Emerging Risk Quotes

On translating text into the new language as it is in source language, there is a chance of it being emerged as an absurd sentence in the target language making no sense at all. In the attempt to make the translation meaningful to the target language, there exists a risk of the original work getting meddled by the translator’s style.

Adventures are funny things. Some streak down upon you like a storm. Others emerge after many years have passed and something forgotten is revealed. They can be discovered on a dusty bookshelf or the yellowed pages of an ancient map. They promise great reward, but no adventure is without risk.

Fear and anxiety affect decision making in the direction of more caution and risk aversion... Traumatized individuals pay more attention to cues of threat than other experiences, and they interpret ambiguous stimuli and situations as threatening (Eyesenck, 1992), leading to more fear-driven decisions. In people with a dissociative disorder, certain parts are compelled to focus on the perception of danger. Living in trauma-time, these dissociative parts immediately perceive the present as being "just like" the past and "emergency" emotions such as fear, rage, or terror are immediately evoked, which compel impulsive decisions to engage in defensive behaviors (freeze, flight, fight, or collapse). When parts of you are triggered, more rational and grounded parts may be overwhelmed and unable to make effective decisions.

Why do I take a blade and slash my arms? Why do I drink myself into a stupor? Why do I swallow bottles of pills and end up in A&E having my stomach pumped? Am I seeking attention? Showing off? The pain of the cuts releases the mental pain of the memories, but the pain of healing lasts weeks. After every self-harming or overdosing incident I run the risk of being sectioned and returned to a psychiatric institution, a harrowing prospect I would not recommend to anyone. So, why do I do it? I don't. If I had power over the alters, I'd stop them. I don't have that power. When they are out, they're out. I experience blank spells and lose time, consciousness, dignity. If I, Alice Jamieson, wanted attention, I would have completed my PhD and started to climb the academic career ladder. Flaunting the label 'doctor' is more attention-grabbing that lying drained of hope in hospital with steri-strips up your arms and the vile taste of liquid charcoal absorbing the chemicals in your stomach. In most things we do, we anticipate some reward or payment. We study for status and to get better jobs; we work for money; our children are little mirrors of our social standing; the charity donation and trip to Oxfam make us feel good. Every kindness carries the potential gift of a responding kindness: you reap what you sow. There is no advantage in my harming myself; no reason for me to invent delusional memories of incest and ritual abuse. There is nothing to be gained in an A&E department.

Climate intelligence enables action-oriented, climate-aligned decisions to mitigate risks, build resilient adaptation, and identify emerging opportunities.

Like any foundation, antifragility requires continued care to remain resilient to new hazards, which constantly emerge to erode it.

The single best way to develop leaders . . . is to take people out of their safe environment and away from the people they know, and throw them into a new arena they know little about. Way over their head, preferably. In fact, the more demanding their challenges, the more pressure and risk they face, the more likely a dynamic leader will emerge.

Maybe the existential risk is not machines taking over the world or reaching human-level intelligence, but rather the opposite where human beings think like idle machines - unable to connect the emerging dots of our complex, systemic world.

Board members must stay abreast of industry trends, regulatory changes, and emerging financial risks to ensure that they are equipped to make sound financial decisions.

A deep understanding of the business and industry landscape allows board members to identify emerging risks and ensure appropriate mitigation strategies are in place.

Because of the consequences of trying to be heard as a child, many adults are unable to take the risk of telling as adults. The fear of the consequences is almost debilitating. The abusers and controllers know that; they rely on it.

Deep knowledge of the company's industry is essential for understanding the competitive landscape, regulatory environment, and emerging trends. Board members with industry experience can provide valuable insights and guidance on strategic decision-making, risk management, and growth opportunities.

For businesses, it is vital to embed ethical checkpoints in workflows, allowing models to be stopped if unacceptable risks emerge. The apparent ease of building capable LLMs with existing foundations can mask serious robustness gaps. However unrealistic the scenario may seem under pressure, responsible LLM work requires pragmatic commitments to stop if red lines are crossed during risk assessment.

For a New Beginning In out-of-the-way places of the heart, Where your thoughts never think to wander, This beginning has been quietly forming, Waiting until you were ready to emerge. For a long time it has watched your desire, Feeling the emptiness growing inside you, Noticing how you willed yourself on, Still unable to leave what you had outgrown. It watched you play with the seduction of safety And the gray promises that sameness whispered, Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent, Wondered would you always live like this. Then the delight, when your courage kindled, And out you stepped onto new ground, Your eyes young again with energy and dream, A path of plenitude opening before you. Though your destination is not yet clear You can trust the promise of this opening; Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning That is at one with your life’s desire. Awaken your spirit to adventure; Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk; Soon you will be home in a new rhythm, For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

The next real literary "rebels" in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that'll be the point. Maybe that's why they'll be the next real rebels. Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today's risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the "Oh how banal". To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law. Who knows

Drills held weekly. All illusions are interactive, but unable to harm you! However, in the event of an emergency, yell Goldilocks, and the battle will stop immediately.* *Students who end Professor Harlow’s simulation do so at their own risk.

Municipalities that struggle with emergency management present an added layer of risk in terms of their ability to repay loans. When we do our underwriting for bond issuance we consider how prepared a municipality is in terms of emergency management.

When a worker is injured at an IBP plant in Texas, he or she is immediately presented with a waiver. Signing the waiver means forever surrendering the right to sue IBP on any grounds. Workers who sign the waiver may receive medical care under IBP's Workplace Injury Settlement Program. Or they may not. Once workers sign, IBP and its company-approved doctors have control over the job-related medical treatment - for life. Under the program's terms, seeking treatment from an independent physician can be grounds for losing all medical benefits. Workers who refuse to sign the IBP waiver not only risk getting no medical care from the company, but also risk being fired on the spot...Injured workers almost always sign the waiver. The pressure to do so is immense. An IBP medical case manager will literally bring the waiver to a hospital emergency room in order to obtain an injured worker's signature. When Lonita Leal's right hand was mangled by a hamburger grinder at the IBP plant in Amarillo, a case manager talked her into signing the waiver with her left hand as she waited in the hospital for surgery. When Duane Mullin had both hands crushed in a hammer mill at the same plant, an IBP representative persuaded him to sign the waiver with a pen held in his mouth.

Humans aren’t going to do anything in time to prevent the planet from being destroyed wholesale. Poor people are too preoccupied by primary emergencies, rich people benefit from the status quo, and the middle class are too obsessed with their own entitlement and the technological spectacle to do anything. The risk of runaway global warming is immediate. A drop in the human population is inevitable, and fewer people will die if collapse happens sooner.

The business of repatriating emotions emerges as one of the most delicate and necessary tasks of love. To accept the risks of transference is to prioritize sympathy and understanding over irritation and judgment. Two people can come to see that sudden bursts of anxiety or hostility may not always be directly caused by them, and so should not always be met with fury or wounded pride. Bristling and condemnation can give way to compassion. By

even if Noam Chomsky were right about everything, the Islamic doctrines related to martyrdom, jihad, blasphemy, apostasy, the rights of women and homosexuals, etc. would still present huge problems for the emergence of a global civil society (and these are problems quite unlike those presented by similar tenets in other faiths, for reasons that I have explained at length elsewhere and touch on only briefly here). And any way in which I might be biased or blinded by “the religion of the state,” or any other form of cultural indoctrination, has absolutely no relevance to the plight of Shiites who have their mosques, weddings, and funerals bombed by Sunni extremists, or to victims of rape who are beaten, imprisoned, or even killed as “adulteresses” throughout the Muslim world. I hope it goes without saying that the Afghan girls who even now are risking their lives by merely learning to read would not be best compensated for their struggles by being handed copies of Chomsky’s books enumerating the sins of the West

Here’s the painful pattern that emerged from my research with men: We ask them to be vulnerable, we beg them to let us in, and we plead with them to tell us when they’re afraid, but the truth is that most women can’t stomach it. In those moments when real vulnerability happens in men, most of us recoil with fear and that fear manifests as everything from disappointment to disgust. And men are very smart. They know the risks, and they see the look in our eyes when we’re thinking, C’mon! Pull it together. Man up. As Joe Reynolds, one of my mentors and the dean at our church, once told me during a conversation about men, shame, and vulnerability, “Men know what women really want. They want us to pretend to be vulnerable. We get really good at pretending.

By the time we emerge from childhood, we have acquired a reflex-level intuition for where most of our everyday world’s loci of unpredictability lie, and the more unpredictable end of this spectrum simultaneously beckons to us and frightens us. We’re pulled by but fearful of risk-taking. That is the nature of life.

Most people accept living unhappy lives because it is the only way they know, they refuse to be open to the new emerging possibilities and refuse to make positive changes. Because they are afraid of being outside their own comfort zone and don’t risk anything, they live lives that are far less fulfilling than they could actually have.

A randomized study by the American College of Physicians Public Health Emergency Collection published on June 24, 2020, concluded “randomized trials in community settings found possibly no difference between N95 versus surgical masks and probably no difference between surgical versus no mask in risk for influenza or influenza-like (respiratory) illness.”146

This is how you build secure attachment: through daily attunement to the subtle cues of other people and lavishing love and care, while letting them come and go as needed. In this kind of connection, you know your home base is always there for you, so you feel comfortable going out into the world, taking risks, trying new or scary things, because you can return to safe arms when you need to.

Removing pubic hair does not improve cleanliness, and there is emerging data that it is associated with an increased risk of infections like HPV and herpes, although the exact mechanism is not known.

But what about the apparent absurdity of the idea of dignity, freedom, and reason, sustained by extreme military discipline, including of the practice of discarding weak children? This “absurdity” is simply the price of freedom—freedom is not free, as they put it in the film [300]. Freedom is not something given, it is regained through a hard struggle in which one should be ready to risk everything. Spartan ruthless military discipline is not simply the opposite of Athenian “liberal democracy,” it is its inherent condition, it lays the foundation for it: the free subject of Reason can only emerge through ruthless self-discipline. True freedom is not a freedom of choice made from a safe distance, like choosing between a strawberry cake and a chocolate cake; true freedom overlaps with necessity, one makes a truly free choice when one’s choice puts at stake one’s very existence—one does it because one simply “cannot do otherwise.” When one’s country is under foreign occupation and one is called by a resistance leader to join the fight against the occupiers, the reason given is not “you are free to choose,” but: “Can’t you see that this is the only thing you can do if you want to retain your dignity?

We said it should be enough to cover three to six months of expenses, but should you go with three months or six months? If you think about the purpose of this fund, it will help you determine what is right for you. The purpose of the fund is to absorb risk, so the more risky your situation, the greater the emergency fund you should have. For example, if you earn straight commission or are self-employed, you should use the six-months rule. If you are single or you are a one-income married household, you should use the six-months rule because a job loss in your situation is a 100 percent cut in household income.

However, society is only composed of weak persons and strong; well, if the pact must perforce displease both weak and strong, there is great cause to suppose it will fail to suit society, and the previously existing state of warfare must appear infinitely preferable, since it permitted everyone the free exercise of his strength and his industry, whereof he would discover himself deprived by a society's unjust pact which takes too much from the one and never accords enough to the other; hence, the truly intelligent person is he who, indifferent to the risk of renewing the state of war that reigned prior to the contract, lashes out in irrevocable violation of that contract, violates it as much and often as he is able, full certain that what he will gain from these ruptures will always be more important than what he will lose if he happens to be a member of the weaker class; for such he was when he respected the treaty; by breaking it he may become one of the stronger; and if the laws return him to the class whence he wished to emerge, the worst that can befall him is the loss of his life, which is a misfortune infinitely less great than that of existing in opprobrium and wretchedness. There are then two positions available to us: either crime, which renders us happy, or the noose, which prevents us from being unhappy. I ask whether there can be any hesitation, lovely Therese, and where will your little mind find an argument able to combat that one?

In a classic study of highly accomplished architects, the most creative ones graduated with a B average. Their straight-A counterparts were so determined to be right that they often failed to take the risk of rethinking the orthodoxy. A similar pattern emerged in a study of students who graduated at the top of their class. “Valedictorians aren’t likely to be the future’s visionaries,” education researcher Karen Arnold explains. “They typically settle into the system instead of shaking it up.

Where are we?” she asked when I pulled into a parking lot. “The park.” “Isn’t it dangerous at night?” “Not here. Come on.” I pulled her out of her seat and grabbed a blanket from the trunk before trekking through the soft grass. “You always keep a blanket in your car?” “Yeah, for emergencies. Never know when you might need it. Food, water, first-aid kit, too.” “Oh!” she grunted and caught my arm as one of her heels pierced the soft dirt and sank. “You should take those off.” “And walk around barefoot? Hello? Ever heard of hookworms and tetanus?” “Ever heard of snapping your ankles as you fall flat on your face in the dark?” I asked as I squatted in front of her and slipped her foot out of the high heels. “What are you doing?” she gasped, tumbling forward and grabbing onto my shoulders for support. “Removing your obstacles.” She landed a bare foot on the grass as I undid the other shoe. “So now I get tetanus?” I looked up at her, my hands lightly stroking her ankles up to her calves. “You worry too much.” “It’s a real risk. Ask Preeti.” I stood slowly, moving up her body, and hovered above her. “How…how far are we walking?” she asked. “To the river.” “In the dark?” I nodded and handed her the shoes. “Took these off and you won’t even carry them?” “I’ll carry them,” I replied, swooped down, and threw her over the blanket on my shoulder. Liya yelped. “Put me down!” “So you can get tetanus?” I asked and walked toward the river. She laughed. “I hate you!” “You love it.” She slapped my butt and then poked her pointy elbows into my shoulder as she arched her back. “Enjoying the view of my backside from over there?” I slid my hand up the back of her thighs and tugged her dress down to keep her covered. “This isn’t so bad,” she said. “Oh, yeah?” “Yeah.” She slapped my butt again. “Giddyap!” “All right. You asked for it.” Her next words were swallowed up in a scream as I took off at a full sprint. She gripped my shirt, clutching for my waist, as the breeze broke around us. I ran the short distance to the riverside in no time, slowing only when the moonlit gleam on the water’s surface appeared. I placed Liya on the grass, but she swayed away. I grabbed her by the waist to steady her and chuckled. “Are you okay?” “You try doing that upside down.

Management is about the position; leadership is a disposition that goes beyond positions. Managers minimize risks; leaders maximize contribution. Managers work through structures of stability; leaders work through dynamic change. While managers are defined by their position, leaders can emerge from any position.

As education and creativity researcher and author Sir Ken Robinson puts it, “We are educating people out of their creativity.” Another major factor is that, for years, organizational management has been developing methods for increasing productivity and minimizing risk and errors that tend to stifle creative experimentation.

Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one’s own understanding without another’s guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one’s mind without another’s guidance. Dare to know! Freedom

In emerging technologies, security is the biggest threat, and common standards for communication and safety are improving, which means that risks will be minimised. We can only hope that man with this technology can actually stop the destruction of our planet, make the population healthier, and create a better future for all of us.

My camouflage, begun so many years before under the persecution of the Judge, was now threatening to become the complete man. It was time to slough the mottled and cunningly contrived outer skin to emerge as myself, to face the risk of exposure, to regain the power of one. I had reached the point where to find myself was essential.

The teaching of Jesus is clear. No one ought to be compelled to become a Christian. This sets the Christian faith drastically apart from Islam. In no country where the Christian faith is the faith of the majority is it illegal to propagate another faith. There is no country in the world that I know of where the renunciation of one’s Christian faith puts one in danger of being hunted down by the powers of state. Yet, there are numerous Islamic countries where it is against the law to publicly proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, and where a Muslim who renounces his or her belief in Islam to believe in anything else risks death. Freedom to critique the text of the Koran and the person of Mohammed are prohibited by the laws of blasphemy, and the result is torturous punishment. One must respect the concern of a culture to protect what it deems sacred, but to compel a belief in Jesus Christ is foreign to the gospel, and that is a vital difference. The contrast is all too clear. It is in this matter of conversion and compulsion that political theory emerges. As I stated earlier, the gospel is not to be spread at the point of a sword. When Christendom has resorted to such methods, it was not the gospel of Jesus Christ that was propagated, but a political theory that used the gospel for the benefit of power-seeking institutions and individuals.

Visionaries are that rare breed of people who have the insight to match up an emerging technology to a strategic opportunity, the temperament to translate that insight into a high-visibility, high-risk project, and the charisma to get the rest of their organization to buy into that project. They are the early adopters of high-tech products.

I began this process without preconceptions of how the information would shake out. Five consistent types of behavioral risk emerged: Ego, Emotion, Information, Attention, and Conservation. The number of bad decisions we can make is limitless (have you seen reality TV?), but all behavioral risk has one or more of these five risk factors at its core.

He parked the car, pressed the button for the roof to fold back, and undid his seat belt. "It's an emergency." Goldilocks giggled. She unfastened her belt and hopped onto her knees. "Yes, I can see" - she glanced down at his crotch - "That we're in danger of a detonation. What's the protocol in a situation like this, Mr. Environmentalist?" "I'm afraid I have no choice but to advocate for release.

The place is of no concern to them. They've left it to fester. An informational dead zone. The abstraction doesn't penetrate here, by design. The dome rebuffs it. The family craved their privacy, their insularity. My alert was a simple radio frequency trigger, with just enough power to reach beyond the estate. A risk even in that, but one worth taking." "You keep saying them," Dreyfus said. "For a reason," Stasov answered.

Why, given their advanced mathematical ideas, did the Arabs not proceed to probability theory and risk management? The answer, I believe, has to do with their view of life. Who determines our future: the fates, the gods, or ourselves? The idea of risk management emerges only when people believe that they are to some degree free agents. Like the Greeks and the early Christians, the fatalistic Muslims were not yet ready to take the leap.

Hundreds of people began to care in a personal way about the suffering of farm workers because they care about you and learned that you were willing to go to jail with striking farm workers,” Chris wrote the delegates from the Jesuit spirituality conference. He apologized profusely for having misled them into thinking they would be out in a few days. But no one complained. They told Chris the two weeks ranked among the most moving times of their lives. The gripes came from those who had opted for the picket line that obeyed the injunctions. They had been forced to make the decision too fast, they grumbled to Chris. Chris saw the saga as a modern parable, and he loved to tell the story: The people who played it safe, unwilling to risk arrest, ended up feeling cheated and angry. Those willing to sacrifice emerged from the ordeal enriched, certain that the experience had changed their lives.

The hell of it is that my son, my only child, has to turn out to be,” he added with a return of his old spirit, black eyes flashing, “the one man in Washington, D.C. who hates my guts!” “You weren’t too fond of him, either, if you recall,” she pointed out. He glared at her. “He’s hot-tempered and arrogant and stubborn!” “Look who he gets it from,” she said with a grin. He unlinked his hands as he considered that. “Those can be desirable traits,” he agreed with a faint smile. “Anyway, it’s nice to know I won’t die childless,” he said after a minute. He lifted his eyes to her face. “Leta can’t know any of this. When and if the time comes, I’ll tell her.” “Who’s going to tell him?” she ventured. “You?” he suggested. “In your dreams,” she said with a sweet smile. He stuffed his hands back into his pockets. “We’ll cross that bridge when the river comes over it. You’ll be careful, do you hear me? I’ve invested a lot of time and energy into hijacking you for my museum. Don’t take the slightest risk. If you think you’ve been discovered, get out and take Leta with you.” “She’s afraid to fly,” she pointed out. “She won’t get in an airplane unless it’s an emergency.” “Then I’ll come out and stuff her into a car and drive her to the airport and put her on a plane,” he said firmly. She pursed her lips. He was very like Tate. “I guess you would, at that.

Heart disease is the Jeffrey Dahmer of modern ailments. It kills more than 25 percent of us. That’s one person in the United States dying of it every 37 seconds. Expanding fitness just a bit—the equivalent of a person improving their max running speed from five to six miles an hour—reduces the risk of heart disease by 30 percent, according to the American Heart Association. Next is cancer. It kills 22.8 percent of us. The most fit people face a 45 percent lower risk of dying from the disease, according to a study in the Annals of Oncology. Then we have accidents. They take 6.8 percent of us. If a person is in a serious car accident, being in shape drops their chances of dying by 80 percent, according to a study in the Emergency Medical Journal. If the docs have to operate—regardless of whether it’s an emergency or a planned surgery—fitter people also face fewer surgical complications and recover faster than unfit people, say scientists in Brazil.

Annie surveyed the boxes of board games stacked on the table. They had everything from Battleship to Cranium to Settlers of Catan, and even a game called Exploding Kittens. If this was a test, she wanted to pass, but she also didn’t want to risk life and limb, knowing how competitive Darcy and Brendon could get. “How about Scruples?” That sounded low risk. Margot grinned. “I like you.” Darcy shook her head. “We should finish with Scruples. I need more wine before I play that game.” Elle laughed. “Charades first?” “Fine.” Darcy dropped her head back against Elle’s thigh. “But we have to pick new teams.” “Normally Brendon and I partner up,” Margot explained. “It’s not safe to put those two”—she nodded at Darcy and Brendon—“on a team together. They’re ruthless.” “I replaced your coffee table, didn’t I?” Darcy arched a brow. “No harm, no foul.” “Brendon fell through the coffee table. It was scarring.” Margot shivered. “I thought we were going to have to drive him to the emergency room.

FOR A NEW BEGINNING In out-of-the-way places of the heart, Where your thoughts never think to wander, This beginning has been quietly forming, Waiting until you were ready to emerge. For a long time it has watched your desire, Feeling the emptiness growing inside you, Noticing how you willed yourself on, Still unable to leave what you had outgrown. It watched you play with the seduction of safety And the gray promises that sameness whispered, Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent, Wondered would you always live like this. Then the delight, when your courage kindled, And out you stepped onto new ground, Your eyes young again with energy and dream, A path of plenitude opening before you. Though your destination is not yet clear You can trust the promise of this opening; Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning That is at one with your life’s desire. Awaken your spirit to adventure; Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk; Soon you will be home in a new rhythm, For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

Our work on these cases eventually led to a new law: Forced Marriage Protection Orders were introduced through the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act in 2007. This legislation allows the court to make an order in an emergency, either to prevent a forced marriage or to protect a victim who was leaving one. Women who were at risk of rape, enforced pregnancy and honour-based violence finally had the law on their side. Hundreds of these orders are now issued every year, with one recipient being only five years old.

You were burning in the middle of the worst solar storm our records can remember. (...) Everyone else fled. All your companions and crew left you alone to wrestle with the storm. “You did not blame them. In a moment of crystal insight, you realized that they were cowards beyond mere cowardice: their dependence on their immortality circuits had made it so that they could not even imagine risking their lives. They were all alike in this respect. They did not know they were not brave; they could not even think of dying as possible; how could they think of facing it, unflinching? “You did not flinch. You knew you were going to die; you knew it when the Sophotechs, who are immune to pain and fear, all screamed and failed and vanished. “And you knew, in that moment of approaching death, with all your life laid out like a single image for you to examine in a frozen moment of time, that no one was immortal, not ultimately, not really. The day may be far away, it may be further away than the dying of the sun, or the extinction of the stars, but the day will come when all our noumenal systems fail, our brilliant machines all pass away, and our records of ourselves and memories shall be lost. “If all life is finite, only the grace and virtue with which it is lived matters, not the length. So you decided to stay another moment, and erect magnetic shields, one by one; to discharge interruption masses into the current, to break up the reinforcement patterns in the storm. Not life but honor mattered to you, Helion: so you stayed a moment after that moment, and then another. (...) “You saw the plasma erupting through shield after shield (...) Chaos was attempting to destroy your life’s work, and major sections of the Solar Array were evaporated. Chaos was attempting to destroy your son’s lifework, and since he was aboard that ship, outside the range of any noumenal circuit, it would have destroyed your son as well. “The Array was safe, but you stayed another moment, to try to deflect the stream of particles and shield your son; circuit after circuit failed, and still you stayed, playing the emergency like a raging orchestra. “When the peak of the storm was passed, it was too late for you: you had stayed too long; the flames were coming. But the radio-static cleared long enough for you to have last words with your son, whom you discovered, to your surprise, you loved better than life itself. In your mind, he was the living image of the best thing in you, the ideal you always wanted to achieve. “ ‘Chaos has killed me, son,’ you said. ‘But the victory of unpredictability is hollow. Men imagine, in their pride, that they can predict life’s each event, and govern nature and govern each other with rules of unyielding iron. Not so. There will always be men like you, my son, who will do the things no one else predicts or can control. I tried to tame the sun and failed; no one knows what is at its fiery heart; but you will tame a thousand suns, and spread mankind so wide in space that no one single chance, no flux of chaos, no unexpected misfortune, will ever have power enough to harm us all. For men to be civilized, they must be unlike each other, so that when chaos comes to claim them, no two will use what strategy the other does, and thus, even in the middle of blind chaos, some men, by sheer blind chance, if nothing else, will conquer. “ ‘The way to conquer the chaos which underlies all the illusionary stable things in life, is to be so free, and tolerant, and so much in love with liberty, that chaos itself becomes our ally; we shall become what no one can foresee; and courage and inventiveness will be the names we call our fearless unpredictability…’ “And you vowed to support Phaethon’s effort, and you died in order that his dream might live.

The rear axle broke and the car spun around, hit an embankment, and flew in the air like a flying saucer. Parts of the body shredded. Thiel, a practicing libertarian, was not wearing a seatbelt, but he emerged unscathed. He was able to hitch a ride up to the Sequoia offices. Musk, also unhurt, stayed behind for a half-hour to have his car towed away, then joined the meeting without telling Harris what had happened. Later, Musk was able to laugh and say, “At least it showed Peter I was unafraid of risks.” Says Thiel, “Yeah, I realized he was a bit crazy.

Engineers speak of a “control loop,” in which the “man in the loop” is the problematical element. This is the human component in a series of sequentially interacting pieces of equipment that control or adjust a function. But when the pilot is suddenly and unexpectedly brought into the control loop (in other words, participates in decision making) as a result of (inevitable) equipment failure, he is disoriented. Long periods of passive monitoring make one unprepared to act in emergencies. The sudden appearance of several alarms, all there for safety reasons, leads to disorientation.

To accomplish this herculean feat, governmental bodies captured the legal power to intrude on human affairs in the hope of fixing man’s flawed nature, as though mankind were destined to live on a sterilized Planet Clorox, a land where everything could be made not only perfectly clean but free of risks. Governmental power was bulked up to launch a toxic blend of utopian and draconian measures to outlaw poverty, inequality, and injustice—supposedly. This socioeconomic jihad against liberty emerged after adherents of state-enhanced liberalism revised their ideological arsenal to include ‘positive rights.

Addiction to internet pornography is a very real phenomenon with a very real impact on well-being. It is a phenomenon which has grown exponentially in the last decade, even though it has remained largely invisible and undetected by society. Tragically, its risks continue to be ignored or actively denied by all but a few enlightened medical professionals. It is a phenomenon that is not just here to stay, but also likely to increase. It is almost certainly the cause of the widespread sexual dysfunction found in recent studies of late adolescence.[1] It is a problem that is most likely impacting you, or your loved ones, without you even being aware of it.

Instead Avi insisted they risk their lives by defying the Nazi curfew to get to a top-secret “emergency” meeting with Maurice Tulek and three other underground cell commanders, none of whom Jacob had ever met. “Gentlemen, thank you for agreeing to meet with me, and especially on such short notice,” Avi began as they huddled in the uninsulated attic of a farmhouse on the outskirts of a town called Herstal. “A few hours ago, I received credible intelligence that the Nazis have moved a total of nineteen trainloads of Jews—mostly women and children, but also men, especially the elderly—out of Belgium to a concentration camp in Poland, a camp known as Auschwitz.

We were beginning to see that the medical profession, at the time still over 90 percent male, had transformed childbirth from a natural event into a surgical operation performed on an unconscious patient in what approximated a sterile environment. Routinely, the woman about to give birth was subjected to an enema, had her pubic hair shaved off, and was placed in the lithotomy position - on her back, with knees up and crotch spread wide open. As the baby began to emerge, the obstetrician performed an episiotomy, a surgical enlargement of the vaginal opening, which had to be stitched back together after birth. Each of these procedures came with a medical rationale: The enema was to prevent contamination with feces; the pubic hair was shaved because it might be unclean; the episiotomy was meant to ease the baby's exit. But each of these was also painful, both physically and otherwise, and some came with their own risks, Shaving produces small cuts and abrasions that are open to infection; episiotomy scars heal m ore slowly than natural tears and can make it difficult for the woman to walk or relieve herself for weeks afterward. The lithotomy position may be more congenial for the physician than kneeling before a sitting woman, but it impedes the baby's process through the birth canal and can lead to tailbone injuries in the mother.

A young woman faces the decision of whether to marry a certain man whom she loves but who has deeply rooted, traditional ideas concerning marriage, family life, and the roles of men and women in each. A sober assessment of her future tell the woman that each of the two alternatives offers real but contrasting goods. One life offers the possibility of a greater degree of personal independence, the chance to pursue a career, perhaps more risk and adventure, while the other offers the rewards of parenting, stability, and a life together with a man whom, after all, she is in love with. In order to choose in a self-determined mode the woman must realize that the decision she faces involves more than the choice between two particular actions; it is also a choice between two distinct identities. In posing the questions "Who am I? Which of the two lives is really me?" she asks herself not a factual question about her identity but a fundamental practical question about the relative values of distinct and incommensurable goods. The point I take to be implicit in Tugendhat's (and Fichte's) view of the practical subject is that it would be mistaken to suppose that the woman had at her disposal an already established hierarchy of values that she must simply consult in order to decide whether to marry. Rather, her decision, if self-determined, must proceed from a ranking of values that emerges only in the process of reflecting upon the kind of person she wants to be.

(IMRT) has an advantage. The newer, high-dose, conformally directed, external-beam techniques for radiation therapy such as IMRT have been in widespread use for less than ten years; IGRT has been around for an even shorter time. However, some reports of long-term success are now emerging. New studies suggest that at ten years, high radiation doses alone can produce PSA control or cure rates in 93 percent of men with low-risk prostate cancer. What about more aggressive prostate cancer? As we discussed in chapter 9, the best treatment regimen for men with intermediate- and high-risk prostate cancer is still a moving target, but it will likely turn out to be a combination of high-dose radiation and short- or long-term hormonal therapy.

It was this situation that led mathematician Chris Hauert and his colleagues to consider another possibility in an important evolutionary model published in Science in 2002. In Axelrod's study and in most previous theoretical models, individuals were forced to interact with each other. But what if they could choose not to interact? Rather than attempting to cooperate and risking being taken advantage of, a person could fend for herself. In other words, she could sever her connections to others in the network. Hauert called the people who adopt this strategy "loners." Using some beautiful mathematics, Hauert and his colleagues showed that in a world full of loners it is easy for cooperation to evolve because there are no people to take advantage of the cooperators that appear. The loners fend for themselves, and the cooperators form networks with other cooperators. Soon, the cooperators take over the population because they always do better together than the loners. But once the world is full of cooperators, it is very easy for free riders to evolve and enjoy the fruits of cooperation without contributing (like parasites). As the free riders become the dominant type in the population, there is no one left for them to take advantage of; then, the loners once again take over -- because they want nothing to do, as it were, with those bastards. In short, cooperating can emerge because we can do more together than we can apart. But because of the free-rider problem, cooperation is not guaranteed to succeed.

On the other hand, irrational fears are difficult, if not impossible, to quantify. Here’s an example: when 152 people were infected with swine flu in Mexico in 2009, people around the world, prodded by the media’s manufactured hysteria, erupted in fear of an epidemic. We were warned that the threat was everywhere—that everyone was potentially at risk; however, the data showed these fears to be completely unwarranted. Weeks into the “outbreak,” there were around 1,000 reported cases of the virus in 20 countries. The number of fatalities stood at 26—25 in Mexico, and one in the United States (a boy who had just traveled to Texas from Mexico). Yet schools were closed, travel was restricted, emergency rooms were flooded, hundreds of thousands of pigs were killed, hand sanitizer and face masks disappeared from store shelves, and network news stories about swine flu consumed 43% of airtime.9 “There is too much hysteria in the country and so far, there hasn’t been that great a danger,” commented Congressman Ron Paul in response. “It’s overblown, grossly so.”10 He should know. During Paul’s first session in Congress in 1976, a swine flu outbreak led Congress to vote to vaccinate the entire country. (He voted against it.) Twenty-five people died from the vaccination itself, while only one person was killed from the actual virus; hundreds, if not more, contracted Guillain-Barre syndrome, a paralyzing neurological illness, as a result of the vaccine. Nearly 25 percent of the population was vaccinated before the effort was cancelled due to safety concerns.

Heroines of American journalism, writing in publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post, and reporting for major television networks, have all played a similar role of legitimizing America's new imperial project in Afghanistan and Iraq and the Middle East at large, promoting a narrative that violent military incursions are designed to liberate women and deliver better societies. Thus they also underscore their own superior status as white feminists, with their values of rebellion over resilience, risk over caution, and speed over endurance as the ultimate feminist values. Afghan women emerge as no more than prototypes whose wishes always align with what white feminists think they should want, rather than as people with independent political positions and perspectives.

What’s going on there?” THAT’S JUST SOME REAL ESTATE DEALS I’M WORKING ON. “Real estate?” I HAVE A LIFE OUTSIDE OF THIS COMPANY, YOU KNOW. “More than I do,” I said. “Is … that legal? Owning real estate?” YOU MEAN, BECAUSE I’M A CAT? “Well, yes.” I HAVE A TRUST SET UP FOR MY BENEFIT AND A HUMAN LAWYER THAT ACTS AS THE EXECUTOR. I TELL HIM WHAT TO DO, HE DOES IT. “Does he know you’re a cat?” YOU KNOW, IT’S NEVER COME UP. “So, you’re a real estate maven.” I HAVE A DIVERSIFIED PORTFOLIO, Hera wrote. MOSTLY BORING BUT SOME EXCITING PARTS. I DO A LOT OF INVESTING IN EMERGING MARKETS. “Sounds risky.” I’M A CAT, I CAN HANDLE RISK. WORST-CASE SCENARIO IS I LOSE EVERYTHING AND I STILL GET FED AND HAVE A PLACE TO NAP. “That’s … a surprisingly chill way of thinking about things.” SOMETIMES IT’S BETTER NOT TO BE A HUMAN, CHARLIE.

Across Western nations, shell-shocked citizens experienced all the well-worn tactics of rising totalitarianism—mass propaganda and censorship, the orchestrated promotion of terror, the manipulation of science, the suppression of debate, the vilification of dissent, and use of force to prevent protest. Conscientious objectors who resisted these unwanted, experimental, zero-liability medical interventions faced orchestrated gaslighting, marginalization, and scapegoating. American lives and livelihoods were shattered by a bewildering array of draconian diktats imposed without legislative approval or judicial review, risk assessment, or scientific citation. So-called Emergency Orders closed our businesses, schools and churches, made unprecedented intrusions into privacy, and disrupted our most treasured social and family relationships. Citizens the world over were ordered to stay in their homes.

A Safety Travel with Sinclair James International Traveling to somewhere completely foreign to you may be challenging but that is what travelers always look for. It can be a good opportunity to find something new and discover new places, meet new people and try a different culture. However, it can involve a lot of risk as well. You may be surprised to find yourself naked and penniless on the side of the road trying to figure out what you did wrong. These kinds of situations come rarely when you are careful and cautious enough but it is not impossible. Sinclair James International Travel and Tours, your Australian based traveling guide can help you travel safely through the following tips: 1. Pack all Security Items In case of emergencies, you should have all the safety tools and security items with you. Carry a card with your name and number with you and don’t forget to scribble down the numbers of local police station, fire department, list of hospitals and other necessary numbers that you may need. Place them in each compartment and on your pockets. If ever you find yourself being a victim of pick pocketing in Manila, Philippines or being driven around in circles in the streets of Bangkok, Thailand, you will definitely find these numbers very helpful. It is also advisable to put your name and an emergency number in case you are in trouble and may need someone else to call. 2. Protect your Passport Passports nowadays have RFID which can be scanned from a distance. We have heard some complaints from fellow travelers of being victims of scams which involves stealing of information through passports. An RFID blocking case in a wallet may come in handy to prevent hackers from stealing your information. 3. Beware of Taxis When you exit the airport, taxis may all look the same but some of them can be hiding a defective scam to rob tourists during their drive. It is better to ask an official before taking a taxi as many unmarked ones claim that they are legitimate. Also, if the fare isn’t flat rate, be sure you know the possible routes. Some drivers will know better and will take good care of you, but others will take longer routes to increase the fare. If you know your options, you can suggest a different route to avoid paying too much. 4. Be aware of your Rights Laws change from state to state, and certainly from country to country, but ignorance to them will get you nowhere. In fact, in many cases you can get yourself out of trouble by knowing the laws that will affect you. When traveling to other countries, make sure to review the laws and policies that can affect your activities. There are a lot of misconceptions and knowing these could save you a headache. Sinclair James International

The talk then turned to the topic of risk. The dozen or so regulatory agencies that had to approve the flight test did not share Musk’s love of it. The engineers briefed him on all the safety reviews and requirements they had endured. “Getting the license was existentially soul-sucking,” Juncosa said. Shana Diez and Jake McKenzie provided details. “My fucking brain is hurting,” Musk said, holding his head. “I’m trying to figure out how we get humanity to Mars with all this bullshit.” He processed in silence for two minutes, and when he emerged from his trance, he was philosophical. “This is how civilizations decline. They quit taking risks. And when they quit taking risks, their arteries harden. Every year there are more referees and fewer doers.” That’s why America could no longer build things like high-speed rail or rockets that go to the moon. “When you’ve had success for too long, you lose the desire to take risks.

Jesus is no genie in a lamp. All the happy thoughts and positive thinking in the world will not keep life from being life. I've come to believe that, as big risks offer the potential for great reward or great failure, the biggest waves bring the swiftest undertow. As I learned to accept this principle rather than fight it, a deeper understanding of the call to perseverance, which appears so frequently in the Bible, emerged. As I learned to persevere, something mysterious began to happen: the more difficult things became, the deeper I looked at myself, sought God's guidance, and let go. It is like the scripture that reads, "And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

The research is still in its infancy, as we have seen, but, in early March 2020, Nature Communications published a model study that followed the link all the way from shelf to sickbed in one case: malaria, one of those beneath-the-radar diseases, affecting some 230 million and killing 400,000 per year, the vast majority in rainforest biomes. Deforestation is a boost for the mosquito vectors. More sunlight reaches the soil where the larvae develop; when biodiversity retreats, fewer animals prey on them. Nigeria suffers most from malaria due to deforestation. It is largely caused by the export of timber and cocoa. Such commodities end up in the north: consumers with the greatest malaria footprint are the cocoa-guzzling Dutch and Belgians, Swiss and Germans. 'In this unequal value chain, ecosystem degradation and malaria risk are borne by low-income producers' - or, in plainer terms: the Europeans get the chocolate and the profits, the Africans the mosquitos.

I find it impossible, therefore, to imagine a growing and maturing church or individual Christian doing without the Psalms. And that is why (to be frank) a fair amount of contemporary Christian music has worried me for some time. The last generation in the Western churches has seen an enormous explosion in “Christian music,” with hundreds of new songs written and sung, often with great devotion and energy. That is wonderful; like all new movements, it will no doubt need to shake down and sift out the wheat from the chaff, but one would much rather have all these new signs of life than the sterile repetition of stale traditions. Until very recently, though, the kind of traditions from which this new music has emerged, traditions that think of themselves as “biblical,” after all, would always have included solid doses of psalmody. If that has changed, the sooner it changes back the better, with, of course, all the resources of fresh musical treatments upon which to draw. To worship without using the Psalms is to risk planting seeds that will never take root.

The courtship continued through January 2000, causing Musk to postpone his honeymoon with Justine. Michael Moritz, X.com’s primary investor, arranged a meeting of the two camps in his Sand Hill Road office. Thiel got a ride with Musk in his McLaren. “So, what can this car do?” Thiel asked. “Watch this,” Musk replied, pulling into the fast lane and flooring the accelerator. The rear axle broke and the car spun around, hit an embankment, and flew in the air like a flying saucer. Parts of the body shredded. Thiel, a practicing libertarian, was not wearing a seatbelt, but he emerged unscathed. He was able to hitch a ride up to the Sequoia offices. Musk, also unhurt, stayed behind for a half-hour to have his car towed away, then joined the meeting without telling Harris what had happened. Later, Musk was able to laugh and say, “At least it showed Peter I was unafraid of risks.” Says Thiel, “Yeah, I realized he was a bit crazy.” Musk remained resistant to a merger. Even though both companies had about 200,000 customers signed up to make electronic payments on eBay, he believed that X.com was a more valuable company because it offered a broader array of banking services.

When we risk being open, vulnerable and honest about our struggles and our joys, the fullness of who we are emerges and connects us to one another at a profound, authentic level. Sharing our stories allows us to take the risk of coming out from behind masks that separate us from one another and from ourselves. Experience has taught me that the pattern of hiding behind masks and disconnecting from authentically engaging in life is at the root of some of our greatest struggles in the times in which we live. We are experiencing an epidemic of loneliness rooted in the destructive powers of judgment, shame, blame and guilt. We are experiencing a culture that is numb to some of the deepest travesties of human history as we sooth ourselves with over-consumption of things, addictive substances and repeated mindless patterns. Too often, we are cut off from the roots of meaning at the core of our being as we strive to survive by fulfilling shallow expectations, rather than allowing ourselves to be nourished by the rich of wisdom and the vision of collaboration that is deep within us. Sharing our stories connects us at the deep level of our profound longing for community, creativity, compassion and acceptance.

Reason No. 1. Overcoming the fear of losing money. I have never met anyone who really likes losing money. And in all my years, I have never met a rich person who has never lost money. But I have met a lot of poor people who have never lost a dime. . .investing, that is. The fear of losing money is real. Everyone has it. Even the rich. But it's not fear that is the problem. It's how you handle fear. It's how you handle losing. It's how you handle failure that makes the difference in one's life. That goes for anything in life, not just money. The primary difference between a rich person and a poor person is how they handle that fear. It's OK to be fearful. It's OK to be a coward when it comes to money. You can still be rich. We're all heroes at something and cowards at something else. My friend's wife is an emergency room nurse. When ; she sees blood, she flies into action. When I mention investing, she runs'j away. When I see blood, I don't run. I pass out. My rich dad understood phobias about money. "Some people are terrified of snakes. Some people are terrified about losing money. Both are phobias," he would say. So his solution to the phobia of losing money was this little rhyme: "If you hate risk and worry. . .start early.

A man approached me and asked if he could sit next to me on the dock. I shrugged my shoulders. Apparently, he had been at the bar the night before and was concerned by what he had witnessed. More importantly, this complete stranger took the time to say something. He remarked that I seemed lost. I simply nodded as the tears began to pour down my checks. It was the first time I had cried in many years. He spoke about how our lives are like the boats we could see on the water. That we all need to orient toward a point on the horizon or we will hopelessly drift. He suggested that it was time for me to realize that I was here for a purpose. I listened and felt a tender release of my pain. He continued to speak about finding a balance between risk and safety. Too much risk sets us back. Too much safety and we can’t progress forward. It is remarkable how one courageous conversation can save a life. I never found out who this man by the ocean was and never saw him again. However, he helped me to discover an inner compass that would eventually help me come back to my true north. With time, therapy helped me gain traction and create more stability. Although my path forward wasn’t completely straight and narrow, I slowly began to emerge with greater confidence and hope.

Old Hubert must have had a premonition of his squalid demise. In October he said to me, ‘Forty-two years I’ve had this place. I’d really like to go back home, but I ain’t got the energy since my old girl died. And I can’t sell it the way it is now. But anyway before I hang my hat up I’d be curious to know what’s in that third cellar of mine.’ The third cellar has been walled up by order of the civil defence authorities after the floods of 1910. A double barrier of cemented bricks prevents the rising waters from invading the upper floors when flooding occurs. In the event of storms or blocked drains, the cellar acts as a regulatory overflow. The weather was fine: no risk of drowning or any sudden emergency. There were five of us: Hubert, Gerard the painter, two regulars and myself. Old Marteau, the local builder, was upstairs with his gear, ready to repair the damage. We made a hole. Our exploration took us sixty metres down a laboriously-faced vaulted corridor (it must have been an old thoroughfare). We were wading through a disgusting sludge. At the far end, an impassable barrier of iron bars. The corridor continued beyond it, plunging downwards. In short, it was a kind of drain-trap. That’s all. Nothing else. Disappointed, we retraced our steps. Old Hubert scanned the walls with his electric torch. Look! An opening. No, an alcove, with some wooden object that looks like a black statuette. I pick the thing up: it’s easily removable. I stick it under my arm. I told Hubert, ‘It’s of no interest. . .’ and kept this treasure for myself. I gazed at it for hours on end, in private. So my deductions, my hunches were not mistaken: the Bièvre-Seine confluence was once the site where sorcerers and satanists must surely have gathered. And this kind of primitive magic, which the blacks of Central Africa practise today, was known here several centuries ago. The statuette had miraculously survived the onslaught of time: the well-known virtues of the waters of the Bièvre, so rich in tannin, had protected the wood from rotting, actually hardened, almost fossilized it. The object answered a purpose that was anything but aesthetic. Crudely carved, probably from heart of oak. The legs were slightly set apart, the arms detached from the body. No indication of gender. Four nails set in a triangle were planted in its chest. Two of them, corroded with rust, broke off at the wood’s surface all on their own. There was a spike sunk in each eye. The skull, like a salt cellar, had twenty-four holes in which little tufts of brown hair had been planted, fixed in place with wax, of which there were still some vestiges. I’ve kept quiet about my find. I’m biding my time.

After more than twenty years as a transactional trader and businessman in what I called the “strange profession,” I tried what one calls an academic career. And I have something to report—actually that was the driver behind this idea of antifragility in life and the dichotomy between the natural and the alienation of the unnatural. Commerce is fun, thrilling, lively, and natural; academia as currently professionalized is none of these. And for those who think that academia is “quieter” and an emotionally relaxing transition after the volatile and risk-taking business life, a surprise: when in action, new problems and scares emerge every day to displace and eliminate the previous day’s headaches, resentments, and conflicts. A nail displaces another nail, with astonishing variety. But academics (particularly in social science) seem to distrust each other; they live in petty obsessions, envy, and icy-cold hatreds, with small snubs developing into grudges, fossilized over time in the loneliness of the transaction with a computer screen and the immutability of their environment. Not to mention a level of envy I have almost never seen in business. … My experience is that money and transactions purify relations; ideas and abstract matters like “recognition” and “credit” warp them, creating an atmosphere of perpetual rivalry. I grew to find people greedy for credentials nauseating, repulsive, and untrustworthy.

The erosion of trust in public school systems has had catastrophic consequences, and will take decades to put right. As we’ve seen, attempts to make schools ‘more accountable’ for their test scores leave teachers torn between what psychologist Barry Schwartz calls ‘doing the right thing and doing the required thing’. The right thing is to teach students through personalised, flexible methods, according to their needs, interests and aspirations; the required thing is to ‘turnaround’ test scores, by ‘teaching to the test’ or, worse, ‘gaming’ the system.  Successive US federal administrations have sought to improve school standards through high accountability. The pressure this puts upon schools at risk of closure and teachers – with test scores linked to pay rates – is intense. During 2011/12 a series of allegations emerged of inner-city schools in New York, Washington DC, Atlanta and Philadelphia ‘cheating’ on student test scores in order to hit accountability targets. Undoubtedly a case of fear producing wrong figures. The result of doing the required thing, above the right thing, is what Schwartz describes as a ‘de-moral-ised’ profession. The double tragedy is that, in addition to the pressure put on teachers – 50 percent of new teachers in the US leave the profession within their first five years – there’s growing evidence that the over-reliance on standardised testing fails to improve academic learning anyway.

As we mature we progressively narrow the scope and variety of our lives. Of all the interests we might pursue, we settle on a few. Of all the people with whom we might associate, we select a small number. We become caught in a web of fixed relationships. We develop set ways of doing things. "As the years go by we view our familiar surroundings with less and less freshness of perception. We no longer look with a wakeful, perceiving eye at the faces of people we see every day, nor at any other features of our everyday world. "It is not unusual to find that the major changes in life-a marriage, a move to a new city, a change of jobs, or a national emergency-break the patterns of our lives and reveal to us quite suddenly how much we had been imprisoned by the comfortable web we had woven around ourselves. "One of the reasons why mature people are apt to learn less than young people is that they are willing to risk less. Learning is a risky business, and they do not like failure. In infancy, when the child is learning at a truly phenomenal rate-a rate he or she will never again achieve-he or she is also experiencing a shattering number of failures. Watch him or her. See the innumerable things he or she tries and fails. And see how little the failures discourage him or her. "With each year that passes he or she will be less blithe about failure. By adolescence the willingness of young people to risk failure has diminished greatly. And all too often parents push them further along that road by instilling fear, by punishing failure, or by making success seem too precious.

Despite our attachment to the notion of free will, most of us know that disorders of the brain can trump the best intentions of the mind. This shift in understanding represents progress toward a deeper, more consistent, and more compassionate view of our common humanity—and we should note that this is progress away from religious metaphysics. Few concepts have offered greater scope for human cruelty than the idea of an immortal soul that stands independent of all material influences, ranging from genes to economic systems. Within a religious framework, a belief in free will supports the notion of sin—which seems to justify not only harsh punishment in this life but eternal punishment in the next. And yet, ironically, one of the fears attending our progress in science is that a more complete understanding of ourselves will dehumanize us. Viewing human beings as natural phenomena need not damage our system of criminal justice. If we could incarcerate earthquakes and hurricanes for their crimes, we would build prisons for them as well. We fight emerging epidemics—and even the occasional wild animal—without attributing free will to them. Clearly, we can respond intelligently to the threat posed by dangerous people without lying to ourselves about the ultimate origins of human behavior. We will still need a criminal justice system that attempts to accurately assess guilt and innocence along with the future risks that the guilty pose to society. But the logic of punishing people will come undone—unless we find that punishment is an essential component of deterrence or rehabilitation.

win. I thought the bureaucrats who had overseen the Emergency Rental Assistance program deserved a parade. They had to settle for scattered applause. When the ERA program was sputtering in the unsteady early days, it seemed that everyone was writing and tweeting about it. Later, when the rollout was working, it was ignored. Because journalists and pundits and social influencers did not celebrate the program, ERA garnered few champions in Washington. Elected leaders learned that they could direct serious federal resources to fighting evictions, make a real dent in the problem, and reap little credit for it. So, the Emergency Rental Assistance program became a temporary program, and we returned to normal, to a society where seven eviction filings are issued every minute.[31] Imagine if we had met the results of the ERA program with loud cheers. Imagine if we had taken to social media and gushed over what a difference it had made. Imagine if newspapers had run headlines that read, “Biden Administration Passes Most Important Eviction Prevention Measure in American History.” Imagine if we’d worked together to ensure that the low eviction regime established during the pandemic became the new normal. But we chose to shrug instead. Poor renters in the future will pay for this, as will the Democratic Party, incessantly blamed for having a “messaging problem” when perhaps the matter is that liberals have a despondency problem: fluent in the language of grievance and bumbling in the language of repair. Meaningful, tangible change had arrived, and we couldn’t see it. When we refuse to recognize what works, we risk swallowing the lie that nothing does.

Dr. Lydia Ciarallo in the Department of Pediatrics, Brown University School of Medicine, treated thirty-one asthma patients ages six to eighteen who were deteriorating on conventional treatments. One group was given magnesium sulfate and another group was given saline solution, both intravenously. At fifty minutes the magnesium group had a significantly greater percentage of improvement in lung function, and more magnesium patients than placebo patients were discharged from the emergency department and did not need hospitalization.4 Another study showed a correlation between intracellular magnesium levels and airway spasm. The investigators found that patients who had low cellular magnesium levels had increased bronchial spasm. This finding confirmed not only that magnesium was useful in the treatment of asthma by dilating the bronchial tubes but that lack of magnesium was probably a cause of this condition.5 A team of researchers identified magnesium deficiency as surprisingly common, finding it in 65 percent of an intensive-care population of asthmatics and in 11 percent of an outpatient asthma population. They supported the use of magnesium to help prevent asthma attacks. Magnesium has several antiasthmatic actions. As a calcium antagonist, it relaxes airways and smooth muscles and dilates the lungs. It also reduces airway inflammation, inhibits chemicals that cause spasm, and increases anti-inflammatory substances such as nitric oxide.6 The same study established that a lower dietary magnesium intake was associated with impaired lung function, bronchial hyperreactivity, and an increased risk of wheezing. The study included 2,633 randomly selected adults ages eighteen to seventy. Dietary magnesium intake was calculated by a food frequency questionnaire, and lung function and allergic tendency were evaluated. The investigators concluded that low magnesium intake may be involved in the development of both asthma and chronic obstructive airway disease.

Weaknesses in claims about self-esteem have been evident for a long time. In California in the late 1980s, the state governor set up a special taskforce to examine politician John Vasconcellos’s claim that boosting young people’s self-esteem would prevent a range of societal problems (see chapter 1). One of its briefs was to review the relevant literature and assess whether there was support for this new approach. An author of the resulting report wrote in the introduction that ‘one of the disappointing aspects of every chapter in this volume … is how low the associations between self-esteem and its [presumed] consequences are in research to date.’1 Unfortunately, this early expression of concern was largely ignored. Carol Craig reviews more recent warnings about the self-esteem movement in an online article ‘A short history of self-esteem’, citing the research of five professors of psychology. Craig’s article and related documents are worth reading if you are interested in exploring this issue in depth.2 The following is my summary of her key conclusions about self-esteem:        •   There is no evidence that self-image enhancing techniques, aimed at boosting self-esteem directly, foster improvements in objectively measured ‘performance’.        •   Many people who consider themselves to have high self-esteem tend to grossly overestimate their own abilities, as assessed by objective tests of their performance, and may be insulted and threatened whenever anyone asserts otherwise.        •   Low self-esteem is not a risk factor for educational problems, or problems such as violence, bullying, delinquency, racism, drug-taking or alcohol abuse.        •   Obsession with self-esteem has contributed to an ‘epidemic of depression’ and is undermining the life skills and resilience of young people.        •   Attempts to boost self-esteem are encouraging narcissism and a sense of entitlement.        •   The pursuit of self-esteem has considerable costs and may undermine the wellbeing of both individuals and societies. Some of these findings were brought to wider public attention in an article entitled ‘The trouble with self-esteem’, written by psychologist Lauren Slater, which appeared in The New York Times in 2002.3 Related articles, far too many to mention individually in this book, have emerged, alongside many books in which authors express their concerns about various aspects of the myth of self-esteem.4 There is particular concern about what we are doing to our children.

He ran long at the White House, and arrived late to his next meeting with Hillary Clinton, Jake Sullivan and Frank Ruggiero—their first major strategy session on Taliban talks after the secret meeting with A-Rod. She was waiting in her outer office, a spacious room paneled in white and gilt wood, with tasseled blue and pink curtains and an array of colorfully upholstered chairs and couches. In my time reporting to her later, I only ever saw Clinton take the couch, with guests of honor in the large chair kitty-corner to her. She’d left it open for him that day. “He came rushing in. . . . ” Clinton later said. “And, you know, he was saying ‘oh I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.’ ” He sat down heavily and shrugged off his coat, rattling off a litany of his latest meetings, including his stop-in at the White House. “That was typical Richard. It was, like, ‘I’m doing a million things and I’m trying to keep all the balls in the air,’ ” she remembered. As he was talking, a “scarlet red” flush went up his face, according to Clinton. He pressed his hands over his eyes, his chest heaving. “Richard, what’s the matter?” Clinton asked. “Something horrible is happening,” he said. A few minutes later, Holbrooke was in an ambulance, strapped to a gurney, headed to nearby George Washington University Hospital, where Clinton had told her own internist to prepare the emergency room. In his typically brash style, he’d demanded that the ambulance take him to the more distant Sibley Memorial Hospital. Clinton overruled him. One of our deputies on the SRAP team, Dan Feldman, rode with him and held his hand. Feldman didn’t have his BlackBerry, so he scrawled notes on a State Department expense form for a dinner at Meiwah Restaurant as Holbrooke dictated messages and a doctor assessed him. The notes are a nonlinear stream of Holbrooke’s indomitable personality, slashed through with medical realities. “Call Eric in Axelrod’s office,” the first read. Nearby: “aortic dissection—type A . . . operation risk @ > 50 percent”—that would be chance of death. A series of messages for people in his life, again interrupted by his deteriorating condition: “S”—Secretary Clinton—“why always together for medical crises?” (The year before, he’d been with Clinton when she fell to the concrete floor of the State Department garage, fracturing her elbow.) “Kids—how much love them + stepkids” . . . “best staff ever” . . . “don’t let him die here” . . . “vascular surgery” . . . “no flow, no feeling legs” . . . “clot” . . . and then, again: “don’t let him die here want to die at home w/ his fam.” The seriousness of the situation fully dawning on him, Holbrooke turned to job succession: “Tell Frank”—Ruggiero—“he’s acting.” And finally: “I love so many people . . . I have a lot left to do . . . my career in public service is over.” Holbrooke cracked wise until they put him under for surgery. “Get me anything you need,” he demanded. “A pig’s heart. Dan’s heart.

Almost no one—not even the police officers who deal with it every day, not even most psychiatrists—publicly connects marijuana and crime. We all know alcohol causes violence, but somehow, we have grown to believe that marijuana does not, that centuries of experience were a myth. As a pediatrician wrote in a 2015 piece for the New York Times in which he argued that marijuana was safer for his teenage children than alcohol: “People who are high are not committing violence.” But they are. Almost unnoticed, the studies have piled up. On murderers in Pittsburgh, on psychiatric patients in Italy, on tourists in Spain, on emergency room patients in Michigan. Most weren’t even designed to look for a connection between marijuana and violence, because no one thought one existed. Yet they found it. In many cases, they have even found marijuana’s tendency to cause violence is greater than that of alcohol. A 2018 study of people with psychosis in Switzerland found that almost half of cannabis users became violent over a three-year period; their risk of violence was four times that of psychotic people who didn’t use. (Alcohol didn’t seem to increase violence in this group at all.) The effect is not confined to people with preexisting psychosis. A 2012 study of 12,000 high school students across the United States showed that those who used cannabis were more than three times as likely to become violent as those who didn’t, surpassing the risk of alcohol use. Even worse, studies of children who have died from abuse and neglect consistently show that the adults responsible for their deaths use marijuana far more frequently than alcohol or other drugs—and far, far more than the general population. Marijuana does not necessarily cause all those crimes, but the link is striking and large. We shouldn’t be surprised. The violence that drinking causes is largely predictable. Alcohol intoxicates. It disinhibits users. It escalates conflict. It turns arguments into fights, fights into assaults, assaults into murders. Marijuana is an intoxicant that can disinhibit users, too. And though it sends many people into a relaxed haze, it also frequently causes paranoia and psychosis. Sometimes those are short-term episodes in healthy people. Sometimes they are months-long spirals in people with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. And paranoia and psychosis cause violence. The psychiatrists who treated Raina Thaiday spoke of the terror she suffered, and they weren’t exaggerating. Imagine voices no one else can hear screaming at you. Imagine fearing your food is poisoned or aliens have put a chip in your brain. When that terror becomes too much, some people with psychosis snap. But when they break, they don’t escalate in predictable ways. They take hammers to their families. They decide their friends are devils and shoot them. They push strangers in front of trains. The homeless man mumbling about God frightens us because we don’t have to be experts on mental illness and violence to know instinctively that untreated psychosis is dangerous. And finding violence and homicides connected to marijuana is all too easy.

Market-driven economic growth never distributes its material rewards with mathematical equality. Economic incentives and disincentives spur hard work, innovation and risk-taking.

Then one day, Walter looked Ruth in the eye and abruptly announced that he was going to become an actor. He joined a generation of World War I veterans who, failing to make a killing in real estate, ended up working as extras in the film industry. Indeed, they arrived by the busload and trainload, according to Anthony Slide in Hollywood Unknowns: A History of Extras, “Bit” Players, and Stand-Ins. It was a hard life for most extras, who were lucky to get a day’s employment in a crowd scene and suffered the embittering experience of serving as observers of the lavish wealth that surrounded them. They were rather like indentured servants, their prospects of emerging as even bit players—let alone as character actors or stars—seemed exceedingly doubtful. But a few, including Walter Brennan, loved the speculative and sporting atmosphere of Los Angeles in the 1920s, and endured the boom-and-bust cycles that broke the spirit of many men and women. A lifelong conservative, Brennan never questioned the nature of such an economy. He seemed to thrive on risk and to enjoy the company of other risk takers.

This apt metaphor of a pyramid helps illustrate that Gagarin’s life was full of contradictions. He was an ambitious and competitive individual, acutely aware that the central achievement of his life was based on the efforts of many others who were not even permitted to reveal their names, let alone share in his public glory. He was a peasant boy at ease with complex engineering equations; a programmed technician who could think for himself; a loyal member of a conformist society who rebelled against the system. He was impetuous, occasionally thoughtless, yet highly disciplined in his work and responsible towards others, often at great risk to himself. He knew little of politics, while displaying a remarkable knack for diplomacy, both at home and abroad. He was an adulterer who never really betrayed his wife and family. As all these conflicting elements of his life intermingle, the story that emerges is one of an essentially decent and brave man giving his best in extraordinary circumstances.

Initially working out of our home in Northern California, with a garage-based lab, I wrote a one page letter introducing myself and what we had and posted it to the CEOs of twenty-two Fortune 500 companies. Within a couple of weeks, we had received seventeen responses, with invitations to meetings and referrals to heads of engineering departments. I met with those CEOs or their deputies and received an enthusiastic response from almost every individual. There was also strong interest from engineers given the task of interfacing with us. However, support from their senior engineering and product development managers was less forthcoming. We learned that many of the big companies we had approached were no longer manufacturers themselves but assemblers of components or were value-added reseller companies, who put their famous names on systems that other original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) had built. That didn't daunt us, though when helpful VPs of engineering at top-of-the-food-chain companies referred us to their suppliers, we found that many had little or no R & D capacity, were unwilling to take a risk on outside ideas, or had no room in their already stripped-down budgets for innovation. Our designs found nowhere to land. It became clear that we needed to build actual products and create an apples-to-apples comparison before we could interest potential manufacturing customers. Where to start? We created a matrix of the product areas that we believed PAX could impact and identified more than five hundred distinct market sectors-with potentially hundreds of thousands of products that we could improve. We had to focus. After analysis that included the size of the addressable market, ease of access, the cost and time it would take to develop working prototypes, the certifications and metrics of the various industries, the need for energy efficiency in the sector, and so on, we prioritized the list to fans, mixers, pumps, and propellers. We began hand-making prototypes as comparisons to existing, leading products. By this time, we were raising working capital from angel investors. It's important to note that this was during the first half of the last decade. The tragedy of September 11, 2001, and ensuing military actions had the world's attention. Clean tech and green tech were just emerging as terms, and energy efficiency was still more of a slogan than a driver for industry. The dot-com boom had busted. We'd researched venture capital firms in the late 1990s and found only seven in the United States investing in mechanical engineering inventions. These tended to be expansion-stage investors that didn't match our phase of development. Still, we were close to the famous Silicon Valley and had a few comical conversations with venture capitalists who said they'd be interested in investing-if we could turn our technology into a website. Instead, every six months or so, we drew up a budget for the following six months. Via a growing network of forward-thinking private investors who could see the looming need for dramatic changes in energy efficiency and the performance results of our prototypes compared to currently marketed products, we funded the next phase of research and business development.

Heart attack is a window on the effects of class on health. The risk factors—smoking, poor diet, inactivity, obesity, hypertension, high cholesterol, and stress—are all more common among the less educated and less affluent, the same group that research has shown is less likely to receive cardiopulmonary resuscitation, to get emergency room care, or to adhere to lifestyle changes after heart attacks.

Indeed, today there is an enormous danger that the Left has lost the ability to offer a genuinely useful critique of America’s emerging role and has degenerated into what is dangerously close to a full-fledged fantasy ideology. The danger here is the danger that arises with any criticism that has become too obviously tendentious or even merely spiteful: it stops being listened to. Under the present circumstances, this is a risk that the Left has been running more and more, both in America and in the world community, with the result that the culture war threatens to position the American academic Left not as a constructive critic, or even as a usefully carping one, but rather as an outright enemy. This was apparent both before, during, and after the Iraq war, so strikingly that it even led one liberal Left critic to write an astonishing article, in which he confessed to the Schadenfreude he felt at each apparent hint of a prospective disaster for the forces of his own country, made up of his fellow citizens. The problem with this reaction is that it represents a radical imbalance in our civic ecology: if criticism is to push in the right direction, it must not seem to be coming from those who have absolutely nothing in common with us. When the Left-wing intellectual seems to have contempt for everything that the average American holds dear, how seriously do you think his advice will be taken? That is why the intellectual, conservative, liberal, or radical, must submit his own “natural” point of view to the same kind of critique that Marxists have traditionally applied to all other forms of ideological distortion and disguise. For it is not only our economic class that colors how we see the world, but our particular vocation within that class.

The five stages of model development. —Donald Knuth, Stanford computer scientist Knuth discovered that computer program development goes through five stages. These steps also apply to building models, and I rigorously adhere to them in my consulting work. 1. Decide what you want the model to do. 2. Decide how to build the model. 3. Build the model. 4. Debug the model. 5. Trash stages 1 through 4 and start again, now that you know what you really wanted in the first place. Once you realize that step 5 is inevitable, you become more willing to discard bad models early rather than continually to patch them up. In fact, I recommend getting to step 5 many times by building an evolving set of prototypes. This is consistent with an emerging style of system development known as Extreme Programming.2 To get a large model to work you must start with a small model that works, not a large model that doesn’t work. —Alan Manne, Stanford energy economist

I do think we’re at a turning point. The question is how strong and permanent this recovery will be,” he noted. But while these external factors are helping Italy emerge from economic decline, others — mainly events in Greece and Ukraine — could spoil any momentum and plunge the eurozone’s third-largest economy back into the doldrums. “We are definitely concerned, I see all the elements for a moderate recovery [but] there are risks coming from a number of open issues in the world,” Mr Rossi said. Mr Rossi credited the European Central Bank’s recent decision to buy government debt — known as quantitative easing — with driving the likely Italian recovery, through a weaker euro, lower borrowing costs, higher confidence and portfolio shifts. He estimated it would add about 1 percentage point to Italian gross domestic product over the next two years, but this would be in line with the rest of the eurozone — offering “no special advantage to Italy”.

At least one version of quantum theory, propounded by the Hungarian mathematician John von Neumann in the 1930's "claims that the world is built no out of bits of matter but out of bits of knowledge-subjective, conscious knowings," Stapp says. These ideas, however, have fallen far short of toppling the materialist worldview, which has emerged so triumphant that to suggest humbly that there might be more to mental life than action potentials zipping along axons is to risk being branded a scientific naif. Even worse, it is to be branded nonscientific. When, in 1997, I made just this suggestion over dinner to a former president of the Society for Neuroscience, he exlaimed, "Well, then you are not a scientist." Questioning whether consciousness, emotions, thoughts, the subjective feeling of pain, and the spark of creativity arise from nothing but the electrochemical activity of large collections of neuronal circuits is a good way to get dismissed as a hopeless dualist.

At the beginning of any new idea, the possibilities can seem infinite, and that wide-open landscape of opportunity can become a prison of anxiety and self-doubt. This is a key reason why failing fast with low-risk prototypes the way Chris Rock does is so helpful: If we haven’t invested much in developing an idea, emotionally or in terms of time or resources, then we are more likely to be able to focus on what we can learn from that effort than on what we’ve lost in making it. Prototyping is one of the most effective ways to both jump-start our thinking and to guide, inspire, and discipline an experimental approach.

Improvisational techniques, therefore, can free us up from the risk aversion and emphasis on rigid procedures that predominate so many workplaces. One company that has made extensive use of these core techniques in its daily operations is Pixar. Throughout the Pixar creative process, they rely heavily on what they call plussing; it is likely the most-used concept around the company. The point of plussing is to build upon and improve ideas without using judgmental language. Creating an atmosphere where ideas are constantly being plussed, while maintaining a sense of humor and playfulness, is a central element of Pixar’s magic. The practice of plussing draws upon those core principles from improvisation: accepting every offer and making your partner look good. Rather than criticize an idea in its entirety (even if they don’t think it’s good), people accept the starting point before suggesting improvements.

Research on brain development illustrates that babies are born with the biological expectation to be a part of a mutually beneficial relationship and that positive relationships are the single most important factor in healthy development.  According to Woodcock-Ross, Hooper, Stenhouse, & Sheaff (2009), “the interactional quality of early relationship experiences has a biological impact on the rapidly developing brain, alongside effects upon psychological health and social functioning” (p. 1009).  In fact, early relationships create the foundation upon which all other learning can occur.  “Each achievement – language and learning, social development, the emergence of self-regulation – occurs in the context of close relationships with others” (National Academy of Science, 2000).   Due to the importance of early relationships for optimal brain development, relational risk factors for infants in the form of unmet emotional needs or negative caregiving experiences places them at an increased risk for mental health problems (Fish & Chapman, 2004).  This risk is mitigated within the context of caring, nurturing relationships with adult caregivers.

Until researchers started measuring the effects of cell-phone distractions under controlled conditions, nobody had any idea how profoundly they can impair a driver. It’s like driving drunk. Recall that large fractions of a second are consumed every time the brain switches tasks. Cell-phone talkers are more wild in their “following distance” behind the vehicle in front of them, a half second slower to hit the brakes in emergencies, and slower to return to normal speed after an emergency. In a half second, a driver going 70 mph travels 51 feet. Given that 80 percent of crashes happen within three seconds of some kind of driver distraction, increasing your amount of task switching increases your risk of an accident. More than 50 percent of the visual cues spotted by attentive drivers are missed by cell-phone talkers. Not surprisingly, they get in more wrecks than anyone except very drunk drivers. Putting on makeup, eating, and rubbernecking at an accident aren’t much better. One study showed that simply reaching for an object while driving a car multiplies the risk of a crash or near-crash by nine times.

Every time you stand in line for the newest Apple product without putting money aside for emergencies, you are pursuing the wrong American dream. Every time you use credit to pay for something, knowing full well that you will pay interest on it, you are risking your financial future and condemning yourself to a lifestyle that is worse than what your paycheck could provide.

Another factor contributing to a new associate’s willingness to work long hours is that it’s the price you pay to get interesting work with significant responsibility. Large firms just won’t entrust you with important matters before you’ve had a lot of quality experiences and exhibited a sufficient level of dedication. Frankly, to large firms the word “dedication” has just one, hidden meaning: “tremendous personal sacrifices.” Cruel as it seems, as a new associate you have to decide at some point what your priorities are: your career, or your personal and family life. If you choose your life outside of work, you’ll find yourself rejecting additional work, and your reluctance to accept it will brand you as “lacking dedication” – and your career will suffer accordingly. Clients also contribute directly to the massive hours new associates have to work, by making demands for legal services that require immediate attention. You may have a client, for instance, who needs you to move for a temporary restraining order (“TRO”) on its behalf. Or a client may ask you to substantially revise a brief shortly before a court deadline. With emergencies like these, you have to work hard, and you’ve got to work right now – and that can have a devastating effect on your personal and family life. You may be called upon at a moment’s notice to cancel evening or weekend social plans you might have made, vacations you’ve long anticipated, and even holiday celebrations. Life at a large firm means learning to accept these incidents as occupational risks.

In one set of experiments, for example, researchers affiliated with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism trained mice to press levers in response to certain cues until the behavior became a habit. The mice were always rewarded with food. Then, the scientists poisoned the food so that it made the animals violently ill, or electrified the floor, so that when the mice walked toward their reward they received a shock. The mice knew the food and cage were dangerous—when they were offered the poisoned pellets in a bowl or saw the electrified floor panels, they stayed away. When they saw their old cues, however, they unthinkingly pressed the lever and ate the food, or they walked across the floor, even as they vomited or jumped from the electricity. The habit was so ingrained the mice couldn’t stop themselves.1.23 It’s not hard to find an analog in the human world. Consider fast food, for instance. It makes sense—when the kids are starving and you’re driving home after a long day—to stop, just this once, at McDonald’s or Burger King. The meals are inexpensive. It tastes so good. After all, one dose of processed meat, salty fries, and sugary soda poses a relatively small health risk, right? It’s not like you do it all the time. But habits emerge without our permission. Studies indicate that families usually don’t intend to eat fast food on a regular basis. What happens is that a once a month pattern slowly becomes once a week, and then twice a week—as the cues and rewards create a habit—until the kids are consuming an unhealthy amount of hamburgers and fries. When researchers at the University of North Texas and Yale tried to understand why families gradually increased their fast food consumption, they found a series of cues and rewards that most customers never knew were influencing their behaviors.1.24 They discovered the habit loop. Every McDonald’s, for instance, looks the same—the company deliberately tries to standardize stores’ architecture and what employees say to customers, so everything is a consistent cue to trigger eating routines. The foods at some chains are specifically engineered to deliver immediate rewards—the fries, for instance, are designed to begin disintegrating the moment they hit your tongue, in order to deliver a hit of salt and grease as fast as possible, causing your pleasure centers to light up and your brain to lock in the pattern. All the better for tightening the habit loop.1.25 However, even these habits are delicate. When a fast food restaurant closes down, the families that previously ate there will often start having dinner at home, rather than seek out an alternative location. Even small shifts can end the pattern. But since we often don’t recognize these habit loops as they grow, we are blind to our ability to control them. By learning to observe the cues and rewards, though, we can change the routines.

Pete has a few methods he uses to help manage people through the fears brought on by pre-production chaos. “Sometimes in meetings, I sense people seizing up, not wanting to even talk about changes,” he says. “So I try to trick them. I’ll say, ‘This would be a big change if we were really going to do it, but just as a thought exercise, what if …’ Or, ‘I’m not actually suggesting this, but go with me for a minute …’ If people anticipate the production pressures, they’ll close the door to new ideas—so you have to pretend you’re not actually going to do anything, we’re just talking, just playing around. Then if you hit upon some new idea that clearly works, people are excited about it and are happier to act on the change.” Another trick is to encourage people to play. “Some of the best ideas come out of joking around, which only comes when you (or the boss) give yourself permission to do it,” Pete says. “It can feel like a waste of time to watch YouTube videos or to tell stories of what happened last weekend, but it can actually be very productive in the long run. I’ve heard some people describe creativity as ‘unexpected connections between unrelated concepts or ideas.’ If that’s at all true, you have to be in a certain mindset to make those connections. So when I sense we’re getting nowhere, I just shut things down. We all go off to something else. Later, once the mood has shifted, I’ll attack the problem again.” This idea—that change is our friend because only from struggle does clarity emerge—makes many people uncomfortable, and I understand why. Whether you’re coming up with a fashion line or an ad campaign or a car design, the creative process is an expensive undertaking, and blind alleys and unforeseen snafus inevitably drive up your costs. The stakes are so high, and the crises that pop up can be so unpredictable, that we try to exert control. The potential cost of failure appears far more damaging than that of micromanaging. But if we shun such necessary investment—tightening up controls because we fear the risk of being exposed for having made a bad bet—we become the kind of rigid thinkers and managers who impede creativity.

tying the laces. The bottom line was that Grandpa would have been willing to risk his life on the gamble that the shadows of Tanu and Coulter meant to offer meaningful assistance. He would have followed them if he could have done so alone. He simply was not willing to risk Seth’s life. To Seth, this proved that the risk was worth taking. If Grandpa loved him too much to let him take a worthwhile risk, then he would bypass Grandpa. Shoes secure, Seth slid his emergency kit out from under the bed. Then he tiptoed down the attic stairs, flinching at every creak. At the bottom of the steps the house remained dark and quiet. Seth hurried along the hall and down the stairs to the entry hall. He stole into Grandpa’s study, tugged a chain to turn on a desk lamp, and rummaged through Tanu’s bag of potions. After examining several bottles, Seth found the one he wanted, grabbed it, and closed the bag.