Reply 1998 Quotes

Frank Muir is affable. ‘We’re all fag ends in the gutter of life,’ he replies cheerfully to my observation that the timing of success is quite unpredictable … ‘One realises that all those things like talent, looks, skill and hard work really don’t get you anywhere.

In the January 12, 1998, issue of U.S. News and World Report, the head of the Harvard School of Public Health's department of nutrition, a very fickle man, Walter Willet, was queried about a low-fat diet's failure to cure any diseases or save any lives. His weak reply, “It was just a hypothesis to begin with,” showed no shame. That hypothesis has cost more lives than the last two world wars and the Vietnam conflict put together. Just check the American Cancer Society's and American Heart Association's statistics for the last three decades.

Peter Pan" Hey, Peter Pan I'm going home now I've done all I can Besides I'm grown now I'll think of you all painted with the night You sit and watch from somewhere As one by one the lights go out I wrote a note to tell you how you matter When the rain came down All the letters scattered And washed away Drifted off to Never Where you'll be safe from me now forever I believe you now when You say that this will hurt So I don't have to go and Play with you in the dirt now Hey Peter Pan I'm going home now I'm all grown up You're on your own now I'll think of you all painted with the night You sit and watch from somewhere As one by one the lights go out Patty Griffin, Flaming Red (1998) reply | edit | delete | flag *

The former head of this operation, Gary Wendt, who is credited with much of the enormous success of GEFS, used his personal agenda as a simple but inordinately powerful tool for growing the business into ever new entrepreneurial arenas. Over the years, he used his personal agenda to make it unequivocally clear that he expected entrepreneurial business growth from every member of management. At every major meeting, the topic of business development was on the agenda (usually in the number one spot). In every annual review, managers were asked to demonstrate the revenues they had created from businesses that did not exist five years before. From division heads to newly hired analysts, everyone was held accountable for some set of activities having to do with creating entrepreneurial revenue and profit streams. In short, no one who worked in the organization could avoid the unremitting focus on new business development. You need to make sure that you are similarly consistent, predictable, and focused, and that you sustain this emphasis over a long period. Pressure applied only once is soon forgotten, and alternating pressure (as in flavor-of-the-month management) will cause people to be confused, disillusioned, or angry. Wendt’s consistent, visible, and predictable attention to business development created a pressure in GEFS for entrepreneurial business growth that took it from the $300 million installment loan portfolio we looked at in chapter 6 to a financial services behemoth with $250 billion in assets under management when he left in 1998. Examples of Wendt’s single-minded determination to drive growth through entrepreneurial transformation at GEFS are numerous. Years ago, for instance, he was asked whether his agenda would change if someone rushed in and told him that the computer room was on fire (implying that his business could be completely destroyed). Wendt replied that he employed firefighters to handle such emergencies. As the leader, his most important job was to keep people focused on business development. Since business development is an uncomfortable and unpredictable process, Wendt knew that if he allowed it to appear to be a low priority for him, all those working for him would heave a sigh of relief and go back to business as usual, with new businesses struggling to find a place on the priority list. In fact, as he remarked, even if he did try to get involved in putting out the fire, he would probably only interfere with the efforts of the highly competent people employed to do so.

Appealing to imperial symbols of grandeur is a powerful tool for managing the political process. The more official Russian propaganda tries to present the Great Patriotic War as a chain of events leading to the preordained victory organized by the ruler, the faster memories of Stalinist repression vanish, and people forget that Stalin himself sanctioned the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and played a large role in starting the war. Positive feelings toward Stalin grew from 19 percent in 1998 to 53 percent in 2003. When asked, “If Stalin were alive and running for President of Russia, would you vote for him?” 26–27 percent of Russian residents replied yes.24 This is a man who killed more of our fellow countrymen than anyone else in the long and complex history of Russia. I think that fact alone is enough to indicate the scale of the dangers associated with post-imperial syndrome in our country.

I asked Hogan to describe his process in performing this task. He replied: In 1998, I read Tracks in the Psychic Wilderness by Dale Graff333 [retired Defense Intelligence Agency director of the US government’s classified psi research program] in which he described how to remote view. I sat in front of a monitor with the code for a target in my mind and closed my eyes. I made my mind “an empty rice bowl.” I repeated the code to myself and waited. The impressions came and I sketched them. I nailed the target the first time. What I do hasn’t changed much [since then], but I have some nuances that are different. I go to a quiet place and sit. I close my eyes and warm down for a minute or two by relaxing. [Former army “psychic spy”] Joe McMoneagle takes 45 minutes to warm down. I’d be asleep by then. I can go only a minute or two. With my eyes closed, I blank my mind and repeat the target code or location. It could be a code like [the letters] AMEF or a location like “on the table in Wayne’s office.” I just need something to focus my attention on that thing out of the innumerable other things in the universe. I have a place I “look” in my mind, and I know my eyes actually focus on it. It isn’t like an infinity setting on a camera. I think it’s with a focus of about three feet. The next part is difficult to describe. I allow images to come. If someone says it’s an object on a table, I allow an “impression” of a table to come into that space. I’m not really remote viewing the table. It’s just a platform. Then my mind relaxes into allowing target impressions through. I may say, “Let me see the object on Wayne’s table.” As I relax into it, I get a feeling that is a little like a very small feeling of that time when you’re starting to drift into sleep. I could guess it’s going from Alpha [brainwave rhythm] into Theta, but I don’t know. I don’t hold it for long, though. I come back from it and have to go back in. I have to open my eyes and sketch what I get, but I’m not a good artist and by the time I get a part of a sketch started, I’ve lost some of the target. I write the impressions in words and sketch what I can. Then I have to close my eyes again, warm down briefly, and repeat the process. I have to stay with details and avoid naming something. I’m much better at objects than pictures. I’ve learned that everything I get is meaningful, but some can’t be associated with an object. It’s still attached to some real thing. I have had no training, and probably haven’t done more than a hundred sessions since I first learned I could do it in 1998.