Approaching 50 Quotes

The link between literacy and revolutions is a well-known historical phenomenon. The three great revolutions of modern European history -- the English, the French and the Russian -- all took place in societies where the rate of literacy was approaching 50 per cent. Literacy had a profound effect on the peasant mind and community. It promotes abstract thought and enables the peasant to master new skills and technologies, Which in turn helps him to accept the concept of progress that fuels change in the modern world.

More often than not, that was a tough sell. If you go to a business and tell it you can save it $50,000 per year in labor costs if it eliminates this one job, then your AI product better eliminate that entire job. Instead, what entrepreneurs found was that their product was perhaps eliminating one task in a person’s job, and that wasn’t going to be enough to save their would-be customer any meaningful labor costs. The better pitches were ones that were not focused on replacement but on value. These pitches demonstrated how an AI product could allow businesses to generate more profits by, say, supplying higher quality products to their own customers. This had the benefit of not having to demonstrate that their AI could perform a particular task at a lower cost than a person. And if that also reduced internal resistance to adopting AI, then that only made their sales task easier. The point here is that a value-enhancing approach to AI, rather than a cost-savings approach, is more likely to find real traction for AI adoption.

So imagine two scenarios. Let’s say it’s the holidays, and two different neighbors invite you to their parties in the same week. You accept both invitations. In one case, you do the irrational thing and give Neighbor X a bottle of Bordeaux; for the second party you adopt the rational approach and give Neighbor Z $50 in cash. The following week, you need some help moving a sofa. How comfortable would you be approaching each of your neighbors, and how do you think each would react to your request for a favor? The odds are that Neighbor X will step in to help. And Neighbor Z? Since you have already paid him once (to make and share dinner with you), his logical response to your request for help might be, “Fine. How much will you pay me this time?” Again, the prospect of acting rationally, financially speaking, sounds deeply irrational in terms of social norms. The point is that while gifts are financially inefficient, they are an important social lubricant. They help us make friends and create long-term relationships that can sustain us through the ups and downs of life. Sometimes, it turns out, a waste of money can be worth a lot.

man and a woman were approaching their 50th wedding anniversary. To celebrate, the woman decided she would cook a big dinner for her husband. Then he said they should do what they did on their wedding night, and eat at the dinner table naked. The woman agreed. On their anniversary night, at the table, the woman says, "Honey, my nipples are as hot for you as they were 50 years ago." The man replies, "Madge, hon, that's because they are sitting in your soup. ♦◊♦◊♦◊♦

Cruising along once again in this cesspool known as life, I realize that it is too late to make a detour. I will have to pass the anti-abortion pickets (50) outside of Planned Parenthood. Nothing gets on my nerves more than these pro-lifers. Not even astrology enthusiasts (51), Herman Hesse (52) or computer games (53). Look at these fools parading up and down! "Mind your own business," I yell. When one of these busybodies (a man, yet) approaches my car with literature, I lose control and scream, "I wish I was a girl so I could get an abortion!" Trembling with rage, I realize I'd better calm down before I get beat up, but can't resist one last taunt—"I hate the pope" (54), I yell to no one in particular.

People play the lottery all the time unaware of how mind-bogglingly difficult it is to win. It seems like they take a different approach to probabilities. Their rationale must be, “Well, I can either win it or not win it, so my odds of winning are 50/50.

The boy reported - after the Sergeant had slept for a few hours, which was not nearly enough - that YouTube had actually gone down for ten minutes under the weight of traffic. The story was truly global, truly immense: not Obama, not Justin Bieber, not Psy and not Bin Laden had ever touched this, he said. Not Khaled Saeed and not Mohamed Bouazizi, either. If Pippa Middleton and Megan Fox had announced their intention to marry during a live theatrical production of 50 Shades of Grey starring Benedict Cumberbatch, and then taken off their clothes to reveal their bodies tattooed with the text of the eighth Harry Potter novel, they might have approached this level of frenzy. But probably not, the boy said, because not everyone liked Benedict Cumberbatch.

AT THE SAME TIME Empire was dying, a new and very different kind of company town was thriving seventy miles to the south. In many ways, it felt like the opposite of Empire. Rather than offering middle-class stability, this village was populated by members of the “precariat”: temporary laborers doing short-term jobs in exchange for low wages. More specifically, its citizens were hundreds of itinerant workers living in RVs, trailers, vans, and even a few tents. Early each fall, they began filling the mobile home parks surrounding Fernley. Linda didn’t know it yet, but she would soon be joining them. Many were in their sixties and seventies, approaching or well into traditional retirement age. Most had traveled hundreds of miles—and undergone the routine indignities of criminal background checks and pee-in-a-cup drug tests—for the chance to earn $11.50 per hour plus overtime at temporary warehouse jobs. They planned to stay through early winter, despite the fact that most of their homes on wheels weren’t designed to support life in subzero temperatures. Their employer was Amazon.com.

Emerging in the 1960s, cognitive psychology used the same rigorous scientific approach as behaviorism but returned to the question of how behavior is actually generated inside the head.

Emerging in the 1960s, cognitive psychology used the same rigorous scientific approach as behaviorism but returned to the question of how behavior is actually generated inside the head. Between

You can’t have a one-size-fits-all mind-set when it comes to effective leadership. You need to tailor a specific approach to every single person on your team in order to get the most out of them.

Although today is sunny and relatively warm—about 50 degrees Fahrenheit—temperatures will plunge as darkness approaches, turning the environment into something akin to a bad night at the South Pole.

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.

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori). H. pylori is frequently accused of contributing to the development and progression of autoimmune disease (and is also one of the best-understood persistent infections). As mentioned in the previous section, H. pylori is a bacterium found in the upper gastrointestinal tract of approximately 50 percent of the population and is known to cause stomach ulcers in susceptible individuals. It also modulates the adaptive immune system through a very complex interaction. In fact, the interaction is so complex that acquiring H. pylori early in life prevents immune and autoimmune diseases. By contrast, acquiring H. pylori as an adult (which is more common in Western countries) increases the risk of immune dysfunction.

With the enemy's approach to Moscow, the Moscovites' view of their situation did not grow more serious but on the contrary became even more frivolous, as always happens with people who see a great danger approaching. At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal power in the human soul: one very reasonably tells a man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of escaping it; the other, still more reasonably, says that it is too depressing and painful to think of the danger, since it is not in man's power to foresee everything and avert the general course of events, and it is therefore better to disregard what is painful till it comes, and to think about what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally listens to the first voice, but in society to the second. So it was now with the inhabitants of Moscow. It was long since people had been as gay in Moscow as that year.

In one sense the cause of suicide is simple: overwhelming pain. This overwhelming pain, however, is the aggregate of thousands of pains. Any hurt that we have ever suffered, if it remains consciously or unconsciously lodged within us, can contribute to suicide. This may range from being an incest victim 50 years ago, to losing a job 10 years ago, to having a car battery stolen yesterday. The pains come from everywhere: ill-health, family, peers, school, work, community, caregivers. For each suicide there was a finite point at which this aggregate became too much. Although "The straw that broke the back," is frequently an accurate metaphor, no one pain is ever the cause of suicide. Suicidal pain is decomposable into thousands of pains, and nearly all of these pains are decomposable into painful constituents. Sexual abuse, job loss, and personal theft each have numerous painful constituents. The search for the single cause is a fundamentally wrongheaded approach to the understanding and prevention of suicide. It is inaccurate to say simply that pain causes suicide, since a level of pain that is lethal for one person may not be lethal for someone with greater resources. Similarly, deficiency in resources cannot be regarded as the cause of suicide, since two people may have equal resources and unequal pain. Our resources may also come from everywhere; even such trivial distractions as going to a movie can contribute to coping with suicidal pain.

Many reports have recommended that national accounts be improved and “humanized” in this way, but little progress has been made to date.25 A useful step in this direction would be a breakdown indicating the poorest 50 percent, the middle 40 percent, and the richest 10 percent. In particular, such an approach would allow any observer to see just how much the growth of domestic output and national income is or is not reflected in the income actually received by these different social groups.

A common simplifying approach to quantifying a risk is simply to multiply the likelihood of some loss by the amount of the loss. This is simple but can be misleading. This assumes the decision maker is “risk neutral.” That is, if I offered you a 10% chance to win $100,000, you would actually be willing to pay as much as $10,000 for it. And you would consider it equivalent to a 50% chance of winning $20,000 or an 80% chance of winning $12,500. But the fact is that most people are not really risk neutral.

Many people with this condition receive minimally invasive surgery, or use adhesive strips called Breathe Right or nasal dilator cones. If these simpler approaches fail, the drills come out. About three-quarters of modern humans have a deviated septum clearly visible to the naked eye, which means the bone and cartilage that separate the right and left airways of the nose are off center. Along with that, 50 percent of us have chronically inflamed turbinates; the erectile tissue lining our sinuses is too puffed up for us to breathe comfortably through our noses.

Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek you. PSALM 9:10 SEPTEMBER 29 A missionary’s wife in central China during World War II knew the Japanese were approaching her city. She was with her baby girl, two months old, and her son, just over a year old. Her husband had been taken to a hospital, himself ill. He was one hundred and fifteen miles away and would not be back for perhaps a month. The poor woman was filled with fear—she was alone and unprotected, in bitter January weather. When morning came, she realized that she was without food for her children. She pulled off the calendar page. That day’s verse stated simply: “So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children” (Genesis 50:21). There was a rap at the door. “We knew you would be hungry,” said a longtime neighbor, “and you didn’t know how to milk the goats. So I have milked your goats. Here is milk for your children.” Will you try to explain this away, handle it on an intellectual basis as just pure coincidence? When you come right down to it, what is coincidence? It is an act of God in the midst of time.

Brent Staples wrote a brilliant essay on this topic called “Just Walk On By: Black Men and Public Space.”50 For years, as Staples walked down city sidewalks and white bodies approached and noticed him, he watched those bodies stiffen, constrict, reposition purses, cross the street, and sometimes run away to avoid him. Eventually Staples developed a strategy of whistling Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” as white people walked near him. This quickly and effectively soothed white bodies. On hearing a Vivaldi melody, they would routinely relax; some people would even start whistling the melody with him.

..." Thine eyes did see Mine imperfect one, and in Thy book shall all be written" (ver. 16), not only the perfect, but also the imperfect. Let not the imperfect fear, only let them advance. Nor yet, because I have said, "let them not fear," let them love their imperfection, and remain there, where they are found. Let them advance, as far as in them lieth. Daily let them add, daily let them approach; yet let them not fall back from the Body of the Lord: that, compacted in one Body and among these members, they may be counted worthy to have that said of them. "By day shall they wander, and none among them.

RENEWABLE ENERGY REVOLUTION: SOLAR + WIND + BATTERIES In addition to AI, we are on the cusp of another important technological revolution—renewable energy. Together, solar photovoltaic, wind power, and lithium-ion battery storage technologies will create the capability of replacing most if not all of our energy infrastructure with renewable clean energy. By 2041, much of the developed world and some developing countries will be primarily powered by solar and wind. The cost of solar energy dropped 82 percent from 2010 to 2020, while the cost of wind energy dropped 46 percent. Solar and onshore wind are now the cheapest sources of electricity. In addition, lithium-ion battery storage cost has dropped 87 percent from 2010 to 2020. It will drop further thanks to the massive production of batteries for electrical vehicles. This rapid drop in the price of battery storage will make it possible to store the solar/wind energy from sunny and windy days for future use. Think tank RethinkX estimates that with a $2 trillion investment through 2030, the cost of energy in the United States will drop to 3 cents per kilowatt-hour, less than one-quarter of today’s cost. By 2041, it should be even lower, as the prices of these three components continue to descend. What happens on days when a given area’s battery energy storage is full—will any generated energy left unused be wasted? RethinkX predicts that these circumstances will create a new class of energy called “super power” at essentially zero cost, usually during the sunniest or most windy days. With intelligent scheduling, this “super power” can be used for non-time-sensitive applications such as charging batteries of idle cars, water desalination and treatment, waste recycling, metal refining, carbon removal, blockchain consensus algorithms, AI drug discovery, and manufacturing activities whose costs are energy-driven. Such a system would not only dramatically decrease energy cost, but also power new applications and inventions that were previously too expensive to pursue. As the cost of energy plummets, the cost of water, materials, manufacturing, computation, and anything that has a major energy component will drop, too. The solar + wind + batteries approach to new energy will also be 100-percent clean energy. Switching to this form of energy can eliminate more than 50 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, which is by far the largest culprit of climate change.

If we wish to make progress in the area of prayer and be sensitized to spiritual things we must fulfill three basic tasks: First, we must be deeply committed to a certain amount of prayer at a certain time every day, without fail. We must fulfill this task, not just as a rule or an obligation, but out of concern for cultivating our relationship with God. This is our salvation and joy. (Our time of prayer can be in the morning and/or evening as the circumstances of our life permit.) Second, as St. Theophan the Recluse says, we must always pray as if we have never prayed before. This means we always approach the mystery of God without expectation or illusion, without letting our past success or failure distract us from our present contact with the Lord. As God can only be found in the present, nostalgia can be harmful to prayer. In addition, imagination4 should never be used when praying as it can potentially be the conduit for demonic energy. Third, we must always be willing to start again no matter how long it has been since we have prayed or what the outcome, good or bad, has been in the past. This also applies to our repentance so that no matter what we have done, seen, thought, or heard, we approach God for forgiveness, in search of our medicine. St. Paul reminds us: “Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:13-14), for “a broken and contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise” (Ps. 50:19 lxx). The

The quality of our thinking is largely influenced by the mental models in our heads. While we want accurate models, we also want a wide variety of models to uncover what’s really happening. The key here is variety. Most of us study something specific and don’t get exposure to the big ideas of other disciplines. We don’t develop the multidisciplinary mindset that we need to accurately see a problem. And because we don’t have the right models to understand the situation, we overuse the models we do have and use them even when they don’t belong. You’ve likely experienced this first hand. An engineer will often think in terms of systems by default. A psychologist will think in terms of incentives. A business person might think in terms of opportunity cost and risk-reward. Through their disciplines, each of these people sees part of the situation, the part of the world that makes sense to them. None of them, however, see the entire situation unless they are thinking in a multidisciplinary way. In short, they have blind spots. Big blind spots. And they’re not aware of their blind spots. [...] Relying on only a few models is like having a 400-horsepower brain that’s only generating 50 horsepower of output. To increase your mental efficiency and reach your 400-horsepower potential, you need to use a latticework of mental models. Exactly the same sort of pattern that graces backyards everywhere, a lattice is a series of points that connect to and reinforce each other. The Great Models can be understood in the same way—models influence and interact with each other to create a structure that can be used to evaluate and understand ideas. [...] Without a latticework of the Great Models our decisions become harder, slower, and less creative. But by using a mental models approach, we can complement our specializations by being curious about how the rest of the world works. A quick glance at the Nobel Prize winners list show that many of them, obviously extreme specialists in something, had multidisciplinary interests that supported their achievements. [...] The more high-quality mental models you have in your mental toolbox, the more likely you will have the ones needed to understand the problem. And understanding is everything. The better you understand, the better the potential actions you can take. The better the potential actions, the fewer problems you’ll encounter down the road. Better models make better decisions.

Experiment: To replace negative character labels, try the following steps: 1. Pick a new, positive character label that you would prefer. For example, if your old belief is “I’m incompetent,” you would likely pick “I’m competent.” 2. Rate how much you currently believe the old negative character label on a scale of 0 (= I don’t believe it at all) to 100 (= I believe it completely). Do the same for the new positive belief. For example, you might say you believe “I’m incompetent” at level 95 and believe “I’m competent” at level 10 (the numbers don’t need to add up to 100). 3. Create a Positive Data Log and a Historical Data Log. Strengthening your new, positive character label is often a more helpful approach than attempting to hack away at the old, negative one. I’m going to give you two experiments that will help you do this. Positive Data Log. For two weeks, commit to writing down evidence that supports your new, positive character belief. For example, if you are trying to boost your belief in the thought “I’m competent” and you show up to an appointment on time, you can write that down as evidence. Don’t fall into the cognitive trap of discounting some of the evidence. For example, if you make a mistake and then sort it out, it’s evidence of competence, not incompetence, so you could put that in your Positive Data Log. Historical Data Log. This log looks back at periods of your life and finds evidence from those time periods that supports your positive character belief. This experiment helps people believe that the positive character quality represents part of their enduring nature. To do this experiment, split your life into whatever size chunks you want to split it into, such as four- to six-year periods. If you’re only in your 20s, then you might choose three- or four-year periods. To continue the prior example, if you’re working on the belief “I’m competent,” then evidence from childhood might be things like learning to walk, talk, or make friends. You figured these things out. From your teen years, your evidence of general competency at life might be getting your driver’s license (yes, on the third try still counts). Evidence from your early college years could be things like successfully choosing a major and passing your courses. Evidence for after you finished your formal education might be related to finding work to support yourself and finding housing. You should include evidence in the social domain, like finding someone you wanted to date or figuring out how to break up with someone when you realized that relationship wasn’t the right fit for you. The general idea is to prove to yourself that “I’m competent” is more true than “I’m incompetent.” Other positive character beliefs you might try to strengthen could be things like “I’m strong” (not weak), “I’m worthy of love” (not unlovable), and “I’m worthy of respect” (not worthless). Sometimes the flipside of a negative character belief is obvious, as in the case of strong/weak, but sometimes there are a couple of possible options that could be considered opposites; in this case, you can choose. 4. Rerate how much you believe the negative and positive character labels. There should have been a little bit of change as a result of doing the data logs. For example, you might bow believe “I’m incompetent” at only 50 instead of 95, and believe “I’m competent” at 60 instead of 10. You’ve probably had your negative character belief for a long time, so changing it isn’t like making a pack of instant noodles.

REPROGRAMMING MY BIOCHEMISTRY A common attitude is that taking substances other than food, such as supplements and medications, should be a last resort, something one takes only to address overt problems. Terry and I believe strongly that this is a bad strategy, particularly as one approaches middle age and beyond. Our philosophy is to embrace the unique opportunity we have at this time and place to expand our longevity and human potential. In keeping with this health philosophy, I am very active in reprogramming my biochemistry. Overall, I am quite satisfied with the dozens of blood levels I routinely test. My biochemical profile has steadily improved during the years that I have done this. For boosting antioxidant levels and for general health, I take a comprehensive vitamin-and-mineral combination, alpha lipoic acid, coenzyme Q10, grapeseed extract, resveratrol, bilberry extract, lycopene, silymarin (milk thistle), conjugated linoleic acid, lecithin, evening primrose oil (omega-6 essential fatty acids), n-acetyl-cysteine, ginger, garlic, l-carnitine, pyridoxal-5-phosphate, and echinacea. I also take Chinese herbs prescribed by Dr. Glenn Rothfeld. For reducing insulin resistance and overcoming my type 2 diabetes, I take chromium, metformin (a powerful anti-aging medication that decreases insulin resistance and which we recommend everyone over 50 consider taking), and gymnema sylvestra. To improve LDL and HDL cholesterol levels, I take policosanol, gugulipid, plant sterols, niacin, oat bran, grapefruit powder, psyllium, lecithin, and Lipitor. To improve blood vessel health, I take arginine, trimethylglycine, and choline. To decrease blood viscosity, I take a daily baby aspirin and lumbrokinase, a natural anti-fibrinolytic agent. Although my CRP (the screening test for inflammation in the body) is very low, I reduce inflammation by taking EPA/DHA (omega-3 essential fatty acids) and curcumin. I have dramatically reduced my homocysteine level by taking folic acid, B6, and trimethylglycine (TMG), and intrinsic factor to improve methylation. I have a B12 shot once a week and take a daily B12 sublingual. Several of my intravenous therapies improve my body’s detoxification: weekly EDTA (for chelating heavy metals, a major source of aging) and monthly DMPS (to chelate mercury). I also take n-acetyl-l-carnitine orally. I take weekly intravenous vitamins and alpha lipoic acid to boost antioxidants. I do a weekly glutathione IV to boost liver health. Perhaps the most important intravenous therapy I do is a weekly phosphatidylcholine (PtC) IV, which rejuvenates all of the body’s tissues by restoring youthful cell membranes. I also take PtC orally each day, and I supplement my hormone levels with DHEA and testosterone. I take I-3-C (indole-3-carbinol), chrysin, nettle, ginger, and herbs to reduce conversion of testosterone into estrogen. I take a saw palmetto complex for prostate health. For stress management, I take l-theonine (the calming substance in green tea), beta sitosterol, phosphatidylserine, and green tea supplements, in addition to drinking 8 to 10 cups of green tea itself. At bedtime, to aid with sleep, I take GABA (a gentle, calming neuro-transmitter) and sublingual melatonin. For brain health, I take acetyl-l-carnitine, vinpocetine, phosphatidylserine, ginkgo biloba, glycerylphosphorylcholine, nextrutine, and quercetin. For eye health, I take lutein and bilberry extract. For skin health, I use an antioxidant skin cream on my face, neck, and hands each day. For digestive health, I take betaine HCL, pepsin, gentian root, peppermint, acidophilus bifodobacter, fructooligosaccharides, fish proteins, l-glutamine, and n-acetyl-d-glucosamine. To inhibit the creation of advanced glycosylated end products (AGEs), a key aging process, I take n-acetyl-carnitine, carnosine, alpha lipoic acid, and quercetin. MAINTAINING A POSITIVE “HEALTH SLOPE” Most important,

Four times a year, the program's street team sifts through police records and its own intelligence to determine, with actuarial detachment, the 50 people in Richmond most likely to shoot someone and to be shot themselves.ONS tracks them and approaches the most lethal (and vulnerable) on the list, offering them a spot in a program that includes a stipend to turn their lives around. While

novels [4]. It follows that authentic text—text written for native speakers—is inappropriate for unassisted ER by all but the most advanced learners. For this reason, many educators advocate the use of learner literature, that is, stories written specifically for L2 learners, or adapted from authentic text [5]. For learners of English, there are over 40 graded reader series, consisting of over 1650 books with a variety of difficulty levels and genres [6].However, the time and expense in producing graded readers results in high purchase costs and limited availability in languages other than English and common L2‘s like Spanish and French. At a cost of £2.50 for a short English reader in 2001 [7] purchasing several thousand readers to cater for a school wide ER program requires a significant monetary investment. More affordable options are required, especially for schools in developing nations. Day and Bamford [8] recommend several alternatives when learner literature is not available. These include children's and young adult books, stories written by learners, newspapers, magazines and comic books. Some educators advocate the use of authentic texts in preference to simplified texts. Berardo [9] claims that the language in learner literature is ―artificial and unvaried‖, ―unlike anything that the learner will encounter in the real world‖ and often ―do not reflect how the language is really used‖. Berardo does concede that simplified texts are ―useful for preparing learners for reading 'real' texts. ‖ 2. ASSISTED READING Due to the large proportion of unknown vocabulary, beginner and intermediate learners require assistance when using authentic text for ER. Two popular forms of assistance are dictionaries and glossing. There are pros and cons of each approach. 1 A group of words that share the same root word, e.g. , run, ran, runner, runs, running. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee.NZCSRSC’11, April 18-21, 2011, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Knowing something about the monetary value and cost of the information in a measurement puts a new light on what is “measurable.” If someone says a measurement would be too expensive, we have to ask, “Compared to what?” If a measurement that would just reduce uncertainty by half costs $50,000 but the EVPI is $5,000,000, then the measurement certainly is not “too expensive.” Indeed, it would be a bargain. But if the information value is zero, then any measurement is too expensive. Some measurements might have marginal information values—say, a few thousand dollars; not enough to justify some formal effort at measurement but a bit too much just to ignore. For those measurements, I try to think of approaches that can quickly reduce a little uncertainty—say, finding a related study or making a few phone calls to a few more experts.

looked up at me. Very content with herself, she opened her mouth, showed me the great job she did on me--- by holding all of my cum in her mouth. Once she got a real nasty look at me, only then she finally felt satisfied enough to swallow it, wetting her lips and savoring the after taste.   I simply looked at her with my head tilted sideways. You....fucking...slut. If only I could have said that out loud, but as a hell of a compliment.   "Knock knock knock..." There goes the door again.   "Okay, that's it! Get the fuck up, now!" My fatherly instinct came over me for a moment as I dragged her off her feet and zipped my pants-- a bit of a bulge still relatively visible under my pants. I pulled my shirt down as a last ditch effort.   I approached the front door and opened it with curiosity.   "Sorry,

7 things every kid should master A noted Williams College psychologist argues standardized tests are useful, if they measure the abilities students really need. By Susan Engel | 2458 words In the past few years, parents, teachers, and policy makers have furiously debated whether standardized tests should be used to promote or hold back children, fire teachers, and withhold funds from schools. The debate has focused for the most part on whether the tests are being used in unfair ways. But almost no one has publicly questioned a fundamental assumption — that the tests measure something meaningful or predict something significant beyond themselves. I have reviewed more than 300 studies of K–12 academic tests. What I have discovered is startling. Most tests used to evaluate students, teachers, and school districts predict almost nothing except the likelihood of achieving similar scores on subsequent tests. I have found virtually no research demonstrating a relationship between those tests and measures of thinking or life outcomes. When you hear people debate the use of tests in schools, the talk usually assumes that the only alternative to the current approach is no testing at all. But nothing could be further from the truth. Ideally, everyone would benefit from objective measures of children’s learning in schools. The answer is not to abandon testing, but to measure the things we most value, and find good ways to do that. How silly to measure a child’s ability to parse a sentence or solve certain kinds of math problems if in fact those measures don’t predict anything important about the child or lead to better teaching practices. Why not test the things we value, and test them in a way that provides us with an accurate picture of what children really do, not what they can do under the most constrained circumstances after the most constrained test preparation? Nor should this be very difficult. After all, in the past 50 years economists and psychologists have found ways to measure things as subtle and dynamic as the mechanisms that explain when and why we give in to impulse, the forces that govern our moral choices, and the thought processes that underlie unconscious stereotyping.

Ancient Chinese physicians linked blood to energy flow in the body. They wrote about the circulation of blood through the heart and blood vessels long before William Harvey described it in seventeenth-century Europe. In China, changes in blood flow were used as diagnostic clues to illness. Chinese physicians were expected to recognize some 50 variations in the pulse. Because blood was considered a vital fluid to be conserved and maintained, bleeding patients to cure disease was not a standard form of treatment.

While graduation rates at the top 50 schools approach 90 percent, overall graduation rates hover around 55 percent for four-year institutions and 29 percent for two-year colleges.

usually does not present much of a problem. Some analysts use t-tests with ordinal rather than continuous data for the testing variable. This approach is theoretically controversial because the distances among ordinal categories are undefined. This situation is avoided easily by using nonparametric alternatives (discussed later in this chapter). Also, when the grouping variable is not dichotomous, analysts need to make it so in order to perform a t-test. Many statistical software packages allow dichotomous variables to be created from other types of variables, such as by grouping or recoding ordinal or continuous variables. The second assumption is that the variances of the two distributions are equal. This is called homogeneity of variances. The use of pooled variances in the earlier formula is justified only when the variances of the two groups are equal. When variances are unequal (called heterogeneity of variances), revised formulas are used to calculate t-test test statistics and degrees of freedom.7 The difference between homogeneity and heterogeneity is shown graphically in Figure 12.2. Although we needn’t be concerned with the precise differences in these calculation methods, all t-tests first test whether variances are equal in order to know which t-test test statistic is to be used for subsequent hypothesis testing. Thus, every t-test involves a (somewhat tricky) two-step procedure. A common test for the equality of variances is the Levene’s test. The null hypothesis of this test is that variances are equal. Many statistical software programs provide the Levene’s test along with the t-test, so that users know which t-test to use—the t-test for equal variances or that for unequal variances. The Levene’s test is performed first, so that the correct t-test can be chosen. Figure 12.2 Equal and Unequal Variances The term robust is used, generally, to describe the extent to which test conclusions are unaffected by departures from test assumptions. T-tests are relatively robust for (hence, unaffected by) departures from assumptions of homogeneity and normality (see below) when groups are of approximately equal size. When groups are of about equal size, test conclusions about any difference between their means will be unaffected by heterogeneity. The third assumption is that observations are independent. (Quasi-) experimental research designs violate this assumption, as discussed in Chapter 11. The formula for the t-test test statistic, then, is modified to test whether the difference between before and after measurements is zero. This is called a paired t-test, which is discussed later in this chapter. The fourth assumption is that the distributions are normally distributed. Although normality is an important test assumption, a key reason for the popularity of the t-test is that t-test conclusions often are robust against considerable violations of normality assumptions that are not caused by highly skewed distributions. We provide some detail about tests for normality and how to address departures thereof. Remember, when nonnormality cannot be resolved adequately, analysts consider nonparametric alternatives to the t-test, discussed at the end of this chapter. Box 12.1 provides a bit more discussion about the reason for this assumption. A combination of visual inspection and statistical tests is always used to determine the normality of variables. Two tests of normality are the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (also known as the K-S test) for samples with more than 50 observations and the Shapiro-Wilk test for samples with up to 50 observations. The null hypothesis of

Historians ancient and modern alike are selective in the material they report. Data the reporting historian deems uninteresting, unimportant or irrelevant to his or her purpose in writing are usually omitted.'9 For example, Lucian complained when he heard a man tell of the Battle of Europus in less than seven lines but afforded much more time to the experiences of a Moorish horseman .2' Amazingly neither Philo nor Josephus, the most prominent non-Christian Jewish writers of the first century, mentioned Emperor Claudius's expulsion of all Jews from Rome in ca. A.D. 49-50. Only Suetonius and Luke mention the event, and each give it only one line in passing.2

Perhaps the most obvious difference between modern social and personality psychology is that the former is based almost exclusively on experiments, whereas the latter is usually based on correlational studies. […] In summary, over the past 50 years social psychology has concentrated on the perceptual and cognitive processes of person perceivers, with scant attention to the persons being perceived. Personality psychology has had the reverse orientation, closely examining self-reports of individuals for indications of their personality traits, but rarely examining how these people actually come off in social interaction. […] individuals trained in either social or personality psychology are often more ignorant of the other field than they should be. Personality psychologists sometimes reveal an imperfect understanding of the concerns and methods of their social psychological brethren, and they in particular fail to comprehend the way in which so much of the self-report data they gather fails to overcome the skepticism of those trained in other methods. For their part, social psychologists are often unfamiliar with basic findings and concepts of personality psychology, misunderstand common statistics such as correlation coefficients and other measures of effect size, and are sometimes breathtakingly ignorant of basic psychometric principles. This is revealed, for example, when social psychologists, assuring themselves that they would not deign to measure any entity so fictitious as a trait, proceed to construct their own self-report scales to measure individual difference constructs called schemas or strategies or construals (never a trait). But they often fail to perform the most elementary analyses to confirm the internal consistency or the convergent and discriminant validity of their new measures, probably because they do not know that they should. […] an astonishing number of research articles currently published in major journals demonstrate a complete innocence of psychometric principles. Social psychologists and cognitive behaviorists who overtly eschew any sympathy with the dreaded concept of ‘‘trait’’ freely report the use of self-report assessment instruments of completely unknown and unexamined reliability, convergent validity, or discriminant validity. It is almost as if they believe that as long as the individual difference construct is called a ‘‘strategy,’’ ‘‘schema,’’ or ‘‘implicit theory,’’ then none of these concepts is relevant. But I suspect the real cause of the omission is that many investigators are unfamiliar with these basic concepts, because through no fault of their own they were never taught them.

The U.S. Patent Office issued him a patent No. 3,809,978. Although he approached many concerns for marketing, no one really seemed to be interested.  To this day, his unique system is still not on the market. In the 1970's, an inventor used an Ev Gray generator, which intensified battery current, the voltage being induced to the field coils by a very simple programmer (sequencer).  By allowing the motor to charge separate batteries as the device ran, phenomenally tiny currents were needed.  The device was tested at the Crosby Research Institute of Beverly Hills California; a 10 horsepower EMA motor ran for over a week (9 days) on four standard automobile batteries.  The inventors estimated that a 50 horsepower electric motor could traverse 300 miles at 50 M.P.H. before needing a re charge.

Pharmaceutical companies became very interested in using siRNAs as potential new drugs. Theoretically, siRNA molecules could be used to knock down expression of any protein that was believed to be harmful in a disease. In the same year that Fire and Mello were awarded their Nobel Prize, the giant pharmaceutical company Merck paid over one billion US dollars for a siRNA company in California called Sirna Therapeutics. Other large pharmaceutical companies have also invested heavily. But in 2010 a bit of a chill breeze began to drift through the pharmaceutical industry. Roche, the giant Swiss company, announced that it was stopping its siRNA programmes, despite having spent more than $500 million on them over three years. Its neighbouring Swiss corporation, Novartis, pulled out of a collaboration with a siRNA company called Alnylam in Massachusetts. There are still plenty of other companies who have stayed in this particular game, but it would probably be fair to say there’s a bit more nervousness around this technology than in the past. One of the major problems with using this kind of approach therapeutically may sound rather mundane. Nucleic acids, such as DNA and RNA, are just difficult to turn into good drugs. Most good existing drugs – ibuprofen, Viagra, anti-histamines – have certain characteristics in common. You can swallow them, they get across your gut wall, they get distributed around your body, they don’t get destroyed too quickly by your liver, they get taken up by cells, and they work their effects on the molecules in or on the cells. Those all sound like really simple things, but they’re often the most difficult things to get right when developing a new drug. Companies will spend tens of millions of dollars – at least – getting this bit right, and it is still a surprisingly hit-and-miss process. It’s so much worse when trying to create drugs around nucleic acids. This is partly because of their size. An average siRNA molecule is over 50 times larger than a drug like ibuprofen. When creating drugs (especially ones to be taken orally rather than injected) the general rule is, the smaller the better. The larger a drug is, the greater the problems with getting high enough doses into patients, and keeping them in the body for long enough. This may be why a company like Roche has decided it can spend its money more effectively elsewhere. This doesn’t mean that siRNA won’t ever work in the treatment of illnesses, it’s just quite high risk as a business venture.

The recklessness of the governments of two terrestrial countries has been obvious, when they have ordered their combat pilots to attack our space and scout ships, as soon as they are detected on their radar. This is highly dangerous for the crew members of your airplanes, because if they approach our gravitational field, their engines and controls become inoperative. In this way, several have lost their lives . . . They do not seem to understand that our orders are clear, not to harm their craft. Otherwise, at least 50 of their planes would have been destroyed. We are aware that many high-ranking military personnel and scientists have been silenced under the pretense of endangering the security of their countries, if public statements were to be made. This is another serious mistake of those governments. If we had any ambition or desire to conquer this planet, we would have done it 300 years ago, when the population could not have opposed any resistance. Even now, it would not be difficult to do. This phase is alternative: we shall continue making appearances, landings, contacts, all over the world, more and more frequently, as planned. You will be responsible for the education of the people in the different countries . . . using all means available. This is a difficult task, because you will be left to your own means [and] you will have against you those who do not take you seriously, and the dark machinations of the great established powers on your planet, hampering, creating doubts, and attacking you as promoters of this knowledge . . . After many years of observation and analysis of your world . . . the conclusion was that humankind, with few exceptions, were a barbarian horde . . . from the deepest levels of their spirit, and utterly incorrigible. Nevertheless, because of the merit of the few, [we are giving] direct help to many men, instructing them. It requires in many cases their evacuation from this planet, to a special place where they will be provided with a new conscience, to be transmitted afterwards to their fellow men . . . The disappearances of such people from Earth have already begun . . . This procedure holds the key to the future of your planet.

No actual science is still hashing out the god thing. No physicists are losing sleep over the Kalam cosmological argument. No biologists are comparing their findings to the “god did it” model. No ethicists are proposing the “cause god’ll burn you in hell” approach. No doctors are prescribing prayer. No lawyers are invoking the “devil really did make him do it” defense. No financial planner is figuring in the “they’re about due for a miracle” variable. No meteorologists are factoring in god’s wrath. The god hypothesis failed.

In our own stock-market experience and observation, extending over 50 years, we have not known a single person who has consistently or lastingly made money by thus “following the market.” We do not hesitate to declare that this approach is as fallacious as it is popular.

Growth-Stock Approach Every investor would like to select the stocks of companies that will do better than the average over a period of years. A growth stock may be defined as one that has done this in the past and is expected to do so in the future.2 Thus it seems only logical that the intelligent investor should concentrate upon the selection of growth stocks. Actually the matter is more complicated, as we shall try to show. It is a mere statistical chore to identify companies that have “out-performed the averages” in the past. The investor can obtain a list of 50 or 100 such enterprises from his broker.† Why, then, should he not merely pick out the 15 or 20 most likely looking issues of this group and lo! he has a guaranteed-successful stock portfolio? There are two catches to this simple idea. The first is that common stocks with good records and apparently good prospects sell at correspondingly high prices. The investor may be right in his judgment of their prospects and still not fare particularly well, merely because he has paid in full (and perhaps overpaid) for the expected prosperity. The second is that his judgment as to the future may prove wrong. Unusually rapid growth cannot keep up forever; when a company has already registered a brilliant expansion, its very increase in size makes a repetition of its achievement more difficult. At some point the growth curve flattens out, and in many cases it turns downward.

The nonconscious mind is responsible for somewhere between 90–99 percent of your mind’s activity.13 For example, out of the 10 million bits per second processed through the eye, only a maximum of 50 bits per second are processed consciously.14 The nonconscious mind operates twenty-four hours a day, at fantastic speeds, about a quintillion (1018) bits per second at a synaptic level and an octillion (1027) bits per second at a microtubular level, for the whole brain.15 Indeed, the mind is truly magnificent. It is the orchestra conductor,

The Skull Valley reservation is ringed by toxic and hazardous waste facilities (Figure 1). To the south lies the Dugway Proving Grounds, where the US Army tests chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and other weapons and trains elite members of the US armed forces in their use. To the west is the Utah Test and Training Range, a vast swath of desert the US Air Force uses for target practice by bombers, the testing of cruise missiles, and air-to-air combat training for fighter jets. North and west of the reservation a private company, Enviro Care, landfills 93 percent of the nation's Class A, low-level nuclear waste. East of the reservation sit the Tooele Army Depot, one of the largest weapons depots in the world, and the Deseret Chemical Depot, which until recently was home to nearly 50 percent of the nation's aging stockpile of chemical weapons. From 1996 to 2012 the US Army worked around the clock to incinerate over a million rockets, missiles, and mortars packed with sarin, mustard gas, and other deadly agents.

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.

The following questions and explorations will lead you to a better awareness of your body and your swing on the course. When you can play an entire hole swinging with 50 percent tempo, you’ll begin to appreciate how many more options you have for your game.

Lean Portfolio Management aligns strategy and execution by applying Lean and systems thinking approaches to strategy and investment funding, Agile portfolio operations, and governance.

Achieving business agility requires a more flexible approach to all types of contracts. How this is achieved depends on the nature and type of contract, but each must be considered in terms of the adaptability that may be required as strategy evolves.

The ‘SAFe managed-investment contract’ describes an Agile approach to contracts and can be found on the SAFe website.

If you focus on creating something for 50 minutes, do a non-work activity as a reward. Fifty minutes of focused creation a day adds up to more than 25 hours a month. Given you’re probably spending zero hours on truly focused work right now, 25 hours is a significant improvement.

Strength Work • Jumping Pull-ups: 3×5→15 with 3 minutes of rest at 50×0 tempo • Jumping Dips: 3×5→15 with 3 minutes of rest at 50×0 tempo • Ring Rows: 3×5→15 with 3 minutes of rest at 10×0 tempo • Pushups: 3×5→15 with 3 minutes of rest at 10×0 tempo • Squats (pistol progression or barbell): 3×5→15 with 3 minutes of rest at 10×0 tempo • Deep Step-ups: 3×5→15 with 3 minutes of rest at 10×0 tempo • Tuck L-Sit for 60s total, in as many sets as needed, not to failure • Compression Work for 3×10s This is an example of a basic routine focused on improving strength in the categories of vertical pushing, horizontal pushing, vertical pulling, and horizontal pulling.

Testing one user early in the project is better than testing 50 near the end.

Ibbotson Associates, founded by Yale scholar Roger Ibbotson, produces a widely used survey of returns covering the past seventy-eight years. Over the nearly eight-decade period from 1926 to 2003, U.S. stocks produced an annual compound return of 10.4 percent, U.S. government bonds returned 5.4 percent, and U.S. Treasury bills generated 3.7 percent. The 5.0 percentage point difference between stock and bond returns represents the historical risk premium, defined as the return to equity holders for accepting risk above the level inherent in bond investments.

there will be a significant reallocation of capital.” BlackRock, he said, will “place sustainability at the center of our investment approach” and will require companies to “disclose climate-related risks.” When BlackRock—$7.5 trillion under management—speaks, companies listen. One example of the “reallocation of capital” is the growth in “green bonds.” These provide financing for infrastructure related to renewables and infrastructure. From $50 billion issued in 2015, the total reached $257 billion in 2019.

The recent history of human population dynamics resembles the ‘boom-bust’ cycle of any other species introduced to a new habitat with abundant resources and no predators, therefore little negative feedback. [...] The population expands rapidly (exponentially), until it depletes essential resources and pollutes its habitat. Negative feedback (overcrowding, disease, starvation, resource scarcity/competition/conflict) then reasserts itself and the population crashes to a level at or below theoretical carrying capacity (it may go locally extinct). Some species populations, in simple habitats, cycle repeatedly through boom and bust phases. The height of the boom is called the ‘plague phase’ of such cycles. Hypothesis: Homo sapiens are currently approaching the peak of the plague phase of a one-off global population cycle and will crash because of depleted resources, habitat deterioration and psycho-social feedback, including possible war over remaining ‘assets,’ sometime in this century. (“But wait,” I hear you protest. “Humans are not just any other species. We’re smarter; we can plan ahead; we just won’t let this happen!” Perhaps, but what is the evidence so far that our leaders even recognize the problem?) [...] climate change is not the only existential threat confronting modern society. Indeed, we could initiate any number of conversations that end with the self-induced implosion of civilization and the loss of 50 per cent or even 90 per cent of humanity. And that places the global community in a particularly embarrassing predicament. Homo sapiens, that self-proclaimed most-intelligent-of-species, is facing a genuine, unprecedented, hydra-like ecological crisis, yet its political leaders, economic elites and sundry other messiahs of hope will not countenance a serious conversation about of any of its ghoulish heads. Climate change is perhaps the most aggressively visible head, yet despite decades of high-level talks — 33 in al — and several international agreements to turn things around, atmospheric CO2 and other GHG concentrations have more than doubled to over 37 billion tonnes and, with other GHG concentrations, are still rising at record rates.

Craig (1989, pp. 184–185) also notes that when Gamaliel died in AD 50, his follower burned 80 pounds of spices and commented, ‘Gamaliel was better than 100 kings’ (B Ebel Rabbathi 8.6). Thus it is not implausible that Nicodemus used 75 pounds of spices for Jesus’ burial as John stated, if he thought that Jesus had been unjustly condemned and crucified as King of the Jews.

There are five ways technology can boost marketing practices: Make more informed decisions based on big data. The greatest side product of digitalization is big data. In the digital context, every customer touchpoint—transaction, call center inquiry, and email exchange—is recorded. Moreover, customers leave footprints every time they browse the Internet and post something on social media. Privacy concerns aside, those are mountains of insights to extract. With such a rich source of information, marketers can now profile the customers at a granular and individual level, allowing one-to-one marketing at scale. Predict outcomes of marketing strategies and tactics. No marketing investment is a sure bet. But the idea of calculating the return on every marketing action makes marketing more accountable. With artificial intelligence–powered analytics, it is now possible for marketers to predict the outcome before launching new products or releasing new campaigns. The predictive model aims to discover patterns from previous marketing endeavors and understand what works, and based on the learning, recommend the optimized design for future campaigns. It allows marketers to stay ahead of the curve without jeopardizing the brands from possible failures. Bring the contextual digital experience to the physical world. The tracking of Internet users enables digital marketers to provide highly contextual experiences, such as personalized landing pages, relevant ads, and custom-made content. It gives digital-native companies a significant advantage over their brick-and-mortar counterparts. Today, the connected devices and sensors—the Internet of Things—empowers businesses to bring contextual touchpoints to the physical space, leveling the playing field while facilitating seamless omnichannel experience. Sensors enable marketers to identify who is coming to the stores and provide personalized treatment. Augment frontline marketers’ capacity to deliver value. Instead of being drawn into the machine-versus-human debate, marketers can focus on building an optimized symbiosis between themselves and digital technologies. AI, along with NLP, can improve the productivity of customer-facing operations by taking over lower-value tasks and empowering frontline personnel to tailor their approach. Chatbots can handle simple, high-volume conversations with an instant response. AR and VR help companies deliver engaging products with minimum human involvement. Thus, frontline marketers can concentrate on delivering highly coveted social interactions only when they need to. Speed up marketing execution. The preferences of always-on customers constantly change, putting pressure on businesses to profit from a shorter window of opportunity. To cope with such a challenge, companies can draw inspiration from the agile practices of lean startups. These startups rely heavily on technology to perform rapid market experiments and real-time validation.

Intermittent fasting affects brain function by massively increasing the production of this special protein. In fact, intermittent fasting has been shown to increase BDNF by a factor of 50 to 400 percent, depending on the specific region of the brain we are dealing with. BDNF is more abundant in areas of the brain that show the highest

They say that the biggest opportunities are often outside of most people’s comfort zones. The juiciest market returns are where very few are willing to go. Momentum investing is the ultimate contrarian approach. How many investors would venture to buy a stock that is already up 50% in the past six months? Psychologically, it is a lot harder to buy in this situation than to sell, isn’t it?   How ridiculous does it sound that stocks that went up 50% in the past six months are likely to outperform in the next six months? Stock picking cannot be that easy, right? There has to be some complicated formula that takes into account hundreds of different criteria in order to have a chance at outperforming the market. Sometimes the most effective methods are the simplest. Most people stay away from them exactly because they seem too simple to work. There is nothing magic about using past performance to select future winners. It is all about simple math.   What

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

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

Self-publishing does require more work, but you’ll earn 5x more royalties for life (50-70% instead of 8-15%) while also maintaining full control over your work and its future.

I advise you to take an empty notebook that will become your diet diary. It is essential to create the habit of recording all critical information in this notebook daily; this will allow you to analyze how your diet is progressing and if any changes to the chosen approach are necessary.

the speed of change has been accelerating. While the telephone took seventy-five years to reach 50 million users, TV took thirteen years, and the internet took only four years.13 As environments change fast and faster, and innovations are copied more and more quickly, employer-imposed scripted and repetitive behaviors are no longer a way for leaders to gain a competitive advantage. Organizational survival today comes from employees being proactive—using creativity and ingenuity to solve problems without waiting for instruction. The most valuable employees think like owners and develop new approaches to solving problems, instead of waiting until management works out a full-blown solution and teaches them the new procedures.

With every breath you take, a tiny particle of water is present in the heart, the female and male characters in the body are within 50 to 85 percent of the water! There is a lot of water with all the elements in this whole vast universe! Men and women who are afraid of disease and death will be involved in regular recitation of mantras as a result of this. There is an opportunity to associate with wise Guru. As a result, religion means work, salvation, health, life, and many paths of life. Wise Guru should keep on doing virtuous, religious deeds. The life of fire is also Shreeom, and the seed of water breath is also Shreeom. The living creatures life is also Shreeom, religious, spiritual, ascetic saint, Pandit, Guru, female and male personality's soul is also Shreeom and Karma Yogis's soul is also Shreeom. Shreeom's dearest love or natures are Mahalakshmi, Pratipriti Vaishnavi Kamala and Bhavani. Those who think that the soul is the killer of the soul and those who think that the soul dies with the body not understand life properly because the soul is immortal and the soul does not kill anyone and the soul is immortal in every Era because the soul is the embodiment of the Lord, teacher of God and his power and the Sun, the Guru, the Divine God. The sweet fragrance of the earth is Shreeom, the happiness, peace, prosperity, joy, success is Shreeom. Shreeom love the most to the social workers, donation givers, knowledgeable Sadhus, Sant, Pandits, helpful ladies and gentlemen, simultaneously positive approach humanitarian and protector of Dharma.:- Shreeom

A holistic approach means giving equal emphasis to each of the following 7 types of fitness: Strength Flexibility Mobility Stability Agility Endurance Nutrition These 7 foundations of total fitness can be considered a pension for your body and future function. The more you put into it, the more you get back!

1.   Identify your core capabilities as a business. Can you define precisely what gives your company competitive advantage? How easily can it be imitated? How do you deliver value to your customers? Evaluate your business as a set of processes and capabilities. Be clear on the definition, and break down big processes into smaller functions and services. 2.   Identify the services. Think through what the service, and the API for the service, might be. How do you make it a “black box”? In other words, how will you protect it from replication and theft? 3.   Where’s your advantage? How would you offer best-in-class commercial terms? Commercial terms include cost, speed, availability, quality, flexibility, and features. 4.   Can it be profitable? Would these commercial terms and capabilities be viable in the market? Would it be a viable profitable business for you? 5.   Test and evaluate. You have a critical and fact-based understanding of your core capabilities, their gaps, and the potential benefit (or lack thereof) of a platform. Build your agile approach to testing, learning, and building value as you go.

In 1945-50, and within the first eighteen months of the Alianza, there were five coups against eighteen constitutional governments, while only two countries – Mexico and Venezuela, even bothered to propose credible agrarian reform. Above all, American corporate capital which had developed historical interest in promoting mass consumption in Western Europe, approached Latin America via a series of special relations of domination and alliance with local oligarchies.

In his 1920 report, Ivar was arguing that the syndicate should abandon the traditional approach to book value. His reasoning was persuasive: if you know land is now worth 15,000 dollars, why would you continue to record its value at 10,000 dollars? The same was true of other investments. If the actual value of an investment increased, why shouldn’t the recorded value of that investment also increase? Thus, as Ivar argued, it was “completely justifiable to increase the book values.” He was simply marking those values to market. For example, the syndicate had purchased shares of one company for just over 4.4 million kronor. Ivar argued that those shares had increased in value to 6.8 million kronor. Why show the investment as worth just 4.4 million, when everyone knew it was worth 50 percent more? Ivar didn’t wait for Rydbeck or the syndicate members to endorse his “mark to market” reasoning. Instead, he simply increased the recorded, or “marked,” value of these shares to reflect the gains. A year later, he again increased the marked value of the same investment to 11.4 million kronor.9 Once more, he argued, the value of the investment had gone up, so the financial statements should show that.

Time always approaches from behind Growling and flowing past our eyes Stand your ground No matter how much time shows its fangs In order to wash you away to a beautiful past Do not look forward Your hopes creep up behind you Only existing in dark turbid waters

Look at it like this: If your products and services start at $50,000, and that person has a true budget of $20,000, do you think he is magically going to come up with an extra $30,000 for your products and/ or services? In most cases, the answer is no. Instead of scaring the person, you’re going to educate him, which brings relief and saves time for all parties involved.

But the two approaches, while similar, had vastly different effects. Adding the word “because” boosted the number of people who let the researcher skip the line by over 50 percent.

Understand: the opposite approach is the way to power in this world. It begins with a fundamental fearlessness—you do not feel afraid or affronted by people who have different ways of thinking or acting. You do not feel superior to those on the outside. In fact, you are excited by such diversity. Your first move is to open up your spirit to these differences, to understand what makes the Other tick, to gain a feel for people’s inner lives, how they see the world. In this way, you continually expose yourself to wider and wider circles of people, building connections to these various networks. The source of your power is your sensitivity and closeness to this social environment.

The Fearless Approach REALITY IS MY DRUG. THE MORE I HAVE OF IT, THE MORE POWER I GET AND THE HIGHER I FEEL. –50 Cent

To Err Is Human explained the concept of using a systems approach based on human factors principles and proclaimed that application of this methodology could have a profound effect. It boldly called for a 50% reduction in medical harm in 5 years.

At those airfields, cocaine was reportedly loaded onto planes to be later dropped near an “Atlantic coast port,” where it was concealed on shrimp boats and ultimately unloaded in Miami. U.S. officials who monitored drug traffic from Colombia to the United States through Central America told the AP that they began receiving “reliable” reports of the operation as early as November 1984 after a Contra leader named Sebastian Gonzalez Mendiola was arrested and indicted in Costa Rica for drug trafficking. Another Contra leader, unnamed in the AP’s investigation, reportedly informed U.S. authorities that he had been approached by Colombian traffickers and offered $50,000 to guard a one-hundred-kilo cocaine shipment. In exchange for turning in the Colombian smugglers, he asked for $50,000 from the U.S. Embassy. When the request was rejected, he reportedly went forward with the smuggling arrangement and faced no consequences from U.S. authorities.

Management consultant Ivy Lee visited Bethlehem Steel Company decades ago, long before it became the world’s largest independent steel producer. “With our services, you’ll know how to manage better,” said Lee to CEO Charles Schwab. Schwab grew indignant. “What we need around here is not more knowing, but more doing! If you’ll pep us up to do the things we already know we ought to do, I’ll gladly pay you anything you ask.” Lee took him up on the proposition. “In 20 minutes,” he told Schwab, “I’ll show you how to get your organization doing at least 50 percent more.” He started by having Schwab write down and prioritize his six most important tasks to complete in the next business day. Then he told Schwab, “Put the list in your pocket and take it out tomorrow and start working on number one. Look at that item every 15 minutes until it’s done. Then move on to the next, and the next. Don’t be concerned if you’ve only finished two or three, or even one, by quitting time. You’ll be working on the most important ones, and the others can wait.” The consultant encouraged Schwab to share this approach with his executives, judge its value, and “send me a check for whatever you think it’s worth.” Two weeks later, Lee received a check for $25,000—a king’s ransom in those days. In an accompanying note, Schwab said it was the most profitable lesson he’d ever learned. The lesson, of course, was the power of focus.

Workers got up with the sun and slept at dusk, the lengths of their days varying with the seasons. There was no need to think of time as something abstract and separate from life: you milked the cows when they needed milking and harvested the crops when it was harvesttime, and anybody who tried to impose an external schedule on any of that—for example, by doing a month’s milking in a single day to get it out of the way, or by trying to make the harvest come sooner—would rightly have been considered a lunatic. There was no anxious pressure to “get everything done,” either, because a farmer’s work is infinite: there will always be another milking and another harvest, forever, so there’s no sense in racing toward some hypothetical moment of completion. Historians call this way of living “task orientation,” because the rhythms of life emerge organically from the tasks themselves, rather than from being lined up against an abstract timeline, the approach that has become second nature for us today. (It’s tempting to think of medieval life as moving slowly, but it’s more accurate to say that the concept of life “moving slowly” would have struck most people as meaningless. Slowly as compared with what?) In those days before clocks, when you did need to explain how long something might take, your only option was to compare it with some other concrete activity. Medieval people might speak of a task lasting a “Miserere whyle”—the approximate time it took to recite Psalm 50, known as the Miserere, from the Bible—or alternatively a “pissing whyle,” which should require no explanation.

In two years of research the best example of self-disruption I can find is Netflix. Netflix’s transition to streaming from DVD rental by mail was not nearly as smooth as many would like to remember it, but in hindsight it appears genius. Netflix was founded in 1997 as a DVD mail service and pretty rapidly rose to take huge market share from local video stores who could not compete with its vast range of titles. People soon appreciated the appeal of no late fees, the ability to have several movies out at the same time, as well as its unlimited consumption tariff. Always keen to keep abreast of the latest technology, in 2007 Netflix spent about $40 million to build data centres and to cover the cost of licensing for the initial streaming titles (Rodriguez, 2017). When internet speeds allowed, it introduced streaming as an additional service for its existing subscribers. Monthly fees remained the same, but those with more expensive tariffs were given access to more hours of streamed content. While it added something for free, it also helped give people a reason to upgrade to more expensive plans. Growth was impressive, the video libraries of streamed content rose, the share price rose impressively from $3 in 2007 to over $42 in 2011, and life was good. In September 2011 Netflix made a very bold move. It created two tariffs, and moved all its US subscribers onto two separate plans: the original DVD-by-mail service was to be called Qwikster; the other was a streaming service for a lower monthly fee. The market was shocked, and by December the stock price was below $10 and the company was in pieces. The company rapidly lost higher revenue DVD subscribers and within nine months profits were down by 50 per cent (Steel, 2015). And yet slowly things changed. First, the lower prices suddenly appealed to a much wider market, bringing in far more paying customers, allowing Netflix to buy more content and to slowly raise prices. Then Netflix started making its own original content, clearing out global streaming rights, and then at a flick of a switch it was able to expand globally. If Netflix had not disrupted itself it would be a very different company. It would rely on a massive physical distortion system, with very high costs. It would probably have lost out massively to YouTube and would have withered away as a mail-order DVD supplier. Instead, Netflix’s share price is now nearly $200, five times more than it was when it bravely self-disrupted, it operates in 190 countries, makes nearly $9 billion in revenue from over 110 million customers (Feldman, 2017). Today DVDs represent only 4 per cent of Netflix’s users. It seems that in 2011, when Wall Street was demanding the resignation of Reed Hastings for reinventing the business, they were wrong. From this you can see the pressure this approach places on leaderships, the confidence you need to have, the degree to which this antagonizes the market and everyone around you. This move takes balls. The confidence, conviction, and aggression, to change before you have to create your own future, is remarkable.

One of the early tasks facing founders at the formation stage of the startup is deciding the equity ownership split between multiple co-founders. Many teams are tempted to divide the company ownership into equal parts—that is, two founders equals a 50/ 50 ownership split or three founders results in a 33.3% share for each founder. Other situations demand a more thoughtful approach. For example, one founder might be bringing the core technology and associated expertise to the startup and would therefore request a larger equity stake. Regardless of your equity split decision, once all the co-founders reach an agreement, log the equity split in the cap table. The “Founders’ Round” section below walks through this beginning entry.

Kim Dokja x Hansooyoung PART 1 [I shall kill you, Yoo Joonghyuk.] ~ Kim Dokja pg 4110 46. ⸢(Looks like you still don't know how it works. The heroine loses her consciousness, her hand falling away. And the male hero awakens! You see, in all the movies I've seen so far…) pg 4112 47. These idiots, I even died so that you two could talk to each other, but this…' She figured that she really needed to give these two men a harsh earful when she arrived there. But, when she pushed past the bushes and stepped forward, the ensuing spectacle freaked her out in a rather grand manner. Kwa-aaang!! Bang!!! Yoo Joonghyuk was mercilessly slamming his sword down on Kim Dokja, currently sprawled out on the ground. "Hey!! You crazy son of a bitch!!" pg 4125 48. There were plenty of things she wanted to ask, but she chose not to. Instead, she poked Kim Dokja's cheek and spoke up. "Still, this guy looks like he got completely fooled, doesn't he." "Looks that way." "How did it go?" "He went crazy and attacked me." Han Sooyoung smirked and lightly pinched Kim Dokja's cheek as if she was proud of him. pg 4127 49. the events of her dying at Yoo Joonghyuk's sword, me fighting against him, and then, passing out from his attack, and finally, sharing a conversation with Yoo Sangah inside the Library… Han Sooyoung approached the bed before I noticed it and pinched my cheek. "In any case, Kim Dokja. You can be really adorable sometimes." pg 4144 50. The moment Han Sooyoung's fist bumped into mine, she was completely enveloped in bright light. As I watched her figure disappear, I became aware once more that she had become my companion for real. pg 4165 51. ⸢And…⸥ My heart began powerfully pounding away. ⸢The woman that I used to love.⸥ pg 4189 52. Her emotionless eyes; the beauty spot just below one of them; and her lips that always mocked me for fun, now arching up in a smooth line. "Proceed with the execution pg 4191 53. "But, should you be doing something like that? She's originally your bride, isn't she?" "Correction. She was supposed to be one. The throne was usurped on the first day of the wedding, however." Oh, I see. So, it's that sort of development? I felt just a bit relieved now. Han Sooyoung and Yoo Joonghyuk as a couple? hadn't allowed any dating at the workplace yet, so hell no. pg 4202 54. ⸢By the time you're reading this book, I…⸥ I steeled my heart and read the next line of the text. ⸢…I'd still be living a pretty good life, I guess. Hahah, were you scared?⸥ This idiot… pg 4212 55. The following words were eerily similar to a certain body of text that I was familiar with. ⸢The you reading this story will definitely make it out of here alive.⸥ Han Sooyoung's afterwords came to an end there. For the longest time, I couldn't tear my eyes away from the full-stop at the end of the sentencepg4216 56. "Looks like the company's internal rules need to be changed somewhat…" pg 4234 57. She spoke in a fed-up tone of voice. And then, issued an order to me. "Marry me, Ricardo Von Kaizenix." pg 4244 58. "I didn't want to extend her 50 years by even one minute if I could help it." I was being serious here. The moment I arrived in this world and realized that Han Sooyoung had to spend 50 years here, I just couldn't escape from this one overwhelming emotion. Someone was sacrificed again because of me. Han Sooyoung who had to endure the time frame of 50 years – could she still maintain a normal, functioning mind? Was she able to maintain the ego of the Han Sooyoung that I know of?pg4254 59. Her palm smacked me in the back of the head again. God damn it, this punk… "The third method, 'Romance'." "And its contents are?" "Marry Yuri di Aristel." "And just what did you choose?" "The third method?" "And are we currently married?" "Nope." "And why the hell not?!" pg 4256

19.   2.8 mg: cauliflower376,377 20.   2.7 mg: celeriac378 21.   2.6 mg: yellow peas379 22.   2.5 mg: wheat germ (1 Tb)380 23.   2.5 mg: french fries381 24.   2.4 mg: oysters382 25.   2.4 mg: lentils383 26.   2.4 mg: adzuki beans384,385,386 27.   2.3 mg: eel livers (1 oz)387 28.   2.2 mg: salad388 29.   2.1 mg: popcorn (50 g)389 30.   2.0 mg: kidney beans390

[46] “I have called myself Grim, I have called myself Wanderer, Warrior and Helmet-Wearer, Famed One and Third One, Thunder and Wave, Hel-Blind and One-Eye, [47] “Truth, and Swift, and True Father, Battle-Merry, Battle-Stirrer, Curse-Eye and Fire-Eye, Evildoer, Spellcaster, Masked and Shadowed-Face, Fool and Wise Man, {70} [48] “Long-Hat and Long-Beard, Victory-Father and War-Ready, Allfather, War-Father, Rope-Rider and Hanged-God. I have never been known by just one name since I first walked among men. [49] “They called me Shadowed-Facehere at Geirroth’s place,but Gelding at Asmund’s,they called me Driverwhen I pulled the sleds,and Mighty at the assembly.Among the gods I’m called Wish-Granter, Speaker, Just-as-High, Shield-Shaker, Wand-Bearer, Graybeard. [50] “Wise and Wisdom-Granter were my names at Sokkmimir’s hall, when I deceived that old giant and I killed his famous son. I was his killer. [51] “You are drunk, Geirroth! You have drunk too much. You have lost too much when you have lost my favor; you’ve lost the favor of Odin and all the Einherjar. [52] “I’ve told you much, and you’ll remember little— your friends will deceive you— I see the sword of my friend dripping with blood. {71} [53] “Now Odin will have a weapon-killed man— I know your life has ended. Your guardian spirits are anxious, they see Odin here before you. Approach me, if you can. [54] “Odin is my name. But before they called me Terror, and Thunder before that, and Waker and Killer, and Confuser and Orator-God, Heat-Maker, Sleep-Maker, both Gelding and Father! I think all these names were used for me alone.

Ch 7: Read Blogs, Periodicals, and Other Web Content for Free on the Kindle Amazon might prefer that you get all your Kindle blogs and periodicals for a price in the Kindle Store, and those Kindle editions are tough to match when it comes to elegant formatting and the convenience of having new issues and posts pushed wirelessly to your Kindle in real time. However, there are a number of increasingly user-friendly ways to enjoy newspapers, magazines, and blogs free of charge on a Kindle, and we'll break them down and show you how in this chapter and the next. Here are the basic approaches: •     You can use your Kindle's web browser to read any of millions of blogs and online periodical editions directly from the web. •     You can use any of several RSS feed services such as Google Reader to read content summaries on your Kindle and then click through to content that interests you. •     You can use Instapaper to flag, sort, and organize interesting articles as you surf the web and send them individually or in digest form to your Kindle. •     You can set up Calibre to fetch the latest issues of newspapers, magazines and blogs and transfer them directly to your Kindle via an easy-to-use Calibre-to-Kindle USB connection. All of these feature are better than ever on the latest generation Kindle 3G and Kindle Wi-Fi models for the following reasons: •     Both models come with wi-fi, which is must faster than 3G for any activities other than reading an ebook or listening to an audio file. •     These latest generation Kindle 3G and Kindle Wi-Fi models both come with the Kindle's relatively new WebKit web browser based on the same platform that powers the Safari web browser. It's still a bit slow, but it is miles ahead of the previous Kindle web browser. •     These latest generation Kindle 3G and Kindle Wi-Fi models feature the new eInk Pearl display that renders 50 percent better contrast than previous Kindle displays, which is especially important when viewing web content formatted for a larger color screen. •     These latest generation Kindle 3G and Kindle Wi-Fi models provide other features to enhance web page viewing and reading, including Article Mode (a Menu selection while viewing any web page on these Kindles) and several different "zoom" options using the "Aa" font key or the Menu. Reading

In Orchestration, we rely on a central system to control and call other Microservices to complete a task. In Choreography, each Microservice works like a State Machine and reacts based on the input from other parts. Orchestration is a tightly coupled approach for integrating Microservices. Whereas, Choreography is a loose coupling approach. Choreography based systems are more flexible and easy to change than Orchestration based systems. Orchestration is often implemented by synchronous calls. Choreography is implemented by asynchronous calls. The synchronous calls are much simpler compared to asynchronous communication.

If we consume the equivalent of about three-quarters of a teaspoon of turmeric a day for a month, the activity of the catalase enzyme in our bloodstream may get boosted by more than 50 percent.

TOP SPERMIDINE SOURCES (MILLIGRAM PER 100-GRAM SERVING UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED)   1.   9.7 mg: tempeh351,352   2.   9.2 mg: mushrooms353,354   3.   9.2 mg: pig pancreas (1 oz)355   4.   8.2 mg: natto (1 oz)356   5.   6.1 mg: mango (one, 210 g)357,358   6.   5.9 mg: edamame359,360   7.   5.8 mg: green peas361,362   8.   5.7 mg: cheddar (aged one year, 1 oz)363   9.   5.5 mg: lentil soup (1 cup)364 10.   5.1 mg: soybeans365 11.   4.4 mg: lettuce366 12.   4.3 mg: polenta367 13.   4.3 mg: corn368,369 14.   3.8 mg: soymilk (1 cup)370 15.   3.8 mg: mussels371 16.   3.7 mg: broccoli372,373 17.   3.4 mg: cow intestine374 18.   2.9 mg: chickpeas375 19.   2.8 mg: cauliflower376,377 20.   2.7 mg: celeriac378 21.   2.6 mg: yellow peas379 22.   2.5 mg: wheat germ (1 Tb)380 23.   2.5 mg: french fries381 24.   2.4 mg: oysters382 25.   2.4 mg: lentils383 26.   2.4 mg: adzuki beans384,385,386 27.   2.3 mg: eel livers (1 oz)387 28.   2.2 mg: salad388 29.   2.1 mg: popcorn (50 g)389 30.   2.0 mg: kidney beans

That’s the reasoning behind recommendations that people take a “50-food challenge,” eating at least fifty different plant foods a week to achieve a diet diverse enough to feed a vast spectrum of bacteria.7530

After only eleven days of cutting back on animal protein, your IGF-1 levels can drop by 20 percent and your levels of IGF-1 binding protein can jump by 50 percent. After study subjects ate plant-based for less than two weeks, researchers dripped their blood onto some cancer cells growing in a petri dish and found that it suppressed cancer growth 30 percent better than before.

Depending on the season, vaccination typically reduces the risk of getting the flu by about 40 to 50 percent.4669 So, in healthy younger adults, we can say with moderate certainty that we can decrease the risk of getting the flu from about 2 percent each year down to just under 1 percent.4670

To help boost this anti-aging pathway, on a daily basis, consider: following the recommendations in the Inflammation and Oxidation chapters eating a high-fiber diet centered around whole plant foods choosing to drink tea or coffee over soda or milk eating cruciferous vegetables supplementing with 800 to 2,000 IU of vitamin D3 a day if your vitamin D blood level is under 20 ng/mL (50 nmol/L)

The recommended dietary allowance for protein is around 50 g a day (46 g for women, 56 g for men).7815 The researchers took men who were averaging twice that—112 g, which is about the average of what many American men get7816—and randomized them down to 64 g of protein a day. So, the “protein-restricted” group was still getting more than enough protein. Do that, and you can essentially double FGF21 levels in the blood within about six weeks.

Based on twenty studies following more than 30,000 people for an average of about five years, a systematic review and meta-analysis found that higher TMAO was associated with a nearly 50 percent increase in all-cause mortality risk.

of their brain waves quickly changed to an astonishing degree 50 seconds after the start of zazen. Even after the finish, the effect remained. This could not be seen at all when amateurs tried to imitate it.2 Thus, zazen has recently begun to be recognized as something contributing to the mental health of some patients suffering from neuroses.

In Antonioni’s film L’Eclisse, the luminous Monica Vitti visits the Rome stock exchange, where her fiancé, played by Alain Delon, works. Delon points out a fat man who has just lost 50 million lire. Intrigued, she follows the man. He orders a drink at a bar, barely touches it, then goes to a café, where he orders an acqua minerale, which he again barely touches. He is writing something on a piece of paper, and leaves it on the table. We imagine that it must be a set of furious, melancholy figures. Vitti approaches the table, and sees that it is a drawing of a flower …

Let the cakes be the bastard boyfriend. Let the takeaways be the ghastly girlfriend. For me, alcohol and cigarettes were the girlfriends who cheated on me, and I’ll never see them in the same light again. You might ask why I haven’t succeeded with this same approach when it comes to food, and this is where I’m willing to accept that my magical technique falls a little flat. It was easy for me to accept that cigarettes and alcohol were responsible for shortening my life, but I have trouble accepting that the same applies to cakes. Call me a sucker, but I keep on giving the ghastly girlfriend another chance, even though she’s made it clear that she’s going to carry on cheating. Perhaps if I were unfortunate enough to suffer from a debilitating illness such as a heart complaint or diabetes, I’d grow a pair and ditch her.

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

Volvo has adopted a similar approach. Its ‘Autonomous Emergency Braking’ system, which automatically slows the car down if it gets too close to a vehicle in front, is widely credited for the impressive safety record of the Volvo XC90. Since the car first went on sale in the UK in 2002, over 50,000 vehicles have been purchased, and not a single driver or passenger within any of them has been killed in a crash.

In Ireland, the Great Famine of 1845–50 was exacerbated by the British government’s insistence on a hands-off approach to managing the economy, with the result that, despite horrendous conditions, Ireland was a net exporter of food during the years of the great hunger. The population reduced by 20–25 per cent – almost 1 in 4 either died or emigrated.