Short Accumulation Quotes

After perhaps thirty meters, just as a soldier turned around, the girl was felled. Hands were clamped upon her from behind and the boy next door brought her down. He forced her knees to the road and suffered the penalty. He collected her punches as if they were presents. Her bony hands and elbows were accepted with nothing but a few short moans. He accumulated the loud, clumsy specks of saliva and tears as if they were lovely to his face, and more important, he was able to hold her down.

Charity is no substitute for justice. If we never challenge a social order that allows some to accumulate wealth--even if they decide to help the less fortunate--while others are short-changed, then even acts of kindness end up supporting unjust arrangements. We must never ignore the injustices that make charity necessary, or the inequalities that make it possible.

Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product...if we should judge the United States of America by that - counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

We experience the externalities of the attention economy in little drips, so we tend to describe them with words of mild bemusement like “annoying” or “distracting.” But this is a grave misreading of their nature. In the short term, distractions can keep us from doing the things we want to do. In the longer term, however, they can accumulate and keep us from living the lives we want to live, or, even worse, undermine our capacities for reflection and self-regulation, making it harder, in the words of Harry Frankfurt, to “want what we want to want.” Thus there are deep ethical implications lurking here for freedom, wellbeing, and even the integrity of the self.

In the morning you were never violently sorry-- you made no resolutions, but if you had overdone it and your heart was slightly out of order, you went on the wagon for a few days without saying anything about it, and waited until an accumulation of nervous boredom projected you into another party.

The indigestible parts of giant squid, in particular their beaks, accumulate in sperm whales’ stomachs into the substance known as ambergris, which is used as a fixative in perfumes. The next time you spray on Chanel Number 5 (assuming you do), you may wish to reflect that you are dousing yourself in distillate of unseen sea monster.

The greater the amount of knowledge you accumulate, the bigger your island gets, but the greater the shoreline of the unknown becomes. In short, the more you know, the more you know you don’t know.

Civilization, as a process, is indistinguishable from diminishing time-preference (or declining concern for the present in comparison to the future). Democracy, which both in theory and evident historical fact accentuates time-preference to the point of convulsive feeding-frenzy, is thus as close to a precise negation of civilization as anything could be, short of instantaneous social collapse into murderous barbarism or zombie apocalypse (which it eventually leads to). As the democratic virus burns through society, painstakingly accumulated habits and attitudes of forward-thinking, prudential, human and industrial investment, are replaced by a sterile, orgiastic consumerism, financial incontinence, and a ‘reality television’ political circus. Tomorrow might belong to the other team, so it’s best to eat it all now.

Once upon a time there was a mother who, in order to become a mother, had agreed to change her name; who set herself the task of falling in love with her husband bit-by-bit, but who could n ever manage to love one part, the part, curiously enough, which made possible her motherhood; whose feet were hobbled by verrucas and whose shoulders were stooped beneath the accumulating guilts of the world; whose husband's unlovable organ failed to recover from the effects of a freeze; and who, like her husband, finally succumbed to the mysteries of telephones, spending long minutes listening to the words of wrong-number callers . . . shortly after my tenth birthday (when I had recovered from the fever which has recently returned to plague me after an interval of nearly twenty-one years), Amina Sinai resumed her recent practice of leaving suddenly, and always immediately after a wrong number, on urgent shopping trips.

The idea that the millionaire finds nothing but a sad, empty place at the top of this society; the idea that the rich do not know what to do with their money; the idea that the successful become filled up with futility, and that those born successful are poor and little as well as rich - the idea, in short, of the disconsolateness of the rich - is, in the main, merely a way by which those who are not rich reconcile themselves to the fact. Wealth in America is directly gratifying and directly leads to many further gratifications. To be truly rich is to possess the means of realizing in big ways one's little whims and fantasies and sicknesses....

A final victory is an accumulation of many short-term encounters. To lightly dismiss a success because it does not usher in a complete order of justice is to fail to comprehend the process of full victory. It underestimates the value of confrontation and dissolves the confidence born of partial victory by which new efforts are powered.

To get acceptable quality at the lowest cost, it is vitally important to reject defective material at a stage where its accumulated value is at the lowest possible level. Thus, as noted, we are better off catching a bad raw egg than a cooked one, and screening out our college applicant before he visits Intel. In short, reject before investing further value.

How fleeting are the wishes and efforts of man! How short his time! Consequently how poor will his products be, compared with those accumulated by nature during whole geological periods. Can we wonder, then, that nature’s productions should be far “truer” in character than man’s productions; that they should be infinitely better adapted to the most complex conditions of life, and should plainly bear the stamp of far higher workmanship?

What the US evidently sought to impose by main force on Iraq was a state apparatus whose fundamental mission was to facilitate conditions for profitable capital accumulation on the part of both domestic and foreign capital. I call this kind of state apparatus a neoliberal state. The freedoms it embodies reflect the interests of private property owners, businesses, multinational corporations, and financial capital. Bremer invited the Iraqis, in short, to ride their horse of freedom straight into the neoliberal corral.

Never be intimidated by what seems ominous, for BiG is only an accumulation of many smalls.

Slow to anger.” The Hebrew phrase is literally “long of nostrils.” Picture an angry bull, pawing the ground, breathing loudly, nostrils flared. That would be, so to speak, “short-nosed.” But the Lord is long-nosed. He doesn’t have his finger on the trigger. It takes much accumulated provoking to draw out his ire. Unlike us, who are often emotional dams ready to break, God can put up with a lot. This is why the Old Testament speaks of God being “provoked to anger” by his people dozens of times (especially in Deuteronomy; 1–2 Kings; and Jeremiah). But not once are we told that God is “provoked to love” or “provoked to mercy.” His anger requires provocation; his mercy is pent up, ready to gush forth. We tend to think: divine anger is pent up, spring-loaded; divine mercy is slow to build. It’s just the opposite. Divine mercy is ready to burst forth at the slightest prick.

Feathers," he says. They ask this question at least once a week. He gives the same answer. Even over such a short time — two months, three? He's lost count — they've accumulated a stock of lore, of conjecture about him: Snowman was once a bird but he's forgotten how to fly and the rest of his feathers fell out, and so he is cold and he needs a second skin, and he has to wrap himself up. No: he's cold because he eats fish, and fish are cold. No: he wraps himself up because he's missing his man thing, and he doesn't want us to see. That's why he won't go swimming. Snowman has wrinkles because he once lived underwater and it wrinkled up his skin. Snowman is sad because the others like him flew away over the sea, and now he is all alone.

It occurred to me that I had been extraordinarily fortunate to have grown up in a prosperous country in an era when, for pretty much the first time in its history, I could read whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted to. And what had I done with this freedom? I had slowly, though unintentionally, abused it. My reading life had become an accumulation of bad habits, short cuts and lies.

WHY DID THE rise of agriculture launch the evolution of our crowd infectious diseases? One reason just mentioned is that agriculture sustains much higher human population densities than does the hunting-gathering lifestyle—on the average, 10 to 100 times higher. In addition, hunter-gatherers frequently shift camp and leave behind their own piles of feces with accumulated microbes and worm larvae. But farmers are sedentary and live amid their own sewage, thus providing microbes with a short path from one person’s body into another’s drinking water.

The Three Considerations You’ll want to consider: In what stage of your investing life are you? The Wealth Accumulation Stage or the Wealth Preservation Stage? Or perhaps a blend of the two? What level of risk do you find acceptable? Is your investment horizon long-term or short-term?

there’s an accumulation of technical know-how, so short of some grievous error nothing’s ever totally ruined. But you can’t stockpile vision and creativity—they’re more perishable, like fresh fruit. Making it big is no guarantee of success. There have been lots of companies that made it big, only to disappear.

People generally suppose that they don't understand one another very well, and that is true; they don't. But some things they communicate easily and fully. Anger and contempt and hatred leap from one heart to another like fire in dry grass. The revelations of love are never complete or clear, not in this world. Love is slow and accumulating, and not matter how large or high it grows, it falls short. Love comprehends the world, though we don't comprehend it. But hate comes off in slices, clear and whole—self-explanatory, you might say.

I’m not sure, though, what “for later” means anymore. Something changed in the world. Not too long ago, it changed, and we know it. We don’t know how to explain it yet, but I think we all can feel it, somewhere deep in our gut or in our brain circuits. We feel time differently. No one has quite been able to capture what is happening or say why. Perhaps it’s just that we sense an absence of future, because the present has become too overwhelming, so the future has become unimaginable. And without future, time feels like only an accumulation. An accumulation of months, days, natural disasters, television series, terrorist attacks, divorces, mass migrations, birthdays, photographs, sunrises. We haven’t understood the exact way we are now experiencing time. And maybe the boy’s frustration at not knowing what to take a picture of, or how to frame and focus the things he sees as we all sit inside the car, driving across this strange, beautiful, dark country, is simply a sign of how our ways of documenting the world have fallen short. Perhaps if we found a new way to document it, we might begin to understand this new way we experience space and time. Novels and movies don’t quite capture it; journalism doesn’t; photography, dance, painting, and theater don’t; molecular biology and quantum physics certainly don’t either. We haven’t understood how space and time exist now, how we really experience them. And until we find a way to document them, we will not understand them.

This matters. Real friends - people you trust, respect, laugh with, and can rely on - are a vitally important part of life. No matter how much wealth or fame you accumulate, if you don’t have true friends it’s unlikely you’ll be happy. Sadly I know too many people who have achieved their material goals, but have no friends. As the expression goes: greed is a hole you can never fill

Though we became experimental creatures of our own devising, it’s important to bear in mind that we had no inkling of this process, let alone its consequences, until only the last six or seven of our 100,000 generations. We have done it all sleepwalking. Nature let a few apes into the lab of evolution, switched on the lights, and left us there to mess about with an ever-growing supply of ingredients and processes. The effect on us and the world has accumulated ever since. Let’s list a few steps between the earliest times and this: sharp stones, animal skins, useful bits of bone and wood, wild fire, tame fire, seeds for eating, seeds for planting, houses, villages, pottery, cities, metals, wheels, explosives. What strikes one most forcefully is the acceleration, the runaway progression of change - or to put it another way, the collapsing of time. From the first chipped stone to the first smelted iron took nearly 3 million years; from the first iron to the hydrogen bomb took only 3,000.

We repeat, these hybrid constructions are not the least interesting for the artist, the antiquary and the historian. They make us aware to what extent architecture is a primitive thing, demonstrating as they do, like the cyclopean remains, the pyramids of Egypt, or the gigantic Hindu pagodas, that architecture's greatest products are less individual than social creations; the offspring of nations in labour rather than the outpouring of men of genius; the deposit let behind by a nation; the accumulation of the centuries; the residue from the successive evaporations of human society; in short, a kind of formation. Each wave of time lays down its alluvium, each race deposits its own stratum on the monument, each individual contributes his stone. Thus do the beavers, and the bees; and thus does man.

Although precautionary saving in anticipation of short-term shocks does indeed exist in the real world, it is clearly not the primary explanation for the observed accumulation and distribution of wealth.

Even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction - purpose and dignity - that afflicts us all. Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans. If this is true here at home, so it is true elsewhere in world.

In life there are four forces: love, habit, time, and boredom. Love and habit at short range are immensely powerful, but time, lacking a minus charge, accumulates inexorably, and with its brother boredom levels all.

I was very fond of strange stories when I was a child. In my village-school days, I used to buy stealthily popular novels and historical recitals. Fearing that my father and my teacher might punish me for this and rob me of these treasures, I carefully hid them in secret places where I could enjoy them unmolested. As I grew older, my love for strange stories became even stronger, and I learned of things stranger than what I had read in my childhood. When I was in my thirties, my memory was full of these stories accumulated through years of eager seeking. l have always admired such writers of the T'ang Dynasty as Tuan Ch'eng-shih [author of the Yu-yang tsa-tsu] and Niu Sheng [author of the Hsuan-kuai lu]. Who wrote short stories so excellent in portrayal of men and description of things. I often had the ambition to write a book (of stories) which might be compared with theirs. But I was too lazy to write, and as my laziness persisted, I gradually forgot most of the stories which I had learned. Now only these few stories, less than a score, have survived and have so successfully battled against my laziness that they are at last written down. Hence this Book of Monsters. I have sometimes laughingly said to myself that it is not I who have found these ghosts and monsters, but they, the monstrosities themselves, which have found me! ... Although my book is called a book or monsters, it is not confined to them: it also records the strange things of the human world and sometimes conveys a little bit of moral lesson.

The short story can be hot and sweet or hot and fierce. You get it in one sitting or you don’t get it. It’s like a shore break. It happens quickly, and is right there in front of you, menacing you. First you’re looking at the shore break, and then if you don’t back up, it’s on you. The novel is the long, low wave that you ride south from the Arctic Circle. It’s powerful, but its power accumulates over a very long time as it rolls towards the reef.

Investment Owner’s Contract I, _____________ ___________________, hereby state that I am an investor who is seeking to accumulate wealth for many years into the future. I know that there will be many times when I will be tempted to invest in stocks or bonds because they have gone (or “are going”) up in price, and other times when I will be tempted to sell my investments because they have gone (or “are going”) down. I hereby declare my refusal to let a herd of strangers make my financial decisions for me. I further make a solemn commitment never to invest because the stock market has gone up, and never to sell because it has gone down. Instead, I will invest $______.00 per month, every month, through an automatic investment plan or “dollar-cost averaging program,” into the following mutual fund(s) or diversified portfolio(s): _________________________________, _________________________________, _________________________________. I will also invest additional amounts whenever I can afford to spare the cash (and can afford to lose it in the short run). I hereby declare that I will hold each of these investments continually through at least the following date (which must be a minimum of 10 years after the date of this contact): _________________ _____, 20__. The only exceptions allowed under the terms of this contract are a sudden, pressing need for cash, like a health-care emergency or the loss of my job, or a planned expenditure like a housing down payment or a tuition bill. I am, by signing below, stating my intention not only to abide by the terms of this contract, but to re-read this document whenever I am tempted to sell any of my investments. This contract is valid only when signed by at least one witness, and must be kept in a safe place that is easily accessible for future reference.

In some respects, the sexual mores of Victorian Britain replicated the mechanics of the age-defining steam engine. Blocking the flow of erotic energy creates ever-increasing pressure which is put to work through short, controlled bursts of productivity. Though he was wrong about a lot, it appears Sigmund Freud got it right when he observed that “civilization” is built largely on erotic energy that has been blocked, concentrated, accumulated, and redirected.

In general, people accumulate knowledge gradually over a long period of time. However, there are extraordinary people all around us, who are capable of accumulating impressive amounts of knowledge within a relatively short period of time. Nevertheless, even the greatest genius possesses only a small fraction of all knowledge known by mankind. Finally, the following question arises: how large is all the existing knowledge in comparison to the space of ignorance?

It is natural to suppose that global warming would act as a useful counterweight to the Earth’s tendency to plunge back into glacial conditions. However, as Kolbert has pointed out, when you are confronted with a fluctuating and unpredictable climate, ‘the last thing you’d want to do is conduct a vast unsupervised experiment on it’. It has even been suggested, with more plausibility than would at first seem evident, that an ice age might actually be induced by a rise in temperatures. The idea is that a slight warming would enhance evaporation rates and increase cloud cover, leading in the higher latitudes to more persistent accumulations of snow. In fact, global warming could plausibly, if paradoxically, lead to powerful localized cooling in North America and northern Europe.

By statute, a Supreme Court term begins on the first Monday of every October. But the justices’ active labor actually begins the week before, on the last Monday of September, when they meet in conference to consider the cert petitions that have accumulated over the summer months of recess.

Oikonomia is the science or art of efficiently producing, distributing, and maintaining concrete use values for the household and community over the long run. Chrematistics is the art of maximizing the accumulation by individuals of abstract exchange value in the form of money in the short run.

Noting that material poverty in the US was matched by an even greater “poverty of satisfaction, purpose, and dignity,” Kennedy decried GDP as a poor measure of the state of the nation. “Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things,” he said. The GDP was buoyed, he noted, by cigarette advertising, ambulances, home security, jails, the destruction of redwood forests, urban sprawl, napalm, nuclear warheads and the armoured vehicles used by police against riots in American cities. “It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile,” Kennedy said.

Most often in culture we see people who short-circuit the Current. They observe some phenomenon in culture or nature that makes them emotional and they run rampant with speculations, never taking the time to entertain possible explanations that could have been verified by further observation. They disconnect themselves from reality and can then imagine whatever they want. On the other hand, we see many people, particularly in academia or in the sciences, who accumulate mountains of information and data from studies and statistics but never venture to speculate on the larger ramifications of this information or connect it all into a theory. They are afraid to speculate because it seems unscientific and subjective, failing to understand that speculation is the heart and soul of human rationality, our way of connecting to reality and seeing the invisible. To them, it is better to stick to facts and studies, to keep a micro view, rather than possibly embarrassing themselves with a speculation that could be wrong.

Stress often produces short-term “fight-or-flight” responses; when the threat passes, the body tends to return to equilibrium. But evidence started to accumulate that trauma could cause long-lasting bodily change, including to brain neurocircuitry, the sympathetic nervous system, the immune system, and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis.

A final victory is an accumulation of many short-term encounters. To lightly dismiss a success because it does not usher in a complete order of justice is to fail to comprehend the process of achieving full victory. It underestimates the value of confrontation and dissolves the confidence born of a partial victory by which new efforts are powered.

The mechanical clock,” as Lewis Mumford wrote, “made possible the idea of regular production, regular working hours and a standardized product.” In short, without the clock, capitalism would have been quite impossible.4 The paradox, the surprise, and the wonder are that the clock was invented by men who wanted to devote themselves more rigorously to God; it ended as the technology of greatest use to men who wished to devote themselves to the accumulation of money. In the eternal struggle between God and Mammon, the clock quite unpredictably favored the latter. Unforeseen consequences stand in the way of all those who think they see clearly the direction in which a new technology will take us.

At the height of the Cultural Revolution, rather than risk having to face dire consequences for his accumulated writings, he burned several kilos of manuscripts (ten plays, and many short stories, poems, and essays). For him it was an ordeal to part with what he had written. Moreover, it took a long time to burn so much paper without creating smoke and arousing suspicions.

Maximum Sustained Power workouts are much less taxing on the cardio endurance component and instead focus on going for max power or going home. Literally, you end your mini-sets when you can’t lift the heavy bar again due to accumulated fatigue. Or, in the case of vertical jumps or calibrated exercise equipment, you stop the set when you fall materially short of your baseline absolute power performance standard that you started the workout with.

If we analyse the classes of life, we readily find that there are three cardinal classes which are radically distinct in function. A short analysis will disclose to us that, though minerals have various activities, they are not "living." The plants have a very definite and well known function-the transformation of solar energy into organic chemical energy. They are a class of life which appropriates one kind of energy, converts it into another kind and stores it up; in that sense they are a kind of storage battery for the solar energy; and so I define THE PLANTS AS THE CHEMISTRY-BINDING class of life. The animals use the highly dynamic products of the chemistry-binding class-the plants-as food, and those products-the results of plant-transformation-undergo in animals a further transformation into yet higher forms; and the animals are correspondingly a more dynamic class of life; their energy is kinetic; they have a remarkable freedom and power which the plants do not possess-I mean the freedom and faculty to move about in space; and so I define ANIMALS AS THE SPACE-BINDING CLASS OF LIFE. And now what shall we say of human beings? What is to be our definition of Man? Like the animals, human beings do indeed possess the space-binding capacity but, over and above that, human beings possess a most remarkable capacity which is entirely peculiar to them-I mean the capacity to summarise, digest and appropriate the labors and experiences of the past; I mean the capacity to use the fruits of past labors and experiences as intellectual or spiritual capital for developments in the present; I mean the capacity to employ as instruments of increasing power the accumulated achievements of the all-precious lives of the past generations spent in trial and error, trial and success; I mean the capacity of human beings to conduct their lives in the ever increasing light of inherited wisdom; I mean the capacity in virtue of which man is at once the heritor of the by-gone ages and the trustee of posterity. And because humanity is just this magnificent natural agency by which the past lives in the present and the present for the future, I define HUMANITY, in the universal tongue of mathematics and mechanics, to be the TIME-BINDING CLASS OF LIFE.

Forcing new loans upon the bankrupt on condition that they shrink their income is nothing short of cruel and unusual punishment. Greece was never bailed out. With their ‘rescue’ loan and their troika of bailiffs enthusiastically slashing incomes, the EU and IMF effectively condemned Greece to a modern version of the Dickensian debtors’ prison and then threw away the key. Debtors’ prisons were ultimately abandoned because, despite their cruelty, they neither deterred the accumulation of new bad debts nor helped creditors get their money back. For capitalism to advance in the nineteenth century, the absurd notion that all debts are sacred had to be ditched and replaced with the notion of limited liability. After all, if all debts are guaranteed, why should lenders lend responsibly? And why should some debts carry a higher interest rate than other debts, reflecting the higher risk of going bad? Bankruptcy and debt write-downs became for capitalism what hell had always been for Christian dogma – unpleasant yet essential – but curiously bankruptcy-denial was revived in the twenty-first century to deal with the Greek state’s insolvency. Why? Did the EU and the IMF not realize what they were doing? They knew exactly what they were doing. Despite their meticulous propaganda, in which they insisted that they were trying to save Greece, to grant the Greek people a second chance, to help reform Greece’s chronically crooked state and so on, the world’s most powerful institutions and governments were under no illusions. […] Banks restructure the debt of stressed corporations every day, not out of philanthropy but out of enlightened self-interest. But the problem was that, now that we had accepted the EU–IMF bailout, we were no longer dealing with banks but with politicians who had lied to their parliaments to convince them to relieve the banks of Greece’s debt and take it on themselves. A debt restructuring would require them to go back to their parliaments and confess their earlier sin, something they would never do voluntarily, fearful of the repercussions. The only alternative was to continue the pretence by giving the Greek government another wad of money with which to pretend to meet its debt repayments to the EU and the IMF: a second bailout.

It has even been suggested, with more plausibility than would at first seem evident, that an ice age might actually be induced by a rise in temperatures. The idea is that a slight warming would enhance evaporation rates and increase cloud cover, leading in the higher latitudes to more persistent accumulations of snow. In fact, global warming could plausibly, if paradoxically, lead to powerful localized cooling in North America and northern Europe. Climate is the product

He collected her punches as if they were presents. Her bony hands and elbows were accepted with nothing but a few short moans. He accumulated the loud, clumsy specks of saliva and tears as if they were lovely to his face, and more important, he was able to hold her down. On Munich Street, a boy and girl were entwined. They were twisted and comfortless on the road. Together, they watched the humans disappear. They watched them dissolve, like moving tablets in the humid air.

Expiring knowledge catches more attention than it should for two reasons: one, there's a lot it. Eager to keep our short attention spans occupied. Two, we chase it down. Anxious to squeeze insight out of it before it loses relevance. Permanent information is harder to notice because it's buried in books rather than blasted in headlines. But it's benefit is huge. It's not just hat permanent information never expires, letting you accumulate it, it also compounds over it, leveraging off what you've already learned. Expiring information tells you what happened. Permanent information tells you WHY something happened and is likely to happen again. That WHY can translate into stuff you know about other topics, which is where the compounding comes in. I read newspapers and books everyday. I cannot recall one damn thing I read in a newspaper from say 2011, but I can tell you in great detail about books I read in 2011 and how they changed the way I think.

My mother believed and I believe in really looking hard at things because, after a while, what you see isn’t at all what you thought you were seeing just a short time before. Looking at any person or object carefully means that it will become increasingly strange, and you will see more and more. I wanted my film about this lonely woman to break down visual and cultural clichés, to be an intimate portrait, not a piece of leering voyeurism about a woman’s horrible accumulations.

These memories, and the stories in these words, might appear to exist in the long ago. In the short-root mind, a kind of mind of a people whose children don't even know the names of their great-grandparents, there is no past. Everything is right now. This kind of mind has its roots in the material culture, in what can be accumulated. My great-grandfather reminds me that we need to keep within the long-rooted mind. Because of the longer roots we have a larger structure of knowing from which to take on understanding.

Science can be divided into an infinite number of disciplines, and the amount of knowledge that can be pursued in each discipline is limitless. The most critical piece of knowledge, then, is the knowledge of what is essential to learn and what isn’t. A huge amount of knowledge is accumulated at present. Soon our abilities will be too weak, and our lives too short, to study this knowledge. We have vast treasures of knowledge at our disposal but after we study them, we often do not use them at all. It would be better not to have this burden, this unnecessary knowledge, which we do not really need.

Tiny threads of time are the warp and woof of God’s redemptive tapestry: a series of todays, used well or poorly. God has ordained that the physical universe be composed of atoms, so also has God ordained that history be composed of moments. Personal and world history is an accumulation of todays, and how they were spent. At death, our window of opportunity will be closed, our time on earth finished. We can no longer store up treasure in heaven. We can no longer lead people to Christ. We can no longer suffer gladly for Christ. The time for all these things will be past. The call to every Christian is to make the most of this short segment of time, to make every day count for eternity.

Roulette, which holds out the opportunity of winning a lot of money in a short space of time, and therefore of changing one’s social status quasi-instantaneously, and in which the winning of the previous spin of the wheel can be staked and lost at every new spin, gives a fairly accurate image of this imaginary universe of perfect competition or perfect equality of opportunity, a world without inertia, without accumulation, without heredity or acquired properties, in which every moment is perfectly independent of the previous one, every soldier has a marshal’s baton in his knapsack, and every prize can be attained, instantaneously, by everyone, so that at each moment anyone can become anything.

SELKIE Alone, the cold body of the selkie man lay upon the sand, so like the drowned one the widow had called for. For her longing, he was hauled upon the sand, exposed to the moonlight. The selkie strained in fraught movements and human form broke from the gleaming seal fur. Undeniably he bore the image of the widow’s lost husband and spoke with the sounds of the dead man’s voice. She hailed back from the rocks. Shadows accumulating beyond the moon’s ability to reform. Colours were washed from sight and silver crashed through her, colder than snow dreams of being. In the dark, the ocean became the rolling flanks of a great beast drifting back across the horizon. Out deep soon, the land’s drop sharp.

About 4.6 billion years ago, a great swirl of gas and dust some 15 billion miles across accumulated in space where we are now and began to aggregate. Virtually all of it—99.9 percent of the mass of the solar system—went to make the Sun. Out of the floating material that was left over, two microscopic grains floated close enough together to be joined by electrostatic forces. This was the moment of conception for our planet. All over the inchoate solar system, the same was happening. Colliding dust grains formed larger and larger clumps. Eventually the clumps grew large enough to be called planetesimals. As these endlessly bumped and collided, they fractured or split or recombined in endless random permutations,

About 4.6 billion years ago, a great swirl of gas and dust some 15 billion miles across accumulated in space where we are now and began to aggregate. Virtually all of it—99.9 percent of the mass of the solar system—went to make the Sun. Out of the floating material that was left over, two microscopic grains floated close enough together to be joined by electrostatic forces. This was the moment of conception for our planet. All over the inchoate solar system, the same was happening. Colliding dust grains formed larger and larger clumps. Eventually the clumps grew large enough to be called planetesimals. As these endlessly bumped and collided, they fractured or split or recombined in endless random permutations, but in every encounter there was a winner, and some of the winners grew big enough to dominate the orbit around which they traveled. It all happened remarkably quickly. To grow from a tiny cluster of grains to a baby planet some hundreds of miles across is thought to have taken only a few tens of thousands of years. In just 200 million years, possibly less, the Earth was essentially formed, though still molten and subject to constant bombardment from all the debris that remained floating about. At this point, about 4.5 billion years ago, an object the size of Mars crashed into Earth, blowing out enough material to form a companion sphere, the Moon. Within weeks, it is thought, the flung material had reassembled itself into a single clump, and within a year it had formed into the spherical rock that companions us yet. Most of the lunar material, it is thought, came from the Earth’s crust, not its core, which is why the Moon has so little iron while we have a lot. The theory, incidentally, is almost always presented as a recent one, but in fact it was first proposed in the 1940s by Reginald Daly of Harvard. The only recent thing about it is people paying any attention to it. When Earth was only about a third of its eventual size, it was probably already beginning to form an atmosphere, mostly of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, methane, and sulfur. Hardly the sort of stuff that we would associate with life, and yet from this noxious stew life formed. Carbon dioxide is a powerful greenhouse gas. This was a good thing because the Sun was significantly dimmer back then. Had we not had the benefit of a greenhouse effect, the Earth might well have frozen over permanently, and life might never have gotten a toehold. But somehow life did. For the next 500 million years the young Earth continued to be pelted relentlessly by comets, meteorites, and other galactic debris, which brought water to fill the oceans and the components necessary for the successful formation of life. It was a singularly hostile environment and yet somehow life got going. Some tiny bag of chemicals twitched and became animate. We were on our way. Four billion years later people began to wonder how it had all happened. And it is there that our story next takes us.

The guy was about forty years old, give or take, right up there on a hard-won plateau in the center of his life, not a dumb kid anymore, but not yet an old man either, and full of accumulated competence and confidence and capability, all wrapped up in experience. He looked to be dead-on six feet tall, and about two hundred pounds. He was wearing blue jeans, coarse and high-waisted, not stylish at all, with a belt, and a white open-neck shirt, and a blue satin baseball jacket. He had fair hair cut short and neatly brushed, and a pink slabby face, and small blue eyes, and an inquiring expression. He could have been a neighborhood electrical contractor, showing up in person to prepare a detailed estimate for a difficult job. Except for the

Snowbound up here with you. Without books or business to occupy my time, I wonder what I’ll do,” he added with a leer. She blushed gorgeously, but her voice was serious as she studied his face. “If things hadn’t gone so well for you-if you hadn’t accumulated so much wealth-you could have been happy up here, couldn’t you?” “With you?” “Of course.” His smile was as somber as hers. “Absolutely.” “Although,” he added, linking her hands behind her back and drawing her a little closer, “you may not want to remain up here when you learn your emeralds are back in their cases at Montmayne.” Her head snapped up, and her eyes shone with love and relief. “I’m so glad. When I realized Robert’s story had been fabrication, it hurt beyond belief to realize I’d sold them.” “It’s going to hurt more,” he teased outrageously, “when you realize your bank draft to cover their cost was a little bit short. It cost me $45,000 to buy back the pieces that had already been sold, and $5,000 to buy the rest back from the jeweler you sold them to.” “That-that unconscionable thief!” she burst out. “He only gave me $5,000 for all of them!” She shook her head in despair at Ian’s lack of bargaining prowess. “He took dreadful advantage of you.” “I wasn’t concerned, however,” Ian continued teasing, enjoying himself hugely, “because I knew I’d get it all back out of your allowance. With interest, of course. According to my figures,” he said, pausing to calculate in his mind what it would have taken Elizabeth several minutes to figure out on paper, “as of today, you now owe me roughly $151,126.” “One hundred and- what?” she cried, half laughing and half irate. “There’s the little matter of the cost of Havenhurst. I added that in to the figure.” Tears of joy clouded her magnificent eyes. “You bought it back from that horrid Mr. Demarcus?” “Yes. And he is ‘horrid.’ He and your uncle ought to be partners. They both possess the instincts of camel traders. I paid $100,000 for it.” Her mouth fell open, and admiration lit her face. “$100,000! Oh, Ian-“ “I love it when you say my name.” She smiled at that, but her mind was still on the splendid bargain he’d gotten. “I could not have done a bit better!” she generously admitted. “That’s exactly what he paid for it, and he told me after the papers were signed that he was certain he could get $150,000 if he waited a year or so.” “He probably could have.” “But not from you!” she announced proudly. “Not from me,” he agreed, grinning. “Did he try?” “He tried for $200,000 as soon as he realized how important it was to me to buy it back for you.” “You must have been very clever and skillful to make him agree to accept so much less.” Trying desperately not to laugh, Ian put his forehead against hers and nodded. “Very skillful,” he agreed in a suffocated voice. “Still, I wonder why he was so agreeable?” Swallowing a surge of laughter, Ian said, “I imagine it was because I showed him that I had something he needed more than he needed an exorbitant profit.” “Really?” she said, fascinated and impressed. “What did you have?” “His throat.

Sheep and cattle now graze side by side, but actually have very different mineral requirements. Modern cattle need quite a lot of copper because they evolved in parts of Europe and Africa where copper was abundant. Sheep, on the other hand, evolved in copper-poor areas of Asia Minor. As a rule, and not surprisingly, our tolerance for elements is directly proportionate to their abundance in the Earth’s crust. We have evolved to expect, and in some cases actually need, the tiny amounts of rare elements that accumulate in the flesh or fiber that we eat. But step up the doses, in some cases by only a tiny amount, and we can soon cross a threshold. Much of this is only imperfectly understood. No one knows, for example, whether a tiny amount of arsenic is necessary for

Now, ideals, conventions, even truth itself, are continually changing things so that the milk of one generation may be the poison of the next. The young Americans of my time have seen one of these transformations with their own eyes, and for this reason they will not make the initial mistake of trying to teach their children too much. Before a man is thirty he has already accumulated, along with a little wisdom, a great quantity of dust and rubbish in his mind, and the difficulty is to let the children profit by what is wise without unloading the dust and rubbish on them too. We can only try to do better at it than the last generation did - when a generation succeeds in doing it completely, in handing down all its discoveries and none of its delusions, its children shall inherit the earth.

In the longer term, by bringing together enough data and enough computing power, the data giants could hack the deepest secrets of life, and then use this knowledge not just to make choices for us or manipulate us but also to reengineer organic life and create inorganic life-forms. Selling advertisements may be necessary to sustain the giants in the short term, but tech companies often evaluate apps, products, and other companies according to the data they harvest rather than according to the money they generate. A popular app may lack a business model and may even lose money in the short term, but as long as it sucks data, it could be worth billions.4 Even if you don’t know how to cash in on the data today, it is worth having it because it might hold the key to controlling and shaping life in the future. I don’t know for certain that the data giants explicitly think about this in such terms, but their actions indicate that they value the accumulation of data in terms beyond those of mere dollars and cents. Ordinary humans will find it very difficult to resist this process. At present, people are happy to give away their most valuable asset—their personal data—in exchange for free email services and funny cat videos. It’s a bit like African and Native American tribes who unwittingly sold entire countries to European imperialists in exchange for colorful beads and cheap trinkets. If, later on, ordinary people decide to try to block the flow of data, they might find it increasingly difficult, especially as they might come to rely on the network for all their decisions, and even for their healthcare and physical survival.

There are two types of information: permanent and expiring. Permanent information is: “How do people behave when they encounter a risk they hadn’t fathomed?” Expiring information is: “How much profit did Microsoft earn in the second quarter of 2005?” Expiring knowledge catches more attention than it should, for two reasons. One, there’s a lot of it, eager to keep our short attention spans occupied. Two, we chase it down, anxious to squeeze insight out of it before it loses relevance. Permanent information is harder to notice because it’s buried in books rather than blasted in headlines. But its benefit is huge. It’s not just that permanent information never expires, letting you accumulate it. It also compounds over time, leveraging off what you’ve already learned. Expiring information tells you what happened; permanent information tells you why something happened and is likely to happen again. That “why” can translate and interact with stuff you know about other topics, which is where the compounding comes in.

I accumulate rash acts: getting into stolen cars, walking in front of stores where I have operated, showing obviously fake papers. I have the feeling that in a very short time everything is bound to break wide open. My rash acts are serious matters and I know that airy-winged catastrophe will emerge from a very, very slight mistake. 1 But while I hope for misfortune as an act of grace, it is well for me to plunge fully into the usual ways of the world. I want to fulfill myself in one of the rarest of destinies. I have only a dim notion of what it will be. I want it to have not a graceful curve, slightly bent toward evening, but a hitherto unseen beauty, lovely because of the danger which works away at it, overwhelms it, undermines it. Oh let me be only utter beauty! I shall go quickly or slowly, but I shall dare what must be dared. I shall destroy appearances, the casings will burn away and one evening I shall appear there in the palm of your hand, quiet and pure, like a glass statuette. You will see me. Round about me there will be nothing left.

I have identified patterns in the technology and civilisational behaviour that confirms to me, with great certainty, that approximately thirty thousand human years ago, about ten thousand years after the date of the ceephays’ fall, a new center of data and physical traffic accumulated at the Keijir System. Ten thousand years correlates closely with how long I estimate a ceephay vessel would have taken to travel some feasible sublight to avoid detection using jump engines, until being discovered by reeh vessels, possibly in some kind of hibernation. The accumulation of technologies at the Keijir System was very rapid, and was responded to by several of the species who were recording this data. There are even several surviving speculations from their academia at the time, wondering what was happening at Keijir. I believe these events are entirely consistent with the discovery, by an organic species of lesser intelligence and capability, of an entity of greater intelligence and capability. Great technological advances appear to have followed, and the expansion of what became the Reeh Empire commenced shortly thereafter.

Alzheimer’s disease, which is associated with the production and accumulation of amyloid-β in the brain. That means he has serious neural damage all over the brain. While for the past twenty years or so amyloid has been considered the “cause” of Alzheimer’s, there is recent evidence against that hypothesis, and others are being entertained.1 At any rate, the disease results in the slow destruction of the brain, commencing particularly with the loss of neurons in the entorhinal cortex and the hippocampus, resulting in short-term memory loss. The disease can become so debilitating that it can completely reshape Grandpa’s personality, transforming him from a lively and caring person into a listless shell of his former self. Yet, though he may not recognize me, he is still cognizant of social niceties and shakes my hand. He may wander off, but he will still feel fear when confused and lost, and anger when frustrated. His conscious experience of the world is brought to him through whatever operational neural circuitry continues to function, and as he loses function, it becomes more restricted. The contents of that conscious experience most likely are odd, very different from those of the normal brain or his past self. As a result, odd behavior follows.

3. ‘Standing armies (miles perpetuus) will gradually be abolished altogether.’ For they constantly threaten other states with war by the very fact that they are always prepared for it. They spur on the states to outdo one another in arming unlimited numbers of soldiers, and since the resultant costs eventually make peace more oppressive than a short war, the armies are themselves the cause of wars of aggression which set out to end burdensome military expenditure. Furthermore, the hiring of men to kill or to be killed seems to mean using them as mere machines and instruments in the hands of someone else (the state), which cannot easily be reconciled with the rights of man in one’s own person. It is quite a different matter if the citizens undertake voluntary military training from time to time in order to secure themselves and their fatherland against attacks from outside. But it would be just the same if wealth rather than soldiers were accumulated, for it would be seen by other states as a military threat; it might compel them to mount preventive attacks, for of the three powers within a state—the power of the army, the power of alliance and the power of money—the third is probably the most reliable instrument of war. It would lead more often to wars if it were not so difficult to discover the amount of wealth which another state possesses.

Even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task; it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction – purpose and dignity – that afflicts us all. Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion a year, but that Gross National Product … counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

It is often said that the separation of the present reality from transcendence, so commonplace today, is pernicious in that it undermines the universe of fixed values. Because life on Earth is the only thing that exists, because it is only in this life that we can seek fulfillment, the only kind of happiness that can be offered to us is purely carnal. Heavens have not revealed anything to us; there are no signs that would indicate the need to devote ourselves to some higher, nonmaterial goals. We furnish our lives ever more comfortably; we build ever more beautiful buildings; we invent ever more ephemeral trends, dances, one-season stars; we enjoy ourselves. Entertainment derived from a nineteenth-century funfair is today becoming an industry underpinned by an ever more perfect technology. We are celebrating a cult of machines—which are replacing us at work, in the kitchen, in the field—as if we were pursuing the idealized ambience of the royal court (with its bustling yet idle courtiers) and wished to extend it across the whole world. In fifty years, or at most a hundred, four to five billion people will become such courtiers. At the same time, a feeling of emptiness, superficiality, and sham sets in, one that is particularly dominant in civilizations that have left the majority of primitive troubles, such as hunger and poverty, behind them. Surrounded by underwater-lit swimming pools and chrome and plastic surfaces, we are suddenly struck by the thought that the last remaining beggar, having accepted his fate willingly, thus turning it into an ascetic act, was incomparably richer than man is today, with his mind fed TV nonsense and his stomach feasting on delicatessen from exotic lands. The beggar believed in eternal happiness, the arrival of which he awaited during his short-term dwelling in this vale of tears, looking as he did into the vast transcendence ahead of him. Free time is now becoming a space that needs to be filled in, but it is actually a vacuum, because dreams can be divided into those that can be realized immediately—which is when they stop being dreams—and those that cannot be realized by any means. Our own body, with its youth, is the last remaining god on the ever-emptying altars; no one else needs to be obeyed and served. Unless something changes, our numerous Western intellectuals say, man is going to drown in the hedonism of consumption. If only it was accompanied by some deep pleasure! Yet there is none: submerged into this slavish comfort, man is more and more bored and empty. Through inertia, the obsession with the accumulation of money and shiny objects is still with us, yet even those wonders of civilization turn out to be of no use. Nothing shows him what to do, what to aim for, what to dream about, what hope to have. What is man left with then? The fear of old age and illness and the pills that restore mental balance—which he is losing, inbeing irrevocably separated from transcendence.

About 4.6 billion years ago, a great swirl of gas and dust some 24 billion kilometres across accumulated in space where we are now and began to aggregate. Virtually all of it – 99.9 per cent of the mass of the solar system21 – went to make the Sun. Out of the floating material that was left over, two microscopic grains floated close enough together to be joined by electrostatic forces. This was the moment of conception for our planet. All over the inchoate solar system, the same was happening. Colliding dust grains formed larger and larger clumps. Eventually the clumps grew large enough to be called planetesimals. As these endlessly bumped and collided, they fractured or split or recombined in endless random permutations, but in every encounter there was a winner, and some of the winners grew big enough to dominate the orbit around which they travelled. It all happened remarkably quickly. To grow from a tiny cluster of grains to a baby planet some hundreds of kilometres across is thought to have taken only a few tens of thousands of years. In just 200 million years, possibly less22, the Earth was essentially formed, though still molten and subject to constant bombardment from all the debris that remained floating about. At this point, about 4.4 billion years ago, an object the size of Mars crashed into the Earth, blowing out enough material to form a companion sphere, the Moon. Within weeks, it is thought, the flung material had reassembled itself into a single clump, and within a year it had formed into the spherical rock that companions us yet. Most of the lunar material, it is thought, came from the Earth’s crust, not its core23, which is why the Moon has so little iron while we have a lot. The theory, incidentally, is almost always presented as a recent one, but in fact it was first proposed in the 1940s by Reginald Daly of Harvard24. The only recent thing about it is people paying any attention to it. When the Earth was only about a third of its eventual size, it was probably already beginning to form an atmosphere, mostly of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, methane and sulphur. Hardly the sort of stuff that we would associate with life, and yet from this noxious stew life formed. Carbon dioxide is a powerful greenhouse gas. This was a good thing, because the Sun was significantly dimmer back then. Had we not had the benefit of a greenhouse effect, the Earth might well have frozen over permanently25, and life might never have got a toehold. But somehow life did. For the next 500 million years the young Earth continued to be pelted relentlessly by comets, meteorites and other galactic debris, which brought water to fill the oceans and the components necessary for the successful formation of life. It was a singularly hostile environment, and yet somehow life got going. Some tiny bag of chemicals twitched and became animate. We were on our way. Four billion years later, people began to wonder how it had all happened. And it is there that our story next takes us.

About 4.6 billion years ago, a great swirl of gas and dust some 24 billion kilometres across accumulated in space where we are now and began to aggregate. Virtually all of it – 99.9 per cent of the mass of the solar system21 – went to make the Sun. Out of the floating material that was left over, two microscopic grains floated close enough together to be joined by electrostatic forces. This was the moment of conception for our planet. All over the inchoate solar system, the same was happening. Colliding dust grains formed larger and larger clumps. Eventually the clumps grew large enough to be called planetesimals. As these endlessly bumped and collided, they fractured or split or recombined in endless random permutations, but in every encounter there was a winner, and some of the winners grew big enough to dominate the orbit around which they travelled. It all happened remarkably quickly. To grow from a tiny cluster of grains to a baby planet some hundreds of kilometres across is thought to have taken only a few tens of thousands of years. In just 200 million years, possibly less22, the Earth was essentially formed, though still molten and subject to constant bombardment from all the debris that remained floating about. At this point, about 4.4 billion years ago, an object the size of Mars crashed into the Earth, blowing out enough material to form a companion sphere, the Moon. Within weeks, it is thought, the flung material had reassembled itself into a single clump, and within a year it had formed into the spherical rock that companions us yet.

The insensitivity of Roosevelt’s reply startled Churchill. The subtext seemed clear: Roosevelt was concerned only about assistance that would directly help sustain the safety of the United States from German attack, and cared little whether the Middle East fell or not. Churchill wrote to Anthony Eden, “It seems to me as if there has been a considerable recession across the Atlantic, and that quite unconsciously we are being left very much to our fate.” Colville noted how the accumulation of bad news that night left Churchill “in worse gloom than I have ever seen him.” Churchill dictated a reply to Roosevelt in which he sought to frame the importance of the Middle East in terms of the long-range interests of the United States itself. “We must not be too sure that the consequences of the loss of Egypt and the Middle East would not be grave,” he told Roosevelt. “It would seriously increase the hazards of the Atlantic and the Pacific, and could hardly fail to prolong the war, with all the suffering and military dangers that this would entail.” Churchill was growing weary of Roosevelt’s reluctance to commit America to war. He had hoped that by now the United States and Britain would be fighting side by side, but always Roosevelt’s actions fell short of Churchill’s needs and expectations. It was true that the destroyers had been an important symbolic gift, and that the lend-lease program and Harriman’s efficient execution of its mandate were a godsend; but it had become clear to Churchill that none of it was enough—only America’s entry into the war would guarantee victory in any reasonable period of time. One result of Churchill’s long courtship of Roosevelt, however, was that now at least the prime minister felt able to express his concerns and wishes with more candor, directly, without fear of driving America away altogether.

Our attachments to whom we think we’re supposed to be are like chains around our necks. Our identities get wrapped up in the external roles, titles, and accomplishments that we put value on … A wealthy businessman values how much he’s worth financially. A research scientist values the cure she is working on. A writer values the books he writes and publishes. In my case, I valued how much social change I could create through my advocacy for women’s rights and my humanitarian work. At first, it might seem that one pursuit or identity is more valuable than another. Surely, the cure for a disease is more important than how many books an author sells. Surely, creating social change that improves thousands—if not millions—of lives is more important than increasing the wealth of one individual. At a fundamental level, though, no matter what our vocation is, our accomplishments are where we find our core self-value and feel affirmed. Attachments are attachments, I realized, no matter who we are or what we identify with. When we value ourselves because of what we accomplish and how much we accomplish, our souls are forever held hostage to these attachments. No matter how much we do, how many dollars we accumulate, cures we discover, books we sell, or people we help, it is never going to be enough to permanently fulfill us.… I was completely identified with my work, and in my own mind, I could never be successful enough at it. That was a very big chain around my soul, a huge weight on my being. Realizing this was like cutting the umbilical cord to my shame.… One short silent retreat couldn’t instantly change the shape of my life—or my mind. It had just given me a taste of what freedom from attachments could be like. It was like tasting chocolate for the first time: we can’t describe how good it tastes until we’ve actually tasted it, and then we can’t ever forget that taste. Now that I had seen the source of my pain and the route to my freedom, I had a clear path to follow. As Zainab’s story so powerfully illustrates, we can learn to recognize assumptions for the thoughts that they are, rather than cleaving to them as an ultimate defining reality we’re bound to. We get to choose, “Do I want to take this to heart or let it go?” EXPANSION

Collateral Capacity or Net Worth? If young Bill Gates had knocked on your door asking you to invest $10,000 in his new company, Microsoft, could you get your hands on the money? Collateral capacity is access to capital. Your net worth is irrelevant if you can’t access any of the money. Collateral capacity is my favorite wealth concept. It’s almost like having a Golden Goose! Collateral can help a borrower secure loans. It gives the lender the assurance that if the borrower defaults on the loan, the lender can repossess the collateral. For example, car loans are secured by cars, and mortgages are secured by homes. Your collateral capacity helps you to avoid or minimize unnecessary wealth transfers where possible, and accumulate an increasing pool of capital providing accessibility, control and uninterrupted compounding. It is the amount of money that you can access through collateralizing a loan against your money, allowing your money to continue earning interest and working for you. It’s very important to understand that accessibility, control and uninterrupted compounding are the key components of collateral capacity. It’s one thing to look good on paper, but when times get tough, assets that you can’t touch or can’t convert easily to cash, will do you little good. Three things affect your collateral capacity: ① The first is contributions into savings and investment accounts that you can access. It would be wise to keep feeding your Golden Goose. Often the lure of higher return potential also brings with it lack of liquidity. Make sure you maintain a good balance between long-term accounts and accounts that provide immediate liquidity and access. ② Second is the growth on the money from interest earned on the money you have in your account. Some assets earn compound interest and grow every year. Others either appreciate or depreciate. Some accounts could be worth a great deal but you have to sell or close them to access the money. That would be like killing your Golden Goose. Having access to money to make it through downtimes is an important factor in sustaining long-term growth. ③ Third is the reduction of any liens you may have against these accounts. As you pay off liens against your collateral positions, your collateral capacity will increase allowing you to access more capital in the future. The goose never quit laying golden eggs – uninterrupted compounding. Years ago, shortly after starting my first business, I laughed at a banker that told me I needed at least $25,000 in my business account in order to borrow $10,000. My business owner friends thought that was ridiculously funny too. We didn’t understand collateral capacity and quite a few other things about money.

Editing is the most obvious way of manipulating vision. And yet, the camera sometimes sees what you don’t - a person in the background, for example, or an object moving in the wind. I like these accidents. My first full-length film, Esperanza, was about a woman I befriended on the Lower East Side when I was a film student at NYU. Esperanza had hoarded nearly all the portable objects she had touched every day for thirty years: the Chock Full O’Nuts paper coffee cups, copies of the Daily News, magazines, gum wrappers, price tags, receipts, rubber bands, plastic bags from the 99-cent store where she did most of her shopping, piles of clothes, torn towels, and bric-a-brac she had found in the street. Esperanza’s apartment consisted of floor-to-ceiling stacks of stuff. At first sight, the crowded apartment appeared to be pure chaos, but Esperanza explained to me that her piles were not random. Her paper cups had their own corner. These crenellated towers of yellowing, disintegrating waxed cardboard stood next to piles of newspapers … One evening, however, while I was watching the footage from a day’s filming, I found myself scrutinizing a pile of rags beside Esperanza’s mattress. I noticed that there were objects carefully tucked in among the fraying bits of coloured cloth: rows of pencils, stones, matchbooks, business cards. It was this sighting that led to the “explanation.” She was keenly aware that the world at large disapproved of her “lifestyle,” and that there was little room left for her in the apartment, but when I asked her about the objects among the rags, she said that she wanted to “keep them safe and sound.” The rags were beds for the things. “Both the beds and the ones that lay down on them,” she told me, “are nice and comfy.” It turned out that Esperanza felt for each and every thing she saved, as if the tags and town sweaters and dishes and postcards and newspapers and toys and rags were imbued with thoughts and feelings. After she saw the film, my mother said that Esperanza appeared to believe in a form of “panpsychism.” Mother said that this meant that mind is a fundamental feature of the universe and exists in everything, from stones to people. She said Spinoza subscribed to this view, and “it was a perfectly legitimate philosophical position.” Esperanza didn’t know anything about Spinoza … My mother believed and I believe in really looking hard at things because, after a while, what you see isn’t at all what you thought you were seeing just a short time before. looking at any person or object carefully means that it will become increasingly strange, and you will see more and more. I wanted my film about this lonely woman to break down visual and cultural cliches, to be an intimate portrait, not a piece of leering voyeurism about woman’s horrible accumulations.

Every person has short-term goals. Some are modest, such as setting aside money for a vacation next month or paying for medical bills. Other short-term goals are more ambitious, such as accruing funds for a down payment to purchase a new home within six months. Whatever the expense or purchase, you need a predictable accumulation of cash soon. If this sounds like your situation, stay away from the stock market!

The massive breakdown of disaster relief with Hurricane Katrina was rooted in state and local governmental agencies’ and elected officials’ lying to the public for decades. Read the Brookings Institution’s list “Government’s Most Visible Failures, 2001–2014”; it is a heartbreaking accumulation of avoidable tragedies and misery in just that short period, almost all rooted in some large, fundamental miscalculation.

where a = accumulated future value, p = principal or present value, r = rate of return in percentage terms, and n = number of compounding periods. All too often, management teams focus on the r variable in this equation. They seek instant gratification, with high profit margins and high growth in reported earnings per share (EPS) in the near term, as opposed to initiatives that would lead to a much more valuable business many years down the line. This causes many management teams to pass on investments that would create long-term value but would cause “accounting numbers” to look bad in the short term. Pressure from analysts can inadvertently incentivize companies to make as much money as possible off their present customers to report good quarterly numbers, instead of offering a fair price that creates enduring goodwill and a long-term win–win relationship for all stakeholders. The businesses that buy commodities and sell brands and have strong pricing power (typically depicted by high gross margins) should always remember that possessing pricing power is like having access to a large amount of credit. You may have it in abundance, but you must use it sparingly. Having pricing power doesn’t mean you exercise it right away. Consumer surplus is a great strategy, especially for subscription-based business models in which management should primarily focus on habit formation and making renewals a no-brainer. Most businesses fail to appreciate this delicate trade-off between high short-term profitability and the longevity accorded to the business through disciplined pricing and offering great customer value. The few businesses that do understand this trade-off always display “pain today, gain tomorrow” thinking in their daily decisions.

There is a wonderful story of a group of American car executives who went to Japan to see a Japanese assembly line. At the end of the line, the doors were put on the hinges, the same as in America. But something was missing. In the United States, a line worker would take a rubber mallet and tap the edges of the door to ensure that it fit perfectly. In Japan, that job didn’t seem to exist. Confused, the American auto executives asked at what point they made sure the door fit perfectly. Their Japanese guide looked at them and smiled sheepishly. “We make sure it fits when we design it.” In the Japanese auto plant, they didn’t examine the problem and accumulate data to figure out the best solution—they engineered the outcome they wanted from the beginning. If they didn’t achieve their desired outcome, they understood it was because of a decision they made at the start of the process. At the end of the day, the doors on the American-made and Japanese-made cars appeared to fit when each rolled off the assembly line. Except the Japanese didn’t need to employ someone to hammer doors, nor did they need to buy any mallets. More importantly, the Japanese doors are likely to last longer and maybe even be more structurally sound in an accident. All this for no other reason than they ensured the pieces fit from the start. What the American automakers did with their rubber mallets is a metaphor for how so many people and organizations lead. When faced with a result that doesn’t go according to plan, a series of perfectly effective short-term tactics are used until the desired outcome is achieved. But how structurally sound are those solutions? So many organizations function in a world of tangible goals and the mallets to achieve them. The ones that achieve more, the ones that get more out of fewer people and fewer resources, the ones with an outsized amount of influence, however, build products and companies and even recruit people that all fit based on the original intention. Even though the outcome may look the same, great leaders understand the value in the things we cannot see. Every instruction we give, every course of action we set, every result we desire, starts with the same thing: a decision. There are those who decide to manipulate the door to fit to achieve the desired result and there are those who start from somewhere very different. Though both courses of action may yield similar short-term results, it is what we can’t see that makes long-term success more predictable for only one. The one that understood why the doors need to fit by design and not by default.

Glucose and fructose are two kinds of sugars that contain equal amounts of calories (400 calories per 100 grams). Both are unhealthy in large amounts, but fructose even more so than glucose. Glucose can be processed by all organs in the body, whereas fructose is processed mainly in the liver. Consequently, fructose causes an even greater risk of fat accumulation in the liver, resulting in a potbelly, more fats in the blood, and insulin resistance. In addition, fructose creates cross-links with proteins much faster than glucose does. Fructose also sends fewer saturation hormones to the brain than does glucose, making you eat more of it and gain more weight. In short, although all these substances contain equal amounts of calories, they have completely different effects on your metabolism and your health, certainly in the long term.

Short-term price fluctuation is not the real risk. It is an opportunity.

Unless you do not understand that loss in profits is a loss, you will not accumulate wealth

Essentially, life is a game. There are natural and manmade laws that serve as rules. There is a beginning and an end. There is a game board we play on that we call planet Earth. And there are decisions and moves that we make that determine where and how we move on the board. Of course, we all want to win. Some of us do, and some of us don’t. But that begs the question, how DOES one win? Unlike a normal game, there is no time afterlife for us to bask in and enjoy a victory. And so, if we wish to truly experience winning the game of life, we must frame our definition of how we win accordingly so that we win while the game is still in play. Winning the game of life is not predicated merely by the quantity of material successes that we have accumulated by the end of it. Sure, it is enjoyable and important to acquire things within the game of life, but the accumulation of things like wealth, material excess, fame, or status tends to easily be confused as the ultimate endgame. But they are not. They are just parts of the game. And furthermore. Each win of this kind is generally short-lived. It is just like how winning a board game, video game, or sports game might feel good when it occurs and for a little while after, but the feeling soon fades and you return to your normal state. And so it is important that the state that you return to is a victory in it of itself. In the case of the game of life, not only is the sense of fulfillment from material wins short-lived, but the accumulation of material points does not matter much at the end of it. These points don’t go anywhere with you when you are dead and gone. Instead, it is about how much you enjoyed the game of pursuing the points in the first place. Ironically, you truly win the game of life when you realize and embrace that it IS a game. When you become aware that against all odds, you were somehow rendered into this existence and are now able to play and enjoy the most enthralling, sophisticated, and entertaining game ever to exist. A game that is so complex and uncertain that you can never completely predict what’s going to happen next. A game that is always updating. A game that you can come up with rules for, change existing ones, unlock new levels, and uncover hidden settings. And the quality of your life experience truly maximizes when you realize that you have already won by being able to do any of this.

REVERSAL The reversal to mastery is to deny its existence or its importance, and therefore the need to strive for it in any way. But such a reversal can only lead to feelings of powerlessness and disappointment. This reversal leads to enslavement to what we shall call the false self. Your false self is the accumulation of all the voices you have internalized from other people—parents and friends who want you to conform to their ideas of what you should be like and what you should do, as well as societal pressures to adhere to certain values that can easily seduce you. It also includes the voice of your own ego, which constantly tries to protect you from unflattering truths. This self talks to you in clear words, and when it comes to mastery, it says things like, “Mastery is for the geniuses, the exceptionally talented, the freaks of nature. I was simply not born that way.” Or it says, “Mastery is ugly and immoral. It is for those who are ambitious and egotistical. Better to accept my lot in life and to work to help other people instead of enriching myself.” Or it might say, “Success is all luck. Those we call Masters are only people who were at the right place at the right time. I could easily be in their place if I had a lucky break.” Or it might also say, “To work for so long at something that requires so much pain and effort, why bother? Better to enjoy my short life and do what I can to get by.” As you must know by now, these voices do not speak the truth. Mastery is not a question of genetics or luck, but of following your natural inclinations and the deep desire that stirs you from within. Everyone has such inclinations. This desire within you is not motivated by egotism or sheer ambition for power, both of which are emotions that get in the way of mastery. It is instead a deep expression of something natural, something that marked you at birth as unique. In following your inclinations and moving toward mastery, you make a great contribution to society, enriching it with discoveries and insights, and making the most of the diversity in nature and among human society. It is in fact the height of selfishness to merely consume what others create and to retreat into a shell of limited goals and immediate pleasures. Alienating yourself from your inclinations can only lead to pain and disappointment in the long run, and a sense that you have wasted something unique. This pain will beexpressed in bitterness and envy, and you will not recognize the true source of your depression.

For all purposes except capital accumulation, the promise of family falls abjectly short of itself. Often, this is nobody's "fault" per se: simply, too much is being asked of too few. On the other hand, the family is where most of the rape happens on this earth, and most of the murder. No one is likelier to rob, bully, blackmail, manipulate, or hit you, or inflict unwanted touch, than family.

Expiring knowledge catches more attention than it should, for two reasons. One, there’s a lot of it, eager to keep our short attention spans occupied. Two, we chase it down, anxious to squeeze insight out of it before it loses relevance. Permanent information is harder to notice because it’s buried in books rather than blasted in headlines. But its benefit is huge. It’s not just that permanent information never expires, letting you accumulate it. It also compounds over time, leveraging off what you’ve already learned.

All humans discount the future. We would rather have a million dollars today than in 30 years from now. We’d rather a flimsy bridge today, rather than a sturdy, durable bridge 5 years from now. We’d rather eat all the fish in the waters tonight, than to go a little hungry and leave fish for others in the future. To delay instant gratification requires cultural training. To be convinced of the value of investing into the future requires a kind of wisdom, knowledge, patience and trust that is gained from history, elders, and system thinking. It requires collective action and collaboration on a large and long scale. It requires civilization. Civilization is a system of trust, both in the goodness of humans today, but also in the ingenuity of humans in the future. It’s a way for humans to trust the future. Civilization is a social machine accumulated over many generations and is constantly being tested by new events. American society over emphasizes the individual's self-interest, and over-relies on the marketplace to solve social problems, and so coddles the short term. Modern Americanism tends to ignore the government which can take the long view because it is inefficient. But the calculus of efficiency is shifted when taking the long view. Storing adequate supplies for a population that are only used in an emergency is inefficient in the short term and this inefficiency is not something companies can afford to do. That short-term inefficiency, however, makes total sense in the long view because it is highly efficient over time. Investing into a communal project that may not pay off until you are long gone is not a natural reflex of modern Americans, whether liberal or conservative. The antidote to this natural focus on the short term is education and a shift in norms. As we continue to civilize ourselves, we can appreciate the gifts of past long-term work, and the need in our fast-moving world today to pay the gifts forward by investing into work that will likely pay off in future generations.

_____________ ___________________, hereby state that I am an investor who is seeking to accumulate wealth for many years into the future. I know that there will be many times when I will be tempted to invest in stocks or bonds because they have gone (or “are going”) up in price, and other times when I will be tempted to sell my investments because they have gone (or “are going”) down. I hereby declare my refusal to let a herd of strangers make my financial decisions for me. I further make a solemn commitment never to invest because the stock market has gone up, and never to sell because it has gone down. Instead, I will invest $______.00 per month, every month, through an automatic investment plan or “dollar-cost averaging program,” into the following mutual fund(s) or diversified portfolio(s): _________________________________, _________________________________, _________________________________. I will also invest additional amounts whenever I can afford to spare the cash (and can afford to lose it in the short run). I hereby declare that I will hold each of these investments continually through at least the following date (which must be a minimum of 10 years after the date of this contact): _________________ _____, 20__. The only exceptions allowed under the terms of this contract are a sudden, pressing need for cash, like a health-care emergency or the loss of my job, or a planned expenditure like a housing down payment or a tuition bill. I am, by signing below, stating my intention not only to abide by the terms of this contract, but to re-read this document whenever I am tempted to sell any of my investments. This contract is valid only when signed by at least one witness, and must be kept in a safe place that is easily accessible for future reference.

Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” If habits are repeated actions and actions are manifested convictions and convictions just accumulated thought, why can’t we just think our way to excellency? “It

Most of us, when we think of volcanoes, think of the classic cone shapes of a Fuji or Kilimanjaro, which are created when erupting magma accumulates in a symmetrical mound. These can form remarkably quickly. In 1943, at Paricutin in Mexico, a farmer was startled to see smoke rising from a patch on his land. In one week he was the bemused owner of a cone five hundred feet high. Within two years it had topped out at almost fourteen hundred feet and was more than half a mile across. Altogether there are some ten thousand of these intrusively visible volcanoes on Earth, all but a few hundred of them extinct.

one of the key hallmarks of aging is the accumulation of senescent cells. These are cells that have permanently ceased reproduction. Young human cells taken out of the body and grown in a petri dish divide about forty to sixty times until their telomeres become critically short, a point discovered by the anatomist Leonard Hayflick that we now call the Hayflick limit. Although the enzyme known as telomerase can extend telomeres—the discovery of which afforded Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider, and Jack Szostak a Nobel Prize in 2009—it is switched off to protect us from cancer, except in stem cells. In 1997, it was a remarkable finding that if you put telomerase into cultured skin cells, they don’t ever senesce.

Advaita   You may be asking: how am I responsible for my karma? How can I change it? One popular Western theory is that when we are born, our lives are like a clean slate where nothing is written. Each life develops as a result of its surroundings and the forces acting on it such as parents, friends, society, their dominant culture, etc. However, TransZendental Introspection teaches the eternity of life – that I’ve lived countless lives before this current manifestation. This means that when I am born, I am not a collection of blank pages, but rather pages with countless impressions. In TransZentalism, life is forever existing in the cosmos. At times, it is manifested; at other times, latent. When I sleep and awaken, my conscious mind awakens and my body is refreshed. My consciousness carries on in a sub-conscious state between sleeping and awakening. Similarly, my life continues eternally in alternating states of life and death. Therefore, death is a part of the process of living.  Karma is a Sanskrit word that means ‘action.’ It is the accumulation of effects from the positive and negative causes I brought with me from my former lives, together with the causes I make in this life, thus shaping my future. My thoughts, words and deeds are manifested in my appearance, behavior, attitudes, good and bad fortune, where I’m born or live - in short, everything about me is the effect of my karma. Unlike some philosophies, TransZendental Introspection does not consider one’s karma or destiny to be fixed; since my mind changes from moment to moment, even the habitual and destructive tendencies I possess can be altered. In other words, I have in me the potential to change my destiny.  Last but not least, Advaita is the non-duality - The Oneness, the fundamental quality of everything conscious.

The key parts you’ve hopefully learned are the following: 1. There are four rules to investing. All four must be met in order to purchase an asset. 2. Financial markets move on emotion in the short term but follow value in the long term. As a result, always possess patience, knowledge, and think for yourself. 3. Every month you need to purchase assets in order to increase cash flow. Use that compounding cash flow to always reinvest in the most undervalued assets. In the end, it’s all about share accumulation. 4. When you don’t understand terms or concepts, do the research. That’s the only way you’ll ever know.

He hesitated, then arranged the gold medallion of the Cetagandan Order of Merit on its colorful ribbon, properly, around the tunic’s high collar. It was cool and heavy under his hand. He could be one of the few soldiers in history ever to be decorated by both sides in the same war . . . though to be truthful, the Order of Merit had come later, and actually had been presented to Lord Vorkosigan, not the little Admiral for a change. When they were all arranged, the effect was just short of loony. Separated into all the little secret compartments, he hadn’t realized just how much he’d accumulated, till he put it all together again. No, not again. For the first time. Let’s lay it all on the line. Smiling grimly, he fastened them down. He donned the white silk shirt that went underneath, the silver-embroidered suspenders, the brown trousers with the silver side-piping, the gleaming riding boots. Lastly, the heavy tunic. He fastened his grandfather’s dagger in its cloisonné sheath, with the Vorkosigan seal in the jeweled hilt, on its proper belt around his waist. He combed his hair, and stepped back to regard himself, glittering in his mirror. Going native, are we? The sarcastic voice was growing fainter. “If you expect to open a can of worms,” he spoke aloud for the first time, “you’d best trouble to pack a can-opener.” *

While the squire pulled out a flat weed she was beside herself with pity for humanity. This short, this fearful loveliness, in which men and women, heroic and baffled, struggling to wisdom, age as they struggle; wrestle upwards and drop into the ground. This marriage, this association, with matter, what a high-handed experiment, but what admirable victims! Man, with his eye on death, draws his foot from the womb. There is not time for anything, yet there is time for everything. No sooner appreciate love than skin withers, no sooner grow wise than we are unfit for wisdom. Learning to live and defeated by death. Discovery succeeds discovery, and nothing accumulates. We live haunted. We grasp and grasp; what we hold dissolves, our very hands dissolve.

The Woman" I have never clearly given to you the associations you have for me, you with such divided presence my dream does not show you. I do not dream. I have compounded these sensations, the accumulation of the things left me by you. Always your tits, not breasts, but harsh sudden rises of impatient flesh on the chest--is it mine--which flower against the vagueness of the air you move in. You walk such a shortness of intent strides, your height is so low, in my hand I feel the weight of yours there, one over one of both, as you pivot upon me, the same weight grown as the hair, the second of your attributes, falls to cover us. We couple but lie against no surface, have lifted as you again grow small against myself, into the air. The air the third of the signs of you are known by: a quiet, a soughing silence, the winds lightly moved. Then your mouth, it opens not speaking, touches, wet, on me. Then I scream, I sing such as is given to me, roar- ing unheard, like stark sight sees itself inverted into dark turned. Onanistic. I feel around myself what you have left me with, wetness, pools of it, my skin drips.

Despite the differences in their ages, I still thought of them as adventurous girls. It never occurred to me that they might be related, that is until I heard Connie refer to Rita as “Mom”?? Now at least I knew their names, but the relationship confused me.… They acted more like friends and equals, than mother and daughter. Didn’t I detect flirtation in Connie’s comments, and didn’t Rita give me the eye? As we walked through this typical small town market, they picked up many more items, “just in case we get snowed in.” I expressed my regret for not being able to help in defraying the ever-increasing cost of the groceries, but it didn’t seem to bother them. “We picked you up and it’s our treat,” Rita explained. “Come on, let’s get going before we get stuck here,” Connie said, with a sound of urgency, to her mother who was still looking around. Picking up two economy-sized bags of potato chips along with some pretzels didn’t impress me as being staples, but to be fair, she did also pick up bacon, eggs, English muffins and a container of milk. Getting back into the car, we turned north again, past where they first picked me up, and then left onto Mountain Street. I knew from the many times that I had come through Camden that Mount Battie was back up here somewhere, but after a short distance of about a mile or so, we turned left again and pulled into the driveway of a big old farmhouse connected to a barn, which looked very much like many other houses in Maine. By this time the snow was coming down in big wet flakes, accumulating fast. It wouldn’t take long before the roads would become totally impassable. I knew that this could become a worse mess than I had anticipated, especially on the back roads. The coastal towns in Maine don’t usually get as cold as the towns in the interior, thus allowing the air to hold more moisture. In turn, they are apt to get more big wet snowflakes that accumulate faster. However, the salt air also melts the snow more rapidly. I seldom had to worry about the weather, but this time I was lucky to have been picked up by these “Oh So Fine Ladies” and was glad that I decided to accept their offer to stay with them.

For Longs: 1)  The Bollinger Bands constrict within the lines of the Keltner Channel, indicating price contraction within the trading range (snake coil), and the Chaikin Oscillator is below the zero baseline.   2)  When the Chaikin oscillator passes back up through the zero baseline, this indicates that the stock is under accumulation and you should go long (the "rattle" indicating that an upside breakout move is about to happen). For Shorts: 1)  The Bollinger Bands constrict within the lines of the Keltner Channel, indicating price contraction within the trading range (snake coil), and the Chaikin Oscillator is above the zero baseline. 2)  When the Chaikin Oscillator passes back down through the zero baseline, this indicates that the stock is under distribution and you should go short (the "rattle" that a downside breakout move is about to happen).

Camden in the winter of 1954 was a bleak place. It is difficult to see it this way if you’ve only been there in the summer, but most of Maine can be dismal, especially along the coast, during the long nights and short days. Once the colorful leaves have fallen from the majestic maple trees, and the last tourist has gone home, things become grim. So it was, during that cold January day, when I was on the road hoping to get a ride to New Jersey. On the radio, the weather forecasters predicted an overnight blizzard, but here it was only late afternoon and snow was already accumulating on the road. This would be my last opportunity to get home to see my family and friends, before cruising back on down to the Caribbean. I had really hoped to get an earlier start, to get far enough south to miss the brunt of the storm. Maine is known for this kind of weather, and the snowplows and sanders were ready. In fact, I didn’t see many other vehicles on the road any longer. Schools had let out early and most businesses were closed in anticipation of the storm. My last ride dropped me off in Belfast, telling me that he was trying to get as far as Augusta, before State Road 3 became impassable. Standing alongside the two-lane coastal highway with darkness not far off, I was half thinking that I should turn back. My mind was made up for me when I stepped back off the road, making room for a big State DOT dump truck with a huge yellow snowplow. His airbrakes wheezed as he braked, coming to a stop, at the same time lifting his plow to keep from burying me. The driver couldn’t believe that I was out hitchhiking in a blizzard. This kind of weather in Maine is no joke! The driver told me that the year before a body had been found under a snow bank during the spring thaw. Never mind, I was invincible and nothing like that could happen to me, or so I thought. He got me as far as Camden and suggested that I get a room. “This storm is only going to get worse,” he cautioned as I got off. I waved as he drove off. Nevertheless, still hoping that things would improve, I was determined to continue…

different meanings of safety to different investors. For someone needing a lump of money in a year’s time, the only safe investment is a cash deposit or a short-term government bond. For someone with no imminent need of the money and a desire to accumulate capital and increase purchasing power in the long-term, it may be safer to invest in equities – volatile but with the historic and likely future characteristic of a high return after inflation – than to put money on deposit with the risk that over the years the real value of the investment will be eroded by inflation.

Robert F. Kennedy in 1968: Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product … if we judge America by that … counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.… Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

The gospel of Jesus Christ solves the innate problem we have of “glory greed.” We are, every one of us from birth, incompetent thieves of the glory that belongs only to God. We know in our insidest insides that we fall short of his glory, and so we are constantly clawing and scratching to make up that difference in some way. This is how all sin is fundamentally idolatry and how all accumulations of worldly treasures—be they material goods or religious merit—are fundamentally acts of self-worship. Then in the gospel of Christ, God forgives our petty theft, sets us free from the bondage of our idols, and unites us Spiritually, irrevocably, and satisfyingly to himself. Now the glory we tried to steal is shared with us freely, and it is real glory this time, not these pathetic knockoffs we think will do the trick.

The quickest way to make money is to jump on to low volume stocks which start to see multifold increase in volumes. Volumes may go up by as much as 20 to 100 times. This is a sign that an accumulation is in process. In low volume stocks, accumulations can take the stock up manifold in short intervals of time.

AFTER THE CALL from Weather, Lucas showered and shaved, put a Band-Aid and some antiseptic on his index finger, above the knuckle, where he’d picked up a splinter earlier in the day, and put on some fresh clothes. He took ten minutes to vacuum up an accumulation of Asian ladybugs that had found their way through the windowless addition, and bagged up the garbage and trash. He called Jimi to tell her he’d be gone for a short time, no more than a few days.

The situation was similar in the Soviet Union, with industry playing the role of sugar in the Caribbean. Industrial growth in the Soviet Union was further facilitated because its technology was so backward relative to what was available in Europe and the United States, so large gains could be reaped by reallocating resources to the industrial sector, even if all this was done inefficiently and by force. Before 1928 most Russians lived in the countryside. The technology used by peasants was primitive, and there were few incentives to be productive. Indeed, the last vestiges of Russian feudalism were eradicated only shortly before the First World War. There was thus huge unrealized economic potential from reallocating this labor from agriculture to industry. Stalinist industrialization was one brutal way of unlocking this potential. By fiat, Stalin moved these very poorly used resources into industry, where they could be employed more productively, even if industry itself was very inefficiently organized relative to what could have been achieved. In fact, between 1928 and 1960 national income grew at 6 percent a year, probably the most rapid spurt of economic growth in history up until then. This quick economic growth was not created by technological change, but by reallocating labor and by capital accumulation through the creation of new tools and factories. Growth was so rapid that it took in generations of Westerners, not just Lincoln Steffens. It took in the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. It even took in the Soviet Union’s own leaders, such as Nikita Khrushchev, who famously boasted in a speech to Western diplomats in 1956 that “we will bury you [the West].” As late as 1977, a leading academic textbook by an English economist argued that Soviet-style economies were superior to capitalist ones in terms of economic growth, providing full employment and price stability and even in producing people with altruistic motivation. Poor old Western capitalism did better only at providing political freedom. Indeed, the most widely used university textbook in economics, written by Nobel Prize–winner Paul Samuelson, repeatedly predicted the coming economic dominance of the Soviet Union. In the 1961 edition, Samuelson predicted that Soviet national income would overtake that of the United States possibly by 1984, but probably by 1997. In the 1980 edition there was little change in the analysis, though the two dates were delayed to 2002 and 2012. Though the policies of Stalin and subsequent Soviet leaders could produce rapid economic growth, they could not do so in a sustained way. By the 1970s, economic growth had all but stopped. The most important lesson is that extractive institutions cannot generate sustained technological change for two reasons: the lack of economic incentives and resistance by the elites. In addition, once all the very inefficiently used resources had been reallocated to industry, there were few economic gains to be had by fiat. Then the Soviet system hit a roadblock, with lack of innovation and poor economic incentives preventing any further progress. The only area in which the Soviets did manage to sustain some innovation was through enormous efforts in military and aerospace technology. As a result they managed to put the first dog, Leika, and the first man, Yuri Gagarin, in space. They also left the world the AK-47 as one of their legacies. Gosplan was the supposedly all-powerful planning agency in charge of the central planning of the Soviet economy.

Originators, however, do not merely master functionalities and use them once and finally in their great creation. What always precedes invention is a lengthy period of accumulating functionalities and of experimenting with them on small problems as five-finger exercises. Often in this period of working with functionalities you can see hints of what originators will use. Five years before his revelation, Charles Townes had argued in a memo that microwave radio "has now been extended to such short wavelengths that it overlaps a region rich in molecular resonances, where quantum mechanical theory and spectroscopic techniques can provide aids to radio engineering." Molecular resonance was exactly what he would use to invent the maser.

With the world and its goings-on constantly blasting through our computer screens, relevance was the thing we craved, whether it was obtained in the media spotlight or with the accumulation of wealth or in being counter-everything or finding an apartment in a cool neighborhood.

Edge of Decay (Un): Passive ability. Wounds you inflict contain a hint of Rafflesia’s Rot, often leading to increased infection and necrosis of the wounds. Accumulation of Edge of Decay on flesh in a short time period will increase its effects immensely. Frequency of rot and speed of rot depend on Skill Level.

If your intent is to throw a barrage of dozens of strikes, thinking that an accumulation of tens of strikes will drop the opponent, you have the wrong mindset. GM Maranga is one of the few short stick fighters with the right mindset. He counters with a single strike, but most importantly, his intent is to drop you with that strike. And trust me, he hits very hard. I have a saying: “My goal is not to hit the opponent, but to drop him. Hitting him is a means of achieving that goal.” It's not enough to hit him. It's not enough to hurt him. Getting him to yell “Ouch!” is not going to stop a meth addict with a blade. My aim is to shut him down. So if I'm hitting him but not incapacitating him, my strikes are ineffective. In my mind I am crushing his kneecap. I am fracturing his skull. If he raises an arm or stick to block, I am committed to blasting through it like a runaway dump truck. In my mind I am breaking any upraised arm.

Read the Brookings Institution’s list “Government’s Most Visible Failures, 2001–2014”; it is a heartbreaking accumulation of avoidable tragedies and misery in just that short period, almost all rooted in some large, fundamental miscalculation.

It’s the habit of process change—the undertaking of numerous, sustained changes over time—that counts. So often leaders try to change a business overnight by taking a single, bold action. Process improvement is less dramatic and glamorous than that. It’s a change in mind-set and operational norms that takes months or even years to establish, and that yields incremental, accumulated gains years into the future (remember that the compounding effect of 3 percent versus 1 percent annual productivity is huge over time). Process improvement is also about yielding some of your authority as a leader and empowering others closest to the action to improve the real work, incrementally, day after day. Their insights, judgments, and decisions large and small, compounded over a period of years, move the organization forward.

Life's Path by Maisie Aletha Smikle Life is a path we must travel Life is a book we must read Your path is yours My path is mine Imaginary paths they are Carved for all Some paths are long Some paths are short Along our paths we must go To reach the end we must Paths may be rocky Paths may be paved Paths may have detours Paths may have cul-de-sacs Turn around at the cul-de-sacs Re-route at the detours For on your path you must return Don't hurry to reach the end Don't stop at the path's bend That is not where it ends Along the path may be thieves Lurking waiting to steal What you have gathered and accumulated And saved along life's journey Along life's path may be starving vultures Hoping for misfortunes Hovering for carcasses Hawking distractions hoping for destruction Along life’s path may be good Samaritans Wishing and hoping for the very best To succeed at the Creator's tests And hoping always you’d be at your utmost best Along life’s path there is One Who wants to accompany you Take Him with you Til your journey ends

The day you passed [the welfare law in England], you took away from before their eyes the greatest of all inducements to industry, frugality, and sobriety, by giving them a dependence on somewhat else than a careful accumulation during youth and health, for support in age or sickness. In short, you offered a premium for the encouragement of idleness, and you should not now wonder that it has had its effect in the increase of poverty.25

One other factor tempted the railroads to come to terms with Rockefeller: In a farsighted tactical maneuver, he had begun to accumulate hundreds of tank cars, which would be in perpetually short supply.

Most of the Universe is made of a mysterious substance called ‘dark matter’ and an even more mysterious substance called ‘dark energy’. Ordinary matter—the stuff our Solar System and ourselves are made of—makes up just 5% of the Universe, with dark matter accounting for 25% and the remainder being dark energy. Ordinary matter is called ‘baryonic’, after the heavy particles (e.g. protons and neutrons) of which it is mostly made. Shortly after the birth of the Universe in the Big Bang, about 75% of the baryonic matter was hydrogen, with almost all of the rest being helium. Things haven’t changed much since, but the tiny bits of stardust which have accumulated contain the heavier elements that make it possible to form beings like ourselves, and the planets on which we live.

As we have learned, the immune system stimulates inflammation to defend us from pathogens as well as self-inflicted damage caused by physical activity. In short bursts, inflammation is lifesaving, but low levels of inflammation that last for months or years are pernicious because they slowly attack our bodies. Over time, the destructive effects of chronic, simmering inflammation accumulate in cells and tissues from head to toe including neurons in the brain, cartilage in joints, the walls of arteries, and insulin receptors in muscle and fat cells. If oxidation, mitochondrial dysfunction, mutations, glycation, and inflammation were not enough, plenty of other processes also contribute to senescence by damaging and degrading cells. Over time, tiny molecules glue themselves to the DNA in cells. These so-called epigenetic (on top of the genome) modifications can affect which genes are expressed in particular cells.31 Because environmental factors like diet, stress, and exercise partly influence epigenetic modifications, the older we are, the more of them we accumulate.32 Most epigenetic modifications are harmless, but the more you have for a given age, the higher your risk of dying.33 Other forms of senescence include cells losing the ability to recycle damaged proteins,34 inadequately sensing and acquiring nutrients,35 and (less likely) being unable to divide because the little caps (telomeres) that protect the ends of chromosomes from unraveling have become too short.36

Life's too short to play small with your talents. “You were born into the opportunity as well as the responsibility to become legendary. You’ve been built to achieve masterwork-level projects, designed to realize unusually important pursuits and constructed to be a force for good on this tiny planet. You have it in you to reclaim sovereignty over your primal greatness in a civilization that has become fairly uncivilized. To restore your nobility in a global community where the majority shops for nice shoes and acquires expensive things yet rarely invests in a better self. Your personal leadership requires—no, demands—that you stop being a cyber-zombie relentlessly attracted to digital devices and restructure your life to model mastery, exemplify decency and relinquish the self-centeredness that keeps good people limited. The great women and men of the world were all givers, not takers. Renounce the common delusion that those who accumulate the most win. Instead, do work that is heroic—that staggers your marketplace by the quality of its originality as well as from the helpfulness it provides. While you do so, my recommendation is that you also create a private life strong in ethics, rich with marvelous beauty and unyielding when it comes to the protection of your inner peace. This, my friends, is how you soar with the angels. And walk alongside the gods.

Life's too short to play small with your talents. “You were born into the opportunity as well as the responsibility to become legendary. You’ve been built to achieve masterwork-level projects, designed to realize unusually important pursuits and constructed to be a force for good on this tiny planet. You have it in you to reclaim sovereignty over your primal greatness in a civilization that has become fairly uncivilized. To restore your nobility in a global community where the majority shops for nice shoes and acquires expensive things yet rarely invests in a better self. Your personal leadership requires—no, demands—that you stop being a cyber-zombie relentlessly attracted to digital devices and restructure your life to model mastery, exemplify decency and relinquish the self-centeredness that keeps good people limited. The great women and men of the world were all givers, not takers. Renounce the common delusion that those who accumulate the most win. Instead, do work that is heroic—that staggers your marketplace by the quality of its originality as well as from the helpfulness it provides. While you do so, my recommendation is that you also create a private life strong in ethics, rich with marvelous beauty and unyielding when it comes to the protection of your inner peace. This, my friends, is how you soar with the angels. And walk alongside the gods.

your short-term sacrifice has been going on for years, and your happiness and health are a thing of the past. Accumulate experiences, not stuff. The great times you have become a part of you; the great things you own gather dust or become trash. That said, if your memory for your lived experiences is as bad as mine, you might struggle to recall many of the great times you’ve had, and then find yourself at risk of owning nothing and remembering little. A simple solution to this problem is to take pictures, and even purchase the occasional doodad from your travels or adventures. By scattering these reminders around your home or office, you can relive your great times and laugh at the adventures that went awry. Prioritize food, friends, and sexual relationships. These three things are the basis of day-to-day happiness. Note that there is no mention here of money or freedom. There’s nothing wrong with having lots of cash and autonomy, but their pursuit shouldn’t interfere with opportunities to enjoy good food, sex, and friends. These three things are most likely to provide the happy experiences that accumulate into a life worth living.

Life’s too short to play small with your talents,” The Spellbinder spoke to the room of thousands. “You were born into the opportunity as well as the responsibility to become legendary. You’ve been built to achieve masterwork-level projects, designed to realize unusually important pursuits and constructed to be a force for good on this tiny planet. You have it in you to reclaim sovereignty over your primal greatness in a civilization that has become fairly uncivilized. To restore your nobility in a global community where the majority shops for nice shoes and acquires expensive things yet rarely invests in a better self. Your personal leadership requires—no, demands—that you stop being a cyber-zombie relentlessly attracted to digital devices and restructure your life to model mastery, exemplify decency and relinquish the self-centeredness that keeps good people limited. The great women and men of the world were all givers, not takers. Renounce the common delusion that those who accumulate the most win. Instead, do work that is heroic—that staggers your marketplace by the quality of its originality as well as from the helpfulness it provides. While you do so, my recommendation is that you also create a private life strong in ethics, rich with marvelous beauty and unyielding when it comes to the protection of your inner peace. This, my friends, is how you soar with the angels. And walk alongside the gods.

No matter how much wealth or fame you accumulate, if you don’t have true friends it’s unlikely you’ll be happy. Sadly I know too many people who have achieved their material goals, but have no friends.

Normalize the inevitability of conflict & establish a safe forum for it. Discuss and agree to as many of these guidelines as seem useful. The goal is to inform and negotiate for change, not punish. Punishment destroys trust. Love can open the “ears” of the other’s heart. Imagine how it would be easiest to hear about your grievance from the other. Say it as it would be easiest for you to hear. Preface complaints with acknowledgement of the good of the other and your mutual relationship. No name-calling, sarcasm or character assassination. No analyzing the other or mind reading. No interrupting or filibustering Be dialogical. Give short, concise statements that allow the other to reflect back and paraphrase key points to let you hear that you are accurately being heard. No denial of the other’s rights as outlined in the Bill of Rights above. Differences are often not a matter of right or wrong; both people can be right, and merely different. Be willing to sometimes agree to differ. Avoid “you” statements. Use “I” statements that identify your feelings and your experience of what you perceive as unfair. One specific issue, with accompanying identifiable behavior, at a time. Ask yourself what hurts the most to try to find your key complaint. Stick to the issue until both persons feel fully heard. Take turns presenting issues. No interrupting or filibustering. Present a complaint as lovingly and calmly as possible. Timeouts: If discussion becomes heated either person can call a timeout [one minute to 24 hours], as long as s/he nominates a time to resume. {See 1 below} Discharge as much of any accumulated charge before hand as possible. Own responsibility for any accumulated charge in the anger that might come from not talking about it soon enough. Own responsibility for accumulated charge displaced from other hurts. {See 2 below} Commit to grow in your understanding of how much of your charge comes from childhood abuse/neglect. Commit to recovering from the losses of childhood by effectively identifying, grieving, and reclaiming them. Apologize from an unashamed place. Make whatever amends are possible.

Change always entails risk, because in a dynamic economy accumulated capital can be lost. So it’s natural for winners to want to arrest the pace of change, to shift from offense to defense once the score is in their favor. But doing this is short-sighted and detrimental to the long-term health of society. Let the gale of creative destruction blow.

It’s not that hard on any given day, but the trick is you can’t skip days. Your workouts can be reasonable and still deliver results—if you don’t skip days. Your writing sessions can be short and the work will still accumulate—if you don’t skip days. As long as you’re working, you’ll get there.

When I had first arrived in this world, I’d been super anxious about my financial future, but ever since I met Fel and the others, I’d been totally economically stable. ‘Stable’ would actually be selling it short—thanks to my familiars’ random acts of chaos and violence, I’d actually been accumulating money. Those three carnivores kept bringing in carcass after carcass for me to cook for them, and all the bits that weren’t edible always ended up getting sold off for an incredible sum of money.

All of this was sheer fiction. The pot horrors, when they come, can last four hours, eight hours or longer – far longer than the drug itself. When the usual armors against anxiety collapse, the accumulated repressed terrors of decades can come out, and long after the drug has left the bloodstream the momentum can continue to build. However, it is fairly easy to short-circuit the process (which usually happens only to novices and is probably a result of autosuggestion produced by anti-pot propaganda combined with ignorance) by telling the smoker a convincing yarn – as I had done. Government propaganda and Bill’s ignorance had produced this bad trip, and I was going to use my propaganda and his ignorance to convert it into a good trip.

Acquiring a deep understanding of the target customer should not be short-changed — by anyone writing sales copy, at any time, for any purpose. As I was writing this edition of this book, I was writing copy for a long-time client, the Guthy-Renker Corporation, for their hugely successful Proactiv® brand of acne products. There are three different people to talk to about this — the teen sufferer, the teen's mom, and playing the odds, the adult female sufferer. This had me reading past and current issues of nearly a hundred magazines, including all the teen and preteen magazines, all the mom magazines, and all the women's magazines, having copious online research done for me, doing “conversational research” directly with people in all three groups, and even hiring a dozen freelance readers — teens, parents of teens, and young women — to critique my copy. Also, as I was writing this edition of this book, I began work on copy aimed at highly successful, professional financial and investment advisors, financial planners, and top-performing life insurance and annuities agents, which required a similar investment of time and energy in crawling inside their psyche, tribal language, daily experiences. Freelance writers worth their salt know they must do this sort of thing, and do. The danger for the business owner writing copy for himself and for his own business is ingrained assumption — encouraging shortcutting or altogether neglecting this step. The only sure way to keep your own accumulated but untested opinions and beliefs about your customers from sabotaging your sales letters is to start anew, from scratch, and to engage in getting to know the customers just as if you were arriving to write for them for the first time, with no foreknowledge.

The actual mechanics of cell division, according to Dick McIntosh at the University of Denver, require significantly more instructions than it takes to build a moon rocket or supercomputer. First of all, the cell needs to duplicate all of its molecules, that is DNA, RNA, proteins, lipids, etc. At the organelle level, several hundred mitochondria, large areas of ER, new Golgi bodies, cytoskeletal structures, and ribosomes by the million all need to be duplicated so that the daughter cells have enough resources to grow and, in turn, divide themselves. All these processes make up the ‘cell cycle’. Some cells will divide on a daily basis, others live for decades without dividing. The cell cycle is divided into phases, starting with interphase, the period between cell divisions (about 23 hours), and mitosis (M phase), the actual process of separating the original into two daughter cells (about 1 hour). Interphase is further split into three distinct periods: gap 1 (G1, 4–6 hours), a synthesis phase (S, 12 hours), and gap 2 (G2, 4–6 hours). Generally, cells continue to grow throughout interphase, but DNA replication is restricted to the S phase. At the end of G1 there is a checkpoint. If nutrient and energy levels are insufficient for DNA synthesis, the cell is diverted into a phase called G0. In 2001 Tim Hunt, Paul Nurse, and Leeland Hartwell received the Nobel Prize for their work in discovering how the cell cycle is controlled. Tim Hunt found a set of proteins called cyclins, which accumulate during specific stages of the cell cycle. Once the right level is reached, the cell is ‘allowed’ to progress to the next stage and the cyclins are destroyed. Cyclins then start to build up again, keeping a score of the progress at each point of the cycle, and only allowing progression to the next stage if the correct cyclin level has been reached.

In a short essay called ‘Liberating Life: Women’s Revolution’, Öcalan (2013) outlines the core tenets of his sociological/historico-philosophical writings. Öcalan’s fundamental claim is that ‘mainstream civilisation’, commences with the enslavement of ‘Woman’, through what he calls ‘Housewifisation’ (2013). As such, it is only through a ‘struggle against the foundations of this ruling system’ (2013), that not only women, but also men can achieve freedom, and slavery can be destroyed. Any liberation of life, for Öcalan, can only be achieved through a Woman’s revolution. In his own words: ‘If I am to be a freedom fighter, I cannot just ignore this: woman’s revolution is a revolution within a revolution’ (2013). For Öcalan, the Neolithic era is crucial, as the heyday of the matricentric social order. The figure of the Woman is quite interesting, and is not just female gender, but rather a condensation of all that is ‘equal’ and ‘natural’ and ‘social’, and its true significance is seen as a mode of social governance, which is non-hierarchical, non-statist, and not premised upon accumulation (2013). This can only be fully seen, through the critique of ‘civilisation’ which is equally gendered and equated with the rise of what he calls the ‘dominant male’ and hegemonic sexuality. These forms of power as coercive are embodied in the institution of masculine civilisation. And power in the matriarchal structures are understood more as authority, they are natural/organic. What further characterised the Neolithic era is the ways through which society was based upon solidarity and sharing – no surplus in production, and a respect for nature. In such a social order, Öcalan finds through his archaeology of ‘sociality’ the traces of an ecological ontology, in which nature is ‘alive and animated’, and thus no different from the people themselves. The ways in which Öcalan figures ‘Woman’, serves as metaphor for the Kurdish nation-as-people (not nation-state). In short, if one manages to liberate woman, from the hegemonic ‘civilisation’ of ‘the dominant male’, one manages to liberate, not only the Kurds, but the world. It is only on this basis that the conditions of possibility for a genuine global democratic confederalism, and a solution to the conflicts of the Middle East can be thinkable. Once it is thinkable, then we can imagine a freedom to organise, to be free from any conception of ownership (of property, persons, or the self), a freedom to show solidarity, to restore balance to life, nature, and other humans through ‘love’, not power. In Rojava, The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, Öcalan’s political thoughts are being implemented, negotiated and practised. Such a radical experiment, which connects theory with practice has not been seen on this scale, ever before, and although the Rojava administration, the Democratic Union Party, is different from the PKK, they share the same political leader, Öcalan. Central to this experiment are commitments to feminism, ecology and justice.

After the war, when the problem of deficient effective demand seemed to have faded into the background, a fresh question came to the fore — long-run development. The change arose partly from the internal evolution of economics as an academic subject. The solution of one problem opens up the next; once Keynes’ short-period theory had been established, in which investment plays the key role, it was evidently necessary to discuss the consequences of the accumulation of capital that investment brings about. [p. 92]

Here are a few notable things that can spark inflammation and depress the function of your liver: Alcohol overload—This is relatively well-known. Your liver is largely responsible for metabolizing alcohol, and drinking too much liquid courage can send your liver running to cry in a corner somewhere. Carbohydrate bombardment—Starches and sugar have the fastest ability to drive up blood glucose, liver glycogen, and liver fat storage (compared to their protein and fat macronutrient counterparts). Bringing in too many carbs, too often, can elicit a wildfire of fat accumulation. In fact, one of the most effective treatments for reversing NAFLD is reducing the intake of carbohydrates. A recent study conducted at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and published in the journal Cell Metabolism had overweight test subjects with high levels of liver fat reduce their ratio of carbohydrate intake (without reducing calories!). After a short two-week study period the subjects showed “rapid and dramatic” reductions of liver fat and other cardiometabolic risk factors. Too many medications—Your liver is the top doc in charge of your body’s drug metabolism. When you hear about drug side effects on commercials, they are really a direct effect of how your liver is able to handle them. The goal is to work on your lifestyle factors so that you can be on as few medications as possible along with the help of your physician. Your liver will do its best to support you either way, but it will definitely feel happier without the additional burden. Too many supplements—There are several wonderful supplements that can be helpful for your health, but becoming an overzealous natural pill-popper might not be good for you either. In a program funded by the National Institutes of Health, it was found that liver injuries linked to supplement use jumped from 7 percent to 20 percent of all medication/supplement-induced injuries in just a ten-year time span. Again, this is not to say that the right supplements can’t be great for you. This merely points to the fact that your liver is also responsible for metabolism of all of the supplements you take as well. And popping a couple dozen different supplements each day can be a lot for your liver to handle. Plus, the supplement industry is largely unregulated, and the additives, fillers, and other questionable ingredients could add to the burden. Do your homework on where you get your supplements from, avoid taking too many, and focus on food first to meet your nutritional needs. Toxicants—According to researchers at the University of Louisville, more than 300 environmental chemicals, mostly pesticides, have been linked to fatty liver disease. Your liver is largely responsible for handling the weight of the toxicants (most of them newly invented) that we’re exposed to in our world today. Pesticides are inherently meant to be deadly, but just to small organisms (like pests), though it seems to be missed that you are actually made of small organisms, too (bacteria

In the short term, distractions can keep us from doing the things we want to do. In the longer term, however, they can accumulate and keep us from living the lives we want to live, or, even worse, undermine our capacities for reflection and self-regulation, making it harder, in the words of Harry Frankfurt, to “want what we want to want.

The optimal duration forO2max intervals for marathoners is approximately 2 to 6 minutes. Intervals in this range are long enough so you accumulate a substantial amount of time at 95 to 100 percent ofO2max during each interval but short enough so you can maintain the optimal-intensity range throughout the workout. Intervals for marathoners should generally be between 800 and 1,600 meters. The training schedules in this book include some workouts of 600-meter repeats during weeks when your top priority lies elsewhere, such as when the week also calls for a tune-up race.

Imagine you're alive at the end of the Civil War. You're living in the South, but you're a Northerner. You plan to move home as soon as the war's over. While in the South you've accumulated lots of Confederate currency. Now, suppose you know for a fact the North's going to win the war, and the end is imminent. What will you do with your Confederate money? If you're smart, there's only one answer. You should immediately cash in your Confederate currency for U. S. currency - the only money that will have value once the war's over. Keep only enough Confederate currency to meet your short-term needs. Kingdom currency, backed by the eternal treasury, is the only medium of exchange recognized by the Son of God, whose government will last forever. The currency of his kingdom is our present faithful service and sacrificial use of our resources for him. The payoff in eternity will be what Paul called 'a firm foundation' consisting of treasures beyond our wildest dreams.

explanation. Why didn’t they accumulate a much larger population?

But, there is another effect that stems from restricting the accumulation of inventory. It makes it very visible to spot the real problems that jeopardize the flow—when one work center in a line stops producing for more than a short while, soon the whole line stops. Ford took advantage of the resulting clear visibility to better balance the flow by addressing and eliminating the apparent stoppages.4 The end result of abolishing local efficiencies and balancing the flow is a substantial increase in throughput. Henry Ford achieved the highest throughput per worker of any car manufacturing company of his time.

The software industry has a name for the consequences of short-termism: technical debt. The idea comes from writing code: if you prioritize short-term code fixes, or “hacks,” over long-term, well-designed code and processes, then you accumulate debt that will eventually have to be paid down by future code rewrites and refactors.

Short-termism can easily lead to the accumulation of technical debt and create disadvantageous path dependence; to counteract it, think about preserving optionality and keep in mind the precautionary principle. Internalize the distinction between irreversible and reversible decisions, and don’t let yourself succumb to analysis paralysis for the latter. Heed Murphy’s law!

Your false self is the accumulation of all the voices you have internalized from other people—parents and friends who want you to conform to their ideas of what you should be like and what you should do, as well as societal pressures to adhere to certain values that can easily seduce you. It also includes the voice of your own ego, which constantly tries to protect you from unflattering truths. This self talks to you in clear words, and when it comes to mastery, it says things like, “Mastery is for the geniuses, the exceptionally talented, the freaks of nature. I was simply not born that way.” Or it says, “Mastery is ugly and immoral. It is for those who are ambitious and egotistical. Better to accept my lot in life and to work to help other people instead of enriching myself.” Or it might say, “Success is all luck. Those we call Masters are only people who were at the right place at the right time. I could easily be in their place if I had a lucky break.” Or it might also say, “To work for so long at something that requires so much pain and effort, why bother? Better to enjoy my short life and do what I can to get by.

The means of creating wealth are abundant, it is the disire to create wealth that is in short supply

One interesting aspect of his book is that it argued that the more specialized a species is, the less likely it is to continue to recognize appropriate habitats as conditions change. Species displaying a less plastic/diverse inventory of behavioral choices, such as those focusing on a single type of food, are the most susceptible. For instance, parasites often have a single host species, which does not present any problems for them as long as the host species does not become extinct. That is why, according to Eldredge, ecologically specialized species become extinct at much higher rates than do ecologically generalized species in the fossil record. The concept that specialization often leads to an evolutionary dead end was first proposed by Cope as the “law of the unspecialized” and has continued to be key for evolutionary biology since then. In Eldredge’s view, the balance of life will tend to produce ecologically specialized organisms because they often flourish more than generalists in the short run, but extinction then normally affects more the ranks of the specialists. In the long run, the generalists thus hang on—‘living fossils’ often being generalists—whereas the ranks of specialists are quickly refilled by the continuous evolution of new taxa. For him, taxa that descend from species that are already somewhat specialized tend to have a greater chance of focusing on a specific portion of the resources not completely exploited by the parental taxa. He designated this as a “ratchet-like mechanism” of the quick accumulation of evolutionary change as lineages keep splitting and new taxa are formed from old ones within specialized lineages. Thus, he directly connects behavioral/ecological specializations to cladogenesis and the rapid evolutionary events predicted in punctuated equilibrium. In turn, he argues that stasis is often related to generalist lineages because without a comparable degree of successful speciation, these lineages tend to have far fewer extant species at any one time than their specialized counterparts. That is, generalists are not really evolving at slower morphological rates: they are simply not generating so many new species. As a result, the gradual fluctuation of form among the members of the generalized taxa is not being fixed by cladogenesis, thus leading to new species.

Sam had a child’s faith in the healing power of the morning, she thought later, as she lay sleepless at his side; he believed that a good night’s sleep could iron out all the accumulated wrinkles of the day. She resented his ability to fall asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow while she tossed restlessly in bed; his even breathing was an affront to her wakefulness.

All of our systems will inevitably fall short, accumulate errors, and crash. And this remains true whether the crash is immediate and obvious and leads to a great depression, or whether it is monotonous, laborious, and even perpetual.

The method of basing general statements on accumulated observations of specific instances is known as induction, and is seen as the hallmark of science. In other words the use of the inductive method is seen as the criterion of demarcation between science and non-science. Scientific statements, being based on observational and experimental evidence - based, in short, on the facts - are contrasted with statements of all other kinds, whether based on auth ority, or emotion, or tradition, or speculation, or prejudice, or habit, or any other foundation, as alone providing sure and certain knowledge. Science is the corpus of such know ledge, and the growth of science consists in the endless pro cess of adding new certainties to the body of existing ones.

Enormous stores of vital energy accumulate in unemployed women of sanguine temperament, which vent themselves in ways that are generally deplorable: in interfering with other people's affairs, in working up emotional scenes, in thinking about love and making it, and in bothering men till they cannot get on with their work.

…every now and then when I felt the necessity of a strong inspiration of soul-thought. My heart was dusty, parched for want of the rain of deep feeling; my mind arid and dry, for there is a dust which settles on the heart as well as that which falls on a ledge. It is injurious to the mind as well as the body to be always in one place and always surrounded by the same circumstances. A species of thick clothing slowly grows about my mind … little habits become a part of existence, and by degrees the mind is inclosed in a husk. When this began to form I felt eager to escape from it … to drink deeply once more at the fresh fountains of life. An inspiration -- a long deep breath of pure air of thought -- could alone give health to the heart. There was a hill to which I used to resort at such periods. The labour of walking three miles to it, all the while gradually ascending, seemed to clear my blood of the heaviness accumulated at home … the slow continued rise required continual effort, which carried away the sense of oppression … Moving up the sweet short turf, at every step my heart seemed to obtain a wider horizon of feeling; with every inhalation of rich pure air, a deeper desire … By the time I had reached the summit I had entirely forgotten the petty circumstances and the annoyances of existence. I felt myself, myself'.

And Dr. Michael Burry was dumbstruck: He recalled Asperger’s from med school, but vaguely. His wife now handed him the stack of books she had accumulated on autism and related disorders. On top were The Complete Guide to Asperger’s Syndrome, by a clinical psychologist named Tony Attwood, and Attwood’s Asperger’s Syndrome: A Guide for Parents and Professionals. “Marked impairment in the use of multiple non-verbal behaviors such as eye-to-eye gaze…” Check. “Failure to develop peer relationships…” Check. “A lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interests, or achievements with other people…” Check. “Difficulty reading the social/emotional messages in someone’s eyes…” Check. “A faulty emotion regulation or control mechanism for expressing anger…” Check. “…One of the reasons why computers are so appealing is not only that you do not have to talk or socialize with them, but that they are logical, consistent and not prone to moods. Thus they are an ideal interest for the person with Asperger’s Syndrome…” Check. “Many people have a hobby…. The difference between the normal range and the eccentricity observed in Asperger’s Syndrome is that these pursuits are often solitary, idiosyncratic and dominate the person’s time and conversation.” Check…Check…Check. After a few pages, Michael Burry realized that he was no longer reading about his son but about himself.

Rapid evolution is now being found in nature in such a wide range of taxa that it must be one of the working hypotheses for the dynamics of populations and communities over even short periods of time. Studies of eco-evolutionary dynamics have increasingly shown that evolutionary and ecological changes can influence each other, fostering yet more change. Examples of strong selection and rapid evolution have accumulated to such an extent in recent years that we should expect that the ecological dynamics observed in populations over timescales of just a few decades are often driven in part by rapid evolution.

What are the “proud and lofty” things of contemporary cultures? To what do nations and peoples point in showing off their “honor” and “glory”? It would be interesting, for example, to count how many times those very words – “honor” and “glory” and their variants and equivalents – are used in our own day at national festivals and political rallies. The variants are seemingly endless. “National honor.” “Our honor is at stake.” “We are gathered today to honor those who...” “Our glorious heritage.” “Our glorious flag.” “What a glorious nation we live in!” People boast about the nations of which they are citizens. They also boast about ethnic identities, religious affiliations, race, gender, and clan. They point in pride to natural wonders they claim as their own possessions – “This land was made for you and me.” They show off their military might, their economic clout, their material abundance. The Lord of hosts has a day against all of these things: against nations who brag about being “Number One,” against racist pride, against the idealizing of “human potential,” against our self-actualization manifestos, against our reliance on missiles and bombers, against art and technology, against philosophy textbooks and country music records, against Russian vodka and South African diamonds, against trade centers and computer banks, against throne-rooms and presidential memorabilia. In short, God will stand in judgment of all idolatrous and prideful attachments to military, technological, commercial, and cultural might. He will destroy all of those rebellious projects that glorify oppression, exploitation, and the accumulation of possessions. It is in such projects that we can discern today our own ships of Tarshish and cedars from Lebanon.

We experience the externalities of the attention economy in little drips, so we tend to describe them with words of mild bemusement like “annoying” or “distracting.” But this is a grave misreading of their nature. In the short term, distractions can keep us from doing the things we want to do. In the longer term, however, they can accumulate and keep us from living the lives we want to live, or, even worse, undermine our capacities for reflection and self-regulation, making it harder, in the words of Harry Frankfurt, to “want what we want to want.” Thus there are deep ethical implications lurking here for freedom, wellbeing, and even the integrity of the self.22

Recursive functions are functions that can be defined by the accumulation and strictly regulated substitution of elementary component parts. As multiplication can be reduced to a series of additions, and addition reduced to repeated iterations of the successor function (counting ahead one integer at a time), so can all recursive functions be deconstructed into a finite number of elemental steps. The list of ingredients is short: the existence of 0, the existence of 1, the concept of a successor, the concept of identity, a least number operator, and some clerical substitution rules. Loosely speaking, these elements require no mathematical skills beyond the ability to count.

How Pressure Relief Devices Prevent Transformer Explosions? Transformers are essential components in the electrical grid, responsible for stepping up or stepping down voltage to ensure the efficient transmission of electricity. However, they also contain pressurized systems that can pose a risk of explosion if not properly managed. Pressure Relief Devices (PRDs) play a crucial role in preventing transformer explosions by managing the internal pressure that builds up during operation. At Precimeasure, we manufacture Pressure Relief Devices using Brass material that requires no external power. What Causes Pressure Buildup in Transformers? Transformers use insulating oil to cool and insulate the internal components, particularly the windings and core. Over time, this oil can absorb heat from the transformer’s operation. If the transformer experiences a fault, such as an electrical short or a sudden overload, the temperature inside can rise significantly. As the temperature increases, the oil begins to break down and release gases, causing pressure to build up within the transformer. In extreme cases, this pressure can become so great that the transformer’s casing may rupture or explode. Without a mechanism to relieve this pressure, a transformer can become a serious hazard, leading not only to equipment failure but also to fire hazards, environmental damage, and significant financial losses. This is where Pressure Relief Devices (PRDs) come into play. How Do Pressure Relief Devices Work? Pressure Relief Devices (PRDs) are designed to monitor and respond to changes in the internal pressure of transformers. There are different types of PRDs, including rupture disks, pressure relief valves, and spring-loaded relief valves. Each of these devices is engineered to release the built-up pressure at a predetermined level, thus preventing the transformer from reaching a point of catastrophic failure. Rupture Disks: This is a one-time-use device that consists of a thin membrane or disk that ruptures when the internal pressure exceeds a specific threshold. Once the disk bursts, the pressure is quickly relieved, preventing further damage to the transformer. Pressure Relief Valves: These are mechanical devices that open when the internal pressure exceeds a set point, allowing the transformer to vent the excess pressure in a controlled manner. Once the pressure returns to normal levels, the valve closes again, allowing the transformer to continue functioning without further intervention. Spring-loaded Relief Valves: Similar to pressure relief valves, these devices use a spring mechanism to maintain a seal under normal conditions. When pressure increases beyond a safe level, the spring compresses and allows the valve to open, venting the excess pressure. Preventing Explosions and Minimizing Risk PRDs are vital for preventing transformer explosions by ensuring that excessive pressure does not accumulate within the transformer tank. If left unchecked, this pressure could lead to the rupture of the transformer casing, causing a dangerous explosion. By venting the pressure in a controlled manner, PRDs help avoid such catastrophic events. Additionally, PRDs play a key role in minimizing other risks associated with transformer operation. For instance, by maintaining the transformer’s structural integrity, they reduce the likelihood of oil leaks, which could lead to fires or environmental contamination. This not only helps to keep the transformer safe but also protects the surrounding infrastructure and environment. Thus, Pressure Relief Devices are an indispensable part of transformer safety. By managing the pressure that naturally builds up within transformers, PRDs prevent explosions and other hazardous outcomes that could result from excessive pressure. Their ability to function reliably and efficiently ensures that transformers can operate safely, even under extreme conditions. In this way, PRDs contr

If the supply of workers exceeds the demand for labour, wages fall and some workers starve. Wages therefore tend to the lowest possible level compatible with keeping an adequate supply of workers alive. Marx draws another important point from the classical economists. Those who employ the workers - the capitalists - build up their wealth through the labour of their workers. They become wealthy by keeping for themselves a certain amount of the value their workers produce. Capital is nothing else but accumulated labour. The worker's labour increases the employer's capital. This increased capital is used to build bigger factories and buy more machines. This increases the division of labour. This puts more self-employed workers out of business. They must then sell their labour on the market. This intensifies the competition among workers trying to get work, and lowers wages.

Want to join this secret occult brotherhood for riches, wealth & gain powers? Knowledge means knowledge which is “hidden”, but it also means knowledge which is known. If it is knowledge that is known, there must be those who know it, there could be no knowledge without the knowers of it. True Kabashi Brotherhood Occult knowledge can be obtained only by those who follow the path to it. This path was set down by those who know, all who will, may and can arrive at that very knowledge. This is not a path open only to certain persons, it is open to every living human being, and limited only by the limitations we ourselves place around it through choice or through ignorance. Much is heard in the world today of what passes for “Occult knowledge”. Much experiment goes on under that name in various directions. We have societies for mental and psychological research, and there is much talk of psychic and astral “experiences” and “communications” with the dead. All these various methods of research are from below, upwards, and will never find the goal. Scientific methods, psychological methods, the methods of the Spiritualists, alike proceed from particulars to universals. Particulars are infinite, and those who follow that path will inevitably get lost in its infinite ramifications, with no real knowledge gained. The goal is to be found from above, below — from universals to particulars, and not the reverse. In all forms of Occultism there is a fundamental principle which cannot be transgressed, if any goal at all is to be reached. Every occult teacher must impress it upon his pupils, and it runs as follows: Every branch of knowledge which you seek only to enrich your own learning, only to accumulate treasure for yourself, leads you away from the Path: but all knowledge which you seek for working in the service of humanity and for the uplifting of the world, brings you a step forward. This law must be rigidly observed; nor is one a genuine disciple until he has adopted it as the guide for his whole life. In many occult schools this truth is expressed in the following short sentences. Every idea which does not become an ideal for you, slays a power in your soul: every idea which becomes an ideal creates within you living powers to join us call or WhatsApp the wise one on this number +27717641931 You were born free and die free but will you live free? As long as habit and routine dictate the pattern of living, new dimensions of the soul will not emerge. JOIN The Official Kabashi Brotherhood Occult society to gain and practice secret knowledge and information that was once only accessible by the privileged elite and society members. This is a private, exclusive, members-only global association. No matter how much the rich have, they always want more. And the richer you are, the more you get. And the more you get, the less others get, so you are actively making the poor poorer. Isn't that the world we live in? That's how we have the 1% versus the 99%. They will take everything from you, unless you take it all back from them. The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will. GET OUT OF POVERTY! Get off the poverty road and onto the path of prosperity now. If money has been tight and things haven't been going very well financially, KABASHI BROTHERHOOD OCCULT society will empower YOU to change your life and live YOUR life to the fullest. DO NOT MISS THIS OPPORTUNITY! CONTACT US NOW ON WHATSAPP ON +27717641931 WHY SUFFER IN POVERTY WHEN YOU CAN JOIN THE BROTHERHOOD AND BECOME MILLIONAIRE INSTANTLY. WHY SEARCH FOR POWER AT THE WRONG PLACES. WHEN THERE IS THE GREATEST OF ALL IN THE UNIVERSE – THE KABASHI BROTHERHOOD OCCULT SOCIETY. GET YOUR POWER FROM KABASHI BROTHERHOOD OCCULT. JOIN US! WHATSAPP THE WISE ONE ON THIS NUMBER: +27717641931

Around 100m seems to be the ideal distance for the base phase because it is short enough to prevent significant lactate production, thereby minimizing its impact on your other workouts. Some suggest 200m strides as well, but I prefer the 100m distance due to its lower lactate accumulation and fatigue. The 100m strides offer the benefits of running at a fast speed without causing excessive fatigue.

British colonial disdain for human rights even left its mark on the English language. The word “coolie” was borrowed from a Chinese word that literally means “bitter labor.” The Romanized first syllable coo means “bitter” and the second syllable lie mimics the pronunciation of the Chinese logograph that means “labor.” This Chinese word sprang into existence shortly after the Opium War in the nineteenth century when Britain annexed several territories along the eastern seaboard of China. Those territories included Hong Kong, parts of Shanghai, Canton city (Guangzhou) and parts of Tianjin, a seaport near Beijing. In those newly acquired territories, the British employed a vast number of manual laborers who served as beasts of burden on the waterfront in factories and at train stations. The coolies’ compensation was opium, not money. The British agency and officers that conceived this unusual scheme of compensation—opium for back-breaking hard labor—were as pernicious and ruthless as they were clever and calculating. Opium is a palliative drug. An addict becomes docile and inured to pain. He has no appetite and only craves the next fix. In the British colonies and concessions, the colonizers, by paying opium to the laborers for their long hours of inhumane, harsh labor, created a situation in which the Chinese laborers toiled obediently and never complained about the excessive workload or the physical devastation. Most important of all, the practice cost the employers next to nothing to feed and house the laborers, since opium suppressed the appetite of the addicts and made them oblivious to pain and discomfort. What could be better or more expedient for the British colonialists whose goal was to make a quick fortune? They had invented the most efficient and effective way to accumulate capital at a negligible cost in a colony. The only consequence was the loss of lives among the colonial subjects—an irrelevant issue to the colonialists. In addition to the advantages of this colonial practice, the British paid a pittance for the opium. In those days, opium was mostly produced in another British colony, Burma, not far from China. The exploitation of farmhands in one colony lubricated the wheels of commerce in another colony. On average, a coolie survived only a few months of the grim regime of harsh labor and opium addiction. Towards the end, as his body began to break down from malnutrition and overexertion, he was prone to cardiac arrest and sudden death. If, before his death, a coolie stumbled and hurt his back or broke a limb, he became unemployed. The employer simply recruited a replacement. The death of coolies in Canton, Hong Kong, Shanghai and other coastal cities where the British had established their extraterritorial jurisdiction during the late 19th century was so common that the Chinese accepted the phenomenon as a routine matter of semi-colonial life. Neither injury nor death of a coolie triggered any compensation to his family. The impoverished Chinese accepted injury and sudden death as part of the occupational hazard of a coolie, the “bitter labor.” “Bitter” because the labor and the opium sucked the life out of a laborer in a short span of time. Once, a 19th-century British colonial officer, commenting on the sudden death syndrome among the coolies, remarked casually in his Queen’s English, “Yes, it is unfortunate, but the coolies are Chinese, and by God, there are so many of them.” Today, the word “coolie” remains in the English language, designating an over-exploited or abused unskilled laborer.

BOOK EXCERPT Did Jesus actually die on the cross? The Roman soldiers were responsible for ensuring that all three crucified prisoners were dead. That was their job. The Roman army had brutal discipline for soldiers who didn't do their job correctly. For example, falling asleep on guard duty was punishable by death. Other corporal punishments included being beaten or having their clothes set on fire. The soldiers would have broken his legs if there was any possibility that Jesus was alive. They didn't. There wasn't anyone there who cried out, "He's still alive!" The Jewish rabbis in attendance wanted him to die. They would have said something if Jesus was still alive. After all, they wanted to guarantee that he died. I don't know how anyone could have survived being beaten, scourged, had a crown of thorns forced onto one's head, crucified, and then stabbed in either the lungs or the heart with a spear. The scourging alone would have been deadly. Jesus' dead body remained on the cross for a short while. Still, it would have been long enough for blood to accumulate in his lower extremities and for his body to cool. His lower extremities also would have turned bluish. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus retrieved the body and would have noticed at once if Jesus weren't dead. His body would have been warm, and his extremities would not have been distended and bluish. Joseph and Nicodemus didn't notice that, though, because they would have stopped preparing his body for burial if they did.

إنها ليست معركة قصيرة، بل ماراثون. " يبقى الثبات هادئًا حتى يُحقق نجاحًا باهرًا مفاجئًا". غالبًا ما يمر هذا البناء التدريجي دون أن يُلاحظ، ومع ذلك فهو أساس لإنجازات دائمة. ومع مرور الوقت، تتراكم الجهود الصغيرة ، ممهدة الطريق لتلك اللحظة الفارقة التي تُغير حياة كل شخص. #جيني_حسين_علي It is not a short battle but rather a marathon. "Consistency is quiet until there is a sudden major success". This gradual buildup often goes unnoticed, yet it is the foundation for lasting achievements. Over time, the small efforts accumulate, paving the way for that breakthrough moment that changes everyone’s life. #jenny_hussien_ali

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These days, you might bump into long-time friends, old acquaintances, or just casual acquaintances and schedule a catch-up session, but the disappointing thing is that the conversations are shallow and surface-level. superficial, if you will. Where do you work now? Which neighborhood do you live in? How much money do you make? Are you driving? Oh, really, which make and model? I find it shallow. Few are those who dare ask whether you're happy and how you're faring mentally and spiritually. What's the point of accumulating all the materialism and riches this world has to offer if you’re still unhappy inside? Certainly, I understand that it makes life easier and whatnot. However, I think having genuine and deep conversations goes a long way toward forming better human connections. It’s refreshing.

I think we should devise a new risk measure: the micromirth. How much more wonderful would our lives be, whether long or short, if we measured them in joy, laughter and utter nonsense? Microlives accumulate, micromorts are fatal but micromirths are priceless.

Camden in the winter of 1954 was a bleak place. It is difficult to see it this way if you’ve only been there in the summer, but most of Maine can be dismal, especially along the coast, during the long nights and short days. Once the colorful leaves have fallen from the majestic maple trees, and the last tourist has gone home, things become grim. So it was, during that cold January day, when I was on the road hoping to get a ride to New Jersey. On the radio, the weather forecasters predicted an overnight blizzard, but here it was only late afternoon and snow was already accumulating on the road. This would be my last opportunity to get home to see my family and friends, before cruising back on down to the Caribbean. I had really hoped to get an earlier start, to get far enough south to miss the brunt of the storm. Maine is known for this kind of weather, and the snowplows and sanders were ready. In fact, I didn’t see many other vehicles on the road any longer. Schools had let out early and most businesses were closed in anticipation of the storm. My last ride dropped me off in Belfast, telling me that he was trying to get as far as Augusta, before State Road 3 became impassable. Standing alongside the two-lane coastal highway with darkness not far off, I was half thinking that I should turn back. My mind was made up for me when I stepped back off the road, making room for a big State DOT dump truck with a huge yellow snowplow. His airbrakes wheezed as he braked, coming to a stop, at the same time lifting his plow to keep from burying me. The driver couldn’t believe that I was out hitchhiking in a blizzard. This kind of weather in Maine is no joke! The driver told me that the year before a body had been found under a snow bank during the spring thaw. Never mind, I was invincible and nothing like that could happen to me, or so I thought. He got me as far as Camden and suggested that I get a room. “This storm is only going to get worse,” he cautioned as I got off. I waved as he drove off. Nevertheless, still hoping that things would improve, I was determined to continue.