Prior Best Quotes

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It's what you deserve to hear," I say firmly, my eyes going cloudy with tears. "That you're whole, that you're worth loving, that you're the best person I've ever known.
Veronica Roth (Allegiant (Divergent, #3))
A path is a prior interpretation of the best way to traverse a landscape.
Rebecca Solnit (Wanderlust: A History of Walking)
I invited a few people to help celebrate your birthday," Cameron said sheepishly. She threw up her hands. "Surprise." "We sort of come with the package," Collin explained. "Think of it as a collective gift from all of us to you: five bona fide annoying and overly intrusive new best friends." "It's the gift that keeps on giving," Wilkins said. Jack grinned. "I'm touched. Really. And since it appears I'm going to be moving in, let me be the first to say that all of you are always welcome at my and Cameron's house. Subject to a minimum of forty-eight hours prior notification.
Julie James (Something About You (FBI/US Attorney, #1))
What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.
Warren Buffett
Then he looked up, despite all best prior intentions. In four minutes, it would be another hour; a half hour after that was the ten-minute break. Lane Dean imagined himself running around on the break, waving his arms and shouting gibberish and holding ten cigarettes at once in his mouth, like a panpipe. Year after year, a face the same color as your desk. Lord Jesus. Coffee wasn't allowed because of spills on the files, but on the break he'd have a big cup of coffee in each hand while he pictured himself running around the outside grounds, shouting. He knew what he'd really do on the break was sit facing the wall clock in the lounge and, despite prayers and effort, count the seconds tick off until he had to come back and do this again. And again and again and again.
David Foster Wallace (The Pale King)
It usually seems best to be absent and slightly missed rather than present but distant.
Lara Prior-Palmer (Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race)
and if a rainy morning deprived them of other enjoyments, they were still resolute in meeting in defiance of wet and dirt, and shut themselves up, to read novels together. Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel–writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding — joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers. And while the abilities of the nine–hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens — there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them. “I am no novel–reader — I seldom look into novels — Do not imagine that I often read novels — It is really very well for a novel.” Such is the common cant. “And what are you reading, Miss — ?” “Oh! It is only a novel!” replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. “It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda”; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best–chosen language. Now, had the same young lady been engaged with a volume of the Spectator, instead of such a work, how proudly would she have produced the book, and told its name; though the chances must be against her being occupied by any part of that voluminous publication, of which either the matter or manner would not disgust a young person of taste: the substance of its papers so often consisting in the statement of improbable circumstances, unnatural characters, and topics of conversation which no longer concern anyone living; and their language, too, frequently so coarse as to give no very favourable idea of the age that could endure it.
Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)
As a historian, I found myself all too often treating my historical subjects like fictional characters, malleable entities that could be made to do one thing or another, whose motivations could be speculated upon endlessly, and whose missing actions could be reconstructed and approximated based on assessments of prior and later behaviors. It was one of the hazards with working a fragmentary source base. You had little scraps, like puzzle pieces, and you could put them together as best you could. But no matter how faithful you tried to be to the historical record, there would always be that element of guesswork, of imagination, of (if we're being totally honest) fiction.
Lauren Willig
Prior to the monotheistic Yahweh, the gods made sense, in that they had familiar, if supra-human appetites—they didn’t just want a lamb shank, they wanted the best lamb shank, wanted to seduce all the wood nymphs, and so on. But the early Jews invented a god with none of those desires, who was so utterly unfathomable, unknowable, as to be pants-wettingly terrifying. So even if His actions are mysterious, when He intervenes you at least get the stress-reducing advantages of attribution—it may not be clear what the deity is up to, but you at least know who is responsible for the locust swarm or the winning lottery ticket. There is Purpose lurking, as an antidote to the existential void.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers)
What Louisa wants for Christmas, Get kissed Find some good books make peace between prior best friends convince the polite world of her charm and finally, get kissed some more; "You're blushing, my girl," Lady Irving said, "Not thinking of something you shouldn't, are you?" "I'm so pure-minded that I can't imagine what you're talking about." Louisa lied.
Theresa Romain (Season for Surrender (Holiday Pleasures, #2))
Your grandfather once told me that when I find the right opportunity in life, all of my prior random experiences will suddenly fit together and make sense.
Justin Hakuta (Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, & Advice for Living Your Best Life)
Grief’s a weird animal at the best of times. It’s even weirder when you think it’s a dead certainty (pardon the pun), but then it disappears only to come hurtling right back at you. It’s like this bungee jump of emotions. You get jolted all over the place. It gives you this sick feeling in your stomach, makes you jittery and wobbly, plays havoc with your sleep patterns.
Hazel Prior (How the Penguins Saved Veronica (Veronica McCreedy, #1))
Lately, because computer technology has made self-publishing an easier and less expensive venture, I'm getting a lot of review copies of amateur books by writers who would be better advised to hone their craft before committing it to print. The best thing you can do as a beginning writer is to write, write, write - and read, read, read. Concentrating on publication prematurely is a mistake. You don't pick up a violin and expect to play Carnegie Hall within the year - yet somehow people forget that writing also requires technical skills that need to be learned, practiced, honed. If I had a dollar for every person I've met who thought, with no prior experience, they could sit down and write a novel and instantly win awards and make their living as a writer, I'd be a rich woman today. It's unrealistic, and it's also mildly insulting to professional writers who have worked hard to perfect their craft. Of course, then you hear stories about people like J.K. Rowling, who did sit down with no prior experience and write a worldwide best-seller...but such people are as rare as hen's teeth. Every day I work with talented, accomplished writers who have many novels in print and awards to their name and who are ‘still’ struggling to make a living. The thing I often find myself wanting to say to new writers is: Write because you love writing, learn your craft, be patient, and be realistic. Anais Nin said about writing, "It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing."
Terri Windling
A useful education served women best, More thought. To ‘learn how to grow old gracefully is perhaps one of the rarest and most valuable arts which can be taught to a woman.’ Yet, when beauty is all that is expected or desired in a woman, she is left with nothing in its absence. It ‘is a most severe trail for those women to be called to lay down beauty, who have nothing else to take up. It is for this sober season of life that education should lay up its rich resources,’ she argued.
Karen Swallow Prior (Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist)
These fans were excited to see your mother perform, but more than that it was as if she was taking her audience to church like a fiery, foul-mouthed preacher who offered up profane salvation. There was the new mom who was enjoying her first night out after giving birth a month prior. There are fans who dress up like your mother, imitating the outfits she wore when you were both in her belly There are mothers who bring their daughters. There are those who travel from across the country, and sometimes across the world. They talk about your mother being their spirit animal. Their eyes are lit up, their faces relaxed and smiling, their postures open and welcoming. Watching this magical effect on her fans keeps me manning the merch table to this day.
Ali Wong (Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, & Advice for Living Your Best Life)
Poisonous people do not deserve your time. To think otherwise is masochistic. The best way to approach a potential break is simple: Confide in them honestly but tactfully and explain your concerns. If they bite back, your conclusions have been confirmed. Drop them like any other bad habit. If they promise to change, first spend at least two weeks apart to develop other positive influences in your life and diminish psychological dependency. The next trial period should have a set duration and consist of pass-or-fail criteria. If this approach is too confrontational for you, just politely refuse to interact with them. Be in the middle of something when the call comes, and have a prior commitment when the invitation to hang out comes. Once you see the benefits of decreased time with these people, it will be easier to stop communication altogether.
Timothy Ferriss (The 4-Hour Workweek)
Angie has never had sticking power. She dropped out of high school; she walked out of the GED exam. Her longest relationship, prior to falling for Andy, was seven months. But then they’d met (no epic tale there—the game was on at a hometown bar), and something in her character was spontaneously altered.
Joe Hill (The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015 (The Best American Series))
I am Jon-Robert Holden - a basketball player, a son, a brother, a father, a friend, a writer and an Olympian!All these things are great , but I am simply a child of God who pushed himself to be the best I could be .And by following my heart and pursuing my passion I know that He blessed my steps prior to me getting here.And it's because of this I simply and humbly say, "Thank You".
Jon-Robert Holden (Blessed Footsteps: Memoirs of J. R. Holden)
Prior to modern times, the term 'Islamic' (Islami in Arabic) was almost never used to define the provenance, status, or substance of things. There was no such thing as 'Islamic art', 'Islamic economics', or even 'Islamic law.' ... The encounter with the modern West, however, ultimately changed the status of 'Islamic.' Inasmuch as the rise of the West converted the achievements of Darwin, Descartes, and Hegel from mere English, French, or German achievements into explicitly 'Western' ones, it also engendered the need for a parallel convention for demarcating the non-Western 'other.' The Western provenance of the modern neologism 'Islamic' is perhaps best revealed in its tendency to connote geography and ethnicity. 'Islamic', in other words, connotes not simply that which is related to or a product of Islam as a religion but that which relates to a particularly non-European people in a non-European part of the world. In this capacity, it carries both a descriptive and a prescriptive force... For no modern Muslim nor non-Muslim would include the likes of such Arab Christians as Michel Aflaq or San' Allah Ibrahim among the 'thinkers of Islam.' Rather, in Western parlance, the modern 'Islamic' began as an instrument to demarcate the boundary between the west and a particular set of 'others.' In Muslim hands, it would go on to evolve into a full-blown signifier of normative Islam and a tool for delineating the boundary between it and Islam. Its added utility, moreover, as a mechanism for elevating the achievements of Muslims to the level of a civilization rivaling that of Europe rendered it all the more irresistible and gained for it universal acceptance throughout the Muslim world.
Sherman A. Jackson (Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection)
We’re at a holiday ball where I’m auctioning off the paintings my dead husband commissioned for his mistress. Does it sound like I’ve been treated kindly thus far?” A flush imbued her cheeks with a red glow as she huffed in annoyance. The Bryony he’d known prior to her marriage had been polite and a tad stiff in his presence—a genteel lady careful with her manners. This show of frustration intrigued him. I can’t afford to be intrigued.
Jemma Frost (The Grand Mistletoe Assembly)
In her book Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Rebecca Solnit writes: A path is a prior interpretation of the best way to traverse a landscape, and to follow a route is to accept an interpretation, or to stalk your predecessors on it as scholars and trackers and pilgrims do. To walk the same way is to reiterate something deep; to move through the same space the same way is a means of becoming the same person, thinking the same thoughts. The
Ben Montgomery (Grandma Gatewood's Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail)
One of the outstanding features of Vanni society was the degree of integration of disabled people into the mainstream. They could be seen actively participating in many spheres, carrying out work with grit and amazing agility. People with one arm would ride motorbikes with heavy loads behind them on their motorbikes. You would hardly have known that some people you worked with were missing a leg from below the knee. Disability had been normalized. Serving these people was the only prosthetic-fitting service in Vanni, Venpuraa. This also expanded its service with the introduction of new technology. A common phrase one heard even prior to the Mullivaikaal genocide was about so and so having a piece of shrapnel in some part of their body. Many people lived with such pieces in their body and suffered varying degrees of pain as a result. Visiting medical experts did their best to remove the ones causing the most severe pain.
N. Malathy (A Fleeting Moment in My Country: The Last Years of the LTTE De-Facto State)
I know that self-control, if I can find it, will be my best ally in this situation. Success is more likely if I can achieve invisibility. I observe Mike and Dietrich. There was a time when I could easily have got my way. An opening of the eyes a little wider, a pouting of the lips and any man would have been at my beck and call. Now whatever I do seems to have the opposite effect. My only remaining power is in my purse and even that can’t work in this particular instance.
Hazel Prior (Away with the Penguins)
A successful special operation defies conventional wisdom by using a small force to defeat a much larger or well-entrenched opponent. This book develops a theory of special operations that explains why this phenomenon occurs. I will show that through the use of certain principles of warfare a special operations force can reduce what Carl von Clausewitz calls the frictions of war to a manageable level. By minimizing these frictions the special operations force can achieve relative superiority over the enemy. Once relative superiority is achieved, the attacking force is no longer at a disadvantage and has the initiative to exploit the enemy’s weaknesses and secure victory. Although gaining relative superiority doesn’t guarantee success, it is necessary for success. If we can determine, prior to an operation, the best way to achieve relative superiority, then we can tailor special operations planning and preparation to improve our chances of victory.
William H. McRaven (Spec Ops: Case Studies in Special Operations Warfare: Theory and Practice)
Life surrounds us. Each day we witness the plenteous gifts of nature. Even following the most bitterly cold winter, new life waits feverishly to erupt. The flower head sown in the prior season quickens to bloom in the eternal spring of wilderness gardens. Each of us hankers to blossom. Life is the active resistance to disintegration and death. A state of grace comes from a life devoted to seeking the pinnacle of human attainment. None of us should suppress our own or another person’s quest for transcendence. Each day we must give full measure to our internal life force. With all our energy and intuition, we must determinedly seek out what is the best part of us. We must faithfully tap our potential for goodness, unapologetically rip ourselves apart if need be, bravely go where we fear, and boldly tread where we must go in order to carry out the sacred blueprint for leading a meaningful life that is imbued in the deepest alcove of our unbidden souls.
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
Putting out the trash is a dirty job, but let’s face it—someone has to do it. Whereas many smart wives are able to cajole their husbands into taking on this duty, what happens when the debris that must be eliminated is (ahem) him? Rule of thumb: Do your best to ensure his demise doesn’t leave a lot of clean up. After all, messy is as messy does! Have a body bag on hand prior to disposal. He won’t question its presence if it is storing out-of-season attire in the back of your closet. Talk about recycling!
Josie Brown (The Housewife Assassin's Handbook (Housewife Assassin, #1))
Like first language learners, second language learners do not learn language simply through imitation and practice. They produce sentences that are not exactly like those they have heard. These new sentences appear to be based on internal cognitive processes and prior knowledge that interact with the language they hear around them. Both first and second language acquisition are best described as developing systems with their own evolving rules and patterns, not simply as imperfect versions of the target language.
Patsy M. Lightbown (How Languages are Learned)
The obvious question is, what are the “conditions to which presumably we are genetically adapted”? As it turns out, what Donaldson assumed in 1919 is still the conventional wisdom today: our genes were effectively shaped by the two and a half million years during which our ancestors lived as hunters and gatherers prior to the introduction of agriculture twelve thousand years ago. This is a period of time known as the Paleolithic era or, less technically, as the Stone Age, because it begins with the development of the first stone tools. It constitutes more than 99.5 percent of human history—more than a hundred thousand generations of humanity living as hunter-gatherers, compared with the six hundred succeeding generations of farmers or the ten generations that have lived in the industrial age. It’s not controversial to say that the agricultural period—the last .5 percent of the history of our species—has had little significant effect on our genetic makeup. What is significant is what we ate during the two and a half million years that preceded agriculture—the Paleolithic era. The question can never be answered definitively, because this era, after all, preceded human record-keeping. The best we can do is what nutritional anthropologists began doing in the mid-1980s—use modern-day hunter-gatherer societies as surrogates for our Stone Age ancestors.
Gary Taubes (Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It)
Kristen and I always have a lot to celebrate at the end of June. First there’s Father’s Day, followed by our wedding anniversary and my birthday. But prior to the Best Practices this two-week season of parties didn’t inspire much of a celebratory mood. It always felt strange celebrating Father’s Day, given that my parenting skills had been something of a disappointment for the first three years, and the tears that Kristen had shed on our third wedding anniversary spoke rather poignantly to the fact that our marriage hadn’t been much to celebrate, either. That left my birthday, a day that was all about toasting the birth of the very person who had made Kristen’s life miserable.
David Finch (The Journal of Best Practices: A Memoir of Marriage, Asperger Syndrome, and One Man's Quest to Be a Better Husband)
1. Did you conduct one-to-one meetings with each salesperson on your team? 2. Did you ask each of them how they like to be managed? Are they coachable? 3. Did you inquire about their prior experience with their past manager? Was it positive or negative? 4. Did you set the expectations of your relationship with them? Did you ask them what they needed and expected from their manager? What changes do they want to see? 5. Did you inform them about how you like to manage and your style of management? This would open up the space for a discussion regarding how you may manage differently from your predecessor. 6. Did you let them know you just completed a coaching course that would enable you to support them even further and maximize their talents? 7. Did you explain to them the difference between coaching and traditional management? 8. Did you enroll them in the benefits of coaching? That is, what would be in it for them? 9. Did you let them know about your intentions, goals, expectations, and aspirations for each of them and for the team as a whole? 10. How have you gone about learning the ins and outs of the company?Are you familiar with the internal workings, culture, leadership team, and subtleties that make the company unique? Have you considered that your team may be the best source of knowledge and intelligence for this? Did you communicate your willingness and desire to learn from them as well, so that the learning and development process can be mutually reciprocated?
Keith Rosen (Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions: A Tactical Playbook for Managers and Executives)
Worse and somehow embarrassing affair are "ghost" dreams, from which the dreamer only remembers fragments, and very short snippets of events, after which the next morning is left only a vague feeling of a messaged received. If the "ghost" is repeated several times, it is certain that it is a dream which is important for some reason. Then the dreamer, through concentration and auto-suggestion tries to force the dream again, this time a more specific "ghost". The best result are to force oneself to dream again immediately after waking up - called "hooking". If the dream does not produce a "hook" they try and produce a vision during one of the following session by concentration and meditation prior to going to sleep. Such pressure programming is called "anchoring".
Andrzej Sapkowski
QUOTES & SAYINGS OF RYAN MORAN- THE WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL MAN Favorite Sayings of Ryan Moran: The World's Most Powerful Man “Sometimes the withholding of a small part of the truth is not only wise, but prudent.” “There is one principle that bars all other principles, and that is contempt prior to investigation.” (Ryan was fond of paraphrasing Herbert Spencer) “What do you mean?”, “How do you know?”, “So what?” “I don’t need much, just one meal a day, a pack of cigarettes and a roof over my head.” “Well…, we must have different data bases, mustn’t we?” “This guy is more squirrely than a shithouse rat” The CIA—you know, the ‘Catholic Irish Alcoholics’ “That dumb fuck.” “Oye! A Jew and an Irishman—what a team!” “Okay, everybody, up and to the right ten thousand feet,” ( If things in general were not going well. Refers to his jet flying days) “Is that what you want to do?.....Are you sure?" “Curiosity is self serving,” “If you don’t know where you’re going, you will end up somewhere else.” “So…, what are you thinking?” “I can do anything that I want, as long as I have the desire and I am willing to pay the price.” (His working definition of honesty) “Well, what did you learn tonight?” “Don’t let your emotions get the best of you, and don’t get too far out into your future.” “If you meet someone in the middle of the desert and he asks you where the next water hole is, you had better tell him the truth. If you don’t, then the next time you meet, he will kill you.” “Damn it!” “And remember to watch your mirrors!” (Refers to the fact someone may be following us in the car) “A person either gets humble or gets humiliated.” “That’s right.” “Oye, Sheldon, a Jew and an Irishman—talk about guilt and suffering!” “Pigs grow fat, but hogs get slaughtered.” “A friend is someone who is coming in, when everyone else is going out.
Ira Teller (Control Switch On: A True Story—The Untold Story of the Most Powerful Man in the World—Ryan Moran—Who Shaped the Planet for Peace)
Well, Mimi Mackson, tell me what you like to bake." "Lots of things- brownies, cookies, pies, tarts, scones. But cupcakes are my favorite. I like to flavor them with unusual spices and herbs." "I see. And what's the last thing that you made?" "Double-chocolate brownies with cinnamon and cayenne, to welcome someone home." "And prior to that?" "Cheddar-chive biscuits." She waved her hand in front of her face like she smelled something bad. "No, no, my word, that will not do at all. Just sweet things, please." She stood and paced behind the desk. "Ha! Cheese and chives! I wouldn't dream of baking, eating, or even serving those, not to win the world." Well, that was strange. Sweet isn't sweet without savory. One isn't good without the other- I thought everyone knew that. Even the most sugary dessert needs a dash of salt. Mrs. T sat again. "So tell me then, young Mimi. The best sweet thing you've ever, ever made?" "Hmm... lemon-lavender cupcakes, I guess. To celebrate friendship.
Rajani LaRocca (Midsummer's Mayhem)
A second case concerns Charles Whitman, the 1966 “Texas Tower” sniper who, after killing his wife and mother, opened fire atop a tower at the University of Texas in Austin, killing sixteen and wounding thirty-two, one of the first school massacres. Whitman was literally an Eagle Scout and childhood choirboy, a happily married engineering major with an IQ in the 99th percentile. In the prior year he had seen doctors, complaining of severe headaches and violent impulses (e.g., to shoot people from the campus tower). He left notes by the bodies of his wife and his mother, proclaiming love and puzzlement at his actions: “I cannot rationaly [sic] pinpoint any specific reason for [killing her],” and “let there be no doubt in your mind that I loved this woman with all my heart.” His suicide note requested an autopsy of his brain, and that any money he had be given to a mental health foundation. The autopsy proved his intuition correct—Whitman had a glioblastoma tumor pressing on his amygdala.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst)
Geno told them why I was there, and they all came down off the truck and looked me over — I guess just to make sure that they didn’t have any prior problems with me. Geno was standing on my right side. He said to me, “Now I’m going to start it.” He took two steps out in front of me, spun around quickly, and delivered a punch to my left jaw. My head jerked back from his blow. I remember thinking to myself, at least that wasn’t bad. However, before I could register another thought, the five Truck Boys were on me like white on rice. They threw blows and slaps on me. For the next minute or so, I stood there and took it all in like a good soldier. This was the price I was more than willing to pay to become a member of the Rebellions. After it was all over, they welcome me in with handshakes. Then they started asking me where I lived, and what school I had attended. Just like that I was now in the gang, these were my new best friends, individuals whom I would go all out for, and who would do the same for me.
Drexel Deal (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped in My Father Book 1))
Imagine you're sitting having dinner in a restaurant. At some point during the meal, your companion leans over and whispers that they've spotted Lady Gaga eating at the table opposite. Before having a look for yourself, you'll no doubt have some sense of how much you believe your friends theory. You'll take into account all of your prior knowledge: perhaps the quality of the establishment, the distance you are from Gaga's home in Malibu, your friend's eyesight. That sort of thing. If pushed, it's a belief that you could put a number on. A probability of sorts. As you turn to look at the woman, you'll automatically use each piece of evidence in front of you to update your belief in your friend's hypothesis Perhaps the platinum-blonde hair is consistent with what you would expect from Gaga, so your belief goes up. But the fact that she's sitting on her own with no bodyguards isn't, so your belief goes down. The point is, each new observations adds to your overall assessment. This is all Bayes' theorem does: offers a systematic way to update your belief in a hypothesis on the basis of the evidence. It accepts that you can't ever be completely certain about the theory you are considering, but allows you to make a best guess from the information available. So, once you realize the woman at the table opposite is wearing a dress made of meat -- a fashion choice that you're unlikely to chance up on in the non-Gaga population -- that might be enough to tip your belief over the threshold and lead you to conclude that it is indeed Lady Gaga in the restaurant. But Bayes' theorem isn't just an equation for the way humans already make decisions. It's much more important that that. To quote Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, author of The Theory That Would Not Die: 'Bayes runs counter to the deeply held conviction that modern science requires objectivity and precision. By providing a mechanism to measure your belief in something, Bayes allows you to draw sensible conclusions from sketchy observations, from messy, incomplete and approximate data -- even from ignorance.
Hannah Fry (Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms)
Perhaps the most striking illustration of Bayes’s theorem comes from a riddle that a mathematics teacher that I knew would pose to his students on the first day of their class. Suppose, he would ask, you go to a roadside fair and meet a man tossing coins. The first toss lands “heads.” So does the second. And the third, fourth . . . and so forth, for twelve straight tosses. What are the chances that the next toss will land “heads” ? Most of the students in the class, trained in standard statistics and probability, would nod knowingly and say: 50 percent. But even a child knows the real answer: it’s the coin that is rigged. Pure statistical reasoning cannot tell you the answer to the question—but common sense does. The fact that the coin has landed “heads” twelve times tells you more about its future chances of landing “heads” than any abstract formula. If you fail to use prior information, you will inevitably make foolish judgments about the future. This is the way we intuit the world, Bayes argued. There is no absolute knowledge; there is only conditional knowledge. History repeats itself—and so do statistical patterns. The past is the best guide to the future.
Siddhartha Mukherjee (The Laws of Medicine: Field Notes from an Uncertain Science (TED Books))
That is the wrong way to think about perception. Let’s simplify it. The problem is something like the following: The brain is locked inside a bony skull, and let’s assume for the sake of this argument that the perception problem is the problem of figuring out what’s out there in the world giving rise to sensory signals impinging on our sensory surfaces—eyes and ears, and so on. Now, these sensory signals are noisy and ambiguous. They won’t have a one-to-one mapping with things out there in the world, whatever those may be. They don’t come labeled for the brain with convenient tags like “this is vision” or “this is hearing.” So perception has to involve a process of inference, of “best guessing,” in which the brain combines the sensory data with prior expectations or (usually implicit) beliefs about the way the world is, to come up with its best guess about the causes of that sensory data. Within this framework, what we perceive is constituted by those multilevel predictions that try to account for the sensory signals. We perceive what the brain infers caused those signals, not the sensory signals themselves, nor things in the world “in themselves” either. There is no such thing as “direct perception” of the world or of the self.
Sam Harris (Making Sense)
The model favoured by Schreck, one that had been in existence for some forty years, placed the planets in orbit around the sun, and the sun and moon in orbit around the earth. Complex though this was, it appeared to a majority of astronomers the one that best corresponded to the available evidence. There were some, however, who preferred an altogether more radical possibility. Among them was a Czech Jesuit, Wenceslas Kirwitzer, who had met Galileo in Rome, and then sailed with Schreck to China, where he had died in 1626. Prior to his departure, he had written a short pamphlet, arguing for heliocentrism: the hypothesis that the earth, just like Venus and the other planets, revolved around the sun.24 The thesis was not Kirwitzer’s own. The first book to propose it had been published back in 1543. Its author, the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, had in turn drawn on the work of earlier scholars at Paris and Oxford, natural philosophers who had argued variously for the possibility that the earth might rotate on its axis, that the cosmos might be governed by laws of motion, even that space might be infinite. Daring though Copernicus’ hypothesis seemed, then, it stood recognisably in a line of descent from a long and venerable tradition of Christian scholarship. Kirwitzer was not the only astronomer to have been persuaded by it. So too had a number of others; and of these the most high profile, the most prolific, the most pugnacious, was Galileo.
Tom Holland (Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World)
The first result of this randomized trial was predictable from prior studies: in the control group, children with the short variant-i.e., the "high risk" form of the gene- were twice as likely to veer toward high-risk behaviors, including binge drinking, drug use, and sexual promiscuity as adolescents, confirming earlier studies that had suggested an increased risk within this genetic subgroup. The second result was more provocative: these very children were also the most likely to respond to the social interventions. In the intervention group, children with the high-risk allele were most strongly and rapidly "normalized"-i.e., the most drastically affected subjects were also the best responders. In a parallel study, orphaned infants with the short variant of 5HTTLRP appeared more impulsive and socially disturbed than their long-variant counterparts as baseline-but were also the most likely to benefit from placement in a more nurturing foster-care environment. In both cases, it seems, the short variant encodes a hyperactive "stress sensor" for psychic susceptibility, but also a sensor most likely to respond to an intervention that targets the susceptibility. The most brittle or fragile forms of psyche are the most likely to be distorted by trauma-inducing environments-but are also the most likely to be restored by targeted interventions. It is as if resilience itself has a genetic core: some humans are born resilient (but are less responsive to interventions), while others are born sensitive (but more likely to respond to changes in their environments.)
Siddhartha Mukherjee (The Gene: An Intimate History)
Just how important a close moment-to-moment connection between mother and infant can be was illustrated by a cleverly designed study, known as the “double TV experiment,” in which infants and mothers interacted via a closed-circuit television system. In separate rooms, infant and mother observed each other and, on “live feed,” communicated by means of the universal infant-mother language: gestures, sounds, smiles, facial expressions. The infants were happy during this phase of the experiment. “When the infants were unknowingly replayed the ‘happy responses’ from the mother recorded from the prior minute,” writes the UCLA child psychiatrist Daniel J. Siegel, “they still became as profoundly distressed as infants do in the classic ‘flat face’ experiments in which mothers-in-person gave no facial emotional response to their infant’s bid for attunement.” Why were the infants distressed despite the sight of their mothers’ happy and friendly faces? Because happy and friendly are not enough. What they needed were signals that the mother is aligned with, responsive to and participating in their mental states from moment to moment. All that was lacking in the instant video replay, during which infants saw their mother’s face unresponsive to the messages they, the infants, were sending out. This sharing of emotional spaces is called attunement. Emotional stress on the mother interferes with infant brain development because it tends to interfere with the attunement contact. Attunement is necessary for the normal development of the brain pathways and neurochemical apparatus of attention and emotional selfregulation. It is a finely calibrated process requiring that the parent remain herself in a relatively nonstressed, non-anxious, nondepressed state of mind. Its clearest expression is the rapturous mutual gaze infant and mother direct at each other, locked in a private and special emotional realm, from which, at that moment, the rest of the world is as completely excluded as from the womb. Attunement does not mean mechanically imitating the infant. It cannot be simulated, even with the best of goodwill. As we all know, there are differences between a real smile and a staged smile. The muscles of smiling are exactly the same in each case, but the signals that set the smile muscles to work do not come from the same centers in the brain. As a consequence, those muscles respond differently to the signals, depending on their origin. This is why only very good actors can mimic a genuine, heartfelt smile. The attunement process is far too subtle to be maintained by a simple act of will on the part of the parent. Infants, particularly sensitive infants, intuit the difference between a parent’s real psychological states and her attempts to soothe and protect the infant by means of feigned emotional expressions. A loving parent who is feeling depressed or anxious may try to hide that fact from the infant, but the effort is futile. In fact, it is much easier to fool an adult with forced emotion than a baby. The emotional sensory radar of the infant has not yet been scrambled. It reads feelings clearly. They cannot be hidden from the infant behind a screen of words, or camouflaged by well-meant but forced gestures. It is unfortunate but true that we grow far more stupid than that by the time we reach adulthood.
Gabor Maté (Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates and What You Can Do About It)
From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers. And while the abilities of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens—there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them. “I am no novel-reader—I seldom look into novels—Do not imagine that I often read novels—It is really very well for a novel.” Such is the common cant. “And what are you reading, Miss—?” “Oh! It is only a novel!” replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. “It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda”; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language. Now, had the same young lady been engaged with a volume of the Spectator, instead of such a work, how proudly would she have produced the book, and told its name; though the chances must be against her being occupied by any part of that voluminous publication, of which either the matter or manner would not disgust a young person of taste: the substance of its papers so often consisting in the statement of improbable circumstances, unnatural characters, and topics of conversation which no longer concern anyone living; and their language, too, frequently so coarse as to give no very favourable idea of the age that could endure it.
Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)
This reaction to the work was obviously a misunderstanding. It ignores the fact that the future Buddha was also of noble origins, that he was the son of a king and heir to the throne and had been raised with the expectation that one day he would inherit the crown. He had been taught martial arts and the art of government, and having reached the right age, he had married and had a son. All of these things would be more typical of the physical and mental formation of a future samurai than of a seminarian ready to take holy orders. A man like Julius Evola was particularly suitable to dispel such a misconception. He did so on two fronts in his Doctrine: on the one hand, he did not cease to recall the origins of the Buddha, Prince Siddhartha, who was destined to the throne of Kapilavastu: on the other hand, he attempted to demonstrate that Buddhist asceticism is not a cowardly resignation before life's vicissitudes, but rather a struggle of a spiritual kind, which is not any less heroic than the struggle of a knight on the battlefield. As Buddha himself said (Mahavagga, 2.15): 'It is better to die fighting than to live as one vanquished.' This resolution is in accord with Evola's ideal of overcoming natural resistances in order to achieve the Awakening through meditation; it should he noted, however, that the warrior terminology is contained in the oldest writings of Buddhism, which are those that best reflect the living teaching of the master. Evola works tirelessly in his hook to erase the Western view of a languid and dull doctrine that in fact was originally regarded as aristocratic and reserved for real 'champions.' After Schopenhauer, the unfounded idea arose in Western culture that Buddhism involved a renunciation of the world and the adoption of a passive attitude: 'Let things go their way; who cares anyway.' Since in this inferior world 'everything is evil,' the wise person is the one who, like Simeon the Stylite, withdraws, if not to the top of a pillar; at least to an isolated place of meditation. Moreover, the most widespread view of Buddhists is that of monks dressed in orange robes, begging for their food; people suppose that the only activity these monks are devoted to is reciting memorized texts, since they shun prayers; thus, their religion appears to an outsider as a form of atheism. Evola successfully demonstrates that this view is profoundly distorted by a series of prejudices. Passivity? Inaction? On the contrary, Buddha never tired of exhorting his disciples to 'work toward victory'; he himself, at the end of his life, said with pride: katam karaniyam, 'done is what needed to he done!' Pessimism? It is true that Buddha, picking up a formula of Brahmanism, the religion in which he had been raised prior to his departure from Kapilavastu, affirmed that everything on earth is 'suffering.' But he also clarified for us that this is the case because we are always yearning to reap concrete benefits from our actions. For example, warriors risk their lives because they long for the pleasure of victory and for the spoils, and yet in the end they are always disappointed: the pillaging is never enough and what has been gained is quickly squandered. Also, the taste of victory soon fades away. But if one becomes aware of this state of affairs (this is one aspect of the Awakening), the pessimism is dispelled since reality is what it is, neither good nor bad in itself; reality is inscribed in Becoming, which cannot be interrupted. Thus, one must live and act with the awareness that the only thing that matters is each and every moment. Thus, duty (dhamma) is claimed to be the only valid reference point: 'Do your duty,' that is. 'let your every action he totally disinterested.
Jean Varenne (The Doctrine of Awakening: The Attainment of Self-Mastery According to the Earliest Buddhist Texts)
proper legal structure. The best structure is that of the Mondragon companies, which do not allow workers to own a tradable share of equity. Instead, in addition to their wages they each have an internal capital account the value of which depends on the business’s performance and on the number of hours the member works. A new member has to pay a large entrance fee, most of which is credited to his internal account. He receives interest at the end of every fiscal year, but he cannot withdraw the annually accumulating principal from his account until retirement. Almost all profits are divided between these individual accounts and a collective account that helps ensure the company’s survival. No buying or selling of shares takes place in this scheme, so it’s difficult for the firm to lose its worker-controlled status. Not until 1982, however, did the internal-capital-accounts legal structure exist in the United States (and then only in Massachusetts); prior to that, worker cooperatives had to make convoluted use of other categories, which sometimes made them vulnerable to degeneration.113 In any case, the survival rates of contemporary cooperatives put the lie to traditional theories of cooperatives’ unsustainability, for they appear to have higher rates of survival than conventional firms. During the 1970s and early 1980s, the death rate for co-ops in France (due either to dissolution or to conversion into a capitalist firm) was 6.9 percent; the comparable rate for capitalist competitors was 10 percent. A study in 1989 found much higher failure rates for capitalist companies than cooperatives in North America.114 A study conducted by Quebec’s Ministry of Industry and Commerce in 1999 concluded that “Co-op startups are twice as likely to celebrate their 10th birthday as conventionally owned private businesses.”115 A later study by the same organization found that “More than 6 out of 10 cooperatives survive more than five years, as compared to almost 4 businesses out of 10 for the private sector in Québec and in Canada in general. More than 4 out of 10 cooperatives survive more than 10 years, compared to 2 businesses out of 10 for the private sector.”116
Chris Wright (Worker Cooperatives and Revolution: History and Possibilities in the United States)
These include: 1.Do the Right Thing—the principle of integrity. We see in George Marshall the endless determination to tell the truth and never to curry favor by thought, word, or deed. Every one of General Marshall’s actions was grounded in the highest sense of integrity, honesty, and fair play. 2.Master the Situation—the principle of action. Here we see the classic “know your stuff and take appropriate action” principle of leadership coupled with a determination to drive events and not be driven by them. Marshall knew that given the enormous challenges of World War II followed by the turbulent postwar era, action would be the heart of his remit. And he was right. 3.Serve the Greater Good—the principle of selflessness. In George Marshall we see a leader who always asked himself, “What is the morally correct course of action that does the greatest good for the greatest number?” as opposed to the careerist leader who asks “What’s in it for me?” and shades recommendations in a way that creates self-benefit. 4.Speak Your Mind—the principle of candor. Always happiest when speaking simple truth to power, General and Secretary Marshall never sugarcoated the message to the global leaders he served so well. 5.Lay the Groundwork—the principle of preparation. As is often said at the nation’s service academies, know the six Ps: Prior Preparation Prevents Particularly Poor Performance. 6.Share Knowledge—the principle of learning and teaching. Like Larry Bird on a basketball court, George Marshall made everyone on his team look better by collaborating and sharing information. 7.Choose and Reward the Right People—the principle of fairness. Unbiased, color- and religion-blind, George Marshall simply picked the very best people. 8.Focus on the Big Picture—the principle of vision. Marshall always kept himself at the strategic level, content to delegate to subordinates when necessary. 9.Support the Troops—the principle of caring. Deeply involved in ensuring that the men and women under his command prospered, General and Secretary Marshall taught that if we are loyal down the chain of command, that loyalty will be repaid not only in kind but in operational outcomes as well.
James G. Stavridis (The Leader's Bookshelf)
It was a story no one could tell me when I was child. The story of Russian Jewry had been told in English, by American Jews; to them, it was a story that began with antiquity, culminated with the pogroms, and ended with emigration. For those who remained in Russia, there had been a time before the pogroms and a time after: a period of home, then a period of fear and even greater fear and then brief hope again, and then a different kind of fear, when one no longer feared for one's life but fear never having hope again. This story did not end; it faded into a picture of my parents sitting at the kitchen table poring over an atlas of the world, or of me sitting on the bedroom floor talking at my best friend. The history of the Soviet Union itself remains a story without an narrative; every attempt to tell this story in Russia has stopped short, giving way to the resolve to turn away from the decades of pain and suffering and bloodshed. With every telling, stories of Stalinism and the Second World War become more mythologized. And with so few Jew left in Russia, with so little uniting them, the Russian Jewish world is one of absences and silences. I had no words for this when I was twelve, but what I felt more strongly that anything, more strongly even than the desire to go to Israel, was this absence of a story. My Jewishness consisted of the experience of being ostracized and beaten up and the specter of not being allowed into university. Once I found my people milling outside the synagogue (we never went inside, where old men in strange clothes sang in an unfamiliar language), a few old Yiddish songs and a couple of newer Hebrew ones were added to my non-story. Finally, I had read the stories of Sholem Aleichem, which were certainly of a different world, as distant from my modern urban Russian-speaking childhood as anything could be. In the end, my Jewish identity was entirely negative: it consisted of non-belonging. How had I and other late-Soviet Jews been so impoverished? Prior to the Russian Revolution, most of the world's Jews lived in the Russian Empire. Following the Second World War, Russia was the only European country whose Jewish population numbered not in the hundreds or even thousands but in the millions. How did this country rid itself of Jewish culture altogether? How did the Jews of Russia lose their home? Much later, as I tried to find the answers to these questions, I kept circling back tot he story of Birobidzhan, which, in its concentrated tragic absurdity seemed to tell it all.
Masha Gessen (Where the Jews Aren't: The Sad and Absurd Story of Birobidzhan, Russia's Jewish Autonomous Region (Jewish Encounters Series))
1. Divine Writing: The Bible, down to the details of its words, consists of and is identical with God’s very own words written inerrantly in human language. 2. Total Representation: The Bible represents the totality of God’s communication to and will for humanity, both in containing all that God has to say to humans and in being the exclusive mode of God’s true communication.[11] 3. Complete Coverage: The divine will about all of the issues relevant to Christian belief and life are contained in the Bible.[12] 4. Democratic Perspicuity: Any reasonably intelligent person can read the Bible in his or her own language and correctly understand the plain meaning of the text.[13] 5. Commonsense Hermeneutics: The best way to understand biblical texts is by reading them in their explicit, plain, most obvious, literal sense, as the author intended them at face value, which may or may not involve taking into account their literary, cultural, and historical contexts. 6. Solo Scriptura:[14] The significance of any given biblical text can be understood without reliance on creeds, confessions, historical church traditions, or other forms of larger theological hermeneutical frameworks, such that theological formulations can be built up directly out of the Bible from scratch. 7. Internal Harmony: All related passages of the Bible on any given subject fit together almost like puzzle pieces into single, unified, internally consistent bodies of instruction about right and wrong beliefs and behaviors. 8. Universal Applicability: What the biblical authors taught God’s people at any point in history remains universally valid for all Christians at every other time, unless explicitly revoked by subsequent scriptural teaching. 9. Inductive Method: All matters of Christian belief and practice can be learned by sitting down with the Bible and piecing together through careful study the clear “biblical” truths that it teaches. The prior nine assumptions and beliefs generate a tenth viewpoint that—although often not stated in explications of biblicist principles and beliefs by its advocates—also commonly characterizes the general biblicist outlook, particularly as it is received and practiced in popular circles: 10. Handbook Model: The Bible teaches doctrine and morals with every affirmation that it makes, so that together those affirmations comprise something like a handbook or textbook for Christian belief and living, a compendium of divine and therefore inerrant teachings on a full array of subjects—including science, economics, health, politics, and romance.[15]
Christian Smith (The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture)
Correlation and causality. Why is it that throughout the animal kingdom and in every human culture, males account for most aggression and violence? Well, what about testosterone and some related hormones, collectively called androgens, a term that unless otherwise noted, I will use simplistically as synonymous with testosterone. In nearly all species, males have more circulating testosterone than do females, who secrete small amounts of androgens from the adrenal glands. Moreover, male aggression is most prevalent when testosterone levels are highest; adolescence and during mating season in seasonal breeders. Thus, testosterone and aggression are linked. Furthermore, there are particularly high levels of testosterone receptors in the amygdala, in the way station by which it projects to the rest of the brain, the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, and in its major targets, the hypothalamus, the central gray of the mid-brain, and the frontal cortex. But these are merely correlative data. Showing that testosterone causes aggression requires a subtraction plus a replacement experiment. Subtraction, castrate a male: do levels of aggression decrease? Yes, including in humans. This shows that something coming from the testes causes aggression. Is it testosterone? Replacement: give that castrated individual replacement testosterone. Do pre-castration levels of aggression return? Yes, including in humans, thus testosterone causes aggression. Time to see how wrong that is. The first hint of a complication comes after castration. When average levels of aggression plummet in every species, but crucially, not to zero, well, maybe the castration wasn't perfect, you missed some bits of testes, or maybe enough of the minor adrenal androgens are secreted to maintain the aggression. But no, even when testosterone and androgens are completely eliminated, some aggression remains, thus some male aggression is testosterone independent. This point is driven home by castration of some sexual offenders, a legal procedure in a few states. This is accomplished with chemical castration, administration of drugs that either inhibit testosterone production or block testosterone receptors. Castration decreases sexual urges in the subset of sex offenders with intense, obsessive, and pathological urges. But otherwise, castration doesn't decrease recidivism rates as stated in one meta-analysis. Hostile rapists and those who commit sex crimes motivated by power or anger are not amenable to treatment with the anti-androgenic drugs. This leads to a hugely informative point. The more experience the male had being aggressive prior to castration, the more aggression continues afterward. In otherwise, the less his being aggressive in the future requires testosterone and the more it's a function of social learning.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst)
he importance and influence of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection can scarcely be exaggerated. A century after Darwin’s death, the great evolutionary biologist and historian of science, Ernst Mayr, wrote, ‘The worldview formed by any thinking person in the Western world after 1859, when On the Origin of Species was published, was by necessity quite different from a worldview formed prior to 1859… The intellectual revolution generated by Darwin went far beyond the confines of biology, causing the overthrow of some of the most basic beliefs of his age.’1 Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin’s biographers, contend, ‘Darwin is arguably the best known scientist in history. More than any modern thinker—even Freud or Marx—this affable old-world naturalist from the minor Shropshire gentry has transformed the way we see ourselves on the planet.’2 In the words of the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, ‘Almost no one is indifferent to Darwin, and no one should be. The Darwinian theory is a scientific theory, and a great one, but that is not all it is… Darwin’s dangerous idea cuts much deeper into the fabric of our most fundamental beliefs than many of its sophisticated apologists have yet admitted, even to themselves.’3 Dennett goes on to add, ‘If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone has ever had, I’d give it to Darwin, ahead of Newton and Einstein and everyone else. In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning, and purpose with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mechanism and physical law.’4 The editors of the Cambridge Companion to Darwin begin their introduction by stating, ‘Some scientific thinkers, while not themselves philosophers, make philosophers necessary. Charles Darwin is an obvious case. His conclusions about the history and diversity of life—including the evolutionary origin of humans—have seemed to bear on fundamental questions about being, knowledge, virtue and justice.’5 Among the fundamental questions raised by Darwin’s work, which are still being debated by philosophers (and others) are these: ‘Are we different in kind from other animals? Do our apparently unique capacities for language, reason and morality point to a divine spark within us, or to ancestral animal legacies still in evidence in our simian relatives? What forms of social life are we naturally disposed towards—competitive and selfish forms, or cooperative and altruistic ones?’6 As the editors of the volume point out, virtually the entire corpus of the foundational works of Western philosophy, from Plato and Aristotle to Descartes to Kant to Hegel, has had to be re-examined in the light of Darwin’s work. Darwin continues to be read, discussed, interpreted, used, abused—and misused—to this day. As the philosopher and historian of science, Jean Gayon, puts it, ‘[T]his persistent positioning of new developments in relation to a single, pioneering figure is quite exceptional in the history of modern natural science.
Charles Darwin (On the Origin of Species)
The Seventh Central Pay Commission was appointed in February 2014 by the Government of India (Ministry of Finance) under the Chairmanship of Justice Ashok Kumar Mathur. The Commission has been given 18 months to make its recommendations. The terms of reference of the Commission are as follows:  1. To examine, review, evolve and recommend changes that are desirable and feasible regarding the principles that should govern the emoluments structure including pay, allowances and other facilities/benefits, in cash or kind, having regard to rationalisation and simplification therein as well as the specialised needs of various departments, agencies and services, in respect of the following categories of employees:-  (i) Central Government employees—industrial and non-industrial; (ii) Personnel belonging to the All India Services; (iii) Personnel of the Union Territories; (iv) Officers and employees of the Indian Audit and Accounts Department; (v) Members of the regulatory bodies (excluding the RBI) set up under the Acts of Parliament; and (vi) Officers and employees of the Supreme Court.   2. To examine, review, evolve and recommend changes that are desirable and feasible regarding the principles that should govern the emoluments structure, concessions and facilities/benefits, in cash or kind, as well as the retirement benefits of the personnel belonging to the Defence Forces, having regard to the historical and traditional parties, with due emphasis on the aspects unique to these personnel.   3. To work out the framework for an emoluments structure linked with the need to attract the most suitable talent to government service, promote efficiency, accountability and responsibility in the work culture, and foster excellence in the public governance system to respond to the complex challenges of modern administration and the rapid political, social, economic and technological changes, with due regard to expectations of stakeholders, and to recommend appropriate training and capacity building through a competency based framework.   4. To examine the existing schemes of payment of bonus, keeping in view, inter-alia, its bearing upon performance and productivity and make recommendations on the general principles, financial parameters and conditions for an appropriate incentive scheme to reward excellence in productivity, performance and integrity.   5. To review the variety of existing allowances presently available to employees in addition to pay and suggest their rationalisation and simplification with a view to ensuring that the pay structure is so designed as to take these into account.   6. To examine the principles which should govern the structure of pension and other retirement benefits, including revision of pension in the case of employees who have retired prior to the date of effect of these recommendations, keeping in view that retirement benefits of all Central Government employees appointed on and after 01.01.2004 are covered by the New Pension Scheme (NPS).   7. To make recommendations on the above, keeping in view:  (i) the economic conditions in the country and the need for fiscal prudence; (ii) the need to ensure that adequate resources are available for developmental expenditures and welfare measures; (iii) the likely impact of the recommendations on the finances of the state governments, which usually adopt the recommendations with some modifications; (iv) the prevailing emolument structure and retirement benefits available to employees of Central Public Sector Undertakings; and (v) the best global practices and their adaptability and relevance in Indian conditions.   8. To recommend the date of effect of its recommendations on all the above.
M. Laxmikanth (Governance in India)
[On Socrates] My decision to prove reincarnation to the sophomoric cavemen of Athens, quite possibly, was the best decision I made for both myself and humanity. Another dominant behavioral trait is displayed by my efforts to perform selfish acts selflessly, which is significantly unique because the majority of people perform selfless acts selfishly. In the former modus operandi the virtue is preserved through the honesty of being selfish, but in the latter the virtue is corrupted by the dishonesty since the intent is disguised to appear virtuous. Therefore, people are the most evil when performing selfish acts selfishly, and would therefore be the most benevolent when performing selfless acts selflessly. To performs acts selfishly for the mere sake of acting, is irresponsible and destructive and to perform acts selflessly for the sake of acting, is reckless and self-destructive. The interesting dynamic of this newest revelation is how Aristotle knew, innately, to seek out Plato upon his father's death. Once Socrates reunited with Plato, as Aristotle, they proved metaphysics; except the trial of Socrates was so traumatizing they made the decision not to make it known. Instead they channeled the knowledge constructively ("selfishly"- because self-preservation is ultimately selfish) which was done selflessly by cultivating it through education. They were so successful, that the King of Macedonia (my father's previous employer) made a formal request ordering me to tutor his son, Alexander. That's interesting because I have memory of Alexander the Great. He was a passionate boy with incredible sex drive that was equal to that of a honey badger's virulence. He allowed his power to intoxicate him and I was the only one he trusted, and when I made the attempt to slow him down by reminding of of the all powerful mighty God, something happened that caused his death and some Athenian imbecile (probably out of guilt) tried to hang me up on a cross for being a traitor. I got the hell of out doge like a bat of hell the minute that fool said something about me not "honoring" the "gods" - I may have even said something to the effect of 'I am God.' Although, the quote that did survive was when I refused to allow Athens to commit the same crime twice prior to fleeing the city to seek sanctuary at a family's estate.
Alejandro C. Estrada
We must engage our sense of self to sensibly deal with environmental stresses in the ever-changing world. Without a strong sense of self and an equally robust ego, I might have expired long ago. Because I possess a brain that is capable of self-recognition and self-regulation, I reserve the opportunity to edit personal behavior. If I can exercise the necessary self-discipline, I can reposition an individualistic and egotistical sense of self-identity. A sense of self can lock us into self-destructive behavioral patterns. If we exhibit an inflexible sense of self, we are predisposed to act in a rigidly prescribed manner. Some of our personal decisions might not support our long-term best interest. The Neanderthals failed to adapt to environmental changes and paid the ultimate price with extermination of their species. I too face the challenge of either adapting to environmental stresses or expiring. My prior characterization of self-identity did not serve me well since it brought me to the brink of self-immolation. Accordingly, I must revise whom I think I am in order to adapt to the challenges of a rapidly changing environment by assessing who I was, determining who I want to become, and developing a disciplined approach to make the transition from what I was to who I seek to become.
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
We wandered the entire length of the street market, stopping to buy the provisions I needed for the lunch dish I wanted to prepare to initiate l'Inglese into the real art of Sicilian cuisine. I took l'Inglese around the best stalls, teaching him how to choose produce, livestock, game, fish, and meat of the highest quality for his dishes. Together we circled among the vegetable sellers, who were praising their heaps of artichokes, zucchini still bearing their yellow flowers, spikes of asparagus, purple-tinged cauliflowers, oyster mushrooms, and vine tomatoes with their customary cries: "Carciofi fresci." "Funghi belli." "Tutto economico." I squeezed and pinched, sniffed, and weighed things in my hands, and having agreed on the goods I would then barter on the price. The stallholders were used to me, but they had never known me to be accompanied by a man. Wild strawberries, cherries, oranges and lemons, quinces and melons were all subject to my scrutiny. The olive sellers, standing behind their huge basins containing all varieties of olives in brine, oil, or vinegar, called out to me: "Hey, Rosa, who's your friend?" We made our way to the meat vendors, where rabbits fresh from the fields, huge sides of beef, whole pigs and sheep were hung up on hooks, and offal and tripe were spread out on marble slabs. I selected some chicken livers, which were wrapped in paper and handed to l'Inglese to carry. I had never had a man to carry my shopping before; it made me feel special. We passed the stalls where whole tuna fish, sardines and oysters, whitebait and octopus were spread out, reflecting the abundant sea surrounding our island. Fish was not on the menu today, but nevertheless I wanted to show l'Inglese where to find the finest tuna, the freshest shrimps, and the most succulent swordfish in the whole market.
Lily Prior (La Cucina)
Essentially that which is only matter, and the sciences that can, through verifiable methods, explore that which we know exists, through the means of...you know, touching, tasting, seeing, and so on...as well as using other instrumentation and so on...is very useful. The question winds up being: ultimately one of: 'Is that all there is?' And going and saying there wasn't even an understanding of matter as we understand it today prior to [...] about the time of Descartes...um, I don't know if the historical argument's the best one to make in that case. But one thing I can say is that thinking that all that exists is that which we can perceive with the five senses is in no way provable –and then if we talk about, 'Well, what is the essence of something?', then we run into a whole other mess. But if we're talking in the context of modernism, where people have gone and become wholly materialistic, the answers become incredibly simple. Incredibly simplistic. And ultimately, I'm not convinced of their accuracy; not only am I not convinced of their accuracy, but I'm not convinced that it's good for humankind in general: because ultimately we're going to wind up killing ourselves off, if all we believe in is that which is material.
Matthew Laine
ah beliefs.... best to transcend all belief structures that crystalize the mind within the limits of time and planetary legends or stories. Elevating consciousness into the state of Being-ness ever originating prior to and beyond all planetary religions and metaphorical stories brings you homeward....
Leland Lewis (Random Molecular Mirroring)
General Kennedy raised his hand. “Once we’ve destroyed these pigs, are we going to get our payback for their crucifixions?” he asked. The Marine commanders, who were beyond enraged, jumped in. “We found over 153 Marines crucified when we re-secured the Ben-Gurion University campus near Negev the other day,” blurted General Peeler, eyes burning with rage. “I know everyone wants payback for the crucifixions, and I assure you we will have it. Once the battlefields have been secured and the grave registration units move in, they are going to bury the IR forces in mass graves. They will do their best to identify the IR soldiers so that they can be properly marked. Prior to the graves being filled in, they have been instructed to cover all the bodies in pig’s blood, which the Germans and Brits have supplied. We have documented over 5,000 crucifixions of US Forces, so we will bury their dead in pig’s blood in retaliation. They believe that this will prevent them from entering Paradise, so we will test that theory.” A few laughs, snickers and whoops could be heard, mostly from the NCO’s. This was a tactic used by General “Black Jack” Pershing in the Philippines prior to World War One. The US had taken possession of the Philippines during the Spanish American War of 1898. In 1911, a Muslim uprising took place in Mindanao, and General Pershing had the insurgents shot with bullets dipped in pig’s blood and then their bodies were buried with the guts of the pig. This discouraged future Muslim attacks by future Jihadis because they believed they would be prevented from entering Paradise if they were buried with the blood from a pig and its guts. General Gardner’s staff wanted to take a page from history and see if it would make a difference in this war--any small advantage that could be gained was something worth pursuing, no matter how strange or unconventional it may be.
James Rosone (Prelude to World War III: The Rise of the Islamic Republic and the Rebirth of America (World War III, #1))
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.
Uptown Realty Austin
Jiu Jitsu opened up doors in my mind that public education had bolted shut. In hindsight, I see just how superficial my thoughts had been prior to this art. It is no coincidence that my efforts in reading and writing have run parallel with this craft. I began training Jiu Jitsu at twenty-two, and at the time of this writing I am about to turn thirty. I have learned more in the past eight years than the previous twenty-two, and have no doubts that Jiu Jitsu opened up my mind in a way traditional organized education never could. Jiu Jitsu gave me a life when I didn't know how to live. It is the best thing I have ever done, and is the foundation upon which all I will do.
Chris Matakas (The Tao of Jiu Jitsu)
$20M in sales, our leadership team was dysfunctional and divided. Prior to this, our culture had earned several “Best Places to Work” accolades, and our performance was repeatedly acknowledged by Inc. Magazine’s, Inc. 5000 award, and Ernst & Young honored our success as a finalist for their Entrepreneur of the year award.
Werner Berger (Journeys To Success: Health, Wellness & Fitness Edition)
These things are mysteries—not because they can’t be explained, but because they only come to us a bit at a time.
Derek Prior (Best Laid Plans (Shader, #2))
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hamayoun jhangeer
Those who believe it is immoral to kill animals for any reason, including eating and humane medical experimentation, should reflect on this: While there are strong links between cruelty to animals and cruelty to humans, there are no links between kindness to animals and kindness to humans. Cruelty to animals frequently indicates a tendency toward cruelty to fellow human beings. But kindness to animals does not indicate that a person will be kind to other people. The Nazis, noted for their cruelty to human beings, were also the most pro-animal-rights group prior to the contemporary period. They outlawed experimentation on animals—but performed widespread experiments on human beings. And Hitler was famously affectionate toward his German shepherd, Blondie, while consigning millions of people to hellish misery and agonizing death.
Dennis Prager (Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph)
Hollywood was called Tinseltown for a reason and I was caught up in its glitter. My friend Ken seemed to know everyone and once took me to the NBC Studios in Burbank, where he introduced me to Steve Allen. “Steverino,” as he was known by friends, must have thought that I wanted to get into show business and promised that if I applied myself, I would go places. I hadn’t really given show business much thought, but it sounded good to me. However, I’m glad that I didn’t count on his promise of becoming a star, because that was the end of it. I never saw Steve Allen again, other than on television, and I guess that’s just the way it was in Hollywood. Later Steve Allen starred in NBC’s The Tonight Show, which in more recent times has been hosted by Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, Jay Leno and now by Jimmy Fallon. Steve Allen had a rider in his contract that whenever he was introduced as a guest, the introduction would include: “And now our next guest is world-renowned recording artist, actor, producer, playwright, best-selling author, composer of thousands of songs, Emmy winning comic genius and entertainer – Steve Allen.” He was a funny guy and he would crack me up, but more than that, he would frequently crack himself up. Steve was loved or hated by people. It was said that he was enormously talented, and if you didn’t believe that, just ask him. Jack Paar, who followed Steve on The Tonight Show, once said, “Steve Allen has claimed to have written over 1,000 songs; name one???” The truth is that he did write a huge number of songs, including the 1963 Grammy award-winning composition, The Gravy Waltz. He wrote about 50 books, one of which is Steve Allen’s Private Joke File, published in 2000, just prior to his death in that same year. He also has two stars on the “Hollywood Walk of Fame,” one for radio and one for TV. Say what you want…. He cracked up at least two people with his humor, himself and me!
Hank Bracker
Hi Tim, Patience. Far too soon to expect strength improvements. Strength improvements [for a movement like this] take a minimum of 6 weeks. Any perceived improvements prior to that are simply the result of improved synaptic facilitation. In plain English, the central nervous system simply became more efficient at that particular movement with practice. This is, however, not to be confused with actual strength gains. Dealing with the temporary frustration of not making progress is an integral part of the path towards excellence. In fact, it is essential and something that every single elite athlete has had to learn to deal with. If the pursuit of excellence was easy, everyone would do it. In fact, this impatience in dealing with frustration is the primary reason that most people fail to achieve their goals. Unreasonable expectations timewise, resulting in unnecessary frustration, due to a perceived feeling of failure. Achieving the extraordinary is not a linear process. The secret is to show up, do the work, and go home. A blue collar work ethic married to indomitable will. It is literally that simple. Nothing interferes. Nothing can sway you from your purpose. Once the decision is made, simply refuse to budge. Refuse to compromise. And accept that quality long-term results require quality long-term focus. No emotion. No drama. No beating yourself up over small bumps in the road. Learn to enjoy and appreciate the process. This is especially important because you are going to spend far more time on the actual journey than with those all too brief moments of triumph at the end. Certainly celebrate the moments of triumph when they occur. More importantly, learn from defeats when they happen. In fact, if you are not encountering defeat on a fairly regular basis, you are not trying hard enough. And absolutely refuse to accept less than your best. Throw out a timeline. It will take what it takes. If the commitment is to a long-term goal and not to a series of smaller intermediate goals, then only one decision needs to be made and adhered to. Clear, simple, straightforward. Much easier to maintain than having to make small decision after small decision to stay the course when dealing with each step along the way. This provides far too many opportunities to inadvertently drift from your chosen goal. The single decision is one of the most powerful tools in the toolbox.
Timothy Ferriss (Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers)
A Rose for Ecclesiastes” appeared in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, ranked sixth among the 26 best stories from 1929–1964 (prior to the institution of the Nebula Awards), elected by the writers themselves.
Zelazny Roger (The Magic: (October 1961-October 1967) Ten Tales by Roger Zelazny)
Best Capital with highest ROI to invest in is, self-growth; becoming better than before, valued higher than prior, day by day.
Vikrmn: CA Vikram Verma (Debit Credit of Life: from the good books of accounts)
Warren Buffett puts it all rather well: “What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.
Adam Rutherford (The Complete Guide to Absolutely Everything (Abridged): Adventures in Math and Science)
KIRKUS REVIEWS BOOK REVIEW A retired professor explores the life and writings of Carl Sandburg in this debut book. “During the first half of the twentieth century,” Quinley writes, “Carl Sandburg seemed to be everywhere and do everything.” Though best known for his Pulitzer Prize–winning poetry and multivolume biography of Abraham Lincoln, Sandburg had a wide-ranging career as a public intellectual, which included stints in journalism as a columnist and investigative reporter, in musicology as a leading advocate and performer of folk music, and in the nascent movie industry as a consultant and film critic. He also dabbled in political activism, children’s literature, and novels. Not only does Quinley, a retired college administrator and professor, hail Sandburg as a 20th-century icon (“If my grandpa asks you a question,” his grandchildren joke, “the answer is always Carl Sandburg”), but much of his own life has been adjacent to that of the poet as well. Born in Maywood, Illinois, a “few blocks” from Sandburg’s home 30 years prior, Quinley would eventually move to the Appalachian Mountains. He lived just a few miles from Sandburg’s famed residence in Hendersonville, North Carolina. As a docent for the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site, the author was often asked for literature about the luminary’s life. And though much has been written about Sandburg, biographies on the iconoclast are either out of print or are tomes with more than 800 pages. Eschewing comprehensiveness for brevity, Quinley seeks to fill this void in the literary world by offering readers a short introduction to Sandburg’s life and writings. At just 122 pages, this accessible book packs a solid punch, providing readers with not just the highlights of Sandburg’s life, but also a sophisticated analysis of his passions, poetry, and influence on American culture. This engaging approach that’s tailored to a general audience is complemented by an ample assortment of historical photographs. And while its hagiographic tone may annoy some readers, this slim volume is backed by more than 260 endnotes and delivers an extensive bibliography for readers interested in learning more about the 20th century’s “voice of America.” A well-written, concise examination of a literary legend Kirkus Indie, Kirkus Media LLC, 2600 Via Fortuna Suite 130 Austin, TX 78746 indie@kirkusreviews.com
John W. Quinley
He had scribbled a note in pencil giving Patton authority to assume command of the four American divisions in Tunisia the moment he landed there, and Patton had taken off again directly for the front. Eisenhower had followed up his note with a memorandum of instructions. Patton was not to keep ' for one instant' any officer who was not up to the mark. 'We cannot afford to throw away soldiers and equipment ... and effectiveness' out of unwillingness to injure 'the feelings of old friends,' Eisenhower had written. Ruthlessness of this kind toward acquaintances often required difficult moral courage, Eisenhower continued, but he expected Patton 'to be perfectly cold-blooded about it.' The first old acquaintance to go had been the general who had commanded at Kasserine, a man whom Eisenhower had rated, prior to the start of the serious shooting, as his best combat leader after Patton. This general had been shipped home to spend the rest of the war excercising his top-notch paper qualifications as an elevated drill instructor.
Neil Sheehan (A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam)
And, 37 years later, in 2013, his breakthrough moment came in another thought experiment, which revealed a system of cycling protocells capable of evolving but also sharing innovations, thereby able to lift ever more complex forms into being. Was this vision simply a motivation for his life’s work, driving him on for decades? Or was it a precognition sent by his future self or from some other mysterious time-shifted source? However you might interpret it, a causal temporal loop seems possible. A clue to this loop came from another point in the interview when Dr Damer told Dr Mossbridge that he had had an even earlier vision, suggesting that future versions of himself were able to communicate back through time. When he was about to turn ten, he wanted to mark that milestone, so he went on a long walk in his neighbourhood. He found himself at the edge of a slough, and asked, “What could I do right now that would have a really positive effect on my future?” Suddenly a vision opened up in his mind’s eye, a line of all his future selves extending to the horizon. They were all busy doing slightly different but interesting things. He felt pleased and began to look forward to this future. Showing remarkable maturity and awareness, the young Bruce decided it would be a good idea to make a deal with these future selves, then and there. He asked them to agree to a written contract, which he held up on an imagined piece of paper. It said: “You will all agree to not send negative thoughts back to the prior, littler selves because they did their best at the time.” One after the next, the future selves each “signed” the only-positive-thoughts contract. Once this was completed, he described experiencing a rush, a sort of force pulling on him as all the doors to the future swung open. He then saw his future path as one flowing, forward movement with no turbulence returning back down to his present. Given this earlier experience, it’s no surprise that just four years later he experienced receiving a clue from the future, setting his life’s work. From a very young age, Bruce felt he was in communication with his future selves and that he also possessed an intimate relationship with some kind of bigger, guiding system. This gave him an abiding sense that his life’s path was somehow mapped out through his intentions toward destinations lit by delivered visions.
Theresa Cheung (The Premonition Code: The Science of Precognition, How Sensing the Future Can Change Your Life)
At its heart, neoliberalism is a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual—not collective, please note—individual entrepreneurial freedoms defined in very particular ways, and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, so-called “free markets,” and so-called “free” trade. If I could just have my hands doing air quotes, I’d be doing it continuously, but you can see that in your imagination. The role of the state under neoliberal philosophy is to create and preserve an institutional framework that’s appropriate to these kinds of practices. It must guarantee the quality and integrity of money. Also set up those military defense, police, and legal structures and functions required to secure private property rights, and to guarantee, by force if need be (and we’ve seen some of this already in the conversation about militarism; we’ll see more of it), by force if need be, the proper functioning of markets. That’s the role of the state. If markets do not exist in areas such as land, water, education, health care, social security, or environmental pollution, then they must be created by state action if necessary. You can see these things immediately as either prior public goods or public resources, these are all to be brought under the rubrics of the market through privatization, an essential feature of neoliberalism. Any other actions by the state are deemed then to be illegitimate, but you can tell already that the state has a very significant role to play here, even though proponents of neoliberalism and their rhetoric constantly downplay both the role and the necessity of the state. It should also be quite clear, immediately and despite this rhetoric, that neoliberalism is not really an unencumbered, non-state-mediated enterprise.
Noam Chomsky (Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance)
Used for learning, testing, including self-testing, is a very desirable difficulty. Even testing prior to studying works, at the point when wrong answers are assured. In one of Kornell’s experiments, participants were made to learn pairs of words and later tested on recall. At test time, they did the best with pairs that they learned via practice quizzes, even if they had gotten the answers on those quizzes wrong. Struggling to retrieve information primes the brain for subsequent learning, even when the retrieval itself is unsuccessful. The struggle is real, and really useful. “Like life,” Kornell and team wrote, “retrieval is all about the journey.
David Epstein (Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World)
Facebook is perhaps the most powerful and the least responsive to criticism. In 2020 alone, stories have emerged of Facebook’s highest-ranking policy staffer in India intervening to keep incitement by the country’s ruling BJP party online; of board member Peter Thiel dining with white nationalists; and of the prior role played by Facebook’s External Oversight Board Member Emi Palmor in censoring Palestinians’ speech. In each of these cases, the response from Facebook executives has been weak at best. The line where the state ends and Facebook’s rule begins is increasingly murky.
Jillian York (Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism)
Every year at the Academy Awards the most notable prize is for “Best Picture.” The media speculate on it for weeks prior to the broadcast, and most viewers stay up well past their bedtimes to see it awarded. There is a far less hyped award on the night: the one for film editing. Let’s face it: most viewers flip the channel or go into the kitchen to refill their popcorn bowl when the winner of “Best Film Editing” is announced. Yet what most people don’t know is that the two awards are highly correlated: since 1981 not a single film has won Best Picture without at least being nominated for Film Editing. In fact, in about two-thirds of the cases the movie nominated for Film Editing has gone on to win Best Picture.
Greg McKeown (Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less)
company is making a lot of money. Second, and more important, it would take a lot of the focus off of our company, and considering what we’ll be doing behind the scenes, we don’t need a lot of attention. The fact that Wally has found a hidden basement to put his real R&D lab in means we are less likely to be exposed, but the last thing we need is a lot of reporters trying to learn our secrets, and even worse would be the problem of industrial espionage. If we make it clear that we will license the technology, there’s not really going to be any point in anyone trying to steal it from us.” Allison nodded. “Okay, I see your points. What about patents? All of the stuff is patentable, right?” “It is, and I’ve already worked with one of the best patent attorneys in the world to get them filed on a global basis. It cost almost two million dollars altogether, but our corporation now holds patents on these designs and functions in every country. That was actually a little tricky, because some of the other appliance manufacturers have been working on some similar devices for a while, but we found loopholes that let us claim many of the functions entirely as our own. We did have to refer to some prior art, so there will be a relatively small amount of royalties to pay out each year.” “As long as we are protected,” Allison said. “Now, fill me in on my job here. What am I supposed to be doing?” “As COO, your job is to oversee our business operations, which includes reporting back to Noah on any issues or developments. I’ll actually handle most of that for you, but I want to brief you at least a couple times a week on what’s happening with the business. That way, if you find yourself in a position of having to answer questions, you’ll know what to say.” Allison grinned and looked at Noah. “Sounds like you have it all figured out,” she said. “This is actually a brilliant idea, Noah. Setting up a business like this to cover activities is very smart. It will also give us a way to receive payments for our services.” “Payments?” Noah asked. “I set this up so that we wouldn’t have to worry about getting a budget from the government.” Allison’s eyebrows rose. “You don’t think we’re going to work for free, do you? Every time we handle a mission, there will be a payment of half a million dollars. That’s the deal I worked out with
David Archer (Noah Wolf Series #17-19 (Noah Wolf #17-19))
That girl peering back at me from the water was me, just me. The real me. Not the other versions I tried to be to win anyone over. I took a breath and exhaled. I forgave myself for my prior judgments of not being good enough to be just who I was. The truth was I was just doing the best I could with what I knew at the time. But now I knew better.
Janice MacLeod (Paris Letters)
Of the many brief tests designed to identify patients at higher risk for falls, the best studied are “stops walking when talking” and “timed up-and-go” tests. In studies of these tests, the history of a prior fall during the previous year predicts another fall in the next 6 to 12 months, with a sensitivity of 20% to 62%, specificity of 71% to 93%, and positive LR of = 2.4.
Steven McGee (Evidence-Based Physical Diagnosis E-Book)
The best evidence indicates that Dr. Offit’s rotavirus vaccine causes negative net public health impacts; in other words, Dr. Offit’s vaccine almost certainly kills and injures more children in the United States than the rotavirus disease killed and injured prior to the vaccine’s introduction.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
Memory seems to work on multiple levels in the brain. The circuit level (multiple interlinked neurons and circuits, involvement of distinct brain areas like the hippocampus, amygdala, and so on) is best understood because it unfolds at a scale that puts it within the granularity of existing research tools. On this level, we can see how “memories” are encoded in the brain physically as the readiness of dispersed groups of neurons to fire together again having fired together in the past (i.e., Hebbian learning—“neurons that fire together, wire together”). Again, long-term potentiation (and its opposite, long-term depression) reflects the constant forging of new connections between neurons and the updating of the weights of existing connections—the readiness of synapses to transmit signals, based on their (prior) history of signal transmission.
Eric Wargo (Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious)
FROM OTHER SOURCES Pre–race and Venue Homework Get hold of any history of past events at the venue, plus any information that the conducting club may have about weather and expected conditions. Go to the weather bureau and get history for the area. Speak to sailors from your class who have this venue as their home club or who have sailed there on a number of occasions. Boat, Sails, Gear Preparation Checklist Many times the outcome of a race is as dependent on what you have done prior to the race as to what you do out on the course. Sometimes no matter how good your tactics and strategy are a simple breakage could render all that useless. Hull – make sure that your hull is well sanded and polished, centreboard strips are in good condition, venturis if fitted are working efficiently, buoyancy tanks are dry and there are no extraneous pieces of kit in your boat which adds unwanted weight. Update any gear that looks tired or worn especially control lines. Mast, boom and poles – check that all halyards, stays and trapeze wires are not worn or damaged and that pins are secure, knots tight and that anything that can tear a sail or injure flesh is taped. Mark the full hoist position on all halyards. Deck hardware – check all cam cleats for spring tension and tape anything that may cause a sail tear or cut legs hands and arms. Check the length of all sheets and control lines and shorten anything that is too long. This not only reduces weight but also minimises clutter. Have marks on sheets and stick or draw numbers and reference scales for the jib tracks, outhaul and halyards so that you can easily duplicate settings that you know are fast in various conditions. Centreboard and rudder – ensure that all nicks and gouges are filled and sanded and the surfaces are polished and most importantly that rudder safety clips are working. Sails – select the correct battens for the day’s forecast. Write on the deck, with a china graph pencil, things like the starting sequence, courses, tide times and anything else that will remind you to sail fast. Tools and spares – carry a shackle key with screwdriver head on your person along with some spare shackles and short lengths of rope or different diameters. A tool like a Leatherman can be very useful to deal with unexpected breakages that can occur even in the best prepared boat.
Brett Bowden (Sailing To Win: Guaranteed Winning Strategies To Navigate From The Back To The Front Of The Fleet)
Aristotle said that the best activities are the most useless. This is because such things are not simply means to a further end but are done entirely for their own sake. Thus watching a baseball game is more important than getting a haircut, and cultivating a friendship is more valuable than making money. The game and the friendship are goods that are excellent in themselves, while getting a haircut and making money are in service of something beyond themselves. This is also why the most important parts of the newspaper are the sports section and the comics, and not, as we would customarily think, the business and political reports. In this sense, the most useless activity of all is the celebration of the Liturgy, which is another way of saying that it is the most important thing we could possibly do. There is no higher good than to rest in God, to honor him for his kindness, to savor his sweetness—in a word, to praise him. As we have seen in chapter three, every good comes from God, reflects God, and leads back to God, and, therefore, all value is summed up in the celebration of the Liturgy, the supreme act by which we commune with God. This is why the great liturgical theologian Romano Guardini said that the liturgy is a consummate form of play. We play football and we play musical instruments because it is simply delightful to do so, and we play in the presence of the Lord for the same reason. In chapter one I spoke of Adam in the garden as being the first priest, which is another way of saying that his life, prior to the fall, was entirely liturgical. At play in the field of the Lord, Adam, with every move and thought, effortlessly gave praise to God. As Dietrich von Hildebrand indicated, this play of liturgy is what rightly orders the personality, since we find interior order in the measure that we surrender everything in us to God. We might say that the Liturgy bookends the entire Scripture, for the priesthood of Adam stands at the beginning of the sacred text and the heavenly Liturgy of the book of Revelation stands at the end. In the closing book of the Bible, John the visionary gives us a glimpse into the heavenly court, and he sees priests, candles, incense, the reading of a sacred text, the gathering of thousands in prayer, prostrations and other gestures of praise, and the appearance of the Lamb of God. He sees,
Robert Barron (Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of the Faith)
Lovers are the best and worst kind of thieves, you know. That’s the trick of love, you see. An entirely new invention, every time. Rare and singular. Without prior context. Fools us into imagining we are the only ones in the history of every last forever to have ever known such a staggering sort of homecoming. The first to have tasted this opened-handed hope, to have surrendered that hope into such serendipitous grace. Love has us believing our own fairytales of never before and never again and now and now and only this right now. That in the entirety of this wide-open world nobody else has or will experience exactly this. Not quite like us. And we are, of course, entirely right and also wholly incorrect, all at once. Language becomes inadequate here, and thus love makes plagiarists of us all—we plunder the cosmos to pirate words and music, and images that come anywhere close to capturing the complexity of this ordinary/extraordinary reality.
Jeanette LeBlanc
I’ll then step away to call my wife, spend a couple minutes on the phone with her, come back to the buyer, and say: Me: “Okay, my wife is good with everything except the closing date— she reminded me that we have a vacation scheduled the week you want to close, so we’d have to close the week prior. Are you okay with an earlier closing?” At this point, I’m already off the phone with my wife, so the buyer knows that any further negotiation or a request for more concessions from me would likely result in another phone call and more wasted time. Since I didn’t ask for anything too big, there’s a reasonable chance he’ll just say okay, and we’ll get the deal we wanted, plus an earlier closing date.
J. Scott (The Book on Negotiating Real Estate: Expert Strategies for Getting the Best Deals When Buying & Selling Investment Property (Fix-and-Flip 3))
Then I spotted a man coming to the ramp doing his best to avoid eye contact, a blue Pan Am travel bag clutched to his incurvate chest. I had seen him a few days prior, at his house in District Three. A mid-ranking apparatchik in the Ministry of the Interior, he was neither too tall nor too short, too thin nor too wide, too pale nor too dark, too smart nor too dumb. Some species of sub-undersecretary, he probably had neither dreams nor nightmares, his own interior as hollow as his office.
Viet Thanh Nguyen (The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer #1))
They are, in fact, more likely to elevate the general mood, but not necessarily by talking the most or by running the show. More often, they contribute through quiet encouragement of whoever is motivated to speak or lead. Like many of those who get stuck in loneliness, some of the socially gifted are actually quite shy. Some have a threshold for connectedness that predisposes them to feel the pain of disconnection very acutely, and for them, shipping out to manage offshore operations in Singapore might not be the best career move. Susan did a very simple thing: She showed genuine interest in another human being, expecting nothing in return. That’s all it took to make a meaningful connection, which, at least briefly, improved life for each of them. Understand that much of your friend or loved one’s disagreeable behavior may be the result of fight-or-flight responses to a sense of being unsafe in the world, and that you can’t win by arguing. The most effective approach often is to directly address the person’s most basic emotions, which include dejection and fear. Remember that we humans often use words and logic merely to rationalize our primitive emotions and prior expectations.
John T. Cacioppo (Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection)
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.  The second best time is now.”  Chinese Proverb
Avery Breyer (Turn Your Computer Into a Money Machine: How to make money from home and grow your income fast, with no prior experience! Set up within a week!)
Arguably, the essential genius of the American political tradition consists of this complex choreography: accommodating the passions and interests opened up by the protocols of democracy without disturbing the underlying equanimity of capital accumulation and rule by propertied elites. It is a balancing act made even more complicated by the heightened fluidity of the American experience of class hierarchy, perhaps best captured by that old but still cogent observation about “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.” Nonetheless, rarely if ever in the past has the plutocrat so rooted himself in plebeian culture, erasing all that remained of the habits of deference once expected to inform relations between rulers and the ruled. Nor did he before now build bridges to the lower orders by pointing out precisely what separates them—namely, his unapproachable wealth—using it as a credential of his all-Americanism. Nor have such alliances, when they existed, lasted nearly as long. Nor have so many businessmen assumed second careers as elected officials without any prior experience; on the contrary, many have pointed to their lack of personal political experience as their chief virtue. That, plus offering their long years spent running companies as proving their unique aptitude to govern.
Steve Fraser (The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power)
Providing structure and predictability Toddlers are reassured by familiar routines, regardless of their nature. When the environment prior to placement is a healthy one, the use of transition objects that link the former caregiver’s style and schedule to the present provides the sense of structure that is important to the toddler’s developing sense of security in her new home. A consistent schedule is also important to the child who is experiencing separation anxiety. Parents should be absolutely reliable about returning when expected. It is important to help children anticipate their schedules by talking through the day’s routine. Because toddlers cannot tell time, use concrete, regularly scheduled events to help them mark time such as mealtimes or the timing of a favorite television program such as Sesame Street. Parents should make every effort to delay making additional major life changes following a toddler adoption such as moving to a new home, adding another family member, divorce, or marriage until new routines are firm and secure.
Mary Hopkins-Best (Toddler Adoption: The Weaver's Craft Revised Edition)
Children who are grieving the loss of a former attachment, or are displaying ambivalence or resistance toward their adoptive parents, do not suddenly bond. Attachment doesn’t just happen; it grows. How quickly depends on a number of factors, including the number and quality of prior attachments; parenting strategies; age; and the severity of pre-placement neglect or other forms of abuse. Any prognosis is at best an educated guess.
Mary Hopkins-Best (Toddler Adoption: The Weaver's Craft Revised Edition)
The very act of visualizing yourself performing at your best prior to any event or activity will improve your performance.
Brian Tracy (Speak to Win: How to Present with Power in Any Situation)
Sabrina’s case is a good example. Sabrina had lived with her foster mother, Carol, since early infancy. To help Sabrina prepare for her pending adoption, Carol showed her pictures and talked frequently about the family she would soon be joining. Letters, telephone calls, and visits preceded Sabrina’s transfer to her adoptive home. Sabrina observed Carol and her adoptive parents talking and laughing together as they jointly cared for her for a week prior to her transfer. She left Carol’s home with an album full of pictures of herself surrounded by her foster and adoptive families—tangible evidence of the continuity and “connectedness” of her life experiences. Sabrina also brought her favorite toys, blanket, and eating utensils with her when she moved home. During her first weeks at home, she frequently talked to her foster mom on the telephone. Carol continues to be an important extended family member. At age five Sabrina’s cognitive, language, physical, and emotional developmental milestones are all right on target.
Mary Hopkins-Best (Toddler Adoption: The Weaver's Craft Revised Edition)
WordPress Site If done right, a self-hosted WordPress site can act as your online business card for your freelance SEO writing services.  You can refer potential clients to it for a listing of your services and rates, plus to see your writing samples and client testimonials.   Details on how to set up a self-hosted Wordpress site are beyond the scope of this book, but it’s easy to do.  In a nutshell, all you do is purchase a domain name, purchase web hosting, install Wordpress on your site, and customize it the way you want it. If you are interested in setting up your own website for your business, sign up for the Money Machine Inner Circle (it’s FREE!) and you’ll get instant access to a free report listing exactly which services I recommend for setting up your site.  Especially if you’re new to the world of setting up a website, this will save you a ton of time since you won’t have to waste time researching which services are the best or easiest to use for a non-techie. A basic website should have the following pages: Home Page This is where you describe your freelance SEO writing services, and even include a testimonial or two once you’ve worked with clients for a while. Samples Page Use this page to show off the sample articles that you’ve written. About Page This is where you explain who you are, your experience (if any), and why someone should hire you. Contact Page This is where you set up a simple contact form that visitors to your website can use to get in touch with you. Action Steps 1. On days 1 and 2, make sure you have a reliable computer, access to high-speed internet, and a PayPal account set up.  If you don’t have
Avery Breyer (Turn Your Computer Into a Money Machine: How to make money from home and grow your income fast, with no prior experience! Set up within a week!)
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The initial answers are the intuitively appealing ones, the ones that come quickly and naturally to mind if we don’t pause to reflect. We let the salience of certain elements (and they were framed to be salient on purpose) draw us away from considering each element fairly and accurately. We use mindless verbatim strategies—repeating an element in the prior answer and not reflecting on the actual best strategy to solve the present problem—instead of mindful ones (in essence, substituting an intuitive question for the more difficult and time-consuming alternative, just because the two happen to seem related)
Anonymous
The best way to know if someone is prepared to commit is to examine his or her prior commitments. If you want to know how someone will behave tomorrow, take a look at what he or she did yesterday.
Andy Stanley (The New Rules for Love, Sex, and Dating)
What the human being is best at doing, is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.
Rolf Dobelli (The Art of Thinking Clearly: The Secrets of Perfect Decision-Making)
During NASA’s first fifty years the agency’s accomplishments were admired globally. Democratic and Republican leaders were generally bipartisan on the future of American spaceflight. The blueprint for the twenty-first century called for sustaining the International Space Station and its fifteen-nation partnership until at least 2020, and for building the space shuttle’s heavy-lift rocket and deep spacecraft successor to enable astronauts to fly beyond the friendly confines of low earth orbit for the first time since Apollo. That deep space ship would fly them again around the moon, then farther out to our solar system’s LaGrange points, and then deeper into space for rendezvous with asteroids and comets, learning how to deal with radiation and other deep space hazards before reaching for Mars or landings on Saturn’s moons. It was the clearest, most reasonable and best cost-achievable goal that NASA had been given since President John F. Kennedy’s historic decision to land astronauts on the lunar surface. Then Barack Obama was elected president. The promising new chief executive gave NASA short shrift, turning the agency’s future over to middle-level bureaucrats with no dreams or vision, bent on slashing existing human spaceflight plans that had their genesis in the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush White Houses. From the starting gate, Mr. Obama’s uncaring space team rolled the dice. First they set up a presidential commission designed to find without question we couldn’t afford the already-established spaceflight plans. Thirty to sixty thousand highly skilled jobs went on the chopping block with space towns coast to coast facing 12 percent unemployment. $9.4 billion already spent on heavy-lift rockets and deep space ships was unashamedly flushed down America’s toilet. The fifty-year dream of new frontiers was replaced with the shortsighted obligations of party politics. As 2011 dawned, NASA, one of America’s great science agencies, was effectively defunct. While Congress has so far prohibited the total cancellation of the space agency’s plans to once again fly astronauts beyond low earth orbit, Obama space operatives have systematically used bureaucratic tricks to slow roll them to a crawl. Congress holds the purse strings and spent most of 2010 saying, “Wait just a minute.” Thousands of highly skilled jobs across the economic spectrum have been lost while hundreds of billions in “stimulus” have been spent. As of this writing only Congress can stop the NASA killing. Florida’s senior U.S. Senator Bill Nelson, a Democrat, a former spaceflyer himself, is leading the fight to keep Obama space advisors from walking away from fifty years of national investment, from throwing the final spade of dirt on the memory of some of America’s most admired heroes. Congressional committees have heard from expert after expert that Mr. Obama’s proposal would be devastating. Placing America’s future in space in the hands of the Russians and inexperienced commercial operatives is foolhardy. Space legend John Glenn, a retired Democratic Senator from Ohio, told president Obama that “Retiring the space shuttles before the country has another space ship is folly. It could leave Americans stranded on the International Space Station with only a Russian spacecraft, if working, to get them off.” And Neil Armstrong testified before the Senate’s Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee that “With regard to President Obama’s 2010 plan, I have yet to find a person in NASA, the Defense Department, the Air Force, the National Academies, industry, or academia that had any knowledge of the plan prior to its announcement. Rumors abound that neither the NASA Administrator nor the President’s Science and Technology Advisor were knowledgeable about the plan. Lack of review normally guarantees that there will be overlooked requirements and unwelcome consequences. How could such a chain of events happen?
Alan Shepard (Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon)
Home Remedies For Chapped Lips Home Remedies For Chapped Lips Dry and chapped lips occur all of the time without warning. It might cause annoyance and affect the way that people live their lives, although this really is not life threatening. There are different indications that may be observed, for example, existence of one or several of these symptoms: sores, tenderness, flaking, cracking, redness and dryness. When left untreated, dry and chapped lips can worsen and affect the other elements of the oral orifice. Causes Reasons for developing dryness on the lips comprise an excessive amount of exposure to sunlight licking of lips, smoking, dehydration, allergy, vitamin deficiency and rigorous climate. Home Remedies for Chapped Lips There are over-the-counter ointments to remedy chapped lips, but there also other home remedies which are thought to be more effective and safer. Among them are: Natural oils Natural oils like olive oil, coconut oil or mustard oil are excellent in keeping the affected area moist. These oils are best for those instances where the offender is either dry or cold weather. Cucumber Slathering the area that is affected with the liquid and juicing cucumber slices is an excellent means of alleviating the discomfort of dry lips. It's recommended to keep the lips moistened by doing this several times per day. Aloe vera There is no doubt about the healing properties of aloe vera although its scent and taste are disagreeable. It'll be easy enough lather the lips with the juice and to simply pluck a leaf when the need arises. Rose petals When there's no aloe vera plant available, rose petal infusion is a great choice for relief of chapped lips. This extract mixed with raw milk can serve as a moisturizing agent. The recommended regimen is always to apply the mixture two to three times a day prior to going to bed, and after that once. If raw milk isn't accessible, glycerin is a great replacement. Water The calming and hydrating effects of water can alleviate the pain. Petroleum Jelly Petroleum jelly could be utilized several times a day before climbing the bed and also once. Coating the lips with honey before cleaning with petroleum may only do just fine if the concentrated greasiness of petroleum feels uneasy or if it's causing more pain. Milk cream Milk cream is a superb skin softener, and it has the aptitude hasten the elimination of dead skin. Judgment The key is to moisturize chapped lips as soon as possible to help hasten the healing by avoiding the thing that is certainly causing it in the first place. Keep hydrated, eat succulent foods or cruciferous, avoid sunlight and keep warm within your room during chilly nights. Must Read More ALL Friends tkplanet.com
Jessica
Warren Buffett knows: “What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.” The
Rolf Dobelli (The Art of Thinking Clearly)
Kristen and I always have a lot to celebrate at the end of June. First there’s Father’s Day, followed by our wedding anniversary and my birthday. But prior to the Best Practices this two-week season of parties didn’t inspire much of a celebratory mood. It always felt strange celebrating Father’s Day, given that my parenting skills had been something of a disappointment for the first three years, and the tears that Kristen had shed on our third wedding anniversary spoke rather poignantly to the fact that our marriage hadn’t been much to celebrate, either. That left my birthday, a day that was all about toasting the birth of the very person who had made Kristen’s life miserable. But after fifteen months of hard work and soul-searching, Kristen and I were finally able to look forward to this season with real anticipation. We were communicating again, and I was beginning to hit my stride as a father and as a husband. I was folding laundry, Kristen was taking her first uninterrupted showers in years, and when America’s Next Top Model wasn’t on during its regularly scheduled hour, I stayed cool as a cucumber. And that gave us plenty of reason to break out the streamers and party hats. Heck, we could have made a layer cake. In light of all this, I decided that June would be the best time to embark on my most ambitious Best Practice yet: being fun.
David Finch (The Journal of Best Practices: A Memoir of Marriage, Asperger Syndrome, and One Man's Quest to Be a Better Husband)