Well, I thought I'd remind you just a bit of the month we left behind. The 4th of July means fireworks (among other things) and you'd be surprised at what sort of fireworks pictures you can take with a little planning. All you need is a nice tripod and remote shutter release, a few experiments with f-stop and focal point, and you're good to go. Oh, it also helps to be psychic, so you know to open the shutter before the firework explodes. But you knew that. 

It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.

Aeschylus

Time to reach back in time for a quote from when the world was young(er). Aeschylus had an interesting life. Not only interesting - but also pretty long. He lived to be 70 and legend suggest he died when an eagle dropped a tortoise on his head, mistaking his bald head for a rock. We've already  seen in an earlier DailyDose that crows drop nuts onto rocks to crack them open and it's certainly possible that an eagle did the same thing for the tortoise. That definitely had to have been a major bummer though, if true.

The world was a different place then, that's for sure. A vineyard worker in his youth, he received a summons from the gods to become a dramatist. Widely acknowledged as one of the best, he nevertheless was called off to war - the first of the Persian Wars - at age 35. The next Persian War didn't come along for another ten years, so you'd think he'd have been able to sit it out. But no, a different time it was. So at age 45 he was off again. And survived again. Good job Aeschylus.

So - back to the quote. Some might think he's saying that wise men  (or women) should act like loons, perhaps to ensure they don't take life too seriously. But I'm of the opinion he's suggesting something else entirely. Namely, that if you want to be wise (whether you are or not), let people think you're not the sharpest mustard on the shelf. 

This advice predates Machiavelli by a few years but it's right up his alley. It rarely pays to let your adversaries know  your true capabilities. The more formidable you appear, the harder they'll work to overcome you. So why not lull them into a cozy sense of false security? And then surprise them.