14 Peaks Quotes

Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.

Mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.

Dreams are not made to put us to sleep, but to awaken us.

The mountains were just about the best therapy a person could experience.

I knew more than anyone that nature didn’t care for reputation, age, gender, or background. It was equally indifferent to personality: the mountain couldn’t give a shit if the people exploring it were morally nasty or nice.

In 2012, Google, for example, generated a profit of nearly $14 billion while employing fewer than 38,000 people.9 Contrast that with the automotive industry. At peak employment in 1979, General Motors alone had nearly 840,000 workers but earned only about $11 billion—20 percent less than what Google raked in. And, yes, that’s after adjusting for inflation.

there is nothing else in life like getting to the summit. What’s more, I’ve always felt that the greater the challenge, the greater the reward.

Your instincts are telling you something. Trust them and listen to them.

That action was designed to stop anyone from stacking it off the mountain.

No matter what the future holds in store, I can say now—out loud, without hesitation—something that, sadly, all too few men and women can ever say: I have lived my dream.

but that is the whole point: I have to push my limits to the max. Sitting tight, waiting it out and living in the past, has never been my thing. I want to be at the world’s highest point again, knowing it might slip out from underneath me at any moment. Because that is the only way to live

Every person has his or her own Annapurna.” I go on to explain that there were many Annapurnas in my life—challenges I wasn’t sure I could meet—but that “the real Annapurna was my last one.” For each of you out there, your Annapurna might be a tough project at work, a bad illness, or the breakup of a marriage, but the trick is to find a way of converting adversity into something positive, a challenge to look forward to.

profit of nearly $14 billion while employing fewer than 38,000 people.9 Contrast that with the automotive industry. At peak employment in 1979, General Motors alone had nearly 840,000 workers but earned only about $11 billion—20 percent less than what Google raked in. And, yes, that’s after adjusting

Safety is first; fun is second; success is third.

The famous last line of Herzog’s book is “There are other Annapurnas in the lives of men.

In our 14,384 oral glucose tolerances with insulin assays, there were 5,128 or 36 percent with lowered glucose levels after the first hour of peaking. The glucose levels were between 20 and 59 mg/dl.

I saw exactly one picture of Marx and one of Lenin in my whole stay, but it's been a long time since ideology had anything to do with it. Not without cunning, Fat Man and Little Boy gradually mutated the whole state belief system into a debased form of Confucianism, in which traditional ancestor worship and respect for order become blended with extreme nationalism and xenophobia. Near the southernmost city of Kaesong, captured by the North in 1951, I was taken to see the beautifully preserved tombs of King and Queen Kongmin. Their significance in F.M.-L.B. cosmology is that they reigned over a then unified Korea in the 14th century, and that they were Confucian and dynastic and left many lavish memorials to themselves. The tombs are built on one hillside, and legend has it that the king sent one of his courtiers to pick the site. Second-guessing his underling, he then climbed the opposite hill. He gave instructions that if the chosen site did not please him he would wave his white handkerchief. On this signal, the courtier was to be slain. The king actually found that the site was ideal. But it was a warm day and he forgetfully mopped his brow with the white handkerchief. On coming downhill he was confronted with the courtier's fresh cadaver and exclaimed, 'Oh dear.' And ever since, my escorts told me, the opposite peak has been known as 'Oh Dear Hill.' I thought this was a perfect illustration of the caprice and cruelty of absolute leadership, and began to phrase a little pun about Kim Jong Il being the 'Oh Dear Leader,' but it died on my lips.

What drives my life is not the desire to get along with other people or make friends so much as a moral obligation to give back as much as—no, more than—I take. That’s karma. It’s really not so far from the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Some

Selleks, et määratud kodanikkude arv mitte väheseks ei jääks ega ülearu suureks ei paisuks, on antud käsk , et üheski peres, ei oleks umbkaudu 14-aastasi lapsi ühekorraga vähem, kui 10 ja rohkem kui 16, samal ajal kui nooremate laste suhtes mingit arvu kindlaks määratud, ega ette kirjutatud ei ole. Kes suuremates peredes ülearu on, väiksema juurdekasvuga peredesse paigutatakse. Kui aga juhtuma peaks, et kogu linnas see arv üle lubatud määra tõuseb, siis täidavad needsinased teiste linnade puudujääki. Kui juhtub, et terve saare rahvaarv lubatud määrast üle läheb, valitakse igast linnast teatud kodanikud ja rajatakse nende eneste seaduste järgi linn kõige lähemal maal. Nad võtavad ka selle maa rahva eneste sekka... kui aga selle maa asukad utooplastega koos ja nende seaduste all elada ei taha, siis aetakse nad välja.

14. I say this in order to make it clear that the one who would go to God relying on natural ability and reasoning will not be very spiritual. There are some who think that by pure force and the activity of the senses, which of itself is lowly and no more than natural, they can reach the strength and height of the supernatural spirit. One does not attain to this peak without surpassing and leaving aside the activity of the senses.

O Lord, how many are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all.… —Psalm 104:24 (NAS) In her intriguing book What’s Your God Language? Dr. Myra Perrine explains how, in our relationship with Jesus, we know Him through our various “spiritual temperaments,” such as intellectual, activist, caregiver, traditionalist, and contemplative. I am drawn to naturalist, described as “loving God through experiencing Him outdoors.” Yesterday, on my bicycle, I passed a tom turkey and his hen in a sprouting cornfield. Suddenly, he fanned his feathers in a beautiful courting display. I thought how Jesus had given me His own show of love in surprising me with that wondrous sight. I walked by this same field one wintry day before dawn and heard an unexpected huff. I had startled a deer. It was glorious to hear that small, secret sound, almost as if we held a shared pleasure in the untouched morning. Visiting my daughter once when she lived well north of the Arctic Circle in Alaska, I can still see the dark silhouettes of the caribou and hear the midnight crunch of their hooves in the snow. I’d watched brilliant green northern lights flash across the sky and was reminded of the emerald rainbow around Christ’s heavenly throne (Revelation 4:3). On another Alaskan visit, a full moon setting appeared to slide into the volcanic slope of Mount Iliamna, crowning the snow-covered peak with a halo of pink in the emerging light. I erupted in praise to the triune God for the grandeur of creation. Traipsing down a dirt road in Minnesota, a bloom of tiny goldfinches lifted off yellow flowers growing there, looking like the petals had taken flight. I stopped, mesmerized, filled with the joy of Jesus. Jesus, today on Earth Day, I rejoice in the language of You. —Carol Knapp Digging Deeper: Pss 24:1, 145:5; Hb 2:14

The proximate causes of the Flemish “peasant” revolt were local and immediate; its roots, the reason it could occur in the first place, were four centuries in creation. As Europe’s population increased threefold between the ninth and thirteenth centuries, the Continent’s demographic pyramid changed its shape. The base grew larger relative to its peak, and more distant: the gap between nobility and peasantry got bigger and bigger. Families that were noble by birth became more and more “noble” in behavior: dressing more opulently, entertaining more lavishly, and housing themselves more extravagantly, while the rural peasantry lived more or less the same as their many times great-grandparents.

Ed Woolard, his mentor on the Apple board, pressed Jobs for more than two years to drop the interim in front of his CEO title. Not only was Jobs refusing to commit himself, but he was baffling everyone by taking only $1 a year in pay and no stock options. “I make 50 cents for showing up,” he liked to joke, “and the other 50 cents is based on performance.” Since his return in July 1997, Apple stock had gone from just under $14 to just over $102 at the peak of the Internet bubble at the beginning of 2000. Woolard had begged him to take at least a modest stock grant back in 1997, but Jobs had declined, saying, “I don’t want the people I work with at Apple to think I am coming back to get rich.” Had he accepted that modest grant, it would have been worth $400 million. Instead he made $2.50 during that period.

The overall U.S. homeownership rate increased from 64 percent in 1994 to a peak in 2004 with an all-time high of 69.2 percent. Real estate had become the leading business in America, more and more speculators invested money in the business. During 2006, 22 percent of homes purchased (1.65 million units) were for investment purposes, with an additional 14 percent (1.07 million units) purchased as vacation homes. These figures led Americans to believe that their economy was indeed booming. And when an economy is booming nobody is really interested in foreign affairs, certainly not in a million dead Iraqis. But then the grave reality dawned on the many struggling, working class Americans and immigrants, who were failing to pay back money they didn't have in the first place. Due to the rise in oil prices and the rise of interest rates, millions of disadvantaged Americans fell behind. By the time they drove back to their newly purchased suburban dream houses, there was not enough money in the kitty to pay the mortgage or elementary needs. Consequently, within a very short time, millions of houses were repossessed. Clearly, there was no one around who could afford to buy those newly repossessed houses. Consequently, the poor people of America became poorer than ever. Just as Wolfowitz's toppled Saddam, who dragged the American Empire down with him, the poor Americans, that were set to facilitate Wolfowitz's war, pulled down American capitalism as well as the American monetary and banking system. Greenspan's policy led an entire class to ruin, leaving America's financial system with a hole that now stands at a trillion dollars.

Well, my dear fellow,” resumed Banks, “a daring climber like you ought to make some ascent in all this great chain.”   “Never!” exclaimed the captain.   “Why not?”   “I have renounced ascents!”   “Since when?”   “Since the day when, after having risked my life twenty times,” answered Captain Hood, “I managed to reach the summit of Vrigel, in the kingdom of Bhootan. It was said that no human being had ever set foot on the top of that peak! There was glory to be gained! my honour was at stake! Well, after no end of narrow squeaks for it, I got to the top, and what did I see but these words cut on a rock: ‘Durand, dentist, 14, Rue Caumartin, Paris!’ I climb no more!”   The honest captain! I must confess that, while telling us of his discomfiture, Hood looked so comical, that it was impossible to help joining him in a hearty laugh.   I

Action is simply an expression of a will to dominate which in itself is illimitable, and those who win seldom have the wisdom to impose limits on themselves. It is the word that will indicate the limits in the name of truth, but the word is weak, and this is precisely why it is the servant of truth. All that we can do is keep on repeating that this victorious action makes no sense and that it will perish faster than it triumphed. What has been the good of all the wars of this terrible 20th century? War, as action at its peak, is always futile. What did 1918 achieve? Nothing but wind and storm. What did 1945 achieve? An extension of the gulag and a lot of mediocre talk. What do wars of liberation achieve? Even worse dictatorships and misery beyond anything previously known. But why continue with this balance sheet of action? Elsewhere I have attempted similar analyses of technique or revolution, and I have always concluded: Vanity of vanity, all is vanity and a pursuit of wind (see Eccl. 1:14).

To this day when I inhale a light scent of Wrangler—its sweet sharpness—or the stronger, darker scent of Musk, I return to those hours and it ceases to be just cologne that I take in but the very scent of age, of youth at its most beautiful peak. It bears the memory of possibility, of unknown forests, unchartered territories, and a heart light and skipping, hell-bent as the captain of any of the three ships, determined at all costs to prevail to the new world. Turning back was no option. Whatever the gales, whatever the emaciation, whatever the casualty to self, onward I kept my course. My heart felt the magnetism of its own compass guiding me on—its direction constant and sure. There was no other way through. I feel it again as once it had been, before it was broken-in; its strength and resolute ardency. The years of solitude were nothing compared to what lay ahead. In sailing for the horizon that part of my life had been sealed up, a gentle eddy, a trough of gentle waves diminishing further, receding away. Whatever loneliness and pain went with the years between the ages of 14 and 20, was closed, irretrievable—I was already cast in form and direction in a certain course. When I open the little bottle of eau de toilette five hundred different days unfold within me, conversations so strained, breaking slowly, so painstakingly, to a comfortable place. A place so warm and inviting after the years of silence and introspect, of hiding. A place in the sun that would burn me alive before I let it cast a shadow on me. Until that time I had not known, I had not been conscious of my loneliness. Yes, I had been taciturn in school, alone, I had set myself apart when others tried to engage. But though I was alone, I had not felt the pangs of loneliness. It had not burdened or tormented as such when I first felt the clear tang of its opposite in the form of another’s company. Of Regn’s company. We came, each in our own way, in our own need—listening, wanting, tentatively, as though we came upon each other from the side in spite of having seen each other head on for two years. It was a gradual advance, much again like a vessel waiting for its sails to catch wind, grasping hold of the ropes and learning much too quickly, all at once, how to move in a certain direction. There was no practicing. It was everything and all—for the first and last time. Everything had to be right, whether it was or not. The waters were beautiful, the work harder than anything in my life, but the very glimpse of any tempest of defeat was never in my line of vision. I’d never failed at anything. And though this may sound quite an exaggeration, I tell you earnestly, it is true. Everything to this point I’d ever set my mind to, I’d achieved. But this wasn’t about conquering some land, nor had any of my other desires ever been about proving something. It just had to be—I could not break, could not turn or retract once I’d committed myself to my course. You cannot force a clock to run backwards when it is made to persevere always, and ever, forward. Had I not been so young I’d never have had the courage to love her.

Prayer and Meditation Matthew 14 AND HE WENT UP INTO THE MOUNTAIN APART TO PRAY This was always the practice of Jesus when he would move into the masses, the crowd, afterwards he would go alone into deep prayer and meditation. Why did he do this? If you have been meditating, you will understand. You will understand that once you start meditating, a very fragile and delicate quality of consciousness is born in you. A flower of the unknown, of the beyond, starts opening, which is delicate. And whenever you move into the crowd, you lose something. Whenever you come back from the crowd, you come back lesser than you had gone. Something has been lost, some contact has been lost. The crowd pulls you down, it has a gravitation of it's own. You may not feel it if you live on the same plane of consciousness. Then there is no problem, then you have nothing to lose. In fact, when you live in the crowd, on the same plane, alone you feel very uneasy. When you are with people, you feel good and happy. But alone, you feel sad, your aloneness is not aloneness. It is loneliness, you miss the other. You do not find yourself in the aloneness, you simply miss the other. When you are alone, you are not alone, beacuse you are not there. Only the desire to be with others is there - that is what loneliness is. Always remember the distinction between aloneness and loneliness. Aloneness is a peak experience - loneliness is a valley. Aloneness has light in it, loneliness is dark. Loneliness is when you desire others; aloneness is when you enjoy yourself. When Jesus would move into the masses, into the crowd, he would tell his disciples to got to the other shore of the lake, and he would move into total aloneness. Not even the disciples were allowed to be with him. This was a constant practice with him. Whenever you go into the crowd, you are infected by it. You need a higher altitude to purify yourself, you need to be alone so that you can become fresh again. You need to be alone with yourself, so that you become together again. You need to be alone, so that you become centered and rooted in yourself again. Whenever you move with others, they push you off centre. AND WHEN THE EVENING WAS COME, HE WAS THERE ALONE Nothing is said about his prayer in the Bible, just the word "prayer". Before God or before existence, you simply need to be vulnerable - that is prayer. You are no to say something. So when you go into prayer, don't start saying something. It will all be desires, demands and deep complaints to God. And prayer with complaints is no prayer, a prayer with deep gratitude is prayer. There is no need to say something, you can just be silent. Hence nothing is said about what Jesus did in his aloneness. It simply says "apart to pray". He went apart, he became alone. That is what prayer is, to be alone, where the other is not felt, where the other is not standing between you and existence. When God's breeze can pass througn you, unhindered. It is a cleansing experience. It revejunates your spirit. To be with God simply means to be alone. You can miss the point, if you start thinking about God, then you are not alone. If you start talking to God, then in imagination you have created the other. And then you God is a projection, it will be a projection of your father. A prayer is not to say something. It is to be silent, open, available. And there is no need to believe in God, because that too is a projection. The only need is to be alone, to be capable of being alone - and immediately you are with God. Whenever you are alone, you are with God.

For long moments, head back, slowly riding him, she let sensation rule, let her senses expand and fill her mind. All but overwhelmed by sensual delight, by an awareness of her body and its potential for pleasure more extensive and more compelling than ever before, she slowed. He growled, a guttural sound that sparked a completely different awareness. An instant later, even before she could lift her lids, he rolled, taking her with him, trapping them both in a welter of covers. Cushioned in the billows of the bed, he held her beneath him and thrust- hard, deep. With a cry, she arched; as he thrust again, even deeper, she desperately caught her breath, then wrapped her arms about him, lifted her legs and gripped his flanks, and raked her nails across his back as she joined him in frantic urgency as he rode her. Hard, fast, desperate for fulfillment, willing to surrender all just to reach that peak. And then they were there, panting, wanting, reaching, stretching for the glory. It broke upon them, swept them up, shattered them, then on a gust of deep, mindless pleasure, surged through them and left them wrecked. Wrecked with pleasure. Smiling sillily, dizzy with delight, softly laughing, they slumped in each other's arms, and let the moment cradle them.

In short, the combined effects of lower infant mortality, higher longevity, and increased fertility have fueled an explosion in the world’s population, as figure 18 graphs. Since population growth is intrinsically exponential, even small increases in fertility or decreases in mortality spark rapid population growth. If an initial population of 1 million people grows at 3.5 percent per year, then it will roughly double every generation, growing to 2 million in twenty years, 4 million in forty years, and so on, reaching 32 million in a hundred years. In actual fact, the global growth rate peaked in 1963 at 2.2 percent per year and has since declined to about 1.1 percent per year,60 which translates into a doubling rate of every sixty-four years. In the fifty years between 1960 and 2010, the world’s population more than doubled, from 3 to 6.9 billion people. At current rates of growth, we can expect 14 billion people at the end of this century. FIGURE 21. The demographic transition model. Following economic development, death rates tend to fall before birth rates decrease, resulting in an initial population boom that eventually levels off. This controversial model, however, only applies to some countries. One major by-product of population growth plus the concentration of wealth in cities has been a shift to more urbanization. In 1800, only 25 million people lived in cities, about 3 percent of the world’s population. In 2010, about 3.3 billion people, half the world’s population, are city dwellers.

Sarah rode with him and felt her body rejoice, felt her senses whirl and sing with pleasure. She was exquisitely conscious, to her fingernails aware of the shattering intimacy of their joining. Eyes closed, hearing suspended, her world condensed just to him and her, and another world came alive, a landscape filled with feeling, with heat and longing, with sensation and power and the promise of glory. He moved within her and she rode out each thrust, met and matched him, welcomed and reluctantly released him again. Pleasure and delight bloomed, welled, then spilled through her. The momentary pain had faded so fast it was already a dim memory, overwhelmed by the solid and immediate reality of him hard and strong and so elementally male, joining so deeply and inexorably with her. His fingers slid from hers, sliding down and around to one globe of her bottom. He tilted her hips, and she gasped as the altered position let him penetrate her more deeply still. The reined power behind each deliberate thrust sent a thrill arcing through her. A primitive sense of danger, the recognition of vulnerability; he was so much stronger than she, his body so much harder, so much more powerful than hers. Yet he was careful. The realization slid through her, but she couldn't focus enough to think, then the heat of their passion rose another degree and claimed her. Sent fire and a hungry, ravenous need sliding through her veins, making her writhe, making her gasp. It inexorably branded desire deep into her flesh, marking and searing, until she burned. Until her body was aflame, until the flames coalesced and concentrated, burning deeper and hotter until she sobbed and clung and desperately urged him on, and he rode her faster, harder, deeper. Until with a rush, all heat and yearning, she found herself clinging to that final, dizzying peak. Felt him thrust one last time and shatter her, felt the furnace within her that he'd stoked and fed rupture, felt glory pour forth and sear her veins. And rush through her. She spiraled through a void, cushioned in heated bliss, her mind disconnected. Dimly, she heard him groan, long-drawn and guttural, was distantly aware that, joined deeply with her, he went rigid in her arms. She felt, from far away, the warmth of his seed spill inside her. Buoyed by glory, cocooned in golden rapture, she smiled.

Elvis Pie Named for the famous crooner’s love of peanut butter and bananas, this decadent dessert is as filling as it is delicious. Serve in small slices, and top with shredded coconut for even more fun.   Difficulty Level: 1 Preparation Time: 30 minutes Yields: 12 servings   Ingredients          8 oz. chocolate cookies          4 Tblsp butter, melted          4 oz. semisweet chocolate chips          2 bananas, sliced thinly          1 cup heavy cream          8 oz. cream cheese          1 cup creamy peanut butter          1 cup powdered sugar          14 oz. sweetened condensed milk          1 tsp vanilla extract          1 tsp lemon juice   1.        In a food processor, grind cookies into fine crumbs. 2.       Combine melted butter and cookie crumbs in a small bowl, and stir with a fork to mix well. 3.       Press mixture into the bottom and 1” up the sides of 9” pie tin. 4.      In a small saucepan over low heat, melt the chocolate chips, stirring often to prevent burning. 5.       Pour melted chocolate over bottom of cookie crust and spread to the edges using a spatula. 6.       Layer banana slices over the melted chocolate. 7.       Place pan in the refrigerator to chill. 8.      Meanwhile, beat heavy cream until stiff peaks form. 9.       Chill in refrigerator until ready to use. 10.    Beat together the cream cheese and peanut butter until light and fluffy. 11.     Stir in powdered sugar until fully incorporated. 12.    Mix in the sweetened condensed milk, vanilla extract, and lemon juice until filling is smooth. 13.    Fold the whipped cream into the filling mixture. 14.   Pour the filling into the prepared pie pan, smoothing top. 15.    Refrigerate for at least 3 hours, preferably overnight. 16.    Serve chilled.

Your Performance Day Sample Meals TIME—MEAL 7 a.m.—Oatmeal, berries, 2 eggs, 2 tablespoons flaxseeds 9:15 a.m.—Preworkout shooter 11:15 a.m.—Postworkout shake 12:15 p.m.—Turkey sandwich on 100 percent whole wheat bread with 6 ounces turkey, avocado, and piled with other vegetables, along with a spinach salad with olive oil and vinegar dressing 3 p.m.—Apple with 1/4 cup nuts 6 p.m.—5 ounces grilled salmon, 1/2 cup whole wheat couscous, steamed asparagus drizzled with olive oil and lemon after cooking 9:30 p.m.—1 cup low-fat cottage cheese and 1/2 cup berries

glued to the top of the head. On conscious trials only, an ample voltage wave sweeps through this region. It starts around 270 milliseconds and peaks anywhere between 350 and 500 milliseconds. This slow and massive event has been called the P3 wave (because it is the third large positive peak after a stimulus appears) or the P300 wave (because it often starts around 300 milliseconds).14 It is only a few microvolts in size, a million times smaller than an AA battery. However,

Moreover, these changes occurred when most American households actually found their real incomes stagnant or declining. Median household income for the last four decades is shown in the chart above. But this graph, disturbing as it is, conceals a far worse reality. The top 10 percent did much better than everyone else; if you remove them, the numbers change dramatically. Economic analysis has found that “only the top 10 percent of the income distribution had real compensation growth equal to or above . . . productivity growth.”14 In fact, most gains went to the top 1 percent, while people in the bottom 90 percent either had declining household incomes or were able to increase their family incomes only by working longer hours. The productivity of workers continued to grow, particularly with the Internet revolution that began in the mid-1990s. But the benefits of productivity growth went almost entirely into the incomes of the top 1 percent and into corporate profits, both of which have grown to record highs as a fraction of GNP. In 2010 and 2011 corporate profits accounted for over 14 percent of total GNP, a historical record. In contrast, the share of US GNP paid as wages and salaries is at a historical low and has not kept pace with inflation since 2006.15 As I was working on this manuscript in late 2011, the US Census Bureau published the income statistics for 2010, when the US recovery officially began. The national poverty rate rose to 15.1 percent, its highest level in nearly twenty years; median household income declined by 2.3 percent. This decline, however, was very unequally distributed. The top tenth experienced a 1 percent decline; the bottom tenth, already desperately poor, saw its income decline 12 percent. America’s median household income peaked in 1999; by 2010 it had declined 7 percent. Average hourly income, which corrects for the number of hours worked, has barely changed in the last thirty years. Ranked by income equality, the US is now ninety-fifth in the world, just behind Nigeria, Iran, Cameroon, and the Ivory Coast. The UK has mimicked the US; even countries with low levels of inequality—including Denmark and Sweden—have seen an increasing gap since the crisis. This is not a distinguished record. And it’s not a statistical fluke. There is now a true, increasingly permanent underclass living in near-subsistence conditions in many wealthy states. There are now tens of millions of people in the US alone whose condition is little better than many people in much poorer nations. If you add up lifetime urban ghetto residents, illegal immigrants, migrant farm-workers, those whose criminal convictions sharply limit their ability to find work, those actually in prison, those with chronic drug-abuse problems, crippled veterans of America’s recently botched wars, children in foster care, the homeless, the long-term unemployed, and other severely disadvantaged groups, you get to tens of millions of people trapped in very harsh, very unfair conditions, in what is supposedly the wealthiest, fairest society on earth. At any given time, there are over two million people in US prisons; over ten million Americans have felony records and have served prison time for non-traffic offences. Many millions more now must work very long hours, and very hard, at minimum-wage jobs in agriculture, retailing, cleaning, and other low-wage service industries. Several million have been unemployed for years, exhausting their savings and morale. Twenty or thirty years ago, many of these people would have had—and some did have—high-wage jobs in manufacturing or construction. No more. But in addition to growing inequalities in income and wealth, America exhibits

significantly different? Because the variances are equal, we read the t-test statistics from the top line, which states “equal variances assumed.” (If variances had been unequal, then we would read the test statistics from the second line, “equal variances not assumed.”). The t-test statistic for equal variances for this test is 2.576, which is significant at p = .011.13 Thus, we conclude that the means are significantly different; the 10th graders report feeling safer one year after the anger management program was implemented. Working Example 2 In the preceding example, the variables were both normally distributed, but this is not always the case. Many variables are highly skewed and not normally distributed. Consider another example. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) collects information about the water quality of watersheds, including information about the sources and nature of pollution. One such measure is the percentage of samples that exceed pollution limits for ammonia, dissolved oxygen, phosphorus, and pH.14 A manager wants to know whether watersheds in the East have higher levels of pollution than those in the Midwest. Figure 12.4 Untransformed Variable: Watershed Pollution An index variable of such pollution is constructed. The index variable is called “pollution,” and the first step is to examine it for test assumptions. Analysis indicates that the range of this variable has a low value of 0.00 percent and a high value of 59.17 percent. These are plausible values (any value above 100.00 percent is implausible). A boxplot (not shown) demonstrates that the variable has two values greater than 50.00 percent that are indicated as outliers for the Midwest region. However, the histograms shown in Figure 12.4 do not suggest that these values are unusually large; rather, the peak in both histograms is located off to the left. The distributions are heavily skewed.15 Because the samples each have fewer than 50 observations, the Shapiro-Wilk test for normality is used. The respective test statistics for East and Midwest are .969 (p = .355) and .931 (p = .007). Visual inspection confirms that the Midwest distribution is indeed nonnormal. The Shapiro-Wilk test statistics are given only for completeness; they have no substantive interpretation. We must now either transform the variable so that it becomes normal for purposes of testing, or use a nonparametric alternative. The second option is discussed later in this chapter. We also show the consequences of ignoring the problem. To transform the variable, we try the recommended transformations, , and then examine the transformed variable for normality. If none of these transformations work, we might modify them, such as using x⅓ instead of x½ (recall that the latter is ).16 Thus, some experimentation is required. In our case, we find that the x½ works. The new Shapiro-Wilk test statistics for East and Midwest are, respectively, .969 (p = .361) and .987 (p = .883). Visual inspection of Figure 12.5 shows these two distributions to be quite normal, indeed. Figure 12.5 Transformed Variable: Watershed Pollution The results of the t-test for the transformed variable are shown in Table

Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.

Brain function is largely an uncharted territory. But just to get a glimpse of the terrain, however foggy, consider some numbers. The human retina, a thin slab of 100 million neurons that's smaller than a dime and about as thick as a few sheets of paper, is one of the best-studied neuronal clusters. The robotics researcher Hans Moravec has estimated that for a computer-based retinal system to be on a par with that of humans, it would need to execute about a billion operations each second. To scale up from the retina's volume to that of the entire brain requires a factor of roughly 100,000; Moravec suggests that effectively simulating a brain would require a comparable increase in processing power, for a total of about 100 million million (10^14) operations per second. Independent estimates based on the number of synapses in the brain and their typical firing rates yield processing speeds within a few orders of magnitude of this result, about 10^17 operations per second. Although it's difficult to be more precise, this gives a sense of the numbers that come into play. The computer I'm now using has a speed that's about a billion operations per second; today's fastest supercomputers have a peak speed of about 10^15 operations per second ( a statistic that no doubt will quickly date this book). If we use the faster estimate for brain speed, we find that a hundred million laptops, or a hundred supercomputers, approach the processing power of a human brain. Such comparisons are likely naive: the mysteries of the human brain are manifold, and speed is only one gross measure of function.

We stopped in our tracks. I said, “Man, let’s not get ourselves killed doing this. Let’s discuss this.” Scott sat down facing out, looking down at me. I figured, if a big spindrift slide comes down now, we’re going to get washed off the face.

After the MTA released its $14.4 billion plan in November 1980, a governor’s aide told Ravitch that Carey was not interested in entertaining a fare hike or a tax package for the MTA. Carey preferred holding down the fare rather than financing a multibillion-dollar capital program. The governor also saw Ravitch’s proposal as a threat to Westway. A coalition of thirty-seven civic and environmental groups had filed suit in federal court to stop the highway project. They wanted the state to take the federal transportation funds designated for the project and use them for transit improvements instead. If Carey admitted that the transit system was underfunded and starved for capital, it would have played into the hands of the Westway opponents.48 Faced with resistance in Albany, Ravitch began a lobbying effort that no state official other than Robert Moses at the height of his powers could have undertaken. He started by pleading with the governor and his staff, explaining that without new sources of revenue he would have to dramatically raise the fare. Then he took his case directly to the public. Rather than minimizing the transit system’s problems, Ravitch made sure that reporters learned about all the delays and breakdowns occurring in MTA facilities. He visited editorial boards and told them, “If you don’t pay attention, the politicians won’t.” He talked to every reporter who called. Unlike his predecessors, he admitted that the MTA’s services, particularly during peak hours, were “deteriorating at an accelerated rate.” The newspapers, he said, were “my shield and my sword.

Professional astronomers were successful in preventing Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) from visiting Kitt Peak National Observatory, however it is highly unlikely that they will be successful in building the biologically toxic 1.4 billion dollar Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) atop the sacred mountain of Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

This is why the higher the peak of enlightenment the people climb, the more widely the vista of moral possibilities open before them. 14.

14) Use the mind-intent, do not use muscular force. 十 四) 用 意 不 用 力; Shi si) Yong yi bu yong li. 15)

Although I remain uncertain about God or any particular religion, I believe in karma. What goes around, comes around. How you live your life, the respect that you give others and the mountain, and how you treat people in general will come back to you in kindred fashion. I like to talk about what I call the Karma National Bank. If you give up the summit to help rescue someone who’s in trouble, you’ve put a deposit in that bank. And sometime down the road, you may need to make a big withdrawal. People

Viewed as a whole, climbing all fourteen 8,000ers would have seemed almost impossible, but I took it one day at a time, one step at a time. I was passionate about what I did, and I never gave up. “Whatever challenge you have before you can be accomplished in the same fashion—whether it takes a week, two months, or a year. If you look at the challenge as a whole, it may seem insuperable, but if you break it down into tangible steps, it can seem more reasonable, and ultimately achievable.” The model for that strategy comes from the way I learned to break up the “impossible” 4,000-foot climb to a summit into tiny, manageable pieces: just get to that rock outcrop there, then focus on the ice block up ahead, and so on. For

those doing intense physical activity, 10 hours is not too much. •The best way to figure out the right amount of sleep for you is to spend 10 to 14 days going to sleep when you are tired and waking up without an alarm clock. Take the average sleep time. That’s what you need. •For a better night’s sleep, follow these tips, consolidated from the world’s leading researchers: Ensure you expose yourself to natural (i.e., non-electric) light throughout the day. This will help you maintain a healthy circadian rhythm. Exercise. Vigorous physical activity makes us tired. When we are tired, we sleep. But don’t exercise too close to bedtime. Limit caffeine intake, and phase it out completely 5 to 6 hours prior to your bedtime. Only use your bed for sleep and sex. Not for eating, watching television, working on your laptop, or anything else. The one exception is reading a paper book prior to bed. Don’t drink alcohol close to bedtime. Although alcohol can hasten the onset of sleep, it often

Let’s take the case of US law schools as an example. If you were to say to someone educated, “There are too many law schools producing too many lawyers in the US,” she would probably agree, in part because there have been dozens of articles over the past several years about the precipitous drop in positions at law firms and the many unemployed law school graduates.9 The general response to this problem is, “Well, people will figure it out and eventually stop applying to law school,” the suggestion being that the market will clear and self-correct if given enough time. On the surface it looks like this market magic is now happening. In 2013, law school applications are projected to be down to about 54,000 from a high of 98,700 in 2004.10 That’s a dramatic decrease of 45 percent. However, a closer look shows that the number of students who started law school in 2011 and are set to graduate in 2014 was 48,697, about 43,000 of whom will graduate, based on historical graduation rates.11 We’ll still be producing 36,000–43,000 newly minted law school grads a year, not far from the peak of 44,495 set in 2012, from now until the current entering class graduates in 2016. Meanwhile, in 2011, only 65.4 percent of law school graduates got jobs for which they needed to pass the bar exam, and estimates of the number of new legal jobs available run as low as 2,180 per year.12 Bloomberg Businessweek has projected a surplus of 176,000 unemployed or underemployed law school graduates by 2020.13 So even as applications plummet, there will not be dramatically fewer law school graduates produced in the coming several years, though it will have been easier to get in as acceptance rates rise due to the diminished applicant pool.14 We’ll still be producing many more lawyers than the market requires, but now they’ll be less talented. If anything, the situation is going to get worse before it gets better. Human capital markets don’t self-correct very quickly, if at all. At a minimum there’s a massive time lag that spans years, for several reasons.

The Rocky Mountains towered all around them, the jagged peaks reaching toward the moon.

In 2019, the Red Bull website claimed my goal was similar to ‘swimming to the moon’.

Colorado is the 8th largest state in America in terms of land mass. It has the highest elevation of any U.S. state, with an average altitude of 6,800 feet and peaks that reach more than 14,000 feet. Approximately 75% of the United States’ land over 10,000 feet can also be found in Colorado. Colorado is also the highest state in the country. It’s entirely above 1,000 meters’ elevation.

A great climb is a wonderful mixture of difficulty and intimacy.

I’ll go even further and say that competitiveness in mountaineering is wrong. It’s dangerous. Climbing should be personally motivated.

Just because you love the mountains doesn’t mean the mountains love you.

Tapas is any practice that pushes the mind against its own limits, and the key ingredient of tapas is endurance. Thus in the archaic Rig-Veda (10.136), the long-haired ascetic or keshin is said to “endure” the world, to “endure” fire, and to “endure” poison.1 The keshin is a type of renouncer, a proto-yogin, who is a “wind-girt” (naked?) companion of the wild God Rudra (Howler). He is said to “ascend” the wind in a God-intoxicated state and to fly through space, looking down upon all things. But the name keshin harbors a deeper meaning, for it also can refer to the Sun whose “long hair” is made up of the countless rays that emanate from the solar orb and reach far into the cosmos and bestow life on Earth. This is again a reminder that the archaic Yoga of the Vedas revolves around the Solar Spirit, who selflessly feeds all beings with his/her/its compassionate warmth. The early name for the yogin is tapasvin, the practitioner of tapas or voluntary self-challenge. The tapasvin lives always at the edge. He deliberately challenges his body and mind, applying formidable will power to whatever practice he vows to undertake. He may choose to stand stock-still under India’s hot sun for hours on end, surrounded by a wall of heat from four fires lit close by. Or he may resolve to sit naked in solitary meditation on a windswept mountain peak in below-zero temperatures. Or he may opt to incessantly chant a divine name, forfeiting sleep for a specified number of days. The possibilities for tapas are endless. Tapas begins with temporarily or permanently denying ourselves a particular desire—having a satisfying cup of coffee, piece of chocolate, or casual sex. Instead of instant gratification, we choose postponement. Then, gradually, postponement can be stepped up to become complete renunciation of a desire. This kind of challenge to our habit patterns causes a certain degree of frustration in us. We begin to “stew in our own juices,” and this generates psychic energy that can be used to power the process of self-transformation. As we become increasingly able to gain control over our impulses, we experience the delight behind creative self-frustration. We see that we are growing and that self-denial need not necessarily be negative. The Bhagavad-Gītā (17.14–16) speaks of three kinds of austerity or tapas: Austerity of body, speech, and mind. Austerity of the body includes purity, rectitude, chastity, nonharming, and making offerings to higher beings, sages, brahmins (the custodians of the spiritual legacy of India), and honored teachers. Austerity of speech encompasses speaking kind, truthful, and beneficial words that give no offense, as well as the regular practice of recitation (svādhyāya) of the sacred lore. Austerity of the mind consists of serenity, gentleness, silence, self-restraint, and pure emotions.

The intelligent machines narratives (chapters 13 and 14) are still much talked about, though they do not seem to have much economic impact at the moment. Machines do not seem to be very scary at the time of this writing, but should there be some adverse news about income inequality or unemployment, the contagion of scary forms of this narrative could reappear. A sudden increase in concerns about robots has happened before. A search on ProQuest News & Newspapers for articles containing both robot and jobs reveals that the number of articles almost tripled between the last six months of 2007 and the first six months of 2009. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2007 was the peak month before the Great Recession, and the recession ended in June 2009.

William James said near the end of the nineteenth century, “No mental modification ever occurs which is not accompanied or followed by a bodily change.” A hundred years later, Norman Cousins summarized the modern view of mind-body interactions with the succinct phrase “Belief becomes biology.”6 That is, an external suggestion can become an internal expectation, and that internal expectation can manifest in the physical body. While the general idea of mind-body connections is now widely accepted, forty years ago it was considered dangerously heretical nonsense. The change in opinion came about largely because of hundreds of studies of the placebo effect, psychosomatic illness, psychoneuroimmunology, and the spontaneous remission of serious disease.7 In studies of drug tests and disease treatments, the placebo response has been estimated to account for between 20 to 40 percent of positive responses. The implication is that the body’s hard, physical reality can be significantly modified by the more evanescent reality of the mind.8 Evidence supporting this implication can be found in many domains. For example: • Hypnotherapy has been used successfully to treat intractable cases of breast cancer pain, migraine headache, arthritis, hypertension, warts, epilepsy, neurodermatitis, and many other physical conditions.9 People’s expectations about drinking can be more potent predictors of behavior than the pharmacological impact of alcohol.10 If they think they are drinking alcohol and expect to get drunk, they will in fact get drunk even if they drink a placebo. Fighter pilots are treated specially to give them the sense that they truly have the “right stuff.” They receive the best training, the best weapons systems, the best perquisites, and the best aircraft. One consequence is that, unlike other soldiers, they rarely suffer from nervous breakdowns or post-traumatic stress syndrome even after many episodes of deadly combat.11 Studies of how doctors and nurses interact with patients in hospitals indicate that health-care teams may speed death in a patient by simply diagnosing a terminal illness and then letting the patient know.12 People who believe that they are engaged in biofeedback training are more likely to report peak experiences than people who are not led to believe this.13 Different personalities within a given individual can display distinctly different physiological states, including measurable differences in autonomic-nervous-system functioning, visual acuity, spontaneous brain waves, and brainware-evoked potentials.14 While the idea that the mind can affect the physical body is becoming more acceptable, it is also true that the mechanisms underlying this link are still a complete mystery. Besides not understanding the biochemical and neural correlates of “mental intention,” we have almost no idea about the limits of mental influence. In particular, if the mind interacts not only with its own body but also with distant physical systems, as we’ve seen in the previous chapter, then there should be evidence for what we will call “distant mental interactions” with living organisms.

Everest Base Camp Trek -14 Days is in the foothill of the world’s highest mountain, Mt. Everest expedition (8848m). The route leading to Everest Base Camp is simply fascinating. Moreover, the trek also explores the Sagarmatha National Park. Everest base camp is a fantastic opportunity to enjoy the Sherpa habitat and culture. Apart from Mount Everest (8848m), Everest Base CampTrek features the Sagarmatha National Park. The park is home to several rare species of plants and wildlife. The trek boasts merry villages like Namche Bazaar, Tengboche, Dingboche Island Peak, Mount Lobuche East Peak, and Mount Ama Dablam Expedition. Read more Article

Everest Base Camp Trek -14 Days is in the foothill of the world’s highest mountain, Mt. Everest expedition (8848m). The route leading to Everest Base Camp is simply fascinating. Moreover, the trek also explores the Sagarmatha National Park. Everest base camp is a fantastic opportunity to enjoy the Sherpa habitat and culture. Apart from Mount Everest (8848m), Everest Base CampTrek features the Sagarmatha National Park. The park is home to several rare species of plants and wildlife. The trek boasts merry villages like Namche Bazaar, Tengboche, Dingboche Island Peak, Mount Lobuche East Peak, and Mount Ama Dablam Expedition.

Apple's iPhone A series chip has always been the strongest and most dominant in the mobile phone market, because Apple relies on this chip to lead the technology strategy. In the past, we did not care much about how powerful the A series chip was, but we felt that it could make the iPhone run very smoothly and efficiently in any situation. This means that the A series chip was always stronger than what the peak performance iPhone needed. However, this changed when the iPhone 11 series added the night mode feature. The A series chip could not handle the night mode processing fast enough, and it showed that it lacked enough computing power. This problem was not solved until the iPhone 14 pro series with the A16 chip.

He was no longer young, and not yet old. Mentally and physically he was up there on a broad plateau of common sense and maturity and peak capability. He was not behind schedule. He was not speeding. He was not drunk. He

there was a worrying gurgle in my guts. Then another. My bowels were cramping and knotting, and I recognised the first onset of explosive diarrhoea. I prayed that the sensation was a one-off.

20. Cloud Bread Ingredients                  3 cold eggs, separate whites and yolks                  2 oz. cream cheese at room temperature                  1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar                  1 packet stevia Directions               Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Place rack in center of oven. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.               In a medium bowl, beat the egg whites on high with a mixer, adding the cream of tartar. Beat until they form fluffy stiff peaks.               Meanwhile, in a small bowl, whisk the egg yolks with the cream cheese and stevia until smooth then gently fold mixture into the egg whites being sure to not to break down the egg white too much.               With a 1/2 cup measuring cup, scoop the mixture onto the prepared parchment paper in 7-8 even mounds about 4" wide and 3/4" tall allowing 1" between each.               Bake in your preheated oven for approximately 30 minutes. Start checking them for a golden brown tops around 25 minutes to make sure they don't get too brown.               Remove from the parchment and allow them to cool on a wire rack.               Store in an airtight container.

a simple but stark criterion: the number of climbers who successfully reach the summit compared to the number who die on the mountain. For Everest, the ratio turns out to be seven to one. For K2, which has the reputation of being the hardest and most dangerous of the high peaks, the ratio is a little over three to one. But for Annapurna, it’s exactly two to one. For every two climbers who get to the top, one climber dies trying.

Until a few years ago, booking a hotel online was a remarkably frustrating experience: once you chose the destination you had to browse through dozens of brand.com sites, search for rates, location, fill endless contact forms to, eventually, find out that the hotel you liked was fully booked. This process could take days, while today the same result can be achieved by simply applying a filter on TripAdvisor, with a much faster and less frustrating UX. Back in 2008, without a proper aggregator, the only possibility web users had was to search for very generic keywords on search engines. This explains why, only a decade ago, the query “Hotels in Paris” was at its peak of popularity, while today the same query produces only 1/4 of the original volume.

There is indeed compelling evidence of a series of massive glacial surges at the end of the last Ice Age. These correlate with meltwater pulses and peaks of sea-level rise, recorded, for example, in 'drowned' reefs of Acropora palmata from the Caribbean-Atlantic region near the island of Barbados. Acropora is an efficient tracker of rising sea-level because it is a light-loving coral that dies at depths greater than about 10 meters. The Barbados reefs were drowned three times at the end of the last Ice Age -- at approximately 14,000, 11,000 and 8000 years ago -- and so suddenly and deeply on each occasion that they now form three distinct steps, one for each flooding peak (rather than having crept towards shallower water as would have been the case with more gradual sea-level rises).

In 2017, carbon emissions grew by 1.4 percent, according to the International Energy Agency, after an ambiguous couple of years optimists had hoped represented a leveling-off, or peak; instead, we’re climbing again.

As the discoverer and principal excavator of Murray Springs, [...] Haynes deserves credit for drawing attention to a very curious aspect of the site--a distinct dark layer of soil draped 'like a shrink-wrap,' as Allen West puts it, over the top of the Clovis remains and of the extinct megafauna--including Eloise. Haynes has identified this 'black mat' (his term) not only at Murray Springs but at dozens of other sites across North America, and was the first to acknowledge its clear and obvious association with the Late Pleistocene Extinction Event. he speaks of the 'remarkable circumstances' surrounding the event, the abrupt die-off on a continental scale of all large mammals 'immediately before deposition of the ... black mat,' and the total absence thereafter of 'mammoth, mastodon, horse, camel, dire wold, American lion, tapir and other [megafauna], as well as Clovis people.' Haynes notes also that 'The basal black mat contact marks a major climate change from the warm dry climate of the terminal Allerod to the glacially cold Younger Dryas.' From roughly 18,000 years ago, and for several thousand years thereafter, global temperatures had been slowly but steadily rising and the ice sheets melting. Our ancestors would have had reason to hope that earth's long winter was at last coming to an end and that a new era of congenial climate beckoned. This process of warming became particularly pronounced after about 14,500 years ago. Then suddenly, around 12,800 years ago, the direction of climate change reversed and the world turned dramatically, instantly cold--as cold as it had been at the peak of the Ice Age many thousands of years earlier. This deep freeze--the mysterious epoch now known as the Younger Dryas--lasted for approximately 1,200 years until 11,600 years ago, at which point the climate flipped again, global temperatures shot up rapidly, the remnant ice sheets melted and collapsed into the oceans, and the world became as warm as it is today.