This is the weather.gov forecast for my zip code for tomorrow night ( Read more... )

I just want to take a minute to rave about a new (?) web idea called Public Stuff. Philadelphia, where as you know I live, has it via their new 311 interface between the city and the inhabitants. I spotted it and just thought I'd try it out, thinking, it certainly couldn't make things worse than Philadelphia's past performance ( Read more... )

"Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer, since to remain constantly at work will cause you to lose power of judgment. Go some distance away, because then the work appears smaller, and more of it can be taken in at a glance, and lack of harmony and proportion is more ( Read more... )

Dad has always driven stick shifts, as a point of control, and taught me on one, and I admit I prefer them, too. To my irritation, fewer and fewer of them are being made. I just learned, though, of at least one saving grace of that fact. While reading Lexington's latest blog post at The Economist, I encountered this passage:

I had expected the ( Read more... )

"As for the chopping of bargains, when a man buys not to hold but to sell over again, that commonly grindeth double, both upon the seller and upon the buyer."

-- Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

"With money in your pocket, you are wise and you are handsome and you sing well too."

-- Yiddish proverb

"The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it."

-- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

"I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all ( Read more... )

"Make a fool of yourself. Otherwise you won't survive."

-- Sir Richard Branson (1950-)

“It appears we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and our most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers! In fact, I discovered by reading newspapers that these editor/geniuses plainly saw all my strategic defects from the start, yet failed to inform me until it was too late. Accordingly, I'm readily willing to yield my command to ( Read more... )