a saint and has influenced some Eastern Church Fathers. Augustine’s impact on Western Christian thought can hardly be overstated; only his beloved example, Paul of Tarsus, has been more influential, and Westerners have generally seen Paul through Augustine’s eyes. 

  • Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.
  • Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.
  • What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.
  • Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.
  • The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
  • In doing what we ought we deserve no praise, because it is our duty.
  • Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance.
  • Patience is the companion of wisdom.
  • In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?
  • Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature.
  • Habit, if not resisted, soon becomes necessity.
  • Hear the other side.
  • If two friends ask you to judge a dispute, don’t accept, because you will lose one friend; on the other hand, if two strangers come with the same request, accept because you will gain one friend.
  • The words printed here are concepts. You must go through the experiences.

The Time is Now

Friday Filosophy v.02.18.2022

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Friday Filosophy v.02.18.2022

Abraham Harold Maslow (April 1, 1908 – June 8, 1970) was an American psychologist who was best known for creating Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in priority, culminating in self-actualization. Maslow was a psychology professor at Brandeis University, Brooklyn College, New School for Social Research, and Columbia University. He stressed the importance of focusing on the positive qualities in people, as opposed to treating them as a “bag of symptoms”. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Maslow as the tenth most cited psychologist of the 20th century.

  • If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.
  • What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.
  • What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization.
  • One’s only rival is one’s own potentialities. One’s only failure is failing to live up to one’s own possibilities. In this sense, every man can be a king, and must therefore be treated like a king.
  • If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
  • The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.
  • Education can become a self-fulfilling activity, liberating in and of itself.
  • The science of psychology has been far more successful on the negative than on the positive side… It has revealed to us much about man’s shortcomings, his illnesses, his sins, but little about his potentialities, his virtues, his achievable aspirations, or his psychological health.
  • I was awfully curious to find out why I didn’t go insane.
  • But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.
  • We may define therapy as a search for value.
  • Rioting is a childish way of trying to be a man, but it takes time to rise out of the hell of hatred and frustration and accept that to be a man you don’t have to riot.
  • What we need is a system of thought – you might even call it a religion – that can bind humans together. A system that would fit the Republic of Chad as well as the United States: a system that would supply our idealistic young people with something to believe in.
  • I’m someone who likes plowing new ground, then walking away from it. I get bored easily. For me, the big thrill comes with the discovering.
  • You can see neurosis from below – as a sickness – as most psychiatrists see it. Or you can understand it as a compassionate man might: respecting the neurosis as a fumbling and inefficient effort toward good ends.
  • Work is that which you dislike doing but perform for the sake of external rewards. At school, this takes the form of grades. In society, it means money, status, privilege.

The Time is Now.

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Friday Filosophy v.02.11.2022

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Friday Filosophy v.02.11.2022

Alexander III of Macedon July 356 BC – June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. A member of the Argead dynasty, he was born in Pella—a city in Ancient Greece—in 356 BC. He succeeded his father King Philip II to the throne at the age of 20, and spent most of his ruling years conducting a lengthy military campaign throughout Western Asia and Northeastern Africa. By the age of thirty, he had created one of the largest empires in history, stretching from Greece to northwestern India. He was undefeated in battle and is widely considered to be one of history’s greatest and most successful military commanders.

During his youth, Alexander was tutored by Aristotle until the age of 16. His father Philip was assassinated in 336 BC at the wedding of Cleopatra of Macedon, Alexander’s sister, and Alexander assumed the throne of the Kingdom of Macedon. In 335 BC he campaigned in the Balkans, reasserting control over Thrace and Illyria before sacking the Greek city of Thebes. Alexander was then awarded the generalship of Greece. He used his authority to launch his father’s Pan-Hellenic project, assuming leadership over all the Greeks in their conquest of Persia.

In 334 BC he invaded the Achaemenid Empire (Persian Empire) and began a series of campaigns that lasted 10 years. Following his conquest of Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), Alexander broke the power of Persia in a series of decisive battles, including those at Issus and Gaugamela. He subsequently overthrew King Darius III and conquered the Achaemenid Empire in its entirety .At that point, his empire stretched from the Adriatic Sea to the Indus River. Alexander endeavored to reach the “ends of the world and the Great Outer Sea” and invaded India in 326 BC, achieving an important victory over King Porus at the Battle of the Hydaspes. He eventually turned back at the Beas River due to the demand of his homesick troops, dying in 323 BC in Babylon, the city he planned to establish as his capital. He did not manage to execute a series of planned campaigns that would have begun with an invasion of Arabia. In the years following his death, a series of civil wars tore his empire apart.

Alexander’s legacy includes the cultural diffusion and syncretism which his conquests engendered, such as Greco-Buddhism and Hellenistic Judaism. He founded more than twenty cities that bore his name, most notably Alexandria in Egypt. Alexander’s settlement of Greek colonists and the resulting spread of Greek culture resulted in Hellenistic civilization, which developed through the Roman Empire into modern Western culture. The Greek language became the lingua franca of the region and was the predominant language of the Byzantine Empire up until its end in the mid-15th century Alexander became legendary as a classical hero in the mold of Achilles, featuring prominently in the history and mythic traditions of both Greek and non-Greek cultures. His military achievements and enduring, unprecedented success in battle made him the measure against which many later military leaders would compare themselves. Military academies throughout the world still teach his tactics.

  • Whatever possession we gain by our sword cannot be sure or lasting, but the love gained by kindness and moderation is certain and durable.
  • How should a man be capable of grooming his own horse, or of furbishing his own spear and helmet, if he allows himself to become unaccustomed to tending even his own person, which is his most treasured belonging?
  • There is nothing impossible to him who will try.
  • Remember upon the conduct of each depends the fate of all.
  • Heaven cannot brook two suns, nor earth two masters.
  • You shall, I question not, find a way to the top if you diligently seek for it; for nature hath placed nothing so high that it is out of the reach of industry and valor.
  • How happy had it been for me had I been slain in the battle. It had been far more noble to have died the victim of the enemy than fall a sacrifice to the rage of my friends.
  • I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.
  • I had rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and dominion.
  • How great are the dangers I face to win a good name in Athens?
  • A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.

The Time is Now

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Friday Filosophy v.02.04.2022

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Friday Filosophy v.02.04.2022

Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; born 21 April 1926) is Queen of the United Kingdom and 14 other Commonwealth realms. Elizabeth was born in Mayfair, London, as the first child of the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth). She was educated privately at home and began to undertake public duties during the Second World War, serving in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. In November 1947, she married Philip Mountbatten, a former prince of Greece and Denmark, with whom she had four children: Charles, Prince of Wales; Anne, Princess Royal; Prince Andrew, Duke of York; and Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex.

When her father died in February 1952, Elizabeth—then 25 years old—became queen regnant of seven independent Commonwealth countries: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan, and Ceylon, as well as Head of the Commonwealth.  Significant events have included her coronation in 1953 and the celebrations of her Silver, Golden, and Diamond Jubilees in 1977, 2002, and 2012 respectively. In 2017, she became the first British monarch to reach a Sapphire Jubilee. In April 2021, after 73 years of marriage, her husband, Prince Philip, died at the age of 99. 2022 marks her 70th year on the throne.

Elizabeth is the longest-lived and longest-reigning British monarch, the longest-serving female head of state in history, the oldest living and longest-reigning current monarch, and the oldest and longest-serving incumbent head of state. Elizabeth has occasionally faced republican sentiment and criticism of the royal family, particularly after the breakdown of her children’s marriages, her annus horribilis in 1992, and the 1997 death of her former daughter-in-law Diana, Princess of Wales. However, support for the monarchy in the United Kingdom has been and remains consistently high, as does her personal popularity.

  • It’s all to do with the training: you can do a lot if you’re properly trained.
  • Grief is the price we pay for love.
  • To what greater inspiration and counsel can we turn than to the imperishable truth to be found in this treasure house, the Bible?
  • We lost the American colonies because we lacked the statesmanship to know the right time and the manner of yielding what is impossible to keep.
  • To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy. With the benefit of historical hindsight, we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all.
  • At Christmas, I am always struck by how the spirit of togetherness lies also at the heart of the Christmas story. A young mother and a dutiful father with their baby were joined by poor shepherds and visitors from afar. They came with their gifts to worship the Christ child.
  • My husband has quite simply been my strength and stay all these years, and I owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim.
  • Like all the best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and of family disagreements.
  • In remembering the appalling suffering of war on both sides, we recognize how precious is the peace we have built in Europe since 1945.
  • The British constitution has always been puzzling and always will be.
  • The upward course of a nation’s history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women.

The Time is Now.

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Friday Filosophy v.01.28.2022

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Friday Filosophy v.01.28.2022

Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American engineer and businessman. He started making cars in 1896 and founded the Ford Motor Company. He developed the idea of a system in which each worker has the duty to do one small part of the process of making something. His idea made it possible to produce cars in large numbers. This was called the assembly line. Many factories around the world still make things this way. It was quite innovative at the time and it allowed him to produce many cars quickly and at a cheaper price than other car companies could. He married Clara Bryant and had one child named Edsel Bryant Ford. Ford left home for Detroit, Michigan to start his mechanical career.

In 1903, Henry Ford helped start the Ford Motor Company. He was the owner of the company.[1] The company sold its first car which was the model T car on July 23, 1903. Ford became president of the company in 1906.

In 1908, Ford’s company began making the Ford Model T car. Ford said that he wanted to make a “motor car for the great multitude”. This meant that he thought that most Americans should be able to afford to buy a car and not just a few rich people. In order to reach this goal, he chose to make the design as simple as possible. All his cars would be made the same way. They were even all the same color – black.

It cost $850 to buy a Model T car. Even though that was a lot of money back then, it was still very cheap for a car. Many people wanted to buy Model T cars. In fact, so many people wanted to buy them that Ford was having a hard time making enough cars to sell one to everybody who wanted to buy one. Ford helped develop an idea, not much used before his time, called the assembly line, and started using it in his factories in 1913. Because of the assembly line, making new cars would not take as long. He put a moving belt in his factory. Cars moved along the belt, and workers put on one part at a time. Each worker would only be responsible for putting one part on cars.

The assembly line was a big success. Cars did not take as long to make, and they were cheaper to buy now, too. By 1916, it only cost $360 to buy one of Ford’s cars, and more than three times as many people were buying his cars now. The Ford Model T changed America. It made it easier for people to live in the city instead of the country.

  • When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.
  • If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.
  • Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.
  • It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
  • If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.
  • If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.
  • Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.
  • You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.
  • Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.
  • It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.
  • One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do.
  • Don’t find fault, find a remedy.
  • It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.
  • A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.
  • The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.
  • As we advance in life, we learn the limits of our abilities.
  • There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.
  • I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done.
  • If money is your hope for independence, you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.
  • The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.
  • Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.

The Time is Now.

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FridayFilosophy v.01.21.2022

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Friday Filosophy v.01.21.2022

Herodotus: c. 484 – c. 425 bc was an Ancient Greek historian. He was born in Halicarnassus, a town in south-west Asia Minor (now Bodrum, Turkey)

Herodotus was called the “Father of History” by Cicero. He wrote about the ancient empires of Babylon, Egypt, and Persia, and about the Ancient Greeks.

During his life, Herodotus probably told his stories in front of large numbers of people in Greek cities. Some men at the time did this for pay. He is now most famous for his writings about the wars between the Persian Empire and the Greek city-states. He told the story from the Greek side, although the war was mostly finished when he was still a child.

In his books, Herodotus tells us that he travelled a lot. He says that he went to what is now Italy (including Sicily), Ukraine, Egypt and Pakistan. He may also have travelled to Babylon in today’s Iraq. He often used stories from people he met to write about other places and happenings.

Some people think that Herodotus wrote about things that were not true. That is possible, because he would have relied on information from various sources. His work is important because there is very little writing on these subjects before his works.

The works of Herodotus are available today in translations.

  • The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance.
  • In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons.
  • Of all possessions a friend is the most precious.
  • Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances.
  • Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.
  • Of all men’s miseries the bitterest is this: to know so much and to have control over nothing.
  • Death is a delightful hiding place for weary men.
  • Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; While others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than ever before.
  • Of all men’s miseries the bitterest is this: to know so much and to have control over nothing.
  • He is the best man who, when making his plans, fears and reflects on everything that can happen to him, but in the moment of action is bold.
  • To think well and to consent to obey someone giving good advice are the same thing.
  • There is nothing more foolish, nothing more given to outrage than a useless mob.
  • It is clear that not in one thing alone, but in many ways equality and freedom of speech are a good thing.
  • Civil strife is as much a greater evil than a concerted war effort as war itself is worse than peace.

The Time is Now.

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Friday Filosophy v.01.14.2022

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Friday Filosophy v.01.14.2022

Ray Douglas Bradbury: August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of modes, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, and realistic fiction. Bradbury was mainly known for his novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and his short-story collections The Martian Chronicles (1950) and The Illustrated Man (1951).[4] Most of his best known work is speculative fiction, but he also worked in other genres, such as the coming of age novel Dandelion Wine (1957) and the fictionalized memoir Green Shadows, White Whale (1992). He also wrote and consulted on screenplays and television scripts, including Moby Dick and It Came from Outer Space. Many of his works were adapted into television and film productions as well as comic books. The New York Times called Bradbury “the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream.”

Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Illinois, to Esther (née Moberg) Bradbury (1888–1966), a Swedish immigrant, and Leonard Spaulding Bradbury (1890–1957), a power and telephone lineman of English ancestry. He was given the middle name “Douglas” after the actor Douglas Fairbanks.

Bradbury was surrounded by an extended family during his early childhood and formative years in Waukegan. An aunt read him short stories when he was a child.[9] This period provided foundations for both the author and his stories. In Bradbury’s works of fiction, 1920s Waukegan becomes “Green Town”, Illinois.

The Bradbury family lived in Tucson, Arizona, during 1926–1927 and 1932–1933 while their father pursued employment, each time returning to Waukegan. While living in Tucson, Bradbury attended Amphi Junior High School and Roskruge Junior High School. They eventually settled in Los Angeles in 1934 when Bradbury was 14 years old. The family arrived with only US$40 (equivalent to $774 in 2020), which paid for rent and food until his father finally found a job making wire at a cable company for $14 a week (equivalent to $271 in 2020). This meant that they could stay, and Bradbury, who was in love with Hollywood, was ecstatic.]

Bradbury attended Los Angeles High School and was active in the drama club. He often roller-skated through Hollywood in hopes of meeting celebrities. Among the creative and talented people Bradbury met were special-effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen and radio star George Burns. Bradbury’s first pay as a writer, at age 14, was for a joke he sold to George Burns to use on the Burns and Allen radio show.

  • There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
  • Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.
  • Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.
  • If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business, because we’d be cynical. Well, that’s nonsense. You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.
  • I don’t try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.
  • Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.
  • I hate all politics. I don’t like either political party. One should not belong to them – one should be an individual, standing in the middle. Anyone that belongs to a party stops thinking.
  • I know you’ve heard it a thousand times before. But it’s true – hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don’t love something, then don’t do it.
  • Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn’t exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.
  • Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.
  • Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.

The Time is Now.

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Some Thoughts About 2022

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Some Thoughts About 2022

As is pretty normal at this time of year there are many “experts” and “analysts” who provide us with their thinking about the coming year. Interest Rates, Inflation, Unemployment, GDP, labor Participation Rates and so on. Several of these “white papers” have got my attention.

  • Digital Transformation

More than at any previous time we need to move to the “contactless” shopping world. The internet. This is in part due to the ease of use that exists in internet-based shopping. It is simple and easy. How do you stack up against your competitors or the Retail Giants such as Amazon and Walmart? Did you know you can purchase OEM parts from Amazon?

What does your Parts Internet-Based Ordering System look like? What is the pricing policy for on line purchases? How will you handle returns?

  • Fixed versus variable Costs

Following on to the Internet-Based business your price point should not be the same as either telephone or walk in business. Your costs to support the internet business as not as high. The customer becomes a “Co-producer” with you. The telephone selling function for the parts department can be done from home WFH. It can be done on a part time basis. It can be done by people who have retired. Something to think about, isn’t it?

Labor as a service is a becoming trend. Our work force is aging. Retirement at 65 seems to have become a wistful thought. More people are working into their 70’s than ever before. Our technicians are in scarce and very rare supply. There are job functions that can be performed by “labor on demand” staffing. Next week I need to perform one hundred and twenty-four 500-hour maintenance services. I can assign that work to a part time employee. Something to think about, isn’t it?

There are some studies (Ardent Partners) suggesting that “nearly half of the U.S. workforce will be comprised of non-employee and agile talent in 2021.

This changes your cost structure in a major way.

  • Travel Costs are not going to return to Pre-Pandemic levels.

With technology allowing WFH through tools such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom and Skype and others we do not need to “drive” or “fly” to meet with each other. This will require us to re-examine communications. To maintain Company Culture means to be able to continue to be transparent to every employee no matter where they are working, either in a store or in their home. This will provoke a major reduction in costs.

  • The Cost Structure of our Customers.

The pressure on our customers to make money will become more severe than ever before. It is estimated that the cost of operations for Contractors has gone up by 30% (Gary Bartecki in ConstructionPros). In the same article Gary notes that the Average Contactors we asked to provide bids on nonresidential projects. They came in at 13% higher. The contractors have not yet realized the serious nature of the change in their cost structure. This will be turning up in the relationship they have with their dealer suppliers.

This is true at the same time as new equipment is in seriously short supply. Simultaneously Used Equipment prices have increased dramatically at the same time as supply dwindles.

Dealers will be asked to assist their contractor customers at a time with a lot of risk for everyone. This is at a time of serious supply chain challenges, price inflation at its highest level in four decades and skilled labor in scarce supply. This is a tough one and simply the doorway to what is coming at us.

  • Front Line – Customer Facing – Employee Retention

Since October 2021 we have been experiencing the highest level of job separations that we have seen in decades. Employees are changing jobs at a rate in excess of 3% of the workforce. How you work with your critical employees, the ones that I call your “heroes” will make a large difference. Do you truly value these customer facing employees? Do they know it and feel it and see it? Do you ask for their input on issues? Do you give them a voice that they feel is heard? Are they “empowered to make decisions on their own? Are they being compensated at the proper levels? Do you conduct performance reviews with your workers? Is there a career development, a career path, structure in place?

These Five items are but my selection from a much larger list. Each of them has merit. Each of them requires thought and then action. Do you have employees that are available to study these items who have to fit this work into their normal job or do you have employees who are tasked with keeping up with the market changes? We have fallen into a bad habit of expecting too much from each employee. We have overworked the talented people who give us everything they have on a daily basis. That in part is why the separation rate is as high as it is. The temptation to continue to do what you have always done, what Einstein called insanity, is high and very powerful. Most dealership are making more money than they ever have. Business during the Pandemic has actually been pretty good for most dealers. But please remember the old adage – Bulls and Bear make Money. Pigs get fattened and Hogs get slaughtered. Which animal most closely resembles you? Think about it.

The Time is Now.

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Friday Filosophy v.01.07.2022

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Friday Filosophy v.01.07.2022

Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. His family was known for teaching people how to speak English clearly (elocution). Both his grandfather, Alexander Bell, and his father, Alexander Melville Bell, taught elocution. His father wrote often about this and is most known for his invention and writings of Visible Speech.[1] In his writings he explained ways of teaching people who were deaf and unable to speak. It also showed how these people could learn to speak words by watching their lips and reading what other people were saying.

Alexander Graham Bell went to the Royal High School of Edinburgh. He graduated at the age of fifteen. At the age of sixteen, he got a job as a student and teacher of elocution and music in Weston House Academy, at Elgin in Morayshire. He spent the next year at the University of Edinburgh. While still in Scotland, he became more interested in the science of sound (acoustics). He hoped to help his deaf mother. From 1866 to 1867, he was a teacher at Somersetshire College in Bath, Somerset.

In 1870 when he was 23 years old, he moved with his family to Canada where they settled at Brantford, Ontario. Bell began to study communication machines. He made a piano that could be heard far away by using electricity. In 1871 he went with his father to Montreal, Quebec in Canada, where he took a job teaching about “visible speech“. His father was asked to teach about it at a large school for deaf mutes in Boston, Massachusetts, but instead he gave the job to his son. The younger Bell began teaching there in 1872. Alexander Graham Bell soon became famous in the United States for this important work. He published many writings about it in Washington, D.C.. Because of this work, thousands of deaf mutes in the United States of America are now able to speak, even though they cannot hear.

Bell’s genius is seen in part by the eighteen patents granted in his name alone and the twelve that he shared with others. These included fifteen for the telephone and telegraph, four for the photophone, one for the phonograph, five for aeronautics, four for hydrofoils, and two for a selenium cell.

In 1888, he was one of the original members of the National Geographic Society and became its second president.

He was given many honors.

Some of his thoughts and words were very powerful:

  • Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.
  • Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.
  • Educate the masses, elevate their standard of intelligence, and you will certainly have a successful nation.
  • When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.
  • Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds. I may be given credit for having blazed the trail, but when I look at the subsequent developments, I feel the credit is due to others rather than to myself.
  • America is a country of inventors, and the greatest of inventors are the newspaper men.
  • A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with – a man is what he makes of himself.
  • A man’s own judgment should be the final appeal in all that relates to himself.
  • My knowledge of electrical subjects was not acquired in a methodical manner but was picked up from such books as I could get hold of and from such experiments as I could make with my own hands.
  • I would impress upon your minds the fact that if you want to do a man justice, you should believe what a man says himself rather than what people say he says.
  • Such a chimerical idea as telegraphing vocal sounds would indeed, to most minds, seem scarcely feasible enough to spend time in working over. I believe, however, that it is feasible and that I have got the cue to the solution of the problem.
  • Morse conquered his electrical difficulties although he was only a painter, and I don’t intend to give in either till all is completed.
  • I do not recognize the right of the public to break in the front door of a man’s private life in order to satisfy the gaze of the curious… I do not think it right to dissect living men even for the advancement of science. So far as I am concerned, I prefer a postmortem examination to vivisection without anesthetics.

The Time is Now.

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Friday Filosophy v.12.31.2021

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Friday Filosophy v.12.31.2021

Paulo Coelho de Souza; was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and attended a Jesuit school. At 17, Coelho’s parents committed him to a mental institution from which he escaped three times before being released at the age of 20. Coelho later remarked that “It wasn’t that they wanted to hurt me, but they didn’t know what to do… They did not do that to destroy me, they did that to save me.” At his parents’ wishes, Coelho enrolled in law school and abandoned his dream of becoming a writer. One year later, he dropped out and lived life as a hippie, traveling through South America, North Africa, Mexico, and Europe and started using drugs in the 1960s.

Upon his return to Brazil, Coelho worked as a songwriter, composing lyrics for Elis Regina, Rita Lee, and Brazilian icon Raul Seixas. Composing with Raul led to Coelho being associated with magic and occultism, due to the content of some songs. He is often accused that these songs were rip-offs of foreign songs not well known in Brazil at the time. In 1974, by his account, he was arrested for “subversive” activities and tortured by the ruling military government, who had taken power ten years earlier and viewed his lyrics as left-wing and dangerous. Coelho also worked as an actor, journalist and theatre director before pursuing his writing career.

Coelho married artist Christina Oiticica in 1980. Together they had previously spent half the year in Rio de Janeiro and the other half in a country house in the Pyrenees Mountains of France, but now the couple reside permanently in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1986 Coelho walked the 500-plus mile Road of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. On the path, he had a spiritual awakening, which he described autobiographically in The Pilgrimage. In an interview, Coelho stated “In 1986, I was very happy in the things I was doing. I was doing something that gave me food and water – to use the metaphor in The Alchemist, I was working, I had a person whom I loved, I had money, but I was not fulfilling my dream. My dream was, and still is, to be a writer.” Coelho would leave his lucrative career as a songwriter and pursue writing full-time.

While trying to overcome his procrastination about launching his writing career, Coelho decided, “If I see a white feather today, that is a sign that God is giving me that I have to write a new book.” Seeing one in the window of a shop, he began writing that day. The following year, Coelho wrote The Alchemist and published it through a small Brazilian publishing house that made an initial print run of 900 copies and decided not to reprint it. He subsequently found a bigger publishing house, and with the publication of his next book Brida, The Alchemist took off. HarperCollins decided to publish the book in 1994. Later it became an international bestseller.

His work has been published in more than 170 countries and translated into eighty-three languages. Together, his books have sold 320 million copies. On 22 December 2016, Coelho was listed by UK-based company Richtopia at number 2 in the list of 200 most influential contemporary authors.

  • When you are enthusiastic about what you do, you feel this positive energy. It’s very simple.
  • You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.
  • Remember your dreams and fight for them. You must know what you want from life. There is just one thing that makes your dream become impossible: the fear of failure.
  • One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.
  • I can control my destiny, but not my fate. Destiny means there are opportunities to turn right or left, but fate is a one-way street. I believe we all have the choice as to whether we fulfil our destiny, but our fate is sealed.
  • The good old days, when each idea had an owner, are gone forever.
  • The more in harmony with yourself you are, the more joyful you are and the more faithful you are. Faith is not to disconnect you from reality – it connects you to reality.
  • The more violent the storm, the quicker it passes.
  • I cry very easily. It can be a movie, a phone conversation, a sunset – tears are words waiting to be written.
  • People are very reluctant to talk about their private lives but then you go to the internet and they’re much more open.
  • Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.
  • The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love.
  • I always was a rich person because moneys not related to happiness.
  • You’re always learning. The problem is, sometimes you stop and think you understand the world. This is not correct. The world is always moving. You never reach the point you can stop making an effort.
  • I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don’t hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.
  • Things do not always happen the way I would like them to happen, and I had better get used to that.
  • What interests me in life is curiosity, challenges, the good fight with its victories and defeats.

The Time is Now.

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