All that is Gold, does not glitter.
He wasn’t even from California.
But he was The Best of California’s Gold, for thirty years.
In Memoriam
He was the same on camera as off camera. He was a people person. “Huell Howser, who turned his folksy reporting style featuring an unrepentant Tennessee drawl and gee-whiz approach into television gold.”
The Premise of Temperament
It was announced that Nathaniel Branden died this morning, December 3, 2014
Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater. —Albert Einstein
This garden universe vibrates complete,
Some, we get a sound so sweet.
Vibrations, reach on up to become light,
And then through gamma, out of sight.
Between the eyes and ears there lie,
The sounds of color and the light of a sigh.
And to hear the sun, what a thing to believe,
But it’s all around if we could but perceive.
To know ultra-violet, infra-red, and x-rays,
Beauty to find in so many ways.
Two notes of the chord, that’s our poor scope,
And to reach the chord is our life’s hope.
And to name the chord is important to some,
So they give it a word, and the word is OM.
Graeme Edge, Moody Blues
There have been many times I have heard an individual say something to the effect: I hate (don’t like, don’t do) “math.” Shame on our ignorant “math” educational system, but now with the Khan Academy there is no excuse for such a lament from our kids.
I always enjoyed “math” — hey, I am a nerd from the sixties. But I “hit a wall” in mathematics in the second-year of college. And even modern “mathematicians” have to “specialize” because the “difficulties” of “mathematics”. Practically all believe that mathematics, even for the “mathematicians,” is too vast and large to now to “see” the whole elephant (so to speak).
In mathematics you don’t understand things. You just get used to them.
— John Von Neumann
Someday information science [in some form of Formatics] will encompass all of math and science, but until then:
The religion of Mathematics is a Master of Us All.
Except when in the 1700’s,
Continue reading A Master of Us All
“Everybody has a story. And there’s something to be learned from every experience.”
— Oprah Winfrey
She would know how hard it is.
She wouldn’t assume the worse or just abandon things.
She warned us of this: 
The Danger of a Single Story
Journalism’s weakness: Hit and run investigative journalism. Headlines and Magazine Covers. Money and reflective fame.
Shallow and a single story. Sometimes good, most of the time irrelevant, sometimes bad…
“Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.”
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
“I had to play. I had to find the heart of the game.”
“She was a very good baseball player,” — Hank
Toni was a pro and “smooth,” — Ernie
Hank Aaron, some people have argued, is the best baseball player ever. So Hank knew what he was talking about.
Mister Cub, Ernie Banks, one of the top baseball players in the 50’s, no doubt.
But she knew she was good, good enough to play with the best: including Satchel.
‘He was so good that he’d ask batters where they wanted it, just so they’d have a chance. He’d ask, “You want it high? You want it low? You want it right in the middle? Just say.” People still couldn’t get a hit against him. So I get up there and he says, “Hey T., how do you like it?” And I said, “It doesn’t matter, just don’t hurt me.” When he wound up — he had these big old feet — all you could see was his shoe. I stood there shaking, but I got a hit. Right out over second base. Happiest moment in my life.’ — Toni Stone.
Baseball. For the love of the game.
“It’s always consciousness — of“
I can see and hear him very distinctly now in my consciousness, even though he is gone.
My father had said it to me, on quite of few times, and it’s full impact has finally come home…
Because of another person, who I was barely conscious of … most of my life. And I never met the man.
But James and Sharon know him. There is the two degrees of physical separation.
But the abstract connections are deeper.
It is called the Gestalt.
For my father and Nathaniel Branden had at least two things in common…
He wasn’t talented enough, he thought.
To join Disney Animation Studios as an animator.
So he became a scientist
A Computer Scientist.
He has had a hand in innovating with a team, in a whole new way.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Now he is the President of Disney Animation Studios… and Pixar Animation Studios … and Disney Toons Studios.
Computer Science, Ed Catmull, and Innovation has come a long way baby…
And you haven’t seen nothing yet.
Malala Yousafzai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
The guy makes sense.
“It is very REASONED with compassion too.” Some might say he is Rational in his thinking.
And people are slowly, but surely realizing this.
Charlie Munger for one. Even John Stewart has caught on. 😉 And me too, even though I thought his fantastic idea about fast and slow ideas was the only article I would read of his.
There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.
— Hannah Arendt
“And one of the things they showed us was how to really focus on making it swift and usable. We made a two-minute surgery checklist; it had just 19 items. Some of them were just make sure you don’t forget dumb stuff: make sure you gave antibiotics, make sure you have blood ready for a high-blood-loss case. And then there were other interesting parts: make sure everybody in the room has been introduced by name and role; make sure the surgeon actually explained to the team what their goals for the operation are; make sure the anesthesiologist and nurses had a chance to explain their plans for the operation. We put that checklist in eight hospitals around the world, ranging from rural Tanzania to Toronto and Seattle, and every single hospital we put it in had a double-digit reduction in complications. The average reduction in death was 46 percent. That made me realize there was something much deeper and more important going on here about this set of problems we’re grappling with in the modern world.”
You see, his main ideas are Slow Ideas. Complex ideas: hard to take hold in the general public zeitgeist.
