Ambiance

What It Takes

August 5, 2009 at 12:11 pm (By Amba)

The three most important characteristics for success in life, it seems to me, are (in no special order)

• temperament
• entitlement
• perseverance

So what does that mean?

Everybody understands “perseverance,” and it is probably the single most important, and most broadly applicable, prerequisite for success.  This was driven home to me when I was writing about the Hubble Telescope.  (I know!  You’ve read it already!  But do read this book.) More than forty years from inception to execution, and then — already a billion and a half over its projected budget of $500,000,000 — finally launched — with a fatal flaw!  The pressure to cut losses and leave the thing up there as orbiting space junk was strong.  But, no!  It took three more years, but they went up and put glasses on it!  And it changed the world.  Trust me, there’s a similar story behind everything — from vaccine to blockbuster — that changes the world.  As @weirdralph said recently on Twitter, “Every giant oak tree is simply the result of a nut that decided to stand his ground.”

Perseverance can probably be acquired, although some people persevere by temperament (i.e. they have an obsessive streak), and having a sense of entitlement helps.  The three are intertwined.

Temperament, I think, is a matter of nature and entitlement one of nurture, although certainly nurture can modify temperament (give your child too much of a sense of entitlement, and given the requisite temperament, you may create a narcissistic diva; too little, and you can quench a fire); and different inborn temperaments elicit different nurturing, as any parent of more than one will tell you.  But without the inborn drive and some early approval of your using it, all the gifts in the world will just sit there like unbaked dough.  Without drive, whether for creation or recognition or whatever, you won’t try hard enough.  Without entitlement, you’ll give up too easily.

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Damned with a Painted Phrase!

August 4, 2009 at 5:47 pm (By Amba)

Proving that to get older is to get more outrageous and outspoken,

My old friend Barry Casselman is smokin‘!

Although some of the new president’s critics have tried to apply a number of sensational epithets to his domestic policies, especially as radical, socialist or quasi-Marxist, the reality is much more conventional and undramatic. In short, Barack Obama, rhetoric notwithstanding, is a classic academic liberal of a type, and from a milieu, which blossomed on elite university campuses and in parvenu liberal salons in the aftermath of the Great Society in the 1970’s. […]

Thwarted in the Reagan/first Bush years, and even during the Clinton years, and certainly during the second Bush years, these aging liberals have accumulated a constipated energy to pass a whole bookshelf of legislation which, in effect, “reforms” nothing, but does further redistribute the resources of taxpayers.  Unfortunately, this redistribution is not from the rich to the poor to the benefit of the latter, but a transfer from all taxpayers to the most inefficient bureaucratic tangle of all times, an outcome so ultimately destructive that it is apparent, before the fact, to anyone who has basic mathematics skills. […]

The Democratic leaders understandably speak about their hurry to enact their liberal domestic legislation. [… The failures of the Bush Administration are discussed]  The proposals, now being advanced by the administration and the Democratic leaders in Congress, and making their way toward enactment, are legislative zombies, i.e., they are walking but not breathing.  Perhaps by intimidation, some of them will be passed into law, but only at the cost of a great political reaction in 2010 and 2012.

Who says centrists can’t be passionate and scathing?  To me, Casselman’s indictment is far more devastating (because of its ring of truth) than fantasies of all the birfers and socialism scaremongers put together.  Read the whole thing!

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That’s Amore!

August 4, 2009 at 9:29 am (By Amba)

Received in a humor e-mail this morning.  Some are better than others.  Go ahead, top them!

For many years now, there has been circulating a continuously expanding poem. Its leaping-off place is the first verse of “That’s Amore,” the song by Harry Warren and Jack Brooks made famous by crooner Dean Martin:

When the moon hits your eye
Like a big pizza pie,
That’s amore.

Around the turn of the century we are living in, Frank Rubin, of Wappinger Falls, New York, came up with the idea of writing some additional verses and inviting others to contribute theirs to his Web site. Soon, the science-fiction writer Spider Robinson picked up the idea on his site.  Sure enough, something about the rhythm of the lines and the sounds of that last line inspired punsters to soar hilariously from the launch pad of the original. Sing along with the best of the take-offs:

Ray Charles gained so much fame
That his fans screamed his name:
“Sing some more, Ray!”

When the yup bought his Deere,
All the neighbors did hear,
“That’s a mower, eh!”

A New Zealander man
With a permanent tan:
That’s a Maori

If your vitamins be
Mainly C, D, and E,
Take some more A

When Canadians show
You their mothers, they go,
“That’s my mawr, eh.”

He stole bases for thrills,
And his last name is Wills.
That’s a Maury.

When an eel bites your hand
And that’s not what you planned
That’s a moray.

When our habits are strange
And our customs deranged
That’s our mores.

When your horse munches straw
And the bales total four
That’s some more hay.

When Othello’s poor wife
She gets stabbed with a knife
That’s a Moor, eh?

When a snack you desire
Toasted over a fire,
That’s a smore, eh?

When your sheep go to graze
In a damp marshy place,
That’s a moor, eh?

When you’re soaking up sun
At the beach, having fun
That’s some more rays.

When “The Fonz” gives a shout
‘Cause he likes whats turned out,
That’s some more “Aaaayyyy”s

When your boat comes home fine
And you tied up her line
That’s a moor, eh?

When humidity’s high
Can’t see far with your eyes
That’s some more haze.

When your paycheck augments
With more dollars and cents
That’s some more raise!

When you want to cut grass
and it must be done fast,
That’s a mower, eh?

When you ace your last tests
Like you did all the rest
That’s some more “A”s!

When you’ve had quite enough
Of this bad rhyming stuff
That’s “No more!”, eh?

When on Mt. Cook you see
An aborigine,
That’s a Maori.

A comedian-ham
With the name Amsterdam
That’s a Morey.

When the school says “Don’t worry,
Learn to dance in a hurry.”,
Thats A (rthur) Murray.

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