Program Appreciation Quotes

Closing The Cycle One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters - whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished. Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents' house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden? You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won't take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that. But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister, everyone will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill. None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we try to understand the things that happen to us. What has passed will not return: we cannot for ever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards our parents, lovers who day and night relive an affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of coming back. Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away. That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home. Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts - and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place. Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them. Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else. Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the "ideal moment." Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person - nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need. This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important. Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust. Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.

Why give a robot an order to obey orders—why aren't the original orders enough? Why command a robot not to do harm—wouldn't it be easier never to command it to do harm in the first place? Does the universe contain a mysterious force pulling entities toward malevolence, so that a positronic brain must be programmed to withstand it? Do intelligent beings inevitably develop an attitude problem? (…) Now that computers really have become smarter and more powerful, the anxiety has waned. Today's ubiquitous, networked computers have an unprecedented ability to do mischief should they ever go to the bad. But the only mayhem comes from unpredictable chaos or from human malice in the form of viruses. We no longer worry about electronic serial killers or subversive silicon cabals because we are beginning to appreciate that malevolence—like vision, motor coordination, and common sense—does not come free with computation but has to be programmed in. (…) Aggression, like every other part of human behavior we take for granted, is a challenging engineering problem!

most cherished desires of present-day Westerners are shaped by romantic, nationalist, capitalist and humanist myths that have been around for centuries. Friends giving advice often tell each other, ‘Follow your heart.’ But the heart is a double agent that usually takes its instructions from the dominant myths of the day, and the very recommendation to ‘follow your heart’ was implanted in our minds by a combination of nineteenth-century Romantic myths and twentieth-century consumerist myths. The Coca-Cola Company, for example, has marketed Diet Coke around the world under the slogan ‘Diet Coke. Do what feels good.’ Even what people take to be their most personal desires are usually programmed by the imagined order. Let’s consider, for example, the popular desire to take a holiday abroad. There is nothing natural or obvious about this. A chimpanzee alpha male would never think of using his power in order to go on holiday into the territory of a neighbouring chimpanzee band. The elite of ancient Egypt spent their fortunes building pyramids and having their corpses mummified, but none of them thought of going shopping in Babylon or taking a skiing holiday in Phoenicia. People today spend a great deal of money on holidays abroad because they are true believers in the myths of romantic consumerism. Romanticism tells us that in order to make the most of our human potential we must have as many different experiences as we can. We must open ourselves to a wide spectrum of emotions; we must sample various kinds of relationships; we must try different cuisines; we must learn to appreciate different styles of music. One of the best ways to do all that is to break free from our daily routine, leave behind our familiar setting, and go travelling in distant lands, where we can ‘experience’ the culture, the smells, the tastes and the norms of other people. We hear again and again the romantic myths about ‘how a new experience opened my eyes and changed my life’. Consumerism tells us that in order to be happy we must consume as many products and services as possible. If we feel that something is missing or not quite right, then we probably need to buy a product (a car, new clothes, organic food) or a service (housekeeping, relationship therapy, yoga classes). Every television commercial is another little legend about how consuming some product or service will make life better. 18. The Great Pyramid of Giza. The kind of thing rich people in ancient Egypt did with their money. Romanticism, which encourages variety, meshes perfectly with consumerism. Their marriage has given birth to the infinite ‘market of experiences’, on which the modern tourism industry is founded. The tourism industry does not sell flight tickets and hotel bedrooms. It sells experiences. Paris is not a city, nor India a country – they are both experiences, the consumption of which is supposed to widen our horizons, fulfil our human potential, and make us happier. Consequently, when the relationship between a millionaire and his wife is going through a rocky patch, he takes her on an expensive trip to Paris. The trip is not a reflection of some independent desire, but rather of an ardent belief in the myths of romantic consumerism. A wealthy man in ancient Egypt would never have dreamed of solving a relationship crisis by taking his wife on holiday to Babylon. Instead, he might have built for her the sumptuous tomb she had always wanted. Like the elite of ancient Egypt, most people in most cultures dedicate their lives to building pyramids. Only the names, shapes and sizes of these pyramids change from one culture to the other. They may take the form, for example, of a suburban cottage with a swimming pool and an evergreen lawn, or a gleaming penthouse with an enviable view. Few question the myths that cause us to desire the pyramid in the first place.

people are programmed to desire, not to appreciate.

Our brain is a circuit board with neurons and terminals ready to be wired. We are born free, then programmed to obey our parents, to tell the truth, pass exams, pursue and achieve, love and propagate, age and fade unfulfilled and uncertain what it has all been for. We swallow the operating system with our mother's milk and sleepwalk into the forest of consumer illusion craving shoes, houses, cars, magazines, experiences that endorse our preconceived dreams and opinions. We grow into our parents. We becomes clones, robots, matchstick men thinking and saying the same, feeling the same, behaving the same, appreciating in books and films and art shows those things we already recognize and understand.

Readers who have owned animals will appreciate how difficult it would be to train a dog to play exclusively in his own yard, to fetch his sweater whenever he sees it is raining outside, or to be generous in sharing his dog biscuits with other dogs. Yet these same people would not even question the feasibility of trying to use reward and punishment to teach their children the same behaviors.

One of the many ways in which cats are superior to humans is their mastery of time. By making no attempt to dissect years into months, days into hours and minutes into seconds, cats avoid much misery. Free from the slavery of measuring every moment, worrying whether they are late or early, young or old, or if Christmas is six weeks away, felines appreciate the present in all its multidimensional glory. They never worry about endings or beginnings. From their paradoxical viewpoint an ending is often a beginning. The joy of basking on a window ledge can seem eternal, though if measured in human time it's diminished to a paltry eighteen minutes. If humans could program themselves to forget time, they would savor a string of pleasures and possibilities. Regrets about the past would dissolve, alongside anxieties for the future. We'd notice the color of the sky and be liberated to seize the wonder of being alive in this moment. If we could be more like cats our lives would seem eternal.

Core heart feelings—including appreciation, care, compassion, nonjudgment, and forgiveness—are very potent.

FREEZE-FRAME also creates a mood shift to harmonious feeling states such as care and appreciation, which helps to create and sustain entrainment between heart and brain.

When one begins to appreciate the roles of unconscious suggestibility and self-fulfilling prophecies in human life, this song seems as funny as the latest radioactive fall-out figures.

I want my students to learn what life readers know: reading is its own reward. Reading is a university course in life; it makes us smarter by increasing our vocabulary and background knowledge of countless topics. Reading allows us to travel to destinations that we will never experience outside of the pages of a book. Reading is a way to find friends who have the same problems we do and who can give advice on solving those problems. Through reading, we can witness all that is noble, beautiful, or horrifying about other human beings. From a book’s characters, we can learn how to conduct ourselves. And most of all, reading is a communal act that connects you to other readers, comrades who have traveled to the same remarkable places that you have and been changed by them, too. Rewarding reading with prizes cheapens it, and undermines students’ chance to appreciate the experience of reading for the possibilities that it brings to their life. For students who read a lot, these programs are neither an incentive, nor a challenge. Yes, my classes participate in the schoolwide incentive programs when they are offered; after all, they would blaze past the requirements anyway. But I never let my students lose sight of what the true prize is; an appreciation of reading will add more to their life than a hundred days at Six Flags ever could.

Doctor James Rowland Angell has said that 'any program may be regarded as educational (and here we may substitute the words 'a public service') in purpose which attempts to increase knowledge, to stimulate thinking, to teach techniques and methods, to cultivate discernment, appreciation, and taste, or to enrich character by sensitizing emotion and by inspiring socialized ideals that may issue on constructive conduct.

In later years, your child will still appreciate having some time with you before he goes to sleep. He needs close, warm, personal time , something that simply watching television together, for instance, will not provide: even if the shows are not exciting or scary —which is unlikely— and even if you are sitting next to him, the lack of direct personal interaction makes this bedtime routine a poor one. Instead, use the time to discuss school events, plans for the weekend, soccer, dance class, after-school programs, or music lessons. It might also be helpful to talk about any worries your child may have, so he will be less likely to brood over them in bed.

The news filled me with such euphoria that for an instant I was numb. My ingrained self-censorship immediately started working: I registered the fact that there was an orgy of weeping going on around me, and that I had to come up with some suitable performance. There seemed nowhere to hide my lack of correct emotion except the shoulder of the woman in front of me, one of the student officials, who was apparently heartbroken. I swiftly buried my head in her shoulder and heaved appropriately. As so often in China, a bit of ritual did the trick. Sniveling heartily she made a movement as though she was going to turn around and embrace me I pressed my whole weight on her from behind to keep her in her place, hoping to give the impression that I was in a state of abandoned grief. In the days after Mao's death, I did a lot of thinking. I knew he was considered a philosopher, and I tried to think what his 'philosophy' really was. It seemed to me that its central principle was the need or the desire? for perpetual conflict. The core of his thinking seemed to be that human struggles were the motivating force of history and that in order to make history 'class enemies' had to be continuously created en masse. I wondered whether there were any other philosophers whose theories had led to the suffering and death of so many. I thought of the terror and misery to which the Chinese population had been subjected. For what? But Mao's theory might just be the extension of his personality. He was, it seemed to me, really a restless fight promoter by nature, and good at it. He understood ugly human instincts such as envy and resentment, and knew how to mobilize them for his ends. He ruled by getting people to hate each other. In doing so, he got ordinary Chinese to carry out many of the tasks undertaken in other dictatorships by professional elites. Mao had managed to turn the people into the ultimate weapon of dictatorship. That was why under him there was no real equivalent of the KGB in China. There was no need. In bringing out and nourishing the worst in people, Mao had created a moral wasteland and a land of hatred. But how much individual responsibility ordinary people should share, I could not decide. The other hallmark of Maoism, it seemed to me, was the reign of ignorance. Because of his calculation that the cultured class were an easy target for a population that was largely illiterate, because of his own deep resentment of formal education and the educated, because of his megalomania, which led to his scorn for the great figures of Chinese culture, and because of his contempt for the areas of Chinese civilization that he did not understand, such as architecture, art, and music, Mao destroyed much of the country's cultural heritage. He left behind not only a brutalized nation, but also an ugly land with little of its past glory remaining or appreciated. The Chinese seemed to be mourning Mao in a heartfelt fashion. But I wondered how many of their tears were genuine. People had practiced acting to such a degree that they confused it with their true feelings. Weeping for Mao was perhaps just another programmed act in their programmed lives. Yet the mood of the nation was unmistakably against continuing Mao's policies. Less than a month after his death, on 6 October, Mme Mao was arrested, along with the other members of the Gang of Four. They had no support from anyone not the army, not the police, not even their own guards. They had had only Mao. The Gang of Four had held power only because it was really a Gang of Five. When I heard about the ease with which the Four had been removed, I felt a wave of sadness. How could such a small group of second-rate tyrants ravage 900 million people for so long? But my main feeling was joy. The last tyrants of the Cultural Revolution were finally gone.

You achieve the best results from FREEZE-FRAME when you focus in the area of the heart; take a few slow, full breaths; sincerely feel emotions such as love, care, or appreciation; and then forget about breathing while maintaining that feeling state.

Whether the Eisenhower administration has underestimated the American people's interest in space exploration or Truman never full appreciated MacArthur, the Soviet Union's Sputnik program has created a public spectacle that even Disney and von Braun might envy.

I learned that Bill himself has long appreciated the importance of competencies other than talent. Back in the days when he had a more direct role in hiring software programmers at Microsoft, for instance, he said he’d give applicants a programming task he knew would require hours and hours of tedious troubleshooting. This wasn’t an IQ test, or a test of programming skills. Rather, it was a test of a person’s ability to muscle through, press on, get to the finish line. Bill only hired programmers who finished what they began.

Positive thoughts and feelings add energy to our system. An optimistic perspective, a feeling of appreciation, or a gesture of kindness, for example, are energy assets. Negative thoughts and feelings deplete our store of energy. Anger, jealousy, and judgmental thoughts, for example, are energy deficits.

"If you prefer it, Your Excellency, a private room will be free directly: Prince Golitsin with a lady. Fresh oysters have come in." "Ah, oysters!" Stepan Arkadyevich became thoughtful. "How if we were to change our program, Levin?" he said, keeping his finger on the bill of fare. And his face expressed serious hesitation. "Are the oysters good? Mind, now!" "They're Flensburg, Your Excellency. We've no Ostend." "Flensburg will do -- but are they fresh?" "Only arrived yesterday." "Well, then, how if we were to begin with oysters, and so change the whole program? Eh?" "It's all the same to me. I should like cabbage soup and porridge better than anything; but of course there's nothing like that here." "Porridge a la Russe, Your Honor would like?" said the Tatar, bending down to Levin, like a nurse speaking to a child. "No, joking apart, whatever you choose is sure to be good. I've been skating, and I'm hungry. And don't imagine," he added, detecting a look of dissatisfaction on Oblonsky's face, "that I shan't appreciate your choice. I don't object to a good dinner." "I should hope so! After all, it's one of the pleasures of life," said Stepan Arkadyevich. "Well, then, my friend, you give us two -- or better say three-dozen oysters, clear soup with vegetables..." "Printaniere," prompted the Tatar. But Stepan Arkadyevich apparently did not care to allow him the satisfaction of giving the French names of the dishes. "With vegetables in it, you know. Then turbot with thick sauce, then... roast beef; and mind it's good. Yes, and capons, perhaps, and then stewed fruit." The Tatar, recollecting that it was Stepan Arkadyevich's way not to call the dishes by the names in the French bill of fare, did not repeat them after him, but could not resist rehearsing the whole menu to himself according to the bill: "Soupe printaniere, turbot sauce Beaumarchais, poulard a l'estragon, Macedoine de fruits..." and then instantly, as though worked by springs, laying down one bound bill of fare, he took up another, the list of wines, and submitted it to Stepan Arkadyevich. "What shall we drink?" "What you like, only not too much. Champagne," said Levin. "What! to start with? You're right though, I dare say. Do you like the white seal?" "Cachet blanc," prompted the Tatar. "Very well, then, give us that brand with the oysters, and then we'll see." "Yes, sir. And what table wine?" "You can give us Nuits. Oh, no -- better the classic Chablis." "Yes, sir. And your cheese, Your Excellency?" "Oh, yes, Parmesan. Or would you like another?" "No, it's all the same to me," said Levin, unable to suppress a smile.

When I took over as chair of the fashion program, I was horrified that only the faculty member was allowed to speak in a critique. I'm talking about perfectly nurturing teachers. But the rule was there would be no call of hands for students to contribute their feedback. It was embedded in the department's culture. That was alarming to me. When I was teaching, I was the least important person in the room as far as I was concerned--my students' points of view mattered most. I wanted to learn who they were and teach them to respect one another's perspectives. I would start off by saying something like, "I am having trouble understanding how this work solves the problem at hand. Here are some things about the work that I appreciate: X, Y, Z. But I see these virtues independent of the problem we're solving.

But the biggest news that month was the departure from Apple, yet again, of its cofounder, Steve Wozniak. Wozniak was then quietly working as a midlevel engineer in the Apple II division, serving as a humble mascot of the roots of the company and staying as far away from management and corporate politics as he could. He felt, with justification, that Jobs was not appreciative of the Apple II, which remained the cash cow of the company and accounted for 70% of its sales at Christmas 1984. “People in the Apple II group were being treated as very unimportant by the rest of the company,” he later said. “This was despite the fact that the Apple II was by far the largest-selling product in our company for ages, and would be for years to come.” He even roused himself to do something out of character; he picked up the phone one day and called Sculley, berating him for lavishing so much attention on Jobs and the Macintosh division. Frustrated, Wozniak decided to leave quietly to start a new company that would make a universal remote control device he had invented. It would control your television, stereo, and other electronic devices with a simple set of buttons that you could easily program. He informed the head of engineering at the Apple II division, but he didn’t feel he was important enough to go out of channels and tell Jobs or Markkula. So Jobs first heard about it when the news leaked in the Wall Street Journal. In his earnest way, Wozniak had openly answered the reporter’s questions when he called. Yes, he said, he felt that Apple had been giving short shrift to the Apple II division. “Apple’s direction has been horrendously wrong for five years,” he said.

Standing for decentralized autonomous organization, The DAO was a complex dApp that programmed a decentralized venture capital fund to run on Ethereum. Holders of The DAO would be able to vote on what projects they wanted to support, and if developers raised enough funding from The DAO holders, they would receive the funds necessary to build their projects. Over time, investors in these projects would be rewarded through dividends or appreciation of the service provided.

A third positive result even further from the traditional tool kit of financial incentives comes from a recent randomized control trial conducted in the U.K., using the increasingly popular and low-cost method of text reminders. This intervention involved sending texts to half the parents in some school in advance of a major math test to let them know that their child had a test coming up in five days, then in three days, then in one day. The researchers call this approach “pre-informing.” The other half of parents did not receive the texts. The pre-informing texts increased student performance on the math test by the equivalent of one additional month of schooling, and students in the bottom quartile benefited most. These children gained the equivalent of two additional months of schooling, relative to the control group. Afterward, both parents and students said they wanted to stick with the program, showing that they appreciated being nudged. This program also belies the frequent claim, unsupported by any evidence, that nudges must be secret to be effective.

I’ve used the common wooden pencil in some of my writing as an example. When I ask audiences which is “simpler”, a digital pencil like Microsoft Word or a wooden pencil, people agree the wooden variety is simpler. Until I point out that Microsoft Word was written by eight programmers, while the wooden variety involved thousands, none of whom could appreciate the full complexity of harvesting lumber, mining graphite, smelting metals, making lacquer, growing rapeseed for oil, etc. The complexity was there in the pencil, but hidden from the user.

I've found that, in most cases, managers greatly underestimate the impact that a comment or quick gesture of approval has on employees. They'll spend weeks trying to tweak an annual bonus program or some other compensation system, believing that their employees are coin-operated, but they'll neglect to stop someone during a meeting and say, “Hey, that's a fantastic example of hunger. We should all try to be more like that.” I'm not saying that compensation doesn't matter. But if we want to create a culture of humility, hunger, and smarts, the best way to do it is to constantly be catching people exhibiting those virtues and publicly holding them up as examples. No balloons, pastries, or plastic tchotchkes are necessary, just genuine, in-the-moment appreciation.

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

The larger point is that as society and the economy go through this shift there will not only be less economic opportunity to fulfill your role as “father, protector, provider, and bread winner,” there will be less appreciation for such roles.  Therefore, to make sure you have purpose and agency in life, you need to find hobbies and interests that are not dependent on economic circumstances and cannot be supplanted by government intervention.   Fun – Because of the Darwinistic programming you have, many men will approach life from the angle of attaining financial security first, and THEN relaxing and enjoying life.  You will get everything in order, get your degree, get your career, pay off your debts, pay off your house, and then, once financially stable, finally permit yourself to enjoy life.  There is just one minor problem with that approach:   Life doesn’t work that way.   Not

It seemed to numerous voters that, thanks to the growing power of the ACLU, criminals were beginning to have more rights than the victims. Preachers across the country were becoming alarmed about the young people’s apathy and lack of morals. Some blamed television. Or as Reverend W. W. Nails put it, “The devil has three initials: ABC, NBC, and CBS. They love Lucy more than they do the Lord and they would rather leave it to Beaver than to Jesus.” The average middle-class Americans who worked hard every day, who were not criminals, not on welfare, and had seldom complained, suddenly and collectively started showing signs of growing disillusionment, worried that with all the new social programs they were now going to have to carry the rich and the poor on their backs. They were tired of having to pay so much income and other taxes to support half the world while they struggled to make ends meet. They began to feel that no matter how hard they worked or how much they paid, it was never appreciated and it was never enough.

Since the inception of the Islamic Republic, the United States has pursued a policy of containment in various forms, essentially relying on political coercion and economic pressure to press Iran in the right direction. The failure of this policy is routinely documented by the U.S. State Department, which insists on issuing reports denouncing Iran as the most active state sponsor of terrorism and warning that its nuclear program is rapidly advancing toward weapons capability. The American diplomats fail to appreciate how, after twenty-seven years of sanctions and containment, Iran's misbehavior has not changed in any measurable manner. Even more curious, the failed policy of containment enjoys a widespread bipartisan consensus, as governments as different as the Clinton and Bush administrations have largely adhered to its parameters. Although at times the Bush White House has indulged in calls for regime change, its essential policy still reflects the containment consensus. In Washington policy circles evidently nothing succeeds like failure.

happening. He went into a restaurant and sat down. A radio was blaring out the latest composition in dissarythm, the new quarter-tone dance music in which chorded woodwinds provided background patterns for the mad melodies pounded on tuned tomtoms. Between each number and the next a frenetic announcer extolled the virtues of a product. Munching a sandwich, Roger listened appreciatively to the dissarhythm and managed not to hear the commercials. Most intelligent people of the nineties had developed a type of radio deafness which enabled them not to hear a human voice coming from a loudspeaker, although they could hear and enjoy the then-infrequent intervals of music between announcements. In an age when advertising competition was so keen that there was scarcely a bare wall or an unbillboarded lot within miles of a population center, discriminating people could retain normal outlooks on life only by carefully-cultivated partial blindness and partial deafness which enabled them to ignore the bulk of that concerted assault upon their senses. For that reason a good part of the newscast which followed the dissarhythm program went, as it were, into one

a harbinger of a third wave of computing, one that blurred the line between augmented human intelligence and artificial intelligence. “The first generation of computers were machines that counted and tabulated,” Rometty says, harking back to IBM’s roots in Herman Hollerith’s punch-card tabulators used for the 1890 census. “The second generation involved programmable machines that used the von Neumann architecture. You had to tell them what to do.” Beginning with Ada Lovelace, people wrote algorithms that instructed these computers, step by step, how to perform tasks. “Because of the proliferation of data,” Rometty adds, “there is no choice but to have a third generation, which are systems that are not programmed, they learn.”27 But even as this occurs, the process could remain one of partnership and symbiosis with humans rather than one designed to relegate humans to the dustbin of history. Larry Norton, a breast cancer specialist at New York’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, was part of the team that worked with Watson. “Computer science is going to evolve rapidly, and medicine will evolve with it,” he said. “This is coevolution. We’ll help each other.”28 This belief that machines and humans will get smarter together is a process that Doug Engelbart called “bootstrapping” and “coevolution.”29 It raises an interesting prospect: perhaps no matter how fast computers progress, artificial intelligence may never outstrip the intelligence of the human-machine partnership. Let us assume, for example, that a machine someday exhibits all of the mental capabilities of a human: giving the outward appearance of recognizing patterns, perceiving emotions, appreciating beauty, creating art, having desires, forming moral values, and pursuing goals. Such a machine might be able to pass a Turing Test. It might even pass what we could call the Ada Test, which is that it could appear to “originate” its own thoughts that go beyond what we humans program it to do. There would, however, be still another hurdle before we could say that artificial intelligence has triumphed over augmented intelligence. We can call it the Licklider Test. It would go beyond asking whether a machine could replicate all the components of human intelligence to ask whether the machine accomplishes these tasks better when whirring away completely on its own or when working in conjunction with humans. In other words, is it possible that humans and machines working in partnership will be indefinitely more powerful than an artificial intelligence machine working alone?

Emotions also directly modulate the immune system. Studies at the U.S. National Cancer Institute found that natural killer (NK) cells, an important class of immune cells we have already met, are more active in breast cancer patients who are able to express anger, to adopt a fighting stance and who have more social support. NK cells mount an attack on malignant cells and are able to destroy them. These women had significantly less spread of their breast cancer, compared with those who exhibited a less assertive attitude or who had fewer nurturing social connections. The researchers found that emotional factors and social involvement were more important to survival than the degree of disease itself. Many studies, such as the one reported in The British Medical Journal article, fail to appreciate that stress is not only a question of external stimulus but also of individual response. It occurs in the real lives of real persons whose inborn temperament, life history, emotional patterns, physical and mental resources, and social and economic supports vary greatly. As already pointed out, there is no universal stressor. In most cases of breast cancer, the stresses are hidden and chronic. They stem from childhood experiences, early emotional programming and unconscious psychological coping styles. They accumulate over a lifetime to make someone susceptible to disease.

The Blue Mind Rx Statement Our wild waters provide vast cognitive, emotional, physical, psychological, social, and spiritual values for people from birth, through adolescence, adulthood, older age, and in death; wild waters provide a useful, widely available, and affordable range of treatments healthcare practitioners can incorporate into treatment plans. The world ocean and all waterways, including lakes, rivers, and wetlands (collectively, blue space), cover over 71% of our planet. Keeping them healthy, clean, accessible, and biodiverse is critical to human health and well-being. In addition to fostering more widely documented ecological, economic, and cultural diversities, our mental well-being, emotional diversity, and resiliency also rely on the global ecological integrity of our waters. Blue space gives us half of our oxygen, provides billions of people with jobs and food, holds the majority of Earth's biodiversity including species and ecosystems, drives climate and weather, regulates temperature, and is the sole source of hydration and hygiene for humanity throughout history. Neuroscientists and psychologists add that the ocean and wild waterways are a wellspring of happiness and relaxation, sociality and romance, peace and freedom, play and creativity, learning and memory, innovation and insight, elation and nostalgia, confidence and solitude, wonder and awe, empathy and compassion, reverence and beauty — and help manage trauma, anxiety, sleep, autism, addiction, fitness, attention/focus, stress, grief, PTSD, build personal resilience, and much more. Chronic stress and anxiety cause or intensify a range of physical and mental afflictions, including depression, ulcers, colitis, heart disease, and more. Being on, in, and near water can be among the most cost-effective ways of reducing stress and anxiety. We encourage healthcare professionals and advocates for the ocean, seas, lakes, and rivers to go deeper and incorporate the latest findings, research, and insights into their treatment plans, communications, reports, mission statements, strategies, grant proposals, media, exhibits, keynotes, and educational programs and to consider the following simple talking points: •Water is the essence of life: The ocean, healthy rivers, lakes, and wetlands are good for our minds and bodies. •Research shows that nature is therapeutic, promotes general health and well-being, and blue space in both urban and rural settings further enhances and broadens cognitive, emotional, psychological, social, physical, and spiritual benefits. •All people should have safe access to salubrious, wild, biodiverse waters for well-being, healing, and therapy. •Aquatic biodiversity has been directly correlated with the therapeutic potency of blue space. Immersive human interactions with healthy aquatic ecosystems can benefit both. •Wild waters can serve as medicine for caregivers, patient families, and all who are part of patients’ circles of support. •Realization of the full range and potential magnitude of ecological, economic, physical, intrinsic, and emotional values of wild places requires us to understand, appreciate, maintain, and improve the integrity and purity of one of our most vital of medicines — water.

up with work I found meaningful. As a young person, I’d explored exactly nothing. Barack’s maturity, I realized, came in part from the years he’d logged as a community organizer and even, prior to that, a decidedly unfulfilling year he’d spent as a researcher at a Manhattan business consulting firm immediately after college. He’d tried out some things, gotten to know all sorts of people, and learned his own priorities along the way. I, meanwhile, had been so afraid of floundering, so eager for respectability and a way to pay the bills, that I’d marched myself unthinkingly into the law. In the span of a year, I’d gained Barack and lost Suzanne, and the power of those two things together had left me spinning. Suzanne’s sudden death had awakened me to the idea that I wanted more joy and meaning in my life. I couldn’t continue to live with my own complacency. I both credited and blamed Barack for the confusion. “If there were not a man in my life constantly questioning me about what drives me and what pains me,” I wrote in my journal, “would I be doing it on my own?” I mused about what I might do, what skills I might possibly have. Could I be a teacher? A college administrator? Could I run some sort of after-school program, a professionalized version of what I’d done for Czerny at Princeton? I was interested in possibly working for a foundation or a nonprofit. I was interested in helping underprivileged kids. I wondered if I could find a job that engaged my mind and still left me enough time to do volunteer work, or appreciate art, or have children. I wanted a life, basically. I wanted to feel whole. I made a list of issues that interested me: education, teen pregnancy, black self-esteem. A more virtuous

Since emotions have to be programmed into robots from the outside, manufacturers may offer a menu of emotions carefully chosen on the basis of whether they are necessary, useful, or will increase bonding with the owner. In all likelihood, robots will be programmed to have only a few human emotions, depending on the situation. Perhaps the emotion most valued by the robot’s owner will be loyalty. One wants a robot that faithfully carries out its commands without complaints, that understands the needs of the master and anticipates them. The last thing an owner will want is a robot with an attitude, one that talks back, criticizes people, and whines. Helpful criticisms are important, but they must be made in a constructive, tactful way. Also, if humans give it conflicting commands, the robot should know to ignore all of them except those coming from its owner. Empathy will be another emotion that will be valued by the owner. Robots that have empathy will understand the problems of others and will come to their aid. By interpreting facial movements and listening to tone of voice, robots will be able to identify when a person is in distress and will provide assistance when possible. Strangely, fear is another emotion that is desirable. Evolution gave us the feeling of fear for a reason, to avoid certain things that are dangerous to us. Even though robots will be made of steel, they should fear certain things that can damage them, like falling off tall buildings or entering a raging fire. A totally fearless robot is a useless one if it destroys itself. But certain emotions may have to be deleted, forbidden, or highly regulated, such as anger. Given that robots could be built to have great physical strength, an angry robot could create tremendous problems in the home and workplace. Anger could get in the way of its duties and cause great damage to property. (The original evolutionary purpose of anger was to show our dissatisfaction. This can be done in a rational, dispassionate way, without getting angry.) Another emotion that should be deleted is the desire to be in command. A bossy robot will only make trouble and might challenge the judgment and wishes of the owner. (This point will also be important later, when we discuss whether robots will one day take over from humans.) Hence the robot will have to defer to the wishes of the owner, even if this may not be the best path. But perhaps the most difficult emotion to convey is humor, which is a glue that can bond total strangers together. A simple joke can defuse a tense situation or inflame it. The basic mechanics of humor are simple: they involve a punch line that is unanticipated. But the subtleties of humor can be enormous. In fact, we often size up other people on the basis of how they react to certain jokes. If humans use humor as a gauge to measure other humans, then one can appreciate the difficulty of creating a robot that can tell if a joke is funny or not.

30% more of the workforce is satisfied when there’s even an informal recognition program in place. 75% of employees receiving at least monthly recognition (even if informal) are satisfied with their job. 79% of employees who quit their jobs cite a lack of appreciation as a key reason for leaving.

Lawrence Hearing Aid Center, located in Carlsbad California offers the latest in hearing aid technology at the value their customers appreciate. Our professional staff will work with you to find the most appropriate solution for your hearing loss and lifestyle, and will usually match or beat other competitors pricing and service programs. Chris Lawrence (BC-HIS) and his staff have been a leading provider of affordable, quality hearing aids, and repair services in San Diego region since 1990!

GTA 5 MONEY HACK : game-hacks.net/ It is a happy event for players who are passionate about GTA 5 since the online money generating platform to optimize its actions on GTA 5 is finally available. The GTA 5 MONEY HACK 2018 | GET INFINITE GTA 5 MONEY RP ONLINE platform is an online tool that allows you to earn credits up to 1 billion usable on the game interface and that can be used at any time. Namely that money is a cheat strategy but that will allow you to do the missions quickly by having access to a large volume of renewable money every day to make all the purchases you want. To get there, the developers worked days and nights for months to put together this tool perfectly effective and that allows to play comfortably while being able to make the purchase of all the materials in the game in order to appreciate at best GTA 5 online. In addition, you will not have to pay to access this option. The use of the generator and the 1 billion available daily without paying a penny. Developers also work to perform weekly maintenance on the platform. The aim is to avoid bugs and to trace possible attacks of viruses of any kind which can impair the proper functioning of the platform. This also prevents malicious programs from being transmitted to the consoles and computer devices used by the players. Maintenance is therefore necessary to guarantee a good moment of play and use of money from the online generator for players. Nevertheless, it is important to know that small problems can remain, but the generator is 99% reliable. If bugs are present, simply restart access to the member and the trick is played. This is a very easy to use gta 5 Money Cheat . To reload your game money and rp, simply fill in the information about you as a user, then register your console platform and finally click on “Generate! “. You will receive an unlimited number of money and rp. Since all the elements required to recharge your game points are available online, there is no need to download software or programs. In terms of compatibility, it is compatible with game consoles such as Xbox, Playstation, but also Windows, Mac, Android or iOS. You are now wondering why you will use this gta 5 money generator rather than another? First of all, this is an easy and online generator that allows you to get your gta 5 hack cash and rp without paying any money. Then, unlike the others that offers you to exorbitant amounts and which have the simple purpose of scamming you, it is regularly updated on our site. This means that you will not encounter speed or bug problems when you give your credits. Moreover, it is a product that has been tested by professional programmers before being put online.

when subjects focus in the heart area and activate a core heart feeling such as love, appreciation, or care, this focus immediately shifts their heart rhythms. When the rhythms become more coherent, a cascade of neural and biochemical events begins that affects virtually every organ in the body.

Positive emotions such as happiness, appreciation, compassion, care, and love not only change patterns of activity in the nervous system; they also reduce the production of the stress hormone cortisol.

About three quarters through the program, the head counselor invited me to share my thoughts on the matter. I walked to the front of the group. “I need an open communication connection between us,” I said, as if I were my son. “I would be open, honest, and express my feelings without any concern for judgmental perspectives. There would be complete confidence that I was loved for being me. I’d feel free to discuss my issues, often asking questions, searching for advice and guidance to learn from my father’s past experiences. My family would be loved and appreciated by all of its members. The household rules and contents would be respected. I would strive for success, giving it my best effort to improve on my education and work toward an enjoyable career. Goals would be set to stay motivated, reassessing the long-term goals when the shorter goals are met. My main goal would be to work on a healthy state of mind and body by staying active, striving to do healthy and pleasant activities, without the need of getting high to enjoy them.” When I finished, the head counselor asked Julian for a response. I was proud of his courage to express his opinion and draw attention to himself in front of the group. The boy I knew a few weeks before wouldn’t have been able to stammer through a poorly structured sentence, let alone present his thought processes in an organized manner. Julian began by saying, “I’d be more understanding of my son’s feelings, patient and supportive in whatever he wanted out of life. If he was in trouble, I’d do whatever I could to help him, but be more strict and tough so he wouldn’t get into trouble in the first place. If the rules were broken, there’d be a fair punishment. I would love my son no matter what.” As

Much science in many disciplines consists of a toolkit of very simple mathematical models. To many not familiar with the subtle art of the simple model, such formal exercises have two seemingly deadly flaws. First, they are not easy to follow. […] Second, motivation to follow the math is often wanting because the model is so cartoonishly simple relative to the real world being analyzed. Critics often level the charge ‘‘reductionism’’ with what they take to be devastating effect. The modeler’s reply is that these two criticisms actually point in opposite directions and sum to nothing. True, the model is quite simple relative to reality, but even so, the analysis is difficult. The real lesson is that complex phenomena like culture require a humble approach. We have to bite off tiny bits of reality to analyze and build up a more global knowledge step by patient step. […] Simple models, simple experiments, and simple observational programs are the best the human mind can do in the face of the awesome complexity of nature. The alternatives to simple models are either complex models or verbal descriptions and analysis. Complex models are sometimes useful for their predictive power, but they have the vice of being difficult or impossible to understand. The heuristic value of simple models in schooling our intuition about natural processes is exceedingly important, even when their predictive power is limited. […] Unaided verbal reasoning can be unreliable […] The lesson, we think, is that all serious students of human behavior need to know enough math to at least appreciate the contributions simple mathematical models make to the understanding of complex phenomena. The idea that social scientists need less math than biologists or other natural scientists is completely mistaken.

After Steve’s death I received letters of condolence from people all over the world. I would like to thank everyone who sent such thoughtful sympathy. Your kind words and support gave me the strength to write this book and so much more. Carolyn Male is one of those dear people who expressed her thoughts and feelings after we lost Steve. It was incredibly touching and special, and I wanted to express my appreciation and gratitude. I’m happy to share it with you. It is with a still-heavy heart that I rise this evening to speak about the life and death of one of the greatest conservationists of our time: Steve Irwin. Many people describe Steve Irwin as a larrikin, inspirational, spontaneous. For me, the best way I can describe Steve Irwin is formidable. He would stand and fight, and was not to be defeated when it came to looking after our environment. When he wanted to get things done--whether that meant his expansion plans for the zoo, providing aid for animals affected by the tsunami and the cyclones, organizing scientific research, or buying land to conserve its environmental and habitat values--he just did it, and woe betide anyone who stood in his way. I am not sure I have ever met anyone else who was so determined to get the conservation message out across the globe, and I believe he achieved his aim. What I admired most about him was that he lived the conservation message every day of his life. Steve’s parents, Bob and Lyn, passed on their love of the Australian bush and their passion for rescuing and rehabilitating wildlife. Steve took their passion and turned it into a worldwide crusade. The founding of Wildlife Warriors Worldwide in 2002 provided Steve and Terri with another vehicle to raise awareness of conservation by allowing individuals to become personally involved in protecting injured, threatened, or endangered wildlife. It also has generated a working fund that helps with the wildlife hospital on the zoo premises and supports work with endangered species in Asia and Africa. Research was always high on Steve’s agenda, and his work has enabled a far greater understanding of crocodile behavior, population, and movement patterns. Working with the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service and the University of Queensland, Steve was an integral part of the world’s first Crocs in Space research program. His work will live on and inform us for many, many years to come. Our hearts go out to his family and the Australia Zoo family. It must be difficult to work at the zoo every day with his larger-than-life persona still very much evident. Everyone must still be waiting for him to walk through the gate. His presence is everywhere, and I hope it lives on in the hearts and minds of generations of wildlife warriors to come. We have lost a great man in Steve Irwin. It is a great loss to the conservation movement. My heart and the hearts of everyone here goes out to his family. Carolyn Male, Member for Glass House, Queensland, Australia October 11, 2006

war is not nice because it’s such a waste, as Queen Sara puts it. It wastes precious resources that could otherwise be used for programs designed to help people flourish. For Rogers, tax dollars are for record players that can help children appreciate music; they’re not for weapons designed to slaughter the parents of children or, worse, the children themselves.

A third positive result even further from the traditional tool kit of financial incentives comes from a recent randomized control trial conducted in the U.K., using the increasingly popular and low-cost method of text reminders. This intervention involved sending texts to half the parents in some school in advance of a major math test to let them know that their child had a test coming up in five days, then in three days, then in one day. The researchers call this approach “pre-informing.” The other half of parents did not receive the texts. The pre-informing texts increased student performance on the math test by the equivalent of one additional month of schooling, and students in the bottom quartile benefited most. These children gained the equivalent of two additional months of schooling, relative to the control group. Afterward, both parents and students said they wanted to stick with the program, showing that they appreciated being nudged.

You may be wondering why Mother Nature would program this variability across people. As a social species, should we not all be synchronized and therefore awake at the same time to promote maximal human interactions? Perhaps not. As we’ll discover later in this book, humans likely evolved to co-sleep as families or even whole tribes, not alone or as couples. Appreciating this evolutionary context, the benefits of such genetically programmed variation in sleep/wake timing preferences can be understood. The night owls in the group would not be going to sleep until one or two a.m., and not waking until nine or ten a.m. The morning larks, on the other hand, would have retired for the night at nine p.m. and woken at five a.m. Consequently, the group as a whole is only collectively vulnerable (i.e., every person asleep) for just four rather than eight hours, despite everyone still getting the chance for eight hours of sleep. That’s potentially a 50 percent increase in survival fitness. Mother Nature would never pass on a biological trait—here, the useful variability in when individuals within a collective tribe go to sleep and wake up—that could enhance the survival safety and thus fitness of a species by this amount. And so she hasn’t.

WISDOM KEEPER: My Extraordinary Journey to Unlock the Sacred Within “Chloe’s heartfelt journey is the real deal here to inspire us all. She takes the reader on a journey of darkness to light, struggle to freedom, fear to love. Thank you, Chloe, for this incredible ride. A must read for all who want true transformation.”— Dr. Shannon South, Award-Winning Therapist, Best-Selling Author, and Founder of the Ignite Your Life and business programs “There is a healing purpose in every experience written by Chloe in this spiritual memoir. She shares processes for healing in the physical, emotional and spiritual realms, showing us our ability to use all levels of energy to achieve deep and lasting healing. Chloe reveals to us the importance of connection—with the spiritual and physical world, and our past lives to the present. She reminds us we are essential in the Universe; when we heal, our loved ones, people around us, and the Earth also heals. Chloe inspires us to do the same thing. Well done. I appreciate it very much. This book is truly for everyone. — Eduardo Morales, Shamanic Curandero, Tepoztlán, Mexico “WISDOM KEEPER is filled with wonderful personal experiences on the power of healing, visualizations, dreams, and listening to our inner voices. Chloe Kemp describes encounters with others on a multitude of levels, including sacred beings, shamans, and other deep-souled humans. This book inspires the reader to go deep within themselves and invite their own personal self-healer to emerge. Chloe helps us to understand that anything is possible.”—River Guerguerian, Sound Immersion Healer, Musician, Composer, and Educator  “Having met and worked with Chloe personally, I know she is a genuine woman with a mission and clear determination to fulfill her purpose in this life. She has followed the call from Spirit to share stories from her life and wisdom she has gained, weaving energies and expressing a frequency of consciousness that has a way of bringing readers to a deeper state of awareness and potency upon their own unique journey. Chloe's book shines a light on our ability to reconnect with the origin of what makes us each a special part of the Divine plan, and she does it in a very humble and approachable way."—Michael Brasunas, Holistic Energy Healer and Bodyworker “Your inspiring memoir is engaging and thought-provoking throughout. It brings together the highest spiritual insights and practical frameworks that everyone can understand and apply.”—Louise, Australia  “A fascinating read!”—Caleb, USA  “The narrative is immensely raw and deeply personal. It engaged all of my emotions completely.”—Abantika, India   “A remarkable story.”—Michael, USA “The writing style is amazing.Your life experiences are so unique.”—Taibaya, Pakistan  “You have a gift for spiritual healing and telling a story. You created a hopeful, sincere, compelling, interesting, and important story.”—Jessica, USA “You tell events, dreams, and moments in your life in a very engaging and thought-provoking way.”—Josh, USA  “Very entertaining, awakening, and engaging; as well as informative, practical, motivating and inspiring.”—Susan, USA      

The Bukharin pamphlet was published in the United States in 1920 by the Contemporary Publishing Association, one of the early underground publishing organizations of the Communist Party. It stated: All these considerations explain the program of the Communists with regard to their attitude to religion and to the church. Religion must be fought, if not by violence, at all events, by argument. The church must be separated from the state.… There is a poison called opium. When it is smoked sweet visions appear. You feel as if you were in paradise, but its action tells on the health of the smoker. His health is gradually ruined, and little by little he becomes a meek idiot. The same applies to religion. There are people who wish to smoke opium, but it would be absurd if the state maintained at its expense—that is to say, at the expense of the people—opium dens and special men to serve them. For this reason the church must be—and already is—treated in the same way. Priests, bishops, archbishops, patriarchs, abbots and the rest of the lot must be refused state maintenance. Let the believers, if they wish it, feed the holy fathers at their own expense on the fat of the land, a thing which they, the priests, greatly appreciate. To say this was a hard, distasteful, cynical view of religion would be an obvious understatement. Nonetheless, it was fully consistent with the long-accepted communist view of religion: Religion was a seductive drug, a poison, an opiate that when smoked produces sweet visions, hallucinations, turning the junkie into a “meek idiot.” The priests were like the dealers; they peddle the junk to hook the addicts who sit stupidly in the pews.

Empathy is particularly insensitive to consequences that apply statistically rather than to specific individuals. Imagine learning that a faulty vaccine has caused Rebecca Smith, an adorable eight-year-old, to get extremely sick. If you watch her suffering and listen to her and her family, the empathy will flow, and you’ll want to act. But suppose that stopping the vaccine program will cause, say, a dozen random children to die. Here your empathy is silent—how can you empathize with a statistical abstraction? To the extent that you can appreciate that it’s better for one specific child to die than for an unknown and imprecise larger number of children to die, you are using capacities other than empathy.

Look it, Jack. While I appreciate the sentiment, we’re already pressed for time. You know our fundraiser’s just around the corner and getting her ready for sale’ll be a huge time zapper for us. And in the end, she’ll just be uprooted again.” “Let’s talk about this later. For now, let’s just get her settled in, fed and watered.” Mrs. M huffed slowly and rubbed her temple with the heel of her hand, as if already feeling the exhaustion of the job just by looking at the mare. “Okay, you girls, walk ’em both to the back barn and put ’em in the two empty stalls. Water them and throw them some hay. We’ll look at ’em later. When you’re done, can you finish cleaning the stalls in the main barn?” “Yes, ma’am.” Without even really thinking it through, a sense of urgency forced me to say, “Um, Mrs. M? If you wouldn’t mind, can I take her on as a project horse? You said she’d be a huge time zapper for you, time that you don’t have. I can take care of her, clean her up, as well as train her to ride and follow commands. Problem solved. Pretty please?” She sighed with her lips scrunched, hopefully seriously considering it. Even though I knew that was gonna be a monstrous job, I was so quick to volunteer because I honestly felt like I was the only one who truly got this horse and saw her potential. Everyone else just saw a headache and a big mess. She was counting on me, and I couldn’t let her down. “Maybe she’ll end up being an excellent addition to the program. You think?” “Oh, I really don’t think we can use her here, sweetie,” she mewed like I was so dumb and silly for even suggesting it.

Keeping so many people motivated to do the best job possible involves a lot of the different programs and approaches we’ve developed at Wal-Mart over the years, but none of them would work at all without one simple thing that puts it all together: appreciation. All of us like praise.

The occasion was the broadcast of a television program about the artistic avant-garde entitled Supervisions, which was produced by the Los Angeles public television station KCET. Smith’s and Shoup’s work on Superpaint had started to win wide notice outside PARC, thanks in part to a tape called “Vidbits” which Smith had compiled from clips of his best work for playing to artists’ gatherings all around California. After one such showing, KCET commissioned the two of them to supply some brief color-cycling effects for Supervisions. They had scrupulously insisted that the producers give Xerox screen credit, assuming that the parent company would appreciate the honor. Instead, Taylor marched into the video lab a day or two after the broadcast and buttonholed Smith. “Xerox wants their logo off every piece of tape,” he said. “Right now.

The Four Courts Irish pub was where we held all our memorials. It had a unique place in my heart because a bunch of assassins had tried to kill me inside the place a long time ago. Bryce wasn’t read into our program, but he believed in what we did, even if he didn’t know what that was. We’d shown up one day toasting a fallen soldier, and then we’d kept showing up, until he’d pulled me aside one afternoon. He’d seen us keeping to ourselves, knowing we didn’t want to be disturbed, and had told me if we wanted privacy the next time, the bar was ours. He’d never asked any questions, and being located so close to the CIA, I’m sure he thought that was where we worked, and I didn’t disabuse him of the notion. All I knew was that when I showed up, he shut down the bar. He flipped the sign on the door to closed and said, “I’ll be serving the drinks.” “I appreciate that. I really do.” I’d initially tried to pay to rent the place, but he was having none of it. He didn’t even let us pay for our drinks.

207, 2nd Floor, 3rd Main Rd, Chamrajpet, Bengaluru, Karnataka-560018. +91 7022122121 Kannada books purchase is a beacon for fans of Kannada literature because it has a diverse selection of books that celebrate the Kannada language's beautiful language and rich cultural heritage. This article delves into the world of Veera Loka Books, looking at its mission, the significance of Kannada literature, the extensive selection of books available, the simple online purchase process, exciting promotions for book lovers, the effect of customer reviews, and the literary haven's plans for expansion. Join us on a journey through Veera Loka Books to understand the essence of Kannada literature. Introduction to Veera Loka Books About Veera Loka Books Veera Loka Books is a treasure trove for fans of Kannada literature that features a diverse selection of Kannada-language literary works. Veera Loka Books is a hub for book lovers looking for high-quality books, with a strong emphasis on promoting Kannada literature. Veera Loka Books' mission and vision are to preserve and promote Kannada culture and language through literature. Our goal is to make Kannada books available to readers all over the world and cultivate a deep appreciation for Karnataka's extensive literary heritage. The Cultural Significance of Kannada Literature Kannada literature is a vibrant reflection of Karnataka's rich cultural tapestry and highlights the language's beauty and diversity. It is essential to the preservation of the state's history and the development of a sense of pride among Kannadigas. Effect of Kannada Writing on Society Kannada writing has the ability to motivate, teach, and incite thought, molding cultural standards and values. It contributes to social change and progress by acting as a medium for expressing diverse viewpoints and challenging established ideologies. Wide Selection of Fiction and Non-Fiction Kannada Books Veera Loka Books offers a wide selection of Kannada books, from engaging fiction to instructive non-fiction. Our collection caters to all tastes and preferences, whether you're a fan of literary masterpieces or informative books. Themes and Genres Covered Veera Loka Books covers a wide range of Kannada literature, from gripping mysteries to historical epics that provoke thought. Our selection ensures that there is something for everyone, whether you are interested in science fiction, romance, or mythology. The Veera Loka Books website has user-friendly features that make browsing and searching for Kannada books a seamless experience. This makes the Kannada books purchase online purchase process as simple as possible. With just a few clicks, you can easily browse through our collection and filter by author or genre to find your next favorite book. Options for Ordering and Paying Veera Loka Books offers a variety of secure and convenient payment methods, making it easy to make a purchase. We guarantee a hassle-free transaction so you can enjoy your Kannada books without stress, regardless of whether you prefer credit card, debit card, or online payment gateways. Book Lovers' Discounts and Promotions Want to Save Money on Great Books? Veera Loka Books has your back with amazing deals and discounts that will make any bookworm happy. Deal Occasions and Extraordinary Offers From streak deals to occasional limits, Veera Loka Books knows how to get your perusing list arranged without begging to be spent. Keep an eye out for their exciting sales and special offers, which will have you buying Kannada gems quickly. Rewards and loyalty programs: Who doesn't like to be rewarded for being a loyal customer? With loyalty programs that make every purchase feel like a win, Veera Loka Books rewards bookworms. Just by being a part of the Veera Loka community, you'll get points, benefits, and even discounts only available to Veera Loka members.

I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and ran my hands through my hair. Today of all days, I could not have these visions in my head. Maybe I would try the new pill. If it let me control my dreams as they promised, I’d program my mind for more productive nights. I’d dream of breaking a code to stop the next attack on America, while finding a smart girl who’d appreciate it. That’s what I needed: a smart girl, not a freakin’ dragon.

Although NBC took a one-year option on the show, and Danny Thomas’s production company agreed to finance the pilot, the network decided not to air what appeared to be a poor prospect. When ABC finally broadcast the show, it seemed doomed from the start, since it was in the same time slot as two popular dramatic programs, Climax! and Dragnet. The first review, in Variety (October 7, 1957), seemed to confirm Brennan’s original misgivings: “‘The Real McCoys’ is a cornball, folksy-wolksy situation comedy series destined to find the going tough.” The Variety critic called the humor “forced,” the pacing “sluggish,” and the characters’ adventures “only lightly amusing.” And too many lovable characters! Brennan received due praise as a “fine actor,” but the rest of the cast was just “okay.” And yet, by the third week the show was number one in its time slot, compelling the Variety skeptic to allow, “It’s all so hokey that it can’t be taken seriously, and for that reason this quarter can’t see any really strong reason why cityfolk shouldn’t appreciate and enjoy it for what it is. The show is already big in the hinterlands.” By December 2, 1957, the critic was obliged to report that the “laughs come freely.” And then, for season after season, the praise escalated. The show began with an audience of ten million, but within a year the

But the very same taker tendencies that served Wright well in Fallingwater also precipitated his nine-year slump. For two decades, until 1911, Wright made his name as an architect living in Chicago and Oak Park, Illinois, where he benefited from the assistance of craftspeople and sculptors. In 1911, he designed Taliesin, an estate in a remote Wisconsin valley. Believing he could excel alone, he moved out there. But as time passed, Wright spun his wheels during “long years of enforced idleness,” Gill wrote. At Taliesin, Wright lacked access to talented apprentices. “The isolation he chose by creating Taliesin,” de St. Aubin observes, “left him without the elements that had become essential to his life: architectural commissions and skillful workers to help him complete his building designs.” Frank Lloyd Wright’s drought lasted until he gave up on independence and began to work interdependently again with talented collaborators. It wasn’t his own idea: his wife Olgivanna convinced him to start a fellowship for apprentices to help him with his work. When apprentices joined him in 1932, his productivity soared, and he was soon working on the Fallingwater house, which would be seen by many as the greatest work of architecture in modern history. Wright ran his fellowship program for a quarter century, but even then, he struggled to appreciate how much he depended on apprentices. He refused to pay apprentices, requiring them to do cooking, cleaning, and fieldwork. Wright “was a great architect,” explained his former apprentice Edgar Tafel, who worked on Fallingwater, “but he needed people like myself to make his designs work—although you couldn’t tell him that.

Healthy foods taste fantastic, but you may have to rehabilitate your taste buds and take some time to learn new cooking techniques and recipes to appreciate them.

The mission of the Incarnate Word High School Library is to stimulate and support learning with appropriate resources and programs in order for students to become critical thinkers. Students are encouraged to become lifelong learners who not only love reading but also have the skills to find, analyze and use information. The Library supports the School curriculum, promotes the enjoyment of reading, and develops skills in critical and effective use of information resources by providing instruction to foster competence in acquiring, evaluating and using information and ideas; stimulating interest in reading and appreciation of literature; and providing intellectual and physical access to materials in multiple formats.

During production, your users need a chance to save their work before the program crashes and they are probably willing to tolerate a few anomalies in exchange for keeping the program going long enough for them to do that. Users don't appreciate anything that results in the loss of their work, regardless of how much it helps debugging and ultimately improves the quality of the program. If your program contains debugging code that could cause a loss of data, take it out of the production version.

At least once a month (perhaps on a plane flight where you have a wide choice of free magazines), purposely spend a half-hour reading a magazine with a viewpoint completely contrary to your own. Or listen to a television or radio discussion program of that kind. For example, if your orientation is liberal and progressive, then read respectfully and openly National Review or a similar conservative journal. If you are conservative yourself, choose The Nation or one of its liberal cousins. When you come across an opinion or argument that really rattles your cage, ask yourself these questions to test the validity of the belief of yours that it challenges: • Where and when did you adopt your position? • What evidence or logic would you use to support your belief, and is it really more compelling than what you are reading? • Are any facts or arguments being presented that you have not really taken into account before? • Can you appreciate why the argument being presented could be convincing to the person presenting it and to the many readers who find it convincing? • Can you develop any facts or insights that would make you or the author you are reading change position? • Are there any circumstances or situations that would make the position in the magazine more acceptable or understandable? • Are there any ways in which the view you are reading could be reconciled, even partially, with your own?

Angel" Shooby dooby dooby doo woi Shooby doo Oh Shooby doo dooby doo boi oi Yeah, ah Girl, you're my angel, you're my darling angel Closer than my peeps you are to me, baby Shorty, you're my angel, you're my darling angel Girl, you're my friend when I'm in need, lady Life is one big party when you're still young But who's gonna have your back when it's all done It's all good when you're little, you have pure fun Can't be a fool, son, what about the long run Looking back Shorty always mention Said me not giving her much attention She was there through my incarceration I wanna show the nation my appreciation Girl, you're my angel, you're my darling angel Closer than my peeps you are to me, baby Shorty, you're my angel, you're my darling angel Girl, you're my friend when I'm in need, lady You're a queen and so you should be treated Though you never get the lovin' that you needed Could have left, but I called and you heeded Begged and I pleaded, mission completed Mama said that I and I dissed the program Not the type to mess around with her emotion But the feeling that I have for you is so strong Been together so long and this could never be wrong Girl, you're my angel, you're my darling angel Closer than my peeps you are to me, baby Shorty, you're my angel, you're my darling angel Girl, you're my friend when I'm in need, lady Uh, uh Girl, in spite of my behavior, said I'm your savior (You must be sent from up above) And you appear to me so tender, say girl I surrender (Thanks for giving me your love) Girl, in spite of my behavior, well, you are my savior (You must be sent from up above) And you appear to me so tender, well, girl I surrender (Said thanks for giving me your love) Now life is one big party when you're still young And who's gonna have your back when it's all done It's all good when you're little, you have pure fun Can't be a fool, son, what about the long run Looking back Shorty always mention Said me not giving her much attention She was there through my incarceration I wanna show the nation my appreciation Girl, you're my angel, you're my darling angel Closer than my peeps you are to me, baby Shorty, you're my angel, you're my darling angel Girl, you're my friend when I'm in need, lady Girl, you're my angel, you're my darling angel Closer than my peeps you are to me, baby Shorty, you're my angel, you're my darling angel Girl, you're my friend when I'm in need, lady

Whatever we place our attention upon becomes more because we place our attention upon it. If we talk about terror, read about terror, think about terror, watch fear-based programming on the television, then we appreciate terror. This is why all masters of manifestation instruct us to place our attention on the feelings of what we seek, not upon what we do not seek.

The plant looked nothing like the real thing, of course. The smiling face and color-changing petals resembled nothing in nature. It was programmed with some behavioral recognition software that could tell when she’d gone awhile without standing or drinking or taking a break, and would chirp cheerful reminders in response. “Hey, there! You need to hydrate!” “How about a snack?” “Take a walk! Stretch it out!” The effect was cheesy, and sometimes a little jarring when she was focused on her work, but she appreciated the sentiment. She

As he and Beth hit the stairs, he called out to his brothers, “Thanks for having my back once again.” The group stopped and turned to face him. After a beat of silence, they formed a half circle around the foot of the grand staircase, each making a thick fist with his weapon hand. With a great whoop! of a war cry, they went down on their right knee and slammed their heavy knuckles into the mosaic floor. The sound was thunder and bass drums and bomb explosions, ricocheting outward, filling all the rooms of the mansion. Wrath stared at them, seeing their heads bent, their broad backs curled, their powerful arms planted. They had each gone to that meeting prepared to take a bullet for him, and that would ever be true. Behind Tohr’s smaller form, Lassiter, the fallen angel, stood with a straight spine, but he wasn’t cracking any jokes at this reaffirmation of allegiance. Instead, he was back to staring at the damn ceiling. Wrath glanced up at the mural of warriors silhouetted against a blue sky and could see nothing much of the pictures that he’d been told were there. Getting back with the program, he said in the Old Language, “No stronger allies, no greater friends, no better fighters of honor could a king behold than these assembled afore me, mine brothers, mine blood.” A rolling growl of ascent lifted as the warriors got to their feet again, and Wrath nodded to each one of them. He had no more words to offer as his throat had abruptly choked, but they didn’t seem to need anything else. They stared at him with respect and gratitude and purpose, and he accepted their enormous gifts with grave appreciation and resolve. This was the ages-old covenant between king and subjects, the pledges on both sides made with the heart and carried out by the sharp mind and the strong body. “God, I love you guys,” Beth said. There was a lot of deep laughter, and then Hollywood said, “You want us to stab the floor for you again? Fists are for kings, but the queen gets the daggers.” “I wouldn’t want you to take chips out of this beautiful floor. Thank you, though.” “Say the word and it’s nothing but rubble.” Beth laughed. “Be still, my heart.” The Brothers came over and kissed the Saturnine Ruby that rode on her finger, and as each paid his honor, she gave him a gentle stroke of the hair. Except for Zsadist, who she smiled tenderly at. “Excuse us, boys,” Wrath said. “Little quiet time, feel me?” There was a ripple of male approval, which Beth took in stride—and with a blush—and then it was time for some privacy.

IVF training courses IIRRH: With more and more couples looking out for infertility treatment, the need for skilled fertility specialists has taken a huge leap in the recent years. Our IVF training courses at IIRRH are carefully structured to cater the needs of a beginner as well as a busy practitioner in the field of embryology, gynaecology and infertility management. IIRRH offers courses that provide an avenue for both scientists and clinicians to enter the field of reproductive medicine; and for those already familiar with this area, an opportunity to gain greater skillset relevant to the manipulation of fertility and the treatment of reproductive abnormalities. Designed to broaden knowledge of the underlying scientific principles and to enhance appreciation of the clinical management of infertility, the institute aims to encourage independent thought and a research orientated approach to the practice of assisted conception. Designed to broaden knowledge in the field of reproductive medicine and ART, our specialized courses include IVF training programs that cater the needs of a beginner as well as a busy practitioner in the field of embryology, gynaecology and infertility management. Our special Advanced ART course for Clinicians is apt to provide an introductory-level understanding of the clinical IVF (in-vitro fertilisation) laboratory and setting up and IVF lab. As well as the basics of the IVF lab, it also covers: • The individual protocols and procedures within the lab • The requirements that must be considered when working within it • Information ranging from embryo selection to new technologies in IVF It will allow better practice and understanding in dealing with patients and IVF cases. With the increasing demand for answers about our fertility, this course will help you understand: • The role of the clinical embryologist • Procedures conducted within the IVF laboratory For more information visit our website iirrh.org

Modeling for others a sincerely positive and encouraging countenance will not only enrich their lives, it can foster trust and appreciation for you. This subtle technique of mirroring can help others feel compatibility with you and lead them to feel better about themselves. A win for everybody!

One of the speaking programs I deliver is entitled, "Service with a Smile . . . How to Create a Sensational Customer Experience." Smiling is at the heart of my teaching because when employees smile while delivering service, it tells the guest/client/customer . . . You matter. You are important. We are glad you are here. We appreciate your business.

I was once hired by an organization to deliver a workshop on networking. The goal was to provide their engineers with tools and strategies for expanding their circles of influence—to foster innovation, collaboration, and teambuilding. One of the engineers raised her hand in the middle of the program and bluntly said, “I’m happy with the people in my life and don’t care to add any more.” I respect and appreciate her position and have sometimes felt the same way. But, as long as we are alive, we will meet, greet, and interact with new people. Even if we are not inviting them into our personal lives, being socially brave will open new doors which may have remained closed otherwise.

I can appreciate the logistics of shipping any sort of produce discreetly inside of an alleged programming manual:

Manage Your Team’s Collective Time Time management is a group endeavor. The payoff goes far beyond morale and retention. ILLUSTRATION: JAMES JOYCE by Leslie Perlow | 1461 words Most professionals approach time management the wrong way. People who fall behind at work are seen to be personally failing—just as people who give up on diet or exercise plans are seen to be lacking self-control or discipline. In response, countless time management experts focus on individual habits, much as self-help coaches do. They offer advice about such things as keeping better to-do lists, not checking e-mail incessantly, and not procrastinating. Of course, we could all do a better job managing our time. But in the modern workplace, with its emphasis on connectivity and collaboration, the real problem is not how individuals manage their own time. It’s how we manage our collective time—how we work together to get the job done. Here is where the true opportunity for productivity gains lies. Nearly a decade ago I began working with a team at the Boston Consulting Group to implement what may sound like a modest innovation: persuading each member to designate and spend one weeknight out of the office and completely unplugged from work. The intervention was aimed at improving quality of life in an industry that’s notorious for long hours and a 24/7 culture. The early returns were positive; the initiative was expanded to four teams of consultants, and then to 10. The results, which I described in a 2009 HBR article, “Making Time Off Predictable—and Required,” and in a 2012 book, Sleeping with Your Smartphone , were profound. Consultants on teams with mandatory time off had higher job satisfaction and a better work/life balance, and they felt they were learning more on the job. It’s no surprise, then, that BCG has continued to expand the program: As of this spring, it has been implemented on thousands of teams in 77 offices in 40 countries. During the five years since I first reported on this work, I have introduced similar time-based interventions at a range of companies—and I have come to appreciate the true power of those interventions. They put the ownership of how a team works into the hands of team members, who are empowered and incentivized to optimize their collective time. As a result, teams collaborate better. They streamline their work. They meet deadlines. They are more productive and efficient. Teams that set a goal of structured time off—and, crucially, meet regularly to discuss how they’ll work together to ensure that every member takes it—have more open dialogue, engage in more experimentation and innovation, and ultimately function better. CREATING “ENHANCED PRODUCTIVITY” DAYS One of the insights driving this work is the realization that many teams stick to tried-and-true processes that, although familiar, are often inefficient. Even companies that create innovative products rarely innovate when it comes to process. This realization came to the fore when I studied three teams of software engineers working for the same company in different cultural contexts. The teams had the same assignments and produced the same amount of work, but they used very different methods. One, in Shenzen, had a hub-and-spokes org chart—a project manager maintained control and assigned the work. Another, in Bangalore, was self-managed and specialized, and it assigned work according to technical expertise. The third, in Budapest, had the strongest sense of being a team; its members were the most versatile and interchangeable. Although, as noted, the end products were the same, the teams’ varying approaches yielded different results. For example, the hub-and-spokes team worked fewer hours than the others, while the most versatile team had much greater flexibility and control over its schedule. The teams were completely unaware that their counterparts elsewhere in the world were managing their work differently. My research provide

Some AI proponents might argue that in order for an AI system to gain any 'actual' understanding, it would need to be programmed in a way that involves bottom-up procedures in a much more basic way than is usual for chess-playing computers. Accordingly, its 'understandings' would develop gradually by its building up a wealth of 'experience', rather than having specific top-down algorithmic rules built into it. Top-down rules that are simple enough for us to appreciate easily could not, by themselves, provide a computational basis for actual understanding-for we can use our very understandings of these rules to realize their fundamental limitations.

You can never fully appreciate the ups if you have not conquered the downs.

Are you attracting money, or repelling it? This is important to understand. If you were conditioned and programmed your whole life that “money is the root of all evil” or “money makes people do bad things,” no wonder you do not have an abundance of it. You are repelling it away from you. Subconsciously, because you do not like money, your actions are causing you to get rid of what money you do earn. If you can change your mind, you can change your bank account. Money is not evil, it is paper. The greed of, or doing bad things for or with the money, is the issue. Money can make you more of what you already are. If you are a bad person, you can now afford to be a worse person. If you are a good person, you can now do more nice things for others. So decide today to respect and appreciate why money is an instrument for good. Begin to attract money rather than repel it. This mental shift will have an enormous effect on your life from today forward if you make this shift in thinking. Decide today that you want more money, and determine what you need the money for. Then attach those good reasons for the need to your dominating thoughts about money. When you connect money with those reasons that compel you to want to earn more, you will begin to attract more.

Great is His Faithfulness     “Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22-23).     At church on Sunday, they sang a song from the hymnbook called, “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” The lyrics were by Thomas Obediah Chisholm and music by William Marion Runyan. Although I had difficulty singing along, I paid close attention to the words. My favourite line was, “All I needed Thy hand hath provided.”   This verse resonated with my soul that day. It didn’t say, “All that I wanted” but rather, “All that I needed.” I took a moment to reflect on the last five years of my life and I was taken to my knees in awe and appreciation.   I wish that I had kept a journal of answered prayer. I think this is a brilliant idea. I have kept notes here and there and I have various journals that I write in every day, but I’ve never dedicated one book to just answered prayer.   There are so many little things that I pray for every day. My husband was working on my income tax on the computer when all of a sudden the program kicked him out. Two hours of work – lost. But it was restored within ten minutes without as much as one number out of place – an answer to prayer.   One of my cats was coughing and sneezing. She looked as if she had trouble breathing and took to hiding under a desk. Would she survive the night? Is it just a cold or something much worse like cat leukemia? The vet announced it only a virus – an answer to prayer.   On a four-hour hike with my mother, two aunts and my brother’s mother-in-law, the average age was 65. The terrain was full of obstacles with fallen trees, raspberry bush thorns, and slippery logs. We made the entire trip without incidence – an answer to prayer.  

Yesterday I got a credit card application from a major bank with a variable rate of 12.99% to 20.99%. Such a deal. And what if I fall on hard times and lose my job? So, I wrote them a return letter: Dear major bank, Thank you for the opportunity to express how I really feel about your corporation. What I do appreciate, is that there is no stamp required for your return envelope. After tearing off all my personal information, so some dumpster diver doesn’t fill out your application for me, and find out he picked the wrong target; I just wanted to make one comment: Your practice of usury is despicable, along with crashing the global economy. Danny - I think I have my grandmother’s charm and wit. Too bad she’s not here to share it with. Maybe if every disgruntled person would use that free envelope and apply their creative talent, they might get the picture that we’re tired of this bullshit. Marcie, there are so many people you could visit and test your information extraction program on, so what are you people doing here? Is this just a practice run? Well, you wanted to know what I was thinking. And you wonder why I look to God for solutions. Wake me up when it’s over. Marcie - You are a crazy SOB. You want me to use my system to play Robin Hood. Danny - You’d make an excellent Robin Hood, make sure you get your merry band to sign on. Maybe that’s the reason we were connected by design. How much materialism do you really need? Some people take what they need from the orchard and other people pick the orchard clean. Marcie - You’re wondering what I’m thinking. I don’t want to mess your mind up with what I’m thinking, so let me simply say, I don’t approve of what some of these people have been doing for decades. Who do you think I am? Danny - Someone who frustrates me, don’t we have enough guessing games in life? Marcie - Marcie is a miracle worker, so what does that tell you? You do not even know what to make of me, someone who keeps coming back for you, someone who won’t let go of you. Danny - Why is it that there’s only a handful of words for truth and over 100 synonyms and derivatives for deception? Marcie - Are you surprised? Danny - It puts it in a different light when you start reading through the list. You may as well add amygdala hijacking. Marcie - Has Danny been bamboozled? Danny - You picked one with an unknown origin. Marcie - That is the best way to start a mind game. Danny - Okay, just for kicks, try saying synonym - cinnamon 10 times as fast as you can. From - "The Mind Game Company - The Players

The art of investment has one characteristic that is not generally appreciated. A creditable, if unspectacular, result can be achieved by the lay investor with a minimum of effort and capability; but to improve this easily attainable standard requires much application and more than a trace of wisdom. If you merely try to bring just a little extra knowledge and cleverness to bear upon your investment program, instead of realizing a little better than normal results, you may well find that you have done worse.

At the organizational level, this value can take the form of acquiring the capacity to sustain ongoing evaluative inquiry. This outcome is more likely when participants experience evaluation as a meaningful and productive way to enhance patterns of work and communication. Participatory, collaborative, appreciative, and empowering mechanisms are often at the heart of evaluations where process use is a high priority. These mechanisms can promote stakeholder ownership of the evaluation processes and products and thus enhance process use, as well as use of evaluation findings. For some organizations, evaluation capacity building means that evaluation stakeholders learn how to work effectively with external evaluators. This organizational learning further facilitates the contributions that external evaluation processes and findings can make to the organization’s growth and productivity.

the classical benefits of static type systems can be better appreciated. Among the most important of these benefits are verifiable properties of program abstractions, safe refactorings, and better documentation.

Was there a moment you realized you could control how you interpreted things? I think one problem people have is not recognizing they can control how they interpret and respond to a situation. I think everyone knows it’s possible. There’s a great Osho lecture, titled “The Attraction for Drugs Is Spiritual.” He talks about why do people do drugs (everything from alcohol to psychedelics to cannabis). They’re doing it to control their mental state. They’re doing it to control how they react. Some people drink because it helps them not care as much, or they’re potheads because they can zone out, or they do psychedelics to feel very present or connected to nature. The attraction of drugs is spiritual. All of society does this to some extent. People chasing thrills in action sports or flow states or orgasms—any of these states people strive for are people trying to get out of their own heads. They’re trying to get away from the voice in their heads—the overdeveloped sense of self. At the very least, I do not want my sense of self to continue to develop and strengthen as I get older. I want it to be weaker and more muted so I can be more in present everyday reality, accept nature and the world for what it is, and appreciate it very much as a child would. [4] The first thing to realize is you can observe your mental state. Meditation doesn’t mean you’re suddenly going to gain the superpower to control your internal state. The advantage of meditation is recognizing just how out of control your mind is. It is like a monkey flinging feces, running around the room, making trouble, shouting, and breaking things. It’s completely uncontrollable. It’s an out-of-control madperson. You have to see this mad creature in operation before you feel a certain distaste toward it and start separating yourself from it. In that separation is liberation. You realize, “Oh, I don’t want to be that person. Why am I so out of control?” Awareness alone calms you down. [4] Insight meditation lets you run your brain in debug mode until you realize you’re just a subroutine in a larger program. I try to keep an eye on my internal monologue. It doesn’t always work. In the computer programming sense, I try to run my brain in “debugging mode” as much as possible. When I’m talking to someone, or when I’m engaged in a group activity, it’s almost impossible because your brain has too many things to handle. If I’m by myself, like just this morning, I’m brushing my teeth and I start thinking forward to a podcast. I started going through this little fantasy where I imagined Shane asking me a bunch of questions and I was fantasy- answering them. Then, I caught myself. I put my brain in debug mode and just watched every little instruction go by. I said, “Why am I fantasy-future planning? Why can’t I just stand here and brush my teeth?” It’s the awareness my brain was running off in the future and planning some fantasy scenario out of ego. I was like, “Well, do I really care if I embarrass myself? Who cares? I’m going to die anyway. This is all going to go to zero, and I won’t remember anything, so this is pointless.” Then, I shut down, and I went back to brushing my teeth. I was noticing how good the toothbrush was and how good it felt. Then the next moment, I’m off to thinking something else. I have to look at my brain again and say, “Do I really need to solve this problem right now?” Ninety-five percent of what my brain runs off and tries to do, I don’t need to tackle in that exact moment. If the brain is like a muscle, I’ll be better off resting it, being at peace. When a particular problem arises, I’ll immerse myself in it. Right now as we’re talking, I’d rather dedicate myself to being completely lost in the conversation and to being 100 percent focused on this as opposed to thinking about “Oh, when I brushed my teeth, did I do it the right way?

What the current aura of disenchantment means for the future of American and world politics is uncertain. Will members of the public turn their backs on politics and turn to aesthetic appreciation, enjoying the comforts of religion, or building Shangri-las in their own minds?20 The post–World War II record-low voter turnout in the 2014 midterm elections might be one indication that Americans are washing their hands of even the most basic expressions of political engagement. But there are other indications that the legions of discontented do not reject the idea of progress as such and will not retreat from politics; instead what we are seeing is a rejection of liberal universalist visions of progress and the political programs associated with them. In a 2013 address before the Federal Assembly, Russian president Vladimir Putin declared that “attempts to push supposedly more progressive development models onto other nations actually resulted in regression, barbarity and extensive bloodshed.”21 Putin’s military incursions in Russia’s near (and not- so-near) abroad aside, increasing numbers of Westerners seem to agree with the sentiment of his remarks, punishing establishment politicians as “globalists” and rewarding inward-looking populists. From Brexiteers bucking the European Union to America-firsters looking to make their country “great again,” from supporters of the National Front in France to loyalists of the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands or the Freedom Party of Austria, nationalists are on the ascent, seeking progress for themselves and their compatriots on their own terms.

Beauty comes out of necessity. For though we may dress up the truth with fancy aesthetic theories, we are biologically programmed to appreciate colour and the reflected glare of the sun for our survival.

The Buddha famously said that life is suffering. I’m not a Buddhist, but I know what he meant and so do you. To exist in this world, we must contend with humiliation, broken dreams, sadness, and loss. That’s just nature. Each specific life comes with its own personalized portion of pain. It’s coming for you. You can’t stop it. And you know it. In response, most of us are programmed to seek comfort as a way to numb it all out and cushion the blows. We carve out safe spaces. We consume media that confirms our beliefs, we take up hobbies aligned with our talents, we try to spend as little time as possible doing the tasks we fucking loathe, and that makes us soft. We live a life defined by the limits we imagine and desire for ourselves because it’s comfortable as hell in that box. Not just for us, but for our closest family and friends. The limits we create and accept become the lens through which they see us. Through which they love and appreciate us. But for some, those limits start to feel like bondage, and when we least expect it, our imagination jumps those walls and hunts down dreams that in the immediate aftermath feel attainable. Because most dreams are. We are inspired to make changes little by little, and it hurts. Breaking the shackles and stretching beyond our own perceived limits takes hard fucking work—oftentimes physical work—and when you put yourself on the line, self doubt and pain will greet you with a stinging combination that will buckle your knees.

Don’t worry about your schedule, your business, your family, or your friends. Just focus with me and really open your mind. In your mind’s eye, see yourself going to the funeral of a loved one. Picture yourself driving to the funeral parlor or chapel, parking the car, and getting out. As you walk inside the building, you notice the flowers, the soft organ music. You see the faces of friends and family you pass along the way. You feel the shared sorrow of losing, the joy of having known, that radiates from the hearts of the people there. As you walk down to the front of the room and look inside the casket, you suddenly come face-to-face with yourself. This is your funeral, three years from today. All these people have come to honor you, to express feelings of love and appreciation for your life. As you take a seat and wait for the services to begin, you look at the program in your hand. There are to be four speakers. The first is from your family, immediate and also extended—children, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents who have come from all over the country to attend. The second speaker is one of your friends, someone who can give a sense of what you were as a person. The third speaker is from your work or profession. And the fourth is from your church or some community organization where you’ve been involved in service. Now think deeply. What would you like each of these speakers to say about you and your life? What kind of husband, wife, father, or mother would you like their words to reflect? What kind of son or daughter or cousin? What kind of friend? What kind of working associate? What character would you like them to have seen in you? What contributions, what achievements would you want them to remember? Look carefully at the people around you. What difference would you like to have made in their lives? Before you read further, take a few minutes to jot down your impressions. It will greatly increase your personal understanding of Habit 2.

A man called me who watches our television program and said, “We are taking an offering for you, and we would like to give an offering to the gospel work in England. You just mentioned it in the sermon.” I said, “We would deeply appreciate it.” He said, “Maybe we can raise ten thousand dollars.” I said, “Oh, that would be so greatly appreciated because we are trying to open another chapel in another city in England, training the people to go there.” He called me after he took the offering and he said, “We do not have ten thousand, we have twenty, and we may have twenty more coming.” What did God do? I thank God for those people, but I am telling you the Lord raised the windows open in heaven.

but the entirety of human existence. Artificial intelligence is, after all, a mirroring and mimicry machine: we feed in the cumulative words, ideas, and images that our species has managed to amass (and digitize) over its history and these programs mirror back to us something that feels uncannily lifelike. A golem world. “I’d rather see an ad for cute shoes that I am going to like than see ads for a bunch of ugly stuff I don’t want,” one student said in an early class. In our discussions, we came to call this the “cute shoes problem” because it encapsulates one of the main reasons why surveillance capitalism and the AI revolution were able to sneak up on us with so little debate. Many of us do appreciate a certain level of automated customization, especially algorithms that suggest music, books, and people who might interest us. And at first, the stakes seemed low: Is it really a big deal if we see ads and suggestions based on our interests and tastes? Or if chatbots help clear our email backlogs? Yet now we find ourselves neck-deep in a system where, as with my own real-life doppelganger, the stakes are distinctly higher. Personal data, extracted without full knowledge or understanding, is sold to third parties and can influence everything from what loans we are eligible for to what job postings we see—to whether our jobs are replaced by deep learning bots that have gotten shockingly good at impersonating us. And those helpful recommendations and eerie impersonations come from the same

The major difference shows up when these monkeys are highly stressed (overaroused) for a long time. Then, compared to other monkeys, these more reactive monkeys seem anxious, depressed, and compulsive. If repeatedly upset, they show these behaviors more often, and at this point their neurotransmitters decrease. These behaviors and physical changes also show up in any monkey traumatized in childhood by being separated from its mother. Interestingly when first traumatized, what increases are the stress hormones like cortisol. But again, with time, especially with other stressors, like being isolated, the serotonin levels decline. Then the monkeys are permanently more reactive. The point to be realized from these two studies is that what creates the problem is chronic overarousal or stress or trauma in childhood—not the inherited trait. We saw the same point in chapter 2. Sensitive children experience more brief moments of arousal, with its increased adrenaline, but they’re fine if feeling secure. But when a sensitive child is insecure (or when any child is), short-term arousal turns to long-term arousal, with its increased cortisol. Eventually, serotonin is used up, too (according to the studies with monkeys). This research is important for HSPs. It makes very concrete why we need to avoid chronic overarousal. If our childhood programmed us to be threatened by everything, then we must do the inner work, usually in therapy, that will change that programming even if it takes years. Kramer cites evidence that a permanent susceptibility to overarousal and depression can develop and real harm can be done if serotonin levels are not returned to normal. So we want to stay secure, rested, and serotonin-strong. This keeps us ready to enjoy our trait’s advantages, the appreciation of the subtle. It means that the inevitable moments of overarousal do not lead to increased cortisol over days and decreased serotonin over months and years. If we have blown it, then we can still correct the situation. But it takes time, and we may want to use medication for a while to help make this correction.

There are three signs that your self-expression is restricted. The first is that you are extremely accommodating to other people. You are always pleasing everybody else, always taking care of everybody. You are self-effacing, almost like a martyr. You do not seem concerned with your own needs. You cannot stand to see those around you in pain and will repeatedly sacrifice your own desires to help them. You may do so much for people that it makes them feel guilty to be with you. Inside, you may feel weak and passive, or resentful when all your giving is not appreciated. You are too much at the mercy of other people's needs. A second sign that you have problems in this realm is that you are overly inhibited and controlled. You may be a workaholic – your whole life revolves around work. Your work may be a career or it may be other things. You may work to look perfectly beautiful at all times, or to keep everything perfectly neat and clean, or to always do things in the perfectly proper, correct way. You may be emotionally flat. There is no spontaneity in your life. You suppress your natural reactions to events. Whether it is because you feel you have to do what other people want (the Subjugation lifetrap) or because you have to live up to some impossibly high standard (the Unrelenting Standards lifetrap), you have a sense that you are not really enjoying your life. Your life is sombre and joyless. You somehow rob yourself of fun, relaxation, and pleasure. A third indications of problems in Self-Expression is having a great deal of unexpressed anger. Chronic resenting may simmer underneath, occasionally erupting unexpectedly, almost out of your control. And you may feel depressed. You are trapped in an unrewarding routine. Your life seems empty. You are doing everything you should, yet there is no pleasure in it.

Adults appreciate differences more. It is only children—or immature adults—who feel that pressure to be exactly the same.

Although the federal government had been trying to persuade middle-class families to buy single-family homes for more than fourteen years, the campaign had achieved little by the time Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933. Homeownership remained prohibitively expensive for working- and middle-class families: bank mortgages typically required 50 percent down, interest-only payments, and repayment in full after five to seven years, at which point the borrower would have to refinance or find another bank to issue a new mortgage with similar terms. Few urban working- and middle-class families had the financial capacity to do what was being asked. The Depression made the housing crisis even worse. Many property-owning families with mortgages couldn't make their payments and were subject to foreclosure. With most others unable to afford homes at all, the construction industry was stalled. The New Deal designed one program to support existing homeowners who couldn't make payments, and another to make first-time homeownership possible for the middle class. In 1933, to rescue households that were about to default, the administration created the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC). It purchased existing mortgages that were subject to imminent foreclosure and then issued new mortgages with repayment schedules of up to fifteen years (later extended to twenty-five years). In addition, HOLC mortgages were amortized, meaning that each month's payment included some principal as well as interest, so when the loan was paid off, the borrower would own the home. Thus, for the first time, working- and middle-class homeowners could gradually gain equity while their properties were still mortgaged. If a family with an amortized mortgage sold its home, the equity (including any appreciation) would be the family's to keep. HOLC mortgages had low interest rates, but the borrowers still were obligated to make regular payments. The HOLC, therefore, had to exercise prudence about. its borrowers' abilities to avoid default. to assess risk, the HOLC wanted to know something about the condition of the house and of surrounding houses in the neighborhood to see whether the property would likely maintain its value. The HOLC hired local real estate agents to make the appraisals on which refinancing decisions could be based. With these agents required by their national ethics code to maintain segregation, it's not surprising that in gauging risk HOLK considered the racial composition of neighborhoods. The HOLC created color-coded maps of every metropolitan area in the nation, with the safest neighborhoods colored green and the riskiest colored red. A neighborhood earned a red color if African Americans lived in it, even if it was a solid middle-class neighborhood of single-family homes. For example, in St. Louis, the white middle-class suburb of Ladue was colored green because, according to an HOLC appraiser in 1940, it had 'not a single foreigner or negro.' The similarly middle-class suburban area of Lincoln Terrace was colored red because it had 'little or no value today . . . due to the colored element now controlling the district.' Although HOLC did not always decline to rescue homeowners in neighborhoods colored red on its maps (i.e., redlined neighborhoods), the maps had a huge impact and put the federal government on record as judging that African Americans, simply because of their race, were poor risks.

Radio is a good music teacher and sometimes it also teaches me dance while I am doing my radio programs.

IF THIS CONCLUSION had signaled the end of Arendt’s thinking on the subject, American readers of On Revolution could close the book basking in a feeling of self-satisfaction, offering a hymn of praise to their country’s exceptionalism, singing a chorus of “God Bless America” and retiring to their beds secure in the conviction that theirs was a nation unlike all others. But this was not the German-Jewish immigrant’s complex understanding of the United States, where gratitude was inevitably tempered by ambivalence and pessimism. Arendt was not one to close on so optimistic a note. The book’s last chapter, bringing the narrative up to the present, takes a sharp turn toward the ominous. It exhibits what one commentator calls a “particularly bleak and embattled tone.” It is a bucket of cold water thrown on the warm glow of the earlier exuberance. Political freedom, Arendt insisted in the book’s final pages, “means the right ‘to be a participator in government,’ or it means nothing.” The colonial townships and assemblies, building pyramidally to the constitutional conventions, were paradigms of citizen participation, but the popular elections that Americans today consider the hallmark of their democratic republic are hardly the same thing. Voting is not what Arendt meant by participation. The individual in the privacy of the voting booth is not engaged with others in the public arena, putting one’s opinions to the test against differing views and life experiences, but instead is choosing among professional politicians offering to promote and protect his or her personal interests through ready-made formulas, mindless banalities, blatant pandering, and outlandish promises cobbled together as party programs. (And heaven help the elected official who, in the manner of Edmund Burke, tries to argue against the personal interest of his or her constituents or to communicate bad news.) Leaders are selected on the basis of private, parochial concerns, not the public welfare, producing a mishmash of self-interested demands, or what Arendt called “the invasion of the public realm by society.” This was almost the opposite of genuine participation. Instead of the kind of intimate interchange of views and the deliberation that might be expected to resolve conflict, which was the practice of the townships and assemblies, isolated voters left to their own devices and with no appreciation of any larger good or of people different from themselves demand an affirmation of their particular prejudices and preconceptions. They have no opportunity, or desire, to come together with the aim of reaching mutual understanding and agreement on shared problems. Centrifugality prevails. American democracy, Arendt writes, had become a zero-sum game of “pressure groups, lobbies and other devices.” It is a system in which only power can prevail, or at best the blight of mutual backscratching to no greater end than mere political survival, lending itself to lies and demagoguery, quarrels and stalemates, cynical deal-making, not public exchange and calm deliberation.

age of computers and programming, and he couldn’t understand either. Sure, he could send emails, had even mastered Word and Excel, but apart from that, the complexities of the machine left him baffled. There was unemployment, but he had never taken the dole, or he could go overseas, try his luck on an oil rig. Even if that were possible, he didn’t want to go, but these were desperate times, and now, to add confusion, there was a solution. Betty Galton, his former sister-in-law, had in her possession a million pounds in gold. He opened his laptop and switched it on. How does one melt gold? How does one dispose of it? he thought. He entered the search terms, fingering one key at a time, and pressed enter. If a criminal act was committed during the planning stage, then he was guilty as charged. And for once, he did not care. He hummed a tune to himself. It had been some time since he had been contented. For that night, he would forget what would be required and envisage what his life could be like with money in his pocket. Maybe a small place in the country, a dog, possibly a woman. How long had it been since he had enjoyed the closeness of another’s skin? He picked up his phone and made a call. It was a special treat for himself and for once the budget was going to be blown. He knew she’d look after him, the way she looked after so many others. Chapter 11 Clare woke early the next day; her phone was ringing. She leant over and picked it up. ‘Yarwood, I’m at the hospital,’ Tremayne said. She could tell by his voice that something was amiss. ‘I’ll be there in fifteen.’ ‘Thanks, and don’t tell anyone.’ A quick shower, some food for her cat, and Clare was out of her cottage. A murder enquiry was serious; her boss being ill, more so. Parking at the hospital, she soon found her way to outpatients, meeting someone she knew. ‘It’s Tremayne, he’s not well,’ Clare said. ‘And please, not a word to anyone.’ The woman, a friend, understood. Inside, behind some screens, Tremayne was lying flat on his back. His shoes had been removed, and his tie had been loosened. ‘How long have you been here?’ Clare said. She knew Tremayne would not appreciate lashings of sympathy, although he looked dreadful. ‘Since last night. I’d had a few drinks, a few cigarettes, and all of a sudden I’m in the back of an ambulance.’ ‘Does Jean know?’ ‘Not yet. Maybe you can phone her. She went to see her son for a few days, left me on my own.’ ‘Off the leash and into trouble, that’s you, guv.’ ‘Not today, Yarwood. Maybe Moulton’s right about me retiring.’ ‘Having you feeling sorry for yourself isn’t going to help, is it?’ The nurse, standing on the other side of the bed, looked over at Clare disapprovingly. ‘It’s how we work,’ Clare said. ‘That may be the case, but Mr Tremayne has had a bit of a scare. He needs to be here for a few days while we conduct a few checks.’ ‘What’s the problem?’ ‘It’s not for me to say. That’s for the doctor.’ ‘He told me to cut down on the beer, quit smoking, and take it easy.’ ‘Retire, is that it?’ Clare said. ‘They don’t get it, do they?’ Tremayne looked over at the nurse who was monitoring his condition. ‘Sorry. We’ve got a murder to deal with, nothing personal.’ ‘Don’t worry about me. We get our fair share of people, men mainly, who think they’re invincible. You’re not the first, not the last, who thinks they know more

A CLASSIC WAITS for me, it contains all, nothing is lacking, Yet all were lacking if taste were lacking, or if the endorsement of the right man were lacking. O clublife, and the pleasures of membership, O volumes for sheer fascination unrivalled. Into an armchair endlessly rocking, Walter J. Black my president, I, freely invited, cordially welcomed to membership, My arm around John Kieran, Pearl S. Buck, My taste in books guarded by the spirits of William Lyon Phelps, Hendrik Willem Van Loon, (From your memories, sad brothers, from the fitful risings and callings I heard), I to the classics devoted, brother of rough mechanics, beauty-parlor technicians, spot welders, radio-program directors (It is not necessary to have a higher education to appreciate these books), I, connoisseur of good reading, friend of connoisseurs of good reading everywhere, I, not obligated to take any specific number of books, free to reject any volume, perfectly free to reject Montaigne, Erasmus, Milton, I, in perfect health except for a slight cold, pressed for time, having only a few more years to live, Now celebrate this opportunity. Come, I will make the club indissoluble, I will read the most splendid books the sun ever shone upon, I will start divine magnetic groups, With the love of comrades, With the life-long love of distinguished committees. I strike up for an Old Book. Long the best-read figure in America, my dues paid, sitter in armchairs everywhere, wanderer in populous cities, weeping with Hecuba and with the late William Lyon Phelps, Free to cancel my membership whenever I wish, Turbulent, fleshy, sensible, Never tiring of clublife, Always ready to read another masterpiece provided it has the approval of my president, Walter J. Black, Me imperturbe, standing at ease among writers, Rais'd by a perfect mother and now belonging to a perfect book club, Bearded, sunburnt, gray-neck'd, astigmatic, Loving the masters and the masters only (I am mad for them to be in contact with me), My arm around Pearl S. Buck, only American woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, I celebrate this opportunity. And I will not read a book nor the least part of a book but has the approval of the Committee, For all is useless without that which you may guess at many times and not hit, that which they hinted at, All is useless without readability. By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms (89¢ for the Regular Edition or $1.39 for the DeLuxe Edition, plus a few cents postage). I will make inseparable readers with their arms around each other's necks, By the love of classics, By the manly love of classics.

Here are a few selections from Ridley’s Rational Optimist: Page 27: Besides, a million years of natural selection shaped human nature to be ambitious to rear successful children, not to settle for contentment: people are programmed to desire, not to appreciate.

Your Success Path I have a 3 part plan for you to be successful... Believe in your value Position yourself in value Communicate your value Go to TheForeverWomanFormula.com, watch the video on the page, and sign up for my free course, The Forever Woman Program. If you get The Forever Woman and use the principles in it... You’ll attract a man who loves and cherishes you He’ll pursue you for a committed, lasting relationship You’ll do less work and feel more appreciated and valued by your man. If you don't get it... You’ll stay stuck in your problems and challenges with men. You’ll feel like you’re doing everything in a relationship only to be taken for granted, have guys pull away, and eventually disappear on you You’ll wonder if you’re ever going to get into the relationship you want. Go to TheForeverWomanFormula.com and check it out for free... if you decide you want to stay a part of our community, you can learn about how to do that as well there.

program itself, you’ll only ever get the same already-converted bunch coming to hear you—if that. I didn’t learn a single thing that wasn’t said fifty years ago.” “Our mission is to educate—” “Stimulate,” Alva said. “That’s what you need to do. Give ladies your age a reason to miss their bridge games and piano recitals. Get yourself a firebrand speaker—the equivalent of Christabel Pankhurst, that English suffragette who keeps getting herself arrested. Use a meeting to organize a march on the Metropolitan Club in Washington; the congressmen are more likely to be there than in chambers. Make posters. Write letters. Do things.” Kitty smiled as politely as Alva had done a minute before. “I’m sure we appreciate the advice.” “You know, for an intelligent woman, you are not very sensible.

Critics of capitalism often decry the “greed” that animates successful entrepreneurs. The real problem, however, is not the amount of money made by people at the top; it is the systematic suppression of people at the bottom. The real-life equivalent of the Monopoly player who has to mortgage all his money-making assets to pay his debts is the hand-to-mouth day laborer who, unable to pay his car insurance, loses his car and, unable to drive to his job, is unable to pay his rent. The villain here is not necessarily the avarice of the banker who loaned this poor fellow his money in the first place. It is the unstable dynamic of a system that mercilessly drives some people down to the bottom through a succession of cascading misfortunes. To experience the board game version of this kind of misery vortex in Monopoly is to appreciate the advantages of the welfare state, which, when it is functioning properly, does not just take money from rich people and give it to poor people. It also softens the iterative feedback dynamics within the system so as to ensure that minor nudges—a lost job, a criminal conviction, a divorce, a medical setback—do not create feedback effects that ultimately produce a full-blown personal catastrophe. Job training, public health care, a humane justice system, community housing and support for single mothers are examples of programs that can achieve that effect.

She often watched him while he worked, her head cocked and her brows drawn as if she were seeing him for the first time. “What can I do to make you happy?” she’d ask. If he gave an answer, she would lavishly fulfill his desires. She took him traveling to the best greenhouses in the state, and bought a library full of gardening books. Lucian knew she would have given him more. He didn’t want it. He wanted to reassure her that he appreciated her extravagance, but didn’t require it, that he was satisfied with simple, loving give-and-take. Sometimes, he told her in the simplest words he knew: “I love you, too.” But he knew that she never quite believed him. She worried that he was lying, or that his programming had erased his free will. It was easier for her to believe those things than to accept that someone could love her.

The second main argument to support the idea that simple living enhances our capacity for pleasure is that it encourages us to attend to and appreciate the inexhaustible wealth of interesting, beautiful, marvelous, and thought-provoking phenomena continually presented to us by the everyday world that is close at hand. As Emerson says: “Things near are not less beautiful and wondrous than things remote. . . . This perception of the worth of the vulgar is fruitful in discoveries.”47 Here, as elsewhere, Emerson elegantly articulates the theory, but it is his friend Thoreau who really puts it into practice. Walden is, among other things, a celebration of the unexotic and a demonstration that the overlooked wonders of the commonplace can be a source of profound pleasure readily available to all. This idea is hardly unique to Emerson and Thoreau, of course, and, like most of the ideas we are considering, it goes back to ancient times. Marcus Aurelius reflects that “anyone with a feeling for nature—a deeper sensitivity—will find it all gives pleasure,” from the jaws of animals to the “distinct beauty of old age in men and women.”48 “Even Nature’s inadvertence has its own charms, its own attractiveness,” he observes, citing as an example the way loaves split open on top when baking.49 With respect to the natural world, celebrating the ordinary has been a staple of literature and art at least since the advent of Romanticism in the late eighteenth century. Wordsworth wrote three separate poems in praise of the lesser celandine, a common wildflower; painters like van Gogh discover whole worlds of beauty and significance in a pair of peasant boots; many of the finest poems crafted by poets like Thomas Hardy, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, William Carlos Williams, and Seamus Heaney take as their subject the most mundane objects, activities, or events and find in these something worth lingering over and commemorating in verse: a singing thrush, a snowy woods, a fish, some chilled plums, a patch of mint. Of course, artists have also celebrated the extraordinary, the exotic, and the magnificent. Homer gushes over the splendors of Menelaus’s palace; Gauguin left his home country to seek inspiration in the more exotic environment of Tahiti; Handel composed pieces to accompany momentous ceremonial occasions. Yet it is striking that a humble activity like picking blackberries—the subject of well-known poems by, among others, Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney, and Richard Wilbur—appears to be more inspirational to modern poets, more charged with interest and significance, than, say, the construction of the world’s tallest building, the Oscar ceremonies, the space program, or the discovery of DNA’s molecular structure. One might even say that it has now become an established function of art to help us discover the remarkable in the commonplace