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Summary of the Science of Getting Rich There is a thinking stuff from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe. A thought in this substance produces the thing that is imaged by the thought. Man can form things in his thought, and by impressing his thought upon formless substance can cause the thing he thinks about to be created. In order to do this, man must pass from the competitive to the creative mind; otherwise he cannot be in harmony with the Formless Intelligence, which is always creative and never competitive in spirit. Man may come into full harmony with the Formless Substance by entertaining a lively and sincere gratitude for the blessings it bestows upon him. Gratitude unifies the mind of man with the intelligence of Substance, so that man’s thoughts are received by the Formless. Man can remain upon the creative plane only by uniting himself with the Formless Intelligence through a deep and continuous feeling of gratitude. Man must form a clear and definite mental image of the things he wishes to have, to do, or to become; and he must hold this mental image in his thoughts, while being deeply grateful to the Supreme that all his desires are granted to him. The man who wishes to get rich must spend his leisure hours in contemplating his Vision, and in earnest thanksgiving that the reality is being given to him. Too much stress cannot be laid on the importance of frequent contemplation of the mental image, coupled with unwavering faith and devout gratitude. This is the process by which the impression is given to the Formless, and the creative forces set in motion. The creative energy works through the established channels of natural growth, and of the industrial and social order. All that is included in his mental image will surely be brought to the man who follows the instructions given above, and whose faith does not waver. What he wants will come to him through the ways of established trade and commerce. In order to receive his own when it shall come to him, man must be active; and this activity can only consist in more than filling his present place. He must keep in mind the Purpose to get rich through the realization of his mental image. And he must do, every day, all that can be done that day, taking care to do each act in a successful manner. He must give to every man a use value in excess of the cash value he receives, so that each transaction makes for more life; and he must so hold the Advancing Thought that the impression of increase will be communicated to all with whom he comes in contact. The men and women who practice the foregoing instructions will certainly get rich; and the riches they receive will be in exact proportion to the definiteness of their vision, the fixity of their purpose, the steadiness of their faith, and the depth of their gratitude.
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Wallace D. Wattles (The Science of Getting Rich)
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Chapter 1 Summary The debate in science is between the mind being what the brain does versus the brain doing the bidding of the mind. The correct view is that the mind is designed to control the body, of which the brain is a part, not the other way around. Our brain does not control us; we control our brain through our thinking and choosing. We can control our reactions to anything. Choices are real. You are free to make choices about how you focus your attention, and this affects how the chemicals, proteins, and wiring of your brain change and function. Research shows that DNA actually changes shape in response to our thoughts. Stress stage one is normal. Stress stage two and stage three, on the other hand, are our mind and body’s response to toxic thinking—basically normal stress gone wrong. Reaction is the key word here. You cannot control the events or circumstances of your life, but you can control your reactions.
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Caroline Leaf (Switch On Your Brain: The Key to Peak Happiness, Thinking, and Health (Includes the '21-Day Brain Detox Plan'))
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Robots are a physical, moveable form of AI. Currently robots do much of the work humans cannot do, with a consistent, flawless level of accuracy and repetitiveness – factory positions are one example. In the future, robots will do anything humans can come up with. The most successful people will be the ones who can optimize their robot’s activities.
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FlashBooks Book Summaries (Summary of The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future by Kevin Kelly | Book Summary Includes Analysis)
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Using a holistic, Eastern philosophy, leaky gut can be classified into four categories: candida gut, a fungal condition caused by too much fluid buildup in the body; stressed gut, caused by overwhelming presence of stress hormones; immune gut, caused by emotional pain and grief; and gastric gut, caused by overeating, bad chewing habits, and emotional turmoil.
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Instaread Summaries (Summary of Eat Dirt: by Dr. Josh Axe | Includes Analysis)
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Conflating prosperity with providence and opting for acquisitiveness as the lesser of two evils until greed was rechristened as benign self-interest, modern Christians have in effect been engaged in a centuries-long attempt to prove Jesus wrong. “You cannot serve both God and Mammon.” Yes we can. Or so most participants in world history’s most insatiably consumerist society, the United States, continue implicitly to claim through their actions, considering the number of self-identified American Christians in the early twenty-first century who seem bent on acquiring ever more and better stuff, including those who espouse the “prosperity Gospel” within American religious hyperpluralism.190 Tocqueville’s summary description of Americans in the early 1830s has proven a prophetic understatement: “people want to do as well as possible in this world without giving up their chances in the next.
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Brad S. Gregory (The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society)
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One other thing. And this really matters for readers of this book. According to official Myers–Briggs documents, the test can ‘give you an insight into what kinds of work you might enjoy and be successful doing’. So if you are, like me, classified as ‘INTJ’ (your dominant traits are being introverted, intuitive and having a preference for thinking and judging), the best-fit occupations include management consultant, IT professional and engineer.30 Would a change to one of these careers make me more fulfilled? Unlikely, according to respected US psychologist David Pittenger, because there is ‘no evidence to show a positive relation between MBTI type and success within an occupation…nor is there any data to suggest that specific types are more satisfied within specific occupations than are other types’. Then why is the MBTI so popular? Its success, he argues, is primarily due to ‘the beguiling nature of the horoscope-like summaries of personality and steady marketing’.31 Personality tests have their uses, even if they do not reveal any scientific ‘truth’ about us. If we are in a state of confusion they can be a great emotional comfort, offering a clear diagnosis of why our current job may not be right, and suggesting others that might suit us better. They also raise interesting hypotheses that aid self-reflection: until I took the MBTI, I had certainly never considered that IT could offer me a bright future (by the way, I apparently have the wrong personality type to be a writer). Yet we should be wary about relying on them as a magic pill that enables us suddenly to hit upon a dream career. That is why wise career counsellors treat such tests with caution, using them as only one of many ways of exploring who you are. Human personality does not neatly reduce into sixteen or any other definitive number of categories: we are far more complex creatures than psychometric tests can ever reveal. And as we will shortly learn, there is compelling evidence that we are much more likely to find fulfilling work by conducting career experiments in the real world than by filling out any number of questionnaires.32
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Roman Krznaric (How to Find Fulfilling Work (The School of Life))
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Note: I won’t be considering any theologically based Judeo-Christian views about these subjects beyond this broad summary here. As far as I can tell, most of the theological discussions center around omniscience—if God’s all-knowingness includes knowing the future, how can we ever freely, willingly choose between two options (let alone be judged for our choice)? Amid the numerous takes on this, one answer is that God is outside of time, such that past, present, and future are meaningless concepts (implying, among other things, that God could never relax by going to a movie and being pleasantly surprised by a plot turn—He always knows that the butler didn’t do it). Another answer is one of the limited God, something explored by Aquinas—God cannot sin, cannot make a boulder too heavy for Him to lift, cannot make a square circle (or, as another example that I’ve seen offered by a surprising number of male but not female theologians, even God cannot make a married bachelor). In other words, God cannot do everything, He can just do whatever is possible, and foreseeing whether someone will choose good or evil is not knowable, even for Him. Related to this all, Sam Harris mordantly notes that even if we each have a soul, we sure didn’t get to pick it.
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Robert M. Sapolsky (Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will)
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While David runs the financial end of the Rockefeller dynasty, Nelson runs the political. Nelson would like to be President of the United States. But, unfortunately for him, he is unacceptable to the vast majority of the grass roots of his own party. The next best thing to being President is controlling a President. Nelson Rockefeller and Richard Nixon are supposed to be bitter political competitors. In a sense they are, but that still does not preclude Rockefeller from asserting dominion over Mr. Nixon. When Mr. Nixon and Mr. Rockefeller competed for the Republican nomination in 1968, Rockefeller naturally would have preferred to win the prize, but regardless of who won, he would control the highest office in the land.
You will recall that right in the middle of drawing up the Republican platform in 1960, Mr. Nixon suddenly left Chicago and flew to New York to meet with Nelson Rockefeller in what Barry Goldwater described as the "Munich of the Republican Party." There was no political reason why Mr. Nixon needed to crawl to Mr. Rockefeller. He had the convention all sewed up. The Chicago Tribune cracked that it was like Grant surrendering to Lee.
In The Making of the President, 1960, Theodore White noted that Nixon accepted all the Rockefeller terms for this meeting, including provisions "that Nixon telephone Rockefeller personally with his request for a meeting; that they meet at the Rockefeller apartment…that their meeting be secret and later be announced in a press release from the Governor, not Nixon; that the meeting be clearly announced as taking place at the Vice President's request; that the statement of policy issuing from it be long, detailed, inclusive, not a summary communiqué."
The meeting produced the infamous "Compact of Fifth Avenue" in which the Republican Platform was scrapped and replaced by Rockefeller's socialist plans. The Wall Street Journal of July 25, 1960, commented: "…a little band of conservatives within the party…are shoved to the sidelines… [T]he fourteen points are very liberal indeed; they comprise a platform akin in many ways to the Democratic platform and they are a far cry from the things that conservative men think the Republican Party ought to stand for…" As Theodore White put it:
"Never had the quadrennial liberal swoop of the regulars been more nakedly dramatized than by the open compact of Fifth Avenue. Whatever honor they might have been able to carry from their services on the platform committee had been wiped out. A single night's meeting of the two men in a millionaire's triplex apartment in Babylon-by-the-Hudson, eight hundred and thirty miles away, was about to overrule them; they were exposed as clowns for all the world to see."
The whole story behind what happened in Rockefeller's apartment will doubtless never be known. We can only make an educated guess in light of subsequent events. But it is obvious that since that time Mr. Nixon has been in the Rockefeller orbit.
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Gary Allen (None Dare Call It Conspiracy)
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Late in the nineteenth century came the first signs of a “Politics in a New Key”: the creation of the first popular movements dedicated to reasserting the priority of the nation against all forms of internationalism or cosmopolitanism. The decade of the 1880s—with its simultaneous economic depression and broadened democratic practice—was a crucial threshold.
That decade confronted Europe and the world with nothing less than the first globalization crisis. In the 1880s new steamships made it possible to bring cheap wheat and meat to Europe, bankrupting family farms and aristocratic estates and sending a flood of rural refugees into the cities. At the same time, railroads knocked the bottom out of what was left of skilled artisanal labor by delivering cheap manufactured goods to every city. At the same ill-chosen moment, unprecedented numbers of immigrants arrived in western Europe—not only the familiar workers from Spain and Italy, but also culturally exotic Jews fleeing oppression in eastern Europe. These shocks form the backdrop to some developments in the 1880s that we can now perceive as the first gropings toward fascism.
The conservative French and German experiments with a manipulated manhood suffrage that I alluded to earlier were extended in the 1880s. The third British Reform Bill of 1884 nearly doubled the electorate to include almost all adult males. In all these countries, political elites found themselves in the 1880s forced to adapt to a shift in political culture that weakened the social deference that had long produced the almost automatic election of upper-class representatives to parliament, thereby opening the way to the entry of more modest social strata into politics: shopkeepers, country doctors and pharmacists, small-town lawyers—the “new layers” (nouvelles couches) famously summoned forth in 1874 by Léon Gambetta, soon to be himself, the son of an immigrant Italian grocer, the first French prime minister of modest origins.
Lacking personal fortunes, this new type of elected representative lived on their parliamentarians’ salary and became the first professional politicians. Lacking the hereditary name recognition of the “notables” who had dominated European parliaments up to then, the new politicians had to invent new kinds of support networks and new kinds of appeal. Some of them built political machines based upon middle-class social clubs, such as Freemasonry (as Gambetta’s Radical Party did in France); others, in both Germany and France, discovered the drawing power of anti-Semitism and nationalism.
Rising nationalism penetrated at the end of the nineteenth century even into the ranks of organized labor. I referred earlier in this chapter to the hostility between German-speaking and Czech-speaking wage earners in Bohemia, in what was then the Habsburg empire. By 1914 it was going to be possible to use nationalist sentiment to mobilize parts of the working class against other parts of it, and even more so after World War I.
For all these reasons, the economic crisis of the 1880s, as the first major depression to occur in the era of mass politics, rewarded demagoguery. Henceforth a decline in the standard of living would translate quickly into electoral defeats for incumbents and victories for political outsiders ready to appeal with summary slogans to angry voters.
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Robert O. Paxton (The Anatomy of Fascism)
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The moment we designate the used or maligned as a state with generative capacity, our reality expands. President John F. Kennedy once mentioned an old saying that success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. 4 Failure is an orphan until we give it a narrative. Then it is palatable because it comes in the context of story, as stars within a beloved constellation. Once we reach a certain height we see how a rise often starts on a seemingly outworn foundation. The gift of failure is a riddle. Like the number zero, it will always be both the void and the start of infinite possibility. The arc is one for which there are few perfect words. Its most succinct summary may come from the wisdom in seventeenth-century poet and samurai Mizuta Masahide’s haiku: “My barn having burned down / I can now see the moon.” When we take the long view, we value the arc of a rise not because of what we have achieved at that height, but because of what it tells us about our capacity, due to how improbable, indefinable, and imperceptible the rise remains. There are advantages to certain opportunities, including their seeming opposite, that make our path as curved and as precise as an arrow’s course.
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Sarah Lewis (The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery)
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Individual status of memory and cognitive functions can be tested to gauge one’s risk level for Alzheimer’s. A series of tests can be used for this, including the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MOCA) test. A normal MOCA score is between 26 and 30.
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Walker-Summary (Summary: The End of Alzheimer's - Dale Bredesen - The First Program to Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline (The End of Alzheimer's: The First Program ... Cognitive Decline - A Book Summary 1))
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vendor for that month and how much I earned on them. Let's go build one of these so you can see how to create a simple summary query using more than one table. First, go to the Create tab and choose the Query Wizard from the Queries section. This is still a simple query, so choose the Simple Query Wizard. Next, select the first table or query that has fields you want to include in your query. In this example that's going to be the Vendor 3 Data Table and I want MonthSale and YearSale. Switch the dropdown to the other table or query you want to use. In my case that'll be the Ebook Link Table. Select the fields you want from that table. I'm going to choose Title. Continue to do this until you have all of the fields you want selected.
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M.L. Humphrey (Access Essentials)
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By this clear and honest phrase, I understand Unamuno to mean that life is not, nor ever has been, a straight line forward. According to him, life is characterized much more by exception and disorder than by total or perfect order. Life, as the biblical tradition makes clear, is both loss and renewal, death and resurrection, chaos and healing at the same time; life seems to be a collision of opposites. Unamuno equates the notion of faith with trust in an underlying life force so strong that it even includes death. Faith also includes reason, but is a larger category than reason for Unamuno. Truth is not always about pragmatic problem solving and making things “work,” but about reconciling contradictions. Just because something might have some dire effects does not mean it is not true or even good. Just because something pleases people does not make it true either. Life is inherently tragic, and that is the truth that only faith, but not our seeming logic, can accept. This is my amateur and very partial summary of the thought of this great Spanish philosopher.
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Richard Rohr (Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life)
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Knowing your DUI attorney can eliminate the effect of the return of drunken
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There are can be drunken very scary encounter billed offer. With the end of the transfer during this procedure of his or very familiar with the other side, while experts, the treatment should be fine. If you come into conflict with the mentioned at this point nation, they do poverty and a little assistance in criminal matters.
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DrunkFire
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A NONPARAMETRIC ALTERNATIVE A nonparametric alternative to one-way ANOVA is Kruskal-Wallis’ H test of one-way ANOVA. Instead of using the actual values of the variables, Kruskal-Wallis’ H test assigns ranks to the variables, as shown in Chapter 11. As a nonparametric method, Kruskal-Wallis’ H test does not assume normal populations, but the test does assume similarly shaped distributions for each group. This test is applied readily to our one-way ANOVA example, and the results are shown in Table 13.5. Table 13.5 Kruskal-Wallis’ H-Test of One-Way ANOVA Kruskal-Wallis’ H one-way ANOVA test shows that population is significantly associated with watershed loss (p = .013). This is one instance in which the general rule that nonparametric tests have higher levels of significance is not seen. Although Kruskal-Wallis’ H test does not report mean values of the dependent variable, the pattern of mean ranks is consistent with Figure 13.2. A limitation of this nonparametric test is that it does not provide post-hoc tests or analysis of homogeneous groups, nor are there nonparametric n-way ANOVA tests such as for the two-way ANOVA test described earlier. SUMMARY One-way ANOVA extends the t-test by allowing analysts to test whether two or more groups have different means of a continuous variable. The t-test is limited to only two groups. One-way ANOVA can be used, for example, when analysts want to know if the mean of a variable varies across regions, racial or ethnic groups, population or employee categories, or another grouping with multiple categories. ANOVA is family of statistical techniques, and one-way ANOVA is the most basic of these methods. ANOVA is a parametric test that makes the following assumptions: The dependent variable is continuous. The independent variable is ordinal or nominal. The groups have equal variances. The variable is normally distributed in each of the groups. Relative to the t-test, ANOVA requires more attention to the assumptions of normality and homogeneity. ANOVA is not robust for the presence of outliers, and it appears to be less robust than the t-test for deviations from normality. Variable transformations and the removal of outliers are to be expected when using ANOVA. ANOVA also includes three other types of tests of interest: post-hoc tests of mean differences among categories, tests of homogeneous subsets, and tests for the linearity of mean differences across categories. Two-way ANOVA addresses the effect of two independent variables on a continuous dependent variable. When using two-way ANOVA, the analyst is able to distinguish main effects from interaction effects. Kruskal-Wallis’ H test is a nonparametric alternative to one-way ANOVA. KEY TERMS Analysis of variance (ANOVA) ANOVA assumptions Covariates Factors Global F-test Homogeneous subsets Interaction effect Kruskal-Wallis’ H test of one-way ANOVA Main effect One-way ANOVA Post-hoc test Two-way ANOVA Notes 1. The between-group variance is
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Evan M. Berman (Essential Statistics for Public Managers and Policy Analysts)
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to the measures described earlier. Hence, 90 percent of the variation in one variable can be explained by the other. For the variables given earlier, the Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient is .274 (p < .01), which is comparable to r reported in preceding sections. Box 14.1 illustrates another use of the statistics described in this chapter, in a study of the relationship between crime and poverty. SUMMARY When analysts examine relationships between two continuous variables, they can use simple regression or the Pearson’s correlation coefficient. Both measures show (1) the statistical significance of the relationship, (2) the direction of the relationship (that is, whether it is positive or negative), and (3) the strength of the relationship. Simple regression assumes a causal and linear relationship between the continuous variables. The statistical significance and direction of the slope coefficient is used to assess the statistical significance and direction of the relationship. The coefficient of determination, R2, is used to assess the strength of relationships; R2 is interpreted as the percent variation explained. Regression is a foundation for studying relationships involving three or more variables, such as control variables. The Pearson’s correlation coefficient does not assume causality between two continuous variables. A nonparametric alternative to testing the relationship between two continuous variables is the Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient, which examines correlation among the ranks of the data rather than among the values themselves. As such, this measure can also be used to study relationships in which one or both variables are ordinal. KEY TERMS Coefficient of determination, R2 Error term Observed value of y Pearson’s correlation coefficient, r Predicted value of the dependent variable y, ŷ Regression coefficient Regression line Scatterplot Simple regression assumptions Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient Standard error of the estimate Test of significance of the regression coefficient Notes 1. See Chapter 3 for a definition of continuous variables. Although the distinction between ordinal and continuous is theoretical (namely, whether or not the distance between categories can be measured), in practice ordinal-level variables with seven or more categories (including Likert variables) are sometimes analyzed using statistics appropriate for interval-level variables. This practice has many critics because it violates an assumption of regression (interval data), but it is often
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Evan M. Berman (Essential Statistics for Public Managers and Policy Analysts)
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Preparation of Financial Statements - A Simple Summary •AR-C 70 is applicable when the accountant is engaged to prepare financial statements and is not applicable when the accountant is engaged to perform a compilation or if the accountant is merely assisting with bookkeeping •The objective of the accountant is to prepare financial statements in accordance with the chosen reporting framework •The financial statements can be prepared in accordance with GAAP or a special purpose reporting framework •The financial statements can be distributed to third parties (and not just management) •The accountant must either: ·State on each financial statement page that “no assurance is provided,” or ·Provide a disclaimer •Documentation requirements include: ·The engagement letter, and ·The financial statements •An engagement letter must be signed by: ·The accountant or the accountant’s firm, and ·Management or those charged with governance •No report (e.g., compilation report) is attached to the financial statements •Consideration of independence is not required •Substantially all disclosures can be omitted •The omission of substantially all disclosures should be: ·Disclosed on the face of the financial statements, or ·In a note •Selected disclosures can be provided •Departures from the applicable financial reporting framework should be: ·Disclosed on the face of the financial statements, or ·In a note •A preparation engagement may be applied to historical financial statements and to: ·Historical information (e.g., specified items of a financial statement) and ·Prospective information, including: ·Budgets ·Forecasts, or ·Projections •A preparation engagement can be performed in relation to prescribed forms (e.g., bank personal financial statements) •Mark draft financial statements with appropriate wording (e.g., Draft Financial Statements)
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Charles Hall (Preparation of Financial Statements & Compilation Engagements)
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According to Piketty, if r remains at its historical rate of about 5 percent, then all the negative developments related to the inequality from the 19th century will be repeated. These will include disrespect for working people; worshiping of people who do not work and enjoy leisurely life by living at the expense of other people’s labor; political acts that disdain equal opportunity and deny democracy; and opportunities for the rich to buy politicians. What logical conclusion can be made from Piketty’s research? If this development continues, then by the end of the 21st century, the world’s wealth may become the property of a few enormously rich individuals and institutions. Then, 99.9 percent of humans will end up working for a small number of oligarchs, who will accumulate their wealth by virtue of heredity instead of earning it based on merit.
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I.K. Mullins (A Summary and Critique of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty First Century – Where We Are, What Is Next, How Piketty is Right and Wrong)
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AICPA peer review checklists are free and can be obtained by Googling “AICPA Peer Review Checklist.” Use the most recent checklist (they often change). Minimum Documentation SSARS 21 states that the minimum documentation requirements are as follows: Establish your firm’s minimum work paper documentation. What work papers are required for each type of engagement? Will your firm require the preparer to sign off on each work paper? When the partner or manager reviews the work papers, will she initial each reviewed work paper or just a summary review sheet? Authority to Issue Determine who has the authority to issue financial statements and compilation reports. Here are a few questions to consider: •Who has authority to issue financial statements using the preparation guidance? •Who has authority to issue financial statements using the compilation guidance? •Will your firm require a second partner review of each initial preparation engagement? •Will annual compilation reports be reviewed by a second partner? Quality Control - A Simple Summary •Well-designed templates will: ·Enhance your firm’s compliance with professional standards, and ·Increase your efficiency •Create templates for those work products that you expect to issue most often (e.g., tax-basis preparation financial statements) •In developing your templates: ·Include the minimum required work papers and reports ·Vet your templates using the AICPA peer review checklists •Determine who has the authority to issue different work products (e.g., preparation, compilation, monthly, annual)
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Charles Hall (Preparation of Financial Statements & Compilation Engagements)
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My Research Bible Routine At some point during my quest, I started what I came to call my research bible, which is, in reality, a document I keep on my computer. Here’s the routine: Once a week I require myself to summarize in my “bible” a paper I think might be relevant to my research. This summary must include a description of the result, how it compares to previous work, and the main strategies used to obtain it. These summaries are less involved than the step-by-step deconstruction I did on my original test-case paper—which is what allows me to do them on a weekly basis—but they still induce the strain of deliberate practice. My
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Cal Newport (So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love)
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Section One Summary Here’s what you should take away from this section about on-page optimization: On-page optimization is what you do on your website to influence SERPs on Google. Doing proper keyword research is the first step to a successful SEO campaign. Having proper meta tags is essential. Always include your keyword phrase(s) in your meta tags. The proper meta tags include your title tag, description tag, keywords tag, and robots tag. Choose your URL carefully. Your URL doesn’t have to have your keyword included but it helps when other sites link to your site. Avoid exact match domains. How you format your page is important for optimization purposes. Make sure you design your web pages so Google is forced to read your on-page content first. Verify that your code is W3C compliant. Don’t forget to include your keyword phrase(s) in , , and header tags. This signifies the importance of your content to Google. Label each graphic with an alt tag that includes your keyword phrase. Place your keyword(s) in the first twenty-five words on your web page and the last twenty-five words on your web page. Eliminate Flash if it’s the main presentation of your website. Google does not view this favorably. If you’re going to use JavaScript to enhance the overall visitor experience of your website, place the code in an external file. Include a sitemap that’s easily accessible by Google. Submit an XML version of your sitemap through Google Webmaster Tools. Never underestimate the power of internal linking. A good internal linking structure can improve your SERPs. Keyword development is one of the most important on-page optimization strategies. Research keywords and competing websites to select ideal keywords. Research the strength of competing websites before selecting your final keywords using Google PR and authority (ex: number of inbound links). Page load speed is a significant factor in Google rankings. Ensure that your home page loads more quickly than those of competing
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Michael H. Fleischner (SEO Made Simple: Search Engine Optimization Strategies: How to Dominate Google, the World's Largest Search Engine)
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Dimensional models implemented in relational database management systems are referred to as star schemas because of their resemblance to a star-like structure. Dimensional models implemented in multidimensional database environments are referred to as online analytical processing (OLAP) cubes, as illustrated in Figure 1.1. Figure 1.1 Star schema versus OLAP cube. If your DW/BI environment includes either star schemas or OLAP cubes, it leverages dimensional concepts. Both stars and cubes have a common logical design with recognizable dimensions; however, the physical implementation differs. When data is loaded into an OLAP cube, it is stored and indexed using formats and techniques that are designed for dimensional data. Performance aggregations or precalculated summary tables are often created and managed by the OLAP cube engine. Consequently, cubes deliver superior query performance because of the precalculations, indexing strategies, and other optimizations. Business users can drill down or up by adding or removing attributes from their analyses with excellent performance without issuing new queries. OLAP cubes also provide more analytically robust functions that exceed those available with SQL. The downside is that you pay a load performance price for these capabilities, especially with large data sets.
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Ralph Kimball (The Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Definitive Guide to Dimensional Modeling)
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My goal is not to contradict conventional answer "X" by replacing it with unconventional answer "Y." My goal is to think about the present in the same way we think about the past, wholly aware that such mass consideration can't happen until we reach a future that no longer includes us. And why do I want to do this? Because this is—or should be—why we invest time into thinking about anything that isn't essential or practical or imperative. The reason so many well-considered ideas appear laughable in retrospect is that people involuntarily assume that whatever we believe and prioritize now will continue to be believed and prioritized later, even though that almost never happens. It's a mistake that never stops being made. So while it's impossible to predict what will matter to future versions of ourselves, we can reasonably presume that whatever they elect to care about (in their own moment) will be equally temporary and ephemeral. Which doesn't necessarily provide us with any new answers, but does eliminate some of the wrong ones we typically fail to question.
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Chuck Klosterman (But What If We're Wrong? Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past)
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Connective talents are useless, of course, if people can’t perform the work. And the most talented people in every occupation have huge advantages over their ordinary peers. Dean Keith Simonton, who studies greatness and genius, finds that whether it comes to songwriters, composers, scientists, programmers, or filmmakers, the top 10 percent generate as much or more output than the other 90 percent. The superiority of great bosses is seen in a summary of eighty-five years of research on employee selection methods. Frank Schmidt and John Hunter found that the top 15 percent of professionals and managers produced nearly 50 percent more output than their average peers. The strongest predictors of performance included general mental ability (IQ and similar measures), job sample tests (having people prove they can do the work), and evaluations by peers; other useful predictors included structured employment interviews (where each candidate is asked the same questions in the same order) and conscientiousness (self-discipline and follow-through, similar to grit). These findings provide ammunition for bosses who stock up on the best talent and believe that little else is required. Yet without constructive connections among people, collective performance and humanity is tough to achieve – no matter how many superstars are in the fold.
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Robert I. Sutton (Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best... and Learn from the Worst)
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Chapter 1: What to Expect in Investing Similar to other concepts that you may grasp, there is no “real way” to prepare for investing. Initially, you just have to jump in to start learning how you can manage different aspects of this activity as you go along. However, you still have to make the necessary preparations by learning the fundamental techniques and other intricacies included in this art and science. Also included in the things you should know are the expectations that you need to have when investing. "You need to expect tax deductions from the government.
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Miller K. (15 Easy Ways to be an intelligent investor: Summary of the ways be the Intelligent Investor (Benjamin Graham Warren buffet) , investing for beginners)
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Fake seafood is not a Florida problem or a Massachusetts problem or a New York City problem - it is an everywhere problem. Oceana took its study national in 2013 and found that mislabeling in violation of FDA regulations was often much worse in the biggest cities. A summary released with the report noted that "Oceana found seafood fraud everywhere it tested, including mislabeling rates of 52 percent in Southern California, 49 percent in Austin and Houston, 48 percent in Boston, 39 percent in New York City, 38 percent in Northern California and South Florida, 32 percent in Chicago, 26 percent in Washington, DC, and 18 percent in Seattle."...
Dr. Warner's most recent project for Oceana was a global "study of studies," in which she and her colleagues did a comprehensive analysis of fake fish studies conducted by many different entities in different countries, including sixty-seven peer-reviewed studies, seven government reports, and twenty-three news articles. The results are pages and pages of more disturbing fraud information, but she was able to sum up the results for me in two sentences: "All studies that have investigated seafood fraud have found it. The take-home message is that anytime someone looks for mislabeling and species substitution in the marketplace, anywhere, they find it.
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Larry Olmsted (Real Food/Fake Food: Why You Don’t Know What You’re Eating and What You Can Do About It)
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Business Plan Samples
This sample business plan is intended to provide you with a template that can be used as a reference for when you’re hard at work on your plan. It's always easier to write something if you can read an example first, so here's an executive summary example that you can use as a model for your own business plan's executive summary.
The Executive Summary is where you explain the general idea behind your company; it’s where you give the reader (most likely an investor, or someone else you need on board) a clear indication of why you’ve sent this Business Plan to them. In the Business Plan section, you will want to get the reader’s attention by letting them know what you do.
It’s vitality important to set up a strong foundation and a thorough business plan in the beginning. Nonprofit business plans have several different features and quirks that you’ll need to include to receive funding and having a strong passion to help your community is only a fragment of what it takes to run a not-for-profit organization.
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Business Plan Writers
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Here’s the routine: Once a week I require myself to summarize in my “bible” a paper I think might be relevant to my research. This summary must include a description of the result, how it compares to previous work, and the main strategies used to obtain it. These summaries are less involved than the step-by-step deconstruction I did on my original test-case paper—which is what allows me to do them on a weekly basis—but they still induce the strain of deliberate practice.
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Cal Newport (So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love)
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You can’t let recognition be your motivation. To find pride in yourself and in what you do, you have to define success as the peace of mind that comes with knowing you did your best.
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FastReads (Summary of Ego Is the Enemy: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis)
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Book Review for Where's Grandma?
"Jordyn looks for her grandma, but cannot find her anywhere. Her bed is empty, her wheelchair is abandoned, and her place at the table unoccupied. Jordyn’s mommy tells her that her grandma has ‘transitioned’, but Jordyn does not know what that means. Her mommy explains that Grandma is now in heaven with other family members. Jordyn misses her grandma and remembers good times spent with her, singing and dancing for her, watching movies together, and playing games. She remembers how her grandma like to spend time with the family, and cook big family dinners. Jordyn’s mommy encourages her to focus on happy memories of her grandma and turn tears of sadness into tears of joy. Jordyn knows that whenever she misses her grandma, she can look back at old pictures and videos, and remember the fun times they spent together."
"Where's Grandma? A Child's View on Loss, Grief and Bereavement is a heartfelt and touching picture book by Tracey Smith about a little girl named Jordyn who faces the loss of her beloved grandma. Struggling with sadness, Jordyn finds it difficult to understand where her grandma has gone. Her mom helps her to cope by gently remembering the happy times they shared. Through these memories, Jordyn discovers that although grandma is no longer there, her love will remain in her heart forever. The author handles the subject of death in a sensitive way that is suitable for young readers. The book includes helpful notes to help parents talk to children about their grief."
Star rating: 5 Stars
Summary: A heartfelt and touching story about grief, and a valuable resource for families who may have experienced the death of a loved one.
--Reader's Choice Book Awards
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Reader"s Choice
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It is important to remember that being a big company executive is very different from being a small company executive. Big company executives are driven by interruptions while startup executives know that nothing happens unless they make it happen. If you hire the wrong match for your company, two dangerous results can occur. If there is a rhythm mismatch, your executive will wait for something to happen, and your employees will wonder what he or she does all day.
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Instaread Summaries (Summary of The Hard Thing About Hard Things: by Ben Horowitz | Includes Analysis)
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The awareness of mortality casts a bittersweet shadow over the vibrancy of life and love. We exist in a state of impermanence, where beauty fades and connection dissolves. Yet, it is precisely this impermanence that imbues life with its preciousness and love with its urgency. In the face of oblivion, love becomes a defiant act, a bridge we build across the chasm of the ephemeral, a testament to the enduring power of connection in a fleeting existence."
The quote's appreciation for love in the face of life's fleeting nature echoes Epicurean ideals. This emphasizes the existentialist concept of living in a finite world and the absurdist notion of creating meaning in the face of nothingness. It highlights love as a way to transcend the impermanence of life and forge a connection that defies the inevitable.
The concept of finding meaning and beauty in a world wracked by impermanence aligns closely with the philosophy of Epicurus.
Epicureanism emphasizes living a virtuous and pleasure-filled life while minimizing pain. Though often misinterpreted as mere hedonism, Epicurus also stressed the importance of intellectual pursuits, close friendships, and facing mortality with courage.
Unfortunately, Epicurus himself didn't write any essays or novels in the traditional sense. Most of his teachings were delivered in letters and discourses to his students and followers. These were later compiled by others, most notably Hermarchus, who helped establish Epicurean philosophy.
The core tenets of Epicureanism are scattered throughout various ancient texts, including:
*Principal Doctrines: A summary of Epicurus' core beliefs, likely compiled by Hermarchus.
*Letter to Menoeceus: A letter outlining the path to happiness through a measured approach to pleasure and freedom from fear.
*Vatican Sayings: A collection of sayings and aphorisms attributed to Epicurus.
These texts, along with Diogenes Laërtius' Lives and Sayings of the Philosophers, which includes biographical details about Epicurus, provide the best understanding of his philosophy.
Love is but an 'Ephemeral Embrace'. Life explodes into a vibrant party, a kaleidoscope of moments that dims as the sun dips below the horizon. The people we adore, the bonds we forge, all tinged with the bittersweet knowledge that nothing lasts forever. But it's this very impermanence that makes everything precious, urging us to savor the here and now.
Imagine Epicurus nudging us and saying, "True pleasure isn't a fleeting high, it's the joy of sharing good times with the people you love." Even knowing things end, we can create a life brimming with love's connections. Love becomes an act of creation, weaving threads of shared joy into a tapestry of memories.
Think of your heart as a garden. Love tells you to tend it with care, for it's the source of connection with others. In a world of constant change, love compels us to nurture our inner essence and share it with someone special. Love transcends impermanence by fostering a deep connection that enriches who we are at our core.
Loss is as natural as breathing. But love says this: "Let life unfold, with all its happy moments and tearful goodbyes. Only then can you understand the profound beauty of impermanence." Love allows us to experience the full spectrum of life's emotions, embracing the present while accepting impermanence. It grants depth and meaning to our fleeting existence.
Even knowing everything ends, love compels us to build a haven, a space where hearts connect. It's a testament to the enduring power of human connection in a world in flux.
So let's love fiercely, vibrantly, because in the face of our impermanence, love erects a bridge to something that transcends the temporary.
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Monika Ajay Kaul
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Summary of COVID-24: SARS-CoV-3 is an infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 3. Common symptoms include fever, sweating, sneezing, coughing, sporadic nerve pain across the extremities and fatigue. While we are still in the early stages of understanding this virus, most cases identified to date have resulted in mild symptoms that appear to resolve themselves without the need for medical intervention. However, an unknown percentage of people infected have experienced acute respiratory distress syndrome, requiring medical intervention. In China, Italy, Germany, and the United Kingdom, there have been reports of some patients suffering from multiple organ failure, to include septic shock. At this present time, we are unable to determine how contagious the virus is or its incubation period. Until more of this information can be identified, the CDC recommends issuing a level 2 travel advisory for China, Italy, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
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James Rosone (Monroe Doctrine: Volume I (Monroe Doctrine, #1))
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ego depletion. As they are worn down, physically or mentally tired, people have less ability to persevere through tasks, showing that if people overexert themselves, it can heavily impact their decision making down the road.
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Ninja Reads (Summary of Thinking, Fast and Slow: by Daniel Kahneman: Key Takeaways & Analysis Included)
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Henry VI’s regime (1450–61):
Henry VI’s inadequacy is widely held to have been the primary cause of the political upheavals of the mid-fifteenth century. To assess how this affected the south-west it is necessary, first, to give a brief regional review introducing the major figures; then, to consider the realities of governance, patronage, and landholding in Somerset, Dorset, Devon, and Cornwall. It is only after surveys of the county elites that a regional overview can be undertaken, which summarises the notable aspects, and evaluates those features that were truly ‘regional’ in nature by relating shire and provincial perspectives to national politics and governance (p. 149).
In summary, it seems that the dukes of Somerset could not only depend on the cooperation of those directly associated with them (such as the Caraunts), but could also rely on the support of others indirectly through secondary patrons such as Stourton and Hungerford. So, including Stourton-Hungerford clients as indirect connections, analysis of shire positions indicates the extent to which the Beauforts’ influence probably pervaded Somerset political society. Beaufort associates had regularly fulfilled local offices since the 1420s, and of the sheriffs’ terms between 1437 and 1450, almost half were undertaken by Beaufort clients. In comparison, between 1450 and 1461, over a third of sheriffs’ terms were served by Beaufort clients (p. 155).
As discussed regarding Devon, during the earl of Devon’s long minority, leading Devon gentry–Sir William Bonville and his clientele–involved themselves in Courtenay dependants’ affairs; hence, on his majority, the young earl lacked local support. The relationship between the earl and Bonville became poisoned after Sir William was designated steward of duchy estates in the county in 1437. This challenge to his authority enraged the earl to resort to violence (p. 174).
In the south-west, if the Beauforts provided a Lancastrian focus in the eastern counties, then the duchy of Cornwall provided another further west, where [Lord] Bonville also provided a specifically Yorkist focus (pp. 186–7).
Therefore, by a combination of estates, royal offices, and prince’s council membership, [James Butler, Earl of] Wiltshire might have become a provincial magnate–and a national power-broker–if he had had a longer period of time in which to establish himself (p. 188).
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Robert E. Stansfield-Cudworth (Political Elites in South-West England, 1450–1500: Politics, Governance, and the Wars of the Roses)
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Christopher Lasch, a history professor at the University of Rochester. In 1979, Lasch published what became a highly influential book titled The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. Describing “postwar America as a society of dangerously self-absorbed individuals, fixated on personal goals, fearful of their impulses, and easily controlled by power elites,” according to a summary in the New York Times, the book quickly became a national bestseller, spent seven weeks on the Times bestseller list, and generated much discussion around the country, including inside the White House and even in the Oval Office.[90]
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Joel C. Rosenberg (Implosion: Can America Recover from Its Economic and Spiritual Challenges in Time?)
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First, never watch your hand as you make finger motions. These include: Simply pressing a finger down to play the note directly underneath, Reaching sideways with a finger to play another key (called a "reach" or an "extension"), and, Crossing the thumb under a finger or a finger over the thumb ("crossovers and crossunders"). When your "fingers do the walking" your eyes should NOT be watching. Second, when your hand must be picked up and moved sideways to a new location, you CAN glance down at the keyboard and back up to the music. But....you will now have to learn to glance down and back up to look directly at the exact point of the music where you need to be looking. That’s a separate skill altogether. Unlike typing, music has a beat and you better not miss it. I mentioned above that “losing your place” would be discussed. Many more advanced players still have trouble with this, and it's a lack of this skill. The rewards of not watching? Let me spell those out clearly: There is probably nothing you could do which would give you greater speed, better expression, and more confidence than to learn to play without watching your hands. In summary, glance at the really hard hand motions, those with significant sideways displacement. Don't watch anything else. Do this for six months and you will be a completely new musician, a player with skills which will reward you for the many years of your
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Dan Starr (How to Play Much Better on Any Sort of Keyboarded Instrument)
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love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which a man can aspire” and that “the salvation of man is through love and in love.” This was a truly transformative thought for Frankl, who realized that even with everything else stripped from his life, a man can endure suffering in an honorable way through loving contemplation of the image he carried of his wife.
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FastReads (Summary of Man's Search for Meaning: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis)
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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
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Stephen Windwalker (Kindle free for all: how to get millions of free kindle books and other free content)
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Anything can go wrong in a complex project. While a master builder is fallible, a team of experts with a checklist can identify and avert serious problems.
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FastReads (Summary of The Checklist Manifesto: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis)
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Owners of complex projects can maximize chances of success by using simple checklists for routine tasks and communication checklists for unexpected occurrences.
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FastReads (Summary of The Checklist Manifesto: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis)
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• Checklists that are too long can easily distract the people making checks from the real work at hand.
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FastReads (Summary of The Checklist Manifesto: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis)
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Any professional can make significant gains by looking for patterns of failure in his field and codifying them into simple and straightforward checks.
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FastReads (Summary of The Checklist Manifesto: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis)
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To make a checklist, Boorman explained, one must first define the pause point: the natural point at which the team pauses to make checks. The drafter can choose between one of two checklists: a do-confirm checklist that people use to ensure what they did from memory is the right thing or a read-do checklist that people go through to know what they have to do next.
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FastReads (Summary of The Checklist Manifesto: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis)
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Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.
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FastReads (Summary of Man's Search for Meaning: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis)
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Helping a client with all those things is part of your job. But before you can begin-in fact, before that person walks through the door-you must prepare yourself. In many agencies part of your preparation will be reading some documentation on the client. That may be nothing more than a two-line summary of the problem the client has reported and a telephone number you can call to set up an appointment. On the other hand, if the case is being transferred to you, it may mean a huge file that includes a medical history, a psychiatric evaluation, a mental status exam, a biopsychosocial assessment by a previous clinician (or clinicians), that clinician’s progress notes, a report of psychological testing, a diagnostic code, and many other types of information. Whether it is one page or fifty, though, your response ought to be the same: What don’t I know that I need to know? Start making some written notes for yourself, beginning with those questions that you need to have answered before you call the client back to arrange an appointment. For instance, you may want further clarification of her current problem, if possible, so you can be sure she is coming to the right place. You may want to find out if anyone told her there is a fee charged. Or, if the case appears to involve more than one person, you may want to inquire about who should be included in the first interview. You should raise those questions with your supervisor or with the person who had the initial phone contact.
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Susan Lukas (Where to Start and What to Ask: An Assessment Handbook)
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Managing all data related to your coin type and its size can be overwhelming. A coin collecting software might be a good idea to have to help you keep track of your coin collection. Coin collecting software is not just for creating a catalog or inventory. Most commercially available software packages have built in coin inventories to categorize modern, ancient and medieval coins. They also are able to organize coin related links, existing web resources and an option that includes recent coin values updated for the current year. Software that has a coin glossary and a dictionary of various numismatic terms integrated in it would be most useful. You can choose from various programs that have an easy to learn interface and have readymade templates. A good one should allow you to create reports and summaries. Both novice and expert coin collectors will benefit from using good coin collecting software.
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James Bradshaw (Coin Collecting for Beginners: Learn the basics of coin collecting as a hobby or an investment)
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The concept of “too much and unnecessary” could also apply to the length of our prayers. A closing prayer in a Church meeting need not include a summary of each message and should not become an unscheduled sermon. Private prayers can be as long as we want, but public prayers ought to be short supplications for the Spirit of the Lord to be with us or brief declarations of gratitude for what has transpired.
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Russell M. Nelson (Accomplishing the Impossible: What God Does, What We Can Do)
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Following is a sample list of some points you will want to include in your business plan. These can all be organized in a very professional manner in a notebook that includes tabs. • Executive summary. Include a one- or two-page summary of your plan. • Mission statement. Include one or two paragraphs that succinctly state your purpose. • Background. Present information about yourself and your experience. • Financial statement. List your assets, liabilities, and net worth. • Site location. Include a list of benefits, maps, and proximity to shopping and schools. • Demographics. Present information about the people living in the area (income, education, etc.). • Competitor analysis. Determine who your competitors are and present average rents and sales comparisons. • Marketing strategy. Define your target market (tenants, buyers, etc.). • Financial analysis. Include historical and pro forma operating statements. • Improvements. Define capital improvements to be made to the property. • Purchase agreement. Include your sales contract with the seller. • Exhibits. Include photographs of the property, tax returns, sample floor plans, and the like.
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Steve Berges (The Complete Guide to Buying and Selling Apartment Buildings)
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In summary: Withdrawing 3% or less annually is as near a sure bet as anything in this life can be. Stray much further out than 7% and your future will include dining on dog food. Stocks are critical to a portfolio’s survival rate. If you absolutely, positively want a sure thing and your yearly inflation raises, keep your withdrawal rate under 4%. And hold 75% stocks/25% bonds. Give up those yearly inflation raises and you can push up towards 6% with a 50% stock/50% bond mix. In fact, the authors of the study suggest you can withdraw up to 7% as long as you remain alert and flexible. That is, if the market takes a huge dive, cut back on your withdrawals and spending until it
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J.L. Collins (The Simple Path to Wealth: Your road map to financial independence and a rich, free life)
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Only by putting yourself in situations where failure is imminent and preparing to fail can you grow and broaden the potential of the person you could become.
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FastReads (Summary of Tools of Titans: Includes Key Takeaways)
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A Lasting Legacy I return to Elkins now, to make a summary point and a single closing observation. The summary point is that even as a closed system, slavery, simply because of its long duration, produced over time a distinctive African American culture. This is a point stressed in Eugene Genovese’s Roll, Jordan, Roll and in his mostly sympathetic critique of Elkins. Slaves, for instance, developed a repertoire of songs and stories and relationships—sometimes lifelong relationships—that ultimately helped to form a black identity in the United States. There is no analog for this in the concentration camps, partly because of the nature of the camps and partly because they lasted for just a dozen years from 1933 to 1945. In general, camp prisoners did not form close relationships, partly because this was discouraged by the guards and partly because prisoners realized that the very person you befriended last week could be summarily executed this week. So the only behavioral changes that concentration camps produced were in the nature of short-term adaptations to camp life itself. It follows from this that the cultural legacy of slavery long outlasted slavery while the cultural legacy of the camps—including the peculiar disfigurations of personality that Elkins detected—proved to be a temporary phenomenon. The phenomena of the zombie-like Muselmanner, the ersatz Nazism of the Kapos—all of this is now gone. It makes no sense to say that Jews or eastern Europeans today display any of the characteristics that developed within that temporary closed system. With American blacks, however, the situation is quite different. Although slavery ended in 1865, it lasted more than 200 years, and it had its widest scope during the era of Democratic supremacy in the South from the 1820s through the 1860s. Many of the features of the old slave plantation—dilapidated housing, broken families, a high degree of violence required to keep the place together, a paucity of opportunity and advancement prospects, a widespread sense of nihilism and despair—are evident in Democrat-run inner cities like Oakland, Detroit, Baltimore, and Chicago. “There was a distinct underclass of slaves,” political scientist Orlando Patterson writes, “who lived fecklessly or dangerously. They were the incorrigible blacks of whom the slave-owner class was forever complaining. They ran away. They were idle. They were compulsive liars. They seemed immune to punishment.” And then comes Patterson’s punch line: “We can trace the underclass, as a persisting social phenomenon, to this group.” 39 The Left doesn’t like Patterson because he’s a black scholar of West Indian origin with a penchant for uttering politically incorrect truths.
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Dinesh D'Souza (The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left)
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CHAPTER 4 SUMMARY: BEST WAYS 71–80 71. When it comes to ensuring your family’s financial well-being, and securing a meaningful and rewarding job, you need to create a written action plan or a MAP (Meticulous Action Plan). 72. When you create a MAP, you are actually programming your own “employment GPS” so you can go from where you are to where you want to be. 73. When you’re done developing your action plan, you’ll have a highly structured schedule of activities for each day of the week. This includes your job transition campaign as well as your personal, social, and fitness activities. 74. If you are unemployed, you should invest 50, 60, or 70 hours a week on your job campaign. If you have a full-time job, you need to set aside a defined number of hours every week as your investment in your future. 75. Whether you are employed and looking for a better job or out of work seeking a new one, you must hold yourself fully accountable for putting in as many hours as possible and getting the most out of every hour you put in. 76. The first question you will need to address is, how many hours a week will you commit to your job transition campaign? Then, based on the number of weekly hours you’ll invest in getting a new job, your next step is to break weekly hours down into daily hours. 77. There are 13 primary job transition strategies for landing a job in troubled economic times. Your job is to determine which 4 to 6 strategies will be most effective for you. a. Networking and contact development b. Target marketing (identifying companies you want to work for) c. Internet searches and postings d. Federal jobs e. Search firms and employment agencies f. Blogs with job listings g. Classified advertisements in newspapers and trade journals h. Job fairs i. College placement departments and alumni associations j. Workforce System and One-Stops k. Volunteer work l. Job transition strategists m. Creative self-marketing 78. Once you have identified which job transition strategies will work best for your campaign, determine when, during the week, you will work on each. You want to create a structured weekly schedule. When you create a structured weekly schedule, you will have a detailed plan with specific daily tasks both for your job campaign and for personal and social activities. 79. Once you have a structured weekly schedule, you must set goals that you want to achieve from your weekly activities. A MAP without specific goals is not an effective plan. You will want to set specific goals for each strategy so you can track your success or modify the MAP if you are not achieving your weekly goals. 80. Prepare for the worst-case scenario. It is vitally important to remain in a positive, optimistic, and enthusiastic state of mind. But sometimes your plan won’t come to fruition as quickly as you’d like. So expect the best, but plan for the worst. This would include looking at your long- and short-term finances and health and other issues that need to be addressed to free you up to concentrate on getting your next job.
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Jay A. Block (101 Best Ways to Land a Job in Troubled Times)