Ongoing Project Quotes

Awe is the gateway to compassion. It is a deep awareness that we are creators, creators who work with the Creator, in an ongoing project of crafting a world. If we do not like the world or are afraid of it, we have had a hand in that. And if we made a mess, we can clean it up and do better. We are what we make.

Pop said once that relationships are more often like old houses—the place where you want to live, but an ongoing project—something always leaking, peeling away, breaking down.

Human existence is, ab initio, an ongoing externalization. As man externalizes himself, he constructs the world into which he externalizes himself. In the process of externalization, he projects his own meanings into reality. Symbolic universes, which proclaim that all reality is humanly meaningful and call upon the entire cosmos to signify the validity of human existence, constitute the farthest reaches of this projection.80 b.

...when my sons were the ages of those two leaping boys, they were so intimate it would have been hard to disentangle their separate natures. They used to play together without pause from the moment they opened their eyes in the morning to the moment they closed them again. Their play was a kind of shared trance in which they created whole imaginary worlds, and they were forever involved in games and projects whose planning and execution were as real to them as they were invisible to everyone else: sometimes I would move or throw away some apparently inconsequential item, only to be told that it was a sacred prop in the ongoing make-believe, a narrative which seemed to run like a magic river through our household, inexhaustible, and which they could exit and re-enter at will, moving over that threshold which no one else could see into another element. And then one day the river dried up: their shared world of imagination ceased, and the reason was that one of them - I can't even recall which one it was - stopped believing in it. In other words, it was nobody's fault; but all the same it was brought home to me how much of what was beautiful in their lives was the result of a shared vision of things that strictly speaking could not have been said to exist.

She was both the most tragically insecure and beguilingly confident person I had ever met. And she loved fun, which was infectious. Her pursuit of new experiences was a preoccupation, and her permanent state of being single had given her the time to make an ongoing project of her own life.

Always have some project under way...an ongoing project that goes from day to day and thus makes each day a small unit of time.

The joke of evolution is that it is a teleology without a point, that we, like all animals, are a project that issues in nothing. But is there really such a thing as nothing, as nothingness? I don’t know. I know we’re still here, who knows for how long, ablaze with our care, its ongoing song.

As our mental lives become more fragmented, what is at stake often seems to be nothing less than the question of whether one can maintain a coherent self. I mean a self that is able to act according to settled purposes and ongoing projects, rather than flitting about.

We are not put on this earth to be happy all the time. I don't think trying to be happy is the secret to life. It certainly isn't what my life is, that's for sure. Then what is? Be sad and suffer? No, no. It's not about trying to be anything. Happiness is not something that can be attained and once attained, that's it. It's an ongoing project.

His vanity required constant stimulation, and constant proof that the ongoing creation of his selfhood was a project that he himself controlled.

Inequality lives, in part, because Americans of every generation have been misled into believing that racial progress is inevitable and ongoing.

Spirituality is not just about sitting in a room encountering a mystical god in meditation or about seeing God in a sunset. Awe is the gateway to compassion. It is a deep awareness that we are creators, creators who work with the Creator, in an ongoing project of crafting a world. If we do not like the world or are afraid of it, we have had a hand in that. And if we made a mess, we can clean it up and do better. We are what we make.

Mature development—does not come from severing the early infantile sense of unity with the Mother, but from reestablishing it. The holistic point of ancient women’s religion was that the Mother is not one’s personal maternal parent solely, but the entire community of women, the entire living earth, and beyond this the entire surrounding and ongoing cosmic process. One could not be alienated because one is always within this process, as it is always within the self. Unless, of course, such knowledge is suppressed from the outside, by patriarchal conditioning. Truly, our very sanity is at stake with continuing patriarchy and the denial of the cosmic self—the Goddess—within us all, and within her. The Great Mother was the projection of the self-experience of groups of highly aware and productive women who were the founders of much of human culture. In this sense the Great Mother is not simply a mental archetype, but a historical fact.

When Pope John's successors — Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI — adamantly refused to alter anything having to do with the patriarchal and deeply misogynistic structure of Catholic power, and when they shored up a broad Catholic suspicion of every erotic impulse, the Church sacrificed the ongoing project of a humanely reformed Catholicism. Even under Francis, the us-against-them bipolarity that John XXIII stood against remains firmly in place, and it is still epitomized by men against women.

Nouns now turn overnight into verbs. We target goals and we access facts. Train conductors announce that the train won’t platform. A sign on an airport door tells me that the door is alarmed. Companies are downsizing. It’s part of an ongoing effort to grow the business. “Ongoing” is a jargon word whose main use is to raise morale. We face our daily job with more zest if the boss tells us it’s an ongoing project; we give more willingly to institutions if they have targeted our funds for ongoing needs. Otherwise we might fall prey to disincentivization.

agile development reflects a product lifecycle approach (continuous delivery of value), rather than a project approach (begin-end). While an individual release of a product can be managed as a project, an agile approach views a release as a single stage in a product’s ongoing evolution.

Very few Zionist Left intellectuals see Israel as a colonial settler state. They do not attribute its “internal” regime, laws, and political culture to this central characteristic of state and society (not to mention Israel’s Apartheid nature). The majority refuses to see the Zionist movement as an ongoing colonial project.

That racism still exists is taken as evidence of the failure of the liberal project, but of course nobody has made the case that it has been eradicated. If a disease is cured but a few symptoms linger, one does not claim that the treatment was ineffective. Social liberalism is an ongoing process because it recognizes the imperfectability of human nature.

The sensory cortex and visual cortex are far away from each other. How do those tactile neurons “know” (a) that there’s vacant property in the visual cortex; (b) that hooking up with those unoccupied neurons helps turn fingertip information into “reading”; and (c) how to send axonal projections to this new cortical continent? All are matters of ongoing research.

Usually what keeps us from this experience of heaven on earth is the sum of all the memories and associated beliefs we hold that make us conclude that we are unworthy of love, and / or have been banished by God. It’s a classic case of anthropocentric projection in which it is actually our own ongoing criticism and judgement of ourselves that reinforces our experience of duality and separation.

This project was undertaken with a great deal of ongoing thought and conversation and concern about the line between allyship and appropriation—a line that might feel different to different readers. It is my great hope that this book will lead the curious to read direct, personal accounts of the AIDS crisis—and that any places where I’ve gotten the details wrong might inspire people to tell their own stories.

Naming as knowing must have the provisionality to accommodate engaged relationships as in their “doing and undergoing” they deepen and become increasingly robust. Such knowing is dependent upon an awareness of the indeterminate aspects of things. The ongoing shaping of experience requires a degree of imagination and creative projection that does not reference the world as it is, but anticipates what it might become.

which Trump released as one of the last acts of his presidency, on Martin Luther King Day. Written without input from any scholars who specialize in American history, it sought to reinforce the exceptional nature of our country, and to put forth a “patriotic” narrative that downplays racism and inequality and emphasizes a unity predicated on seeing slavery, segregation, and ongoing racial injustice as aberrations in a fundamentally just and exceptionally free nation.21

Every time that we consider our past, examine our present environment, and speculate about the future, we engage in mental projection. Contemplation merges into thinking, and thinking unspools into theorizing suppositions. Every act of attentiveness expands our state of awareness. Deductive surmises represent an ongoing process of making applicable connections between theories and facts. Devising working hypothesis represents one of the highest intellectual achievements of humankind.

Theologically, Hell is out of favor now, but it still seems more "real" to most people than Fairyland or Atlantis or Valhalla or other much imagined places. This is because of the sheer mass and weight and breadth of ancient tradition, inventive fantasy, analytic argument, dictatorial dogma, and both simple and complex faith employed over a very long time- thousands of years- in the ongoing attempt to map the netherworld. The landscape of Hell is the largest shared construction project in imaginative history, and its chief architects have been creative giants- Homer, Virgil, Plato, Augustine, Dante, Bosch, Michelangelo, Milton, Goethe, Blake, and more.

What content types best meet the needs of our target audience and their changing, multiple contexts? What content types best fit the skills of our copywriters? What content types do we already have? What contexts are appropriate for the delivery of our content, and how will we translate our information into multiple content types appropriate for different screens, resolutions, locations, and contexts? Is existing content still good? Is it still current, relevant, and brand-appropriate for our needs, our users’ needs, and the context in which we want to deliver it? How will we get more content to bridge the gaps between what we have and what we need? What is the workflow that already supports that, and do we need to refine it? How will we make the case for these new content types to other team members who help shape the user experience? Who will do this for launch? Who will maintain content on an ongoing basis? Who will train them? How will we help people find the answers, definitions, and other information they need? What are the relationships within our content?

-jeez, these guys, with their on-again, off-again rela­tionships, lutgen said; -Yeah, Dave said: now you see them, now you see them once more; -They're virtual insects!, Jurgen said; -Virtually innumerable, said Dave; -I wonder, though, if we haven't got it wrong, Jurgen said: I mean, I wonder if maybe these guys' natural condition isn't to be lit up-if their ground state isn't actually when they're glowing; -Hm, said Dave: so what they're actually doing is turning off their lights­ -Right: momentarily going under; -Flashing darkness­ -Projecting their inner voids­ -Their repeating, periodic depressions ... -So then, I suppose, we should really call them douse bugs---;. -Exactly... -Or nature's faders---;. -Flying extinguishers­ -Buzzing snuffers-! -Or maybe­ -Or maybe, despite what it looks like, maybe they really are glowing constantly, Jurgen said: but, through some malign unknown mechanism, their everlasting light is peri­odically swallowed up by un-understood atmospheric forces; -So then they're being occluded­ -Rudely occluded­ -Denied their God-given right to shine ... -So that, I suppose, would make them-o horror-victims­ -Yeah: victims of predatory darkness­ -Of uncontrollable flares of night; -So it isn't bioluminescence, but eco-eclipsis­ -Exactly: ambient effacement­ -Nature's station-identification­ -Ongoing lessons in humility ... -In fact, that might explain the nits' efficiency factor, Jurgen Said: you know, these guys burn so cleanly that they produce what's known in the trade as cold light they put together this real slow oxidation reaction within these little cell-structures called photocytes, using a really weird enzyme and substrate that're, like, named for the devil; and the result is virtually 100% efficient: almost no heat is lost at all... -So, in fact, these folks should be our heroes­ -Exactly: our role models­ -Our ego ideals---;. -Hosts of syndicated talk shows­ -Spokes-things for massive advertising campaigns---;. -In fact, children should be forced to leave their families and go be raised by them­-MacArthur winners, all...

Performance measure. Throughout this book, the term performance measure refers to an indicator used by management to measure, report, and improve performance. Performance measures are classed as key result indicators, result indicators, performance indicators, or key performance indicators. Critical success factors (CSFs). CSFs are the list of issues or aspects of organizational performance that determine ongoing health, vitality, and wellbeing. Normally there are between five and eight CSFs in any organization. Success factors. A list of 30 or so issues or aspects of organizational performance that management knows are important in order to perform well in any given sector/ industry. Some of these success factors are much more important; these are known as critical success factors. Balanced scorecard. A term first introduced by Kaplan and Norton describing how you need to measure performance in a more holistic way. You need to see an organization’s performance in a number of different perspectives. For the purposes of this book, there are six perspectives in a balanced scorecard (see Exhibit 1.7). Oracles and young guns. In an organization, oracles are those gray-haired individuals who have seen it all before. They are often considered to be slow, ponderous, and, quite frankly, a nuisance by the new management. Often they are retired early or made redundant only to be rehired as contractors at twice their previous salary when management realizes they have lost too much institutional knowledge. Their considered pace is often a reflection that they can see that an exercise is futile because it has failed twice before. The young guns are fearless and precocious leaders of the future who are not afraid to go where angels fear to tread. These staff members have not yet achieved management positions. The mixing of the oracles and young guns during a KPI project benefits both parties and the organization. The young guns learn much and the oracles rediscover their energy being around these live wires. Empowerment. For the purposes of this book, empowerment is an outcome of a process that matches competencies, skills, and motivations with the required level of autonomy and responsibility in the workplace. Senior management team (SMT). The team comprised of the CEO and all direct reports. Better practice. The efficient and effective way management and staff undertake business activities in all key processes: leadership, planning, customers, suppliers, community relations, production and supply of products and services, employee wellbeing, and so forth. Best practice. A commonly misused term, especially because what is best practice for one organization may not be best practice for another, albeit they are in the same sector. Best practice is where better practices, when effectively linked together, lead to sustainable world-class outcomes in quality, customer service, flexibility, timeliness, innovation, cost, and competitiveness. Best-practice organizations commonly use the latest time-saving technologies, always focus on the 80/20, are members of quality management and continuous improvement professional bodies, and utilize benchmarking. Exhibit 1.10 shows the contents of the toolkit used by best-practice organizations to achieve world-class performance. EXHIBIT 1.10 Best-Practice Toolkit Benchmarking. An ongoing, systematic process to search for international better practices, compare against them, and then introduce them, modified where necessary, into your organization. Benchmarking may be focused on products, services, business practices, and processes of recognized leading organizations.

We might think then of rhetorical production as an extended intentional state in which rhetoric emerges from the dynamic, ongoing intra-actions of human and nonhuman entities all projecting toward each other.

Viewer Media Center policies in the future will need to focus on stabilization of ongoing projects and the establishment of new

In a formal conversation in Ukraine, it is always correct to ask how things are, how life is; about your interlocutor’s job and his or her ongoing projects. You should be prepared to hear “And what about you?” in return. Be ready to give an answer in the same way. It is simply a matter of politeness.

Galeano emphasized the import of nature in the European “conquest/invasion” of Latin America and the subsequent and ongoing colonial project. And he “located” the divorce of nature and people’s communion within—and as fundamental to—the venture of Western civilization.1 The growing recognition, particularly in the “Souths” of the world today, that Western civilization is in crisis, and the propositions coming from Abya-Yala (the name, originally from the Cuna language, that indigenous peoples collectively give to the Americas today) for radically distinct life-models and visions interlaced with and in nature, give Galeano’s words pragmatic substance. Galeano’s words also, in a sense, establish the importance of location and place; that is to say, of the place and location from which we think the world, and act, struggle, and live in and with it.

Wildly Popular House Buying Strategy In A Competitive Environment It is important for the success of any real estate consulting company to have customers who are happy with their services. Customers who are unhappy with your real estate services business will stop buying your goods and will supply your business with a bad name. To guarantee that your business receives positive reviews, be certain to give your customers the best quality service. We've great ideas about how to create potential customers and keeping current ones satisfied. Each new employee you bring into your real estate services business could have long-lasting repercussions, so choose them carefully. Prior to inviting someone to join you, be certain that he or she's going to be capable of performing the duties the job will require, and that he or she's certified in any way needed. Whenever a new employee joins your business, you should see that they receive thorough training and could complete the tasks assigned to them. Successful companies have happy staff members that need to help you succeed; they tend to be the product of ongoing training. A real estate services business that hopes to be competitive in today's business world should have a professionally designed website. As a responsible business owner, you have to hire a professional website designer to build your site if you don't have the necessary skills to do it yourself. The appearance of your website is vital to its success, so be sure to use visually appealing templates and images that support your content. Never discount the importance of virtual retailing to your real estate consulting company's success; today's business climate requires that all companies establish and maintain a strong and authoritative web presence. Don't give in to complacency, even though your real estate consulting company is doing well. House buying experts universally believe that the very best time to expand your company is when you are gaining momentum. When you have dedication to the project, you could build a successful company. If your company could learn to embrace changes in the marketplace and always strive for something better, you will get through a lot of tough times.

Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt wrote his seminal book, The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, in 1984. It’s a Socratic novel about Alex Rogo, a plant manager who must fix his cost and due date issues in ninety days, or his plant will be shut down.

According to the survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2012 (see the Introduction) Germany is today the only member of the EU in which most people, 59 per cent, think their country has been helped by European integration. Majorities or near majorities in most countries surveyed now believe that the economic integration of Europe has actually weakened their economies. This is the opinion in Greece (70 per cent), France (63 per cent), Britain (61 per cent), Italy (61 per cent), the Czech Republic (59 per cent), and Spain (50 per cent). The survey data also show that the crisis of the euro has triggered a full-blown crisis of public confidence: in the economy, in the future, in the benefits of European economic integration, in membership in the EU, in the euro and in the free-market system. Again, Europeans largely oppose further fiscal austerity to deal with the crisis; they are divided on bailing out indebted nations; and oppose Brussels’ oversight of national budgets. In short, the European project is a major casualty of the ongoing sovereign-debt crisis: we are witnessing the failure of the attempt to integrate Europe through a ‘positive’ law that has neither produced the promised benefits for the people, nor has it been enacted by the people itself.

In Brazil, the targeting of peasant leaders has been an ongoing government and private-sector project. Over the past two decades, and according only to official sources, at least 1,425 rural workers, leaders and activists have been assassinated there. And yet only 79 cases have ever been brought to trial.

This erosion of faith in Europe has been ongoing since early in the twentieth century, when Europe was home to a majority of the world’s Christians—66 percent—and North America was then a far second at 15 percent. By 2010, Europeans comprised only 25.5 percent of Christians internationally. North America, 12.3 percent. Those figures are projected to drop further by 2050: to, respectively, 15.6 percent and 9.8 percent.

There is no such thing as an ongoing project—that would be an oxymoron.

Seibel: So sometimes—maybe even often—your people actually know what they're talking about and you shouldn't interfere too much because you might stomp out a good idea. It's trickier when you're really right and their idea really is a little bit flawed but you don't want to beat up on them too much. Allen: There was some of that. It was often where somebody came in with a knowledge of some area and wanted to apply that knowledge to an ongoing piece of project without having been embedded in the project long enough to know, and often up against a deadline. I ran into it big time doing some subcontracting work. I had a group of people that was doing wonderful work building an optimizer based on the work we've done here for PL/I, a big, different language. But one of the people working for the subcontractor had just discovered object-oriented programming and decided that he would apply it to the extreme. And I couldn't stop him, even though I was the contract overseer, and the project was destroyed.

Like Lincoln, who taught himself geometry, grammar, and military strategy, Douglass treated the improvement of his mind as an ongoing project. He did not know exactly how he would use what he was learning, but he was committed to making himself into all he could.

Actually the message boards were part of a larger pilot project,” Mrs. Wood said. “An ongoing project in incident management. With the message boards we hoped to learn if motorists would modify their behavior according to what we told them on the boards.” I asked if the motorists had. “Actually no,” Mrs. Wood said finally. “They didn’t react to the signs exactly as we’d hypothesized they would, no. But. If we’d known what the motorist would do … then we wouldn’t have needed a pilot project in the first place, would we.

The other major oil industry suppliers were similarly weary, trying to shore up earnings by slashing jobs, trimming project costs, and squeezing their own customers and suppliers wherever they could. (The wildcatters had it worse: many of the mom-and-pop operators of the American oil patch started to file for bankruptcy.) One year later, GE would merge its oil and gas unit into the oil-field giant Baker Hughes, keeping for itself a more than 50 percent stake in the company and spinning out a new public company to be run by Simonelli, under GE’s control. The transaction eased GE’s exposure to the ongoing oil rout and gave the new company, dubbed “Baker Hughes, a GE company,” vast new areas of redundant employees and operations to eliminate. With Baker Hughes, GE changed its tone a bit. The deal was transformational, but in which intended direction wasn’t made clear. GE execs like Bornstein would proclaim that the deal gave them “optionality,” but the reality was that investors were left in the dark on the strategy: Was GE doubling down on oil? Or was it preparing to exit the industry? The idea of holding such a long-term option was nice, but the game pieces in the positioning were people, and those who didn’t leave their job had no idea where the future of the company might be. The new arrangement didn’t spare Lufkin. The historic foundry was closed. The city’s annual financial report now just shows a blank line when listing the company’s employment tally, evidence of the more than four thousand jobs that evaporated after GE came to town. Between two Mondays—the day GE announced it was coming to Lufkin and the day the company said it would move on, leaving a shuttered foundry at the center of town—just 868 days had passed.

PRINCIPLE 2 Make a list of ongoing projects

New York City’s fiscal health was no better than the state of its subways. Lindsay and the city comptroller, Abe Beame, were engaging in a series of fiscal gimmicks to keep the city’s operating and capital budgets afloat. They were trying to satisfy too many constituents by undertaking ambitious capital projects, minimizing fare increases, and providing some of the most generous pension benefits in the nation to municipal employees. Government agencies have two types of budgets: operating budgets and capital budgets. The operating budget pays for day-to-day expenses such as salaries, pensions, and office supplies, as well as ongoing maintenance and basic repairs, such as cleaning buses and filling potholes. The capital budget funds the construction and rehabilitation of the city’s infrastructure and facilities.

.. while there is some truth to the claims (..) that the prison plays an important function in containing the contradictions that have emerged in the contemporary phase of capitalist development, this should not be viewed simply as a response to growing social cleavages. Rather, as part of the gendered social ontology of capitalism, the law is itself constitutive of historically specific relations of production and social reproduction. Thus, the restructuring of the neoliberal state in ways that limit its ability to regulate the movement of capital across borders, on-going forms of primitive accumulation that enclose and police formerly public spaces and the criminalization and incarceration of particular sectors of the poor and working-class population are all manifestations of the neoliberal project

I am a cultural historian specializing in fashion, and the book you are now reading as part of an ongoing project on the relationship between clothing and sexuality. I am interested in exploring fashion as a symbolic system linked to expression of sexuality – both sexual behaviour (including erotic attraction) and gender identity.

This kind of mental engagement communicates the struggle between experiencing projective identifications, on the one hand, and the ability to survive and have his own thoughts, a mind of his own, on the other. If stated in terms of the ongoing internal dialogue between ‘proper object’ and ‘dream object’, passion is the emotional link signalling these two representations of the therapist’s experience in dialogue. It is an internal dialogue that takes place, or is conveyed, within an intersubjective process (Billow, 2000). The

I also know, of course, that the others have a perspective on this common world that is not identical with mine. My “here” is their “there.” My “now” does not fully overlap with theirs. My projects differ from and may even conflict with theirs. All the same, I know that I live with them in a common world. Most importantly, I know that there is an ongoing correspondence between my meanings and their meanings in this world, that we share a common sense about its reality. The natural attitude is the attitude of commonsense consciousness precisely because it refers to a world that is common to many men. Commonsense knowledge is the knowledge I share with others in the normal, self-evident routines of everyday life.

I know now that you can’t know everything about everyone. You have to think of it as a thrilling, ongoing project. Crossing the threshold of a strange house is like the opening line of a gripping story. At its best, penetrating deeper, it is like falling in love.

throughout my life, using skills or talents or a person’s raw physical power to help them rise to the top of their society came and went. In the beginning, it was the strength in their arms to swing their swords. Then the tongue to sway large groups to accomplish something together. It became those who developed the sciences, and then—to a degree—it was those again who had physical prowess and could run or shoot a ball into a hoop. Yet, it was those who produced the food, built the homes, protected society, or taught the children or young adults who often weren’t supported. They would do their jobs, punch their time cards, and do what needed to get done to keep society going. My suggestion is to consider all work—if done well—equal. Government needs to be in place, but we’ll require some form of service as your debt to society. Perhaps you are a musician but can test into working with an R&D lab in the future. Can that be your service?” “That,” Bethany Anne replied, “could be a nightmare. Just think about the ongoing effort for some of Jean Dukes’ stuff. There’s no way we could place a person into a project for two weeks and then they leave.” Michael tapped a finger on the table. “I understand. However, let me give you a quote from a worker to Jack Welch.” “Who?” Peter interrupted. Stephen answered, “Jack Welch. He was the CEO of General Electric—GE—back on Earth in the twentieth century.” Michael continued, “He was talking to the assembly line workers at one of their businesses and one of the men spoke up, telling Welch that ‘for twenty-five years you paid for my hands when you could have had my brain as well for nothing.’” The table was quiet a moment, thinking about that. Peter was the first to break it. “Makes sense. We use that concept in the Guardians all the time. Everyone has a role to play, but if you have ideas you need to speak up.” “It would,” Addix added, “allow those interacting to bring new ways of thinking to perhaps old and worn-out strategies.” “What about those who truly hated the notion?” Stephen asked. “I can think of a few.” “I’m tempted to say ‘fuck ‘em.’” Bethany Anne snorted. “However, I know people, and they might fuck up the works. What about a ten-percent charge of their annual wealth if they wish to forego service?” “Two weeks,” Michael interjected, “is at best four percent of their time.” “Right,” Bethany Anne agreed, “so I’d suggest they do the two weeks. But if they want to they can lose ten percent of their annual wealth—which is not their annual income, because that shit can be hidden.” The Admiral asked, “So a billionaire who technically made nothing during the year would owe a hundred million to get out of two weeks’ service?” “Right,” Bethany Anne agreed. “And someone with fifty thousand owes five thousand.” “Where does the money go?” Peter asked. Admiral Thomas grinned. “I suggest the military.” “Education?” Peter asked. “It’s just a suggestion, because that is what we are talking about.” Stephen scratched his chin. “I can imagine large corporations putting income packages together for their upper-level executives to pay for this.” “I suggest,” Bethany Anne added, “putting the names of those who opt out on a public list so everyone knows who isn’t working.” “What about sickness, or a family illness they need to deal with?” Stephen countered. “With Pod-docs we shouldn’t have that issue, but there would have to be some sort of schedule. Further, we will always have public projects. There are always roads to be built, gardens to be tended, or military

I was always looking out in airport gift shops for stickers or little toys and knickknacks to include with the envelopes. We ended up with quite a collection of dolls in national dress—from Finland, from Japan, from Brazil. These notes and keepsakes were an ongoing, private little project for me as I carried on with my other duties. It kept me closer to

In breaking with history, art has broken with all primitivism. Art may still seek plenitude and participation, therapies and ceremonies, a repeal of the dissociation of sensibility, but not routed through the past. Today the challenge to an obtuse and callous classicism is no longer mapped onto a rejection of tradition, nor does it ironically re-embrace traditions previously rejected. Now classicism, or intellectual vassalage, is internal to the present. The ancien régime targeted by modernism is no longer found in the past but rather embedded within our own society: mass culture, entertainment, the superstitions and stupidities, the half-hearted democracy, the disguised cruelty of the modern economy. It is just as in the era of religious conflict: content provides the resistance. Art is a struggle against false content. This struggle gives history its shape. Since the content of contemporary art is often topical, basically current events, there is a constant obligation to keep up the pace. This is consistent with the overall project of Enlightenment, whose successor is modernism. Within the project of emancipation, there is finally no tolerance for relativism. The Enlightenment was antirelativist; we saw that with Diderot, who did not allow historical perspective to deflect his present-tense opinions. Historicist relativism was allied instead with the neo-Christian reaction to Enlightenment. The Enlightenment critiques itself, of course, pointing out that the Enlightenment of the philosophes, or last year's enlightenment, was not enlightened enough. Ongoing self-castigation is the very shape of the Enlightenment project. However, anyone today who dares to revive the Romantic critique of the Enlightenment, namely, to take up again the illiberal call for remystification and recovery of trust in myth an ritual - anyone who dares to exit the Enlightenment - is vilified.

Examine Analyze Compile Draft Edit Supervise Manage Oversee Assemble (exhibits for witness interview of . . . ) Address and resolve (technical issues in document review platform with vendor) Track (status of ongoing review projects or discovery work streams) Strategic discussion Tactical discussion Assist (with the deposition/interview/preparation of . . . ) Prepare Provide (feedback for staff attorneys for quality control) Finalize Build (list of key employees) Create (case chronology timeline; tracking spreadsheet of ongoing work flow and research assignments, etc.) Summarize Submit Assess (litigation strategy for client presentation) File (motion to dismiss . . . ) Participate (in client conference) Update Confer Notice two verbs that I did not include in the list: Review and Code. I never use these words. Biglaw associates do not review and code documents. That

If we have some good teachers, we will learn to develop a conscious nondual mind, a choiceful contemplation, some spiritual practices or disciplines that can return us to unitive consciousness on an ongoing and daily basis. Whatever practice it is, it must become our ‘daily bread.’ That is the consensus of spiritual masters through the ages. The general words for these many forms of practice (‘rewiring’) are ‘meditation,’ ‘contemplation,’ any ‘prayer of quiet,’ ‘centering prayer,’ ‘chosen solitude,’ but it is always some form of inner silence, symbolized by the Jewish Sabbath rest. Every world religion-at the mature levels-discovers some forms of practice to free us from our addictive mind, which we take as normal. No fast-food religion, or upward-bound Christianity, ever goes there and thus provides little real nutrition to sustain people through the hard times, infatuations, trials, idolatries, darkness, and obsessions that always eventually show themselves. Some of us call today’s form of climbing religion the ‘prosperity gospel,’ which is quite common among those who avoid great love and great suffering. It normally does not know what to do with darkness, and so it always projects darkness elsewhere.

Fearful-Avoidant will: • Often demonstrate ongoing ambivalence in relationships—they constantly shift between being vulnerable with their partner and being distant. This behavior is consistent across all their relationships, regardless of whether they are romantic. • Generally express depth of processing—a tendency to overanalyze microexpressions, body language, and language for signs of betrayal. This occurs because they had an untrusting relationship with their caregivers in childhood. Living with a parent who is an addict or emotionally unwell are two examples of what may create this distrust. • Not trust naturally • Often feel as if betrayal is always on the horizon The core wounds for this attachment style revolve around feeling unworthy, being taken advantage of, and feeling unsafe. Why is the Fearful-Avoidant individual so unpredictable? Their core wounds and tumultuous behavior typically stem from some form of childhood abuse. However, this abuse is paired with one or both parents also being emotionally supportive at infrequent times. This combination creates an innate sense of distrust and confusion, and Fearful-Avoidants learn to expect betrayal while also craving love. It also becomes quite difficult for the Fearful-Avoidant to learn a strategy for attaching or bonding to caregivers because of the level of inconsistency. Moreover, since they perceived love as a chaotic entity from a young age, they tend to have immense internal conflict as adults. They simultaneously want to feel a sense of connection while subconsciously believing it to be a threat. This produces feelings of resentment or frustration that can be later projected onto relationships. Ultimately, the Fearful-Avoidant shows up in their relationships as a loving partner, and then will become frightened and pull away when they become vulnerable. To be in a successful relationship with a Fearful-Avoidant, the partner or friend must provide a deep connection in a consistent way. This means openness and respect for boundaries, paired with constant reassurance.

The Law of Magnetism states that each of us creates and projects a certain kind of energy—an actual frequency. And we attract and resonate to the exact same kind of energy that we send out. In short, the Law of Magnetism is the ongoing process of transmitting and receiving energy, an energy that’s generated by and about ourselves.

In an effort to help decode these buyer actions, researchers from consumer intelligence firm Motista found specific “emotional motivators” that provide a critical indicator of customers’ potential affinity to a company.2 In fact, these emotional motivators, a proxy for value, were more compelling than any other metric in terms of driving key buying sentiments such as brand awareness and customer satisfaction. While hundreds of emotional motivators were found to drive consumer behavior, the study found ten that drove significant levels of customer value across all of the categories studied. I am inspired by a desire to: Brands can leverage this motivator by helping customers: Stand out from the crowd Project a unique social identity; be seen as special Have confidence in the future Perceive the future as better than the past; have a positive mental picture of what’s to come Enjoy a sense of well-being Feel that life measures up to expectations and that balance has been achieved; seek a stress-free state without conflicts or threats Feel a sense of freedom Act independently, without obligations or restrictions Feel a sense of thrill Experience visceral, overwhelming pleasure and excitement; participate in exciting, fun events Feel a sense of belonging Have an affiliation with people they relate to or aspire to be like; feel part of a group Protect the environment Sustain the belief that the environment is sacred; take action to improve their surroundings Be the person I want to be Fulfill a desire for ongoing self-improvement; live up to their ideal self-image Feel secure Believe that what they have today will be there tomorrow; pursue goals and dreams without worry Succeed in life Feel that they lead meaningful lives; find worth that goes beyond financial or socioeconomic measures

Third Party Manufacturing Pharma Company In Ahmedabad Saphnix Lifesciences is the best Third Party Manufacturing Pharma Company In Ahmedabad. With numerous ongoing manufacturing projects, we have certainly done our best to comply with our customers' demands. We plan to expand our horizons and look beyond what we have accomplished so far. Be it Third party Manufacturing or Offering Franchise, we have succeeded in each project. In our case, as a self-owned organization, we have access to a fully equipped technology system. In a secure warehouse with hygienic packaging, finished goods are stored. The manufacturers of houses design them following their temperature, humidity, and ventilation requirements. It is divided into sections for filter washing, drying, and storage. So what are you waiting for? Saphnix is only one call away!

Aside from offering therapeutic comfort and therapeutic insight, therapy also becomes a performative practice where patients actively reflect on their own power and their relationship to the ongoing project of an unfinished democracy.

The lack of a functioning, trustful community also heightened the refugees’ fears of being abducted by the extremist organization Islamic State. Many initially refused to move to Azraq camp, and although the numbers have increased more recently, Azraq is still far below the 130,000 capacity for which it was built. It’s fitting then that this pop-up city, in real need of some functioning social capital, is now the scene of a radical experiment in new models of community governance, institution-building, and the management of resources. At the heart of that effort is blockchain technology, the decentralized ledger-keeping system that underpins the digital currency bitcoin and promises a more reliable, immediate way to trace transactions. The World Food Program (WFP), a UN agency that feeds 80 million people worldwide, is putting 10,000 Azraq refugees through a pilot that uses this system to better coordinate food distribution. In doing so, the WFP is tackling a giant administrative challenge: how to ensure, in an environment where theft is rampant and few people carry personal identifying documents, that everyone gets their fair share of food. Among those participating in this project was forty-three-year-old Najah Saleh Al-Mheimed, one of the more than 5 million Syrians forced to flee their homes as the brutal, ongoing civil war has all but destroyed their country. In early June 2015, with mounting food shortages and reports of girls being kidnapped by militias in nearby villages, Najah and her husband made the drastic decision to leave her hometown of Hasaka, where their families had lived for generations. “It was an ordeal that I pray to God no human will ever witness,” she said in an interview conducted on our behalf by WFP staffers working in the Azraq camp.

The operational work is the ongoing, repetitive set of activities that sustain the organization.

Robinson further explained that, “intersectionality theory also highlights the connection between speciesism and sexism, revealing the way that female animals and feminized others, including the land, are treated as objects for domination and rape (Adams, 1990). Given the ongoing problem of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada, the US, and elsewhere, it is important to highlight the role that the intersection of sexism and speciesism play in making it possible for individuals, the general public, police agencies, and governments to treat Indigenous women as if our suffering is unreal, or unimportant.

As human beings, the quest to seeking wealth is an ongoing project and a life time endeavor; it should not be taken as a destination but rather a journey, not an event but a process. Striving for excellence and higher levels of satisfaction should be our mantra and motto, and keeping ourselves challenged to do better make life even more fulfilling and satisfying

Cohen said that his “agenda” in submitting the statement to Congress with false representations about the Trump Tower Moscow project was to minimize links between the project and the President, give the false impression that the project had ended before the first presidential primaries, and shut down further inquiry into Trump Tower Moscow, with the aim of limiting the ongoing Russia investigations.2266

What’s Slipping Under Your Radar? Word Count: 1096 Summary: Ben, a high-level leader in a multi-national firm, recently confessed that he felt like a bad father. That weekend he had messed up his Saturday daddy duties. When he took his son to soccer practice, Ben stayed for a while to support him. In the process, though, he forgot to take his daughter to her piano lesson. By the time they got to the piano teacher’s house, the next student was already playing. This extremely successful businessman felt like a failure. Keywords: Dr. Karen Otazo, Global Executive Coaching, Leadership Article Body: Ben, a high-level leader in a multi-national firm, recently confessed that he felt like a bad father. That weekend he had messed up his Saturday daddy duties. When he took his son to soccer practice, Ben stayed for a while to support him. In the process, though, he forgot to take his daughter to her piano lesson. By the time they got to the piano teacher’s house, the next student was already playing. This extremely successful businessman felt like a failure. At work, one of Ben’s greatest strengths is keeping his focus no matter what. As a strategic visionary, he keeps his eyes on the ongoing strategy, the high-profile projects and the high-level commitments of his group. Even on weekends Ben spends time on email, reading and writing so he can attend the many meetings in his busy work schedule. Since he is so good at multi-processing in his work environment, he assumed he could do that at home too. But when we talked, Ben was surprised to realize that he is missing a crucial skill: keeping people on his radar. Ben is great at holding tasks and strategies in the forefront of his mind, but he has trouble thinking of people and their priorities in the same way. To succeed at home, Ben needs to keep track of his family members’ needs in the same way he tracks key business commitments. He also needs to consider what’s on their radar screens. In my field of executive coaching, I keep every client on my radar screen by holding them in my thinking on a daily and weekly basis. That way, I can ask the right questions and remind them of what matters in their work lives. No matter what your field is, though, keeping people on your radar is essential. Consider Roger, who led a team of gung-ho sales people. His guys and gals loved working with him because his gut instincts were superb. He could look at most situations and immediately know how to make them work. His gut was great, almost a sixth sense. But when Sidney, one of his team of sales managers, wanted to move quickly to hire a new salesperson, Roger was busy. He was managing a new sales campaign and wrangling with marketing and headquarters bigwigs on how to position the company’s consumer products. Those projects were the only things on his radar screen. He didn’t realize that Sidney was counting on hiring someone fast. Roger reviewed the paperwork for the new hire. It was apparent to Roger that the prospective recruit didn’t have the right background for the role. He was too green in his experience with the senior people he’d be exposed to in the job. Roger saw that there would be political hassles down the road which would stymie someone without enough political savvy or experience with other parts of the organization. He wanted an insider or a seasoned outside hire with great political skills. To get the issue off his radar screen quickly, Roger told Human Resources to give the potential recruit a rejection letter. In his haste, he didn’t consult with Sidney first. It seemed obvious from the resume that this was the wrong person. Roger rushed off to deal with the top tasks on his radar screen. In the process, Sidney was hurt and became angry. Roger was taken by surprise since he thought he had done the right thing, but he could have seen this coming.

Teaching academic writing to Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) students is crucial early in their academic journey and should continue throughout their program. Here's a breakdown: Foundation Level (First Year): Introducing basic academic writing skills at the onset helps students develop a strong foundation. This includes understanding essay structure, proper citation methods (APA, MLA), and critical reading and writing skills NURS FPX 4010 Assessment 2. Core Nursing Courses: As students progress into core nursing courses, integrating academic writing into these subjects is beneficial. Assignments related to evidence-based practice, research papers, case studies, and reflective writing can aid in linking theoretical knowledge to practical application through writing.NURS FPX 4010 Assessment 3 Clinical Practice Integration: Incorporating writing assignments that reflect on clinical experiences or patient interactions helps students articulate their observations, reflections, and professional development, enhancing their communication skills.online class help services Advanced Nursing Courses: In advanced years, focus on more complex academic writing, such as scholarly articles, thesis or capstone projects, and literature reviews. This phase aligns with deeper research and specialization within nursing fields. Continuous Improvement: Encourage ongoing improvement by providing resources, workshops, and feedback on writing. Additionally, revisiting and reinforcing academic writing skills periodically ensures students maintain and enhance these crucial abilities.nursfpx.com By introducing and reinforcing academic writing skills across various stages of the BSN program, students develop proficiency in communicating their ideas effectively, a skill essential for their future practice, research endeavors, and professional growth.

If you are in any way part of Build, Build, Build, be strong and steadfast. The truth will not change only because alternate realities are repeated, or that facts are often ignored. The attacks will be more vicious and it will be at a rate that we have never seen before. Do not be disheartened. There is work to be done still. While we are already able to complete 29,264 kilometers of roads, 15,134 kilometers are still ongoing. While we have already built 5,950 bridges, we still have 1,859 bridges to build. “ - Anna Mae Yu Lamentillo , Night Owl: A Nationbuilder’s Manual 2nd Edition (p. 238, Build, Build, Build Projects Zamboanga Peninsula)

What is often lost in the critiques of the Federal Acknowledgement Process is the fact the leaders of the Five Tribes and other Indian nations do not see it as an entirely foreign, nonaboriginal regimen. They were actively engaged in its creation during the 1970s, and they continue to support the process because they view it as the best method available to determine which groups are viable indigenous nations today. By supporting the government process, Five Tribes leaders are engaging in an ongoing Native project that seeks new ways to define their peoples using both precontact, “traditional” measures and criteria borrowed from the dominant, Euro-American society. Ventures that seek to delineate and measure “Indianness” and “tribes” are no less troublesome from the tribal persepective. However, how native leaders perceive unrecognized individuals and groups is important to understanding modern Indian identity. The Five Tribes and related groups have exerted their sovereignty by extending government relations to formerly unrecognized tribes in the Southeast. They have also chosen to withhold recognition to groups they feel are inauthentic. While they support the process of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, tribal leaders us their own definitions and “ways of seeing” when making these decisions. Their criteria generally represent a complex mixture of indigenous and non-Indian notions of ethnicity and authenticity. The Five Tribes and other long-recognized Native nations have always been actively engaged in tribal acknowledgement debates. Today they have important reasons for remaining involved. Recognition politics involving established tribes, unrecognized communities, and non-Indians exposes the fundamental truth about ethnic and racial identities: they are constantly evolving and negotiated.

The government has included 3,836 development schemes in the PSDP 2021-22. These include 2,285 new and 1,501 ongoing schemes. During the next financial year, 1,647 development schemes will be completed as funds have already been released for these schemes that also include those schemes which had been launched many years back. The government has allocated Rs112 billion for the ongoing development schemes while 20% development budget has been allocated for new schemes. All efforts would be made to complete development projects in time.

Beginning largely in the late 1970s and flourishing in the early 1980s (though the original ideas actually date back much further), especially in the US and UK, neoliberalism has been an ongoing project of elites to claw back the few gains made by other classes in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. The central tenets include the elimination (or preferably the privatization) of government services of all kinds, an all-out assault on the ability of labor to organize, the massive deregulation of every segment of the economy, and the absolute faith in market-based principles to adjudicate all elements of social, political, cultural, and economic life. The results have been staggering levels of wealth and income inequality, the disappearance or significant shredding of even the most grudging social safety net provisions, the loss of the “commons” in virtually all sectors, and the truncation (ideally to zero) of public expectations for anything that might be provided by something called “society.

Charles Darwin “could be considered a professional outsider,” according to creativity researcher Dean Keith Simonton. Darwin was not a university faculty member nor a professional scientist at any institution, but he was networked into the scientific community. For a time, he focused narrowly on barnacles, but got so tired of it that he declared, “I am unwilling to spend more time on the subject,” in the introduction to a barnacle monograph. Like the 3M generalists and polymaths, he got bored sticking in one area, so that was that. For his paradigm-shattering work, Darwin’s broad network was crucial. Howard Gruber, a psychologist who studied Darwin’s journals, wrote that Darwin only personally carried out experiments “opportune for experimental attack by a scientific generalist such as he was.” For everything else, he relied on correspondents, Jayshree Seth style. Darwin always juggled multiple projects, what Gruber called his “network of enterprise.” He had at least 231 scientific pen pals who can be grouped roughly into thirteen broad themes based on his interests, from worms to human sexual selection. He peppered them with questions. He cut up their letters to paste pieces of information in his own notebooks, in which “ideas tumble over each other in a seemingly chaotic fashion.” When his chaotic notebooks became too unwieldy, he tore pages out and filed them by themes of inquiry. Just for his own experiments with seeds, he corresponded with geologists, botanists, ornithologists, and conchologists in France, South Africa, the United States, the Azores, Jamaica, and Norway, not to mention a number of amateur naturalists and some gardeners he happened to know. As Gruber wrote, the activities of a creator “may appear, from the outside, as a bewildering miscellany,” but he or she can “map” each activity onto one of the ongoing enterprises. “In some respects,” Gruber concluded, “Charles Darwin’s greatest works represent interpretative compilations of facts first gathered by others.” He was a lateral-thinking integrator.

Generosity takes many forms. Barnaby Pain, a church planter with 2020birmingham who is one year into a church revitalization project, makes this clear. He emailed the following to me (John) recently, when I asked him to reflect on why he planted with 2020birmingham. I felt, since Bible college, that the only place I could lead a revitalization would be in Birmingham. Why? I knew revitalization would mean a lot of challenges. I knew I was not some amazing rugged hero with vast experience who could accomplish change alone. I felt weak and unimpressive, and facing up to my own limitations and weakness meant that leading a revitalization would require more than just me and my young family. So we needed the generous support of faithful people with us and the support of faithful pastors around us. Birmingham was the only place I thought we had this, and we had it there in abundance! We were able to gather a first-class team of families to join with us to kick-start the revitalization. The benefit of collaborative church planting and the thriving movement of church planting in Birmingham was that all these people already knew what was expected; they’d seen it done. And churches were willing to be generous in giving us their best. Another benefit is the ongoing partnership between churches. Just because we took a group of families a year and three months ago does not in any sense mean the job is done. Ongoing needs arise at different stages of our journey, and the churches around us get this. They are in constant contact to pray and offer real practical support.

The mobile industry quickly developed, and lawyers, investment bankers, consultants and contractors offered their services. The feeling of ownership of the projects and the effort of getting networks up and running within the shortest possible time span was gigantic. Engineers slept in their cars to make sure that they could start early mornings, ‘war rooms’ were kitted out with huge maps, project timelines, pictures and milestone markers. Contests ongoing between different teams in the specific country regions where we were building. Employing a thousand people in no time and generating work for tenfold that number; network and other suppliers, construction companies, distributors, retailers and other often highly skilled third parties.

The situational diagnosis conversation. In this conversation, you seek to understand how your new boss sees the STARS portfolio you have inherited. Are there elements of start-up, turnaround, accelerated growth, realignment, and sustaining success? How did the organization reach this point? What factors—both soft and hard—make this situation a challenge? What resources within the organization can you draw on? Your view may differ from your boss’s, but it is essential to grasp how she sees the situation. The expectations conversation. Your goal in this conversation is to understand and negotiate expectations. What does your new boss need you to do in the short term and in the medium term? What will constitute success? Critically, how will your performance be measured? When? You might conclude that your boss’s expectations are unrealistic and that you need to work to reset them. Also, as part of your broader campaign to secure early wins, discussed in the next chapter, keep in mind that it’s better to underpromise and overdeliver. The resource conversation. This conversation is essentially a negotiation for critical resources. What do you need to be successful? What do you need your boss to do? The resources need not be limited to funding or personnel. In a realignment, for example, you may need help from your boss to persuade the organization to confront the need for change. Key here is to focus your boss on the benefits and costs of what you can accomplish with different amounts of resources. The style conversation. This conversation is about how you and your new boss can best interact on an ongoing basis. What forms of communication does he prefer, and for what? Face-to-face? Voice, electronic? How often? What kinds of decisions does he want to be consulted on, and when can you make the call on your own? How do your styles differ, and what are the implications for the ways you should interact? The personal development conversation. Once you’re a few months into your new role, you can begin to discuss how you’re doing and what your developmental priorities should be. Where are you doing well? In what areas do you need to improve or do things differently? Are there projects or special assignments you could undertake (without sacrificing focus)? In practice, your

Digitization, in other words, is not a single project providing one-time benefits. Instead, it's an ongoing process of creative destruction; innovators use both new and established technologies to make deep changes at the level of the task, the job, the process, even the organization itself. And these changes build and feed on each other so that the possibilities offered really are constantly expanding.

One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do is accept and acknowledge my privilege. It’s an ongoing project.

The reality of everyday life further presents itself to me as an intersubjective world, a world that I share with others. This intersubjectivity sharply differentiates everyday life from other realities of which I am conscious. I am alone in the world of my dreams, but I know that the world of everyday life is as real to others as it is to myself. Indeed, I cannot exist in everyday life without continually interacting and communicating with others. I know that my natural attitude to this world corresponds to the natural attitude of others, that they also comprehend the objectifications by which this world is ordered, that they also organize this world around the “here and now” of their being in it and have projects for working in it. I also know, of course, that the others have a perspective on this common world that is not identical with mine. My “here” is their “there.” My “now” does not fully overlap with theirs. My projects differ from and may even conflict with theirs. All the same, I know that I live with them in a common world. Most importantly, I know that there is an ongoing correspondence between my meanings and their meanings in this world, that we share a common sense about its reality. The natural attitude is the attitude of commonsense consciousness precisely because it refers to a world that is common to many men. Commonsense knowledge is the knowledge I share with others in the normal, self-evident routines of everyday life. The

Mary Douglas' seminal anthropological work, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (1966), is instructive in situating the swamp's figurative link to the ongoing project of Southern self-creation and in explaining the nature and origin of the physical swamp's link to the South's moral and cultural "underside.

In the ancient world the king stood between the divine and human realms mediating the power of the deity in his city and beyond. He communed with the gods, was privy to their councils, and enjoyed their favor and protection. He was responsible for maintaining justice, for leading in battle, for initiating and accomplishing public building projects from canals to walls to temples, and had ultimate responsibility for the ongoing performance of the cult.

I had succeeded in getting my colleagues invested in my insertion point behavior work, not just by asking for their help in a single meeting and saying thanks when it was finished but by demonstrating through my ongoing actions in code changes, demo reviews, and lunchtime chats that their advice had mattered to me. Getting the insertion point to behave correctly wasn’t just my project anymore. It was now our project.

(from Acknowledgments) For some years I have profited from an in-house, informal but ongoing seminar on organizational behavior, a seminar comprising my wife, our three children, and three children-in-law. They have shared their insights into the functions and dysfunctions of the organizational settings in which they have worked, which include government, education, and medicine. I am indebted to all of them, though none are responsible for the uses to which I have put their observations. Eli Muller first drew my attention to the larger themes of The Wire (episodes of which he can quote chapter and verse), and his acute analysis of institutional dynamics finds its echoes in the pages of this book, which he also helped to edit. Thanks go to Joseph Muller, M.D., for orienting me in the literature of medicine and healthcare, as well as his sage advice about the tone and direction of the book. My wife, Sharon, was the first reader and editor of every chapter, and many of the book's ideas were born or refined in our daily conversations (when we weren't talking about the immeasurable pleasures of grandparenthood--but that's the subject of another book). Completion of this book was eased by the support of my parents. I'm saddened to note that this is the last project that I was able to discuss with mt father, Henry Muller, who passed away when the manuscript was nearing completion: his memory is a blessing. My mother, Bella Muller, remains a vigorous source of wisdom, encouragement, and humor in my life.

it is not a fun state that we struggle to achieve and then relax, as though we were working at an uncongenial job in order to retire and forget about the work we did to get there. Rather happiness, living happily, is always an ongoing activity. It is an ongoing project, and so very different to accounts in terns of feeling good or getting what you want or being satisfied. This is an account of happiness which emphasizes activity and engagement rather than passive experiences.

Once the defenses fall and we let go of faith, we are overcome by a sobering clarity: Of course, a religion that ever failed so miserably must be the product of humans, not divinity. There is no way that a god would sit back and watch for 600 years while his highest priests tortured thousands of innocents via the likes of anal vice until they denounced him. Something truly holy would never have been subjected to such gross misunderstanding and atrocious implementation in the past. It would be timeless, not a work in progress; otherwise it reduces the billions of people who have lived before us to some sort of experiments for our own well-being today, us living in much better times. What a horrifically narcissistic and insensitive attitude this would be, to disregard the past in order to soothe our own existential fears about our own deaths, most of which will be quite pampered relative to theirs. Again, I did it, too. And now I’m ashamed. In fact, it makes me wonder if some of the hostility I have towards people who remain faithful is projected, that is, I’m mad at myself for ever having been in so much denial, too. The truth is that we have come a long way so that religion is more civilized than ever before. But this is not because God cares more about us today than he did those living in the Middle Ages; it’s simply because we’re smarter than we were back then. And, despite how far we’ve come, we’re far from out of the woods. There’s still much more divinely inspired torture and murder in the world today than there ever should have been, and religious-based oppression of a less lethal nature remains quite rampant, even in the progressive and privileged West. Overall, we are still in a state of progress, meaning that we are actually an ongoing experiment for the people of the future who will have even better religious lives than us, one where there is even less murder of heretics and less oppression of slaves, women, and homosexuals.

When assigned a project or task, avoid the tendency to start doing. Take time to think it through, plan it, identify resources, and so forth. Break it down into small parts with benchmarks that enable you to measure and report progress on an ongoing basis, rather than when the project is completed. It also makes everything on your plate more easily digested.