Cult Icon
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George Bernard Shaw wrote, “This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
We should chat one day Mr. Icon
14 hours ago, Limerlight said:We should chat one day Mr. Icon
Well, I'm here..
Another provoking insight from the course:
- There are people in life with mediocre intelligence that rise very high due to their "animal" brains being so aggressive/risk taking combined with outstanding instincts. High self esteem, high risk tolerance, high energy. This applies to both men and women. Millionaire high school drop-outs and such. Organized crime, business scams/pyramid schemes, etc. Pop stars, instant celebs, modeling.
-But these people can have a high risk of crashing and burning as their endeavors may not be matched with a wise, mature, long-term outlook.
-The Instructor then went to talk about how a bunch of "uneducated hooligans" outdid him in his own psychology business endeavors while technically himself ( with an MD) and objectively smarter than them was largely surpassed by them.
***One of my favorite sayings: "The opposite of love isn't hate. It's apathy."
I heard that this is good. Anybody see it?
On 11/10/2017 at 11:55 AM, Cult Icon said:
Well, I'm here..
I'll send you a message when I'm not working late one day
Vids of Bar Harbor, Maine
The Park was very impressive. these videos don't do the area justice.
Maine is a very beautiful and rather empty state. Much of it is undisturbed by civilization and what civilization is there is very clean and well organized. No pollution and dirtiness. I don't think I saw a single cigarette butt on the ground. Everything is 'fall leaves' and colorful. Bar Harbour is a gorgeous island. The youtubes I posted doesn't do it justice. There are shocking scenes of natural splendor all throughout. Gigantic vistas. The Acadia park is at a high elevation and is close to the clouds. It's romantic, too. The downtown area is liberal and quite interesting/pretty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsiq-0RGXTg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mxdyp5NbW4A
I recently picked up:
-the essence of beauty is gratitude.
lots of different things
masquerade as love. Comfort, fear, dependency, ennui, loneliness, etc. I do
believe that it is these things that translate in our heads as "love".
-Gratitude. True beauty has a profound sense of gratitude. A gratitude for life and a gratitude for love. A simple thankfulness, a kindness, a grace of spirit in the heart. As Nietzsche put it, “The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.”
"And what is the beauty in a man? A lifelong devotion to a personal passion, a passion larger than him, larger than her, larger than the whole wide world, a passion that radiates from his pores until the day he dies. This is the beauty of men. And this is why beautiful women are forever in love with starving artists, musicians, dreamers, iconoclasts. They love these men because they, too, possess a certain, rare beauty. They, too, are set apart."
Wow, some excellent and true quotes
"Imagine the heart of a man like this, my love. He goes because
he must, because he is caught up in something greater, something
ineluctable, something wondrous that calls his name, something
that draws him ever onward to all his magnificent horizons. Simply
stated, he must go. So now... is this a bad thing? Is it possible that
his love of adventure and freedom is simply stronger, more ebullient,
more exhilarating, and more alive, than any desire to stay? Could
it be that this man has no fear of commitment at all? Could it be
that his commitment is the highest form of commitment—a commitment
to the truth that is his truth? Could it be that a woman
knows in her heart that, contrary to other men, he will never leave
her? Even if he must go?"
His desire to stay is strong but his desire to go is stronger. He must go, for this is his full truth, his full heart, his full vulnerability. He is not running away at all. He believes in her, he loves her. But he must go. He knows that if he stays, if he quiets his spirit for her, if he calms the warrior in him, it will slowly kill his heart, kill the light in his eyes, and just as surely, kill her desire for him. And though she won’t admit it, in her heart she knows this as well. For this is the very thing she loves about him.
A woman wants it both ways. This is what leads to all the heart-rending. She is attracted to the valiant, exciting, feral heart of the adventurer, but once she catches hold of him, she tries to tame him, domesticate him, settle him down, and once he is stuffed and mounted, she has inadvertently quieted the very essence in him she loves the most.
A woman can never change a real man. He can only change of his own volition. He can only change because he chooses it, because he looks at her and thinks, “yes, this is where my heart lies.” She can, however, change a weak man; he will change just to please her, because he is too insipid or too timid or too bland to do anything else.
"Why do they do any of these things? For fame?
For money? For power? No, they do it all for romance. Which is
to say, they do it for their dreams, for relevance in their lives, for
meaning. Locke said, “Beasts abstract not.” In other words, humans
are the only romantic ones.
We are all starved for romance, for seduction, for passion. We want it
so badly that it makes us cry. Oh, how we yearn for a romantic path
through our days, for relevance in our lives, for our lives to have an
impact. Our hearts ache to be caught up in something greater than
ourselves, to be seduced, to seduce ourselves and others, to desire
something—anything!—so much that we would die for it.
This is the essence of romance. And we try so hard to find it. We
scatter about this earth, to every wind, pursuing an infinite number
of endeavors, pursuing fulfillment of the romantic yearnings of our
hearts, getting lost in whims, choosing this pair of shoes rather than
that pair of shoes. We are all starved for romance. It is the fight of
our lives."
Best technical adviser ever:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Dye
IMHO, He is the only adviser that makes the battle scenes have semblance of historical accuracy )- films (and the Pacific/Bob) that have his mark have carefully balanced accuracy melded with the practical needs of filmmaking. All the battle scenes in Bob and the Pacific were made as good as possible. I'd go as far as to say that both TV series are educational in the technical sense, as well.
These are the best from BOB that I know of (Attack on Brecourt Manor was also very good. There is a one with the attack on a Dutch village but I can't find it.):
The Foy battle (elements of the 101.AB supported by armor push out Panzer-grenadiers and Panzers out of Foy) shows that the adviser team clearly understand WW2 combat and tactics (unlike the rest of hollywood). This battle is a great model for a common attack in the West front 1944/1945.
The german defense doctrine was to have a low manpower screen (snipers, forward observers (used to guide mortar and artillery fire), and machinegun teams) all across the Front. Often the frontline had only 20 germans per KM of front. The majority of the force was in the rear. This gave the severely outnumbered germans the flexibility to counterattack- their idea of defense was to launch careful counterattacks with assault reserves at enemy weak points. The Americans attack conventionally with combined arms and with numerical superiority. In memoirs and divisional histories, the experience of fighting the defending germans was like fighting invisible ghosts- they were all snipers and machineguns. Then, suddenly a german counterattack, and the majority of the germans emerge. There is no counterattack in this scene but the other battle (for the Dutch village) in the early episode shows a classic german counterattack with Pzgrenadiers and tanks.
This one is great too- the best model of an armor breakthrough attack I've ever seen. A battlegroup of Panzer-grenadiers from the 17.SS supported by German Paras from FJR-6 attack the 101.AB division a few days after the landing. They try to achieve a breakthrough by sending a Stug IV Battalion (45 armored assault guns), clear out the airborne, and then roll up the flanks. Combat Commands from the 2.AD maneuver in and hit the German attack from the flank. IIRC around half of the Stug IVs are knocked out or abandoned and the "bloody gulch" is littered with hundreds of dead and wounded. The Germans are out of Carentan for good.
It also has a nice scene of a fearful soldier who overcomes his fears, and later falls in combat for it.
2018 reading:
I want to read all of his books eventually. I read the first one an extremely long time ago:
https://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Balkoski/e/B001JS6IIA/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1
5 volume series: 29th Infantry Division
1. Beyond the Beachhead
2. From the Beachhead to Brittany
3. From Brittany to the Reich
4. Our Tortured Souls
5. The Last Roll Call, 1945
Interesting Twist on the "rehabilitated' Joker
http://viewcomic.com/batman-white-knight-002-2017/
The punisher in Vietnam
x
nvm, too long
On 10/11/2017 at 1:42 AM, 17 Moments of Spring said:but the o'reilly accusations were clearly aginst fox news, to hunt down their mvps. they tried the same against hannity, but he took it seriously, fought back and turned to the audience. the same tactics was used against trump in the campaign. hire disposable women who lie for fame / money / whatever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XlhRL3D3Sw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=705Os-3YOoc
and again
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHw2fR6JCKY
2 hours ago, Cult Icon said:
Zimmer always do great pieces. I understand that he is an autodidact who learnt by himself while practicing. He says that "he's always heard music in his head". I feel the same way.
Yes, I like this track; the vocals are interesting. I've lost someone recently; so, I've been listenning to tracks like this one quite a lot. It turns out that it actually makes us feel better. I even came across an article with a "scientific" study stating that (while I was listenning to this kind of music!). We read so many "scientific" studies in the media (most of them are distorted by the journalist and it's never exact science), but I kinda shared what they said in this particular study (which doesn't mean that it applies to everybody)
These days, I've been listenning a lot to this one:
Spoiler
So, is this you personnal page ? What kind of stuff do you post here ?
It says you're a financial guru ; do you work in finance ?
On 11/10/2017 at 2:43 AM, Cult Icon said:I'm interested in psych as I am preparing for the next stage of my life.
If I may ask, which stage are you preparing? Do you think that psychology is an efficient tool to understand our world? These psychologists are real hard workers, but since experiments are quite complicated in human sciences (reproducibility is hard to get since the samples aren't thick), I'm assuming that it's hard for them to really confirm all their assumptions. 
Anyway, I don't really know any of these stuffs, so I'm interested by your enlightments.
Youth
By Samuel Ullman
Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.
Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.
Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.
Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being’s heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of what’s next, and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the infinite, so long are you young.
When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch the waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty.