UN- COMMON SENSE… or... Critical Thinking Skills

Words to live by… 

1st Carl's quote... "read the directions... and / or read the label..." 

“don’t put all of your eggs in one basket”

“If it sounds to good to be true, it usually is” 

"Don't put yourself between a rock and a hard place"

(or as Sean Connery said in "the Rock" "between "the Rock" and a hard case")

"Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today"

but sometimes you have to....
we will cross that bridge when we come to it

Some thoughts

“don’t put all of your eggs in one basket”

Why… if you put all your eggs in one basket and something happens most likely all of your eggs will break and you will have nothing left.

Your eggs cost time and money to create… you saved hard earned money to buy the chickens and the grain to feed them and the pen to keep them safe and you have spent a lot of valuable time feeding them and collecting the eggs…

So how does this relate to real life… the general idea is that if you put $1,000 (hard earned cash)  in one account in one bank..   what if something happens to that bank… a lot of banks are FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance corporation) insured which means that you may be able to recover most if not all of your money… but some investments are not FDIC insured and they send you documents to let you know that is the case… in this case, if something happens… like the CEO of the firm investing your money has decided to invest all of the money on himself his family vacations buying stuff… and then the company does not have enough cash to cover the investments, you might wind up losing all of your money…

If you think this could not happen look up Bernie Madoff…  which brings us to the next idiom

“If it sounds to good to be true, it usually is” 

Some other interesting information...

I did not know that!

“Since her death in 1979, the woman who discovered what the universe is made of has not so much as received a memorial plaque. Her newspaper obituaries do not mention her greatest discovery. […] Every high school student knows that Isaac Newton discovered gravity, that Charles Darwin discovered evolution, and that Albert Einstein discovered the relativity of time. But when it comes to the composition of our universe, the textbooks simply say that the most abundant atom in the universe is hydrogen. And no one ever wonders how we know.”
— 
Jeremy Knowles, discussing the complete lack of recognition Cecilia Payne gets, even today, for her revolutionary discovery. (via alliterate)

OH WAIT LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT CECILIA PAYNE.

Cecilia Payne’s mother refused to spend money on her college education, so she won a scholarship to Cambridge.

Cecilia Payne completed her studies, but Cambridge wouldn’t give her a degree because she was a woman, so she said to heck with that and moved to the United States to work at Harvard.

Cecilia Payne was the first person ever to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy from Radcliffe College, with what Otto Strauve called “the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy.”

Not only did Cecilia Payne discover what the universe is made of, she also discovered what the sun is made of (Henry Norris Russell, a fellow astronomer, is usually given credit for discovering that the sun’s composition is different from the Earth’s, but he came to his conclusions four years later than Payne—after telling her not to publish).

Cecilia Payne is the reason we know basically anything about variable stars (stars whose brightness as seen from earth fluctuates). Literally every other study on variable stars is based on her work.

Cecilia Payne was the first woman to be promoted to full professor from within Harvard, and is often credited with breaking the glass ceiling for women in the Harvard science department and in astronomy, as well as inspiring entire generations of women to take up science.

Cecilia Payne is awesome and everyone should know her.

We took Bandit to the “Gate” or the “Bridge”, Saturday, September 30, 2006.

We had a hard time making the decision, but after we spoke with the doctor, we felt it was right. Dr. Horvath said she has had to put a few cats to sleep that were in the same condition and felt that Bandit most likely was depressed and his quality of life at this time was not very good. Dr. Horvath said that we would have had to make the decision within the next week or so and from her experience, it was not any easier or the benefits were not that great if we had delayed much longer. We did everything that we could to help him be as comfortable as possible. Bandit’s last moments were peaceful and he went to sleep very quickly.

He is gone but not forgotten.

Bandit was our first “kid” and we had him with us for around 16 years. Bandit was a special needs cat and we saved him several times because of his problems. We became very close monitoring his progress these last few months and it was very difficult to say good-by.

We will miss our “Little Man-Squirt- Bandit”

A Cat’s Journey

The young cat set his foot on the path of life. "Is this the long way," he asked? And the guide said, "Yes, and the way is hard. And you will be old before you are at the end of it. But the end will be better than the beginning."

But the young cat was happy, and he would not believe that anything could be better than these years. So he played with the family. The sun shone on the young cat and he cried, “Nothing will ever be lovelier than this."

Year after year, he showed them compassion and understanding. But most of all, he showed them unconditional love.

The days went on, the weeks, months and years and the cat grew old and became little and bent. However, when the cat would lay down at night and look up at the stars, he would think, "This is a better day than the last.

When the way became rough for him, the family lifted him and gave him their strength - just as he had given them his. One day they came to a hill and beyond the hill they could see a shining road and golden gates flung open wide. And the cat said, "I have reached the end of my journey. Now I know the end is better than the beginning - for my family has walked with me with dignity and pride. The family said, "You will always walk with us, Great Cat - even when you have gone through the gates." They stood and watched as he went on alone and the gates closed behind him. And then they said, "We cannot see him, but he is still with us, he is more than a memory, he is a living presence."

Our Cat will always be with us. He is the whisper of the leaves. He is the smell of the grass.

He is the meow when you're not feeling well; he's your breath in the air on a cold winter's day. He is the sound of the rain that lulls you to sleep, the colors of the rainbow. He is Christmas morning. Your cat lives in your laughter. He is crystallized in every tear drop. He's the place you came from, your first home. He is the map you follow with every step you take. Nothing on earth can separate you ... not time, not space or even death.

Do not stand at my grave and weep

I am not there. I do not sleep.

I am a thousands winds that blow.

I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning's hush,

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry.

I am not there. I did not die.

mary elizabeth frye – 1932