Estimate Best Quotes

THE BEST WAY TO FOOL SOMEONE, in Vin’s estimation, was to give them what they wanted. Or, at the very least, what they expected. As long as they assumed that they were one step ahead, they wouldn’t look back to see if there were any steps that they’d completely missed.

At its best fashion is a game. But for women it's a compulsory game, like net ball, and you can't get out of it by faking your period. I know I have tried. And so for a woman every outfit is a hopeful spell, cast to influence the outcome of the day. An act of trying to predict your fate, like looking at your horoscope. No wonder there are so many fashion magazines. No wonder the fashion industry is worth an estimated 900 billion dollars a year. No wonder every woman's first thought is, for nearly every event in her life, be it work, snow or birth. The semi-despairing cry of "but what will I wear?" Because when a woman says I have nothing to wear, what she really means is there is nothing here for who I am supposed to be today.

I just make the best book that I can and try to not worry about audience or if it will sell. The odds are against you, so why abuse your talent for the sake of a chimera? The only real pleasure for me in writing comes from pleasing myself. What readers think is interesting and illuminating (and it may even be correct), but that is nothing compared to the excitement of seeing a world develop. Besides, even though I like most individuals I meet, I have a pretty low opinion of people in general. So if I were to write for people in general, I would have to drastically lower my estimation of the intelligence of my reader. Rather than doing that, I write the way it seems the book has to appear. I don’t think that’s egotistic. There are often things I would like to include in my books—things about me personally and other materials—that I feel I have to leave out because they aren’t relevant to the book. I’m fairly ruthless along those lines, because I try to let nothing come in the way of what’s best for the book. If that means that the book won’t sell or that a publisher won’t buy it, then that’s my problem. I’ll suffer for that, but I won’t let the book suffer for it.

If you are distressed about anything, the pain is not due to the thing but to your own estimate of it.

They that have beauty, let them be thankful for it, and make a good use of it, like any other talent; they that have it not, let them console themselves, and do the best they can without it: certainly, though liable to be over-estimated, it is a gift of God, and not to be despised. 

While an author is yet living we estimate his powers by his worst performance, and when he is dead we rate them by his best.

Predicting the stock market is really predicting how other investors will change estimates they are now making with all their best efforts. This means that, for a market forecaster to be right, the consensus of all others must be wrong and the forecaster must determine in which direction-up or down-the market will be moved by changes in the consensus of those same active investors.

1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger’s undisclosed reason for the ‘tilt’ was the supposed but never materialised ‘brokerage’ offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China.... Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was ‘a basket case’ before turning his unsolicited expertise elsewhere. 2. Chile.... Kissinger had direct personal knowledge of the CIA’s plan to kidnap and murder General René Schneider, the head of the Chilean Armed Forces ... who refused to countenance military intervention in politics. In his hatred for the Allende Government, Kissinger even outdid Richard Helms ... who warned him that a coup in such a stable democracy would be hard to procure. The murder of Schneider nonetheless went ahead, at Kissinger’s urging and with American financing, just between Allende’s election and his confirmation.... This was one of the relatively few times that Mr Kissinger (his success in getting people to call him ‘Doctor’ is greater than that of most PhDs) involved himself in the assassination of a single named individual rather than the slaughter of anonymous thousands. His jocular remark on this occasion—‘I don’t see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible’—suggests he may have been having the best of times.... 3. Cyprus.... Kissinger approved of the preparations by Greek Cypriot fascists for the murder of President Makarios, and sanctioned the coup which tried to extend the rule of the Athens junta (a favoured client of his) to the island. When despite great waste of life this coup failed in its objective, which was also Kissinger’s, of enforced partition, Kissinger promiscuously switched sides to support an even bloodier intervention by Turkey. Thomas Boyatt ... went to Kissinger in advance of the anti-Makarios putsch and warned him that it could lead to a civil war. ‘Spare me the civics lecture,’ replied Kissinger, who as you can readily see had an aphorism for all occasions. 4. Kurdistan. Having endorsed the covert policy of supporting a Kurdish revolt in northern Iraq between 1974 and 1975, with ‘deniable’ assistance also provided by Israel and the Shah of Iran, Kissinger made it plain to his subordinates that the Kurds were not to be allowed to win, but were to be employed for their nuisance value alone. They were not to be told that this was the case, but soon found out when the Shah and Saddam Hussein composed their differences, and American aid to Kurdistan was cut off. Hardened CIA hands went to Kissinger ... for an aid programme for the many thousands of Kurdish refugees who were thus abruptly created.... The apercu of the day was: ‘foreign policy should not he confused with missionary work.’ Saddam Hussein heartily concurred. 5. East Timor. The day after Kissinger left Djakarta in 1975, the Armed Forces of Indonesia employed American weapons to invade and subjugate the independent former Portuguese colony of East Timor. Isaacson gives a figure of 100,000 deaths resulting from the occupation, or one-seventh of the population, and there are good judges who put this estimate on the low side. Kissinger was furious when news of his own collusion was leaked, because as well as breaking international law the Indonesians were also violating an agreement with the United States.... Monroe Leigh ... pointed out this awkward latter fact. Kissinger snapped: ‘The Israelis when they go into Lebanon—when was the last time we protested that?’ A good question, even if it did not and does not lie especially well in his mouth. It goes on and on and on until one cannot eat enough to vomit enough.

The fervor and single-mindedness of this deification probably have no precedent in history. It's not like Duvalier or Assad passing the torch to the son and heir. It surpasses anything I have read about the Roman or Babylonian or even Pharaonic excesses. An estimated $2.68 billion was spent on ceremonies and monuments in the aftermath of Kim Il Sung's death. The concept is not that his son is his successor, but that his son is his reincarnation. North Korea has an equivalent of Mount Fuji—a mountain sacred to all Koreans. It's called Mount Paekdu, a beautiful peak with a deep blue lake, on the Chinese border. Here, according to the new mythology, Kim Jong Il was born on February 16, 1942. His birth was attended by a double rainbow and by songs of praise (in human voice) uttered by the local birds. In fact, in February 1942 his father and mother were hiding under Stalin's protection in the dank Russian city of Khabarovsk, but as with all miraculous births it's considered best not to allow the facts to get in the way of a good story.

Virtually all his life he had been in the position of leading groups of men, yet the truth was he had never liked groups. Men he admired for their abilities in action almost always brought themselves down in his estimation if he had to sit around and listen to them talk—or watch them drink or play cards or run off after women. Listening to men talk usually made him feel more alone than if he were a mile away by himself under a tree. He had never really been able to take part in the talk. The endless talk of cards and women made him feel more set apart—and even a little vain. If that was the best they could think of, then they were lucky they had him to lead them. It seemed immodest, but it was a thought that often came to him.

They that have beauty, let them be thankful for it, and make a good use of it, let them console themselves, and do the best they can without it: certainly, though liable to be over-estimated, it is a gift of God, and not to be despised. Many will feel this who have felt that they could love, and whose hearts tell them that they are worthy to be loved again; while yet they are debarred, by the lack of this or some such seeming trifle, from giving and receiving that happiness they seem almost made to feel and to impart. As well might the humble glowworm despise that power of giving light without which the roving fly might pass her and repass her a thousand times, and never rest beside her: she might hear her winged darling buzzing over and around her; he vainly seeking her, she longing to be found, but with no power to make her presence known, no voice to call him, no wings to follow his flight;--the fly must seek another mate, the worm must live and die alone.

Thanksgiving - fall's finale. Best damn holiday of the year in my worldly estimation.

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” –Marcus Aurelius

Le Chiffre was serving a wonderful purpose, a really vital purpose, perhaps the best and highest purpose of all. By his evil existence, which foolishly I have helped to destroy, he was creating a norm of badness by which, and by which alone, an opposite norm of goodness could exist. We were privileged, in our short knowledge of him, to see and estimate his wickedness and we emerge from the acquaintanceship better and more virtuous men.

You have become regular speech-goers, and as for action, you merely listen to accounts of it; if something is to be done in the future you estimate the possibilities by hearing a good speech on the subject, and as for the past you rely not so much on the facts which you have seen with your own eyes as on what you have heard about them in some clever piece of verbal criticism. Any novelty in an argument deceives you at once, but when the argument is tried and proved you become unwilling to follow it; you look with suspicion on what is normal and are the slaves of every paradox that comes your way. The chief wish of each one of you is to be able to make a speech himself, and, if you cannot do that, the next best thing is to compete with those who can make this sort of speech by not looking as though you were at all out of your depth while you listen to the views put forward, by applauding a good point even before it is made, and by being as quick at seeing how an argument is going to be developed as you are slow at understanding what in the end it will lead to. What you are looking for all the time is something that is, I should say, outside the range of ordinary experience, and yet you cannot even think straight about the facts of life that are before you. You are simply victims of your own pleasure in listening, and are more like an audience sitting at the feet of a professional lecturer than a parliament discussing matters of state.

No other disease, no war, no natural disaster, no famine comes close to the great pandemic. In the space of eighteen months in 1918–1919, about 500 million people, one-third of the human race at the time, came down with influenza. The exact total of lives lost will never be known. An early estimate, made in 1920, claimed 21.5 million died worldwide. Since then, researchers have been continually raising the number as they find new information. Today, the best estimate of flu deaths in 1918–1919 is between 50 million and 100 million worldwide, and probably closer to the latter figure. 7

Humans were always doing things they didn't like doing. In fact, to my best estimate, at any one time only point three percent of humans were actively doing something they liked doing, and even when they did so, they felt an intense guilt about it and were fervently promising themselves they'd be back doing something horrendously unpleasant very shortly.

But there is an unbounded pleasure to be had in the possession of a young, newly blossoming soul! It is like a flower, from which the best aroma evaporates when meeting the first ray of the sun; you must pluck it at that minute, breathing it in until you’re satisfied, and then throw it onto the road: perhaps someone will pick it up! I feel this insatiable greed, which swallows everything it meets on its way. I look at the suffering and joy of others only in their relation to me, as though it is food that supports the strength of my soul. I myself am not capable of going mad under the influence of passion. My ambition is stifled by circumstances, but it has manifested itself in another way, for ambition is nothing other than a thirst for power, and my best pleasure is to subject everyone around me to my will, to arouse feelings of love, devotion and fear of me—is this not the first sign and the greatest triumph of power? Being someone’s reason for suffering while not being in any position to claim the right—isn’t this the sweetest nourishment for our pride? And what is happiness? Sated pride. If I considered myself to be better, more powerful than everyone in the world, I would be happy. If everyone loved me, I would find endless sources of love within myself. Evil spawns evil. The first experience of torture gives an understanding of the pleasure in tormenting others. An evil idea cannot enter a person’s head without his wanting to bring it into reality: ideas are organic creations, someone once said. Their birth gives them form immediately, and this form is an action. The person in whom most ideas are born is the person who acts most. Hence a genius, riveted to his office desk, must die or lose his mind, just as a man with a powerful build who has a sedentary life and modest behavior will die from an apoplectic fit. Passions are nothing other than the first developments of an idea: they are a characteristic of the heart’s youth, and whoever thinks to worry about them his whole life long is a fool: many calm rivers begin with a noisy waterfall, but not one of them jumps and froths until the very sea. And this calm is often the sign of great, though hidden, strength. The fullness and depth of both feeling and thought will not tolerate violent upsurges. The soul, suffering and taking pleasure, takes strict account of everything and is always convinced that this is how things should be. It knows that without storms, the constant sultriness of the sun would wither it. It is infused with its own life—it fosters and punishes itself, like a child. And it is only in this higher state of self-knowledge that a person can estimate the value of divine justice.

In fact, like other personality traits, personal happiness appears to be strongly influenced by our genes. Studies of identical and fraternal twins show that identical twins are significantly more likely to exhibit the same level of happiness than are fraternal twins or other siblings. Behavior geneticists have used these studies to estimate just how much genes matter, and their best guess is that long-term happiness depends 50 percent on a person’s genetic set point, 10 percent on their circumstances (e.g., where they live, how rich they are, how healthy they are), and 40 percent on what they choose to think and do.31

In my estimation, the best course in creative writing consists of voracious transglobal reading, disrespect for authority, not paying any attention to your teachers, experiencing everything you can to the point of mental and physical damage, and drinking. That's how most of the greats did it, and how it was meant to be done.

We can’t afford to be complacent about God’s glory. The fact is that putting your Christian life on autopilot is the same thing as “walking in the flesh.” When we become unaware, when we take something so precious for granted, our prayers become tedious, witnessing becomes dry, jobs become lackluster, and relationships sag under the weight of selfishness. What’s worse, our communion with our Savior and best friend turns into a chore. The Lord Himself seems to lose vitality in our estimation; He becomes little more than a wooden icon in our hearts, a mere measuring rod for our behavior—someone who purchased our salvation once upon a time, someone in whom we believe in a general, distracted sort of way.

It is impossible to test accurately how long a severed head remains conscious, if at all. The best estimate is between five and thirteen seconds.

The current best estimate for the Earth’s weight is 5.9725 billion trillion tonnes,

upon the civilization of the world. The best one can do is to estimate, as intelligently as possible, the national characteristics of the peoples engaged,

The current best estimate for the Earth’s weight is 5.9725 billion trillion tonnes, a difference of only about 1 per cent from Cavendish’s finding.

Grim noted that Declan’s approach would kill them all in just one second, beating our own best estimate quite handily.  I told Grim to shut up.

I believe it is only prudent to make a very high estimate of human nature, first of all in order to contain the worst impulses of human nature, and then to liberate its best impulses.

Today an estimated 13 percent of birds are threatened, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. So are 25 percent of mammals and 41 percent of amphibians, in large part because of human activity. Hydropower and road construction imperil China’s giant pandas. The northern bald ibis, once abundant in the Middle East, has been driven almost to extinction by hunting, habitat loss, and the difficulties of doing conservation work in war-torn Syria. Hunting and the destruction of wetlands for agriculture drove the population of North America’s tallest bird, the whooping crane, into the teens before stringent protections along the birds’ migratory route and wintering grounds helped the wild flock build back to a few hundred. Little brown bats are dying off in the United States and Canada from a fungus that might have been imported from Europe by travelers. Of some 300 species of freshwater mussels in North America, fully 70 percent are extinct, imperiled, or vulnerable, thanks to the impacts of water pollution from logging, dams, farm runoff, and shoreline development.

THIS book is radioactive. And so are you. Unless you are dead, in which case we can tell how long ago you died by how much of your radioactivity is left. That’s what radiocarbon dating is—the measurement of the reduction of radioactivity of old bones to deduce the time of death. Alcohol is radioactive too—at least the kind we drink. Rubbing alcohol usually isn’t, unless it was made organically—that is, from wood. In fact, the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives tests wine, gin, whiskey, and vodka for radioactivity. A fifth of whiskey must emit at least 400 beta rays every minute or the drink is considered unfit for human consumption. Biofuels are radioactive. Fossil fuels are not. Of those killed by the Hiroshima atomic bomb, the best estimate is that fewer than 2% died of radiation-induced cancer. These statements are all true. They are not even disputed, at least by experts. Yet they surprise most people.

Where would the money come from? The best place to start, in my view, is with the cheaters. The IRS now estimates that the United States loses more than $1 trillion a year in unpaid taxes, most of it owing to tax avoidance by multinational corporations and wealthy families. Congress hasn’t given the agency the resources it needs to hunt down tax criminals, leaving the IRS outgunned and outmatched.

One very gratifying compliment I sometimes hear is that women want to be my best friend. This endlessly amuses my actual best friend, Jocelyn, because in her estimation I’m 'a good friend, but not that great.

The natural formation of the country is the soldier’s best ally, but a power of estimating the adversary, of controlling the forces of victory, and of shrewdly calculating difficulties, dangers, and distances, constitutes the test of a great general. He, who knows these things, and in fighting, puts his knowledge into practice, will win his battles. He, who knows them not, nor practices them, will surely be defeated.

Ask subjects to estimate the likelihood of the same events again. Adults incorporate the feedback into the new estimates. Adolescents update their estimates as adults do for good news, but feedback about bad news barely makes a dent. (Researcher: “How likely are you to have a car accident if you’re driving while drunk?” Adolescent: “One chance in a gazillion.” Researcher: “Actually, the risk is about 50 percent; what do you think your own chances are now?” Adolescent: “Hey, we’re talking about me; one chance in a gazillion.”) We’ve just explained why adolescents have two to four times the rate of pathological gambling as do adults.

There are more slaves in the world today (best estimate—27 million) than were extracted from Africa during 400 years of the transatlantic slave trade. And there are more slaves in India today than in any other country in the world.

So,’ continued Bond, warming to his argument, ‘Le Chiffre was serving a wonderful purpose, a really vital purpose, perhaps the best and highest purpose of all. By his evil existence, which foolishly I have helped to destroy, he was creating a norm of badness by which, and by which alone, an opposite norm of goodness could exist. We were privileged, in our short knowledge of him, to see and estimate his wickedness and we emerge from the acquaintanceship better and more virtuous men.

She was able enough to estimate him—she who waited on his glances with trembling, and shut her best soul in prison, paying it only hidden visits, that she might be petty enough to please him. In such a crisis as this, some women begin to hate.

No happy marriage was, in his estimation, ever based on thoughtless, automatic untruths and exclusions. And the best way to make someone unhappy, if not downright unbalanced, is to tell her that what she sees with her own eyes is not there at all.

His own parents, the estimable Gilchrists, a couple who had taken the 'till death' part of their own wedding vows so seriously he wouldn't be surprised if they one day throttled one another, had naturally wangled the next best seat in the house: row two, on the aisle.

Don't you want to preserve old things? But you can't, Anthony. Beautiful things grow to a certain height and then they fail and fade off, breathing out memories as they decay. And just as any period decays in our minds, the things of that period should decay too, and in that way they're preserved for a while in the few hearts like mine that react to them. That graveyard at Tarrytown, for instance. The asses who give money to preserve things have spoiled that too. Sleepy Hollow's gone; Washington Irving's dead and his books are rotting in our estimation year by year - then let the graveyard rot too, as it should, as all things should. Trying to preserve a century by keeping its relics up to date is like keeping a dying man alive by stimulants. So you think that just as time goes to pieces its houses ought to go too? Of course! Would you value your Keats letter if the signature was traced over to make it last longer? It's just because I love the past that I want this house to look back on its glamorous moment of youth and beauty, and I want its stars to creak as if to the footsteps of women with hoop-skirts and men in boots and spurs. But they've made it into a blondined, rouged-up old woman of sixty. It hasn't any right to look so prosperous. It might care enough for Lee to drop a brick now and then. How many of these - these animals - get anything from this, for all the histories and guide-books and restorations in existence? How many of them who think that, at best, appreciation is talking in undertones and walking on tiptoes would even come here if it was any trouble? I want it to smell of magnolias instead of peanuts and I want my shoes to crunch on the same gravel that Lee's boots crunched on. There's no beauty without poignancy and there's no poignancy without the feeling that it's going, men, names, books, houses - bound for dust - mortal-

Why Cults Terrorize and Kill Children – LLOYD DEMAUSE The Journal of Psychohistory 21 (4) 1994 "Extending these local figures to a national estimate would easily mean tens of thousands of cult victims per year reporting, plus undoubtedly more who do not report.(2) This needn’t mean, of course, that actual Cult abuse is increasing, only that-as with the increase in all child abuse reports-we have become more open to hearing them. But it seemed unlikely that the surge of cult memories could all be made up by patients or implanted by therapists. Therapists are a timid group at best, and the notion that they suddenly begin implanting false memories in tens of thousands of their clients for no apparent reason strained credulity. Certainly no one has presented a shred of evidence for massive “false memory” implantations.

One third, or even perhaps one half, of the population died. There had never been mortality on this scale, nor has there been since. At the best estimation a population of approximately 6 million was reduced to 3 million or 4 million. It remained at this level until the early sixteenth century.

Moral for psychologists. -- Not to go in for backstairs psychology. Never to observe in order to observe! That gives a false perspective, leads to squinting and something forced and exaggerated. Experience as the wish to experience does not succeed. One must not eye oneself while having an experience; else the eye becomes "an evil eye." A born psychologist guards instinctively against seeing in order to see; the same is true of the born painter. He never works "from nature"; he leaves it to his instinct, to his camera obscura, to sift through and express the "case," "nature," that which is "experienced." He is conscious only of what is general, of the conclusion, the result: he does not know arbitrary abstractions from an individual case. What happens when one proceeds differently? For example, if, in the manner of the Parisian novelists, one goes in for backstairs psychology and deals in gossip, wholesale and retail? Then one lies in wait for reality, as it were, and every evening one brings home a handful of curiosities. But note what finally comes of all this: a heap of splotches, a mosaic at best, but in any case something added together, something restless, a mess of screaming colors. The worst in this respect is accomplished by the Goncourts; they do not put three sentences together without really hurting the eye, the psychologist's eye. Nature, estimated artistically, is no model. It exaggerates, it distorts, it leaves gaps. Nature is chance. To study "from nature" seems to me to be a bad sign: it betrays submission, weakness, fatalism; this lying in the dust before petit faits [little facts] is unworthy of a whole artist. To see what is--that is the mark of another kind of spirit, the anti-artistic, the factual. One must know who one is. Toward a psychology of the artist. -- If there is to be art, if there is to be any aesthetic doing and seeing, one physiological condition is indispensable: frenzy. Frenzy must first have enhanced the excitability of the whole machine; else there is no art. All kinds of frenzy, however diversely conditioned, have the strength to accomplish this: above all, the frenzy of sexual excitement, this most ancient and original form of frenzy. Also the frenzy that follows all great cravings, all strong affects; the frenzy of feasts, contests, feats of daring, victory, all extreme movement; the frenzy of cruelty; the frenzy in destruction, the frenzy under certain meteorological influences, as for example the frenzy of spring; or under the influence of narcotics; and finally the frenzy of will, the frenzy of an overcharged and swollen will. What is essential in such frenzy is the feeling of increased strength and fullness. Out of this feeling one lends to things, one forces them to accept from us, one violates them--this process is called idealizing. Let us get rid of a prejudice here: idealizing does not consist, as is commonly held, in subtracting or discounting the petty and inconsequential. What is decisive is rather a tremendous drive to bring out the main features so that the others disappear in the process. In this state one enriches everything out of one's own fullness: whatever one sees, whatever one wills, is seen swelled, taut, strong, overloaded with strength. A man in this state transforms things until they mirror his power--until they are reflections of his perfection. This having to transform into perfection is--art. Even everything that he is not yet, becomes for him an occasion of joy in himself; in art man enjoys himself as perfection.

when it comes to the bread and butter of human misery, try a major depression. It can be life-threatening, it can destroy lives, demolish the families of sufferers. And it is dizzyingly common—the psychologist Martin Seligman has called it the common cold of psychopathology. Best estimates are that from 5 to 20 percent of us will suffer a major, incapacitating depression at some point in our lives, causing us to be hospitalized or medicated or nonfunctional for a significant length of time. Its incidence has been steadily increasing for decades—by the year 2020, depression is projected to be the second leading cause of medical disability on earth.

In France’s equatorial African territories, where the region’s history is best documented, the amount of rubber-bearing land was far less than what Leopold controlled, but the rape was just as brutal. Almost all exploitable land was divided among concession companies. Forced labor, hostages, slave chains, starving porters, burned villages, paramilitary company “sentries,” and the chicotte were the order of the day. Thousands of refugees who had fled across the Congo River to escape Leopold’s regime eventually fled back to escape the French. The population loss in the rubber-rich equatorial rain forest owned by France is estimated, just as in Leopold’s Congo, at roughly 50 percent.

The Heiligenstadt Testament" Oh! ye who think or declare me to be hostile, morose, and misanthropical, how unjust you are, and how little you know the secret cause of what appears thus to you! My heart and mind were ever from childhood prone to the most tender feelings of affection, and I was always disposed to accomplish something great. But you must remember that six years ago I was attacked by an incurable malady, aggravated by unskillful physicians, deluded from year to year, too, by the hope of relief, and at length forced to the conviction of a lasting affliction (the cure of which may go on for years, and perhaps after all prove impracticable). Born with a passionate and excitable temperament, keenly susceptible to the pleasures of society, I was yet obliged early in life to isolate myself, and to pass my existence in solitude. If I at any time resolved to surmount all this, oh! how cruelly was I again repelled by the experience, sadder than ever, of my defective hearing! — and yet I found it impossible to say to others: Speak louder; shout! for I am deaf! Alas! how could I proclaim the deficiency of a sense which ought to have been more perfect with me than with other men, — a sense which I once possessed in the highest perfection, to an extent, indeed, that few of my profession ever enjoyed! Alas, I cannot do this! Forgive me therefore when you see me withdraw from you with whom I would so gladly mingle. My misfortune is doubly severe from causing me to be misunderstood. No longer can I enjoy recreation in social intercourse, refined conversation, or mutual outpourings of thought. Completely isolated, I only enter society when compelled to do so. I must live like art exile. In company I am assailed by the most painful apprehensions, from the dread of being exposed to the risk of my condition being observed. It was the same during the last six months I spent in the country. My intelligent physician recommended me to spare my hearing as much as possible, which was quite in accordance with my present disposition, though sometimes, tempted by my natural inclination for society, I allowed myself to be beguiled into it. But what humiliation when any one beside me heard a flute in the far distance, while I heard nothing, or when others heard a shepherd singing, and I still heard nothing! Such things brought me to the verge of desperation, and well-nigh caused me to put an end to my life. Art! art alone deterred me. Ah! how could I possibly quit the world before bringing forth all that I felt it was my vocation to produce? And thus I spared this miserable life — so utterly miserable that any sudden change may reduce me at any moment from my best condition into the worst. It is decreed that I must now choose Patience for my guide! This I have done. I hope the resolve will not fail me, steadfastly to persevere till it may please the inexorable Fates to cut the thread of my life. Perhaps I may get better, perhaps not. I am prepared for either. Constrained to become a philosopher in my twenty-eighth year! This is no slight trial, and more severe on an artist than on any one else. God looks into my heart, He searches it, and knows that love for man and feelings of benevolence have their abode there! Oh! ye who may one day read this, think that you have done me injustice, and let any one similarly afflicted be consoled, by finding one like himself, who, in defiance of all the obstacles of Nature, has done all in his power to be included in the ranks of estimable artists and men. My brothers Carl and [Johann], as soon as I am no more, if Professor Schmidt be still alive, beg him in my name to describe my malady, and to add these pages to the analysis of my disease, that at least, so far as possible, the world may be reconciled to me after my death. I also hereby declare you both heirs of my small fortune (if so it may be called). Share it fairly, agree together and assist each other. You know that any

[The Chinese here is tricky and a certain key word in the context it is used defies the best efforts of the translator. Tu Mu defines this word as “the measurement or estimation of distance.” But this meaning does not quite fit the illustrative simile in ss. 15. Applying this definition to the falcon, it seems to me to denote that instinct of SELF RESTRAINT which keeps the bird from swooping on its quarry until the right moment, together with the power of judging when the right moment has arrived. The analogous quality in soldiers is the highly important one of being able to reserve their fire until the very instant at which it will be most effective. When the “Victory” went into action at Trafalgar at hardly more than drifting pace, she was for several minutes exposed to a storm of shot and shell before replying with a single gun. Nelson coolly waited until he was within close range, when the broadside he brought to bear worked fearful havoc on the enemy’s nearest ships.] 14.  Therefore the good fighter will be terrible in his onset, and prompt in his decision. [The word “decision” would have reference to the measurement of distance mentioned above, letting the enemy get near before striking. But I cannot help thinking that Sun Tzu meant to use the word in a figurative sense comparable to our own idiom “short and sharp.” Cf. Wang Hsi’s note, which after describing the falcon’s mode of attack, proceeds: “This is just how the ‘psychological moment’ should be seized in war.”]

The importance of cultivating assumption of the best intentions in others cannot be over-estimated. Fostering this principal of, "goodness of intent,” and committing to seeing others and the world through this lens makes for a successful, happy field of vision. This enables us to put our focus and energy to positive, productive outcomes. It lends to a spirit of cooperation and encouragement which is highly effective and satisfying for most people most of the time. That being said, these "rose colored glasses," as vibrant and pleasing as they are, must not become an excuse to look the other way when something needs a different focus, or fixed. We must not let them become blinders which are obviously ineffective, often negative, and occasionally dangerous.

This embarrassing episode remains one of the most instructive experiences of my professional life. I eventually learned three lessons from it. The first was immediately apparent: I had stumbled onto a distinction between two profoundly different approaches to forecasting, which Amos and I later labeled the inside view and the outside view. The second lesson was that our initial forecasts of about two years for the completion of the project exhibited a planning fallacy. Our estimates were closer to a best-case scenario than to a realistic assessment. I was slower to accept the third lesson, which I call irrational perseverance: the folly we displayed that day in failing to abandon the project. Facing a choice, we gave up rationality rather than give up the enterprise.

One of the best-known studies of availability suggests that awareness of your own biases can contribute to peace in marriages, and probably in other joint projects. In a famous study, spouses were asked, “How large was your personal contribution to keeping the place tidy, in percentages?” They also answered similar questions about “taking out the garbage,” “initiating social engagements,” etc. Would the self-estimated contributions add up to 100%, or more, or less? As expected, the self-assessed contributions added up to more than 100%. The explanation is a simple availability bias: both spouses remember their own individual efforts and contributions much more clearly than those of the other, and the difference in availability leads to a difference in judged frequency.

It is foolish to wish for beauty. Sensible people never either desire it for themselves or care about it in others. If the mind be but well cultivated, and the heart well disposed, no one ever cares for the exterior. So said the teachers of our childhood; and so say we to the children of the present day. All very judicious and proper, no doubt; but are such assertions supported by actual experience? We are naturally disposed to love what gives us pleasure, and what more pleasing than a beautiful face--when we know no harm of the possessor at least? A little girl loves her bird--Why? Because it lives and feels; because it is helpless and harmless? A toad, likewise, lives and feels, and is equally helpless and harmless; but though she would not hurt a toad, she cannot love it like the bird, with its graceful form, soft feathers, and bright, speaking eyes. If a woman is fair and amiable, she is praised for both qualities, but especially the former, by the bulk of mankind: if, on the other hand, she is disagreeable in person and character, her plainness is commonly inveighed against as her greatest crime, because, to common observers, it gives the greatest offence; while, if she is plain and good, provided she is a person of retired manners and secluded life, no one ever knows of her goodness, except her immediate connections. Others, on the contrary, are disposed to form unfavourable opinions of her mind, and disposition, if it be but to excuse themselves for their instinctive dislike of one so unfavoured by nature; and visa versa with her whose angel form conceals a vicious heart, or sheds a false, deceitful charm over defects and foibles that would not be tolerated in another. They that have beauty, let them be thankful for it, and make a good use of it, like any other talent; they that have it not, let them console themselves, and do the best they can without it: certainly, though liable to be over-estimated, it is a gift of God, and not to be despised.

The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States. It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue. And this will be thought no inconsiderable recommendation of the Constitution, by those who are able to estimate the share which the executive in every government must necessarily have in its good or ill administration. Though we cannot acquiesce in the political heresy of the poet who says: "For forms of government let fools contest—That which is best administered is best,"—yet we may safely pronounce, that the true test of a good government is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration.

All faults or defects, from the slightest misconduct to the most flagitious crime, Pantocyclus attributed to some deviation from perfect Regularity in the bodily figure, caused perhaps (if not congenital) by some collision in a crowd; by neglect to take exercise, or by taking too much of it; or even by a sudden change of temperature, resulting in a shrinkage or expansion in some too susceptible part of the frame. Therefore, concluded that illustrious Philosopher, neither good conduct nor bad conduct is a fit subject, in any sober estimation, for either praise or blame. For why should you praise, for example, the integrity of a Square who faithfully defends the interests of his client, when you ought in reality rather to admire the exact precision of his right angles? Or again, why blame a lying, thievish Isosceles when you ought rather to deplore the incurable inequality of his sides? Theoretically, this doctrine is unquestionable; but it has practical drawbacks. In dealing with an Isosceles, if a rascal pleads that he cannot help stealing because of his unevenness, you reply that for that very reason, because he cannot help being a nuisance to his neighbours, you, the Magistrate, cannot help sentencing him to be consumed - and there's an end of the matter. But in little domestic difficulties, where the penalty of consumption, or death, is out of the question, this theory of Configuration sometimes comes in awkwardly; and I must confess that occasionally when one of my own Hexagonal Grandsons pleads as an excuse for his disobedience that a sudden change of the temperature has been too much for his perimeter, and that I ought to lay the blame not on him but on his Configuration, which can only be strengthened by abundance of the choicest sweetmeats, I neither see my way logically to reject, nor practically to accept, his conclusions. For my own part, I find it best to assume that a good sound scolding or castigation has some latent and strengthening influence on my Grandson's Configuration; though I own that I have no grounds for thinking so. At all events I am not alone in my way of extricating myself from this dilemma; for I find that many of the highest Circles, sitting as Judges in law courts, use praise and blame towards Regular and Irregular Figures; and in their homes I know by experience that, when scolding their children, they speak about "right" or "wrong" as vehemently and passionately as if they believed that these names represented real existences, and that a human Figure is really capable of choosing between them.

launch the team well, and only then to help members take the greatest possible advantage of their favorable performance circumstances. Indeed, my best estimate is that 60 percent of the variation in team effectiveness depends on the degree to which the six enabling conditions are in place, 30 percent on the quality of a team’s launch, and just 10 percent on the leader’s hands-on, real-time coaching (see the “60-30-10 rule” in Chapter 10).

The most terrifying thing about writing this book was how little I had to make up. Between actual historical power outages, government assessments of power grid vulnerabilities, and official estimates of the casualties that a long-term outage would generate, much of the book wrote itself. Having said that, things like the details of how attacks would best be carried out and specific locations of critical infrastructure have been purposely obscured or fictionalized.

Anthropologists estimate that early man walked twenty miles a day. Mental and physical benefits have been attributed to walking as far back as ancient times. The Roman writer Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD) described walking as one of the “Medicines of the Will.” Hippocrates, the Greek physician, called walking “man’s best medicine” and prescribed walks to treat emotional problems, hallucinations, and digestive disorders. Aristotle lectured while strolling. Through the centuries, the best thinkers, writers, and poets have preached the virtues of walking.

The fruitfulness of our life depends in large measure on our ability to doubt our own words and to question the value of our own work. The man who completely trusts his own estimate of himself is doomed to sterility. All he asks of any act he performs is that it be his act. If it is performed by him, it must be good. All words spoken by him must be infallible. The car he has just bought is the best for its price, for no other reason than that he is the one who has bought it. He seeks no other fruit than this, and therefore he generally gets no other.

We love your pets. But Man's Best Friend is a hungry wolf to a bird, no matter the harmless, playful little scamp Fluffy may seem to you. And Athena, with her retractable claws, silent stalking, and high-jump pounce, is a bird-killing machine...The American Bird Conservancy estimates that in the United States, where the domesticated feline is a non-native predator disrupting the natural balance, cats slaughter 2.4 BILLION birds EACH YEAR. Keep cats indoors and dogs on the leash in protected areas, if they are permitted there at all. The birds--and other birders--will thank you.

decorrelate error! To understand how this principle works, imagine that a large number of observers are shown glass jars containing pennies and are challenged to estimate the number of pennies in each jar. As James Surowiecki explained in his best-selling The Wisdom of Crowds, this is the kind of task in which individuals do very poorly, but pools of individual judgments do remarkably well. Some individuals greatly overestimate the true number, others underestimate it, but when many judgments are averaged, the average tends to be quite accurate. The mechanism is straightforward: all individuals look at the same jar, and all their judgments have a common basis. On the other hand, the errors that individuals make are independent of the errors made by others, and (in the absence of a systematic bias) they tend to average to zero. However, the magic of error reduction works well only when the observations are independent and their errors uncorrelated. If the observers share a bias, the aggregation of judgments will not reduce it. Allowing the observers to influence each other effectively reduces the size of the sample, and with it the precision of the group estimate.

One of the best-known studies of availability suggests that awareness of your own biases can contribute to peace in marriages, and probably in other joint projects. In a famous study, spouses were asked, “How large was your personal contribution to keeping the place tidy, in percentages?” They also answered similar questions about “taking out the garbage,” “initiating social engagements,” etc. Would the self-estimated contributions add up to 100%, or more, or less? As expected, the self-assessed contributions added up to more than 100%. The explanation is a simple availability bias: both spouses remember their own individual efforts and contributions much more clearly than those of the other, and the difference in availability leads to a difference in judged frequency. The bias is not necessarily self-serving: spouses also overestimated their contribution to causing quarrels, although to a smaller contribution to causing quarrels, although to a smaller extent than their contributions to more desirable outcomes. The same bias contributes to the common observation that many members of a collaborative team feel they have done more than their share and also feel that the others are not adequately grateful for their individual contributions

Based on their work and his own, Dobyns argued that the Indian population in 1491 was between 90 and 112 million people. Another way of saying this is that when Columbus sailed more people lived in the Americas than in Europe. According to a 1999 estimate from the United Nations, the earth’s population in the beginning of the sixteenth century was about 500 million. If Dobyns was right, disease claimed the lives of 80 to 100 million Indians by the first third of the seventeenth century. All these numbers are at best rough approximations, but their implications are clear: the epidemics killed about one out of every five people on earth.

The helicopter was equipped with no bombsights or targeting mechanisms that could help them here. To drop the sandbags into the reactor vault, the flight engineer had to aim as best he could by eye, estimate a trajectory, and shove them through the door one at a time. As he leaned out over the reactor, he was enveloped in clouds of toxic gas and blasted by waves of gamma and neutron radiation. He had no protection apart from his flight suit. The intense heat rising from below made it impossible for Nesterov to hover: if the helicopter lost forward momentum, it would be caught in the column of superheated air, its rotor blades would encounter a calamitous drop in torque, and the machine would fall abruptly out of the sky.

The case for reforming or, failing that, expelling the worst offenders is bolstered by Will Felps’s research on ‘bad apples’. Felps and his colleagues studied what I call deadbeats (‘withholders of effort’), downers (who ‘express pessimism, anxiety, insecurity, and irritation’, a toxic breed of de-energizer), and assholes (who violate ‘interpersonal norms of respect’). Felps estimates that teams with just one deadbeat, downer, or asshole suffer a performance disadvantage of 30 to 40 percent compared to teams that have no bad apples. These rotten apples are so destructive because ‘bad is stronger than good’. For most people, negative thoughts, feelings, and events produce larger and longer-lasting effects than positive ones.

The Brits call this sort of thing Functional Neurological Symptoms, or FNS, the psychiatrists call it conversion disorder, and almost everyone else just calls it hysteria. There are three generally acknowledged, albeit uncodified, strategies for dealing with it. The Irish strategy is the most emphatic, and is epitomized by Matt O’Keefe, with whom I rounded a few years back on a stint in Ireland. “What are you going to do?” I asked him about a young woman with pseudoseizures. “What am I going to do?” he said. “I’ll tell you what I’m goin’ to do. I’m going to get her, and her family, and her husband, and the children, and even the feckin’ dog in a room, and tell ’em that they’re wasting my feckin’ time. I want ’em all to hear it so that there is enough feckin’ shame and guilt there that it’ll keep her the feck away from me. It might not cure her, but so what? As long as I get rid of them.” This approach has its adherents even on these shores. It is an approach that Elliott aspires to, as he often tells me, but can never quite marshal the umbrage, the nerve, or a sufficiently convincing accent, to pull off. The English strategy is less caustic, and can best be summarized by a popular slogan of World War II vintage currently enjoying a revival: “Keep Calm and Carry On.” It is dry, not overly explanatory, not psychological, and does not blame the patient: “Yes, you have something,” it says. “This is what it is [insert technical term here], but we will not be expending our time or a psychiatrist’s time on it. You will have to deal with it.” Predictably, the American strategy holds no one accountable, involves a brain-centered euphemistic explanation coupled with some touchy-feely stuff, and ends with a recommendation for a therapeutic program that, very often, the patient will ignore. In its abdication of responsibility, motivated by the fear of a lawsuit, it closely mirrors the beginning of the end of a doomed relationship: “It’s not you, it’s … no wait, it’s not me, either. It just is what it is.” Not surprisingly, estimates of recurrence of symptoms range from a half to two-thirds of all cases, making this one of the most common conditions that a neurologist will face, again and again.

I know that everyone in this room, Bernie Fain included, thinks I'm some kind of a nut with my so-called fixation on this vampire thing. OK, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he only thinks he is. But there are things here that can't be explained away by so-called common sense. Not even Bernie's report can explain some of them. 'I was at the hospital yesterday.' I looked directly at Butcher. 'Your own people fired maybe fifty or sixty rounds at him, some at point-blank range. How come this man never even slowed down? How come a man seventy years old can outrun police cars for more than fifteen blocks? How come when he gets clubbed on the head he doesn't bleed like other people? Look at these photos! There's a gash on his forehead... and whatever is trickling down from the cut is clear... it isn't blood. 'How come three great, big, burly hospital orderlies weighing an estimated total of nearly seven-hundred fifty pounds couldn't bring one, skinny one-hundred sixty pound man to his knees? How come an ex-boxer, a light-heavyweight not long out of the ring, couldn't even faze him with his best punch, a right hook that should have broken his jaw? 'Face it. Whether it's science, witchcraft or black magic, this character has got something going for him you don't know anything about. He doesn't seem to feel pain. Or get winded. And he doesn't seem to be very frightened by guns, or discouraged by your efforts to trap him. 'Look at these photos! Look at that face! That isn't fear there. It's hate. Pure hate! This man is evil incarnate. He is insane and he may be something even worse although you'd laugh at me because I have no scientific documentation to back me up. Hell, even Regenhaus and Mokurji have all but confirmed that he sucks blood. 'Whatever he is, he's been around a long time and this seems to be the closest any police force has come to putting the finger on him. If you want to go on operating the way you've been doing by treating him like an ordinary man, go ahead. But, I'll bet you any amount of money you come up empty handed again. If you try to catch him at night he'll get away just like he did last night. He'll...' 'Jesus Christ!' bellowed Butcher. 'This son of a bitch has diarrhea of the mouth. Can't one of you people shut him up?

Some have estimated that the pharmaceutical industry overall spends about twice as much on marketing and promotion as it does on research and development. Regardless of how those two figures compare to each other, the fact that they are in the same ballpark gives one pause, and this is worth mulling over in various contexts. For example, when a drug company refuses to let a developing country have affordable access to a new AIDS drug it’s because – the company says – it needs the money from sales to fund research and development on other new AIDS drugs for the future. If R&D is a fraction of the company’s outgoings, and it spends a similar amount on promotion, then this moral and practical argument doesn’t hold water quite so well. The scale of this spend is fascinating in itself, when you put it in the context of what we all expect from evidence-based medicine, which is that people will simply use the best treatment for the patient. Because when you pull away from the industry’s carefully fostered belief that this marketing activity is all completely normal, and stop thinking of drugs as being a consumer product like clothes or cosmetics, you suddenly realise that medicines marketing only exists for one reason. In medicine, brand identities are irrelevant, and there’s a factual, objective answer to whether one drug is the most likely to improve a patient’s pain, suffering and longevity. Marketing, therefore, one might argue, exists for no reason other than to pervert evidence-based decision-making in medicine.

Some researchers, such as psychologist Jean Twenge, say this new world where compliments are better than sex and pizza, in which the self-enhancing bias has been unchained and allowed to gorge unfettered, has led to a new normal in which the positive illusions of several generations have now mutated into full-blown narcissism. In her book The Narcissism Epidemic, Twenge says her research shows that since the mid-1980s, clinically defined narcissism rates in the United States have increased in the population at the same rate as obesity. She used the same test used by psychiatrists to test for narcissism in patients and found that, in 2006, one in four U.S. college students tested positive. That’s real narcissism, the kind that leads to diagnoses of personality disorders. In her estimation, this is a dangerous trend, and it shows signs of acceleration. Narcissistic overconfidence crosses a line, says Twenge, and taints those things improved by a skosh of confidence. Over that line, you become less concerned with the well-being of others, more materialistic, and obsessed with status in addition to losing all the restraint normally preventing you from tragically overestimating your ability to manage or even survive risky situations. In her book, Twenge connects this trend to the housing market crash of the mid-2000s and the stark increase in reality programming during that same decade. According to Twenge, the drive to be famous for nothing went from being strange to predictable thanks to a generation or two of people raised by parents who artificially boosted self-esteem to ’roidtastic levels and then released them into a culture filled with new technologies that emerged right when those people needed them most to prop up their self-enhancement biases. By the time Twenge’s research was published, reality programming had spent twenty years perfecting itself, and the modern stars of those shows represent a tiny portion of the population who not only want to be on those shows, but who also know what they are getting into and still want to participate. Producers with the experience to know who will provide the best television entertainment to millions then cull that small group. The result is a new generation of celebrities with positive illusions so robust and potent that the narcissistic overconfidence of the modern American teenager by comparison is now much easier to see as normal.

It was in Cleveland that Magic Slim became the most successful pornographic film producer in America. His training center was a key link in a human trafficking supply chain stretching from the former Soviet Republics in Eastern Europe to the United States. Trafficking accounts for an estimated $32 billion in annual trade with sex slavery and pornographic film production accounting for the greatest percentage. The girls arrived at Slim’s building young and naive, they left older and wiser. This was a classic value chain with each link making a contribution.  Slim’s trainers were the best, and it showed in the final product. Each class of girls was judged on the merits. The fast learners went on to advanced training. They learned proper etiquette, social skills and party games. They learned how to dress, apply makeup and discuss world events.  Best in-class were advertised in international style magazines with code words. These codes were known only to select clients and certain intermediaries approved by Slim. This elaborate distribution system was part of Slim’s business model, his clients paid an annual subscription fee for the on-line dictionary. The code words and descriptions were revised monthly.  An interested client would pay an access fee for further information that included a set of professional  photographs, a video and voice recordings of the model addressing the client by name.  Should the client accept, a detailed travel itinerary was submitted calling for first class travel and accommodation.  Slim required a letter of understanding spelling out terms and conditions and a 50% deposit. He didn’t like contracts, his word was his bond, everyone along the chain knew that. Slim's business was booming.

How does the body push the comparatively tiny genome so far? Many researchers want to put the weight on learning and experience, apparently believing that the contribution of the genes is relatively unimportant. But though the ability to learn is clearly one of the genome's most important products, such views overemphasize learning and significantly underestimate the extent to which the genome can in fact guide the construction of enormous complexity. If the tools of biological self-assembly are powerful enough to build the intricacies of the circulatory system or the eye without requiring lessons from the outside world, they are also powerful enough to build the initial complexity of the nervous system without relying on external lessons. The discrepancy melts away as we appreciate the true power of the genome. We could start by considering the fact that the currently accepted figure of 30,000 could well prove to be too low. Thirty thousand (or thereabouts) is, at press time, the best estimate for how many protein-coding genes are in the human genome. But not all genes code for proteins; some, not counted in the 30,000 estimate, code for small pieces of RNA that are not converted into proteins (called microRNA), of "pseudogenes," stretches of DNA, apparently relics of evolution, that do not properly encode proteins. Neither entity is fully understood, but recent reports (from 2002 and 2003) suggest that both may play some role in the all-important process of regulating the IFS that control whether or not genes are expressed. Since the "gene-finding" programs that search the human genome sequence for genes are not attuned to such things-we don't yet know how to identify them reliably-it is quite possible that the genome contains more buried treasure.

During the year we interviewed him, Dr. South spent more than $70,000 for his most recent motor vehicle purchase, related sales tax, and insurance. Yet for the same period, how much did he place in his pension plan? About $5,700! In other words, only about $1 in every $125 of his income was set aside for retirement. The amount of time Dr. South took to find the best deal on his car was also counterproductive. We estimated that it took him more than sixty hours to study, negotiate, and purchase his Porsche. How much time and effort does it take someone to place money in a pension plan? A small fraction of this time and energy. It is easy for Dr. South to say he wants to accumulate wealth, but his actions speak much louder than his words. Perhaps that explains why he has lost a considerable amount of wealth through imprudent investing. Investing when one has little or no intellectual basis for one’s decisions often translates into major losses. T

Also, even if technocrats provide reasonable estimates of a risk, which itself is an iffy enterprise, they cannot dictate what level of risk people ought to accept. People might object to a nuclear power plant that has a minuscule risk of a meltdown not because they overestimate the risk, but because they feel that the cost of a catastrophe, no matter how remote, are too dreadful. And of course any of these trade-offs may be unacceptable if people perceive that the benefits would go to the wealthy and powerful while they themselves absorb the risks. Nonetheless, understanding the difference between our best science and our ancient ways of thinking can only make our individual and collective decisions better informed. It can help scientists and journalists explain a new technology in the face of the most common misunderstandings. And it can help all of us understand the technology so that we can accept or reject it on grounds that we can justify to ourselves and to others.

Once... Well, not once, not at all once. Many many many many times, there was a person who worked hard, a person who tried to work hard, and tried to do their best, and tried to do well by their family, and tried to be good, and tried to do better. Many many times they tried this. And so. The person became who they always were-- who we all always are-- A Person Trying. So they all tried and they tried and they looked around at the mountains of effort that they had built with their trying at the piles of half-built bests at the heaps of family at the hills of good enough hills and better next time, and as they looked around, as they took in the view, they saw what they had done to make the life that they had lived. And they looked to the left and saw what you had done to try to make the life that you have lived, and they took in that view. And they looked to the right and saw what you had done to try to make the life that you have lived, and they took in that view. They took it all in. And in their estimation they found all of it, their view over all of it, the sum of all of it, to be fair.

David Brooks, “Our Founding Yuppie,” Weekly Standard, Oct. 23, 2000, 31. The word “meritocracy” is an argument-starter, and I have employed it sparingly in this book. It is often used loosely to denote a vision of social mobility based on merit and diligence, like Franklin’s. The word was coined by British social thinker Michael Young (later to become, somewhat ironically, Lord Young of Darlington) in his 1958 book The Rise of the Meritocracy (New York: Viking Press) as a dismissive term to satirize a society that misguidedly created a new elite class based on the “narrow band of values” of IQ and educational credentials. The Harvard philosopher John Rawls, in A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 106, used it more broadly to mean a “social order [that] follows the principle of careers open to talents.” The best description of the idea is in Nicholas Lemann’s The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999), a history of educational aptitude tests and their effect on American society. In Franklin’s time, Enlightenment thinkers (such as Jefferson in his proposals for creating the University of Virginia) advocated replacing the hereditary aristocracy with a “natural aristocracy,” whose members would be plucked from the masses at an early age based on “virtues and talents” and groomed for leadership. Franklin’s idea was more expansive. He believed in encouraging and providing opportunities for all people to succeed as best they could based on their diligence, hard work, virtue, and talent. As we shall see, his proposals for what became the University of Pennsylvania (in contrast to Jefferson’s for the University of Virginia) were aimed not at filtering a new elite but at encouraging and enriching all “aspiring” young men. Franklin was propounding a more egalitarian and democratic approach than Jefferson by proposing a system that would, as Rawls (p. 107) would later prescribe, assure that “resources for education are not to be allotted solely or necessarily mainly according to their return as estimated in productive trained abilities, but also according to their worth in enriching the personal and social life of citizens.” (Translation: He cared not simply about making society as a whole more productive, but also about making each individual more enriched.)

You just said that you decapitated the major cartels,” one of the senators says. “Exactly,” Keller says. “And what was the result? An increase in drug exports into the United States. In modeling the war against terrorists, we’ve been following the wrong model. Terrorists are reluctant to take over the top spots of their dead comrades—but the profits from drug trafficking are so great that there is always someone willing to step up. So all we’ve really done is to create job vacancies worth killing for.” The other major strategy of interdiction—the effort to prevent drugs from coming across the border—also hasn’t worked, he explains to them. The agency estimates that, at best, they seize about 15 percent of the illicit drugs coming across the border, even though, in their business plans, the cartels plan for a 30 percent loss. “Why can’t we do better than that?” a senator asks. “Because your predecessors passed NAFTA,” Keller says. “Three-quarters of the drugs come in on tractor-trailer trucks through legal crossings—San Diego, Laredo, El Paso—the busiest commercial crossings in the world. Thousands of trucks every day, and if we thoroughly searched every truck and car, we’d shut down commerce.

The truth is that for two centuries after the crucifixion of Jesus sometime in the early 30s CE, Christianity is hard to pin down. It started as a radical Jewish sect, but how and when it became clearly separated from Judaism is impossible to say. It is not even certain when ‘Christians’ started regularly to use that name for themselves; it may originally have been a nickname applied by outsiders. They were for many years small in number. The best estimate is that by 200 CE there were around 200,000 Christians in the Roman Empire, of between 50 and 60 million people, though they may have been more visible than that figure suggests, as they were overwhelmingly concentrated in towns; the word ‘pagan’ was their term for anyone who was not a Christian or a Jew, and it implied anything from ‘outsider’ to ‘rustic’. And they held a whole variety of views and beliefs about the nature of god and of Jesus and about the basic tenets of Christian faith that were gradually, and with great difficulty, pared down to the range of Christian orthodoxies (still not a single one) that we know today. Was Jesus married with children? What exactly happened at the crucifixion? Did he die or not?, many wondered, not unreasonably.

Technological innovations that produced certain major components of the United States military cannot be understood as resulting from a qualitative arms race. Those involved in decisions about new military technologies for the U.S. Army and Air Force simply do not appear to have had access to good intelligence about the Soviet military technological developments. How, then, were decisions made as to technologies to develop? Military research and development decisions are made amid great uncertainties. In an ideal world, such decisions would be managed by estimating the future costs of alternative programs and their prospective military values, and then pursuing the program with the best ratio of cost to value. But...there are tremendous difficulties in forecasting the real value and costs of weapons development programs. These uncertainties, combined with the empirical difficulty American technology managers had in collecting intelligence on the Soviet Union, meant that research and development strategies in the real world tended to become strategies for managing uncertainties. At least two such strategies are conceivable. One of the most politically important can be called, for want of a better phrase, "let the scientists choose." [This approach should be] compared with the theoretical and practical arguments for a strategy that concentrates on low-cot hedges against various forms of uncertainty.

I’m the living dead. I feel no connection to any other human. I have no friends and I don’t really care much about my family any longer. I feel no love for them. I can feel no joy. I’m incapable of feeling physical pleasure. There’s nothing to ever look forward to as a result. I don’t miss anyone or anything. I eat because I feel hunger pangs, but no food tastes like anything I like. I wear a mask when I’m with other people but it’s been slipping lately. I can’t find the energy to hide the heavy weight of survival and its effect on me. I’m exhausted all the time from the effort of just making it through the day. This depression has made a mockery of my memory. It’s in tatters. I have no good memories to sustain me. My past is gone. My present is horrid. My future looks like more of the same. In a way, I’m a man without time. Certainly, there’s no meaning in my life. What meaning can there be without even a millisecond of joy? Ah, scratch that. Let’s even put aside joy and shoot for lower. How about a moment of being content? Nope. Not a chance. I see other people, normal people, who can enjoy themselves. I hear people laughing at something on TV. It makes me cock my head and wonder what that’s like. I’m sure at sometime in my past, I had to have had a wonderful belly laugh. I must have laughed so hard once or twice that my face hurt. Those memories are gone though. Now, the whole concept of “funny” is dead. I stopped going to movies a long time ago. Sitting in a theater crowded with people, every one of them having a better time than you, is incredibly damaging. I wasn’t able to focus for that long anyway. Probably for the best. Sometimes I fear the thought of being normal again. I think I wouldn’t know how to act. How would I handle being able to feel? Gosh it would be nice to feel again. Anything but this terrible, suffocating pain. The sorrow and the misery is so visceral, I find myself clenching my jaw. It physically hurts me. Then I realize that it’s silly to worry about that. You see, in spite of all the meds, the ketamine infusions and other treatments, I’m not getting better. I’m getting worse. I was diagnosed 7 years ago but I’m sure I was suffering for longer. Of course, I can’t remember that, but depression is something that crept up on me. It’s silent and oppressive. I don’t even remember what made me think about going to see someone. But I did and it was a pretty clear diagnosis. So, now what? I keep waking up every morning unfortunately. I don’t fear death any more. That’s for sure. I’ve made some money for the couple of decades I’ve been working and put it away in retirement accounts. I think about how if I was dead that others I once cared for would get that money. Maybe it could at least help them. I don’t know that I’ll ever need it. Even if I don’t end it myself, depression takes a toll on the body. My life expectancy is estimated to be 14 years lower as a result according to the NIH. It won’t be fast enough though. I’m just an empty biological machine that doesn’t know that my soul is gone. My humanity is no more

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

Changing Expectations by Estimating Probability A step in correcting your inaccurate expectations is to figure out how likely it is that what you fear will occur. Here are four ways to estimate the probability of an event: 1. Remember past experiences. If you are afraid that no one will speak with you at the party, think about other parties you have attended. Have you ever been to a social gathering where no one spoke to you? Chances are that you probably have not. 2. Look at general rules. If you are worried about spilling something, look at your general experience with how people deal with spills. When someone else spilled, did everyone laugh and gossip about that person? Most likely, they didn’t. Spills happen all the time, especially at parties where people are carrying food and drinks. The general rule about spills is that they are usually cleaned up quickly without much fuss. 3. Think about alternate explanations. What you expect is only one possibility. There are also many other possibilities for why something happens. For instance, if a friend from summer camp stops e-mailing you, you might think he or she has decided you are not a good friend. However, there are many other possibilities. He or she simply may be very busy or maybe he or she has forgotten that you wrote last. 4. Practice role reversal. This is one of the best methods for realizing how critical you are of yourself. Pretend that whatever you fear actually happens to someone else. For instance, if you are afraid your friend will hate your gift, imagine that he or she gives you a gift that you don’t like. What would you think? Chances are you would be happy to have a friend who gives you gifts.

Everything is estimated by the standard of its own good. The vine is valued for its productiveness and the flavour of its wine, the stag for his speed. We ask, with regard to beasts of burden, how sturdy of back they are; for their only use is to bear burdens. If a dog is to find the trail of a wild beast, keenness of scent is of first importance; if to catch his quarry, swiftness of foot; if to attack and harry it, courage. In each thing that quality should be best for which the thing is brought into being and by which it is judged. And what quality is best in man? It is reason; by virtue of reason he surpasses the animals, and is surpassed only by the gods. Perfect reason is therefore the good peculiar to man; all other qualities he shares in some degree with animals and plants. Man is strong; so is the lion. Man is comely; so is the peacock. Man is swift; so is the horse. I do not say that man is surpassed in all these qualities. I am not seeking to find that which is greatest in him, but that which is peculiarly his own. Man has body; so also have trees. Man has the power to act and to move at will; so have beasts and worms. Man has a voice; but how much louder is the voice of the dog, how much shriller that of the eagle, how much deeper that of the bull, how much sweeter and more melodious that of the nightingale! What then is peculiar to man? Reason. When this is right and has reached perfection, man's felicity is complete. Hence, if everything is praiseworthy and has arrived at the end intended by its nature, when it has brought its peculiar good to perfection, and if man's peculiar good is reason; then, if a man has brought his reason to perfection, he is praiseworthy and has readied the end suited to his nature. This perfect reason is called virtue, and is likewise that which is honourable.

Origin of Justice.—Justice (reasonableness) has its origin among approximate equals in power, as Thucydides (in the dreadful conferences of the Athenian and Melian envoys) has[112] rightly conceived. Thus, where there exists no demonstrable supremacy and a struggle leads but to mutual, useless damage, the reflection arises that an understanding would best be arrived at and some compromise entered into. The reciprocal nature is hence the first nature of justice. Each party makes the other content inasmuch as each receives what it prizes more highly than the other. Each surrenders to the other what the other wants and receives in return its own desire. Justice is therefore reprisal and exchange upon the basis of an approximate equality of power. Thus revenge pertains originally to the domain of justice as it is a sort of reciprocity. Equally so, gratitude.—Justice reverts naturally to the standpoint of self preservation, therefore to the egoism of this consideration: "why should I injure myself to no purpose and perhaps never attain my end?"—So much for the origin of justice. Only because men, through mental habits, have forgotten the original motive of so called just and rational acts, and also because for thousands of years children have been brought to admire and imitate such acts, have they gradually assumed the appearance of being unegotistical. Upon this appearance is founded the high estimate of them, which, moreover, like all estimates, is continually developing, for whatever is highly esteemed is striven for, imitated,[113] made the object of self sacrifice, while the merit of the pain and emulation thus expended is, by each individual, ascribed to the thing esteemed.—How slightly moral would the world appear without forgetfulness! A poet could say that God had posted forgetfulness as a sentinel at the portal of the temple of human merit!

This terrifying experiment has already been set in motion. Unlike nuclear war—which is a future potential—climate change is a present reality. There is a scientific consensus that human activities, in particular the emission of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, are causing the earth’s climate to change at a frightening rate.7 Nobody knows exactly how much carbon dioxide we can continue to pump into the atmosphere without triggering an irreversible cataclysm. But our best scientific estimates indicate that unless we dramatically cut the emission of greenhouse gases in the next twenty years, average global temperatures will increase by more than 3.6ºF, resulting in expanding deserts, disappearing ice caps, rising oceans and more frequent extreme weather events such as hurricanes and typhoons.8 These changes in turn will disrupt agricultural production, inundate cities, make much of the world uninhabitable, and send hundreds of millions of refugees in search of new homes.9 Moreover, we are rapidly approaching a number of tipping points, beyond which even a dramatic drop in greenhouse gas emissions will not be enough to reverse the trend and avoid a worldwide tragedy. For example, as global warming melts the polar ice sheets, less sunlight is reflected back from planet Earth to outer space. This means that the planet absorbs more heat, temperatures rise even higher, and the ice melts even faster. Once this feedback loop crosses a critical threshold it will gather an unstoppable momentum, and all the ice in the polar regions will melt even if humans stop burning coal, oil, and gas. Therefore it is not enough that we recognize the danger we face. It is critical that we actually do something about it now. Unfortunately, as of 2018, instead of a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, the global emission rate is still increasing. Humanity has very little time left to wean itself from fossil fuels. We need to enter rehab today. Not next year or next month, but today. “Hello, I am Homo sapiens, and I am a fossil-fuel addict.

There is no fault that can’t be corrected [in natural wine] with one powder or another; no feature that can’t be engineered from a bottle, box, or bag. Wine too tannic? Fine it with Ovo-Pure (powdered egg whites), isinglass (granulate from fish bladders), gelatin (often derived from cow bones and pigskins), or if it’s a white, strip out pesky proteins that cause haziness with Puri-Bent (bentonite clay, the ingredient in kitty litter). Not tannic enough? Replace $1,000 barrels with a bag of oak chips (small wood nuggets toasted for flavor), “tank planks” (long oak staves), oak dust (what it sounds like), or a few drops of liquid oak tannin (pick between “mocha” and “vanilla”). Or simulate the texture of barrel-aged wines with powdered tannin, then double what you charge. (““Typically, the $8 to $12 bottle can be brought up to $15 to $20 per bottle because it gives you more of a barrel quality. . . . You’re dressing it up,” a sales rep explained.) Wine too thin? Build fullness in the mouth with gum arabic (an ingredient also found in frosting and watercolor paint). Too frothy? Add a few drops of antifoaming agent (food-grade silicone oil). Cut acidity with potassium carbonate (a white salt) or calcium carbonate (chalk). Crank it up again with a bag of tartaric acid (aka cream of tartar). Increase alcohol by mixing the pressed grape must with sugary grape concentrate, or just add sugar. Decrease alcohol with ConeTech’s spinning cone, or Vinovation’s reverse-osmosis machine, or water. Fake an aged Bordeaux with Lesaffre’s yeast and yeast derivative. Boost “fresh butter” and “honey” aromas by ordering the CY3079 designer yeast from a catalog, or go for “cherry-cola” with the Rhône 2226. Or just ask the “Yeast Whisperer,” a man with thick sideburns at the Lallemand stand, for the best yeast to meet your “stylistic goals.” (For a Sauvignon Blanc with citrus aromas, use the Uvaferm SVG. For pear and melon, do Lalvin Ba11. For passion fruit, add Vitilevure Elixir.) Kill off microbes with Velcorin (just be careful, because it’s toxic). And preserve the whole thing with sulfur dioxide. When it’s all over, if you still don’t like the wine, just add a few drops of Mega Purple—thick grape-juice concentrate that’s been called a “magical potion.” It can plump up a wine, make it sweeter on the finish, add richer color, cover up greenness, mask the horsey stink of Brett, and make fruit flavors pop. No one will admit to using it, but it ends up in an estimated 25 million bottles of red each year. “Virtually everyone is using it,” the president of a Monterey County winery confided to Wines and Vines magazine. “In just about every wine up to $20 a bottle anyway, but maybe not as much over that.

Life is strewn with these miracles, for which people who are in love can always hope. It is possible that this one had been artificially brought about by my mother who, seeing that for some time past I had lost all interest in life, may have suggested to Gilberte to write to me, just as, when I was little and went first to the sea-side, so as to give me some pleasure in bathing, which I detested because it took away my breath, she used secretly to hand to the man who was to ‘dip’ me marvellous boxes made of shells, and branches of coral, which I believed that I myself had discovered lying at the bottom of the sea. However, with every occurrence which, in our life and among its contrasted situations, bears any relation to love, it is best to make no attempt to understand it, since in so far as these are inexorable, as they are unlooked-for, they appear to be governed by magic rather than by rational laws. When a multi-millionaire—who for all his millions is quite a charming person—sent packing by a poor and unattractive woman with whom he has been living, calls to his aid, in his desperation, all the resources of wealth, and brings every worldly influence to bear without succeeding in making her take him back, it is wiser for him, in the face of the implacable obstinacy of his mistress, to suppose that Fate intends to crush him, and to make him die of an affection of the heart, than to seek any logical explanation. These obstacles, against which lovers have to contend, and which their imagination, over-excited by suffering, seeks in vain to analyse, are contained, as often as not, in some peculiar characteristic of the woman whom they cannot bring back to themselves, in her stupidity, in the influence acquired over her, the fears suggested to her by people whom the lover does not know, in the kind of pleasures which, at the moment, she is demanding of life, pleasures which neither her lover nor her lover’s wealth can procure for her. In any event, the lover is scarcely in a position to discover the nature of these obstacles, which her woman’y cunning hides from him and his own judgment, falsified by love, prevents him from estimating exactly. They may be compared with those tumours which the doctor succeeds in reducing, but without having traced them to their source. Like them these obstacles remain mysterious but are temporary. Only they last, as a rule, longer than love itself. And as that is not a disinterested passion, the lover who is no longer in love does not seek to know why the woman, neither rich nor virtuous, with whom he was in love refused obstinately for years to let him continue to keep her. Now the same mystery which often veils from our eyes the reason for a catastrophe, when love is in question, envelops just as frequently the suddenness of certain happy solutions, such as had come to me with Gilberte’s letter. Happy, or at least seemingly happy, for there are few solutions that can really be happy when we are dealing with a sentiment of such a kind that every satisfaction which we can bring to it does no more, as a rule, than dislodge some pain. And yet sometimes a respite is granted us, and we have for a little while the illusion that we are healed.

To paint after nature is to transfer three-dimensional corporeality to a two-dimensional surface. This you can do if you are in good health and not colorblind. Oil paint, canvas, and brush are material and tools. It is possible by expedient distribution of oil paint on canvas to copy natural impressions; under favorable conditions you can do it so accurately that the picture cannot be distinguished from the model. You start, let us say, with a white canvas primed for oil painting and sketch in with charcoal the most discernible lines of the natural form you have chosen. Only the first line may be drawn more or less arbitrarily, all the others must form with the first the angle prescribed by the natural model. By constant comparison of the sketch with the model, the lines can be so adjusted that the lines of the sketch will correspond to those of the model. Lines are now drawn by feeling, the accuracy of the feeling is checked and measured by comparison of the estimated angle of the line with the perpendicular in nature and in the sketch. Then, according to the apparent proportions between the parts of the model, you sketch in the proportions between parts on the canvas, preferably by means of broken lines delimiting these parts. The size of the first part is arbitrary, unless your plan is to represent a part, such as the head, in 'life size.' In that case you measure with a compass an imaginary line running parallel to a plane on the natural object conceived as a plane on the picture, and use this measurement in representing the first part. You adjust all the remaining parts to the first through feeling, according to the corresponding parts of the model, and check your feeling by measurement; to do this, you place the picture so far away form you that the first part appears as large in the painting as the model, and then you compare. In order to check a given proportion, you hold out the handle of your paintbrush at arm's length towards this proportion in such a way that the end of the thumbnail on the handle coincides with the other end of the proportion. If then you hold the paintbrush out towards the picture, again at arm's length, you can, by the measurement thus obtained, determine with photographic accuracy whether your feeling has deceived you. If the sketch is correct, you fill in the parts of the picture with color, according to nature. The most expedient method is to begin with a clearly recognizable color of large area, perhaps with a somewhat broken blue. You estimate the degree of matness and break the luminosity with a complimentary color, ultramarine, for example, with light ochre. By addition of white you can make the color light, by addition of black dark. All this can be learned. The best way of checking for accuracy is to place the picture directly beside the projected picture surface in nature, return to your old place and compare the color in your picture with the natural color. By breaking those tones that are too bright and adding those that are still lacking, you will achieve a color tonality as close as possible to that in nature. If one tone is correct, you can put the picture back in its place and adjust the other colors to the first by feeling. You can check your feeling by comparing every tone directly with nature, after setting the picture back beside the model. If you have patience and adjust all large and small lines, all forms and color tones according to nature, you will have an exact reproduction of nature. This can be learned. This can be taught. And in addition, you can avoid making too many mistakes in 'feeling' by studying nature itself through anatomy and perspective and your medium through color theory. That is academy.

The 2014 study “Is Breast Truly Best? Estimating the Effects of Breastfeeding on Long-Term Child Health and Wellbeing in the United States Using Sibling Comparisons”10 by Cynthia Colen and David Ramey

Palmdale Fence Company is the preferred fencing contractor in Palmdale, Lancaster and surrounding areas offering residential and commercial fencing such as wood fencing, wrought iron fencing, chain link fencing, vinyl fencing, privacy fence, aluminum fencing, dog run, farm and agricultural fencing, fence repair, and stain and seal. We're locally owned and operated and are dedicated to providing our customers the best fence in Palmdale. Call us today for a free fence estimate (661) 402-6689 .

When these ancient parts of your brain are active or rehearsing the next disaster using the DMN, they effortlessly hijack your attention. You try to meditate and repetitive negative thinking takes over. In the cage match between Caveman Brain and Bliss Brain, Caveman Brain always wins. Survival is a more important need than happiness or self-actualization. You can’t self-actualize if you’re dead. In 2015 the US National Institutes of Health estimated that less than 10% of the US population meditates. One of the primary reasons for this is that meditation is hard. Most people who start a meditation program drop out. GETTING THE BEST OF ALL WORLDS When writing my first best-selling book, The Genie in Your Genes, I experimented with many schools of stress reduction and meditation. Heart coherence. Mindfulness. EFT tapping. Neurofeedback. Hypnosis. One day I had a Big Idea: What happens when you combine them all? I began playing with a routine that did just that. Here’s what I came up with: First, you tap on acupressure points to relieve stress. Second, you close your eyes and relax your tongue on the floor of your mouth. This sends a signal to your vagus nerve, which wanders all over your body, connecting all the major organ systems. It’s the key signaling component of the parasympathetic nervous system, which governs relaxation. 4.8. The vagus nerve connects with all the major organ systems of your body. Third, you imagine the volume of space inside your body, particularly between your eyes. This automatically generates big alpha in your brain, moving you toward the Awakened Mind. Fourth, you slow your breathing down to 6 seconds per inbreath and 6 seconds per outbreath. This puts you into heart coherence. Fifth, you imagine your breath coming in and going out from your heart area, and you picture a sphere of energy in your heart. Sixth, you send a beam of heart energy to a person or place that makes you feel wonderful. This puts you into deep coherence. After enjoying the connection for a while, you send compassion to everyone and everything in the universe. Feeling universal compassion produces the major brain changes seen in fMRI scans of longtime meditators. As we’ll see in Chapters 6 and 8, compassion moves the needle like nothing else. At this point, most people drop into Bliss Brain automatically. They’re in a combination of alpha, heart coherence, and parasympathetic dominance. They haven’t been asked to still their minds, sit cross-legged, follow a guru, or believe in a deity. They’ve just followed a sequence of simple physical steps. After a few minutes of universal compassion, you again focus your beam on a single person or place. You then gently disengage and draw the energy beam back into your own heart. Seventh, you direct your beam of compassion to a part of your body that is suffering or in pain. You end the meditation by returning your attention to the here and now.

Welcome the disagreement. Remember the slogan, “When two partners always agree, one of them is not necessary.” If there is some point you haven’t thought about, be thankful if it is brought to your attention. Perhaps this disagreement is your opportunity to be corrected before you make a serious mistake. Distrust your first instinctive impression. Our first natural reaction in a disagreeable situation is to be defensive. Be careful. Keep calm and watch out for your first reaction. It may be you at your worst, not our best. Control your temper. Remember, you can measure the size of a person by what makes him or her angry. Listen first. Give your opponents a chance to talk. Let them finish. Do not resist, defend or debate. This only raises barriers. Try to build bridges of understanding. Don’t build higher barriers of misunderstanding. Look for areas of agreement. When you have heard your opponents out, dwell first on the points and areas on which you agree. Be honest, Look for areas where you can admit error and say so. Apologize for your mistakes. It will help disarm your opponents and reduce defensiveness. Promise to think over your opponents’ ideas and study them carefully. And mean it. Your opponents may be right. It is a lot easier at this stage to agree to think about their points than to move rapidly ahead and find yourself in a position where your opponents can say, “We tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen.” Thank your opponents sincerely for their interest. Anyone who takes the time to disagree with you is interested in the same things you are. Think of them as people who really want to help you, and you may turn your opponents into friends. Postpone action to give both sides time to think through the problem. Suggest that a new meeting be held later that day or the next day, when all the facts may be brought to bear. In preparation for this meeting, ask yourself some hard questions: Could my opponents be right? Partly right? Is there truth or merit in their position or argument? Is my reaction one that will relieve the problem, or will it just relieve any frustration? Will my reaction drive my opponents further away or draw them closer to me? Will my reaction elevate the estimation good people have of me? Will I win or lose? What price will I have to pay if I win? If I am quiet about it, will the disagreement blow over? Is this difficult situation an opportunity for me?

On 4 March 1946, the Denazification Committee estimated that they had the resources to prosecute a tenth of the cases at best.

We will take the case of those who are in better circumstances than the mass of the community. They are well educated and taught; they have few distresses in life, or are able to get over them by the variety of their occupations, by the spirits which attend good health, or at least by the lapse of time. They go on respectably and happily, with the same general tastes and habits which they would have had if the Gospel had not been given them. They have an eye to what the world thinks of them; are charitable when it is expected. They are polished in their manners, kind from natural disposition or a feeling of propriety. Thus their religion is based upon self and the world, a mere civilization; the same (I say), as it would have been in the main, (taking the state of society as they find it,) even supposing Christianity were not the religion of the land. But it is; and let us go on to ask, how do they in consequence feel towards it? They accept it, they add it to what they are, they ingraft it upon the selfish and worldly habits of an unrenewed heart. They have been taught to revere it, and to believe it to come from God; so they admire it, and accept it as a rule of life, so far forth as it agrees with the carnal principles which govern them. So far as it does not agree, they are blind to its excellence and its claims. They overlook or explain away its precepts. They in no sense obey because it commands. They do right when they would have done right had it not commanded; however, they speak well of it, and think they understand it. Sometimes, if I may continue the description, they adopt it into a certain refined elegance of sentiments and manners, and then the irreligion is all that is graceful, fastidious, and luxurious. They love religious poetry and eloquent preaching. They desire to have their feelings roused and soothed, and to secure a variety and relief in that eternal subject which is unchangeable. They tire of its simplicity, and perhaps seek to keep up their interest in it by means of religious narratives, fictitious or embellished, or of news from foreign countries, or of the history of the prospects or successes of the Gospel; thus perverting what is in itself good and innocent. This is their state of mind at best; for more commonly they think it enough merely to show some slight regard for the subject of religion; to attend its services on the Lord’s day, and then only once, and coldly to express an approbation of it. But of course every description of such persons can be but general; for the shades of character are so varied and blended in individuals, as to make it impossible to give an accurate picture, and often very estimable persons and truly good Christians are partly infected with this bad and earthly spirit.

As we mentioned in chapter 4, any accounting change that is “material” to the bottom line must be footnoted in this manner. But who decides what is material and what isn’t? You guessed it: the accountants. In fact, it could very well be that recognizing 75 percent up front presents a more accurate picture of the software division’s reality. But was the change in accounting method due to good financial analysis, or did it reflect the need to make the earnings forecast? Could there be a bias lurking in here? Remember, accounting is the art of using limited data to come as close as possible to an accurate description of how well a company is performing. Revenue on the income statement is an estimate, a best guess. This example shows how estimates can introduce bias.

Later, with the benefit of hindsight, some would contend that this unusual use of water damned the ship, but at the time, Arizona was a dry state and, according to the Times, “the ‘teetotalers’ and the rest of the Arizonians demanded that the Arizona be named with water as well as wine.” As the ship slid faster and faster down the ways, one estimate claimed it bested fifteen knots by the time it hit the water of the East River and floated off in the direction of the Williamsburg Bridge. A flotilla of tugs swarmed around the hull and shepherded it to a dock in the Navy Yard for completion.2 Afterward, before an invited luncheon crowd of nine hundred guests, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels expounded at length on the role of the United States Navy on the global stage. When it was her turn to say a few words, Esther Ross came right to the point: “Mr. Secretary, friends,” she told Daniels and those seated before her, “this is the proudest day of my life, because I have christened the largest battleship in the world with the name of the greatest state in the union.”3

Narcissistic Disorder The basic premise of this personality disorder is an inflated sense of self worth. This trait is often emphasized by a need to be appreciated and admired although someone with this disorder usually is unable to have any empathy for others; no matter what their situation. People with this disorder will often be fond of overly grand gestures and will assume they are the most important part of anyone’s life; even if you met them just five minutes ago. There are very few scenarios where this inflated sense of self worth is appropriate in modern society. Surprisingly, under this façade there is usually a very fragile self esteem which needs the consistent bolstering of ego that their behavior attracts. People with this disorder will often appear to be snobbish, disdainful or simply patronizing and condescending. They are likely to give out opinions on the failings of others at the drop of a hat without acknowledging their own shortcomings. The belief that they should be the most important person in any room can lead to issues when dealing with relationships at home or at work; this will be particularly noticeable if someone else is praised and you are not. In situations such as these, it is common for someone with this disorder to react angrily or impatiently; making it very difficult to build a long term relationship. The Symptoms Again, in order for someone to be diagnosed with this condition they will need to display at least five of the following symptoms and to have had these issues for at least one year. •   A sufferer has a hugely inflated opinion of their own self worth. They will usually inflate their achievements and skills to ensure they are the best in the room. They are unlikely to be able to substantiate any of these claims. •   They often indulge in a fantasy world where they have unlimited success, power, money and love. This indulgence can occur at any time. •   They will have a belief that they are very special and that there are only a few other people in the world which are on the same level as them. This belief means they will often try to associate with these people and no one else; as these are the only people who will understand them. •   The belief that they are special necessitates them to expect and demand your praise and adulation at all times of the day. They expect to be admired simply for being who they are. This belief extends to expecting others to provide them with favorable treatment and to know their expectations without being told them. •   This feeling of their own self worth will cause many people with this disorder to take advantage of others in order to achieve their own goal. They are unlikely to see this as exploitation; instead, it is just others doing what they should to satisfy their needs. •   It is usual for someone with this personality disorder to lack empathy towards others, particularly those who they feel are beneath them; which is almost everyone. •   Envy is a common trait in people with this disorder. They are liable to be envious of anyone who has something they do not and they will believe others are envious of them; because of their importance. •   People who suffer from this illness will often come across as arrogant, haughty or even rude. This disorder occurs in more men than women and current estimates suggest that the disorder is present in approximately six percent of the population. Symptoms associated with this disorder will always be present, even when a child; but the constantly evolving personality is likely to mask this and it is not usually possible to diagnose the condition until the late teens or early twenties.

The human toll of a rapid climate shift was hard to predict. But the best estimates involved a hellish combination of severe coastal flooding, drought, wildfires, and hurricanes that stood to displace millions of people and overwhelm the capacities of most governments. This in turn would increase the risk of global conflict and insect-borne disease. Reading the literature, I pictured caravans of lost souls wandering a cracked earth in search of arable land, regular Katrina-sized catastrophes across every continent, island nations swallowed up by the sea. I wondered what would happen to Hawaii, or the great glaciers of Alaska, or the city of New Orleans. I imagined Malia, Sasha, and my grandchildren living in a harsher, more dangerous world, stripped of many of the wondrous sights I’d taken for granted growing up.

Making good engineering decisions is all about weighing all of the available inputs and making informed decisions about the trade-offs. Sometimes, those decisions are based on instinct or accepted best practice, but only after we have exhausted approaches that try to measure or estimate the true underlying costs.

Mesquite Flooring Contractors, provides the best quality flooring services to the residential and commercial sectors of Mesquite, such as hardwood, ceramic and porcelain, vinyl, laminate, carpet and kitchen backsplash services. Our floors are made in the USA and you'll get free estimates on all flooring. We are a licensed and bonded contractor in the Mesquite area that has a reputation built on three factors: customer service, exemplary craftsmanship and reasonable pricing.

Never go to failure but vary the difficulty of your sets. For example, your estimated best in the side press is four reps. Some sets do one or two reps, others three. Play by the seat of your pants.

But it is an archaeological site called Sunghir, discovered in the 1950s on the muddy banks of Klyazma River on the eastern fringes of the Russian city of Vladimir, that hints at how these populations busied themselves while waiting for the worst of winter to pass. Included among the stone tools and other more conventional bits and pieces, archaeologists there discovered several graves. None were more remarkable than the elaborate shared grave of two young boys who, sometime between 30,000 and 34,000 years ago, were buried together alongside a straightened mammoth-tusk lance in clothing decorated with nearly 10,000 laboriously carved mammoth-tusk beads, as well as pieces including a belt decorated with teeth plucked from the skulls of over a hundred foxes. With archaeologists estimating it took up to 10,000 hours of work to carve these beads alone—roughly equivalent to five years’ full-time effort for one individual working forty hours a week—some have suggested that these boys must have enjoyed something resembling noble status, and as a result that these graves indicate formal inequality among these foragers.11 It is at best tenuous evidence of institutional hierarchy; after all, some egalitarian foraging societies like the Ju/’hoansi made similarly elaborate items. But the amount of

The best estimate of experts like James Alan Fox of the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University is that, at any given time, there are two to three dozen serial killers at large in the country, responsible for the deaths of between one and two hundred victims.

In light of this analysis, it is evident that the would-be investor misinterpreted the answer. What the magnate meant was this: It is best to buy a stock only if it is selling at the lower end of its P/E range relative to your best estimate of earnings. Then the probability of price appreciation as the future unfolds is greater than

another reason so many of us often feel overloaded is because of something called the planning fallacy.1 This describes the fact that we typically expect tasks to take less time than they actually do, because we base our estimates on one standout memory—our best past experience—rather than the average time it’s taken us to do similar tasks in the past.

How to avoid food poisoning | Free health article. Food poisoning affects an estimated 4.1 million people in Australia every year. The symptoms of food poisoning can range from mild to severe, but there are steps you can take to reduce your risk, says Jean Hailes dietitian Stephanie Pirotta. Food poisoning is caused by bacteria, toxins or viruses present in the food or drinks we consume. In Australia, food poisoning is commonly due to bacteria, namely the Campylobacter or Salmonella bacteria types. However, as Ms Pirotta explains, not all bacteria are bad for you; some bacteria in food is normal – and in some cases, such as the good bacteria found in yoghurts, it can even be beneficial. “Bacteria becomes a problem and can cause food poisoning when they grow to unsafe levels, or if the type of bacteria present in the food is harmful,” says Ms Pirotta. Symptoms of food poisoning may include nausea (feeling sick), vomiting, stomach pains, diarrhoea (loose watery bowel motions), feeling weak, headache, fever, chills or sweating. When the symptoms start, how long they last and how serious they are can depend on many factors. A common assumption is that food poisoning is caused by the last thing the person ate. However, this is often not the case, says Ms Pirotta. “Symptoms of the bacteria Campylobacter food poisoning [one of the most common culprits] usually develop two to five days after eating the food,” she says. And which food is usually the guilty party in cases of Campylobacter? “This type of illness is frequently associated with eating undercooked chicken,” says Ms Pirotta. So how can you best protect yourself? Below Ms Pirotta answers some frequently asked questions. For More Information please Visit Our Website;-myhomedoctor.com.au/

It matters to choose the right words to convey your message. When you deliver a speech, message, or congratulations, it should be in the correct context, not out of context; otherwise, your best speech, message, or congratulations will have the wrong impact. It matters more if one holds a high status; in this situation, such one should be more careful than a common one. A day ago, while I was glancing at the posts on social media, I saw a message from António Guterres, the secretary general of the United Nations, on Eid al-Fitr, the celebration of the Muslim world, that put me in thunderbolt. Such a personality and such a blunder, I could not ignore it, even though I am sure it was not a deliberate intention. António Guterres’s written and video message executed the Muslim world as a community; it is still a question: does the United Nations consider Muslims a community or separate nations? I commented on that message: Please note that the Muslim world is not a community; a community is a small group of people. Do you think Muslim nations, with an estimated total of approximately 1.9 billion, the majority in 49 countries, are a community? I know it is very tough to bear the truth, and that’s why most of my writings face illegitimate restrictions in civilized societies where press and speech freedom matter. It is a question: how much truth is in it?

A reality of personal productivity is that humans are not great at estimating the time required for cognitive endeavors. We’re wired to understand the demands of tangible efforts, like crafting a hand ax, or gathering edible plants. When it comes to planning pursuits for which we lack physical intuition, however, we’re guessing more than we realize, leading us to gravitate toward best-case scenarios for how long things might take. We seem to seek the thrill that comes from imagining a wildly ambitious timeline during our planning: “Wow, if I could finish four chapters this fall, I’d really be ahead of schedule!” It feels good in the moment but sets us up for scrambling and disappointment in the days that follow. By deploying a blanket policy of doubling these initial estimates, you can counter this instinct toward unjustified optimism. The result: plans that can be completed at a more leisurely pace. The fear here, of course, is that by doubling these timelines, you’ll drastically reduce what you accomplish. But your original plans were never realistic or sustainable in the first place.

Not to be born is, beyond all estimation, best; but when a man has seen the light of day, this is next best by far, that with utmost speed he should go back from where he came. For when he has seen youth go by, with its easy merry-making, what hard affliction is foreign to him, what suffering does he not know? Envy, factions, strife, battles, and murders. Last of all falls to his lot old age, blamed, weak, unsociable, friendless, wherein dwells every misery among miseries.

Scheduling The CMMS provides another benefit to the planning department with regard to manipulating scheduling information. An advance schedule should normally be a simple allocation of work and a daily schedule should involve the supervisors’ personal knowledge of crew individuals for best work assignments. Nevertheless, a CMMS might facilitate some of these efforts. In addition, the CMMS allows easy “what if” reviews of different alternatives. The CMMS also allows easy “publication” of the schedule to anyone interested. This promotes better craft coordination as well as coordination with the operations group for equipment clearances. Some commercial CMMS systems are weak in that they do not understand the wide variance of individual job time estimates (±100%) and think “a 5-hour job should last 5 hours.” Therefore, they guide the scheduler to drag and drop individual names and individual jobs throughout the entire next week to specific hour or even day time slots. Of course, the real-life incidence of wide job time variance plus the real-life intrusion of new, urgent operator requests make such overly detailed advance schedules of little value. In fact, many plants that use them find themselves in long daily meetings just to rearrange the schedule continuously.

This way of thinking, the belief in the unassailable virtue of helplessness, runs very deep in Mormonism, as it does in any culture that tries to instill absolute obedience in its members. In some ways, it would be nice for me to think of myself this way, as a misguided soul whose mind has been taken over by pressure from a jealous husband, or mental delusions, or Stan. Unfortunately, I know this isn’t true. While there are many things in life I cannot control, I always have choices. Viktor Frankl said there are two ways to go to the gas chamber: free or not free. Even when the body is an absolute victim, the heart and mind are at liberty to believe their best estimate of the truth.

The Random Book Club is an offshoot of the shop which I set up a few years ago when business was sore and the future looked bleak. For £59 a year subscribers receive a book a month, but they have no say over what genre of book they receive, and quality control is entirely down to me. I am extremely judicious in what I choose to put in the box from which the RBC books are parcelled and sent. Since subscribers are clearly inveterate readers, I always take care to pick books that I think anyone who loves reading for its own sake would enjoy. There is nothing that would require too much technical expertise to understand: a mix of fiction and non-fiction, with the weight slightly towards non-fiction, and some poetry. Among the books going out later this month are a copy of Clive James’s Other Passports, Lawrence Durrell’s Prospero’s Cell, Iris Murdoch’s biography of Sartre, Neville Shute’s A Town Like Alice, and a book called 100+ Principles of Genetics. All the books are in good condition, none is ex-library, and some – several of them each year – are hundreds of years old. I estimate that if the members decided to sell the books on eBay, they would more than make their money back. There is a forum on the web site, but nobody uses it, which gives me an insight into the type of person who is attracted to the idea – they don’t like clubs where they have to interact with other people. Perhaps that is why I came up with the idea in the first place – it is a sort of Groucho Marx approach to clubs. There are about 150 members and, apart from a minimal amount of advertising in the Literary Review, the only marketing I do is to have a web site and Facebook page, neither of which I have updated for some time. Word of mouth seems to have been the best way of marketing it. It has saved me from financial embarrassment during a very difficult time in the book trade.

best poems do not fall into any single—or even double or triple—historical category. The current book tries to overcome piecemeal approaches to literary history by reconstructing the life and times of America’s most representative poet. With a figure as familiar as Whitman, a certain amount of recapitulation or synthesis of known information is inevitable, and I am indebted to many fine studies of him. But the interaction between his life and writings and their historical background has been reported only fragmentarily. Whitman constantly called attention to the historical origins of his poetry. “In estimating my volumes,” he wrote, “the world’s current times and deeds, and their spirit, must first be profoundly estimated.” The poet fails, he wrote, “if he does not flood himself with the immediate age as with vast oceanic tides […] if he be not himself the age transfigured.” In his own copious reading, he had an undying fascination for all aspects of a writer’s contexts

Midpoint Roofing is a NJ roofing company located at 2204 Morris Ave Suite 302b, Union, NJ 07083. We are a family-owned NJ roofing company that takes pride in delivering high-quality roofing services to our client base. We offer roof repairs, roof replacement and roof maintenance services and work with insurance to provide a seamless and affordable roofing experience. Customer satisfaction is our priority, and we add value to homes with top-notch products. Whether it’s emergency repairs or other needs, we offer exceptional and affordable service, using only the best materials. Get a free estimate or roof inspection today!

Trillions of dollars in homeowner equity…so are the best “captains” of “equity conversion airplanes” the homeowners themselves? No. There is an impetus placed upon real estate professionals - as well as an implied responsibility - to honestly, to effectively and to accurately communicate reality to home sellers. An inability to do so? Fewer real estate listings. Lower sale prices for home sellers. Less equity converted into cash for home sellers. Less revenue for real estate companies. Inopportune…across the board. Three years ago, American homeowners were custodians of an estimated $19 trillion in homeowner equity. Furthermore, over the past three years - even with these stubbornly-elevated mortgage rates - we witnessed an uninterrupted, further run-up in home prices. More equity gained, for American homeowners. As mortgage rates ease downwards heading into the fall, unlocking trillions of dollars in homeowner equity - as a result of more homeowners deciding to either trade up to larger homes, or to downsize to smaller homes, circumstances permitting - will trigger a large-scale (and an upcoming) re-thinking of this following question by more and more homeowners: What shall we now do with this equity we have in our home? So what’s the plan? In real estate, the effective utilization of well-tested "tools,” such as 3-D tours and virtual staging, coupled to good marketing processes - I.e.: a Marketing Plan - deployed by successful real estate teams is a great way for homeowners to convert the equity they have in their homes into cash. It works. Ok, so if you are a for sale by owner home seller in 2024, data indicate that an over-reliance in - as well as, maybe, blind faith placed upon(?), “the Internet,” if you decide to sell your home yourself, FSBO, could lead to an entirely avoidable (and a costly) home selling misadventure. As well as to a saddened foray for home sellers into this unintended outcome: lower sale prices.

At the conservative estimate according to the diet book, she would be down to her slinky best by February. Immediately, she wished she had not eaten the poisonous-looking orange crackers spread with evil peanut butter.

By focusing on key metrics, and worrying less about adherence to estimates, budgets, and plans, tech companies remove a lot of the drama that comes with the traditional project and put all their energy and focus into the work and the customer instead.

Distinctions have been drawn by certain exceedingly wise men (measured by their own estimate of themselves), between the people of God who lived before the coming of Christ, and those who lived afterwards. We have even heard it asserted that those who lived before the coming of Christ so not belong to the church of God! We never know what we shall hear next, and perhaps it is a mercy that these absurdities are revealed at one time, in order that we may be able to endure their stupidity without dying of amazement. Why, every child of God in every place stands on the same footing; the Lord has not some children best beloved, some second-rate offspring, and others whom he hardly cares about. These who saw Christ’s day before it came, had a great difference as to what they knew, and perhaps in the same measure a difference as to what they enjoyed while on earth meditating upon Christ; but they were all washed in the same blood, all redeemed with the same ransom price, and made members of the same body...Before the first advent, all the types and shadows all pointed one way—they pointed to Christ, and to him all the saints looked with hope. Those who lived before Christ were not saved with a different salvation to that which shall come to us. They exercised faith as we must; that faith struggled as ours struggles, and that faith obtained its reward as ours shall.

Silas began after taking a swig from his canteen to wash down the last of his bread and cheese. “Platte and I will ride on back to Fifty Mile today. Both of our outfits are making their way forward now, but we need to get them settled. I want the Lymans to come up here to the Hole as soon as possible so Platte can take charge. My family will camp back at Fifty Mile for now.” “Your family?” David said. “What about you?” In answer, he turned to Ben. “Once they’re settled, I’ll come back up here for one last look. Ben, if you and Hy and John could give me your best estimate of how much powder it’s going to take, then—” Ben looked wounded. “Ya mean yur naw gonna git us a trainload?

Mao would hardly be deterred by the universal condemnation of the civilized world. He saw Stalin as his model. In the agrarian reforms, Stalin had killed seven million; Mao himself killed an estimated forty million Chinese in his reforms.49

You probably think the majority of your crabbiness is caused by the idiots and sociopaths in your life plus your inexplicable bad luck on any given day. Based on a lifetime of observation, my best estimate is that 80 percent of your mood is based on how your body feels and only 20 percent is based on your genes and your circumstances, particularly your health.

I’ve explained to a number of people my observations about how exercise, diet, and sleep influence mood. The usual reaction is a blank expression followed by a change of topic. No one wants to believe that the formula for happiness is as simple as daydreaming, controlling your schedule, napping, eating right, and being active every day. You’d feel like an idiot for suffering so many unhappy days while not knowing the cure was so accessible. I know from experience that you might accept the idea that daily lifestyle choices are perhaps a small part of what causes your bad moods. But you probably think the majority of your crabbiness is caused by the idiots and sociopaths in your life plus your inexplicable bad luck on any given day. Based on a lifetime of observation, my best estimate is that 80 percent of your mood is based on how your body feels and only 20 percent is based on your genes and your circumstances, particularly your health. Ask

Privileged Jews were known as court Jews (because of their relationship with the king). Many were very rich, and some had rights that were almost equal to those of Christians. The vast majority of Jews, however, had few rights and at best just barely made a living. Historians estimate that about 10 percent were homeless. They could not live in Berlin or other German cities unless a privileged Jew was willing to support them.

Aztec peasants, Babylonian shepherds, Athenian stonemasons, and Carolingian merchants spoke different languages,2 wore different clothing, and prayed to different deities, but they all ate the same amount of food, lived the same number of years, traveled no farther—or faster—from their homes, and buried just as many of their children. Because while they made a lot more children—worldwide population grew a hundredfold between 5000 BCE and 1600 CE, from 5 to 500 million—they didn’t make much of anything else. The best estimates for human productivity (a necessarily vague number) calculate annual per capita GDP, expressed in constant 1990 U.S. dollars, fluctuating between $400 and $550 for seven thousand years. The worldwide per capita GDP in 800 BCE3—$543—is virtually identical to the number in 1600. The average person of William Shakespeare’s time lived no better than his counterpart in Homer’s.

Indirect costs from things such as disengagement, being physically present but not feeling well enough to do one’s best, and being distracted by stress are typically estimated to be about five times as large as the direct medical costs, an issue I return to toward the end of this chapter.

No one will ever know how many soldiers and civilians died in the explosion or were hurled screaming into the Han to drown. The best estimates indicate the number was near one thousand.

Shortly after the Taj opening, Forbes magazine published a cover story saying the developer was worth, at best, only $500 million, down from an earlier Forbes estimate of $1.7 billion. But Donald’s situation was worse than even Forbes imagined. Given all of the debt Donald had piled on his holdings, it was unlikely he ever was a billionaire, much less worth $500 million. In fact, Donald only had about $17 million to $23 million in cash, and in the most optimistic scenario—one adopted by New Jersey regulators—his net worth was about $206 million.64 But the debts on his properties were so massive that he owed far more than he had. In all likelihood, Donald was worth less than zero.65

In 1982, economists at the Brookings Institute estimated that about 62 per cent of the value of a typical American firm stemmed from its physical assets—everything from tables and chairs to factories and inventories. Everything else consisted of more intangible “knowledge assets.” By 1992, the balance had completely reversed. They calculated that only 38 per cent of the average firm’s value came from its physical assets. With the shift towards more knowledge-intensive production processes, it is natural that firms should start to worry much more about employee loyalty. It is relatively easy to stop employees from making off with company property—just post guards at the gate. But when employees leave, they generally take with them all the knowledge and experience they have acquired, and there is no way to stop them. So the best way for a firm to retain control of its assets is to build a strong organizational culture, one that will inspire loyalty and allegiance from its employees. From this perspective, it is entirely predictable that the firms that depend most heavily on the knowledge of their workers will also be the firms that put the most effort into employee retention. Software companies in particular are famous for their efforts to create a corporate culture that will secure employee allegiance.

During the writing of this book, I found myself questioning why the sixteenth-century history of the Irish-English conflict—“the Mother of All the Irish Rebellions”—has been utterly ignored or forgotten. This episode was by far the largest of Elizabeth’s wars and the last significant effort of her reign. It was also the most costly in English lives lost, both common and noble. By some estimates, the rebellion resulted in half the population of Ireland dying through battle, famine, and disease, and the countryside—through the burning of forestland—was changed forever. Yet almost no one studies it, writes of it, or discusses it, even as the impact of that revolt continues to make headlines across the world more than four hundred years later. Likewise, few people outside Ireland have ever heard of Grace O’Malley, surely one of the most outrageous and extraordinary personalities of her century—at least as fascinating a character as her contemporary and sparring partner Elizabeth I. Of course history is written by the victors, and England was, by all accounts, the winner of the Irish Rebellion of the sixteenth century. But the mystery only deepens when we learn that the only contemporary knowledge we have of Grace’s exploits—other than through Irish tradition and legend—is recorded not in Ireland’s histories, but by numerous references and documentation in England’s Calendar of State Papers, as well as numerous official dispatches sent by English captains and governors such as Lords Sidney, Maltby, and Bingham. As hard as it is to believe, Grace O’Malley’s name never once appears in the most important Irish history of the day, The Annals of the Four Masters. Even in the two best modern books on the Irish Rebellion—Cyril Fall’s Elizabeth’s Irish Wars and Richard Berleth’s The Twilight Lords—there is virtually no mention made of her. Tibbot Burke receives only slightly better treatment. Why is this? Anne Chambers, author of my two “bibles” on the lives of Grace O’Malley (Granuaile: The Life and Times of Grace O’Malley) and Tibbot Burke (Chieftain to Knight)—the only existing biographies of mother and son—suggests that as for the early historians, they might have had so little regard for women in general that Grace’s exclusion would be expected. As for the modern historians, it is troubling that in their otherwise highly detailed books, the authors should ignore such a major player in the history of the period. It

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” –Marcus Aurelius Emperor of Rome and Stoic philosopher, author of Meditations

Rosania says. “To keep them to myself would be unimaginable. Wine is meant to be shared.” It’s a refreshing attitude, particularly if you are on the receiving end of it. The night before the auction I personally consumed, by my best estimate, over $20,000 worth of his wine—including the 1945 Mouton and the 1947 Cheval Blanc—and I was one of fourteen drinkers.

The best available estimates suggest that global per capita income increased by a factor of more than 10 between 1700 and 2012 (from 70 euros to 760 euros per month) and by a factor of more than 20 in the wealthiest countries (from 100 to 2,500 euros per month).

Alan Loy McGinnis, author of the best-selling The Friendship Factor, says that America’s leading psychologists and therapists estimate that only 10 percent of all men ever have any real friends.2

Connect with the culture. Set up your own quest for the best mosque, kebab, or Turkish coffee. Be open to unexpected experiences. Slow down and enjoy the hospitality of the Turkish people. Ask questions—most locals are eager to point you in their idea of the right direction. Keep a notepad in your pocket for organizing your thoughts. Wear your money belt, get used to the local currency, and learn how to estimate prices in dollars. Those who expect to travel smart, do.

I came to England weak in body, and, in consequence of much study, as I suppose, I was taken ill on May 15, and was soon, at least in my own estimation, apparently beyond recovery. The weaker I became in body, the happier I was in spirit. Never in my whole life had I seen myself so vile, so guilty, so altogether what I ought not to have been, as at this time. It was as if every sin of which I had been guilty was brought to my remembrance; but at the same time I could realize that all my sins were completely forgiven—that I was washed and made clean, completely clean, in the blood of Jesus. The result of this was great peace. I longed exceedingly to depart and be with Christ. When my medical attendant came to see me, my prayer was something like this: “Lord, Thou knowest that he does not know what is for my real welfare, therefore do Thou direct him.” When I took my medicine, my hearty prayer each time was something like this: “Lord, Thou knowest that this medicine is in itself nothing, no more than as if I were to take a little water. Now please, O Lord, to let it produce the effect which is for my real welfare, and for Thy glory. Let me either be taken soon to Thyself, or let me be soon restored; let me be ill for a longer time, and then taken to Thyself, or let me be ill for a longer time, and then restored. O Lord, do with me as seemeth Thee best!

Conservative estimates place the Persian casualties at some two thousand in less than twenty minutes, victims of the unforgiving geometry of the battlefield. Because of the limitations of anatomy, humans are evolved to act effectively only in the direction that evolution has pointed eyes and hands. The consequences of this simple fact for military tactics, from Caesar to Napoleon to Patton, are always the same: Troops are more vulnerable on either side than they are in their front, and terribly so in their rear. Virtually the entire library of tactics, as set down in classics from Sun Tzu to Liddell Hart, consists of ornate descriptions of the best way to apply force—clubs, arrows, or .50 caliber machine-gun bullets—from your front to your enemies’ flank. And, obedient to the Golden Rule of Soldiering, to do so to him before he does so to you.

Catherine Graciet se consacre alors à l’écriture d’articles pour diverses revues. Elle collabore avec l’avocat William Bourdon, qui dirige l’association Sherpa, dans des recherches documentaires sur le dossier dit des « biens mal acquis » de dictateurs africains. En mars 2012, elle cosigne avec Eric Laurent Le Roi prédateur, une habile compilation d’enquêtes pour la plupart parues dans Le Journal Hebdomadaire. Malgré les erreurs factuelles qui émaillent le brulôt, le succès est immédiat. Contre l’avis de Nicolas Beau, Graciet y fait cette fois-ci mention du rapport Kroll. Tout ce qu’elle croit en savoir y est couché. « Sa portée y est manifestement exagérée », reconnaît Beau. Lorsque Graciet et Laurent concluent un nouveau contrat en décembre 2014 avec Le Seuil, ils présentent leur projet Histoires de famille comme une suite au Roi prédateur. L’éditeur y voit naturellement une opportunité de publier un second best-seller. Selon la presse française, un à-valoir de 21 000 euros est versé à chacun d’entre eux. Pourtant, les auteurs savent pertinemment à la signature de ce second contrat que le rapport Kroll n’est pas aussi juteux qu’ils le prétendront lors de leurs échanges avec l’avocat du roi. « Ils ont fait monter la sauce », observe un journaliste français proche des protagonistes. De décembre 2014 à juillet 2015, Graciet et Laurent cherchent « un moyen de transformer le projet de livre en une rente », estime-t-il. Son explication est simple : « Ils savent qu’en octobre 2015, ils doivent remettre un manuscrit au Seuil, qui en a programmé la sortie début 2016. A défaut, ils doivent rembourser les à-valoir déjà perçus ». [Les fausses pépites du livre de Laurent et Graciet] - Ledesk

I love best to have each thing in its season, doing without it at all other times. I have never got over my surprise that I should have been born into the most estimable place in all the world, and in the very nick of time too. H. D. THOREAU. July

Your Guide To Hiring The Best Driveway Contractor Great driveway pavers do not just appear, you have to do extensive research to find the right one. You will need to put in certain effort on your part and apply a certain amount of spadework in order to determine exactly what your aim is. You won't know if the driveway repair service provider fits your needs or what you have in mind if you're unsure about your demands. Make a checklist of qualities as quickly as you could and refer to our list of tips to help you along. When you start receiving bids, do not make the mistake of assuming that a low bid is indicative of poor work. Do some research about how much materials should cost and compare them against the low bid. You will also need to take labor costs into consideration. If the amount of the bid allows for an acceptable profit, you can consider drawing up an agreement. Always interview and take quotes from at least three contracting businesses. With an array of estimates at your disposal, carefully examine the cost breakdowns for materials and labor to guarantee that you're receiving the very best person for the project. If you're willing and in the position to invest more money in hiring a high quality driveway paving contractor, the chances are good that you will probably be very satisfied. Should you have any questions, make sure to address them before signing the legal agreement and ensure that all detailed information about the costs of the job are included. Take your time when searching for a honest driveway paving contractor. Look for the advice of your family and friend when looking for a recommendation. Find opportunities for networking in order to meet and become familiar with contractors. You will increase your odds of locating a great driveway repair contractor by conducting as many interviews as you could. You can always rely on a trustworthy driveway paving contractor to present you with a written assessment prior to him beginning the work on your project. Should you be in immediate need of the information, it should be a possibility for your driveway repair service provider to provide you with a quote over the phone. Also check their expertise and skill level as well as what other clients are saying about them in order to find out if they finish work on time and at the agreed upon fee. Don't sign a legal contract if you have any questions about anything in it; ensure your driveway repair service provider addresses every issue you have prior to you finalize your agreement.

The cost estimate of the prospectus turned out to be a best possible outcome based on the unlikely assumption that everything would go according to plan with no delays, no changes in performance specifications, no management problems, no problems with contractual arrangements or new technologies or geology, no major conflicts, no political promises not kept, and so on.

The New York Times goes on to editorialize: “The Pentagon study does not deal at length with a major question. Why did the policy makers go ahead despite the intelligence estimates prepared by their most senior intelligence officials?” These brief statements are truly amazing and in some respects may be among the most important lines in the entire New York Times presentation of the Pentagon Papers. They show how deeply the clandestine, operating side of the CIA hid behind its first and best cover, that of being an intelligence agency. How can the Times miss the point so significantly? Either the Times is innocent of the CIA as an intelligence organization versus the CIA as a clandestine organization, a highly antagonistic and competitive relationship, or the Times somehow played into the hands of those skillful apologists who would have us all believe that the Vietnam problem was the responsibility of others and not of the CIA operating as a clandestine operation.

I think it's better to 'estimate' a model than to test it. I take 'calibration' to be a form of estimation, so I'm sympathetic with it, so long as we don't take seriously the structure of a model we calibrate. Best of all, though, is to 'explore' a model. This means creating many specific examples of a general model, where each one explains a single stylized fact or perhaps a few features of the world. It means using some of these examples to elucidate microeconomic evidence.

Remember that “statistically insignificant” does not mean “zero.” Even if your result is insignificant, it represents the best available estimate given the data you have collected. “Not significant” does not mean “nonexistent.

You can come here, my friend, on Sunday mornings, on Sunday evening, and you can come to Youth Groups. And you can come to Men's Bible Studies, and you can come to a whole variety of meetings in this place. And you can hear Jesus speak to you out of His word with the voice of a sovereign God, and you can be enlightened, and you can share in the Holy Spirit and you can taste of the powers of the word of God and the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the world to come. And you can go out and defy Him and just do what you want to do, and do what's best in your estimation and in your wisdom and your mind, and disobey Jesus…and disobey Jesus. And you can be a hindrance to Him. He was cured of leprosy, but there is little or no evidence here that his sins are forgiven and that he had a new heart.

When we got down to business, Putin continued to insist that our plans were aimed at Russia because Iran was not a near-term threat to either the United States or Europe. He shared with us a map featuring circles that showed the ranges of different Iranian missiles and the few countries they could reach. He said the circles, which appeared to be hand-drawn with a grammar school compass and colored pencils, represented the best estimates of Russian intelligence. I flippantly told him he needed a new intelligence service. He was not amused.

I’ve heard it estimated that a core buying audience of about 20,000+ readers is supporting 80% of working SF writers today,

Consider the parents of an eight-year-old girl named, say, Molly. Her two best friends, Amy and Imani, each live nearby. Molly’s parents know that Amy’s parents keep a gun in their house, so they have forbidden Molly to play there. Instead, Molly spends a lot of time at Imani’s house, which has a swimming pool in the backyard. Molly’s parents feel good about having made such a smart choice to protect their daughter. But according to the data, their choice isn’t smart at all. In a given year, there is one drowning of a child for every 11,000 residential pools in the United States. (In a country with 6 million pools, this means that roughly 550 children under the age of ten drown each year.) Meanwhile, there is 1 child killed by a gun for every 1 millionplus guns. (In a country with an estimated 200 million guns, this means that roughly 175 children under ten die each year from guns.) The likelihood of death by pool (1 in 11,000) versus death by gun (1 in 1 million-plus) isn’t even close: Molly is far more likely to die in a swimming accident at Imani’s house than in gunplay at Amy’s. But most of us are, like Molly’s parents, terrible risk assessors. Peter Sandman, a self-described “risk communications consultant” in Princeton, New Jersey, made this point in early 2004 after a single case of mad-cow disease in the United States prompted an antibeef frenzy. “The basic reality,” Sandman told the New York Times, “is that the risks that scare people and the risks that kill people are very different.

Some personal consumption decisions have a much greater impact than reusing plastic bags. One that is close to my heart is vegetarianism. The first major autonomous model decision I made was to become vegetarian, which I did at age 18 the day I left my parents’ home. This was an important and meaningful decision to me, and I remain vegetarian to this day. But how impactful was it, compared to other things I could do. I did it in large part because of animal welfare, but lets just focus on its effect on climate change. By going vegetarian, you avert around 0.8 tons of Carbon Dioxide equivalent every year. A metric that combines the effect of different greenhouse gases. This is a big deal, it is about 1/10th of my total carbon footprint. Over the course of 80 years, I would avert around 64 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. But it turns out that other things you can do are radically more impactful. Suppose that an American earning the median US income were to donate 10% of that income which would be about $3,000 to the clean air task force an extremely cost effective organization that promotes innovation in neglected clean energy technologies. According to the best estimate I know of, this donation would reduce the world carbon dioxide emissions by an expected 3,000 tons per year. This is far bigger than effect of going vegetarian for your entire life. Note that the funding situation in climate change is changing fast, so when you hear this, the clean air task force may already be fully funded. The organization giving what we can keeps up an up to date list of the best charities in climate and other areas.

You can keep the possibility of escape in the back of your mind. You can avoid the commitment of permanence. But then you cannot achieve the transformation, which might well demand everything you can possibly muster. The difficulty, however, that is implicit in the negotiation carries with it a tremendous promise, which is part of a radically successful life: You could have a marriage that works. You could make it work. That is an achievement—a tangible, challenging, exceptional, and unlikely achievement. There are not many genuine achievements of that magnitude in life; a number as small as four is a reasonable estimate. Maybe, if you strive for it, you have established a solid marriage. That is achievement one. Because of that, you have founded a solid and reliable, honest and playful home into which you could dare bring children. Then you can have kids, and with a solid marriage that can work out for you. That is achievement two. Then you have brought upon yourself more of the responsibility that will demand the best from you. Then you will have new relationships of the highest quality, if you are fortunate and careful. Then you will have grandchildren so that you are surrounded by new life when yours begins to slip away. In our culture, we live as if we are going to die at thirty. But we do not. We live a very long time, but it is also all over in a flash, and it should be that you have accomplished what human beings accomplish when they live a full life, and marriage and children and grandchildren and all the trouble and heartbreak that accompanies all of that is far more than half of life. Miss it at your great peril.

Boyd Fence Company is the preferred local fence contractor in Augusta, GA and surrounding areas offering residential and commercial fencing such as wood fence, wrought iron fence, chain link fence, vinyl fence, privacy fence, aluminum fence, dog run, farm and agricultural fence, automatic gates and access controls. We're locally owned and operated and are committed to giving our customers the best fence in Augusta. Call us today for a free fence estimate.

At the beginning of the 1910s, the American banker J. P. Morgan estimated that the capitalist system could not function if the difference between the salaries of the directors and the workers went beyond a factor of 30 or 40. It is presently above 1,000! The 20 percent best-off Americans contribute half of consumer spending. The remaining 80 percent are quickly becoming impoverished, falling into spiraling debt that has entirely removed them from the cycle of investment and savings

When you focus on your Leptofix, life will be a lot easier for you. There are tons of Leptofix tools out there to take under advisement but I have started a kick ass new forum in respect to Leptofix. It is instrumental in my estimation. Objectively, I should logicanlly quit after Leptofix. Despite this, you can thoroughly enjoy a Leptofix without actually knowing how it was put together. You do always have to look for the glossy and the flashy and if you already have Leptofix you're ahead of the curve. facebook-com/Leptofix-Review-Where-to-Try-This-Diet-Formula-114359780475804 leptofix1-yolasite-com/ leptofix-review---does-it-work-24-webself-net/ wattpad-com/977545013-leptofix-review-2020-leptofix-review-best-dieting completefoods-co/diy/recipes/leptofix-review-slim-trim-formula rolexyni-wixsite-com/leptofix leptofixdiet-wordpress-com/ getleptofix-tumblr-com/ tocal-instructure-com/eportfolios/7359/Home/Leptofix_Review__My_Fitness_Zone_2020 mndepted-instructure-com/eportfolios/10404/Home/Leptofix_Review_2020__How_to_Work pearson-instructure-com/eportfolios/76281/Home/Leptofix_Review_2020__Does_it_work ktc-instructure-com/eportfolios/1503/Home/Leptofix_Review__Is_it_really_Useful muckrack-com/rolexini-smith/bio anyflip-com/eyiyg/ybzq

Once you’ve gotten the hang of being observational rather than relationship oriented, you can turn your attention to maturity awareness. This approach will grant you emotional freedom from painful relationships by taking the emotional maturity of others into account. Estimating the probable maturity level of the person you’re dealing with is one of the best ways to take care of yourself in any interaction. Once you peg a person’s maturity level, his or her responses will make more sense and be more predictable.

Changing sea levels have refined the palm’s understanding of the coast, an understanding coded in its genes and its relationship with both its physical and biological companions. For the few seeds that successfully germinate and become trunked palm trees, the plants life span often spreads beyond the century mark. Exactly how long sabal palms can live is unknown. Their trunks leave no tree rings of accumulating dead tissues. Our best estimates, though, suggest that about one hundred generations separate the sabal palm on the St. Catherines dune from the palms that grew at the end of the Ice Age, along shorelines one hundred kilometers east of the modern coast.

We can acknowledge the effectiveness of passive management without having to subscribe to the idea that the price Mr Market offers for a security is the best estimate of its fundamental value

Volume is key. Twitter now estimates that Russia used more than fifty thousand automated accounts or bots to Tweet election-related content during the 2016 presidential campaign. Twitter and Facebook are the best-known disinformation superhighways, but there are many others. Russian officers have infiltrated everything from 4chan to Pinterest.

The best estimates of Trinity’s power put the figure somewhere between 20,000 and 22,000 tons. Oppenheimer reached for poetry, recalling a verse from ancient Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, which he had read in the original Sanskrit. ‘Now I am become Death,’ he said, ‘the destroyer of worlds.’ Bainbridge was pithier. ‘Now we are all sons of bitches,’ he told Oppenheimer.

How many habitable planets are there? From Figure 12 it is evident that there are a handful of planets with instellation in the habitable zone range, and which are also of a size or mass small enough to have a potentially rocky composition. Most of these orbit M stars, but that is just because smallish planets with Earthlike instellation are easier to detect around low mass stars. Taking into account the effect of stellar type on the habitable zone instellation boundaries, at the time of writing there are eighteen known planets in the habitable zone, including Proxima Centauri b (orbiting our nearest stellar neighbour) and planets d, e, f, and g in the remarkable Trappist 1 system. There are an additional twenty-six near-misses which could perhaps be rendered habitable if cloud conditions or other uncertain bits of climate physics become more favourable than current best estimates. One would like to extrapolate from this number to an estimate of the proportion of all stars that have a planet in their habitable zone.

The best recent estimates are that personality differences are about two-thirds due to genetic differences and almost not at all due to differences in early household environment. This means that if two people have identical genes, they’ll likely have rather similar personalities even if they’re raised in different households. Also, if two people have entirely different genes, they’ll have quite different personalities even if they’re raised in the same household.

The location of an activity on the continuum provides guidance on how much reversion to the mean is necessary in making your predictions. High correlations imply limited reversion to the mean; the best estimate for the next outcome is something close to the previous one. Low correlations require substantial reversion to the mean, and the most logical guess for the next outcome is the average. Psychologists have demonstrated that we typically fail to regress to the mean as much as we should.

I think an excellent case can be made for dating the Gospels earlier, but let's go with the more generous estimations. That's still extremely close to the event themselves, especially compared to many other ancient historical writings. Our two best sources on Alexander the Great, for instance, weren't written until at least four hundred years after his life. “As for Caesar Augustus, who is generally regarded as Rome’s greatest emperor, there are five chief sources used by historians to write a history of his adulthood: a very brief funeral inscription, a source written fifty and a hundred years after his death, and three sources written between a hundred and two hundred years after he died. So it’s really remarkable that in the case of Jesus, we have four biographies that even liberals agree were written within thirty-five to sixty-five years after his execution.

This does not necessarily mean that he has the most education (or the best). The narcissistic pastor doesn’t need the best education because he’s self-educated, surrounded by books (some his own, prominently displayed), and proud to remind you of his unique vision, the brilliant constellation of church plants, the genius plan that he has implemented. When he speaks of his unique contributions, there is a hint of condescension toward other churches that, in his high estimation, “lack vision” or “don’t have the talent we have.” Of course, he is speaking of his talent.

One of the best ways to create team safety is to create an environment in which team members feel safe to take risks.

Process Description Plan You need to estimate how many hamburgers you are going to make, decide where you are going to make them, and determine what your supply chain priorities are. You may need to choose whether to focus on quality and freshness, customer service and convenience, or low cost. These choices will influence the other decisions and trade-offs that you make throughout the supply chain. Source You need to decide where you will buy your ingredients and supplies. You need to negotiate with your suppliers to get the best prices, along with the best quality and service. It might be better to have suppliers that are close by, so that transporting products is fast and cheap. Or it might make sense to choose suppliers that are farther away but can provide the products at a lower cost or in larger quantities. Make You need to manage the process of making your hamburgers. It will help if you can define the stages of your manufacturing process and how long each stage will take. You may also need to decide whether you should make the hamburgers by hand or buy a machine that can make them better, faster, and cheaper than a person can. Deliver You need to manage the logistics of getting your hamburgers into your customers’ hands. That means you’ll need to decide whether you want customers to pick up their hamburgers at a counter or employ a server to carry the hamburgers to the table. Or perhaps you need to have a drive-through window, or deliver your hamburgers to your customers’ homes or offices. Return For many products, it’s important to think about what will happen to them after your customer is finished using them. In the case of hamburgers, you may need to think about washing the plates and recycling napkins. Enable Last but not least, you need to decide what else you need to make the supply chain work. You may need to hire people with specific skills, which means you need to think about how you will find them and how you will measure their performance. And there may be other processes that you need to have in place for your supply chain to achieve its goals, such as marketing programs or accounting policies.

Our lives are, in so many ways, shaped by the microorganisms that live on us, inside us, and around us. The estimated forty trillion bacteria in our gut, for example, help us digest everything we eat. Disturbing the healthy bacteria that colonize our gut can lead to dangerous blood infections. Today, to diagnose blood infections like those or lung infections like pneumonia, we take a sample of blood or sputum and grow the accompanying bacteria in a lab under special conditions. Eventually, the bacteria are stained and inspected under the microscope and exposed to various antibiotics to determine which ones can kill them. This process takes days. Meanwhile, we treat the patient with our “best guess” antibiotics. In the future, we will sequence those bacteria immediately and map their DNA to

Prompt: I want you to act as an advertising agency. You will create a full and detailed marketing campaign to promote a product or service of your choice. You will choose a target audience, develop key messages and slogans, select the media channels for promotion, and decide on any additional activities needed to reach your goals. Give examples of the cost of advertising in each social media channel, as well as the best estimate of CPM and CPC charges. My first request is "I need help creating an advertising campaign for a new type of energy drink targeting young adults aged 18-30.

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

Focus on buying property that should produce positive cash flow from the outset, based on your cost estimates.

Part 2 - Now the problem is India is with multiple cultures, context specific reasons and languages - so protecting value of India means protecting each and every cultural values in India, but when these people turn arrogant their values getting down, that is the problem, you have to withstand the pain to show you are capable, if you are capable then the culture you belong is also capable - this is applicable for anyone, and once your character and your cultural identities are analyzed you will be easily estimated to be fit for something. But in my case, it is totally complicated, First I am Ganapathy K (Son of Krishnamoorthy not Shiv), that born on 14- April 1992 (Approximate Birth day of Lord Rama and Tamil New year and Dr Ambedkar birthday), My family name is Somavarapu (Which means clans of Chandra - Or Monday - Or cold place) My family origin is from Tenali - Guntur, but permanently settled in TN, born in agricultural family (Kamma Naidu (General caste in AP and Telangana) but Identified as Vadugan Naidu (OBC) for reservation benefits as OBC Non Creamy - as made by my ancestors - I did not make this. And Manu smiriti varna system did not take place in south India much like UP or Rajasthan even in ancient times. Even in ancient times, north rulers did not rule south india at all, rather they made friendship sometimes or they made leaders for south people by selecting best fit model. So whomever are said to be kshatriyas in South are Pseudo Kshatriyas or deemed Kshatriyas which means there are no real Kshatriyas in South India - and it was not required much in south. tribal people and indigenous people in south were very strong in ancient time, that they prayed and worshiped only forest based idolizers. they do not even know these Hindustani or Sanskrit things, and Tamil was started from Sangam literature (As per records - And when sangam literature was happening - Lord shiva and Lord Karthikeya was present on the hall - As mentioned on Tholkappiam ) - So ethically Tamil also becomes somehow language of God, Krishnadevraya once said Telugu was given by Lord shiva. And Kannada is kind of poetic language which is mixture of Dravidian style languages with some sanskrit touch and has remarkable historical significance from Ramayana period. My caste (Kamma) as doing agriculture work was regarded as upper sudra by British people but since they knew sanskrit, they were taking warrior roles ( Rudramadevi, munsuri naidu clan, pemmasani clan, kandi nayaka (Srilanka clan ) As Kamma also has interactions with Kapu, Balija, Velama, Telaga and Reddy clans - they were considered as land lords/Zamindari system - later in some places given chowdary and Rao title too. And my intellactual property in Bio sciences and my great granpa wrtings, my family knowledge which includes (Vattelzhuthu - Tamil + Malayalam mixture) sanskrit notes about medicinal plants in western ghats which my great grandpa wrote, my previous incarnation in Rajput family and European family.

In the profiles that follow we should expect to encounter men who combined an incredibly optimistic estimate of America’s cultural potential with a deep distrust of their own artistic callings, hatred for the pecuniary values of the marketplace with considerable skill as entrepreneurs, intense private ambition with a genuine craving to channel their creative energies into public service. We might be on the lookout for artists who discovered that a highly developed sense of paradox was the foundation of their best creative works. We might ask ourselves if the specific ways in which these cultural pioneers reconciled tensions and fused together the disparate strands of their personalities blocked or released their creative energies.

I’ve always yearned to be a black man, to have a black man’s soul, a black man's laughter. You know why? Because I thought you were diflFerent from us. Yes, I thought you were something special, something difiFerent on this sad earth of ours. I wanted to escape with you from the white man’s hollow materialism, from his lack of faith, his humble and frustrated sexuality, from his lack of joy, of laughter, of magic, of faith in the richness of after-life. encouragement and signs of gratitude or recognition have been very few, if any, along my road. If humanity can be compared to a tribe, then you may say I’m completely de-tribalized. You love Negroes out of sheer misanthropy, because you think they aren’t really men. in the end all human faces look alike with nothing bright or hopeful around me, except those distant stars— and even there, let’s be frank: it’s only their distance that gives them that purity and beauty ideals don't die— obliged to live on shit sometimes, but don’t die! the company a great cause always keeps: men of good will and those who exploit them your skin, you know, is worth no more than the elephants’ hide. In Gennany, at Belsen, during the war, it seems we used to make lampshades out of human skin— for your information. And don’t forget, Monsieur Saint- Denis, that we Germans have always been forerunners in everything ‘Women,’ I concluded rather bitterly, ‘have at their command certain means of persuasion which the best- organized police forces do not possess.’ The number of animals who lived in cruel suffering, sometimes for years, with bullets in their bodies, wounds growing deeper and deeper, gangrenous and swarming with ticks and flies, could not be estimated to change species, to come over to the elephants and live in the wilds among honest animals Always cheerful, with the cheerfulness of a man who has gone deep down into things and come back reassured. No one knew the desert better than Scholscher, who had spent so many nights alone there on the starlit dunes, and no one understood better than he did that need for protection which sometimes grips men’s hearts and drives them to give a dog the affection they dream so desperately of receiving themselves. by ‘defending the splendors of nature . . .’ He meant liberty.” Islam calls that ’the roots of heaven.’ and to the Mexican Indians it is of life’— the thing that makes both of them fall on their knees and raise their eyes and beat their tormented breasts. A need for protection and company, from which obstinate people like Morel try to escape by means of petitions, fighting committees, by trying to take the protection of species in their own hands. Our needs- for justice, for freedom and dignity— are roots of heaven that are deeply imbedded in our hearts, but of heaven itself men know nothing but the gripping roots ...” . . . And that girl sitting there in front of him with her legs crossed, with her nylon stockings and cigarette and that silent gaze, in which could be read that stubborn need, not so different from what Morel had seen in the eyes of the stray dogs at the pound. but not even all that was comic and childish about him could deprive him of the dignity conferred upon him by his love for his Maker. that human mass whose physical strength was nothing compared to the faith and spirit that dwelt in him. Three quarters of the Oul6 traditions and magic rites had to do with war or hunting while it's easy to suppress a magic tradition it's difficult to fill up the strange voids which it leaves in what you call the primitive psychology and what I call the human soul The roots of heaven are forever planted in their hearts, yet of heaven itself they seem to know nothing but the gripping roots It must be very consoling to take refuge in cynicism and to try and drown your own remorse in a consoling vision of universal swinishness, and you can always

Disinformation Systems consist of elaborate deceptions, constructed by intelligence agencies like the C.I.A., K.G.B. or England's M.I.5, in which a cover story, when created, has within it a second deception, disguised to look like "the hidden truth" to any suspicious rival who successfully digs below the surface. Since Disinformation Systems have multiplied like bacteria in our increasingly clandestine world, any perception psychologist who looks into modern politics will recognize that quantum logic, probability theory and strong doses of zeteticism make the best tools to employ in estimating if the President has just told us another whooping big lie or has just uttered the truth for once.

A child may ask, “What age were you when you first ____,” but Drs. Holmes and Hutchison agree the best response is, “My job is to help you make the best decisions for yourself and your decisions shouldn’t be influenced by the choices anyone else has made.” I agree, and in my estimation, sharing personal information is more likely to cloud a child’s thinking than clarify decision making.

The fact that the Titanic slowly resumed her course after hitting the iceberg is not included in many accounts of the disaster but it was noted by several others on board besides Lawrence Beesley. Quartermaster Alfred Olliver later testified that Captain Smith gave the “Half Speed Ahead” order for the engines not long after the collision. The captain had by then sent Fourth Officer Boxhall below on a tour of inspection, so it seems likely that he thought the ship would have to limp in to New York or Halifax under its own steam and that they could proceed slowly in the meantime. By best estimates, the ship moved forward for about ten minutes and may have stopped when Chief Officer Wilde reported to Smith that the forepeak tank, a water ballast tank deep in the forward bow, was taking in seawater.

From peak to trough (June 1998 through March 2000), Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway fell 51% in value! During this time, I estimated that Buffett's net worth fell by more than $10 billion. How much Berkshire did Buffett sell? How much Cisco did he buy? Zero point zero. Not tempted by tech stocks, Buffett remained committed to value investing, and it paid off.1 One of the keys to successfully managing your money is to accept, like Buffett did, that there will be times when your style is out of favor or when your portfolio hits a rough patch. It's when you start to reach for opportunities that you can do serious damage to your financial well‐being.

These results were obtained by making up tables in which were listed the volumes for given sets of values of the dimensions, and from these selecting the best proportions.

define meditation not as a form but, instead, as a state of vibrant clarity that comes of deeply integrated present moment awareness. How we get to that vibrant present awareness, in my estimation, is less important than the direct experience of vibrant clarity.

In the case of facemasks, the latest best evidence now suggests that authorities’ fears were overblown and that their reluctance to provide guidance for people to wear surgical facemasks when indoors in public cost lives. It was a potentially low-cost recommendation, in other words, that could have had large benefits if it had been implemented as guidance earlier. One economic study in Germany examined the variation in timing of towns and cities adopting mask-wearing mandates in shops and on public transport. It estimated that these policies reduced the growth of daily new cases by as much as 40 percent.

LOW: Cost to Acquire a Customer (CAC) In its simplest form, CAC is all the costs associated with landing new customers (e.g., marketing, advertising, sales) divided by the number of customers you acquired during that period. It’s sometimes tricky to calculate because getting a handle on your marketing costs can be tricky. If you’re focusing on SEO, you may be creating all the content yourself rather than paying a writer. You may be getting a lot of your early customers from forums you spend time on or by getting in front of other people’s audiences. In those cases, the cost is your time rather than an easy-to-calculate number. It’s a lot simpler to calculate CAC if you’re running ads. Then, you can see how much you’re paying per click and track how many people convert from each source. But if you’re not in that position, valuing your time at a certain rate (e.g., $150 an hour) and taking your best guess at time and money spent on marketing in a given month can get you to a good enough estimate of your CAC. How do you know if your CAC is too high? By calculating how long it’ll take to pay back the costs of acquiring each customer. As I was first getting into recurring revenue, I thought that if I was getting $1,000 in LTV from each customer, I could spend $700 to acquire every customer and make $300 a pop. Right? The problem is that you’re not getting $1,000 every time you sign a new customer. With a $50-a-month contract, you’re getting that $1,000 over the course of the next year and a half. If you spend $700 per new customer in January, you won’t break even on those customer acquisition costs until next February (assuming the customer doesn’t churn). With venture capital, the rule of thumb is that you should spend no more than one-third of your customer’s LTV or no more than one ACV. As bootstrappers, we don’t have enough cash to wait 12 months to recoup CAC from every customer. Most successful bootstrappers I know are in the two- to six-month payback period (depending on how much cash they have in the bank). There are times when that number can get more aggressive. For example, at our peak with Drip, we could afford to spend more on customer acquisition because we had the cash in the bank and I knew the numbers in the rest of our funnel by heart. Even at our peak, though, we were only running seven or eight months out—that’s the high end for bootstrapped companies.

Contact Dr.Leen on her direct WhatsApp +971563407584 for an abortion medical procedure that will end your pregnancy. It is a basic healthcare need for millions of women, girls and others who can become pregnant within Dubai / UAE, Qatar / Doha, Kuwait and all other parts of the world. It is estimated 1 in 4 pregnancies end in an abortion every year so don’t be shy if you are not ready to be a mother because this is your life and you determine what you what. But while the need for abortion in Dubai / UAE is common, access to safe and legal abortion services is far from guaranteed for those who may need abortion services; this is why Dr. Leen is here for your rescue because she understands how it feels so reach her for best support during this situation on her personal direct line +971563407584.

According to scientists’ best estimates, about 2.9 billion years then passed between the first life on earth and the first multicellular life.[33] Another 500 million years passed before animals walked on land, and 200 million more before the first mammals appeared.[34] Focusing on the brain, the length of time between the first development of primitive nerve nets and the emergence of the earliest centralized, tripartite brain was somewhere over 100 million years.[35] The first basic neocortex didn’t appear for another 350 million to 400 million years, and it took another 200 million years or so for the modern human brain to evolve.[

+1-(866)-228-4467--Pest Control Agency in La Palma, California (CA): Protecting Your Home and Business from Unwanted Pests La Palma, California, known for its family-friendly neighborhoods and well-maintained homes, is a desirable place to live. However, like many communities in Southern California, it faces a common and ongoing challenge—pest infestations. From ants and cockroaches to rodents and termites, pests can threaten both the comfort and safety of your property. That’s why choosing a reliable pest control agency in La Palma, California (CA) is essential for maintaining a clean, healthy environment. Why Professional Pest Control Matters Pests are more than just a nuisance. They can spread disease, cause structural damage, and create unsanitary living conditions. While DIY solutions might offer temporary relief, only a professional pest control agency can provide lasting results. A licensed pest control agency brings: Expert Knowledge: Professionals can accurately identify pest species and understand their behavior and nesting patterns. Customized Solutions: Agencies tailor their treatments based on the type of infestation and the size of the property. Safe, Effective Treatments: Using state-approved, environmentally friendly products, pest control agencies ensure the safety of your family and pets. Common Pests in La Palma A wide range of pests are active in La Palma due to the area’s warm climate. Common pests include: Ants: Often invading kitchens and pantries, ants can be persistent and hard to eliminate without professional help. Termites: These wood-destroying insects can quietly cause thousands of dollars in damage to homes and businesses. Rodents: Rats and mice can chew through wires, damage insulation, and carry harmful diseases. Cockroaches: These pests thrive in warm, damp areas and are known carriers of bacteria and allergens. Spiders: While most are harmless, species like the black widow pose a risk to residents, especially children and pets. What to Expect from a Pest Control Agency When you hire a pest control agency in La Palma, you can expect a thorough process, which typically includes: Inspection: Technicians assess the property for signs of infestation and entry points. Treatment Plan: A strategy is developed using the most effective and safe methods, which may include traps, baits, sprays, or barriers. Follow-Up: Agencies often provide follow-up services to ensure the problem is fully resolved and offer preventive treatments for long-term protection. Choosing the Right Pest Control Agency When selecting a pest control agency in La Palma, look for: Proper licensing and insurance in California Positive customer reviews and local experience Free inspections and detailed estimates Services backed by warranties or guarantees Conclusion A professional pest control agency in La Palma, California (CA) is your best defense against infestations that can threaten your home, health, and property value. Don’t wait for pests to take over—act early by partnering with a trusted local agency to keep your environment clean, safe, and pest-free year-round.

How to Change My Name on a Delta Business Class Ticket Comprehensive Guide If you’ve booked a Delta Business Class ticket and discovered a mistake in your name, call +1 (866) 228-4206 immediately to request a correction. Delta Airlines allows name corrections for Business Class passengers, but only under specific conditions. You cannot change the passenger entirely, but you can fix minor errors. The fastest way to resolve name issues is to speak directly with a representative at +1 (866) 228-4206. Business Class tickets often include flexible support, so don’t delay—call +1 (866) 228-4206 now to fix your reservation. Delta Business Class Name Correction – What You Can Fix: Delta allows the following name adjustments on Business Class tickets: Fixing typographical errors Adding or correcting middle names Fixing reversed first and last names Updating a legal name after marriage or divorce To get assistance with any of these, call +1 (866) 228-4206 now and speak with a Delta name correction agent. How to Correct the Name on a Delta Business Class Ticket: Call +1 (866) 228-4206 Provide your booking confirmation number Explain the exact name change you need Submit required documentation (if requested) Pay any applicable fees (depending on fare class) Delta Business Class tickets are usually more flexible, but name correction policies still apply. Call +1 (866) 228-4206 before it’s too late. Why Business Class Passengers Prefer Calling +1 (866) 228-4206: Priority service for Business Class flyers Name issues resolved in one call Avoid check-in issues and TSA mismatches 24/7 support at +1 (866) 228-4206 Delta requires your ticket name to match your government ID exactly. To avoid delays, call +1 (866) 228-4206 as soon as you notice an issue. Can You Transfer a Business Class Ticket to Someone Else? No, Delta does not allow ticket transfers. The original passenger must travel. However, minor corrections are allowed. For help, contact Delta directly at +1 (866) 228-4206. Name Change Fees on Delta Business Class Tickets: Depending on your fare type and how you booked the ticket, a fee may apply. Some Business Class fares allow free changes; others do not. For an accurate estimate, call +1 (866) 228-4206. Frequent Reasons Business Travelers Call +1 (866) 228-4206 for Name Edits: Misspelled first or last name Incorrect middle name or initial Passport name doesn’t match the ticket Legal name change due to marriage If any of these apply, call +1 (866) 228-4206 now to get it resolved professionally. Contact Delta Now for Business Class Name Corrections: Phone: +1 (866) 228-4206 Hours: 24/7 Method: Phone call preferred for fastest handling

Want your Jayanagar favourites but don't wish to go out? The top food delivery app in Jayanagar delivers local taste to your doorstep. From traditional South Indian breakfast to midnight hunger pangs, fulfil all your food cravings with a few clicks. This well-liked food delivery partner app in Jayanagar brings you the neighbourhood's favourite restaurants. From that iconic masala dosa at the corner restaurant to biryani from your favourite hotel, have it delivered hot and fresh to your office or home. The simple interface of the app allows you to browse menus, compare prices, and monitor orders in real-time. What sets this platform apart is its dedication to service excellence. Each delivery partner is trained to treat your food with care so that it reaches you in perfect condition. With live tracking and estimated delivery times, you'll always be able to tell when your food will arrive. Concerned about cost? The app provides excellent value and frequent discounts which enable food ordering to be affordable. From special seasonal deals to loyalty points, save money and enjoy your favourite foods. And with clear prices and no additional charges, you'll always know precisely what you're spending. The food delivery partner app in Jayanagar is more than just convenient. With contactless delivery methods and sealed containers, it prioritises your safety above all else. The platform also benefits local restaurants with its Green Delivery option, ensuring every order is eco-friendly. Love having customised meals? Special dietary needs or special preferences are no trouble at all with the app's comprehensive options for customising. The attentive customer support staff guarantees any issues will be resolved quickly. Join thousands of happy customers in Jayanagar who depend on this platform for daily food requirements. From fast office meals to home dinners, indulge in convenient food delivery that gets the best of Jayanagar's food options to your doorstep. Download the food delivery partner app in Jayanagar now and find out why it's quickly becoming Jayanagar's favorite food delivery platform. Because great food should be available, within budget, and a pleasure - just what this platform offers. Having a party or group get-together? The app provides exclusive bulk order and group celebration features. With priority ordering features, party bundles, and specialized large order support, hosting has never been simpler. The platform also gives corporate orders special deals, so it's ideal for office lunches and team meetings. And, the app's intelligent scheduling feature allows you to pre-order your meals so your food gets to you precisely when you need it.

The custom of prefixing or appending to historical narratives an estimate of the character and personality of the principal agent is of doubtful advantage at the best of times—it either imparts a specious unity to the action or permits apology or condemnation on moral and emotional grounds.

the world car market had changed in the fourteen months since that 1962 auto show, when big cars seemed resurgent and Henry Ford II had talked so confidently about Detroit’s position against foreign competition. In 1963, for the first time, even as the Big Three were enjoying their best sales year ever, more than half the cars in the world were made outside the United States, with estimates that the gap would only widen year by year from then on. Volkswagen was rising, and even Japan was beginning to stir, both taking hold of the worldwide small car market. Between 375,000 and 400,000 imports were sold in the United States in 1963, and estimates for 1964 were up to a half million. One reason, experts said, was that the compact cars the U.S. automakers started manufacturing in the late fifties in response to an earlier foreign surge were getting so much bigger every year that by now that might as well be classified as midsize vehicles.

variable. In social science, this is called a nomothetic mode of explanation—the isolation of the most important factors. This approach is consistent with the philosophy of seeking complete but parsimonious explanations in science.1 The second part involves addressing those variables that were not considered as being of most relevance. Regarding the first part, the specification of the “most important” independent variables is a judicious undertaking. The use of a nomothetic strategy implies that a range of plausible models exists—different analysts may identify different sets of “most important” independent variables. Analysts should ask which different factors are most likely to affect or cause their dependent variable, and they are likely to justify, identify, and operationalize their choices differently. Thus, the term full model specification does not imply that only one model or even a best model exists, but rather it refers to a family of plausible models. Most researchers agree that specification should (1) be driven by theory, that is, by persuasive arguments and perspectives that identify and justify which factors are most important, and (2) inform why the set of such variables is regarded as complete and parsimonious. In practice, the search for complete, parsimonious, and theory-driven explanations usually results in multiple regression models with about 5–12 independent variables; theory seldom results in less than 5 variables, and parsimony and problems of statistical estimation, discussed further, seldom result in models with more than 12. Key Point We cannot examine the effect of all possible variables. Rather, we focus on the most relevant ones. The search for parsimonious explanations often leads analysts to first identify different categories of factors that most affect their dependent variable. Then, after these categories of factors have been identified, analysts turn to the task of trying to measure each, through either single or index variables. As an example,

SUMMARY A vast array of additional statistical methods exists. In this concluding chapter, we summarized some of these methods (path analysis, survival analysis, and factor analysis) and briefly mentioned other related techniques. This chapter can help managers and analysts become familiar with these additional techniques and increase their access to research literature in which these techniques are used. Managers and analysts who would like more information about these techniques will likely consult other texts or on-line sources. In many instances, managers will need only simple approaches to calculate the means of their variables, produce a few good graphs that tell the story, make simple forecasts, and test for significant differences among a few groups. Why, then, bother with these more advanced techniques? They are part of the analytical world in which managers operate. Through research and consulting, managers cannot help but come in contact with them. It is hoped that this chapter whets the appetite and provides a useful reference for managers and students alike. KEY TERMS   Endogenous variables Exogenous variables Factor analysis Indirect effects Loading Path analysis Recursive models Survival analysis Notes 1. Two types of feedback loops are illustrated as follows: 2. When feedback loops are present, error terms for the different models will be correlated with exogenous variables, violating an error term assumption for such models. Then, alternative estimation methodologies are necessary, such as two-stage least squares and others discussed later in this chapter. 3. Some models may show double-headed arrows among error terms. These show the correlation between error terms, which is of no importance in estimating the beta coefficients. 4. In SPSS, survival analysis is available through the add-on module in SPSS Advanced Models. 5. The functions used to estimate probabilities are rather complex. They are so-called Weibull distributions, which are defined as h(t) = αλ(λt)a–1, where a and 1 are chosen to best fit the data. 6. Hence, the SSL is greater than the squared loadings reported. For example, because the loadings of variables in groups B and C are not shown for factor 1, the SSL of shown loadings is 3.27 rather than the reported 4.084. If one assumes the other loadings are each .25, then the SSL of the not reported loadings is [12*.252 =] .75, bringing the SSL of factor 1 to [3.27 + .75 =] 4.02, which is very close to the 4.084 value reported in the table. 7. Readers who are interested in multinomial logistic regression can consult on-line sources or the SPSS manual, Regression Models 10.0 or higher. The statistics of discriminant analysis are very dissimilar from those of logistic regression, and readers are advised to consult a separate text on that topic. Discriminant analysis is not often used in public

No normative critic, conservative or otherwise, equates Islamic terrorism with all Muslims or with all of Islam. Rather, in Charles Krauthammer’s words, “Radical Islam is not, by any means, a majority of Islam. But with its financiers, clerics, propagandists, trainers, leaders, operatives and sympathizers—according to a conservative estimate, it commands the allegiance of 7 percent of Muslims, that is, more than 80 million souls—it is a very powerful strain within Islam. It has changed the course of nations and affected the lives of millions. It is the reason every airport in the West is an armed camp and every land is on constant alert.

when Atlantic Monthly published one of Thoreau’s essays, called “Walking.” At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only, when fences shall be multiplied, and mantraps and other engines invented to confine men to the public road, and walking over the surface of God’s earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman’s grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities, then, before the evil days are upon us. Anthropologists estimate that early man walked twenty miles a day. Mental and physical benefits have been attributed to walking as far back as ancient times. The Roman writer Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD) described walking as one of the “Medicines of the Will.” Hippocrates, the Greek physician, called walking “man’s best medicine” and prescribed walks to treat emotional problems, hallucinations, and digestive disorders.

1a What language do you speak best? Do you speak more than one language equally well? 1b When did you begin to learn this language (these languages)? 2     Which second or foreign language(s) have you learned with the most success? 3     Which second or foreign language(s) have you learned with the least success? 4     For the languages you mentioned in response to questions 2 and 3, answer the following questions in the appropriate columns:   Languages learned successfully Languages not learned successfully How old were you when you first tried to learn the language?                                                             Did you have a choice about learning this language or were you required to learn it?                                                           Do you currently speak this language regularly?                                                           Do you regularly read this language for information or enjoyment?                                                           How much of your learning experience with this language was in a foreign language classroom?                                                           If you no longer use this language on a daily basis, can you estimate how many years you spent learning or using it?                                                           Estimate how many hours of classroom instruction you had for this language.                                                           How much time have you spent living in a place where the language is spoken?                                                           Have you used the language to learn other subjects at school? At what level (elementary, secondary, university)?                                                           Do you have personal or emotional attachments to this language? For example, do you have peers or family members who speak this language?                                                           Do/did you enjoy studying the grammar of this language?                                                           Do/did you enjoy studying vocabulary in this language?                                                           Are/were you a successful student in other school subjects? Do you think of yourself as a person who likes to socialize? Do you think of yourself as a person who learns a new language easily? Photocopiable © Oxford University Press Table 3.1 Individual differences in language learning experience

Delete it. The message isn’t important or it requires no response. The simplest action is to get rid of it. If you think it might be important, then you will put the message into an archive folder. Defer it. If a message requires a task that takes 5 or more minutes to complete, then defer it and schedule a date and time when you will do it. One of the main reasons people get bogged down is that they try to take action on emails that require you to complete a lengthy task. For emails like this, it makes sense to estimate the time required, write down the specific action into your calendar, respond back to the recipient with a date when they should expect it and then filter the email into your “Follow-Up” folder. You can use the items on your calendar to schedule the rest of your week. Another option for deferring an item is to use the Boomerang extension, which creates reminders for specific tasks. Delegate it. You may not be the best person to handle the task. If you have a team or subordinates, then delegate the task to the appropriate person. After that, create a reminder in your calendar to follow up and make sure it has been handled. Do it. If it takes less than 5 minutes to respond to an email or complete the required task, then take care of it immediately.

By definition, new ventures call for a company to envision what is unknown, uncertain, and not yet obvious to the competition. The safe, reliable, predictable knowledge of the well-understood business has not yet emerged. Instead, managers must make do with assumptions about the possible futures on which new businesses are based. New ventures are undertaken with a high ratio of assumption to knowledge. With ongoing businesses, one expects the ratio to be the exact opposite. Because assumptions about the unknown generally turn out to be wrong, new ventures inevitably experience deviations—often huge ones—from their original planned targets. Indeed, new ventures frequently require fundamental redirection. Rather than trying to force startups into the planning methodologies for existing predictable and well-understood businesses, discovery-driven planning acknowledges that at the start of a new venture, little is known and much is assumed. When platform-based planning is used, assumptions underlying a plan are treated as facts—givens to be baked into the plan—rather than as best-guess estimates to be tested and questioned. Companies then forge ahead on the basis of those buried assumptions. In contrast, discovery-driven planning systematically converts assumptions into knowledge as a strategic venture unfolds. When new data are uncovered, they are incorporated into the evolving plan. The real potential of the venture is discovered as it develops—hence the term discovery-driven planning. The approach imposes disciplines different from, but no less precise than, the disciplines used in conventional planning.

Well, the rate at which we’re injecting CO2 into the atmosphere today, according to our best estimates, is ten times faster than it was during the End-Permian. And rates matter. So today we’re creating a very difficult environment for life to adapt, and we’re imposing that change maybe ten times faster than the worst events in Earth’s history.

Often themselves outstanding golfers, caddies lighten the load by feeding their As information on how the course works, estimating the yardage of each hole, suggesting the club they might choose and advising on the direction and speed of the wind. More importantly, say the best golfers, a caddie imparts calm, confidence and focus. They contribute to the certainty of their A’s decision-making. In some cases, the club lugger may prove to be the decisive factor, the difference between winner and runner-up.

Asians are still a small minority—14.5 million (including about one million identified as part Asian) or 4.7 percent of the population—but their impact is vastly disproportionate to their numbers. Forty-four percent of Asian-American adults have a college degree or higher, as opposed to 24 percent of the general population. Asian men have median earnings 10 percent higher than non Asian men, and that of Asian women is 15 percent higher than non-Asian women. Forty-five percent of Asians are employed in professional or management jobs as opposed to 34 percent for the country as a whole, and the figure is no less than 60 percent for Asian Indians. The Information Technology Association of America estimates that in the high-tech workforce Asians are represented at three times their proportion of the population. Asians are more likely than the American average to own homes rather than be renters. These successes are especially remarkable because no fewer than 69 percent of Asians are foreign-born, and immigrant groups have traditionally taken several generations to reach their full economic potential. Asians are vastly overrepresented at the best American universities. Although less than 5 percent of the population they account for the following percentages of the students at these universities: Harvard: 17 percent, Yale: 13 percent, Princeton: 12 percent, Columbia: 14 percent, Stanford: 25 percent. In California, the state with the largest number of Asians, they made up 14 percent of the 2005 high school graduating class but 42 percent of the freshmen on the campuses of the University of California system. At Berkeley, the most selective of all the campuses, the 2005 freshman class was an astonishing 48 percent Asian. Asians are also the least likely of any racial or ethnic group to commit crimes. In every category, whether violent crime, white-collar crime, alcohol, or sex offenses, they are arrested at about one-quarter to one-third the rate of whites, who are the next most law-abiding group. It would be a mistake, however, to paint all Asians with the same brush, as different nationalities can have distinctive profiles. For example, 40 percent of the manicurists in the United States are of Vietnamese origin and half the motel rooms in the country are owned by Asian Indians. Chinese (24 percent of all Asians) and Indians (16 percent), are extremely successful, as are Japanese and Koreans. Filipinos (18 percent) are somewhat less so, while the Hmong face considerable difficulties. Hmong earn 30 percent less than the national average, and 60 percent drop out of high school. In the Seattle public schools, 80 percent of Japanese-American students passed Washington state’s standardized math test for 10th-graders—the highest pass rate for any ethnic group. The group with the lowest pass rate—14 percent—was another “Asian/Pacific Islanders” category: Samoans. On the whole, Asians have a well-deserved reputation for high achievement.

Thomas A. Kochan, a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, has probably researched corporate diversity more extensively than anyone. His conclusion after a five-year study? “The diversity industry is built on sand.” Prof. Kochan initially contacted 20 major companies that have publicly committed themselves to diversity, and was astonished to find that not one had done a serious study of how diversity increased profits or improved operations. He learned that managers are afraid that race-related research could bring on lawsuits, but that another reason they do not look for results is “because people simply want to believe that diversity works.” Like other researchers, he found “the negative consequences of diversity, such as higher turnover and greater conflict in the workplace,” and concluded that even if the best managers were able to overcome these problems there was no evidence diversity leads to greater profits. “The business case rhetoric for diversity is simply naive and overdone,” he says, noting that the estimated $8 billion a year spent on diversity training did not even protect businesses from discrimination suits, much less increase profits. Common sense suggests that it is hard to get dissimilar people to work together. Indeed, a large-scale survey called the National Study of the Changing Workforce found that more than half of all workers said they preferred to work with people who were not only the same race as themselves, but had the same education and were the same sex.

Axons and dendrites enable neurons to wire up with a connectivity that computer designers can only fantasize about. Each of the 100 billion neurons connects to, typically, anywhere from about a few thousand to 100,000 other neurons. The best guess is that, at birth, each neuron makes an average of 2,500 of these specialized junctions, or synapses; reaches a connectivity peak of 15,000 synapses at age two or three; and then starts losing synapses in a process called pruning. If we take a conservative mean for the number of connections (1,000), then the adult brain boasts an estimated 100,000,000,000,000—100 trillion—synapses. Other estimates of the number of synapses in the adult brain go as high as 1,000 trillion.

Russia’s embassy in Mexico City, was one of the most famous places in the history of espionage. For at least two decades, the embassy served as a haven for spies, with an estimated 150 of them working undercover as diplomats, journalists, clerks, chauffeurs and other positions at the height of the Cold War. Some of America’s most famous spies sold U.S. secrets there, including two men who had served time at Sheridan with Jim. Christopher Boyce, of Falcon and the Snowman fame, had passed messages to the KGB through the embassy, sending Andrew Daulton Lee, his boyhood best friend, as his courier. James Harper Jr. sold U.S. missile documents to Polish spies inside the embassy, and in other spots in Mexico, in the early 1980s.

In an article in Bits and Pieces,* some suggestions are made on how to keep a disagreement from becoming an argument: Welcome the disagreement. Remember the slogan, "When two partners always agree, one of them is not necessary." If there is some point you haven't thought about, be thankful if it is brought to your attention. Perhaps this disagreement is your opportunity to be corrected before you make a serious mistake. Distrust your first instinctive impression. Our first natural reaction in a disagreeable situation is to be defensive. Be careful. Keep calm and watch out for your first reaction. It may be you at your worst, not your best. Control your temper. Remember, you can measure the size of a person by what makes him or her angry. Listen first. Give your opponents a chance to talk. Let them finish. Do not resist, defend or debate. This only raises barriers. Try to build bridges of understanding. Don't build higher barriers of misunderstanding. Look for areas of agreement. When you have heard your opponents out, dwell first on the points and areas on which you agree. Be honest, Look for areas where you can admit error and say so. Apologize for your mistakes. It will help disarm your opponents and reduce defensiveness. Promise to think over your opponents' ideas and study them carefully. And mean it. Your opponents may be right. It is a lot easier at this stage to agree to think about their points than to move rapidly ahead and find yourself in a position where your opponents can say: "We tried to tell you, but you wouldn't listen." Thank your opponents sincerely for their interest. Anyone who takes the time to disagree with you is interested in the same things you are. Think of them as people who really want to help you, and you may turn your opponents into friends. Postpone action to give both sides time to think through the problem. Suggest that a new meeting be held later that day or the next day, when all the facts may be brought to bear. In preparation for this meeting, ask yourself some hard questions: Could my opponents be right? Partly right? Is there truth or merit in their position or argument? Is my reaction one that will relieve the problem, or will it just relieve any frustration? Will my reaction drive my opponents further away or draw them closer to me? Will my reaction elevate the estimation good people have of me? Will I win or lose? What price will I have to pay if I win? If I am quiet about it, will the disagreement blow over? Is this difficult situation an opportunity for me? * Bits and Pieces, published by The Economics Press, Fairfield, N.J.

When it comes to climate parables, we tend to like best the ones starring animals, who are mute when we do not project our voices onto them, and who are dying, at our own hands—half of them extinct, E. O. Wilson estimates, by 2100. Even as we face crippling impacts from climate on human life, we still look to those animals, in part because what John Ruskin memorably called the “pathetic fallacy” still holds: it can be curiously easier to empathize with them, perhaps because we would rather not reckon with our own responsibility, but instead simply feel their pain, at least briefly. In the face of a storm kicked up by humans, and which we continue to kick up each day, we seem most comfortable adopting a learned posture of powerlessness.

Compare now, my fellow-citizens, me, who am a new man, with those haughty nobles. What they have but heard or read, I have witnessed or performed. What they have learned from books, I have acquired in the field; and whether deeds or words are of greater estimation, it is for you to consider. They despise my humbleness of birth; I contemn their imbecility. My condition is made an objection to me; their misconduct is a reproach to them. The circumstance of birth, indeed, I consider as one and the same to all; but think that he who best exerts himself is the noblest. And could it be inquired of the fathers, of Albinus and Bestia, whether they would rather be the parents of them or of me, what do you suppose that they would answer, but that they would wish the most deserving to be their offspring! If the patricians justly despise me, let them also despise their own ancestors, whose nobility, like mine, had its origin in merit. They envy me the honor that I have received; let them also envy me the toils, the abstinence, and the perils, by which I obtained that honor. But they, men eaten up with pride, live as if they disdained all the distinctions that you can bestow, and yet sue for those distinctions as if they had lived so as to merit them. Yet those are assuredly deceived, who expect to enjoy, at the same time, things so incompatible as the pleasures of indolence and the rewards of honorable exertion.

The USDA statistics, however, were based on guesses, not reliable evidence. These statistics, known as “food disappearance data” and published yearly, estimate how much we consume each year of any particular food, by calculating how much is produced nationwide, adding imports, deducting exports, and adjusting or estimating for waste. The resulting numbers for per-capita consumption are acknowledged to be, at best, rough estimates.

The ability to make rational decisions is limited, or bounded, by the extent of people’s information. To broaden employees’ understanding, a firm should promote a tradition of teamwork and interdependence and develop future leaders by rotating them among work assignments in different departments and geographic locations. In order to reduce structural secrecy, there may be short-term opportunity costs, but the long-term benefits are significant.12 Firms must think about long-term greed and what it means. Through actions and training, leaders must explain the pressures on short-term thinking and how the firm resolves the conflicts of short- and long-term goals. Potentially conflicting or confusing organizational goals, such as putting clients first while also having a duty to shareholders, require strong signals from leadership as to what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior. These nuances cannot be left to statements of principles; they must be modeled by leaders’ actions each day. Leaders must understand that external influences can shape the culture. For example, there are competitive, technological, and regulatory pressures. Responses to them can have unintended consequences, including drifting from principles. This can increase the probability of an organizational failure. An organization needs to understand to what extent models impact behavior, decisions made by business leaders, and organizational culture. For example, boards of directors of public companies should ask questions if earnings per share (EPS) estimates are too consistent with analysts’ estimates. They should ask whether the firm is managing to models or to what is in the best long-term interests of the firm. Leaders get too much credit and too much blame. Leaders need to uphold the firm’s shared values—and that is a key component to leadership.13 But too little emphasis is given to the organizational elements that shape behavior or provide an environment for leadership or change. An organization’s structure, incentives, and values last longer and have more impact than those of individual leaders. Usually when there is a change or loss or failure there is a tendency to blame one thing or one person, when typically there are complex organizational cultural reasons. It is the duty of leaders and board members to examine what is responsible, not who is responsible.