Approaching 30 Quotes

Try to look like Peabody." "Sorry?" "Serious, official, yet approachable." "You forgot adorable." "Peabody is not adorable." "She is from my perspective. Besides, I was talking about me.

I used to feel for years and years and years that I was very remiss not to have written a novel and I would question people who wrote novels and try to find out how they did it and how they had got past page 30. Then, with the approach of old age, I began to just think: “Well, lucky I can do anything at all.

There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings.’ Ruskin

A so-called ideal scheme which does not grow out of reality is definitely and finally not ideal at all.

For words, like Nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within.

the first rule of Moritz Haupt for interpreting the classics,—‘Man soll nicht übersetzen.’ [‘Do not translate’:

England in August 1914 was more of a state than she was during the great industrial strikes of 1911–1912.

Despite all the medical warnings about ketones, it turns out the fetal brain actually gets approximately 30% of its energy from ketones.[142]

To theorize’ means, to see as a whole. The actual is a small part of the whole, or a single aspect of it, which, when taken by itself is, by reason of its incompleteness, both meaningless and comparatively unreal. To see the actual in its wholeness is to see it filled out with all that it implies, supplemented by that which gives it meaning.

I had recently read to my dismay that they have started hunting moose again in New England. Goodness knows why anyone would want to shoot an animal as harmless and retiring as the moose, but thousands of people do—so many, in fact, that states now hold lotteries to decide who gets a permit. Maine in 1996 received 82,000 applications for just 1,500 permits. Over 12,000 outof-staters happily parted with a nonrefundable $20 just to be allowed to take part in the draw. Hunters will tell you that a moose is a wily and ferocious forest creature. Nonsense. A moose is a cow drawn by a three-year-old. That’s all there is to it. Without doubt, the moose is the most improbable, endearingly hopeless creature ever to live in the wilds. Every bit of it—its spindly legs, its chronically puzzled expression, its comical oven-mitt antlers—looks like some droll evolutionary joke. It is wondrously ungainly: it runs as if its legs have never been introduced to each other. Above all, what distinguishes the moose is its almost boundless lack of intelligence. If you are driving down a highway and a moose steps from the woods ahead of you, he will stare at you for a long minute (moose are notoriously shortsighted), then abruptly try to run away from you, legs flailing in eight directions at once. Never mind that there are several thousand square miles of forest on either side of the highway. The moose does not think of this. Clueless as to what exactly is going on, he runs halfway to New Brunswick before his peculiar gait inadvertently steers him back into the woods, where he immediately stops and takes on a startled expression that says, “Hey—woods. Now how the heck did I get here?” Moose are so monumentally muddle-headed, in fact, that when they hear a car or truck approaching they will often bolt out of the woods and onto the highway in the curious hope that this will bring them to safety. Amazingly, given the moose’s lack of cunning and peculiarly-blunted survival instincts, it is one of the longest-surviving creatures in North America. Mastodons, saber-toothed tigers, wolves, caribou, wild horses, and even camels all once thrived in eastern North America alongside the moose but gradually stumbled into extinction, while the moose just plodded on. It hasn’t always been so. At the turn of this century, it was estimated that there were no more than a dozen moose in New Hampshire and probably none at all in Vermont. Today New Hampshire has an estimated 5,000 moose, Vermont 1,000, and Maine anywhere up to 30,000. It is because of these robust and growing numbers that hunting has been reintroduced as a way of keeping them from getting out of hand. There are, however, two problems with this that I can think of. First, the numbers are really just guesses. Moose clearly don’t line up for censuses. Some naturalists think the population may have been overstated by as much as 20 percent, which means that the moose aren’t being so much culled as slaughtered. No less pertinent is that there is just something deeply and unquestionably wrong about killing an animal that is so sweetly and dopily unassuming as a moose. I could have slain this one with a slingshot, with a rock or stick—with a folded newspaper, I’d almost bet—and all it wanted was a drink of water. You might as well hunt cows.

A lot of self-help methods are based on mental discipline or on working through emotional issues. What these approaches lack in an awareness of how the body is an integral part of the equation. The health of your body influences what you experience in your mind. There is no split. If you can engage your whole spirit in the pursuit of fitness--not just your intellect, not just your emotions-- but instead everything inside you that is truly you, you'll discover what it is to be a whole person.

Then Hermione’s voice came out of the blackness for the third time, sharp and clear from a few yards away. “Harry, they’re here…right here.” And he knew by her tone that it was his mother and father this time: He moved toward her, feeling as if something heavy were pressing on his chest, the same sensation he had had right after Dumbledore had died, a grief that had actually weighed on his heart and lungs. The headstone was only two rows behind Kendra and Ariana’s. It was made of white marble, just like Dumbledore’s tomb, and this made it easy to read, as it seemed to shine in the dark. Harry did not need to kneel or even approach very close to it to make out the words engraved upon it. JAMES POTTER BORN 27 MARCH 1960 DIED 31 OCTOBER 1981 LILY POTTER BORN 30 JANUARY 1960 DIED 31 OCTOBER 1981 The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. Harry read the words slowly, as though he would have only one chance to take in their meaning, and he read the last of them aloud. “‘The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death’…” A horrible thought came to him, and with it a kind of panic. “Isn’t that a Death Eater idea? Why is that there?” “It doesn’t mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Harry,” said Hermione, her voice gentle. “It means…you know…living beyond death. Living after death.” But they were not living, though Harry: They were gone. The empty words could not disguise the fact that his parents’ moldering remains lay beneath snow and stone, indifferent, unknowing. And tears came before he could stop them, boiling hot then instantly freezing on his face, and what was the point in wiping them off or pretending? He let them fall, his lips pressed hard together, looking down at the thick snow hiding from his eyes the place where the last of Lily and James lay, bones now, surely, or dust, not knowing or caring that their living son stood so near, his heart still beating, alive because of their sacrifice and close to wishing, at this moment, that he was sleeping under the snow with them.

Jeff watched her come, the whole time. He never noticed her mincing, hesitant steps on treacherous heels. He was simply swept up in the ancient ceremony. And discovering, as untold millions of young men had discovered before him, that there is nothing in the world as beautiful as his bride approaching.

research shows that the eight-hours-in-one-shot approach to sleep may be somewhat of a modern invention. When people are removed from all artificial sleep cues, one study found, they start to shift to a sleep pattern of about four hours asleep, 30 to 60 minutes awake, then another three to four hours asleep.

ON A COLD CALL: Be brief. You must generate interest in about 30 seconds or less, or forget it. Make a strong statement about how you can help the prospect. Don't focus on how much money you can save them. That approach seems to be wearing thin. Talk about what you do for companies like hers, or how your product has worked for others.

A left margin watches the sea floor approach It takes 30 million years It is the first love

Browning: ‘Justinian’s Pandects only make precise / What simply sparkled in men’s eyes before’.

Image the whole, then execute the parts— Fancy the fabric Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz Ere mortar dab brick!

For there is not so complete and perfect a part that we know of nature, which does not owe the being it has, and the excellence of it, to its neighbours.

a child might possibly change his country; a man can only wish that he might change it.

cannot associate with one another without creating a moral relationship.

What’s 30 or 60 or 90 days in the scope of your life?’ Experimenting with a potentially healthier approach can’t hurt, and it might just change your life!

One ratio that Buffett is known to track is the total market cap to GDP. Recently, it was at 125%, which is a level approached in 1999 during the Internet bubble. Another

Proverbs takes a supremely pragmatic approach: “A wife of noble character who can find?” (31:10). This verse assumes that we are involved in a serious pursuit, actively engaging our minds to make a wise choice. And the top thing a young man should consider is this: “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised” (Prov. 31:30).

USE EMOTIONS AS INFORMATION. Horses use emotion as information to engage surprisingly agile responses to environmental stimuli and relationship challenges: (a) Feel the emotion in its purest form (b) Get the message behind the emotion (c) Change something in response to the message (d) Go back to grazing. In other words, let the emotion go, and either get back on task or relax, so you can enjoy life fully. Horses don’t hang on to the story, endlessly ruminating over the details of uncomfortable situations -- from an October 30, 2013 article on the Intelligent Optimist magazine

For a great state, qua state, is not one which embraces a great population or an extensive territory, but one which achieves a great intensity of social unity. And in this matter we must bear in mind that unity means unity of purpose and will, and not merely unity of action and result. One of the most significant reasons for refusing to attribute an unlimited degree of statehood to those associations which are legally known as states, is that their size is governed by considerations of commerce, mere whim, or by other limited ends, rather than by reference to the good life or the excellence of souls.

What I was quickly discovering about the presidency was that no problem that landed on my desk, foreign or domestic, had a clean, 100 percent solution. If it had, someone else down the chain of command would have solved it already. Instead, I was constantly dealing with probabilities: a 70 percent chance, say, that a decision to do nothing would end in disaster; a 55 percent chance that this approach versus that one might solve the problem (with a 0 percent chance that it would work out exactly as intended); a 30 percent chance that whatever we chose wouldn’t work at all, along with a 15 percent chance that it would make the problem worse.

In the 30 years following Prozac, the field has not flourished but fizzled out. There have been no major new advances in drug treatment, or psychological treatment come to that, for depression or any other mental health disorder, since about 1990.

The radiation in Chernobyl’s Unit 4 reactor hall was now at an instantly-lethal 30,000 roentgens-per-hour. 500 roentgens, received over the course of 5 hours, is a fatal dose. 400 is fatal in 50% of victims. Anything even approaching that will hospitalise you for months if you’re lucky, or cripple you if you aren’t. The volume and intensity of radioactive particles thrown into the atmosphere on that night was equal to 10 Hiroshima bombs, not including the hundreds of tons of reactor fuel and graphite that landed all over the plant.

We remember the Spartan ambassador who, being asked in whose name he had come, replied: ‘In the name of the State, if I succeed; if I fail, in my own.’ [See Plutarch, ‘Lycurgus’, Lives, tr. J. Langhorne and W. Langhorne (London: Ward, Lock & Co., Limited, nd [1898]), pp. 40–1:

The contrast between these stories is painful but inescapable. It is not only the rainforest that is being chewed up in the industrial machine, but also human cultures 30,000 years old, ways of thinking radically different from Western approaches, plants that may never be seen again, and things that many of us will never know we lost.

The real, if it is anything, is a coherent whole, it is a unity so unified as to preclude the possibility of disunity. And this is what we have called the truth. The real thing is the thing as it truly exists. The true thing, the thing as it exists in its wholeness, is the real thing.[26] And how does this differ from what we have called the ideal? In no respect whatever. The word Hegel uses for ‘wholeness’ is ‘reasonableness’, and if we are content to understand it (and not to abuse it) his assertion that was vernünftig ist, das ist wirklich; und was wirklich ist, das ist vernünftig, is not so wide of the mark.[27] Thought out to the end, as we have tried to do, the ideal not only grows out of the real, not only is contained in the real, but is the real.

Girls seemed to have it easy in comparison. They mostly stood there in blue frocks or tight jeans or frilly skirts or whatever and handed out judgement, like flocks of Caesars in lipstick, crushing my fledging ego with their precious thumbs. And just like Caesar, they never seemed to earn the right to do that, it was theirs by birth. Who had decided this? I sure was never consulted. I had no choice, forced to bury my head in a game I had never agreed to join. I resented girls for it, and that cost me dearly. It nearly crippled me for life. But the winds of power were beginning to shift now. Just as those girls were becoming women, approaching the big 30 and being overtaken by a new batch of free riders, I was starting to get noticed. Time was a great leveller, and time was here.

A person’s average or typical level of happiness is that person’s “affective style.” (“Affect” refers to the felt or experienced part of emotion.) Your affective style reflects the everyday balance of power between your approach system and your withdrawal system, and this balance can be read right from your forehead. It has long been known from studies of brainwaves that most people show an asymmetry: more activity either in the right frontal cortex or in the left frontal cortex. In the late 1980s, Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin discovered that these asymmetries correlated with a person’s general tendencies to experience positive and negative emotions. People showing more of a certain kind of brainwave coming through the left side of the forehead reported feeling more happiness in their daily lives and less fear, anxiety, and shame than people exhibiting higher activity on the right side. Later research showed that these cortical “lefties” are less subject to depression and recover more quickly from negative experiences.29 The difference between cortical righties and lefties can be seen even in infants: Ten-month-old babies showing more activity on the right side are more likely to cry when separated briefly from their mothers.30 And this difference in infancy appears to reflect an aspect of personality that is stable, for most people, all the way through adulthood. 31 Babies who show a lot more activity on the right side of the forehead become toddlers who are more anxious about novel situations; as teenagers, they are more likely to be fearful about dating and social activities; and, finally, as adults, they are more likely to need psychotherapy to loosen up.

Equally important was the approach of the advertising, which can be summarized with a single word: “minimalist.” “Billy Graham, Harringay Arena, 7: 30 Every Night.” Or “Hear Billy Graham.” Or just “Billy Graham,” with his photo. Crusade organizers took a cue from advertisements for Cadillacs in the United States. They gave just enough information to arouse curiosity, implying that the product was so desirable it sold itself.

In fact, during this study, the highest levels of blood ketones detected was 0.34mmol/L. True diabetic ketoacidosis typically appears at blood ketone levels of 10-20mmol/L, at least 30-fold higher than the highest level recorded throughout this study. That means that even women  subjected to very-low-calorie diets (which, in this case, were also low in carbohydrates) didn’t experience harmful levels of ketones in their blood.

The process of experiencing is well described by Goethe when he says that our life is made up of our connections with the world about us, and that we must each spin our own web and sit at the centre to catch what we can.[21] The web itself is made up of past experiences, and each new connection with the world about us, in so far as it is fully known and understood, is an addition to that web, and so an added means of experiencing.

The whole visible world is only an imperceptible atom in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it. We may enlarge our conceptions beyond all imaginable space; we only produce atoms in comparison with the reality of things. It is an infinite sphere, the centre of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere. [30] In short it is the greatest sensible mark of the almighty power of God, that imagination loses itself in that thought.

What they found is that there’s simply no way for the states to do it without enhancing the power grid. The model also showed that regional and national approaches to transmission—rather than leaving each state to its own devices—would allow every state to meet the emission-reduction goals with 30 percent fewer renewables than they would need otherwise. In other words, we’ll save money by building renewables in the best locations, building a unified national grid, and shipping zero-emissions electrons wherever they’re needed.

My emphasis on process was born of necessity. What I was quickly discovering about the presidency was that no problem that landed on my desk, foreign or domestic, had a clean, 100 percent solution. If it had, someone else down the chain of command would have solved it already. Instead, I was constantly dealing with probabilities: a 70 percent chance, say, that a decision to do nothing would end in disaster; a 55 percent chance that this approach versus that one might solve the problem (with a 0 percent chance that it would work out exactly as intended); a 30 percent chance that whatever we chose wouldn’t work at all, along with a 15 percent chance that it

As much depended on the priest's willingness to listen to his imploring cry, a leprous Israelite would often go up to the spot whence he could call on him desponding or fearful. And the priest, however willing, might be busy so as not to be able to come at once. As, with most wistful eye, the man gazes on the living, cheerful camp, he sees one and another meet the priest and pour some message or entreaty into his ear—so that the priest is detained, and hurried away to this and that part of the camp, while the trembling, weary leper waits at the gate. In this we see that our high priest hath the pre-eminence— never too busy—never unwilling—never unable. "He waits that he may be gracious." (Isa. 30.18). Neither the business nor the bliss of heaven will detain him from a wretched soul. He who in the days of his flesh forgot to eat, and even ceased to feel faintness, when a soul stood before him in his leprosy, has nothing now to keep him from instant compassion. He who on the cross, under the dark shade of the approaching cloud of wrath and of death, heard the heaving of his mother's bosom and the rush of anguish through her heart—has nothing now to hinder him freely to direct his ever ready compassions towards the coming leper. Even as this is true in regard to those already come, so also is it to the coming.

Here’s a Reader’s Digest version of my approach. I select mutual funds that have had a good track record of winning for more than five years, preferably for more than ten years. I don’t look at their one-year or three-year track records because I think long term. I spread my retirement, investing evenly across four types of funds. Growth and Income funds get 25 percent of my investment. (They are sometimes called Large Cap or Blue Chip funds.) Growth funds get 25 percent of my investment. (They are sometimes called Mid Cap or Equity funds; an S&P Index fund would also qualify.) International funds get 25 percent of my investment. (They are sometimes called Foreign or Overseas funds.) Aggressive Growth funds get the last 25 percent of my investment. (They are sometimes called Small Cap or Emerging Market funds.) For a full discussion of what mutual funds are and why I use this mix, go to daveramsey.com and visit MyTotalMoneyMakeover.com. The invested 15 percent of your income should take advantage of all the matching and tax advantages available to you. Again, our purpose here is not to teach the detailed differences in every retirement plan out there (see my other materials for that), but let me give you some guidelines on where to invest first. Always start where you have a match. When your company will give you free money, take it. If your 401(k) matches the first 3 percent, the 3 percent you put in will be the first 3 percent of your 15 percent invested. If you don’t have a match, or after you have invested through the match, you should next fund Roth IRAs. The Roth IRA will allow you to invest up to $5,000 per year, per person. There are some limitations as to income and situation, but most people can invest in a Roth IRA. The Roth grows tax-FREE. If you invest $3,000 per year from age thirty-five to age sixty-five, and your mutual funds average 12 percent, you will have $873,000 tax-FREE at age sixty-five. You have invested only $90,000 (30 years x 3,000); the rest is growth, and you pay no taxes. The Roth IRA is a very important tool in virtually anyone’s Total Money Makeover. Start with any match you can get, and then fully fund Roth IRAs. Be sure the total you are putting in is 15 percent of your total household gross income. If not, go back to 401(k)s, 403(b)s, 457s, or SEPPs (for the self-employed), and invest enough so that the total invested is 15 percent of your gross annual pay. Example: Household Income $81,000 Husband $45,000 Wife $36,000 Husband’s 401(k) matches first 3%. 3% of 45,000 ($1,350) goes into the 401(k). Two Roth IRAs are next, totaling $10,000. The goal is 15% of 81,000, which is $12,150. You have $11,350 going in. So you bump the husband’s 401(k) to 5%, making the total invested $12,250.

Officers approached the 43-year-old Garner on July 17 in a high-crime area near the Staten Island Ferry Terminal and accused him of illegally selling untaxed cigarettes—the kind of misdemeanor that Broken Windows policing aims to curb. Garner had already been arrested more than 30 times, mostly for selling loose cigarettes but also for marijuana possession and other offenses. As captured in a cell-phone video, the 350-pound man loudly objected to the charge and broke free when an officer tried to handcuff him. The officer then put his arm around Garner’s neck and pulled him to the ground. Garner repeatedly stated that he couldn’t breathe, and then went eerily stiff and quiet. After a seemingly interminable time on the ground without assistance, Garner was finally put on a stretcher to be taken to an emergency room. He died of cardiac arrest before arriving at the hospital. Garner suffered from severe asthma and diabetes, among other ailments, which contributed to his heart attack.

Virtually every version of CBT for anxiety disorders involves working through what’s called an exposure hierarchy. The concept is simple. You make a list of all the situations and behaviors you avoid due to anxiety. You then assign a number to each item on your list based on how anxiety provoking you expect doing the avoided behavior would be. Use numbers from 0 (= not anxiety provoking at all) to 100 (= you would fear having an instant panic attack). For example, attempting to talk to a famous person in your field at a conference might be an 80 on the 0-100 scale. Sort your list in order, from least to most anxiety provoking. Aim to construct a list that has several avoided actions in each 10-point range. For example, several that fall between 20 and 30, between 30 and 40, and so on, on your anxiety scale. That way, you won’t have any jumps that are too big. Omit things that are anxiety-provoking but wouldn’t actually benefit you (such as eating a fried insect). Make a plan for how you can work through your hierarchy, starting at the bottom of the list. Where possible, repeat an avoided behavior several times before you move up to the next level. For example, if one of your items is talking to a colleague you find intimidating, do this several times (with the same or different colleagues) before moving on. When you start doing things you’d usually avoid that are low on your hierarchy, you’ll gain the confidence you need to do the things that are higher up on your list. It’s important you don’t use what are called safety behaviors. Safety behaviors are things people do as an anxiety crutch—for example, wearing their lucky undies when they approach that famous person or excessively rehearsing what they plan to say. There is a general consensus within psychology that exposure techniques like the one just described are among the most effective ways to reduce problems with anxiety. In clinical settings, people who do exposures get the most out of treatment. Some studies have even shown that just doing exposure can be as effective as therapies that also include extensive work on thoughts. If you want to turbocharge your results, try exposure. If you find it too difficult to do alone, consider working with a therapist.

You might think your life is a mess right now, but God doesn’t. And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified (Romans 8:28–30). The world wants one thing for you; God wants another. z The world offers you finer wine; God wants you to act like His Son. z The world offers you a bigger house; God wants you to think like His Son. z The world offers you a fancier wardrobe; God wants you to be clothed in the righteousness of His Son. The world offers things that are relatively easy to obtain. God offers you profound things that require more effort than online shopping. The world wants you to conform to its image. God wants you to be transformed to think and act the way human beings were created to act: like image bearers of Almighty God. To accomplish this, He is causing all things to work together for your good.

Try a 30-Day Project for Overcoming Avoidance Coping Avoidance coping habits aren’t something you can snap your fingers and change. A 30-day project focused on gradually turning around avoidance coping can help. You can use this approach as an alternative to the exposure hierarchy if doing a 30-day project seems more appealing or relevant to you. During the 30 days, take as many opportunities as you can to be less avoidant than you usually would be. This will help you overcome any problems you might have with not knowing where to start in reducing your avoidance. As situations come up, focus on taking some action, even if you’re not certain what the absolute right action is. For example, if you’re confused by all the options for backing up your digital photos in the cloud, you might ask your most tech-savvy friend what she does, and just go with that. You can always switch later. Don’t be too all-or-nothing about overcoming avoidance coping. We all have only so much willpower available for dealing with things we’d prefer not to do. The goal is to start unraveling your avoidance coping habits bit by bit. If you sometimes fall back into the avoidance coping trap, that’s to be expected.

Since the Enlightenment unfolded in the late 18th century, life expectancy across the world has risen from 30 to 71, and in the more fortunate countries to 81.1 When the Enlightenment began, a third of the children born in the richest parts of the world died before their fifth birthday; today, that fate befalls 6 percent of the children in the poorest parts. Their mothers, too, were freed from tragedy: one percent in the richest countries did not live to see their newborns, a rate triple that of the poorest countries today, which continues to fall. In those poor countries, lethal infectious diseases are in steady decline, some of them afflicting just a few dozen people a year, soon to follow smallpox into extinction. The poor may not always be with us. The world is about a hundred times wealthier today than it was two centuries ago, and the prosperity is becoming more evenly distributed across the world’s countries and people. The proportion of humanity living in extreme poverty has fallen from almost 90 percent to less than 10 percent, and within the lifetimes of most of the readers of this book it could approach zero. Catastrophic famine, never far away in most of human history, has vanished from most of the world, and undernourishment and stunting are in steady decline. A century ago, richer countries devoted one percent of their wealth to supporting children, the poor, and the aged; today they spend almost a quarter of it. Most of their poor today are fed, clothed, and sheltered, and have luxuries like smartphones

In 63 B.C., a young Roman quaestor in Spain approached a statue of Alexander to pay homage to the commander, who had never lost a battle in his remarkable career. He broke down and wept before it. The 30-year-old realized that the Macedonian had already conquered the world at his age, while he was a mere administrator in a backwater Roman province who had frittered away his youth. The stone face smiled back at him, satisfied in his reputation as a military colossus.   This young man, Julius Caesar, eventually found his bearings and went on to his own successful career of conquest. He would raise up his own empire and lead armies to extraordinary victory. But it was to Alexander whom his knee bent, perhaps the only human worthy of such an act of praise by a Caesar.

To define a thing is to see it clearly, to see it as distinct from other things and at the same time to see its exact relationship with other things: for a thing is its relations and activities.

to see a thing completely is to set it in relation with the universe.

When Plutarch says that a city might sooner subsist without a geographical site than without belief in the gods, his words would not have appeared strange to his countrymen at any time.’]

For history and for science facts are self-evident and are the subject-matter of these studies, but for philosophy they are the most puzzling things imaginable, and when they are really discovered its part is played.

Property was thus appall’d / That the self was not the same / Single nature’s double name / Neither two nor one was call’d.

in modern philosophy, the first glimpse of the true view of the conception of ‘might is right’ as applying to government is to be found in the political writings of Spinoza. Briefly it is this. Government, as such, has a limited sphere of activity. This limitation is self-limitation; and the proper province of government comprehends all that it is able to accomplish. Government may not attempt that which it is unable to achieve; that which it is able to achieve is its true and proper sphere of action. Ask and answer the question, What can government do? and we have solved the problem of what it ought to do, that is, we have defined its limits and discovered its particular nature. Its might is its right.

to think nothing about the opinion of his society (if he be in any sense a member) is to be unconsciously influenced by it.

An ideal society, properly so-called, can be none other than an actual, present, society taken at its truest and best.

Identify your 70/20/10 (or 60/30/10 depending on risk appetite). Most people know of this allocation from the innovation approach that Eric Schmidt pioneered at Google: 70 percent of time allocated to core business tasks, 20 percent to projects directly related to the core business, and 10 percent dedicated to projects unrelated to the core business.

learning—we have learned how to increase productivity, the outputs that can be produced with any inputs. There are two aspects of learning that we can distinguish: an improvement in best practices, reflected in increases in productivity of firms that marshal all available knowledge and technology, and improvements in the productivity of firms as they catch up to best practices. In fact, the distinction may be somewhat artificial; there may be no firm that has employed best practices in every aspect of its activities. One firm may be catching up with another in some dimension, but the second firm may be catching up with the first in others. In developing countries, almost all firms may be catching up with global best practices; but the real difference between developing and developed countries is the larger fraction of firms that are significantly below global best practices and the larger gap between their productivity and that of the best-performing firms. While we are concerned in this book with both aspects of learning, it is especially the learning associated with catching up that we believe has been given short shrift in the economics literature, and which is central to improvements in standards of living, especially in developing countries. But as we noted in chapter 1, the two are closely related; because of the improvements in best practices by the most innovative firms, most other firms are always engaged in a process of catching up. While the evidence of Solow and the work that followed demonstrated (what to many seems obvious) the importance of learning for increases in standards of living, to further explicate the role of learning, the first three sections of this chapter marshal other macro- and microeconomic evidence. In particular, we stress the pervasive gap between best practices and the productivity of most firms. We argue that this gap is far more important than the traditional allocative inefficiencies upon which most of economics has focused and is related to learning—or more accurately, the lack of learning. The final section provides a theoretical context within which to think about the sources of sustained increases in standards of living, employing the familiar distinction of movements of the production possibilities curve and movements toward the production possibilities curve. Using this framework, we explain why it is that we ascribe such importance to learning. Macroeconomic Perspectives There are several empirical arguments that can be brought to bear to support our conclusion concerning the importance of learning. The first is a simple argument: In theory, leading-edge technology is globally available. Thus, with sufficient capital and trained labor (or sufficient mobility for capital and trained labor), all countries should enjoy comparable standards of living. The only difference would be the rents associated with ownership of intellectual property rights and factor supplies. Yet there is an enormous divergence in economic performance and standards of living across national economies, far greater than can be explained by differences in factor supplies.1 And this includes many low-performing economies with high levels of capital intensity (especially among formerly socialist economies) and highly trained labor forces. Table 2.1 presents a comparison of formerly socialist countries with similar nonsocialist economies in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the state-controlled model of economic activity. TABLE 2.1 Quality of Life Comparisons, 1992–1994 (U.S. $) Source: Greenwald and Khan (2009), p. 30. In most of these cases, at the time communism was imposed after World War II, the subsequently socialist economies enjoyed higher levels of economic development than

Participation in the affairs of government was another element in the new Company approach. Soon after his arrival, Yeardley issued a call for the first representative legislative assembly in America which convened at Jamestown on July 30, 1619, and remained in session until August 4. This was the beginning of our present system of representative government.

I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” —Acts 10:34–35 (NRSV) We stared at the school handout. “That’s pouring it on pretty thick,” Kate said. I nodded. “Was it like this when we were in school?” I asked. Presidents’ Day was approaching, and Frances’s school was hosting a patriotic assembly. The kids had a packet of songs and poems to memorize. Some of them seemed over the top in their worship of the United States. Don’t get me wrong. I love America. I studied abroad in college and returned home profoundly grateful for my sprawling, boisterous, beautiful, dynamic country. But no country is perfect, and the United States is not the kingdom of God. Was it right to fill impressionable kids’ minds with such unvarnished patriotic worship? Aren’t we supposed to see the world through God’s eyes, thankful for our religious freedom, but calling out greed and injustice when we see it? “Maybe I learned some of these songs in school,” Kate said. “I can’t remember.” “Well, then probably Frances won’t remember either,” I said. “She’ll form her own ideas as she grows up.” And, suddenly, I realized that was the point of patriotism. Frances could form her own ideas. She was free to think and believe what seemed right to her. She was free to grow up and disagree with Kate and me completely. That was the glory of America. Lord, help me to see the world through Your eyes. —Jim Hinch Digging Deeper: Ps 22:28; Is 30:21

when organizations adopt Agile practices, it is imperative that team leaders and development managers learn a better approach to leading and managing their teams.

In order to leave out any doubt, I let my passport expire, without trying to extend it. I applied for an Affidavit in lieu of passport, valid for a trip out of the U.S. to Israel, dated November 30, 1949. Just as two years previously my family came to say `hello,' now they visited to say `goodbye.' Some were puzzled by my decision yet they found it interesting and idealistic, since I was going to labor in the vineyards of the newly established Jewish State. Maybe, some thought, they would have treated or approached me differently, had they known that it was only a temporary stay, a two-year visit. Of course, it made no difference any more. That stint was an interlude between life in Europe and my settling in Israel, where I remained for over seven years.

you’ll be stuck in sucky classes! Through conversations with friends, your own research, and an understanding of the teaching and learning styles that work for you, select the classes that suit you best. If you are interested in a particular field in which you don’t have any connections, do not be afraid to reach out. Research the people in that field before approaching them and make sure you ask intelligent questions that will help you decide if you want to pursue further study. Non-academic pursuits in college can be just as important or even more important than classes and grades. College grades matter less than high school grades (except when applying to highly competitive graduate and medical

Today, going around human resources and straight to the hiring managers also requires an indirect approach using the Web.

From the Bridge” by Captain Hank Bracker The Hurricane of 1502 In the time before hurricanes were understood or modern methods of detection and tracking were available, people were frequently caught off guard by these monstrous storms. One of these times was on June 29, 1502. What had started as another normal day in the Caribbean turned into the devastation of a fleet of 30 ships, preparing to sail back to Spain laden with gold and other treasures from the New World. Without the benefit of a National Weather Service, mariners had to rely on their own knowledge and understanding of atmospheric conditions and the sea. Sensing that one of these storms was approaching, Columbus sought shelter for his ships near the Capitol city of Santo Domingo along the southern coast of Hispaniola, now known as the Dominican Republic. The following is taken from page 61 of the author’s award winning book, The Exciting Story of Cuba. “Columbus was aware of dangerous weather indicators that were frequently a threat in the Caribbean during the summer months. Although the barometer had not yet been invented, there were definitely other telltale signs of an approaching hurricane. Had the governor listened to Columbus’ advice and given him some leeway, he could have saved the convoy that was being readied for a return trans-Atlantic crossing. Instead, the new inexperienced governor ordered the fleet of over 30 caravels, laden, heavy with gold, to set sail for Spain without delay. As a result, it is estimated that 20 of these ships were sunk by this violent storm, nine ran aground and only the Aguja, which coincidently carried Columbus’ gold, survived and made it back to Spain safely. The ferocity of the storm claimed the lives of five hundred souls, including that of the former governor Francisco de Bobadilla. Many of the caravels that sank during this hurricane were ships that were part of the same convoy that Ovando had traveled with from Spain to the West Indies. However he felt about this tragedy, which could have been prevented, he continued as the third Governor of the Indies until 1509, and became known for his brutal treatment of the Taíno Indians. Columbus’ ships fared somewhat better in that terrible storm, and survived with only minor damage. Heaving in their anchors, Columbus’ small fleet of ships left Hispaniola to explore the western side of the Caribbean.” Hurricanes and Typhoons, remain the most powerful and dangerous storms on our planet. Hurricane Matthew that is now raking the eastern coastline of Florida is no exception. Perhaps the climate change that we are experiencing has intensified these storms and perhaps we should be doing more to stabilize our atmosphere but Earth is our home and the only place where proven life exists. Perhaps the conclusion to this is that we should take the warning signs more seriously and be proactive in protecting our environment! This is not a political issue and will affect us, our children and grandchildren for centuries!

The negotiated sale is a more effective approach than the two-step auction when selling an intangible company, particularly those with a transaction size of less than $30 million. The small and midsized buyers do not have the in-house resources to respond to the strict time deadlines of an auction process. The

PARTIES, CONFERENCES AND NETWORKING EVENTS. You’ve got to be honest with yourself; this was the actual lesson you’ve been dreading, only if you are a natural extrovert, there are some things that are more stressful than going to parties and other networking activities. Today is going to be a bit tough, so you are going to have to be tougher. This is where all the lessons you’ve learnt so far will pay off. When you’re in a party, a conference or networking event, you are likely to hold one of four possible roles. How you react to the event will depend on this role. The possibilities include: Host/Greeter. Guest. Networker. Support. People will definitely come to you if you’re in the first category, making introduction moderately easy and opportunities for small talk plentiful. You may be in charge of giving a presentation or attending to a table at a convention or any similar event. Make sure to create eye contact and smile at strangers to acknowledge them, someone will approach you in no time. Topics that may outstand may include how successful the turnout was or other positive factors that craved out of the event. If you happen to be a guest or a visitor, the challenge is on you to approach and kick start conversations. The golden rule for breaking ice at events and starting small talks ate networking arena are remarkably the same. You have to keep one thing in mind; everyone attends a party with the intention of meeting a new person and talking with them. So, if you find out that your introduction is not so much an imposition as making it up to meet new people, you will find it much compelling and easy. Your best topics in this case are basically probing enquires about what brings your other party to the event and if you have mutual acquaintances. Your own work as a networker is a little bit different from being a host or guest. As a networker, you have to join groups, or even groups of groups in a cohesive way. You may need to go in to many conversations in the middle. The best way to go about this is to smile or enthusiastically go with something that was just said. When this is done, be careful not to shoehorn your conversation topics in to small talks, but try to carefully merge in to each of them as if you’re approaching from a highway on- ramp. Support is the final role, and the sad part about this is that you might find yourself at the end catering an event or working as a neutral staff. Even with that, you may still create opportunities for personal networking or even very revealing small talks during the course of the event. Conversation with other staff, special guests or even the host can turn out to invaluable connections that you can make use of later. With this at the back of your mind, always prepare for short conversations when you’re working an event just as seriously as if you were attending the event as a special guest. Maybe you’re not that kind of person that can withstand large crowd, take a break to regain who you are and review the topical assessments you prepared in the previous lessons. Don’t forget to excuse yourself so you can move around in the event centre on a regular basis, perhaps going for another role you think you’re capable of. This particular aspect does not have any other way to go about it. In fact, it might take the next 5 days before you put the whole concept together, and you may need to combine the zeal with tomorrow’s lesson. Now, you should go for a party or be the host to one yourself so you can utilize all these principles you learnt today. There’s no way to wave this, you have to learn it and be perfect. Bring your partner who has been your support all this while along to tackle the four roles and many more within the time frame. Until then, maintain the free flow with ease.

Respected Mormon archaeologist Professor Dee F.Green has said: The first myth we need to eliminate is that Book of Mormon archaeology exists.... If one is to study Book of Mormon archaeology, then one must have a corpus of data with which to deal. We do not. ... No Book of Mormon location is known with reference to modern topography. Biblical archaeology can be studied because we do know where Jerusalem and Jericho were and are, but we do not know where Zarahemla and Bountiful (nor any location for that matter) were and are. ... A concentration on geography should be the first order of business, but we have already seen that twenty years of such an approach has left us empty-handed.30

The Doppler Defense I went to court in Manhattan and pleaded 'not guilty' to 'running a red light'. I used the 'Doppler Effect defense', saying I approached the red light at such speed that the frequency of the red light wave from the traffic lamp shifted to a green light wave relative to me, the observer. The judge agreed with my scientific explanation and dropped the red light charge. He then and upgraded the charge to a speeding ticket and sentenced me to '30 days of community service in another dimension'. Man, do I fucking hate Brooklyn.

When I was 30, I used to wonder when I was going to quit playing. Use disorder worry about it. Now, I know I'm never going to quit.

Qur'an 5:30-35: "The (selfish) soul of the other led him to the murder of his brother: he murdered him, and became (himself) one of the lost ones. Then Allah sent a raven, who scratched the ground, to show him how to hide the shame of his brother. "Woe is me!" said he; "Was I not even able to be as this raven, and to hide the shame of my brother?" then he became full of regrets- On that account: We ordained for the Children of Israel that if any one slew a person - unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land - it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people. Then although there came to them Our messengers with clear signs, yet, even after that, many of them continued to commit excesses in the land. The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter; Except for those who repent before they fall into your power: in that case, know that Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful. O ye who believe! Do your duty to Allah, seek the means of approach unto Him, and strive with might and main in his cause: that ye may prosper.

Akbar's Rajput policy, however, did not result from any grand, premeditated strategy. Rather, it began as a response to the internal politics of one of the Rajput lineages, the Kachwaha clan, based in the state of Amber in northern Rajasthan. In 1534 the clan's head, Puran Man, died with no adult heir and was succeeded by his younger brother, Bharmal. Puran Mal, however, did have a son who by the early 1560s had come of age and challenged Bharmal's right to rule Amber. Feeling this pressure from within his own clan, Bharmal approached Akbar for material support, offering in exchange his daughter in marriage. The king agreed to the proposal. In 1562 the Kachwaha chieftain entered Mughal service, with Akbar assuring him of support in maintaining his position in the Kachwaha political order, while his family entered the royal household. Besides his daughter, Bharmal also sent his son Bhagwant Das and his grandson Man Singh (1550-1614) to the court in Agra. For several generations thereafter, the ruling clan continued to give its daughters to the Mughal court, thereby making the chiefs of these clans the uncles, cousins or even father-in-laws of Mughal emperors. The intimate connection between the two courts had far-reaching results. Not only did Kachwaha rulers quickly rise in rank and stature in the Mughal court, but their position within their own clan was greatly enhanced by Akbar's confirmation of their political leadership. Akbar's support also enhanced the position of the Kachwahas as a whole -- and hence Amber state -- in the hierarchy of Rajasthan's other Rajput lineages. Neighbouring clans soon realised the political wisdom of attaching themselves to the expanding Mughal state, a visibly rising star in North Indian politics. [...] Driving these arrangements, though, was not just the incentive of courtly patronage. The clans of Rajasthan well understood that refusal to engage with the Mughals would bring the stick of military confrontation. Alone among the Rajput clans, the Sisodiyas of Mewar in southern Rajasthan, north India's pre-eminent warrior lineages, obstinately refused to negotiate with the Mughals. In response, Akbar in 1568 led a four-month siege of the Sisodiyas' principal stronghold of Chittor, which ultimately fell to the Mughals, but only after a spectacular 'jauhar' in which the fort's defenders, foreseeing their doom, killed their women and gallantly sallied forth to meet their deaths. In all, some 30,000 defenders of the fort were killed, although its ruler, Rana Pratap, managed to escape. For decades, he and the Sisodiya house would continue to resist Mughal domination, whereas nearly every other Rajput lineage had acknowledged Mughal overlordship.

I have seen people who never made over $30,000 per year retire comfortably, while couples who made hundreds of thousands of dollars approach retirement almost penniless.

Further assistance was received about the first of January, with the arrival of a squadron of PBY’s, Navy patrol bombers known as “Catalinas” or “Black Cats.” The PBY’s not only reported positions but heckled enemy ships by dropping flares and bombs, sometimes forcing the ships to reveal their positions by drawing fire from them. Once, toward the end of January, when a group of PT’s was waiting near Savo to engage an approaching force of 12 enemy destroyers, the Black Cats bombed the destroyers so effectively that they turned and fled before they had come within 30 miles of Guadalcanal.

If your investment horizon is long—at least 25 or 30 years—there is only one sensible approach: Buy every month, automatically, and whenever else you can spare some money. The single best choice for this lifelong holding is a total stock-market index fund. Sell only when you need the cash

Michaelis prefers the earnings power approach. If a company earns very high returns year after year, he explained, then, ultimately, those will be the shareholders’ returns as well.

Reuchlin stated that Germans and Jews, “Are fellow citizens of the same Roman Empire, and live on the basis of the same law of citizenship and internal peace.”[ 30]

If you listen to financial TV, or read most market columnists, you’d think that investing is some kind of sport, or a war, or a struggle for survival in a hostile wilderness. But investing isn’t about beating others at their game. It’s about controlling yourself at your own game. The challenge for the intelligent investor is not to find the stocks that will go up the most and down the least, but rather to prevent yourself from being your own worst enemy—from buying high just because Mr. Market says “Buy!” and from selling low just because Mr. Market says “Sell!” If your investment horizon is long—at least 25 or 30 years—there is only one sensible approach: Buy every month, automatically, and whenever else you can spare some money. The single best choice for this lifelong holding is a total stock-market index fund. Sell only when you need the cash

Inextricably linked to the climate emergency is a broader environmental crisis. A third of the Earth’s land is now acutely degraded, with fertile soil being lost at a rate of 24 billion tonnes a year through intensive farming.[19] Generating three centimetres of top soil takes 1,000 years, and, the UN said in 2014, if current rates of degradation continue all of the world's top soil could be gone within 60 years.[20] 95% of our food presently comes from the soil. Unless new approaches are adopted, the global amount of arable and productive land per person in 2050 will be only a quarter of the level in 1960. The equivalent of 30 football pitches of soil are being lost every minute. Heavy tilling, monocropping multiple harvests and abundant use of agrochemicals have increased yields at the expense of long-term sustainability. Agriculture is actually the number one reason for deforestation. In the past 20 years, agricultural production has increased threefold and the amount of irrigated land has doubled, often leading to land abandonment and desertification. Decreasing productivity has been observed, due to diminished fertility, on 20% of the world’s cropland, 16% of forest land, 19% of grassland, and 27% of rangeland. Furthermore, tropical forests have become a source rather than a sink of carbon.[21] Forest areas in South America, Africa and Asia – which have until recently played a crucial role in absorbing GHG – are now releasing 425 teragrams of carbon annually, more than all the traffic in the US. This is due to the thinning of tree density and culling of biodiversity, reducing biomass by up to 75%. Scientists combined 12 years of satellite data with field studies. They found a net carbon loss on every continent. Latin America – home to the world’s biggest forest, the Amazon, which is responsible for 20% of its oxygen – accounted for nearly 60% of the emissions, while 24% came from Africa and 16% from Asia. Every year about 18 million hectares of forest – an area the size of England and Wales – is felled. In just 40 years, possibly one billion hectares, the equivalent of Europe, has been torn down. Half the world’s rainforests have been razed in a century and they will vanish altogether at current rates within another. Earth’s “sixth mass extinction”[22] is well underway: up to 50% of all individual animals have been lost in recent decades and almost half of land mammals have lost 80% of their range in the last century. Vertebrate populations have fallen by an average of 60% since the 1970s, and in some countries there has been an even faster decline of insects – vital, of course, for aerating the soil, pollinating blossoms, and controlling insect and plant pests.

For example, if your final destination is a business that makes $20,000 a month in recurring income and lets you work no more than 30 hours a week, then your first station may be: identifying a market of hungry buyers creating or sourcing a product or offer you can sell to them building a website page or flyer ready for potential prospects.

Your entire membership now has a discount to the market rate. Each month will be a reminder that it’s worth staying because if they leave and come back it will cost more. This has a huge psychological effect. As you increase your price two or three times, you’ll have members who are paying rates of 20%, 30% or even 40% less than new members. Those people will stick around forever.

If only I did have ‘today’ me ten years ago. I wouldn’t have had to cram 30 years of business into ten, trying everything and working countless hours to get where I am today.

The problems we face fall in one of three areas: direct control (problems involving our own behavior); indirect control (problems involving other people’s behavior); or no control (problems we can do nothing about, such as our past or situational realities). The proactive approach puts the first step in the solution of all three kinds of problems within our present Circle of Influence. Direct control problems are solved by working on our habits. They are obviously within our Circle of Influence. These are the “Private Victories” of Habits 1, 2, and 3. Indirect control problems are solved by changing our methods of influence. These are the “Public Victories” of Habits 4, 5, and 6. I have personally identified over 30 separate methods of human influence—as separate as empathy is from confrontation, as separate as example is from persuasion. Most people have only three or four of these methods in their repertoire, starting usually with reasoning, and, if that doesn’t work, moving to flight or fight. How liberating it is to accept the idea that I can learn new methods of human influence instead of constantly trying to use old ineffective methods to “shape up” someone else! No control problems involve taking the responsibility to change the line on the bottom of our face—to smile, to genuinely and peacefully accept these problems and learn to live with them, even though we don’t like them. In this way, we do not empower these problems to control us. We share in the spirit embodied in the Alcoholics Anonymous prayer, “Lord, give me the courage to change the things which can and ought to be changed, the serenity to accept the things which cannot be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Whether a problem is direct, indirect, or no control, we have in our

Market timing refers to deviations from the long-term asset-allocation targets. Active market timing represents a purposeful attempt to generate short-term, superior returns based on insights regarding relative asset class valuations. For example, an investor who believes that stocks represent good value and bonds represent poor value might temporarily move the domestic stock allocation from 30 percent to 35 percent of assets, while reducing the bond allocation from 15 percent to 10 percent of assets.

why American industry adopted lean manufacturing 30 to 40 years after these methods began to produce benefits in Japan? Was it because the Japanese hid this approach from Western eyes? No. American industry waited until the full-scale implementations of these ideas at Toyota could no longer be ignored.

Trump treats women the way Roman culture treated them at the time of Jesus—as property, objectified and ridiculed. We see in Gospel stories Jesus’ radical approach to treating women with honor and respect.

Once superintelligent AI has settled another solar system or galaxy, bringing humans there is easy — if humans have succeeded in programming the AI with this goal. All the necessary information about humans can be transmitted at the speed of light, after which the AI can assemble quarks and electrons into the desired humans. This could be done either in a low-tech way by simply transmitting the 2 gigabytes of information needed to specify a person’s DNA and then incubating a baby to be raised by the AI, or the AI could assemble quarks and electrons into full-grown people who would have all the memories scanned from their originals back on Earth. This means that if there’s an intelligence explosion, the key question isn’t if intergalactic settlement is possible, but simply how fast it can proceed. Since all the ideas we've explored above come from humans, they should be viewed as merely lower limits on how fast life can expand; ambitious superintelligent life can probably do a lot better, and it will have a strong incentive to push the limits, since in the race against time and dark energy, every 1% increase in average settlement speed translates into 3% more galaxies colonized. For example, if it takes 20 years to travel 10 light-years to the next star system with a laser-sail system, and then another 10 years to settle it and build new lasers and seed probes there, the settled region will be a sphere growing in all directions at a third of the speed of light on average. In a beautiful and thorough analysis of cosmically expanding civilizations in 2014, the American physicist Jay Olson considered a high-tech alternative to the island-hopping approach, involving two separate types of probes: seed probes and expanders. The seed probes would slow down, land and seed their destination with life. The expanders, on the other hand, would never stop: they'd scoop up matter in flight, perhaps using some improved variant of the ramjet technology, and use this matter both as fuel and as raw material out of which they'd build expanders and copies of themselves. This self-reproducing fleet of expanders would keep gently accelerating to always maintain a constant speed (say half the speed of light) relative to nearby galaxies, and reproduce often enough that the fleet formed an expanding spherical shell with a constant number of expanders per shell area. Last but not least, there’s the sneaky Hail Mary approach to expanding even faster than any of the above methods will permit: using Hans Moravec’s “cosmic spam” scam from chapter 4. By broadcasting a message that tricks naive freshly evolved civilizations into building a superintelligent machine that hijacks them, a civilization can expand essentially at the speed of light, the speed at which their seductive siren song spreads through the cosmos. Since this may be the only way for advanced civilizations to reach most of the galaxies within their future light cone and they have little incentive not to try it, we should be highly suspicious of any transmissions from extraterrestrials! In Carl Sagan’s book Contact, we earthlings used blueprints from aliens to build a machine we didn’t understand — I don’t recommend doing this ... In summary, most scientists and sci-fi authors considering cosmic settlement have in my opinion been overly pessimistic in ignoring the possibility of superintelligence: by limiting attention to human travelers, they've overestimated the difficulty of intergalactic travel, and by limiting attention to technology invented by humans, they've overestimated the time needed to approach the physical limits of what's possible.

Failure can feel like the ultimate death sentence, but it’s actually a step forward. When we fail, life is pushing us in a different direction so we can experience something new. One adventure has ended and another is about to begin, because it must. Think of your activities in life as scientific experiments. Scientists expect the vast majority of their tests to fail, but they still view each test as a step forward, regardless of the outcome. This is because each failed test rules out that particular approach, narrowing the remaining scope of potential solutions. You might be thinking, “What if all of my experiments fail until the day I die?” Great question. That might happen, depending on how you define failure and success. Here’s the magical solution to that problem: The results of your experiments are of little consequence. Only the experiments themselves matter. The old platitude is true: It’s about the journey, not the destination. Doing experiments will account for 99% of your time on this earth. That’s the journey. The result of your experiments is the other 1%. If you enjoy 99% of your life (the time spent in experimentation), who cares about the results? This is how to remove the problem of failure. Failure is just a temporary result. Its effect is as big or as small as you allow it to be. Elon Musk is becoming a household name. He cofounded Paypal. He now runs two companies simultaneously. The first, Tesla Motors, builds electric cars. The second, SpaceX, builds rocket ships. Many people think of Elon Musk as a real-world Iron Man—a superhero. He’s a living legend. He works extremely hard, and he’s brilliant. Did you know that Elon Musk never worked at Netscape? This is interesting because he actually wanted to work there very badly. He applied to Netscape while he was in grad school at Stanford, but never received a response. He even went to Netscape’s lobby with resume in hand, hoping to talk to someone about getting a job. No one in the lobby ever spoke to Elon that day. After getting nervous and feeling ashamed of himself, he walked out. That’s right. Elon Musk failed to get hired at Netscape. The recruiting managers didn’t see a need for him, and he was too ashamed to keep badgering them. So what happened next? Well, we know what happened from there. Musk went on to become one of the most successful and respected visionaries of our time.[30] Take a deep breath and realize that there are no life-ending failures, only experiments and results. It’s also important to realize that you are not the failure—the experiment is the failure. It is impossible for a person to be a failure. A person’s life is just a collection of experiments. We’re meant to enjoy them and grow from them. If you learn to love the process of experimentation, the prospect of failure isn’t so scary anymore.

A Most Dangerous Hurricane Columbus was aware of dangerous weather indicators that were frequently a threat in the Caribbean during the summer months. Although the barometer had not yet been invented, there were definitely other telltale signs of an approaching hurricane. Had the governor who detested Columbus, listened to his advice and given him some leeway, he could have saved the convoy that was being readied for a return trans-Atlantic crossing. Instead, the new inexperienced governor ordered a fleet of over 30 caravels, laden, heavy with gold, to set sail for Spain without delay. As a result, it is estimated that 20 of these ships were sunk by this violent storm, nine ran aground and only the Aguja, which coincidently carried Columbus’ gold, survived and made it back to Spain safely. The ferocity of the storm claimed the lives of five hundred souls, including that of the former governor Francisco de Bobadilla. Many of the caravels that sank during this horrific hurricane were ships that were part of the same convoy that Governor Ovando, had traveled with from Spain to the West Indies. However he felt about this tragedy, which could have been prevented, he continued as the third Governor of the Indies until 1509, and became known for his brutal treatment of the Taíno Indians. Having taken adequate precautions, Columbus’ ships fared somewhat better in that terrible storm, and survived with only minor damage. Heaving in their anchors, Columbus’ small fleet of ships left Hispaniola to explore the western side of the Caribbean.

when it was announced that the outgoing steamer would be 30 minutes late departing, an impatient visitor was complaining loud and long until Angus got tired of his grumbles. ‘Ach, haud your wheesht, man. It’ll no take you long to wait half an hour!’ Celtic logic, perhaps? SEVEN A castle and a corpus So Hogmanay approached. I was not looking forward to the

He claimed to employ different tactics for different ships, but the basic strategy was crude in its simplicity. In attack groups spread amongst several small and speedy skiffs, Boyah and his men approached their target on all sides, swarming like a water-borne wolf pack. They brandished their weapons in an attempt to frighten the ship's crew into stopping, and even fired into the air. If these scare tactics did not work, and if the target ship was capable of outperforming their outboard motors, the chase ended there. But if they managed to pull even with their target, they tossed hooked rope ladders onto the decks and boarded the ship. Instances of the crew fighting back were rare, and rarely effective, and the whole process, from spotting to capturing, took at most thirty minutes. Boyah guessed that only 20 per cent to 30 per cent of attempted hijackings met with success, for which he blamed speedy prey, technical problems, and foreign naval or domestic intervention. The captured ship was then steered to a friendly port – in Boyah's case, Eyl – where guards and interpreters were brought from the shore to look after the hostages during the ransom negotiation. Once the ransom was secured – often routed through banks in London and Dubai and parachuted like a special-delivery care package directly onto the deck of the ship – it was split amongst all the concerned parties. Half the money went to the attackers, the men who actually captured the ship. A third went to the operation’s investors: those who fronted the money for the ships, fuel, tracking equipment, and weapons. The remaining sixth went to everyone else: the guards ferried from shore to watch over the hostage crew, the suppliers of food and water, the translators (occasionally high school students on their summer break), and even the poor and disabled in the local community, who received some as charity. Such largesse, Boyah told me, had made his merry band into Robin Hood figures amongst the residents of Eyl.

think I’ll sit this one out,” I muttered to myself, sitting down on the floor and eating the sandwich I’d brought with me. “ARE YOU SERIOUS!?” “You look like you’ve got this under control,” I replied to Dinnerbone, before digging into my delicious sandwich. Yum. Eggs and bacon. “Errr…” CRASH! Dinnerbone was blasted into his little chair, as this new figure bombarded him with purple orbs of what I could only assume was dark magic. “DESPAWN! DESPAWN! DESPAWN! DESPAWN! DESPAWN! DESPAWN! DESPAWN! DESPAWN!” Fairly dramatic, dontcha think? BANG! Man, I love these catchy sound effects! The mysterious stranger was launched backwards, as Dinnerbone approached his foe with glowing white eyes. If it weren’t for his ridiculous moustache, you could easily have mistaken him for Herobrine. “MY MOUSTACHE IS NOT RIDICULOUS!” “Get back to fighting!” “BEGONE!” Purple spears, purple swords and other purple objects morphed into existence, before flying towards Dinnerbone and exploding upon impact. The poor guy didn’t deserve(d) it. “MY SPLEEN!” he moaned in pain, as he rolled around on the floor. “STOP MOVING!” his opponent demanded, attempting to hit him with the attack. Surprisingly, he couldn’t land a single blow after Dinnerbone started rolling around. “HELP ME OUT!” Dinnerbone begged. Oh. So the guy who wanted to destroy my server was asking for help. I couldn’t help but feel there was some sort of irony here. “THAT’S NOT HOW YOU USE IRONY!” “QUIT SCREAMING!

On June 18, 1964, about 11:30 a.m. Mrs. Juanita Brooks, who had been shopping, was walking home along an alley in the San Pedro area of the city of Los Angeles. She was pulling behind her a wicker basket carryall containing groceries and had her purse on top of the packages. She was using a cane. As she stooped down to pick up an empty carton, she was suddenly pushed to the ground by a person whom she neither saw nor heard approach. She was stunned by the fall and felt some pain. She managed to look up and saw a young woman running from the scene. According to Mrs. Brooks the latter appeared to weigh about 145 pounds, was wearing “something dark,” and had hair “between a dark blond and a light blond,” but lighter than the color of defendant Janet Collins’ hair as it appeared at the trial. Immediately after the incident, Mrs. Brooks discovered that her purse, containing between $35 and $40, was missing.

It is hard to find many better examples of values-first leadership than Ventura, California-based outdoor clothing company Patagonia. For more than 30 years, the company has defied conventional wisdom by building its brand as much around environmental responsibility as on quality products and service. How many businesses would run a marketing campaign encouraging customers to not buy new products but repair the old ones instead in order to reduce their environmental footprint? Only companies interested in creating a “lovability economy” would prioritize sustainable growth for themselves and the world and take a long-term perspective. They see themselves as stewards of meaningful relationships and understand that mutually positive interactions and exchanges of value are lasting. Patagonia has even made its supply chain public with an online map showing every farm, textile mill, and factory it uses in sourcing its materials and manufacturing its products. Anyone who wants to can see where their Patagonia products come from and verify that the company is walking the walk — using sustainable materials and producing apparel in facilities that are safe for workers. That is transparency that breeds trust. Founder Yvon Chouinard’s vision has also led to a culture that is not only employee-friendly (the company even encourages employees at its corporate headquarters to quit early when the surf is up) but attracts people whose values align with the company’s. This aggressively anti-profit, pro-values approach has yielded big dividends. The privately-held benefit corporation is tight-lipped about its revenues, but two years after it began its “cause marketing” campaign, sales increased 27 percent, to $575 million in 2013.7

In summary, most scientists and sci-fi authors considering cosmic settlement have in my opinion been overly pessimistic in ignoring the possibility of superintelligence: by limiting attention to human travelers, they’ve overestimated the difficulty of intergalactic travel, and by limiting attention to technology invented by humans, they’ve overestimated the time needed to approach the physical limits of what’s possible.

My own story is instructive. More than twenty years ago I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. The conventional treatment made my condition worse, so I approached this health challenge from my perspective as an inventor. I immersed myself in the scientific literature and came up with a unique program that successfully reversed my diabetes. In 1993 I wrote a health book (The 10% Solution for a Healthy Life) about this experience, and I continue today to be free of any indication or complication of this disease.13 In addition, when I was twenty-two, my father died of heart disease at the age of fifty-eight, and I have inherited his genes predisposing me to this illness. Twenty years ago, despite following the public guidelines of the American Heart Association, my cholesterol was in the high 200s (it should be well below 180), my HDL (high-density lipoprotein, the “good” cholesterol) below 30 (it should be above 50), and my homocysteine (a measure of the health of a biochemical process called methylation) was an unhealthy 11 (it should be below 7.5). By following a longevity program that Grossman and I developed, my current cholesterol level is 130, my HDL is 55, my homocysteine is 6.2, my C-reactive protein (a measure of inflammation in the body) is a very healthy 0.01, and all of my other indexes (for heart disease, diabetes, and other conditions) are at ideal levels.14

Entrances and Exits Between 4 million and 2 million years ago, at least 11 different hominid species existed in central, eastern, and southern Africa. These species fall into three genera: Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and Kenyanthropus. At any given time during this era, from four to seven different species existed simultaneously.8 Paleoanthropologists surmise that at least six of the hominids were Australopithecus. Like earlier hominids, australopithecines can be thought of as bipedal apes, distinct from chimpanzees.9 The brain size of australopithecines (380 to 450 cm3) was slightly larger than that of chimpanzees (300 to 400 cm3). Though the cranium, facial features, and dental anatomy were apelike, they were distinct from the corresponding chimpanzee features. The australopithecines stood about four feet tall and matured rapidly, like the great apes. Skull, pelvis, and lower limbs all display features that indicate these hominids walked erect. Still, the bipedalism, called facultative, was distinct from the obligatory bipedalism employed by Homo hominids. Some paleoanthropologists think the australopithecines could also climb and move effectively through trees. This idea is based on their relatively long upper arms, short lower limbs, and funnel-shaped torsos. Work published in 2000 indicates that some australopithecines might have knuckle-walked like the great apes.10 The earliest australopithecines lived either in a woodland environment or in a mixed habitat of trees and open savannas. Later australopithecines lived only on the grassy plains. Their capacity to climb and move through trees, as well as walk erect, gave these hominids easy mobility in their varied environment. The oldest member of Australopithecus, Australopithecus anamensis, existed between 4.2 and 3.8 million years ago, based on fossils recovered near Lake Turkana in Kenya. Australopithecus afarensis fossils have been recovered in eastern Africa and date to between 4 and 3 million years old. “Lucy” (discovered in the early 1970s by Donald Johanson) is one of the best-known specimens. She is nearly 40 percent complete, with much of the postcranial skeleton intact.11 Remains of Australopithecus bahrelghazali, dated at 3.2 million years ago, have been recovered in Chad. Some paleoanthropologists think, however, that A. bahrelghazali is properly classified as an A. afarensis. Australopithecus africanus lived in South Africa between 3.0 and 2.2 million years ago, based on the fossil record. One of the best-known A. africanus specimens is the “Taung child” discovered in 1924 by Dart. The Taung child was the first australopithecine found.12

While the rich became richer, the taxation policy of the government, instead of correcting this trend, actively strengthened it. One of the first decisions of the first Modi government was to abolish the wealth tax that had been introduced in 1957. While the fiscal resources generated by this tax were never significant, the decision was more than a symbolic one.126 The wealth tax was replaced with an income tax increase of 2 percent for households that earned more than Rs 10 million (133,333 USD) annually.127 Few people pay income tax in India anyway: only 14.6 million people (2 percent of the population) did in 2019. As a result, the income-tax-to-GDP ratio remained below 11 percent. Not only has the Modi government not tried to introduce any reforms to change this, but it has instead increased indirect taxes (such as excise taxes), which are the most unfair as they affect everyone, irrespective of income. Taxes on alcohol and petroleum products are a case in point. As some state governments have also imposed their own taxes, this strategy means that India has one of the highest taxation rates on fuel in the world. The share of indirect taxes in the state’s fiscal resources has increased under the Modi government to reach 50 percent of the total taxes—compared to 39 percent under UPA I and 44 percent under UPA II.128 Modi’s taxation policy, a supply-side economics approach, is in keeping with the managerial rhetoric of promoting the spirit of enterprise that the prime minister, who readily presents himself as an efficiency-conscious “apolitical CEO,” relishes. One of the neoliberal measures the Modi government enacted in the name of economic rationality, right from his very first budget in 2015, was to lower the corporate tax.129 For existing companies it was reduced from 30 to 22 percent, and for manufacturing firms incorporated after October 1, 2019 that started operations before March 31, 2023, it was reduced from 25 to 15 percent—the biggest reduction in twenty-eight years. In addition to these tax reductions, the government withdrew the enhanced surcharge on long- and short-term capital gains for foreign portfolio investors as well as domestic portfolio investors.130

A complementary strategy is to establish predetermined time boundaries for your daily work. To whatever extent your job situation permits, decide in advance how much time you’ll dedicate to work—you might resolve to start by 8:30 a.m., and finish no later than 5:30 p.m., say—then make all other time-related decisions in light of those predetermined limits. “You could fill any arbitrary number of hours with what feels to be productive work,” writes Cal Newport, who explores this approach in his book Deep Work. But if your primary goal is to do what’s required in order to be finished by 5:30, you’ll be aware of the constraints on your time, and more motivated to use it wisely.

Seurat took to heart the color theorists' notion of a scientific approach to painting. He believed that a painter could use color to create harmony and emotion in art in the same way that a musician uses counterpoint and variation to create harmony in music. He theorized that the scientific application of color was like any other natural law, and he was driven to prove this conjecture. He thought that the knowledge of perception and optical laws could be used to create a new language of art based on its own set of heuristics and he set out to show this language using lines, color intensity and color schema. Seurat called this language Chromoluminarism.[27] In a letter to the writer Maurice Beaubourg in 1890 he wrote: "Art is Harmony. Harmony is the analogy of the contrary and of similar elements of tone, of colour and of line. In tone, lighter against darker. In colour, the complementary, red-green, orange-blue, yellow-violet. In line, those that form a right-angle. The frame is in a harmony that opposes those of the tones, colours and lines of the picture, these aspects are considered according to their dominance and under the influence of light, in gay, calm or sad combinations".[29][30] Seurat's theories can be summarized as follows: The emotion of gaiety can be achieved by the domination of luminous hues, by the predominance of warm colors, and by the use of lines directed upward. Calm is achieved through an equivalence/balance of the use of the light and the dark, by the balance of warm and cold colors, and by lines that are horizontal. Sadness is achieved by using dark and cold colors and by lines pointing downward