Tag Archives: personality

The Prize

No, she hasn’t won it, yet.

The prize she has worked for much of her life.

No, not the Nobel Peace Prize.

She finally was able to accept that prize: Saturday, June 16, 2012 in Oslo Norway.   She was awarded the prize in 1991, but couldn’t accept personally, she wouldn’t be able to get back into Burma.

The prize she has worked for most of her life is: free speech, democracy, and peace in Burma.  However, she says that are still prisoners of conscience, and as long as there is one prisoner of conscience, despite that she has been released, one too many.

No, her work is not done.  There is no peace, free speech, and democracy in Burma — but things are progressing, slowly.

She can’t rest on her laurels.  But then Aung San Sui Kyi, the Iron Butterfly, Counselor Idealist, Diplomatic Contender, has her eyes firmly focused on the REAL PRIZE, and she will not be turned away from her impossible dream, fame or no fame.  She has no a-gati.

Please Understand Me Blog |  Iron Butterfly

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Imagine

Imagine

“Be your own self. Love what YOU love.”

There is a story about him that illustrates him.

No, it isn’t one of thousands of his stories.

It is short story illustrating his enthusiasm for the future, and his celebration of the accomplishments of man.

For he was “himself” and he loved what he loved, until the day he died.

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They’re Nuts

We have Armageddon.

Want to make money?

Yes?!

No, I have yet to meet personally an individual who wants to make money.

Everybody that I know, wants to spend money — admit it, you do too.  Making money is work.

Well — he will demonstrate how to make money —  If you watch and listen, and learn.

He loves making money — it’s fun for him: it’s a way of keeping score.  Who is a winner?

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American Temperament

“There are strong minds in every walk of life that will rise superior to the disadvantages of situation, and will command the tribute due to their merit, not only from the classes to which they particularly belong, but from the society in general.”

So wrote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper #36, one the founding articles of the United States of America.

If this is not one of the best arguments for the importance of Temperament in the Human Wealth of Nations, then I don’t know what would be.

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The Contenders

‘The Putin regime, like all such regimes, is a pyramid. And what the protests are doing is dismantling the bottom rungs of this pyramid…..I have thought of leaving, and I have even made plans to leave. The truth is, I don’t want to. I love my home, my friends, my job, my life. And if Putin doesn’t like me, he can leave.’

There is a contention here.  Who is going to win in the end?

Well, it depends on the time frame.

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Wandering towards the Enlightenment

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost.

Nomad – synonym – wanderer.

She titled her book, “Nomad.”

For that was her ancestral origins — misleadingly put as “her genetics”  —  supposedly her “inheritance” and her culture.

But she was different.  Something deep inside was different.

She had always read books, from the beginning as a child.

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On the Shoulder of a Giant

If I have seen a little further,
it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.
Isaac Newton

We all know the quote. But often we don’t know the name of those Giants.

And she was not concerned that we know the true story, for in science, the shoulders are many and the results are what matter.

Newton’s giants were many: Copernicus, Galileo, Bruno, Kepler, Wallis, … But others were nameless.

Her giants included Newton, Haley, but also Annie Cannon.

And she was a giant, but who few know her name, for her almost contribution, or rather, her until recently uncredited contribution. For a man took that credit by publishing four years later essentially the same idea she had told him about — and that she deserved the real credit, for she was the first person to observe it and understand it.  Moreover, she had the imagination not blinded by “conventional wisdom:” the scientific heterodoxy, which wasn’t really science at the time, anyway. Consensus science is never a science.

But she didn’t know that…

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Supplying the Cool

It’s cool daddy-o.

Have you heard the expression?  If you have, when?

If you haven’t, it says something about you.  Maybe your age and where you were born.

He had heard it, and really had a subtle influence on the lingo as the 50s and 60s as they progressed.

As the host of the television after-school dance program “American Bandstand” he made an ideal surrogate chaperone: a wholesome, polite, honorary adolescent. Although he was 27 when the program was first broadcast nationally on Aug. 5, 1957, he could have passed for 17. At the time he seemed the sort of mild-mannered superannuated boy who might once have served on the school safety patrol and been elected class treasurer. In fact he had been the president of his high school student council in Mount Vernon, N.Y. [Wikipedia]

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Angry Young Man

The Voice is unmistakable.

You know the music.

There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man.

It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition. And, it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the …

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Tough but Fair

That was his answer.

Tim Russert had asked him what he would want to be his epitaph.

He rarely gave answers.

He did ask a lot of tough questions. Very tough.

In fact, he was the first to do it on Television.

1955. “Night Beat” became an instant hit that New Yorkers began referring to as “brow beat.” His relentless questioning of his subjects proved to be a compelling alternative to the polite chit-chat practiced by early television hosts.

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