Persistence, patience and the elusive squirrel.

   Patience and persistence are two widely admired characteristics. Rightfully so, as they contribute to a broad array of accomplishments. There is just one problem, on their own, they are pretty useless.

    To illustrate my point, my old dog "Patches" loved to chase squirrels. He held on to this passion into the final years of his life. Moreover, he wasn't just passionate about the chase, he truly wanted to catch them. It consumed him to even see a squirrel in our yard. He demanded to be released to pursue his quarry.

   In fourteen years of diligent pursuit of squirrels, never giving less than his absolute all, he caught exactly zero squirrels. So much for persistence and patience. On their own, those two attributes have great potential; for comedy. To be effective they must be tied to intelligence. In that regard, Patches was sadly lacking. A lovely dog, but dumber than a bag of hammers.

  If you want your persistence and patience to pay off, you need to add a nice healthy dose of thinking to interpret the feedback you get from your efforts. By using that feedback you can adjust your efforts and continually get closer to your goal. 

   Sometimes, we just need to switch races. By all means, put in an effort. Just be prepared to use the feedback you get honestly. Be willing to accept that you're doing a "Patches" and putting a lot of effort into a losing idea. 

   Maybe you're just not meant to catch squirrels. 

   

   

They're liars! Yeah, but you believed them. A political education.

  Marge, "I can't believe it Homer, you lied to me"
  
  Homer, "It's not just me Marge. It takes two to lie, one to lie and one to listen.". 

  The Simpsons sure are funny. But maybe Homer has a point. Duh! Yep, I think Homer is on to something. If we get lied to all the time, maybe we have a gullibility problem.

  If we have politicians who are full of excrement, how did they get elected? More importantly, how do they get re-elected?

   To illustrate a point, I love quotes. One of my favorite sources for quotes is Will Rogers. One of my favorite of Will Roger's quotes is:, "Everything is changing. People are taking the comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke." When you consider that Rogers died in 1935, and wasn't familiar with the "Daily Show" it becomes a bit apparent that our "new problem" isn't new at all.

  Politicians have been bending and shaping the truth for as long as there have been politicians. For an equally long period of time, people have been frustrated by this phenomena. But, as Plato, an even older source of information said, "One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."

   So, if you have had enough of this truth void, getting involved can be a simple matter of paying attention at a critical level. Stop listening to quick pitches, or being lulled into complacency by your short-term good fortune. Spend time actually learning the facts. Build a BS detector in your brain. Stop being governed by your inferiors.

  It may not be in the ten commandments, but believing nonsense is almost as bad as concocting it. Listen to Homer. Lies are only effective when they are believed. You can't stop them being told, but you can develop the critical thinking to recognize them as they are being spoken.

   Good luck.

NSA, Edward Snowden, and a bit more about honesty...

Forget the political aspects of this if you possibly can.

Is Edward a traitor? Well, given that I have only seen what has been presented in the news, which hardly rises to the level of evidentiary rules of a courtroom, who knows?

Has my own government been a little short in the honesty department? Yes.

Now, you might ask "Aren't you also drawing your conclusions from the same news you mentioned just a second ago?" Kind of, but the overwhelming effort to paint this guy as an evil worm and the myriad of press with elected members of our government droning (pardon the pun) on about the damage he has done sort of tells me that he hit a nerve.

That our President owned up to the program after the fact seals the deal. They lied through omission.

This blog is not the place I want to debate policy. But I think it is fair to say that whether or not the PRISM program is worthwhile we deserved to know about it from the people we hired when we elected them.

How does that belong in a blog about success? Because Congress has terminally bad ratings. There are not many people who trust anything a politician says. Now this is not exactly new ground, as their has always been a bit of a barrier between what will get you elected and what you can get done.

However, the lack of honesty and transparency has lead to the decline in their ratings on both sides of the aisle. If someone was elected on the principal that they would do something, they should go down fighting for the principal or promise they set forth.

Second and of equal importance, my fellow U.S. citizens deserve to know what portion of our civil rights are given away in an effort to protect us. The government is NOT the boss. We are. You don't hide things from the boss. Sometimes the truth might be hard for "the boss" to hear, but it still must be told. Honesty isn't only what you say, it is also informing those you work for of things that they will even potentially consider important.

ABC - Always Be Committed. Yes, even if you were elected.


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