Category: rePosts

Upon hearing the name Abraham Lincoln, many images may come to mind: rail-splitter, country lawyer, young congressman, embattled president, Great Emancipator, assassin’s victim, even the colossal face carved into Mount Rushmore. One aspect of this multidimensional man that probably doesn’t occur to anyone other than avid readers of Lincoln biographies (and Smithsonian) is that of inventor. Yet before he became the 16th president of the United States, Lincoln, who had a long fascination with how things worked, invented a flotation system for lifting riverboats stuck on sandbars.
Though his invention was never manufactured, it serves to give Lincoln yet another honor: he remains the only U.S. president to have a patent in his name. According to Paul Johnston, curator of maritime history at the National Museum of American History (NMAH), Lincoln’s eminence and the historical rarity of his patent make the wooden model he submitted to the Patent Office “one of the half dozen or so most valuable things in our collection.”
Inventive Abe | History & Archaeology | Smithsonian Magazine.

Great story of personal choice and true wealth!

The razor’s edge
During the summer of 1997, Sparky and I went for a hike. As we walked, we talked. He told me about his plans and his goals. He was living in a small town in northern Washington, working two full-time jobs, a part-time job, and getting free rent in exchange for housesitting with an elderly homeowner. “I’ve only had five or six days off in the past eight months,” he said.
“That seems crazy,” I said. “Why are you working so hard?”
“I want to travel around the world,” he said. “You know that I don’t have a lot of Stuff. There’s a reason for that. Material possessions tie a person down to one place. I can’t travel if I have a house and a car and all of that other Stuff.”
He told me about the trip he had planned. He had a one-way ticket to Thailand. From there, he hoped to travel to India and then Israel, but he didn’t have any sort of agenda. “I’m just going to go,” he said. “I’m going to travel as long as my money holds out.”
The Razor’s Edge: Lessons in True Wealth ∞ Get Rich Slowly.

just had to pass this on!
here is the link to the nytimes article.

“My parents told me to keep coming to school even if I am killed,” said Shamsia, 17, in a moment after class. Shamsia’s mother, like nearly all of the adult women in the area, is unable to read or write. “The people who did this to me don’t want women to be educated. They want us to be stupid things.”
The Bayesian Heresy is MTEF: What it takes for a girl to go to school in Afghanistan.

Got This Great Story From Paulo Coelho’s blog!
The sheate is almost as important as the sword, it allows the samurai to not think about the sword most of the times, like during trying to run from enemies, or jumping etc.

Here where I am
Published by Paulo Coelho on October 3, 2008 in Stories
– That is why the discipline of meditation was worthwhile – concluded the master, when the young man returned to him. – You may have great skill with the instrument you choose for your livelihood, but it us useless, if you cannot command the mind which uses that instrument.
Here where I am at Paulo Coelho’s Blog.

Remind me of the West Wing!
Need to get this thing down, I believe looking back the heroes , villains and heroes of this crisis must be remembered, villified and villified.

Wild White House meeting sets back deal
By DAVID ROGERS | 9/25/08 9:58 PM EDT Updated: 9/25/08 9:58 PM EDT
After White House meeting, Dems complain of being “blindsided” by a new conservative alternative.
A high-profile White House meeting on Treasury’s $700 billion Wall Street rescue plan ended on a sour, contentious note Thursday after animated exchanges among lawmakers laced with presidential politics just weeks before the November elections.
“I can’t invent votes,” House Republican Leader John Boehner warned the administration about the lack of support in his conference for the massive government intervention. And House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) angrily accused House Republicans — with the tacit support of Republican presidential candidate John McCain — of crafting an alternative to undercut Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.
Both McCain and his Democrat rival, Sen. Barack Obama, left without any joint endorsement. A beleaguered President Bush had to struggle to maintain order and reassert himself. And when Democrats left after the meeting to caucus in the Roosevelt Room, Paulson pursued them, begging that they not “blow up” the legislation.
The former Goldman Sachs CEO even went down on one knee as if genuflecting, to which Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) is said to have joked, “I didn’t know you were Catholic.”
The White House meeting had been called at the urging of McCain, but Democrats made sure Obama had a prominent part. And much as they complained later of being blindsided, the whole meeting turned out to be something of an ambush on their part—aimed at McCain and House Republicans.
“Speaking professionally,” said one Republican aide, “They did a very good job.”
When Bush yielded early to Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D- Nev.) to speak, they yielded to Obama to speak for the assembled Democrats. And it was Obama who raised the subject of the conservative alternative and pressed Paulson on what he thought of the idea.
Wild White House meeting sets back deal – David Rogers – Politico.com.

This quote was a gem:

BARTLET Because the idea of American exceptionalism doesn’t extend to Americans being exceptional. If you excelled academically and are able to casually use 690 SAT words then you might as well have the press shoot video of you giving the finger to the Statue of Liberty while the Dixie Chicks sing the University of the Taliban fight song. The people who want English to be the official language of the United States are uncomfortable with their leaders being fluent in it.
Op-Ed Columnist – Aaron Sorkin Conjures a Meeting of Obama and Bartlet – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com.