Size Zero Quotes

To all the girls that think you’re fat because you’re not a size zero, you’re the beautiful one, its society who’s ugly.

The only number that would ever be enough is 0. Zero pounds, zero life, size zero, double-zero, zero point. Zero in tennis is love. I finally get it.

The number doesn't matter. If I got down to 070.00, I'd want to be 065.00. If I weight 010.00, I wouldn't be happy until I got down to 005.00. The only number that would ever be enough is 0. Zero pounds, zero life, size zero, double-zero, zero point. Zero in tennis is love. I finally get it.

iv. who was it who invented size zero? who was it who promised that if you got to a certain point you would no longer be?

A million million million million (1 with twenty-four zeros after it) miles, the size of the observable universe.

The moment we see a pop artifact offering even a sliver of something different—say, a woman who isn’t a size zero or who doesn't treat a man as the center of the universe—we cling to it desperately because that representation is all we have.

He wanted to hide by shrinking past zero, through the dot at the end of himself, to a negative size, into an otherworld, where he would find a place— in an enormous city, too large to know itself, or some slowly developing suburb— to be alone and carefully build a life in which he might be able to begin, at some point, to think about what to do about himself.

Tachi’s galley had a full kitchen and a table with room for twelve. It also had a full-size coffeepot that could brew forty cups of coffee in less than five minutes whether the ship was in zero g or under a five-g burn. Holden said a silent prayer of thanks for bloated military budgets and pressed the brew button. He had to restrain himself from stroking the stainless steel cover while it made gentle percolating noises.

What a joke, coming from a woman who worked for the fashion industry. Really. Starving yourself to fit into a size zero — why did that size even exist? Zero referred to the absence of something, but what did it mean in terms of a model's measurements? Her fat? Or her presence? How much could you cut away before the person herself vanished? It was hypocritical, that's what it was. I said as much, adding, “If you're so keen on me being healthy then you should have no problem accepting me for the way I am. That's what's healthy, Mom. Not being focused on all this freaky weight-loss stuff.

Before me, before us—did you ever—were you ever in love?’ He paused for a while then shrugged. ‘I thought I was a couple of times at my last school—the usual crushes.’ ‘Yeah, I really don’t want to hear it,’ I said, backtracking like crazy. ‘You’re going to tell me they were blond and beautiful size zeros.

..in the 21st century, we don’t need to march against size zero models, risible pornography, lap-dancing clubs and Botox. We don’t need to riot, or go on hunger strike. There’s no need to throw ourselves under a horse, or even a donkey. We just need to look it in the eye, squarely, for a minute, and then start laughing at it. We look hot when we laugh. People fancy us when they observe us giving out relaxed, earthy chuckles.

Before I got here, I thought a size four was a good size.  And then I saw the natives wearing a size negative-triple-zero, or something crazy like that.

Mara on either side of me in my queen-size bed, and my heart is so full, I’m afraid it’ll overflow. Apparently this is what I am now, a unicorn rainbow marshmallow kitten creature. Bah.

Until you ask my husband those same questions, I just can’t answer them anymore.” But I can’t stop. I can’t help myself. “Do you know why no one asks men how they balance it all? It’s because there is no expectation of that. Bringing home money is enough. We don’t expect you to be anything more than a provider, men. But a working woman? Not only do you have to bring home the bacon and fry it up, you gotta be a size double-zero, too. You’ve got to volunteer at the school, you’ve got to be a sex kitten, a great friend, a community activist. There are all these expectations that we put on women that we don’t put on men. In the same way, we never inquire about what’s happening in a man’s urethra. ‘Low sperm count, huh? That why you don’t have kids? Have you tried IVF?

A board of three is ideal. Your board should never exceed five people, unless your company is publicly held. (Government regulations effectively mandate that public companies have larger boards—the average is nine members.) By far the worst you can do is to make your board extra large. When unsavvy observers see a nonprofit organization with dozens of people on its board, they think: “Look how many great people are committed to this organization! It must be extremely well run.” Actually, a huge board will exercise no effective oversight at all; it merely provides cover for whatever microdictator actually runs the organization. If you want that kind of free rein from your board, blow it up to giant size. If you want an effective board, keep it small.

The normal brain learns from what it perceives. It doesn’t have to start from zero if it hears the same thing twice. People with schizophrenia, however, couldn’t manage that. In test after test, conducted at Freedman’s lab in Denver, their brains showed two waves of equal size for the two clicks. It was as if they had to react all over again to the second click—even though they had just heard the same click a fraction of a second earlier.

Remember Rio de Janeiro, the size of God’s hand, sardines fleshed-open at the market, the way I entered you and moved inside? Looking down, is this the kind of density you can live with? What is the slightness of our bodies to stay, to be good at loving a second time? My mouth pretends it is an oar when it lives inside your mouth, but you are far away.

but how to establish a process by which a sales team of modest size can move the product to a wide audience.

To all the girls that think you’re fat because you’re not a size zero, you’re the beautiful one, its society who’s ugly.

That’s what so many people get wrong about fashion now. It shouldn’t be about the trends or the size zeros or who’s using fur and who isn’t; it should be about love.

Ms. Terwilliger didn’t have a chance to respond to my geological ramblings because someone knocked on the door. I slipped the rocks into my pocket and tried to look studious as she called an entry. I figured Zoe had tracked me down, but surprisingly, Angeline walked in. "Did you know," she said, "that it’s a lot harder to put organs back in the body than it is to get them out?" I closed my eyes and silently counted to five before opening them again. “Please tell me you haven’t eviscerated someone.” She shook her head. “No, no. I left my biology homework in Miss Wentworth’s room, but when I went back to get it, she’d already left and locked the door. But it’s due tomorrow, and I’m already in trouble in there, so I had to get it. So, I went around outside, and her window lock wasn’t that hard to open, and I—” "Wait," I interrupted. "You broke into a classroom?" "Yeah, but that’s not the problem." Behind me, I heard a choking laugh from Ms. Terwilliger’s desk. "Go on," I said wearily. "Well, when I climbed through, I didn’t realize there was a bunch of stuff in the way, and I crashed into those plastic models of the human body she has. You know, the life size ones with all the parts inside? And bam!" Angeline held up her arms for effect. "Organs everywhere." She paused and looked at me expectantly. "So what are we going to do? I can’t get in trouble with her." "We?" I exclaimed. "Here," said Ms. Terwilliger. I turned around, and she tossed me a set of keys. From the look on her face, it was taking every ounce of self-control not to burst out laughing. "That square one’s a master. I know for a fact she has yoga and won’t be back for the rest of the day. I imagine you can repair the damage—and retrieve the homework—before anyone’s the wiser.” I knew that the “you” in “you can repair” meant me. With a sigh, I stood up and packed up my things. “Thanks,” I said. As Angeline and I walked down to the science wing, I told her, “You know, the next time you’ve got a problem, maybe come to me before it becomes an even bigger problem.” "Oh no," she said nobly. "I didn’t want to be an inconvenience." Her description of the scene was pretty accurate: organs everywhere. Miss Wentworth had two models, male and female, with carved out torsos that cleverly held removable parts of the body that could be examined in greater detail. Wisely, she had purchased models that were only waist-high. That was still more than enough of a mess for us, especially since it was hard to tell which model the various organs belonged to. I had a pretty good sense of anatomy but still opened up a textbook for reference as I began sorting. Angeline, realizing her uselessness here, perched on a far counter and swing her legs as she watched me. I’d started reassembling the male when I heard a voice behind me. "Melbourne, I always knew you’d need to learn about this kind of thing. I’d just kind of hoped you’d learn it on a real guy." I glanced back at Trey, as he leaned in the doorway with a smug expression. “Ha, ha. If you were a real friend, you’d come help me.” I pointed to the female model. “Let’s see some of your alleged expertise in action.” "Alleged?" He sounded indignant but strolled in anyways. I hadn’t really thought much about asking him for help. Mostly I was thinking this was taking much longer than it should, and I had more important things to do with my time. It was only when he came to a sudden halt that I realized my mistake. "Oh," he said, seeing Angeline. "Hi." Her swinging feet stopped, and her eyes were as wide as his. “Um, hi.” The tension ramped up from zero to sixty in a matter of seconds, and everyone seemed at a loss for words. Angeline jerked her head toward the models and blurted out. “I had an accident.” That seemed to snap Trey from his daze, and a smile curved his lips. Whereas Angeline’s antics made me want to pull out my hair sometimes, he found them endearing.

When I played the “I don’t feel comfortable” card, he knew it was over. “I don’t feel comfortable” is the classic manipulative girl get-my-way line. It’s right up there with “I don’t feel entirely safe.” Was it fair? Nope. Was it cool? Absolutely not. But it also wasn’t fair or cool for him to have brought three dozen size-zero gowns to my photo shoot.

In 1970, the prison system in this country was perhaps one-tenth the size of what it is today. Many people attribute this immense growth to the war on drugs. But even more than that, the expansion of the prison system reflects a war being waged against people of color, against Black-Brown-Indigenous bodies—the very same colonial war brought to us by Columbus and the conquistadores. These European “civilizers” treated Black and Brown people as if their lives were worth nothing. In many parts of the country, the designated value of our lives continues to be zero.

And For You Zero, A Life Sized Vudu Doll" -Kaname Kuran "I DONT WANT IT!" -Zero Kiryu "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA" -Juri Elizabeth Marin

A new company’s most important strength is new thinking: even more important than nimbleness, small size affords space to think.

Do not throw your power at me, to know the fact, the size of your power is zero

The general theory of relativity describes the force of gravity and the large-scale structure of the universe, that is, the structure on scales from only a few miles to as large as a million million million million (1 with twenty-four zeros after it) miles, the size of the observable universe. Quantum mechanics, on the other hand, deals with phenomena on extremely small scales, such as a millionth of a millionth of an inch. Unfortunately, however, these two theories are known to be inconsistent with each other – they cannot both be correct.

In the 21st century, we don’t need to march against size-zero models, risible pornography, lap-dancing clubs, and Botox. We don’t need to riot or go on hunger strikes. There’s no need to throw ourselves under a horse, or even a donkey. We just need to look it in the eye, squarely, for a minute, and then start laughing at it.

My laboratory is a place where I write. I have become proficient at producing a rare species of prose capable of distilling ten years of work by five people into six published pages, written in a language that very few people can read and that no one ever speaks. This writing relates the details of my work with the precision of a laser scalpel, but its streamlined beauty is a type of artifice, a size-zero mannequin designed to showcase the glory of a dress that would be much less perfect on any real person. My papers do not display the footnotes that they have earned, the table of data that required painstaking months to redo when a graduate student quit, sneering on her way out that she didn’t want a life like mine. The paragraph that took five hours to write while riding on a plane, stunned with grief, flying to a funeral that I couldn’t believe was happening. The early draft that my toddler covered in crayon and applesauce while it was still warm from the printer. Although my publications contain meticulous details of the plants that did grow, the runs that went smoothly, and the data that materialized, they perpetrate a disrespectful amnesia against the entire gardens that rotted in fungus and dismay, the electrical signals that refused to stabilize, and the printer ink cartridges that we secured late at night through nefarious means. I

I reach out and squeeze her hand, and remember everything we’ve lived through together. The normal things we endured as we grew from girls to women. The days in school where boys would line us up in order of our fuckability. The parties where it was normal to lie on top of a semi-conscious girl, do things to her, then call her a slut afterwards. A Christmas number-one song about a pregnant woman being stuffed into the boot of a car and driven off a bridge. Laughing when your male friends made rape jokes. Opening a newspaper and seeing the breasts of a girl who had only just turned legal, dressed in school uniform to make her look underage. Of the childhood films we grew up on, and loved, and knew all the words to, where, at the end, a girl would always get chosen for looking the prettiest compared to all the others. Reading magazines that told you to mirror men’s body language, and hum on their dick when you went down on them, that turned into books about how to get them to commit by not being yourself. Of size zero, and Atkins, and Five-Two, and cabbage soup, and juice cleanses and eat clean. Of pole-dancing lessons as a great way to get fit, and actually, if you want to be really cool, come to the actual strip club too. Of being sexually assaulted when you kissed someone on a dance floor and not thinking about it properly until you are twenty-seven and read a book about how maybe it was wrong. Of being jealous of your friend who got assaulted on the dance floor because why didn’t he pick you to assault? Boys not wanting to be with you unless you fuck them quickly. Boys not wanting to be with you because you fucked them too quickly. Being terrified to walk anywhere in the dark in case the worst thing happens to you, and so your male friend walks you home to keep you safe, and then comes into your bedroom and does the worst thing to you, and now, when you look him up online, he’s engaged to a woman who wears a feminist T-shirt and isn’t going to change her name when they get married. Of learning to have no pubic hair, and how liberating it is to pay thirty-five pounds a month to rip this from your body and lurch up in agony. Rings around famous women’s bodies saying ‘look at this cellulite’, oh, by the way, here is a twenty-quid cream so you don’t get

Scientists now know the brain receives 400 billion bits of information each second. To give you some idea of just how much information that is, consider this: It would take nearly 600,000 average-size books just to print 400 billion zeros. Needless to say, that’s a heck of a lot of reality. So what do we do? We start screening. We start narrowing down. I’ll take that bit of information over there, and let’s see—this one fits nicely with my ongoing soap opera about the opposite sex. When all is said and done, we’re down to 2,000 measly bits of information. Go ahead and take a bow, because even that’s pretty impressive. We’re talking 2,000 bits of information each and every second. But here’s the problem. What we choose to take in is only one-half of one-millionth of a percent of what’s out there.

That was some shady shit out there, Rome,” Braeden said once the total chaos of winning the game had gone down to a considerable roar. We were finally in the locker room, and I was stripping off my sweat and grass-stained gear. “Total douche move.” I agreed. It wasn’t the first time a team had tried to take me out of a game. It was pretty much common practice, especially when something like a title and championship was at stake. Still, I’d never quite had anyone come at me like that before. The play was already in progress. Sacking me wouldn’t have changed the touchdown I’d just thrown. Except of course to keep me from throwing another one. That guy deliberately came in like a freight train and plowed me down. I lay there stunned for long moments, waiting for the air to come back in my lungs and for my body to process the shock of the hit. Thankfully, he wasn’t that good at tackling and it did nothing more than stun me. And it got him thrown out of the game. It really hadn’t been a big deal. Like I said, it happened a lot. But it was the first time it happened in front of Rimmel. I couldn’t help but notice how the large screen on the field had zeroed in on the girl in number twenty-four’s hoodie, who was climbing over the railing and preparing to leap down onto the field. The security guard was yelling at her, but she barely noticed him. Her eyes were trained out on the field, where I was. It was almost laughable that her tiny ass was going to rush out onto a field full of men more than double her size to make sure I was okay. G**damn. I loved her even more just then. When the guard put his hand on her ankle, trying to stop her from going back to her seat, something happened. Something that never had in my entire life of playing football. The game faded away. For once, I was out on the field and unable to focus on only the game. It took a backseat to the girl teetering on the edge of the railing.

Do you know why no one asks men how they balance it all? It’s because there is no expectation of that. Bringing home money is enough. We don’t expect you to be anything more than a provider, men. But a working woman? Not only do you have to bring home the bacon and fry it up, you gotta be a size double-zero, too. You’ve got to volunteer at the school, you’ve got to be a sex kitten, a great friend, a community activist. There are all these expectations that we put on women that we don’t put on men.

Any so-called “normal” brain, a brain without schizophrenia, recorded a large brain wave reacting to the first click, followed by a smaller wave reacting to the second click. The normal brain learns from what it perceives. It doesn’t have to start from zero if it hears the same thing twice. People with schizophrenia, however, couldn’t manage that. In test after test, conducted at Freedman’s lab in Denver, their brains showed two waves of equal size for the two clicks. It was as if they had to react all over again to the second click—even though they had just heard the same click a fraction of a second earlier.

hero’s gotta do. Even if he’d rather be doing anything else—like algebra or going to the dentist. I hang a right at the corner bakery and make a beeline for Keystone Police Station. Why the police station? Well, it’s not because I’m trying to stuff this Godzilla wannabe into a human-sized jail cell. That’s impossible, although it sure would be nice. No, I’m heading for the police station because that’s where TechnocRat told me to meet him. He said he had a big solution for our not-so-little problem. And he better be right, because we’re coming in fast, so I hope he’s ready to deliver on his end of the deal. THUMP! My feet fly off the pavement. Every time that over-sized lizard takes a step,

The main Stuxnet file was incredibly large—500 kilobytes, as opposed to the 10 to 15 KB they usually saw. Even Conficker, the monster worm that infected more than 6 million machines the previous two years, was only 35 kilobytes in size. Any malware larger than this usually just contained a space-hogging image file that accounted for its bloat—such as a fake online banking page that popped up in the browser of infected machines to trick victims into relinquishing their banking credentials. But there was no image file in Stuxnet, and no extraneous fat, either. And, as O’Murchu began to take the files apart, he realized the code was also much more complex than he or anyone else had previously believed. When

The general theory of relativity describes the force of gravity and the large-scale structure of the universe, that is, the structure on scales from only a few miles to as large as a million million million million (1 with twenty-four zeros after it) miles, the size of the observable universe. Quantum mechanics, on the other hand, deals with phenomena on extremely small scales, such as a millionth of a millionth of an inch. Unfortunately, however, these two theories are known to be inconsistent with each other—they cannot both be correct. One of the major endeavors in physics today, and the major theme of this book, is the search for a new theory that will incorporate them both—a quantum theory of gravity.

Leaders nourish and uphold the culture of an organization. They make choices that inevitably limit the size and scope of activities that the organization undertakes. A good leader will only work in a firm where there is clear and effective governance to protect the culture, philosophy and investment discipline of the firm. The most effective leaders create a non-hierarchical environment in which idea sharing is encouraged, and diligent execution is rewarded. They also establish a solid foundation, a durable framework, and processes for successfully managing an organization that can maintain these qualities. And last, a great investment leader has a zero tolerance policy for breaches of integrity. By integrity, we mean not only honesty and fulfillment of fiduciary obligation, but process integrity.

How rude of me, we haven’t even introduced ourselves. We’re the Andersons. I’m Evan, the lovely size-zero lass in the floppy sun hat is my wife Amy, and these are our best friends/children, Evan and Amy Jr. As you can see, we’re very fit and active. You know what our family’s average percentage of body fat is? Three. Yes, really. We got it tested last year when we all became organ donors. You may have noticed that I’m carrying Amy on my back. We do that a lot. At least once a day, and not just when we’re in fields like this; we do it on beaches and in urban environments as well. That’s what happens when your love is deep and playful like ours. You should also know that we also dab frosting on each other’s noses every single time we eat cupcakes, which is both mischievous and very us. Do you guys even eat cupcakes?

It was one of those rare moments where one has a vision of the scope of the wild ocean. Not just small cylinders firing to keep a tiny engine running, but rather the giant, massive gears of nature, each one with its own reasoning, its own meta-logic, spinning in its particular circle in competition or in confluence with the gear below it. We zeroed in on the school, but our progress was painfully slow, It would have been foolish to speed into the tumult-we would have ruined our baits in the process and doomed our chances of hooking a tuna. But luckily, the commotion did not subside. If anything it only grew more frantic and exhuberant on our approach. Beneath the birds, beneath the dolphins, beneath the menhaden, there should have been an equally vast school of giant bluefin tuna, collaborating with vertebrates of the so-called higher orders of life to form the floor of the prey trap, sealing the baitfish in from below, while the dolphins and birds made up the trap's walls and ceiling. A strike from a giant tuna seemed inevitable.....as the boat moved forward, I saw seabirds gathering up ahead into a cloud, the size and violence of which I had never seen before. Gannets - big, albatross-like pelagic birds - flew hundreds of feet above the churning surface of the water. In a flock of many thousands, they whirled in unison and then, as if on command from some brigadier general of bird life, dropped in an arc, bird after bird, into the water beneath. The gyre of gannets turned in a clockwise direction, and down below, spinning counterclockwise, was the largest school of dolphins I'd ever seen. There in the angry blue-green sea, the dolphins had corralled a vast school of menhaden-small herringlike creatures that, when bitten, release globules of oil that float on the surface. Oil slicks flattened the water everywhere as the dolphins swirled around, using their exceptional intelligence and wolf-pack cooperation to befuddle and surround the fish, which in turn whirled in a clockwise direction.

One night, we somehow ended up discussing Wile E. Coyote as a paradigm for obsession. She argued that Wile E., with all the resources he wasted on gadgets, could have been living high on the hog. “He was so skinny,” she complained after she had Googled him and watched a few skits on YouTube. “Poor thing, he looks like a size-zero model.” “But, Love, no other food would have satisfied him. He only wanted the Road Runner. He was obsessed with her. Obsession does not allow for satisfaction. You can never really eat your cake and have it too, which is the only way you can satisfy your obsession by devouring and yet having the object of your fascination,” I said from experience. “But he really didn't want to catch it,” she argued. “What do you mean?” “It was the chase he wanted. To eat the Road Runner would have ended that, ended his only reason for living. He isn't really that inept. He really didn't want to catch it.” “I guess not,” I said, thoughtfully. “It's the journey not the resolution that matters. If he caught her, he would lie down next to her and die too.

decorrelate error! To understand how this principle works, imagine that a large number of observers are shown glass jars containing pennies and are challenged to estimate the number of pennies in each jar. As James Surowiecki explained in his best-selling The Wisdom of Crowds, this is the kind of task in which individuals do very poorly, but pools of individual judgments do remarkably well. Some individuals greatly overestimate the true number, others underestimate it, but when many judgments are averaged, the average tends to be quite accurate. The mechanism is straightforward: all individuals look at the same jar, and all their judgments have a common basis. On the other hand, the errors that individuals make are independent of the errors made by others, and (in the absence of a systematic bias) they tend to average to zero. However, the magic of error reduction works well only when the observations are independent and their errors uncorrelated. If the observers share a bias, the aggregation of judgments will not reduce it. Allowing the observers to influence each other effectively reduces the size of the sample, and with it the precision of the group estimate.

Cheng Xin stared at the death lines, her terror mixed with awe. “If these are trails, why don’t they spread?” Guan Yifan clutched Cheng Xin’s arm. “I was just getting to that. We’ve got to get out of here. Leave not just Planet Gray, but the entire system. This is a very dangerous place. Death lines are not like regular trails. Without disturbance, they’ll stay like this, with a diameter equal to the effective surface of the curvature engine. But if they’re disturbed, they’ll spread very rapidly. A death line of this size can expand to cover a region the size of a solar system. Scientists call this phenomenon a death line rupture.” “Does a rupture make the speed of light zero in the entire region?” “No, no. After rupture, it turns into a regular trail. The speed of light inside goes up as the trail dissipates over a wider region, but it will never be much more than a dozen meters per second. After these death lines expand, this entire system might turn into a reduced-lightspeed black hole, or a black domain.… Let’s go.” Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan turned toward the shuttle and began to run and leap. “What kind of disturbance makes them spread?” Cheng Xin asked. She turned to give the death lines another glance. Behind them, the five death lines cast long shadows that stretched across the plain to the horizon. “We’re not sure. Some theories suggest that the appearance of other curvature trails nearby would cause disturbance. We’ve confirmed that curvature trails within a short distance can influence each other.” “So, if Halo accelerates—” “That’s why we must get farther away using only the fusion engine before engaging the curvature engine. We’ve got to move … using your units of measurement … at least forty astronomical units away.” After

The blinking message light on the phone screamed at us when we walked into the bedroom of our suite. Marlboro Man audibly exhaled, clearly wishing the world--and his brother and the grain markets and the uncertainties of agriculture--would leave us alone already. I wish they’d leave us alone, too. In light of the recent developments, though, Marlboro Man picked up the phone and dialed Tim to get an update. I excused myself to the bathroom to freshen up and put on a champagne satin negligee in an effort to thwart the external forces that were trying to rob me of my husband’s attention. I brushed my teeth and spritzed myself with Jil Sander perfume before opening the door to the bedroom, where I would seduce my Marlboro Man away from his worries. I knew I could win if only I applied myself. He was just getting off the phone when I entered the room. “Dammit,” I heard him mumble as he plopped down onto the enormous king-size bed. Oh no. Jil Sander had her work cut out for her. I climbed on the bed and lay beside him, resting my head on his arm. He draped his arm across my waist. I draped my leg around his. He sighed. “The markets are totally in the shitter.” I didn’t know the details, but I did know the shitter wasn’t a good place. I wanted to throw out the usual platitudes. Don’t worry about it, try not to think about it, we’ll figure it out, everything will be okay. But I didn’t know enough about it. I knew he and his brother owned a lot of land. I knew they worked hard to pay for it. I knew they weren’t lawyers or physicians by profession and didn’t have a whole separate income to supplement their ranching operation. As full-time ranchers, their livelihoods were completely reliant on so many things outside of their control--weather, market fluctuations, supply, demand, luck. I knew they weren’t home free in terms of finances--Marlboro Man and I had talked about it. But I didn’t understand enough about the ramifications of this current wrinkle to reassure him that everything would be okay, businesswise. And he probably didn’t want me to. So I did the only thing I could think of to do. I assured my new husband everything would be okay between us by leaning over, turning off the lamp, and letting the love between us--which had zero to do with markets or grains--take over.

BUTTERSCOTCH BONANZA BARS Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position.   ½ cup salted butter (1 stick, 4 ounces, ¼ pound) 2 cups light brown sugar*** (pack it down in the cup when you measure it) 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 beaten eggs (just whip them up in a glass with a fork) 1 and ½cups flour (scoop it up and level it off with a table knife) 1 cup chopped nuts (optional) 2 cups butterscotch chips (optional) ***- If all you have in the house is dark brown sugar and the roads are icy, it’s below zero, and you really don’t feel like driving to the store, don’t despair. Measure out one cup of dark brown sugar and mix it with one cup regular white granulated sugar. Now you’ve got light brown sugar, just what’s called for in Leslie’s recipe. And remember that you can always make any type of brown sugar by mixing molasses into white granulated sugar until it’s the right color. Hannah’s Note: Leslie says the nuts are optional, but she likes these cookie bars better with nuts. So do I, especially with walnuts. Bertie Straub wants hers with a cup of chopped pecans and 2 cups of butterscotch chips. Mother prefers these bars with 2 cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips and no nuts, Carrie likes them with 2 cups of mini chocolate chips and a cup of chopped pecans, and Lisa prefers to make them with 1 cup of chopped walnuts, 1 cup of white chocolate chips, and 1 cup of butterscotch chips. All this goes to show just how versatile Leslie’s recipe is. Try it first as it’s written with just the nuts. Then try any other versions that you think would be yummy. Grease and flour a 9-inch by 13-inch cake pan, or spray it with nonstick baking spray, the kind with flour added. Set it aside while you mix up the batter. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over low heat on the stovetop, or put it in the bottom of a microwave-safe, medium-sized mixing bowl and heat it for 1 minute in the microwave on HIGH. Add the light brown sugar to the mixing bowl with the melted butter and stir it in well. Mix in the baking powder and the salt. Make sure they’re thoroughly incorporated. Stir in the vanilla extract. Mix in the beaten eggs. Add the flour by half-cup increments, stirring in each increment before adding the next. Stir in the nuts, if you decided to use them. Mix in the butterscotch chips if you decided to use them, or any other chips you’ve chosen. Spoon the batter into the prepared cake pan and smooth out the top with a rubber spatula. Bake the Butterscotch Bonanza Bars at 350 degrees F. for 20 to 25 minutes. (Mine took 25 minutes.) When the bars are done, take them out of the oven and cool them completely in the pan on a cold stove burner or a wire rack. When the bars are cool, use a sharp knife to cut them into brownie-sized pieces. Yield: Approximately 40 bars, but that all depends on how large you cut the squares. You may not believe this, but Mother suggested that I make these cookie bars with semi-sweet chocolate chips and then frost them with chocolate fudge frosting. There are times when I think she’d frost a tuna sandwich with chocolate fudge frosting and actually enjoy eating it!

a startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future. A new company’s most important strength is new thinking: even more important than nimbleness, small size affords space to think.

weight.  Now that she’d accepted that there was nothing wrong with being larger than a size zero, she’d filled out her figure with magnificently sexy

march against size-zero models, risible pornography, lap-dancing clubs, and Botox. We don’t need to

STARTUP THINKING New technology tends to come from new ventures—startups. From the Founding Fathers in politics to the Royal Society in science to Fairchild Semiconductor’s “traitorous eight” in business, small groups of people bound together by a sense of mission have changed the world for the better. The easiest explanation for this is negative: it’s hard to develop new things in big organizations, and it’s even harder to do it by yourself. Bureaucratic hierarchies move slowly, and entrenched interests shy away from risk. In the most dysfunctional organizations, signaling that work is being done becomes a better strategy for career advancement than actually doing work (if this describes your company, you should quit now). At the other extreme, a lone genius might create a classic work of art or literature, but he could never create an entire industry. Startups operate on the principle that you need to work with other people to get stuff done, but you also need to stay small enough so that you actually can. Positively defined, a startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future. A new company’s most important strength is new thinking: even more important than nimbleness, small size affords space to think. This book is about the questions you must ask and answer to succeed in the business of doing new things: what follows is not a manual or a record of knowledge but an exercise in thinking. Because that is what a startup has to do: question received ideas and rethink business from scratch.

If your needs are not attainable through safe instruments, the solution is not to increase the rate of return by upping the level of risk. Instead, goals may be revised, savings increased, or income boosted through added years of work. . . . Somebody has to care about the consequences if uncertainty is to be understood as risk. . . . As we’ve seen, the chances of loss do decline over time, but this hardly means that the odds are zero, or negligible, just because the horizon is long. . . . In fact, even though the odds of loss do fall over long periods, the size of potential losses gets larger, not smaller, over time. . . . The message to emerge from all this hype has been inescapable: In the long run, the stock market can only go up. Its ascent is inexorable and predictable. Long-term stock returns are seen as near certain while risks appear minimal, and only temporary. And the messaging has been effective: The familiar market propositions come across as bedrock fact. For the most part, the public views them as scientific truth, although this is hardly the case. It may surprise you, but all this confidence is rather new. Prevailing attitudes and behavior before the early 1980s were different. Fewer people owned stocks then, and the general popular attitude to buying stocks was wariness, not ebullience or complacency. . . . Unfortunately, the American public’s embrace of stocks is not at all related to the spread of sound knowledge. It’s useful to consider how the transition actually evolved—because the real story resists a triumphalist interpretation. . . . Excessive optimism helps explain the popularity of the stocks-for-the-long-run doctrine. The pseudo-factual statement that stocks always succeed in the long run provides an overconfident investor with more grist for the optimistic mill. . . . Speaking with the editors of Forbes.com in 2002, Kahneman explained: “When you are making a decision whether or not to go for something,” he said, “my guess is that knowing the odds won’t hurt you, if you’re brave. But when you are executing, not to be asking yourself at every moment in time whether you will succeed or not is certainly a good thing. . . . In many cases, what looks like risk-taking is not courage at all, it’s just unrealistic optimism. Courage is willingness to take the risk once you know the odds. Optimistic overconfidence means you are taking the risk because you don’t know the odds. It’s a big difference.” Optimism can be a great motivator. It helps especially when it comes to implementing plans. Although optimism is healthy, however, it’s not always appropriate. You would not want rose-colored glasses in a financial advisor, for instance. . . . Over the long haul, the more you are exposed to danger, the more likely it is to catch up with you. The odds don’t exactly add, but they do accumulate. . . . Yet, overriding this instinctive understanding, the prevailing investment dogma has argued just the reverse. The creed that stocks grow steadily safer over time has managed to trump our common-sense assumption by appealing to a different set of homespun precepts. Chief among these is a flawed surmise that, with the passage of time, downward fluctuations are balanced out by compensatory upward swings. Many people believe that each step backward will be offset by more than one step forward. The assumption is that you can own all the upside and none of the downside just by sticking around. . . . If you find yourself rejecting safe investments because they are not profitable enough, you are asking the wrong questions. If you spurn insurance simply because the premiums put a crimp in your returns, you may be destined for disappointment—and possibly loss.

The Tachi’s galley had a full kitchen and a table with room for twelve. It also had a full-size coffeepot that could brew forty cups of coffee in less than five minutes whether the ship was in zero g or under a five-g burn. Holden said a silent prayer of thanks for bloated military budgets and pressed the brew button. He had to restrain himself from stroking the stainless steel cover while it made gentle percolating noises.

FACTOID: Today, food manufacturers can still slap a “zero trans fat” label on their foods even if it contains up to half a gram per serving. While that might not seem like a lot, it can add up quickly in products like cooking sprays, whose serving size is even less than half a gram—making it legally possible for the product to consist of nothing but trans fat and still be marketed as free of it.

Statistics doesn’t work when the sample size is one.

This is why so many small and medium-sized businesses don’t use tools that bigger firms take for granted. It’s not that small business proprietors are unusually backward or that good tools don’t exist: distribution is the hidden bottleneck.

The most commonly quoted mass for the vacuum is 1094 grams per centimeter cubed (g/cm3) as calculated by John Wheeler who was quoted above.11 We will calculate later that the energy of the vacuum is 1095 g/cm3 by a slightly different method, so that value will be used from here on. As we will see, one order of magnitude difference is not that significant at this point in our discussions. Energy is related to mass by the well-known relation E=mc2. For comparison water has a mass density of 1 g/cm3 by definition. It is impossible for most normal people to grasp just how big a difference in energy there is between the zero-point field and water, so perhaps a simple illustrative example will help. Let’s start with the clichéd drop in a bucket. If the drop is one milliliter (1 ml) and the bucket 100 liters (72.5 gallons), then that gives us a factor of 105. If instead we consider a drop in all the Earth’s oceans, then we have a factor of 1024. That is a lot bigger than a bucket but nowhere close to how insignificant the mass of the drop of water is when compared to zero-point energy. To continue, what if the ocean was the size of the sun? That gives us a ratio on the order of 1041, which is still a long way off. If the ocean was the size of the solar system we get a ratio on the order of 1050. Now if we expand the ocean to the size of the galaxy we get ~1076 and we are still not anywhere close. What if the ocean is the size of the known visible universe? Assuming a radius of 7.4 x 1026 meters the mass ratio is 5 x 1095. There we go. So, the density of water compared to the energy of the vacuum is equivalent to five 1 ml drops of water in an ocean the size of the visible universe. Since we are mostly water and have a similar density to water, the vacuum fluctuations inside our body are like having all the mass-energy of an ocean of water the size of the universe inside each little part of us. Wow, we are pretty insignificant in the big scheme of things and so is any other body of solid matter or any amount of energy associated with it. This zero-point energy is all around us and all throughout us. We are lucky that zero-point energy is not detectable or anything we did would be undetectable noise to any sensor we could possibly make. Even worse, if we could absorb even a small fraction of that energy, we would be vaporized in an instant. Or, if all that energy participated in a gravitational force, the universe would be crushed to a speck.

T-TESTS FOR INDEPENDENT SAMPLES T-tests are used to test whether the means of a continuous variable differ across two different groups. For example, do men and women differ in their levels of income, when measured as a continuous variable? Does crime vary between two parts of town? Do rich people live longer than poor people? Do high-performing students commit fewer acts of violence than do low-performing students? The t-test approach is shown graphically in Figure 12.1, which illustrates the incomes of men and women as boxplots (the lines in the middle of the boxes indicate the means rather than the medians).2 When the two groups are independent samples, the t-test is called the independent-samples t-test. Sometimes the continuous variable is called a “test variable” and the dichotomous variable is called a “grouping variable.” The t-test tests whether the difference of the means is significantly different from zero, that is, whether men and women have different incomes. The following hypotheses are posited: Key Point The independent-samples t-test is used when one variable is dichotomous and the other is continuous. H0: Men and women do not have different mean incomes (in the population). HA: Men and women do have different mean incomes (in the population). Alternatively, using the Greek letter m to refer to differences in the population, H0: μm = μf, and HA: μm ≠ μf. The formula for calculating the t-test test statistic (a tongue twister?) is As always, the computer calculates the test statistic and reports at what level it is significant. Such calculations are seldom done by hand. To further conceptual understanding of this formula, it is useful to relate it to the discussion of hypothesis testing in Chapter 10. First, note that the difference of means, appears in the numerator: the larger the difference of means, the larger the t-test test statistic, and the more likely we might reject the null hypothesis. Second, sp is the pooled variance of the two groups, that is, the weighted average of the variances of each group.3 Increases in the standard deviation decrease the test statistic. Thus, it is easier to reject the null hypotheses when two populations are clustered narrowly around their means than when they are spread widely around them. Finally, more observations (that is, increased information or larger n1 and n2) increase the size of the test statistic, making it easier to reject the null hypothesis. Figure 12.1 The T-Test: Mean Incomes by Gender

usually does not present much of a problem. Some analysts use t-tests with ordinal rather than continuous data for the testing variable. This approach is theoretically controversial because the distances among ordinal categories are undefined. This situation is avoided easily by using nonparametric alternatives (discussed later in this chapter). Also, when the grouping variable is not dichotomous, analysts need to make it so in order to perform a t-test. Many statistical software packages allow dichotomous variables to be created from other types of variables, such as by grouping or recoding ordinal or continuous variables. The second assumption is that the variances of the two distributions are equal. This is called homogeneity of variances. The use of pooled variances in the earlier formula is justified only when the variances of the two groups are equal. When variances are unequal (called heterogeneity of variances), revised formulas are used to calculate t-test test statistics and degrees of freedom.7 The difference between homogeneity and heterogeneity is shown graphically in Figure 12.2. Although we needn’t be concerned with the precise differences in these calculation methods, all t-tests first test whether variances are equal in order to know which t-test test statistic is to be used for subsequent hypothesis testing. Thus, every t-test involves a (somewhat tricky) two-step procedure. A common test for the equality of variances is the Levene’s test. The null hypothesis of this test is that variances are equal. Many statistical software programs provide the Levene’s test along with the t-test, so that users know which t-test to use—the t-test for equal variances or that for unequal variances. The Levene’s test is performed first, so that the correct t-test can be chosen. Figure 12.2 Equal and Unequal Variances The term robust is used, generally, to describe the extent to which test conclusions are unaffected by departures from test assumptions. T-tests are relatively robust for (hence, unaffected by) departures from assumptions of homogeneity and normality (see below) when groups are of approximately equal size. When groups are of about equal size, test conclusions about any difference between their means will be unaffected by heterogeneity. The third assumption is that observations are independent. (Quasi-) experimental research designs violate this assumption, as discussed in Chapter 11. The formula for the t-test test statistic, then, is modified to test whether the difference between before and after measurements is zero. This is called a paired t-test, which is discussed later in this chapter. The fourth assumption is that the distributions are normally distributed. Although normality is an important test assumption, a key reason for the popularity of the t-test is that t-test conclusions often are robust against considerable violations of normality assumptions that are not caused by highly skewed distributions. We provide some detail about tests for normality and how to address departures thereof. Remember, when nonnormality cannot be resolved adequately, analysts consider nonparametric alternatives to the t-test, discussed at the end of this chapter. Box 12.1 provides a bit more discussion about the reason for this assumption. A combination of visual inspection and statistical tests is always used to determine the normality of variables. Two tests of normality are the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (also known as the K-S test) for samples with more than 50 observations and the Shapiro-Wilk test for samples with up to 50 observations. The null hypothesis of

live with being a size zero.” “I don’t care what size you are so long as it’s you.” “Aw, say stuff like that and I might have to kiss you, McKenna.” Raj’s lips, however, were

In the ‘Broken Windows’ theory, if a single broken window on an empty building is ignored, and not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may break into the building, and light fires, or become squatters. When Rudy Giuliani became mayor of New York in 1993, his belief in the ‘Broken Windows’ theory led him to implement the ‘Zero Tolerance’ policy. Crime dropped dramatically, significantly, and continued to for the next ten years. Personally, I feel the time has come for women to introduce their own Zero Tolerance policy on the Broken Window issues in our lives – I want a Zero Tolerance policy on ‘All The Patriarchal Bullshit’. And the great thing about a Zero Tolerance policy on Patriarchal Broken Windows Bullshit is this: in the 21st century, we don’t need to march against size zero models, risible pornography, lap-dancing clubs and Botox. We don’t need to riot, or go on hunger strike. There’s no need to throw ourselves under a horse, or even a donkey. We just need to look it in the eye, squarely, for a minute, and then start laughing at it. We look hot when we laugh. People fancy us when they observe us giving out relaxed, earthy chuckles. ~

Positively defined, a startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future. A new company’s most important strength is new thinking: even more important than nimbleness, small size affords space to think.

Setting the bar at even 2,000 word families means learning 20 word families a week over two years, starting from zero: a daunting task, but not an impossible one. Nor a thankless one. There are grounds for believing that vocabulary size may be a reliable predictor, not just of reading proficiency, but of linguistic competence overall. Certainly, in first language acquisition, the processes of vocabulary development and grammar emergence are closely intertwined, with the former possibly driving the latter. Tomasello (2003: 93), for example, cites research that shows that ‘only after children have vocabularies of several hundred words [do] they begin to produce in earnest grammatical speech’, which suggests to him ‘that learning words and learning grammatical constructions

What did size zero even mean? That you weren’t actually there? That no fabric at all was required to make your clothes? Seeing

Twitter Is Twitter the ultimate Mythos medium? Writing too hard for you? Analysis too hard for you? No need to worry. Now you can say it all in 140 characters, roughly reflecting the size of your vocabulary, knowledge and brain. Twitter is successful because 140 characters corresponds to the typical size of a meme: a single idea that can shoot off into the Darwinian meme pool and be naturally selected by all the jostling Mythos meme machines (Twitterati, or Twits, to you and me). Don’t you just love it? This is dumbing down with go-faster stripes and turbo engines. Maybe we can reach the ultimate Tweet: zero characters and a complete flatline of human mental activity.

Two of the underground buildings were each about the size of half a dozen football fields and were heavily reinforced with concrete walls about six to eight feet thick. The Iranians were obviously fortifying them against a possible air strike. The tunnel leading down to the buildings was also built in the shape of a U instead of a straight line—a common tactic to prevent missiles sent into the mouth of a tunnel from having direct aim at a target on the other end.

During the five years leading up to the end of immunity in 2002, diplomats from the UK, Sweden, Canada, Australia, and a few other countries got a total of zero tickets. Meanwhile, diplomats from Egypt, Chad, and Bulgaria, among other countries, got the most tickets, accumulating over 100 for each member of their respective diplomatic delegations. Looking across nations, the higher the international corruption index for a delegation’s home country, the more tickets those delegations accumulated. The relationship between corruption back home and parking behavior in Manhattan holds independent of the size of a country’s UN mission, the income of its diplomats, the type of violation (e.g., double-parking), and the time of day.

The Banach-Tarski Theorem is an astonishing result. We have decomposed a ball into finitely many pieces, moved around the pieces without changing their size or shape, and then reassembled them into two balls of the same size as the original. I think the theorem teaches us something important about the notion of volume. As noted earlier, it is an immediate consequence of the theorem that some of the Banach-Tarski pieces must lack definite volumes and, therefore, that not every subset of the unit ball can have a well-defined volume. A little more precisely, the theorem teaches us that there is no way of assigning volumes to the Banach-Tarski pieces while preserving three-dimensional versions of the principles we called Uniformity and (finite) Additivity in chapter 7. (Proof: Suppose that each of the (finitely many) Banach-Tarski pieces has a definite finite volume. Since the pieces are disjoint, and since their union is the original ball, Additivity entails that the sum of the volumes of the pieces must equal the volume of the original ball. But Uniformity ensures that the volume of each piece is unchanged as we move it around. Since the reassembled pieces are disjoint, and since their union is two balls, Additivity entails that the sum of their volumes must be twice the volume of the original ball. But since the volume of the original ball is finite and greater than zero, it is impossible for the sum of the pieces to equal both the volume of the original ball and twice the volume of the original ball.) If I were to assign the Banach-Tarski Theorem a paradoxicality grade of the kind we used in chapter 3, I would assign it an 8. The theorem teaches us that although the notion of volume is well-behaved when we focus on ordinary objects, there are limits to how far it can be extended when we consider certain extraordinary objects - objects that can only be shown to exist by assuming the Axiom of Choice.

Why do people want to be so skinny? What do they think will happen when they reach their size-zero goal? What happens at zero? Zero means there’s nothing left. Why does she want to disappear?

I’m in a small, white room roughly the size of a minivan. Other than the bed I’m lying in, which is sitting smack dab in the middle of the room, the only piece of furniture is a white bench to my right where my costume is sitting—neatly folded. So, wait a minute, does that mean … I peek under the covers and realize I’m wearing white pajamas. Whew! That could have been embarrassing. Hold on! I don’t remember putting on pajamas! Wonderful.

The proliferation of state and local tax incentives designed to attract or retain business investment…has proven troublingly resistant to reform. Despite a growing recognition…that the competition over business incentives is at best a zero-sum game…the size of the incentive packages offered for large corporate facilities reaches ever-new heights…. The only consistent winners are the large businesses that can pit one jurisdiction against another for reduced tax burdens, while other taxpayers and citizens pay the costs in constrained government services and higher taxes.

She reminded me of a pink mannequin displayed in the windows of fashion shops, one of those minus zero size females who are advised to eat air for sustainability.

Back in the Stone Age, we hardly ever encountered anything truly extraordinary. The deer we chased was sometimes a bit faster or slower, sometimes a little bit fatter or thinner. Everything revolved around a stable mean. Today is different. With one breakthrough, you can increase your income by a factor of ten thousand. Just ask Larry Page, Usain Bolt, George Soros, J. K. Rowling, or Bono. Such fortunes did not exist previously; peaks of this size were unknown. Only in the most recent of human history has this been possible—hence our problem with extreme scenarios. Since probabilities cannot fall below zero, and our thought processes are prone to error, you should assume that everything has an above-zero probability.

Startups operate on the principle that you need to work with other people to get stuff done, but you also need to stay small enough so that you actually can. Positively defined, a startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future. A new company’s most important strength is new thinking: even more important than nimbleness, small size affords space to think.

Ninety feet directly beneath the center courtyard café in the middle of the Pentagon—previously known as the Ground Zero Cafe, because when the bomb dropped that was where it would most likely detonate—there is a deep subbasement office with ferroconcrete walls and a filtered air supply, accessible by discreet elevators and staircases from all five wings of the main building. It was designed as a deep command bunker back when the worst threats were raids by long-range Luftwaffe bombers bearing conventional explosives. Obsolescent since the morning of July 16, 1945—it won’t withstand a direct ground burst from an atom bomb, much less more modern munitions—it still possesses certain uses. Being deep underground and equidistant from all the other wings, it was well suited as a switch for SCAN, the Army’s automatic switched communications system, and later for AUTOVON. AUTOVON led to ARPANET, the predecessor of the internet, and the secure exchange in the basement played host to one of the first IMPs—Interface Message Processors—outside of academia. By the early 1980s a lack of rackspace led the DoD to relocate their hardened exchanges to a site closer to the 1950s-sized mainframe halls. And it was then that the empty bunker was taken over by a shadowy affiliate of the National Security Agency, tasked with waging occult warfare against the enemies of the nation. The past six months have brought some changes. There is a pentagonal main room inside the bunker, and within it there is a ceremonial maze, inscribed in blood and silver that glows with a soft fluorescence, converging on a dais at the heart of the design. The labyrinth takes the shape of a pentacle aligned with the building overhead: at each corner stands a motionless sentinel clad head to toe in occlusive silver fabric. Robed in black and crimson silk and shod in slippers of disturbingly pale leather, the Deputy Director paces her way through the maze. In her left hand she bears a jewel-capped scepter carved from the femur of a dead pope, and in her right hand she bears a gold-plated chalice made from a skull that once served Josef Stalin as an ashtray. As she walks she recites a prayer of allegiance and propitiation, its cadences and grammar those of a variant dialect of Old Enochian.

Why me?” I ask him. He looks up at me, but only for a second. He goes quickly back to his icing. “Why not you?” “I’m not like them,” I point out. “Thank God for that,” he murmurs. “No, I mean I’m not at all like them.” “Who’s the them we’re talking about? Cheerleaders?” “Well…yeah.” I look down and am immediately mortified to find that I’ve completely cleaned my plate. “I dated the cheerleader because she was nice. Not because she was petite. Personally, I’d whole lot rather kiss a chick your size.” I drop my fork and it clatters loudly onto the plate. Did he really just talk about my height? Right in front of me? “I don’t have to wrench my neck to kiss you. Short petite chicks make big guys like me feel like Neanderthals. I always worry I’m going to break them.” Whereas with me, he’d have to worry about the opposite. “I want a girl I can hold on to. With a rear end, and tits.” His face goes rosy again. “But that’s just me.” I’m trying to process his comments. “Rear end and tits,” I whisper to myself. “Rear end and tits,” he says again. “Why are you so surprised?” “It’s just…not…what I’m used to.” “What

STARTUP THINKING New technology tends to come from new ventures—startups. From the Founding Fathers in politics to the Royal Society in science to Fairchild Semiconductor’s “traitorous eight” in business, small groups of people bound together by a sense of mission have changed the world for the better. The easiest explanation for this is negative: it’s hard to develop new things in big organizations, and it’s even harder to do it by yourself. Bureaucratic hierarchies move slowly, and entrenched interests shy away from risk. In the most dysfunctional organizations, signaling that work is being done becomes a better strategy for career advancement than actually doing work (if this describes your company, you should quit now). At the other extreme, a lone genius might create a classic work of art or literature, but he could never create an entire industry. Startups operate on the principle that you need to work with other people to get stuff done, but you also need to stay small enough so that you actually can. Positively defined, a startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future. A new company’s most important strength is new thinking: even more important than nimbleness, small size affords space to think. This

It does, however, seem to me that fashionable Western self-loathing is fundamentally misplaced. Almost always it is directed at the fact of our wealth and power, relative to the other peoples of the earth, with the constant, quasi-Marxist (and false) assumption that the wealth must somehow inevitably be stolen from the poor, as if the economic pie were of a fixed size and economics a zero-sum game. Really, a decade and a half after the fall of communism, do we still need to go on disproving this? Our vast wealth does, indeed, impose upon us equally vast responsibilities toward those who remain in poverty. It is the real strengths of the West that created that wealth and that, tentatively and in humility, need to be proffered to those who could profit from them. The self-loathing, however, should be redirected from the mere fact of our prosperity to the disconnection, boredom, feeble-mindedness and infantilism that we have allowed our wealth to let us slip into. The unprecedented comfort of our lives allows us, if we are not careful—and we have not been careful—to lose hold of the fundamental realities that underpin all human existence.

Why is this show being held to the higher standard when there are so many television shows that have long ignored race and class or have flagrantly transgressed in these areas? There are so many terrible shows on television representing women in sexist, stupid, silly ways. Movies are even worse. Movies take one or two anemic ideas about women, caricature them, and shove those caricatures down our throats. The moment we see a pop artifact offering even a sliver of something different—say, a woman who isn't a size zero or who doesn't treat a man as the center of the universe—we cling to it desperately because that representation is all we have.

The Tachi’s galley had a full kitchen and a table with room for twelve. It also had a full-size coffeepot that could brew forty cups of coffee in less than five minutes whether the ship was in zero g or under a five-g burn. Holden said a silent prayer of thanks for bloated military budgets and pressed the brew button. He had to restrain himself from stroking the stainless steel cover while it made gentle percolating noises.

How many planes there are, we do not know. The levels of nature that science discriminates give us no clue, for these all pertain to size which, being an aspect of space, belongs to our plane only. (We discount as irrelevant for present purposes the peculiar modes of space we experience when dreaming.) The entire size-continuum, from minutest particle to our 26-billion-light-year universe, falls along the horizontal arms we see. The planes that bracket this central one—central from our point of view—may be indefinite in number, but even if they are, something can be said about their antipodes. As the levels of reality array themselves along the vertical axis in descending degrees of reality, reality being (as noted in the preceding chapter) worth's final criterion, the bottom of the arm represents the point—a fraction of a degree above absolute zero as we might say—where being phases out completely; all that could lie beyond this margin is a nothing that is as unthinkable as it is non-existent. The top of the axis represents the opposite of this, that is, everything. Opposites being well acquainted, this everything shares in common with its antithesis the fact that it too cannot be imaged, but unlike complete nothingness it can be conceived. Being we experience, whereas nothing, by itself, we do not. The zenith of being is Being Unlimited, Being relieved of all confines and conditionings. The next chapter will discuss it; for now we simply name it. It is All-Possibility, the Absolute, the In-finite in all the directions that word can possibly point." from_The Forgotten Truth_

This 'Planck length' is the only quantity with the dimensions of a length that can be built from the three mist fundamental constants of Nature: the velocity of light c, Planck's constant h, and Newton's gravitational conatant G. It is given by Lp = (Gh/c^3)^1/2 = 4 X 10 ^ -33 cm. This tiny dimension encapsulates the attributes of a world that is at once relativistic (c), quantum mechanical (h), and gravitational (G). It is a standard of length that makes no reference to any artefact of man or even of the chemical and nuclear forces of Nature. Relative to this unit of length, the size of the entire visible universe today extends roughly 10^60 Planck lengths, but the cosmological constant must be less than 10^-118 when referred to these Planck units of length rather than centimetres. To have to consider such a degree of smallness is unprecedented in the entire history of science. Any quantity that is required to be so close to zero by observation must surely in reality be precisely zero. This is what many cosmologists believe. But why?

a huge board will exercise no effective oversight at all; it merely provides cover for whatever microdictator actually runs the organization. If you want that kind of free rein from your board, blow it up to giant size. If you want an effective board, keep it small.

As a result, the most important recommendation for organizations of all shapes and sizes moving forward is to anticipate worst case scenarios at a minimum. Even in cases where organizations cannot or will not make some of the operational changes recommended below, the exercise of focusing on nonsoftware areas of a given business can help identify under-realized or -appreciated assets within an organization. Particularly ones for whom the sale of software has been low effort, brainstorming about other potential revenue opportunities is unlikely to be time wasted. One vendor in the business intelligence and analytics space has privately acknowledged doing just this; based on current research and projecting current trends forward, it is in the process of building out a 10-year plan over which it assumes that the upfront licensing model will gradually approach zero revenue. In its place, the vendor plans to build out subscription and data-based revenue streams. Even if the plan ultimately proves to be unnecessary, the exercise has been enormously useful internally for the insight gained into its business.

The implicit assumption in traditional business strategy that competition is a zero-sum game is far less applicable in the world of platforms. Rather than re-dividing a pie of more-or-less static size, platform businesses often grow the pie (as, for example, Amazon has done by innovating new models, such as self-publishing and publishing on demand, within the traditional book industry) or create an alternative pie that taps new markets and sources of supply (as Airbnb and Uber have done alongside the traditional hotel and taxi industries). Actively managing network effects changes the shape of markets rather than taking them as fixed.

Every company starts in unique circumstances, and every company starts only once. Statistics doesn’t work when the sample size is one.

The incidental camouflage provided by his ashen coat against the tile flooring ‒ likewise denoted as being a series of twelve inch gray slate squares by all of them again ‒ save for Nate’s mother ‒ in concert with his current focus on the mixer and its hypnotic, simultaneous whir; which drew his visual attention to the blue pearl granite countertop directly in front of him and induced his total disregard for the feline's entrance. He therefore failed to observe that it was marked by an inordinately determined gait ‒ itself relatively less peculiar than the paradoxical lack of conviction in his clenched jaws, out of which a visibly dispirited common brown rat was loosely dangling by the nape of its neck. Upon shutting off the mixer and sensing a presence, Nate glanced intuitively downward ‒ just as Zero had raised his head sharply and looked up with eager, widened eyes ‒ then becoming struck by a sense that it appeared in the moment as if the incongruous mouser had been instead transporting an itsy-bitsy newborn kitten. Then in the next, he casually dropped the rodent at his owner's feet. Being sufficiently emboldened by its youthful size and appearance to first crouch and then kneel to the floor for a closer look, Nate endeavored to roust the lethargic rodent with a toothpick. He was taken aback to discover a set of tiny ‒ though notably bulging ‒ coal black eyes returning his gaze. Their vacant helplessness inspired him toward an appreciably more sober contemplation of its plight than he’d undertaken upon witnessing Zero capture and kill a field mouse behind his apple tree the previous spring. An instance whereby he had caught but a fleeting glimpse of its limp body as his typically passive, then suddenly feral tomcat clamped down on its entire neck just prior to seeking a more private spot in which to consume his prey. Nate realized that if he'd intended to eat this latest catch, his since neutered pet would have remained outside and carried it in a similar manner; so being the softhearted sort, while possessing a firm understanding that upon his mother's imminent arrival in a chic skirt with matching heels, the tragic scene of a dying and worse yet ‒ possibly bleeding ‒ brown Norway rat on her Montauk Blue tile flooring would be ill-received, he suffered the burden of understanding that this rodent's fate might be in his hands.

New technology tends to come from new ventures—startups. From the Founding Fathers in politics to the Royal Society in science to Fairchild Semiconductor’s “traitorous eight” in business, small groups of people bound together by a sense of mission have changed the world for the better. The easiest explanation for this is negative: it’s hard to develop new things in big organizations, and it’s even harder to do it by yourself. Bureaucratic hierarchies move slowly, and entrenched interests shy away from risk. In the most dysfunctional organizations, signaling that work is being done becomes a better strategy for career advancement than actually doing work (if this describes your company, you should quit now). At the other extreme, a lone genius might create a classic work of art or literature, but he could never create an entire industry. Startups operate on the principle that you need to work with other people to get stuff done, but you also need to stay small enough so that you actually can. Positively defined, a startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future. A new company’s most important strength is new thinking: even more important than nimbleness, small size affords space to think. This book is about the questions you must ask and answer to succeed in the business of doing new things: what follows is not a manual or a record of knowledge but an exercise in thinking. Because that is what a startup has to do: question received ideas and rethink business from scratch.

Micro-studios are very trendy right now, Ms. Mascolo.” I am standing in the tiniest apartment I’ve ever seen. My real estate broker, Cindy, has now shown me three apartments, each smaller than the last. This one is only seventy square feet. Yes, that’s right. Seven-zero. I need to suck in my breath to fit into the room. There are coffins larger than this apartment. “And it’s furnished,” Cindy adds, gesturing at the small sofa pushed against the wall, and the tiny desk smashed into a corner. There’s even a mini-fridge on the side of the sofa, doubling as an end table. “You’ll just need a microwave and maybe some sort of hot pot.” “What about a closet?” I ask around the bile rising in my throat. Cindy pushes aside a faded yellow curtain and there it is: what may be my new closet. It’s roughly one-sixth the size of my current clothing space. I’ll have to get rid of most of what I own if I move in here. I glance around again, sure I’ve missed something. “What about sleeping?” I’m certain Cindy’s going to inform me that sleeping standing up is all the rage right now, but instead, she gestures at a set of stairs leading to a nook just above our heads. No wonder the ceiling is so low. “You’ve got an upstairs bedroom,” Cindy says, without cracking the smile that I feel such a statement clearly deserves. I climb the stairs, which is more of a ladder than a staircase. It leads to a tiny nook above the apartment where I can put a mattress. When I’m lying there, I will have about a foot of space between my nose and the ceiling. The coffin metaphor is becoming more and more apt. “What about a bathroom?” I ask. “There’s one in the hallway. You’ll share it with four other residents.

Melons & Dongles (The Sonnet) It is one thing to embrace one's imperfections, But there is nothing empowering in popping melons. It is one thing to fight for equal pay rights, Totally another to fight for the freedom of nipples. On the other side, nobody wants a dongle in their inbox, Only the dumb and callow care about your greek abs. Men who are concerned more with grooming than behaving, Raise a red flag to those with character and heart. It is one thing to stay healthy through regular workout, And totally another to worship one's body in the mirror. All that packaging isn't worth even a confederate bill, If inside all you have left is stinky narcissistic vapor. So I say, stay healthy, but embrace your imperfections. Once the packaging is gone, what'll be your contribution?

Look for strong price signals: channel breakout, head-and-shoulders, good range trades. (I used to include Golden Cross, but it let me down once too often. Maybe I should give it another try, as that was a few years ago.) Always confirm the price signal with another indicator (RSI or volume). If in doubt check a third indicator. If that is not conclusive, don't trade. Ensure the potential profit is at least 2x the stop-loss level, 3x or more if possible.  Trade in lots of [5% my portfolio size]. Place the stop-loss at the same time as the order. Do not ever, ever break these rules. The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. If you can't find a trade, don't try to make one.

The handover from efficiency to adaptivity comes with sweeping changes in the economy and society including the shift from productivity to regenerativity, growth to flourishing, ownership to access, seller-buyer markets to provider-user networks, linear processes to cybernetic processes, vertically integrated economies of scale to laterally integrated economies of scale, centralized value chains to distributed value chains, corporate conglomerates to agile, high-tech small- and medium-sized cooperatives blockchained in fluid commons, intellectual property rights to open-source sharing of knowledge, zero-sum games to network effects, globalization to glocalization, consumerism to eco-stewardship, gross domestic product (GDP) to quality-of-life indicators (QLI), negative externalities to circularity, and geopolitics to biosphere politics.

Meantime, I underwent another echocardiogram and a CT test with dye. Turns out, my condition had zero to do with diet or behavior. I was born with a congenital heart defect known as a bicuspid aortic valve, the valve that transports blood flow from the heart. It’s an inherited form of heart disease in which two of the leaflets of the valve fuse together in the womb. It is the most common cause of heart disease present at birth and affects between 1 and 2 percent of adults. The walls of the aorta are typically strong enough to tolerate the stress of blood flow from the heart. Aneurysms—which develop in about half of all patients with bicuspid valves—occur when the walls weaken. As the weakened wall deteriorates, it leaves behind damaged tissue that grows in size, heightening the risk of a serious tear. The aortic valve is supposed to be three centimeters. Mine? The size of a can of Coca-Cola. So that’s why time was of the essence.

Is organic cotton the future of sustainable development? With the increase in climate change and global warming, each step taken by us matters, be it even by transforming our cotton closet into an organic cotton closet. We are living in a time, where each step will either lead to an immense increase in global warming or will lead to the protection of our Mother Earth. So why not make our actions count and take a step by protecting our nature by switching to organic clothing?! As we know, the fashion industry is one of the largest industry of today, in which the cotton textiles lead the line together with the cotton manufacture setting them as the highest-ranked in the fashion industry. These pieces of regular cotton those are constructed into garments leads to 88% more wastage of water from our resources. Whereas Organic Cotton that has been made from natural seeds and handpicked for maintaining the purity of fibres; uses 1,982 fewer gallons of water compared to regular cotton. Gallons of water used by: Regular cotton: 2168 gallons Organic Cotton: 186 gallons Due to increase in market size of the fashion industry every year along with the cotton industry; regular cotton is handpicked by workers to keep up with the increase in demand for the regular cotton and because these crops are handpicked it leads to various damages and crises such as: Damage of fibres: As regular cotton is grown as mono-crop it destroys the soil quality, that exceeds the damage when handpicked by the farmers, leading to also the destruction of fibres because of the speed and time limit ordered. Damage of crops: Regular cotton leads to damage of crops when it is handpicked, as not much attention is paid while plucking it in bulk, due to which all the effort, time and resources used to cultivate the crops drain-out to zero. Water wastage: The amount of clean water being depleted to produce regular cotton is extreme that might lead to a water crisis. The clean water when used for manufacturing turns into toxic water that is disposed into freshwater bodies, causing a hazardous impact on the people deprived of this natural resource. Wastage of resources: When all the above-mentioned factors are ignored by the manufactures and the farmers, it directly leads to the waste of resources, as the number of resources used to produce the regular cotton is way high in number when compared to the results at the end. Regular cotton along with these damages also demands to use chemical dyes for their further process, that is not only harmful to our body but is also very dangerous to the workers exposed to it, as these chemicals lead to many health problems like earring aids, lunch cancer, skin cancer, eczema and many more, other than that people can also lose their lives when exposed to these chemicals for long other than that people can also lose their lives when exposed to these chemicals for long Know More about synthetic dyes on ‘Why synthetic dye stands for the immortality done to Nature?’ Organic cotton, when compared to regular cotton, brings a radical positive change to the environment. To manufacture, just one t-shirt, regular cotton uses 16% of the world’s insecticides, 7% pesticides and 2,700 litres of water, when compared to this, organic cotton uses 62% less energy than regular Cotton. Bulk Organic Cotton Fabric Manufacturer: Suvetah is one of the leading bulk organic cotton fabric manufacturer in India. Suvetah is GOTS certified sustainable fabric manufacturer in Organic Cotton Fabric, Linen Fabric and Hemp Fabric. We are also manufacturer of other fabrics like Denim, Kala Cotton Fabric, Ahimsa Silk Fabric, Ethical Recycled Cotton Fabric, Banana Fabric, Orange Fabric, Bamboo Fabric, Rose Fabric, Khadi Fabric etc.

It was not difficult for an intelligent physicist to understand what was behind his gazes. The longer we sit, the more he looks at my smallest detail, he keeps looking at my lips, my neck, and my shoulders, with a gaze full of passion. Shy but still a female, who will not fail to feel a man’s desires toward her which is one of her most important strengths that was inherited from her ancestors. She looks away, but still sees her surroundings with a wider panoramic view than a man does. her sensors pick up risks, feelings, and repressed desires, many times as much as he can. It is enough for her to stand in front of the wardrobe and without moving her head or her eyes, she sees all its contents, she finds what she wants in a second, while a man has to move his eyes, head, and probably most of his organs and all of his senses to find what he is looking for, and often fails. Thus, our mind has developed these physical abilities, over thousands of years, as needed. The man’s need was to focus on his arrow and his prey, and his foresight has evolved, it has become more focused, while the woman’s need is to protect the home and children from dangers, her panoramic view has evolved to see her surroundings more broadly than the man’s. So, our mind programmed itself, and in this way, it developed our abilities. What it does not need, it leaves or neglects until this thing withers and dies, but what it thinks is important or needed, it keeps, strengthens it. Necessity is the key to evolution. Even athletes are well aware of this: in the body-building halls, they gradually lift weights, to force their brains to feed and build muscles. And as long as they’re still in pain to lift a weight, their brains realize they need more muscle power, so they can handle that weight without danger, and the brain starts to protein the muscles, thereby strengthening them and increasing their size. If it didn’t find enough protein in the diet, it creates it. As the muscles became stronger, and the weight on the trainee became easier to carry, he increased it, and the brain began to strengthen the muscles more to handle the new weight. If the muscle ceases to gain weight, it freezes at enough force and size to carry the current weight. The principle of negligence and usage; what has a need remains, and what has no need perishes. But Mousa’ need recently while going to the bodybuilding gym is not to stimulate the mind to meet his muscular needs. Rather, his causes are more profound, dangerous, and insane… But whom of us would need this?

Al-Khwarizmi fell into the taboo that humans refused to fall into throughout their history, not because of their stupidity, nor their lack of attention to the presence of a number here that has an impact, but because they preferred not to deal with it at all unless they fully understood it, they ignored it rather than building the world around them on a wrong frame of reference. So, you have to ask now what if we decided to change the zero and give it its value that we know for sure, which is the unknown. We do not know it, we do not understand it, and not knowing is better than building everything on the wrong frame of reference Any number multiplied by zero equals an unknown The sum of any number with zero equals an unknown The result of any number divided by zero equals an unknown The result of subtracting any number with zero equals an unknown Are you starting to feel the problem and see the size of the unknown that is inside our calculations and our whole life! Infiltrating it without knowing anything about it! The clear is clear, that zero is not only divisible, but also summation, subtraction, and multiplication, because it is unknown, and no matter how much we try to patch the tables to fit the calculations, the division keeps breaking our back and telling us, you are wrong. Despite all this, our strongest strength remains, our winning ball, which has never failed us, is the power of creative adaptation. We are not like viruses, we settle in an environment that we drain and then move to others, nor like animals, we go into an environment and adapt to it and adapt ourselves according to its capabilities. That is why when we hit zero, we got creative and innovated, and decided to change the law of the entire universe, made it a hypothetical effect inspired by our imagination, and built the world on this basis. And the crazy thing is that everything around us is working perfectly. And what is even crazier, is that if we decide to change the effect of zero, so that one multiplied by zero equals twenty, then everything around us will reset, and it will work perfectly as well. Even if we decide to change all the math tables, this universe will mutate to suit our thinking.

For being so early in the season, the tables on either side of the street were heavily laden with produce. I could see English peas, asparagus, arugula, several varieties of chard, kale, rhubarb, radishes... My mouth tingled as I walked slowly from booth to booth, drinking in the knowledge that the food I was checking out had not been trucked over the Jersey Turnpike or from a far-flung spot upstate, but from somewhere nearby, where people still felt dirt in their hands and not just in their nostrils after a day of walking in the city. I paused at the end of a block, and my gaze zeroed in on a mountain of gorgeous strawberries a few stands down. Cutting in and out of the throng, I reached the stand and stood under a banner that read FORSYTHIA FARMS. I crouched to be eye level with the berries, narrowing my eyes at their color, shape, and size. The red was deep, but still bright. Shape: irregular, as they should be, and still shooting delightful stems that poked out the tops like tiny berets. The berries weren't too small, and best of all, not too large. No Costco mutants, I was pleased to note.

The challenge here isn’t about how to make any particular sale, but how to establish a process by which a sales team of modest size can move the product to a wide audience.

. If you want that kind of free rein from your board, blow it up to giant size. If you want an effective board, keep it small.

ZocDoc is a Founders Fund portfolio company that helps people find and book medical appointments online. The company charges doctors a few hundred dollars per month to be included in its network. With an average deal size of just a few thousand dollars, ZocDoc needs lots of salespeople—so many that they have an internal recruiting team to do nothing but hire more. But making personal sales to doctors doesn’t just bring in revenue; by adding doctors to the network, salespeople make the product more valuable to consumers (and more consumer users increases its appeal to doctors). More than 5 million people already use the service each month, and if it can continue to scale its network to include a majority of practitioners, it will become a fundamental utility for the U.S. health care industry.

Naskar is made by Naskar alone, not an industry or benefactor - or more importantly, by family wealth. I had a roof over my head, food on the table, and clothes on my back - that was more than enough. I started writing with literally zero dollar in my pocket. Let me tell you how it began, because for some reason, I completely forgot a crucial event of my life when I wrote my memoir Love, God & Neurons. I once met an American tourist at a local train in Calcutta. The first thing he asked me was, had I lived in the States? I said, no. Then how come you have an American accent - he asked. Watching movies - I said. We got chatting and he told me about a book he had recently published, a memoir. I believe, this was the cosmic event that planted the thought of writing my own books in my head - I had already started my self-education in Neurology and Psychology, and I was all determined to publish research papers on my ideas, but not books. Meeting the person somehow subconsciously shifted my focus from research papers to books. So the journey began. And for the first few years, I made no real money from my books. Occasionally some of my books would climb the bestsellers list on amazon, like my very first book did, and that would keep the bills paid for several months. Then the invitations for talks started coming, but they too were not paid in the beginning. The organizers made all the travel arrangements, and I gave the talks for free. It's ironic and super confusing really - I remember flying business class, but I didn't have enough money to even afford a one way flight ticket, because I had already used up my royalties on other expenses. Today I can pick and choose which speaking invitations to accept, but back then I didn't have that luxury - I was grateful for any speaking gig and interview request I received, paid or not. One time, I gave an interview to this moderately popular journalist for her personal youtube channel, only to find out, she never released the video publicly - she posted an interview with a dog owner instead - whose dog videos had gained quite a following on social media. You could say, this was the first time I realized first hand, what white privilege was. Anyway, the point is this. Did I doubt myself? Often. Did I consider quitting? Occasionally. But did I actually quit? Never. And because I didn't quit, the world received a vast never-before seen multicultural humanitarian legacy, that you know me for today. There is no such thing as overnight success. If you have a dream, you gotta work at it day in, day out - night after night - spoiling sleep, ruining rest, forgetting fun. Persist, persist, and persist, that's the only secret - there is no other. Remember this - the size of your pocket does not determine your destiny, the size of your dedication does.

...Tis the Reciprocal of 'as above, so below,'... being only at the finer Scales, that we may find the truth about the Greater Heavens,... the exact value of a Solar Parallax of less than ten seconds can give us the size of the Solar system. The Parallax of Sirius, perhaps less than two seconds, can give us the size of Creation. May we not, in the Domain of Zero to One Second of Arc, find ways to measure even That Which we cannot,— may not,— see?