Various Sports Quotes

We are all in search of feeling more connected to reality—to other people, the times we live in, the natural world, our character, and our own uniqueness. Our culture increasingly tends to separate us from these realities in various ways. We indulge in drugs or alcohol, or engage in dangerous sports or risky behavior, just to wake ourselves up from the sleep of our daily existence and feel a heightened sense of connection to reality. In the end, however, the most satisfying and powerful way to feel this connection is through creative activity. Engaged in the creative process we feel more alive than ever, because we are making something and not merely consuming, Masters of the small reality we create. In doing this work, we are in fact creating ourselves.

O Divine Poesy, goddess, daughter of Zeus, sustain for me this song of the various-minded man who, after he had plundered the innermost citadel of hallowed Troy, was made to stay grievously about the coasts of men, the sport of their customs, good and bad, while his heart, through all the sea-faring, ached with an agony to redeem himself and bring his company safe home. Vain hope – for them. The fools! Their own witlessness cast them aside. To destroy for meat the oxen of the most exalted Sun, wherefore the Sun-god blotted out the day of their return. Make this tale live for us in all its many bearings, O Muse.” – from Homer’s Odyssey, translation by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)

I am also planning to leave a lot of things undone. Part of life's mystery depends on future possibilities, and mystery is an elusive quality which evaporates when sampled frequently, to be followed by boredom. For example, catching various types of fish is on my list of good things to do, but I would be reluctant to rush into it, even if i had the time. I want no part of destroying fishing as a mysterious sport.

O Divine Poesy, goddess, daughter of Zeus, sustain for me this song of the various-minded man who, after he had plundered the innermost citadel of hallowed Troy, was made to stay grievously about the coasts of men, the sport of their customs, good and bad, while his heart, through all the sea-faring, ached with an agony to redeem himself and bring his company safe home. Vain hope – for them. The fools! Their own witlessness cast them aside. To destroy for meat the oxen of the most exalted Sun, wherefore the Sun-god blotted out the day of their return. Make this tale live for us in all its many bearings, O Muse.

In the temple of science are many mansions, and various indeed are they that dwell therein and the motives that have led them thither. Many take to science out of a joyful sense of superior intellectual power; science is their own special sport to which they look for vivid experience and the satisfaction of ambition; many others are to be found in the temple who have offered the products of their brains on this altar for purely utilitarian purposes. Were [someone to] drive all the people belonging to these two categories out of the temple, the assemblage would be seriously depleted, but there would still be some men, of both present and past times, left inside. Our Planck is one of them, and that is why we love him.

It is a common sentence that Knowledge is power; but who hath duly Considered or set forth the power of Ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day’s dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavor to its one roast with the burned souls of many generations. Knowledge, instructing the sense, refining and multiplying needs, transforms itself into skill and makes life various with a new six days’ work; comes Ignorance drunk on the seventh, with a firkin of oil and a match and an easy “Let there not be,” and the many-coloured creation is shriveled up in blackness. Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy dark as a buried Babylon.

We see the illusion of individual predilection being maintained, for example, in the array of different styles of iPhone cases available to us. We wonder which of the provided range of colourful or sophisticated sheaths best communicates to the world our unique character. Thus we lean towards the wood effect, or the Batman one (ironically sported, of course), or the vintage Union Jack. Meanwhile, it is much harder to honestly ask ourselves whether our lives would be improved were we not to be attached to our devices quite as umbilically, and how much misery they bring us alongside the various conveniences and amusements. Whether we might be more authentically ourselves if, with a pioneering and curious spirit, we occasionally left them at home. It

AN ACADEMIC DEFINITION of Lynchian might be that the term "refers to a particular kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mundane combine in such a way as to reveal the former's perpetual containment within the latter." But like postmodern or pornographic, Lynchian is one of those Porter Stewart-type words that's ultimately definable only ostensively-i.e., we know it when we see it. Ted Bundy wasn't particularly Lynchian, but good old Jeffrey Dahmer, with his victims' various anatomies neatly separated and stored in his fridge alongside his chocolate milk and Shedd Spread, was thoroughgoingly Lynchian. A recent homicide in Boston, in which the deacon of a South Shore church reportedly gave chase to a vehicle that bad cut him off, forced the car off the road, and shot the driver with a highpowered crossbow, was borderline Lynchian. A Rotary luncheon where everybody's got a comb-over and a polyester sport coat and is eating bland Rotarian chicken and exchanging Republican platitudes with heartfelt sincerity and yet all are either amputees or neurologically damaged or both would be more Lynchian than not.

When I was a kid, summers were the most glorious time of life. Because my parents believed in hands-off, free-range parenting, I’d usually be out the door before ten and wouldn’t return until dinner. There were no cell phones to keep track of me and whenever my mom called a neighbor to ask where I was, the neighbor was often just as clueless as to her own child’s whereabouts. In fact, there was only one rule as far as I could tell: I had to be home at half past five, since my parents liked to eat dinner as a family. I can’t remember exactly how I used to spend those days. I have recollections in snapshot form: building forts or playing king of the hill on the high part of the jungle gym or chasing after a soccer ball while attempting to score. I remember playing in the woods, too. Back then, our home was surrounded by undeveloped land, and my friends and I would have dirt-clod wars or play capture the flag; when we got BB guns, we could spend hours shooting cans and occasionally shooting at each other. I spent hours exploring on my bicycle, and whole weeks would pass where I’d wake every morning with nothing scheduled at all. Of course, there were kids in the neighborhood who didn’t lead that sort of carefree existence. They would head off to camp or participate in summer leagues for various sports, but back then, kids like that were the minority. These days, kids are scheduled from morning to night because parents have demanded it, and London has been no exception. But how did it happen? And why? What changed the outlook of parents in my generation? Peer pressure? Living vicariously through a child’s success? Résumé building for college? Or was it simply fear that if their kids were allowed to discover the world on their own, nothing good would come of it? I don’t know. I am, however, of the opinion that something has been lost in the process: the simple joy of waking in the morning and having nothing whatsoever to do.

It is of course true that many modern combat sports are extremely demanding in terms of physical force, skill, and endurance. Indeed many athletes are much fitter and better trained than the vast majority of soldiers. However, all those various kinds of sport are based on artificial rules as to what is and is not permitted. Furthermore, and with the exception of fencing, a highly ritualized form of combat to which we shall return, even the most violent ones do not permit the players to use weapons. In their absence, most of those skills are too specialized to be of much military relevance.

You can have the room just off this one. I can lend you everything you need." Collins's eyes implored her like a dog's; Captain Wolf's arm had settled familiarly around Rachael's waist; they were waiting. But the lure of promiscuity, colorful, various, labyrinthine, and ever a little odorous and stale, had no call or promise for Gloria. Had she so desired she would have remained, without hesitation, without regret; as it was she could face coolly the six hostile and offended eyes that followed her out into the hall with forced politeness and hollow words. "He wasn't even sport, enough to try to take me home," she thought in the taxi, and then with a quick surge of resentment: "How utterly common!" GALLANTRY

The establishment was sizeable by tavern standards, sporting at least fifteen tables large enough to hold four to six people and a few smaller ones. A long bar surrounded by tall stools ran along one wall. Behind the bar, a number of tapped kegs were lined up along a tall bench, and between the kegs was a tall rack holding an assortment of shiny bottles filled with various colored liquids.

I am also planning to leave a lot of things undone. Part of life's mystery depends on future possibilities, and mystery is an elusive quality which evaporates when sampled frequently, to be followed by boredom. For example, catching various types of fish is on my list of good things to do, but I would be reluctant to rush into it, even if I had the time. I want no part of destroying fishing as a mysterious sport.

The Hotel dining-room, like most of the others I was to find in the Highlands, had its walls covered with pictures of all sorts of wild game, living or in the various postures of death that are produced by sport. Between these pictures the walls were alert with the stuffed heads of deer, furnished with antlers of every degree of magnificence. A friend of mine has a theory that these pictures of dying birds and wounded beasts are intended to whet the diner's appetite, and perhaps they did in the more lusty age of Victoria; but I found they had the opposite effect on me, and had to keep my eyes from straying too often to them. In one particular hotel this idea was carried out with such thoroughness that the walls of its dining room looked like a shambles, they presented such an overwhelming array of bleeding birds, beasts and fishes. To find these abominations on the walls of Highland hotels, among a people of such delicacy in other things, is peculiarly revolting, and rubs in with superfluous force that this is a land whose main contemporary industry is the shooting down of wild creatures; not production of any kind but wholesale destruction. This state of things is not the fault of the Highlanders, but of the people who have bought their country and come to it chiefly to kill various forms of life.

Robert is, of course, at the theater, but it’s true that Jeff isn’t alone. Behind him, Lulu holds up two bottles of tequila, and behind her is Gene, Lulu’s . . . bed-friend, holding a bag of limes and sporting the world’s most enormous mustache. I take the bag of limes from him. “Are you guessing my weight tonight?” Jeff laughs in a loud bark before heading into the kitchen, but Gene does a bewildered double take. “What?” “Do I get to shoot a water gun to knock down the ducks?” I see the moment he gets it because his giant mustache twitches under his suppressed grin. “I’ll take my limes home if you’re going to be sassy, miss.” “You look like an old-timey auction barker,” I say. “Or Yosemite Sam. I have this sudden urge to buy a few head of cattle.” Behind me, Calvin snickers. “You wish you could grow a ’stache like this.” I burst out laughing. “I’m sorry, I can’t even hear what you’re saying through that thing.” “I told him it’s awful.” Lulu tugs at it and Gene leans away. He smoothes it down proudly. “I’m so lazy, and this is much more low maintenance than shaving.” I don’t need to look that closely to see he’s clearly waxed and styled it with a comb. It’s really not an afterthought mustache; it’s the kind that a person chooses from a book on various mustache styles—the perfect accessory for his very carefully crafted I don’t care enough to even glance in the mirror look (which Lulu tells me takes him a long time in front of the mirror).

The Christian race lasts a lifetime, with Christ Jesus as our goal, the prize that awaits us at the finish line in heaven. It can’t be run all-out as a sprint or no one would last the course. Though there was one race in the ancient games where the runners wore full armor, most of the time the ancient runners ran naked, stripping away anything that would slow them down. Obviously the writer of Hebrews was familiar with the ancient sport of running when he advised believers to run with endurance the race God set before them.

For men as a rule, love is but and episode which takes its place among the other affairs of the day, and the emphasis laid on it in novels gives it and importance which is untrue to life. There are few men to whom it is the most important thing it the world, and they are not very interesting ones; even women, with whom the subject is of paramount interest, have a contempt for them. They are flattered and excited by them, but have an uneasy feeling that they are poor creatures. But even during the brief intervals in which they are in love, men do other things which distract their minds; the trades by which they earn a living engage their attention; they are absorbed in sport; they can interest themselves in art. For the most part, they keep their various activities in various compartments, and they can pursue one to the temporary exclusion of the other. They have a faculty of concentration on that which occupies them at the moment, and it irk them if one encroaches on the other. As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times.

Competition is the spice of sports; but if you make spice the whole meal you'll be sick. The simplest single-celled organism oscillates to a number of different frequencies, at the atomic, molecular, sub-cellular, and cellular levels. Microscopic movies of these organisms are striking for the ceaseless, rhythmic pulsation that is revealed. In an organism as complex as a human being, the frequencies of oscillation and the interactions between those frequencies are multitudinous. -George Leonard Learning any new skill involves relatively brief spurts of progress, each of which is followed by a slight decline to a plateau somewhat higher in most cases than that which preceded it…the upward spurts vary; the plateaus have their own dips and rises along the way…To take the master’s journey, you have to practice diligently, striving to hone your skills, to attain new levels of competence. But while doing so–and this is the inexorable–fact of the journey–you also have to be willing to spend most of your time on a plateau, to keep practicing even when you seem to be getting nowhere. (Mastery, p. 14-15). Backsliding is a universal experience. Every one of us resists significant change, no matter whether it’s for the worse or for the better. Our body, brain and behavior have a built-in tendency to stay the same within rather narrow limits, and to snap back when changed…Be aware of the way homeostasis works…Expect resistance and backlash. Realize that when the alarm bells start ringing, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re sick or crazy or lazy or that you’ve made a bad decision in embarking on the journey of mastery. In fact, you might take these signals as an indication that your life is definitely changing–just what you’ve wanted….Be willing to negotiate with your resistance to change. Our preoccupation with goals, results, and the quick fix has separated us from our own experiences…there are all of those chores that most of us can’t avoid: cleaning, straightening, raking leaves, shopping for groceries, driving the children to various activities, preparing food, washing dishes, washing the car, commuting, performing the routine, repetitive aspects of our jobs….Take driving, for instance. Say you need to drive ten miles to visit a friend. You might consider the trip itself as in-between-time, something to get over with. Or you could take it as an opportunity for the practice of mastery. In that case, you would approach your car in a state of full awareness…Take a moment to walk around the car and check its external condition, especially that of the tires…Open the door and get in the driver’s seat, performing the next series of actions as a ritual: fastening the seatbelt, adjusting the seat and the rearview mirror…As you begin moving, make a silent affirmation that you’ll take responsibility for the space all around your vehicle at all times…We tend to downgrade driving as a skill simply because it’s so common. Actually maneuvering a car through varying conditions of weather, traffic, and road surface calls for an extremely high level of perception, concentration, coordination, and judgement…Driving can be high art…Ultimately, nothing in this life is “commonplace,” nothing is “in between.” The threads that join your every act, your every thought, are infinite. All paths of mastery eventually merge. [Each person has a] vantage point that offers a truth of its own. We are the architects of creation and all things are connected through us. The Universe is continually at its work of restructuring itself at a higher, more complex, more elegant level . . . The intention of the universe is evolution. We exist as a locus of waves that spreads its influence to the ends of space and time. The whole of a thing is contained in each of its parts. We are completely, firmly, absolutely connected with all of existence. We are indeed in relationship to all that is.

In the pages that follow we shall review some of the ways that the quality of experience can be improved through the refined use of bodily processes. These include physical activities like sports and dance, the cultivation of sexuality, and the various Eastern disciplines for controlling the mind through the training of the body. They also feature the discriminating use of the senses of sight, hearing, and taste. Each of these modalities offers an almost unlimited amount of enjoyment, but only to persons who work to develop the skills they require. To those who do not, the body remains indeed a lump of rather inexpensive flesh.

Mentally practice two or three times each week for about 10 to 15 minutes per rehearsal. Select a specific sports skill to further develop, or work your way though different scenarios, incorporating various game-ending situations. Examples include meeting your marathon goal time, striking out the side in the bottom of the ninth, or making the game-winning shot as the final buzzer is sounding. Mental practice sessions that are shorter in length are also beneficial. Good times include during any downtime in your schedule, the night before a competition, as an element of your pregame routine, and especially as part of a preshot routine.

DOES HARVARD MAKE YOU SMARTER? Swimmer’s Body Illusion As essayist and trader Nassim Taleb resolved to do something about the stubborn extra pounds he’d be carrying, he contemplated taking up various sports. However, joggers seemed scrawny and unhappy, and bodybuilders looked broad and stupid, and tennis players? Oh, so upper-middle class! Swimmers, though, appealed to him with their well-built, streamlined bodies. He decided to sign up at his local swimming pool and to train hard twice a week. A short while later, he realised that he had succumbed to an illusion. Professional swimmers don’t have perfect bodies because they train extensively. Rather, they are good swimmers because of their physiques. How their bodies are designed is a factor for selection and not the result of their activities. Similarly, female models advertise cosmetics and thus, many female consumers believe that these products make you beautiful. But it is not the cosmetics that make these women model-like. Quite simply, the models are born attractive and only for this reason are they candidates for cosmetics advertising. As with the swimmers’ bodies, beauty is a factor for selection and not the result. Whenever we confuse selection factors with results, we fall prey to what Taleb calls the swimmer’s body illusion. Without this illusion, half of advertising campaigns would not work

The Archons use 'mind control' techniques. This is known as psychological warfare, but Archontic manipulation far surpasses anything the United States, Russia, Vatican City, Israel, or the United Kingdom has, of yet, invented. The Archons are the ultimate brainwashers. The Archons keep people distracted with pornography and drugs, with sports and alcohol, with material possessions, exotic vacations, artificial reality, addiction to various pleasures, along with dreams of the artificial technological paradise of: radical life-extension, transhumanism, nootropics and Brain Computer Interfaces. The Archons do this so that humanity does not have the time or opportunity to observe what is really happening in the world. Humanity is under siege. The Archons want you to be as uneducated and uninformed as possible. They destroy your passion for learning, and infiltrate and sabotage the educational system. Ultimately, they want to destroy all that makes you human, your hopes, your dreams, your joys, especially they want to destroy your spirituality.

It is a common sentence that Knowledge is power; but who hath duly Considered or set forth the power of Ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day’s dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavor to its one roast with the burned souls of many generations. Knowledge, instructing the sense, refining and multiplying needs, transforms itself into skill and makes life various with a new six days’ work; comes Ignorance drunk on the seventh, with a firkin of oil and a match and an easy “Let there not be,” and the many-colored creation is shriveled up in blackness. Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy dark as a buried Babylon.

Fifteen of his clubs, dedicated to politics, music, and the performing arts, had all been developing strategic plans for the past two years. And the local branches of various societies--whose goals were to advance aviation, knowledge of chemistry, automotive transportation, equestrian sports, highway construction, as well as the prompt eradication of ethnic chauvinism--existed only in the sick imagination of the local union committee. As for the school of continuing education, of which Sardinevich was especially proud, it was constantly reorganizing itself, which, as anybody knows, means it wasn't undertaking any useful activity whatsoever. If Sardinevich were an honest man, he would probably have admitted that all these activities were essentially a mirage. But the local union committee used this mirage to concoct its reports, so at the next level up nobody doubted the existence of all those musico-political clubs. At that level, the school of continuing education was imagined as a large stone building filled with desks, where perky teachers draw graphs that show the rise of unemployment in the United States on their chalkboards, while mustachioed students develop political consciousness right in front of your eyes.

Well, I think people should be able to live in a society where they can exercise these kinds of internal drives and develop their capacities freely instead of being forced into the narrow range of options that are available to most people in the world now. And by that, I mean not only options that are objectively available, but also options that are subjectively available―like, how are people allowed to think, how are they able to think? Remember, there are all kinds of ways of thinking that are cut off from us in our society―not because we're incapable of them, but because various blockages have been developed and imposed to prevent people from thinking in those ways. That's what indoctrination is about in the first place, in fact―and I don't mean somebody giving you lectures: sitcoms on television, sports that you watch, every aspect of the culture implicitly involves an expression of what a "proper" life and a "proper" set of values are, and that's all indoctrination. So I think what has to happen is, other options have to be opened up to people―both subjectively, and in fact concretely: meaning you can do something about them without great suffering. And that's one of the main purposes of socialism, I think: to reach a point where people have the opportunity to decide freely for themselves what their needs are, and not just have the "choices" forced on them by some arbitrary system of power.

It is a common sentence that Knowledge is power, but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of Ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day's dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavour to its one roast with the burnt souls of many generations. Knowledge, instructing the sense, refining and multiplying needs, transforms itself into skill and makes life various with a new six days' work; comes Ignorance drunk on the seventh, with a firkin of oil and a match and an easy 'Let there not be' - and the many-coloured creation is shrivelled up in blackness. Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him by wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy dark as a buried Babylon. And looking at life parcel-wise, in the growth of a single lot, who having a practiced vision may not see that Ignorance of the true bond between events, and false conceit of means whereby sequences may be compelled - like that falsity of eyesight which overlooks the gradations of distance, seeing that which is afar off as if it were within a step or a grasp - precipitates the mistaken soul on destruction?

It is a common sentence that Knowledge is power; but who hath duly Considered or set forth the power of Ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day's dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavor to its one roast with the burned souls of many generations. Knowledge, instructing the sense, refining and multiplying needs, transforms itself into skill and makes life various with a new six days' work; comes Ignorance drunk on the seventh, with a firkin of oil and a match and an easy ‘Let there not be,’ and the many-colored creation is shriveled up in blackness. Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy dark as a buried Babylon. And looking at life parcel-wise, in the growth of a single lot, who having a practiced vision may not see that ignorance of the true bond between events, and false conceit of means whereby sequences may be compelled - like that falsity of eyesight which overlooks the gradations of distance, seeing that which is afar off as if it were within a step or a grasp - precipitates the mistaken soul on destruction?

5. Move toward resistance and pain A. Bill Bradley (b. 1943) fell in love with the sport of basketball somewhere around the age of ten. He had one advantage over his peers—he was tall for his age. But beyond that, he had no real natural gift for the game. He was slow and gawky, and could not jump very high. None of the aspects of the game came easily to him. He would have to compensate for all of his inadequacies through sheer practice. And so he proceeded to devise one of the most rigorous and efficient training routines in the history of sports. Managing to get his hands on the keys to the high school gym, he created for himself a schedule—three and a half hours of practice after school and on Sundays, eight hours every Saturday, and three hours a day during the summer. Over the years, he would keep rigidly to this schedule. In the gym, he would put ten-pound weights in his shoes to strengthen his legs and give him more spring to his jump. His greatest weaknesses, he decided, were his dribbling and his overall slowness. He would have to work on these and also transform himself into a superior passer to make up for his lack of speed. For this purpose, he devised various exercises. He wore eyeglass frames with pieces of cardboard taped to the bottom, so he could not see the basketball while he practiced dribbling. This would train him to always look around him rather than at the ball—a key skill in passing. He set up chairs on the court to act as opponents. He would dribble around them, back and forth, for hours, until he could glide past them, quickly changing direction. He spent hours at both of these exercises, well past any feelings of boredom or pain. Walking down the main street of his hometown in Missouri, he would keep his eyes focused straight ahead and try to notice the goods in the store windows, on either side, without turning his head. He worked on this endlessly, developing his peripheral vision so he could see more of the court. In his room at home, he practiced pivot moves and fakes well into the night—such skills that would also help him compensate for his lack of speed. Bradley put all of his creative energy into coming up with novel and effective ways of practicing. One time his family traveled to Europe via transatlantic ship. Finally, they thought, he would give his training regimen a break—there was really no place to practice on board. But below deck and running the length of the ship were two corridors, 900 feet long and quite narrow—just enough room for two passengers. This was the perfect location to practice dribbling at top speed while maintaining perfect ball control. To make it even harder, he decided to wear special eyeglasses that narrowed his vision. For hours every day he dribbled up one side and down the other, until the voyage was done. Working this way over the years, Bradley slowly transformed himself into one of the biggest stars in basketball—first as an All-American at Princeton University and then as a professional with the New York Knicks. Fans were in awe of his ability to make the most astounding passes, as if he had eyes on the back and sides of his head—not to mention his dribbling prowess, his incredible arsenal of fakes and pivots, and his complete gracefulness on the court. Little did they know that such apparent ease was the result of so many hours of intense practice over so many years.

Time management also involves energy management. Sometimes the rationalization for procrastination is wrapped up in the form of the statement “I’m not up to this,” which reflects the fact you feel tired, stressed, or some other uncomfortable state. Consequently, you conclude that you do not have the requisite energy for a task, which is likely combined with a distorted justification for putting it off (e.g., “I have to be at my best or else I will be unable to do it.”). Similar to reframing time, it is helpful to respond to the “I’m not up to this” reaction by reframing energy. Thinking through the actual behavioral and energy requirements of a job challenges the initial and often distorted reasoning with a more realistic view. Remember, you only need “enough” energy to start the task. Consequently, being “too tired” to unload the dishwasher or put in a load of laundry can be reframed to see these tasks as requiring only a low level of energy and focus. This sort of reframing can be used to address automatic thoughts about energy on tasks that require a little more get-up-and-go. For example, it is common for people to be on the fence about exercising because of the thought “I’m too tired to exercise.” That assumption can be redirected to consider the energy required for the smaller steps involved in the “exercise script” that serve as the “launch sequence” for getting to the gym (e.g., “Are you too tired to stand up and get your workout clothes? Carry them to the car?” etc.). You can also ask yourself if you have ever seen people at the gym who are slumped over the exercise machines because they ran out of energy from trying to exert themselves when “too tired.” Instead, you can draw on past experience that you will end up feeling better and more energized after exercise; in fact, you will sleep better, be more rested, and have the positive outcome of keeping up with your exercise plan. If nothing else, going through this process rather than giving into the impulse to avoid makes it more likely that you will make a reasoned decision rather than an impulsive one about the task. A separate energy management issue relevant to keeping plans going is your ability to maintain energy (and thereby your effort) over longer courses of time. Managing ADHD is an endurance sport. It is said that good soccer players find their rest on the field in order to be able to play the full 90 minutes of a game. Similarly, you will have to manage your pace and exertion throughout the day. That is, the choreography of different tasks and obligations in your Daily Planner affects your energy. It is important to engage in self-care throughout your day, including adequate sleep, time for meals, and downtime and recreational activities in order to recharge your battery. Even when sequencing tasks at work, you can follow up a difficult task, such as working on a report, with more administrative tasks, such as responding to e-mails or phone calls that do not require as much mental energy or at least represent a shift to a different mode. Similarly, at home you may take care of various chores earlier in the evening and spend the remaining time relaxing. A useful reminder is that there are ways to make some chores more tolerable, if not enjoyable, by linking them with preferred activities for which you have more motivation. Folding laundry while watching television, or doing yard work or household chores while listening to music on an iPod are examples of coupling obligations with pleasurable activities. Moreover, these pleasant experiences combined with task completion will likely be rewarding and energizing.

The key question, as Williams reminds us, is whether the ‘formula’ of the base/ superstructure—which in various formulations has framed Marxist accounts of culture—was meant as a literal reading or ‘no more than an analogy

The night before the last round, the leaders of the Soviet team tried to persuade me not to play in that match. The conversation took place on various levels, from ‘the possibilities of obtaining entry visas to our country are not unlimited’, to ‘don’t forget that you still have a sister in Leningrad’. They did not manage to convince me. ‘I am playing for Holland, not against the Soviet Union’, I repeated, which was not entirely true. A short line from a Soviet newspaper – ‘in the USSR-Holland match, Polugaevsky’s game on board two ended in a draw’ – was my reward: after my departure, my name could not appear in the Soviet press. A report in the Leningrad sports paper, about how 1st-3rd places in the 1973 Dutch Championship were shared by Enklaar and Zuidema, is something that I retain to this day.

pring is a great time to introduce your children to the wonders of God's creation. Take them to a garden center and let them pick out a tree to be planted in your yard. Let them help dig the hole, add soil amendments, and place the tree. As they fill the hole around the tree, talk about how amazing God was when creating the world. Your children will love watching the tree grow through the years... as they grow with it. And remember when you used to press flowers in a scrapbook? Why not do it again? Use the pages of your phone book or apply heavy weight as you press and dry the flowers. When they're completely dry, use a tiny bit of glue to arrange them on colorful or white poster board. Add lace and ribbon, and you've got a perfect pressed flower arrangement. Or make it more masculine by adding graphics of sports, animals, cars, or trucks. ere's a tip that'll help in the dilemma of what to do with your various collections. Always arrange them in odd-numbered groupings. Three is a magic number. Cluster things that have differing shapes, but keep a theme going. ho is your best friend? Who is your second best friend? Now think about it. Is there really such a thing as a "bad" friend? Not all friendships are alike, to be sure. Some are casual and relaxing. Others are intense and stimulating. And some surprise us by seeming to come out of nowhere. Some friendships will fade ...a truth we have to accept. I have several "friends of the heart." These people aren't necessarily "best friends" because

Run with Endurance Let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus. HEBREWS 12:1-2 NLT Running was the first and, for many years, the only event of the ancient Olympic games. So it is no wonder that the New Testament writers use the metaphor to describe the Christian life. The first races were two-hundred-yard sprints. These gradually increased in length as the Olympic games continued to develop. The modern marathon commemorates the legendary run made by a Greek soldier named Pheidippides, who ran from the battlefield outside Marathon, Greece, to Athens to proclaim a single word: victory! Then he collapsed and died. The Christian race lasts a lifetime, with Christ Jesus as our goal, the prize that awaits us at the finish line in heaven. It can’t be run all-out as a sprint or no one would last the course. Though there was one race in the ancient games where the runners wore full armor, most of the time the ancient runners ran naked, stripping away anything that would slow them down. Obviously the writer of Hebrews was familiar with the ancient sport of running when he advised believers to run with endurance the race God set before them. Father; as we run the race You set before us this year, let us run with endurance, not allowing anything to distract us from the goal of Christ-likeness.

I take to slummy bars and sheisty gambling halls like a proud lion to the rolling grassy plains of the savannah. Well acquainted, am I, with the various beasts of the beer-tavern. The cackling hyena pool players—scavengers, lurking in the shadows, waiting to prey upon the unwary sucker. The sports-betting meerkat folk who poke heads out of their beer mug homes only long enough to check scores, before ducking back down in a bid to avoid the larger predators. The aloof but noble baboon bartender, dispensing suds and barroom wisdom in equal portions—kind of like Rafiki from the Lion King, sans the beer thing.

On all the roads we traversed between Yozgat and Kayseri, about 80 per cent of the Muslims we encountered (there were no Christians left in these parts) were wearing European clothes, bearing on their persons proof of the crimes they had committed. Indeed, it was an absurd sight: overcoats, frock coats, jackets—various men’s and women’s European garments of the finest materials—on villagers who were also wearing sandals and traditional baggy pants [shalvars]. Barefoot Turkish peasant boys wore formal clothes; men sported gold chains and watches. It was reported that the women had confiscated many pieces of diamond jewelry, but [as they were sequestered] we had no way of encountering them.34

IN BRAZIL, where the state collects a hefty 36% of GDP in taxes and offers mediocre public services in return, tax-dodging is a national sport. The latest scam unearthed by police, treasury and finance-ministry sleuths sets a record. On March 26th they revealed that over the past ten years the government had been cheated of at least 5.7 billion reais ($1.8 billion) in back taxes and fines from firms, and perhaps as much as 19 billion reais. That would be enough to pay three-quarters of the bill for last year’s football World Cup. It is nearly twice the suspicious payments in a separate corruption scheme involving Petrobras, a state-controlled oil company. Unlike the petrolão, the tax imbroglio does not implicate top politicians. It centres instead on the Administrative Council of Fiscal Resources (CARF), part of the finance ministry, which hears appeals by firms that feel wronged by the tax collectors. Some of its 216 councillors, who decide cases in teams of six, allegedly promised to slash companies’ bills for various taxes, including sales and industrial tax, or make them disappear altogether. In exchange they apparently received 1-10% of the value of the forgone revenue. The bribes were paid in the form of bogus consulting contracts with law firms. To deflect suspicion, the conspirators used firms that do not specialise in tax law. The identity of the suspects remains secret for now. But leaks published in the press suggest that some of Brazil’s biggest firms, in industries ranging from banking to manufacturing, are involved. So, apparently, are a handful of multinationals. There is also much speculation that the dimensions of the scandal will grow: CARF has 105,000 cases pending, with a total value of 520 billion reais.

face, conclusively prove that the enormous progress made in the Highlands during the last half century, and now rapidly going on, is mainly due to our Highland Sports. A great amount of nonsense has been said and written on this question, and an attempt made to hold grouse and deer

Bill Bradley (b. 1943) fell in love with the sport of basketball somewhere around the age of ten. He had one advantage over his peers—he was tall for his age. But beyond that, he had no real natural gift for the game. He was slow and gawky, and could not jump very high. None of the aspects of the game came easily to him. He would have to compensate for all of his inadequacies through sheer practice. And so he proceeded to devise one of the most rigorous and efficient training routines in the history of sports. Managing to get his hands on the keys to the high school gym, he created for himself a schedule—three and a half hours of practice after school and on Sundays, eight hours every Saturday, and three hours a day during the summer. Over the years, he would keep rigidly to this schedule. In the gym, he would put ten-pound weights in his shoes to strengthen his legs and give him more spring to his jump. His greatest weaknesses, he decided, were his dribbling and his overall slowness. He would have to work on these and also transform himself into a superior passer to make up for his lack of speed. For this purpose, he devised various exercises. He wore eyeglass frames with pieces of cardboard taped to the bottom, so he could not see the basketball while he practiced dribbling. This would train him to always look around him rather than at the ball—a key skill in passing. He set up chairs on the court to act as opponents. He would dribble around them, back and forth, for hours, until he could glide past them, quickly changing direction. He spent hours at both of these exercises, well past any feelings of boredom or pain. Walking down the main street of his hometown in Missouri, he would keep his eyes focused straight ahead and try to notice the goods in the store windows, on either side, without turning his head. He worked on this endlessly, developing his peripheral vision so he could see more of the court. In his room at home, he practiced pivot moves and fakes well into the night—such skills that would also help him compensate for his lack of speed. Bradley put all of his creative energy into coming up with novel and effective ways of practicing. One time his family traveled to Europe via transatlantic ship. Finally, they thought, he would give his training regimen a break—there was really no place to practice on board. But below deck and running the length of the ship were two corridors, 900 feet long and quite narrow—just enough room for two passengers. This was the perfect location to practice dribbling at top speed while maintaining perfect ball control. To make it even harder, he decided to wear special eyeglasses that narrowed his vision. For hours every day he dribbled up one side and down the other, until the voyage was done. Working this way over the years, Bradley slowly transformed himself into one of the biggest stars in basketball—first as an All-American at Princeton University and then as a professional with the New York Knicks. Fans were in awe of his ability to make the most astounding passes, as if he had eyes on the back and sides of his head—not to mention his dribbling prowess, his incredible arsenal of fakes and pivots, and his complete gracefulness on the court. Little did they know that such apparent ease was the result of so many hours of intense practice over so many years.

Statistics Canada, the national statistical agency of that country, has pointed out that churchgoing Christians in Canada are generally much more likely than the majority of non-Christian Canadians to donate significantly to charities and to volunteer. According to their recent study, 62 percent of Canadians who regularly attend Christian services volunteered their time to various causes compared with only 43 percent of other Canadians. Surprisingly to some at least, these Christians did not limit their giving to churches. Almost 60 percent of their volunteer time went to secular causes from health care to youth sports to various social and environmental organizations. Doug Todd, religion writer for the Vancouver Sun newspaper, summarizes the situation as revealed by Statistics Canada and his broader research this way: Christians are on the front lines, locally and around the globe, helping those who can not fend for themselves. They are supporting Canadian aboriginals, providing micro-loans in the Dominican Republic, handing out soup in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, providing clean water in Ghana, ministering to people with AIDS and supporting environmental projects in Asia. . . . They’ve also led social justice movements: To free slaves, oppose wars, fight for civil rights or protect wilderness.[161]

hunger lust drives many personalities to stand out from the crowd. Members of the new generation seek celebrity status regardless of the cost. We have each engaged in or witnessed someone else’s feeble attempts to define their personal strand of uniqueness derived through acquisitions, nationalism, body piercings, serving as rabid fans of various conglomeration’s sports teams, or by participating in other cult-like activities. Fervently engaging in these or similar misguided identity markers is laughable. Our real identity marker comes from engagement in a succession of character building experiences that integrate the conscious and unconscious mind into a coherent whole. A person defines the contours of their life through a series of life affirming actions, many of which choices initially seem disjointed from any functional significance beyond meeting the needs of our immediate family and mollifying our own selfishness. Akin to silent film actors of yesteryear, we must each play some worthwhile role in the symposium of life which staccato orchestra of spring beauty embraces every nook and cranny of planet Earth.

Phyl Newton was visiting Sandy that evening, but the girls displayed a marked coolness toward Tom and Bud. Instead of engaging in conversation, they retired to Sandy's room upstairs to play records, while Mrs. Swift served the boys a warmed-up but tasty meal of roast beef and mince pie. "What's wrong? Are we repulsive or something?" Bud asked as they ate. Tom shrugged, concentrating on a mouthful of roast beef. "Search me. We sure don't seem very popular with the girls tonight." Mrs. Swift, overhearing their remarks in the kitchen, smiled but maintained a diplomatic silence. Suddenly Bud slapped his forehead. "Good night! No wonder!" Tom looked up with a grin of interest. "Well, what have we done?" "It's what we haven't done, pal!" Bud retorted. "We had a date this afternoon, remember? That beach party and dance put on by Sandy and Phyl's school sorority!" Tom gulped. "Oops! Boy, we really did pull a boner this time! I completely forgot!" As they finished supper, the boys discussed various ways to make amends. Boxes of chocolates? Flowers? None of their ideas seemed to have the proper spark. "We'll have to come up with something super," Bud said. "Right!" Tom agreed. "Let's sleep on it and see if we can't dream up something by tomorrow morning that'll really wow them." The next morning Tom had a flash of inspiration as he drove to the plant in his sports car. He hailed Bud at the first opportunity. "I

The Archons keep people distracted with pornography and drugs, with sports and alcohol, with material possessions, exotic vacations, artificial reality, addiction to various pleasures, along with dreams of the artificial technological paradise of: radical life-extension, transhumanism, nootropics and Brain Computer Interfaces.

The best coaches have a growth mindset and know how to motivate, communicate, and inspire their athletes to achieve more than they ever would on their own. They instill a love of the game, a passion for achievement, and model the character and values that they preach to their athletes. They know when a kid needs a hug and when he needs a metaphoric kick in the rear. All high performers can point to various coaches as major contributors in their ultimate success, and most lifelong athletes can point to a coach who taught them to love sport and to be active for life.

When I first met my long-term partner, Mike, he was suffering with an incurable disease. (No need for specifics). He was taking a concoction of pills and was facing a prospect of steroid medication and perhaps surgery to keep his condition in remission. I was somewhat surprised that on our first date, he told me, not just the full story of his own disease, but also all about his father and sister, who were both suffering with separate incurable illnesses. As I got to know Mike and his family, I was struck by how much they talked about illness. Mike gave an almost daily commentary about his various aches, pains, twinges and physical state. Where some families talk about politics or sport, or celebrities, or current affairs (it’s dogs, cats and kids in my family), Mike’s family would chat around the dinner table about conditions, consultants, tests, medical procedures, drugs and treatments. I found this quite bewildering, because these subjects rarely enter my mind. It was like being in a room full of people talking about a book you haven’t read or a film you haven’t seen. I found myself with nothing to add to this conversation, having no story about illness to tell. But here’s where it gets interesting. When I mentioned my observations to Mike, he became aware of how much he and his family spoke about illness for the first time ever. With my prompting, he began to change his story. And as he did so, not only did his aches and pains begin to disappear, but his chronic disease also started, almost miraculously, to improve. After a few months, he felt well enough to come off all his medication. At some point, he even stopped his regular visits to the doctor. There was just no point in seeing a doctor when he felt so well. Of course, we aren’t allowed to say ‘cured’ (because only doctors are allowed to claim a cure), but all these years later, his ‘incurable’ illness is not simply better, it’s gone. Now, please don’t take this as a prescription to ditch your meds and stop seeing your doctor. I’m not saying you can or should replace proper medical advice or treatment with words. This is just one anecdote about one man who chose to tell a different story. Take from it what you will.

Basically, action is, and always will be, faster than reaction. Thus, the attacker is the one that dictates the fight. They are forcing the encounter with technique after technique that are designed to overcome any defensive techniques initiated by the defender. Much of this exchange, and determining which of the adversaries is victorious, is all a matter of split seconds. That is the gap between action and reaction. That attacker acts; the defender reacts. Military history is saturated with an uneven amount of victorious attackers compared to victorious defenders. It is common to observe the same phenomenon in popular sports, fighting competitions, in the corporate world of big business. The list goes on and on. So, how do we effectively defend ourselves when we can easily arrive at the conclusion that the defender statistically loses? It is by developing the mentality that once attacked that you immediately counter-attack. That counter-attack has to be ferocious and unrelenting. If someone throws a punch, or otherwise initiates battle with you, putting you, for a split second, on the wrong side of the action versus reaction gap. Your best chance of victory is to deflect, smoother, parry, or otherwise negate their attack and then immediately launch into a vicious counter-attack. Done properly, this forces your adversary into a reactive state, rather than an action one. You turn the table on them and become the aggressor. That is how to effectively conceptualizes being in a defensive situation. Utilizing this method will place you in a greater position to be victorious. Dempsey, Sun Tzu and General Patton would agree. Humans are very violent animals. As a species, we are capable of high levels of extreme violence. In fact, approaching the subject of unarmed combatives, or any form of combatives, involves the immersion into a field that is inherently violent to the extreme of those extremes. It is one thing to find yourself facing an opponent across a field, or ring, during a sporting match. Those contests still pit skill verses skill, but lack the survival aspects of an unarmed combative encounter. The average person rarely, if ever, ponders any of this and many consider various sporting contests as the apex of human competition. It is not. Finding yourself in a life-or-death struggle against an opponent that is completely intent on ending your life is the greatest of all human competitions. Understanding that and acknowledging that takes some degree of courage in today’s society.

HT-1 This point is difficult to access, as it is well protected by the structure of the human body. HT-1is a bilateral Vital Point that is located in the armpit at the junction of the inner arm with the torso. It is associated with the Heart Meridian and is the point that the internal aspects of that meridian leaves the inner torso and emerges close to the surface of the skin. It does not have a direct connection to any Extraordinary Vessels, but is highly sensitive to attack. Traditional Chinese Medicine state that this is a no-needle point in many related textbooks. On the surface, this point would appear to be a difficult one to access during an altercation, but it is accessible. HT-1 becomes easily accessible if the opponent’s arm is raised, which occurs in the short instances that they are throwing a punch. A quick finger thrust or one-knuckle fist strike can easily activate it, but it requires a fair amount of precision to land. Combat science teaches us that precision generally diminishes during an altercation, but I add the above variant for those that would be willing to put in the training time for achieve such a strike. Just remember that the likelihood of landing such a technique during an actual altercation is remote, even with copious amounts of practice. A more realistic attack to HT-1 is when you have used your opponent’s arm to take them to the ground. Once established, as a generally rule of thumb, it is advised that if you have established control over an opponent’s arm that you should maintain that control until you deliver a blow that ends the fight. So, with that in mind, one of my favorite attacks to HT-1 after driving an opponent to ground while having established and maintained arm control, that you jerk the arm towards yourself as you throw a kick into this Vital Point. The type of kick will be dependent on the positioning of your opponent. If he is bladed on the ground (laying on one side with the arm you control in the air) a hard side kick or stomp works well. If the opponent starts turning, or squaring his shoulders towards you as he hits the ground in an attempt to regain his feet, then a forceful forward, or straight kick, can work. I would suggest working with a training partner to determine the various configurations that a downed opponent would react when you maintain control of one of their arms. Notice that I did not advise that you kick your training partner in HT-1, which is ill advised since it theoretically can cause disruptions to the heart and according to Traditional Chinese Medicine theory even death. Again, this technique is not for demonstration or sport-oriented martial arts, but mature and thoughtful training practice can provide a wealth of knowledge on how best to attack a Vital Point, even if it is not actually struck.

During induction week we were housed in apartments on South Fremantle’s South Terrace and given a tour of the club - not that there was that much of a club to tour in those days. It was a dilapidated and substandard set-up. The gymnasium, team meeting room and physio treatment room were all housed in the old Victoria Pavilion at the western end of Fremantle Oval. Our official change rooms were in the South Fremantle visitors’ change rooms, which were normally reserved for the opposition at WAFL matches, and the team was shipped to other venues around Perth as required for training sessions. We trained regularly at Subiaco Oval, Aquinas College, Troy Park, McGillivray Oval and various military facilities, in particular the Leeuwin barracks in East Fremantle, in my early days.

All that I’ve thought, all that I’ve dreamed, all that I have or haven’t done – all will go in autumn, like used matches strewn over the floor and pointing various ways, or papers crumpled into fake balls, or the great empires, all religions, the philosophies that the drowsy children of the abyss invented for sport. All that constituted my soul, from my lofty ambitions to my humble rented room, from the gods I had to the boss – Senhor Vasques – that I also had, all will go in autumn, all in autumn, in the tender indifference of autumn. All in autumn, yes, all in autumn.

Perhaps the most important idea is that the rate of reversion to the mean relates to the coefficient of correlation. If the correlation between two variables is 1.0, there is no reversion to the mean. If the correlation is 0, the best guess about what the next outcome will be is simply the average. In other words, when there's no correlation between what you do and what happens, you'll see total reversion to the mean. That's why there's always a small expected loss when you play roulette, whether you've just lost or won chips. Simply having a sense of the correlations for various events can help guide us in making predictions.

Even when the antidote of the Gospel story is pulsing through the veins of your children, the Gospel will still often need to be rehearsed to confront various idols that try to take root in their lives. When we see our kids fall in love with video games, popularity, sports or themselves, we often spend all of our energy attacking the idols themselves but the Gospel presents a different approach. The only way to break the hold of a beautiful object on the soul is to show it an object more beautiful (to paraphrase Thomas Chalmers's famous sermon “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection”). It’s not enough just to say no—we need to give our kids something greater to which they can say yes. The greatest antidote for sin is not always more self-control but greater spiritual passion. The Gospel gives kids this passion for Christ. When they see what it cost Him and how glorious His love truly is, spiritual passion will begin to violently shove out the idols in their lives.

ADJUSTING OUR STANDARDS for accepting evidence to favor our preferred conclusions is but one instrument in the subliminal mind’s motivated reasoning tool kit. Other ways we find support for our worldviews (including our view of ourselves) include adjusting the importance we assign to various pieces of evidence and, sometimes, ignoring unfavorable evidence altogether. For example, ever notice how, after a win, sports fans crow about their team’s great play, but after a loss they often ignore the quality of play and focus on Lady Luck or the referees?35 Similarly, executives in public companies pat themselves on the back for good outcomes but suddenly recognize the importance of random environmental factors when performance is poor.3

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The blows are inflicted in a smooth order, at various angles; These blows are based on the principle of shifting the weight of the body from foot to foot, combined with the torsion of the torso. With the right hand, the weight of the body is transferred to the left leg, the torso turns left; the right hand, bent at the right angle at the elbow, performs a short, semicircular movement in the horizontal plane (or slightly from the bottom upwards or from the top downwards); fist twisted half a turn of his fingers towards the body.

Much like GM and GE, Kodak had a fair employment policy in place by the 1960s and had laid out is own Plan for Progress, which included a commitment to “hold discussions with the employment interviewers in the various division to remind them: that “such things as race, creed, color, or national origin” are neither to “help nor hinder in getting a job at Kodak.” Yet for blacks trying to work and move up at the company, these assurances didn’t mesh with their own experiences. Some of this was a consequence of blacks being poorly educated, especially those who had relocated to Rochester from the rural South. In the company’s eyes, the simply weren’t qualified. “We don’t grow many peanuts in Eastman Kodak,” Monroe Dill, Kodak’s industrial relations director said in 1963, adding that the company would start to recruit more from all-black colleges so as to not keep “discriminating by omission.” But there was also plenty of discrimination by commission, as individual Kodak managers used their discretion to hire whomever they liked and cast off whomever they didn’t. “They would say it blatant, like, 'We don't have any colored jobs,"" recalled Clarence Ingram, who served as general manager of the Rochester Business Opportunities Corporation, an entity formed after the '64 riots to support minority businesses. "They would tell you that." Apparently, they told a lot of blacks that. In 1964, only about 600 African Americans worked for Kodak in Rochester. less than 2 percent of the 33,000 employees based there. Determined to remedy this was FIGHT, which was led by Franklin Delano Roosevelt Florence, the thirty-one-year-old pastor of the Reynolds Street Church of Christ, a stocky, hard-charging, charismatic man, who called Malcolm X a friend. On September 2, 1966, a delegation of sixteen from FIGHT walked into Kodak's executive suite. Florence, sporting a Black Power button in his lapel, said he wanted to see "the top man." Before he knew it, the minister and his retinue were sitting in front of three top men: Kodak chairman Albert Chapman, president William Vaughn, and executive vice president Louis Eilers. Florence told them about the harshness of life in Rochester's black ghetto and said he wanted Kodak to start a training program for people who normally wouldn't be recruited into the company. Florence braced himself, expecting Kodak to resist. But Vaughn listened carefully and then asked Florence to submit a more specific proposal. Two weeks later, he did. Calling FIGHT " the only mass based organization of poor people and near poor people in the Rochester area," Florence requested that Kodak train 500 to 600 men and women over eighteen months. FIGHT also wanted direct involvement in the process; the group would "recruit and counsel trainees and offer advice, consultation, and assistance.

Sort the problems categorically: Our lives, at least for most of us, can be divided into different buckets or categories, in various ways: Work vs. leisure. Activities we do solo vs. those we do with others. Family vs. friends, sports vs. music, and so on. Once each month, look at your bug list and sort it into categories that are meaningful to you. Doing so is likely to stimulate your curiosity.

Mastering, perceptiveness and correct judgment on the properties of the opponent help the broker to act decisively in the fight. The ability to conduct reconnaissance is obtained in training battles with various combat-related characteristics of the partners. Based on the diagnosis, the main task before the boxer is to plan the fight in tactical terms. But before the decisive action begins, the boxer should set a clear goal. Comparing your own advantages with the opponent's combat characteristics gives you the opportunity to sketch a specific plan, the path to victory and the use of this or that tactic.

In Schwarz and Clore’s seminal study on the phenomenon they term “mood as information,” they called people in various zip codes to ask them how satisfied they were with their life—a simple question rather than an elaborate decision task. The zip codes were chosen alongside weather reports. Some people were experiencing a sunny day, and others a rainy day. On average, people expressed higher life satisfaction when the sun was out. But the effect disappeared when the experimenter drew their attention to the weather, by asking, “How’s the weather down there?” In other words, if our attention is drawn to the actual cause of our mood, it stops having an effect. Schwarz and Clore’s findings have been replicated in multiple settings. Stock market returns have been found to be lower on days with greater cloud cover—and higher when a favorite sports team wins. Over and over, incidental events affect decisions they shouldn’t actually influence, simply because they affect how we’re feeling. Tell people what’s going on, though, and they can often overcome it. Which is great news for dealing with tilt

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It became sport, which is itself a form of sacrifice,” writes Sansone. “For only if sport is a form of sacrifice can we explain its ritual associations. There is no other plausible reason to account for the fact that the Hurons played a game of lacrosse in order to influence the weather for the benefit of their crops. It is only because they engaged in ritual sacrifice that natives of the Sudan hold wrestling matches at the time of sowing and harvesting. In Homer’s Iliad the hero Achilles honors the death of his companion Patroclus with an elaborate funeral that consists of various kinds of sacrifice: hair offering; holocausts of sheep and cattle; libations of oil, honey, and wine; slaughter of horses and dogs; human sacrifice and athletic contests.”3 Once the ritual expenditure of energy was decoupled from the hunt, it didn’t especially matter how that energy was squandered. The rules and forms could proliferate a thousand ways, to accommodate the terrain and the materials at hand. The rules and conventions could morph and become subject to contention, debate, wagering, and technical innovation

You don't use science to prove you're right, you use science to become right. - Randall Munroe Brevity is the soul of wit. - The Elements of Style Sometimes, nothing can be a real cool hand. - Luke My sport is your sport's punishment. - Runner's World

Joshua took another small sip from his wine glass as his gaze and his thoughts drifted away from the flat-screen television mounted above the marbled fireplace to ponder a roomful of sports jackets and pantsuits and in some cases cocktail dresses but only of neutral tones and minimal detailing if for no other reason than to avoid becoming the subject of the next petty scandal that would nevertheless send shockwaves through their haughty and insular world. The way they stood in their intimate clusters. Their drink glasses held in various poses of sophistication. And whenever they did bring glass to mouth in accordance with judiciously preset intervals it was also for show, as he believed was true of their subdued conversations, which, from where he was sitting, appeared to be nothing more than the unintelligible murmurings of barely moving lips. A whole list of observations came to mind. Not one of them flattering in any way. The atmosphere thick with that certain stuffiness and elitist redolence of an ivy league alumni fundraising gala. Of course, he readily admitted to himself that out of everyone in the room he was very likely the most materially bereft and least credentialed and that this stinging truth undoubtedly inflamed his plebeian impulse. But that’s not what was bugging him.

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Physiologically there are abundant reasons for an extension of ourselves involving us in a state of numbness. Medical researchers like Hans Selye and Adolphe Jonas hold that all extensions of ourselves, in sickness or in health, are attempts to maintain equilibrium. Any extension of ourselves they regard as “autoamputation,” and they find that the autoamputative power or strategy is resorted to by the body when the perceptual power cannot locate or avoid the cause of irritation. Our language has many expressions that indicate this self-amputation that is imposed by various pressures. We speak of “wanting to jump out of my skin” or of “going out of my mind,” being “driven batty” or “flipping my lid.” And we often create artificial situations that rival the irritations and stresses of real life under controlled conditions of sport and play.

Thomas Esser, hailing from Jersey City, NJ, is not just a teacher but also a passionate sports advocate. With a teaching career spanning over three decades, he's left a lasting impact on countless students. Off the field, Thomas is a sports enthusiast who plays and coaches various sports and actively contributes to charity organizations.

Auntie Christine in Leeds was, in reality, part of a new branch of British intelligence dedicated to aiding POWs and servicemen shot down or lost in enemy territory. It operated under various cover names, including The Lisbon Book Fund, The Welsh Provident Society, The Licensed Victuallers Sports Association, The British Local Ladies’ Comforts Society, and The Jigsaw Puzzle Club. But its official name was MI9, the youngest addition to the Military Intelligence family that already included MI5 and MI6.

To argue against human enhancement, Saletan continues, “Sandel needs something deeper: a common foundation for the various norms in sports, arts and parenting. He thinks he has found it in the idea of giftedness. To some degree, being a good parent, athlete or performer is about accepting and cherishing the raw material you’ve been given to work with [italics my own]. Strengthen your body, but respect it. Challenge your child, but love her. Celebrate nature. Don’t try to control everything […] Why should we accept our lot as a gift? Because the loss of such reverence would change our moral landscape.

Hooper, nicknamed Biff because of his fondness for a distant relative who was a boxer named Biff; Jerry Gilroy, Phil Cohen, and Tony Prito. All were students at Bayport High and prominent in various sports. The five boys were eager to co-

All that’ve thought, all that I’ve dreamed, all that I have or haven’t done — all will go in autumn, like used matches strewn over the floor and pointing various ways, or papers crumpled into fake balls, or the great empires, all religions, the philosophies that the drowsy children of the abyss invented for sport.

What else dwells here other than kelpies?” “Some say witches,” he murmured. “Not the human kind,” he added when she raised a brow. “The kind that used to be something else and then their thirst for magic and power turned them into wretched creatures, banished here by various High Lords.” “They don’t sound so bad.” “They drink young blood to fill the coldness the magic left in them.” Nesta winced. Cassian went on as she scanned the bog, “There are lightsingers: lovely, ethereal beings who will lure you, appearing as friendly faces when you are lost. Only when you’re in their arms will you see their true faces, and they aren’t fair at all. The horror of it is the last thing you see before they drown you in the bog. But they kill for sport, not food.” “And all these horrible creatures are just left here, untended?” “The Middle lies under no High Lord’s jurisdiction. It’s long been the dumping ground for any unwanteds.” “Not the Prison?” “Their crimes are ones of nature. A kelpie is designed to lure and kill, just as a wolf is designed to hunt its prey. The Middle keeps them separate from us without punishing them for what they were made to be.

Mind sees world from various perspectives when body does long-distance running.

It’s eerily quiet in the corridor right now. Just the faint hum of the ice machine and various beeps and buzzes from patients’ rooms. I quietly sneak around the nurses’ station desk and crouch down to Manny. I’m so sorry. I really do like you. Please forgive me. I tug his wallet out of his back pocket and remove all the cash. A hundred dollars will be plenty to tide me over until the morning. I stuff the cash in my sports bra. I unclip Manny’s employee badge from the front of his shirt, toss the wallet on the desk next to his head, and quickly walk down the hall. Every

I see now that in my search for love and acceptance, I slowly began to enslave myself to various identities, which I mistook for my real self in many arenas—sports, church, relationships, career, wealth. These identities became like gods of a lesser kind, all of which I hoped would save me from insignificance in this life.

Various cultures can point to games that involved kicking a ball, but, for all the claims of Rome, Greece, Egypt, the Caribbean, Mexico, China or Japan to be the home of football, the modern sport has its roots in the mob game of medieval Britain. Rules – in as much as they existed at all – varied from place to place, but the game essentially involved two teams each trying to force a roughly spherical object to a target at opposite ends of a notional pitch. It was violent, unruly and anarchic, and it was repeatedly outlawed.

As today’s young people seek a more coherent sense of identity, the stress that formerly hit them in college, or even after college, now begins in middle school (or younger). By high school, many middle- and upper-class teenagers juggle digital calendars jammed with extracurricular activities that begin as early as 6:00 a.m., after-school study sessions, college entrance exam tutoring, and sports team practices that leave them trailing home after 10:00 p.m.11 Followed by two to three hours of homework.12 Athletes used to specialize in a single sport in high school; now that starts in elementary school. Previously, musicians and artists could freely dabble in various media and instruments throughout high school; present-day teenagers have to claim their craft in middle school. No longer can a kid flirt with a handful of hobbies, discovering various facets of their personality and passions, before choosing what they love. There’s so little time for thoughtful and measured exploration in high school that young adults end up exploring their skills and passions well into their twenties. A recent study showed that 13- to 17-year-olds are more likely to feel “extreme stress” than adults.13 Even more alarming is that the adults closest to young people are often blind to their heightened stress levels. Approximately 20 percent of teenagers confess that they worry “a great deal” about current and future life events. But only 8 percent of the parents of these same teenagers report that their child is experiencing a great deal of stress.14 Parents often don’t realize the constant heat felt by adolescents, increasing the pressure for them to figure out who they are and what’s important to them. After adolescence, emerging adults race from the proverbial stress-filled pot into the stress-fueled fire.15 Fewer college students are reporting “above-average” health since this question was first asked in 1985.16

The notion that international competition – the battle between one arbitrary, bordered landmass and another – is not political, is a fatuous notion. But even in that context, cricket is different, its fierceness of a different order to that in almost every other sport. The story of the game is the story of civilisation, its old rivalries based on more than simple you and me, us and them dichotomies, its various antipathies rooted not in sport but actual, real things, a narrative with a genuine moral dimension.

The whole sport of high-performance windsurfing really started from that. As soon as I did it, there were about ten of us who sailed all the time together and within one or two days there were various boards out there that had footstraps of various kinds on them, and we were all going fast and jumping waves and stuff. It just kind of snowballed from there. (Shah 2000) By 1998, more than a million people were engaged

interfere with others of less importance, and therefore Mr. P. will not deny that, after having exhibited to his friends and the sporting fraternity in general, his little investment in fancy horseflesh, he made

interfere with others of less importance, and therefore Mr. P. will not deny that, after having exhibited to his friends and the sporting fraternity in general, his little investment in fancy horseflesh, he made up a very satisfactory betting-book. Now Mr. P. believed,—and events proved him to be correct,—that when his friends and the sporting

sporting

of Business.*11 They’ve completed their humor audits (just as you will—read on!), and now they’re ready to start paying attention to the nuances of humor in their lives—where they see it in the world, what they find funny, who brings it out in them, and how they most naturally express it. Over the course of the semester, our students experience a profound shift. What begins as a sobering, often (very) unfunny first class (remember: “On Tuesday, I did not laugh once. Not once. Who knew a class about humor could be so depressing?”) ends with students reporting significantly more joy and more laughter in their lives. This shift is about more than their becoming funnier: They become more generous with their laughter. They notice opportunities for humor that would otherwise pass them by. The mindset of looking for reasons to be delighted becomes a habit. In a very real way, they learned how to move a little more fluidly, how to exercise with better form, and play their favorite (amateur) sport with better results—just as you will. When you walk around on the precipice of a smile, you’ll be surprised how many things you encounter that push you over the edge. So, repeat after us: “I promise to laugh more. Even on Tuesday.” THE HUMOR AUDIT*12 WHAT DOES HUMOR LOOK LIKE IN MY LIFE? This exercise is intended to spark self-awareness about various aspects of your unique sense of humor, so you can more

Struggle sessions were a form of public humiliation and torture used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at various times in the Mao era, particularly during the years immediately before and after the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and during the Cultural Revolution. The aim of struggle sessions was to shape public opinion, as well as to humiliate, persecute, or execute political rivals and those deemed class enemies. In general, the victim of a struggle session was forced to admit various crimes before a crowd of people who would verbally and physically abuse the victim until they confessed. Struggle sessions were often held at the workplace of the accused, but they were sometimes conducted in sports stadiums where large crowds would gather if the target was well-known.

In 1925, the central committee of the Soviet Communist party declared that sport should be consciously used "as a means of rallying the broad masses of workers and peasants around the various Party Soviet and Trade Union organizations through which the masses of workers and peasants are to be drawn into social and political activity." Fortunately, people of all nations intuitively tend to resist such exhortations. They know that games remain gloriously pointless and that watching an exciting athletic contest, moreover, can be emotionally almost as exhausting as participation itself—hardly the "passive" experience it is made out to be by the guardians of public health and virtue.

Ralph Brown coached high school football at St. Margaret’s Episcopal School in San Juan Capistrano, California. He is an accomplished football player who has won various championships and awards. He proudly served as a sports broadcaster for Fox Sports West Prenzone for 3 years, and he was a sports analyst for the ABC affiliate in Lincoln Nebraska, covering Husker Football. Ralph currently serves as a mentor and motivational speaker to young athletes.

Vitamin D3 boasts a strong safety profile, along with broad and deep evidence that links it to brain, metabolic, cardiovascular, muscle, bone, lung, and immune health. New and emerging research suggests that vitamin D supplements may also slow down our epigenetic/biological aging.29, 30 2. Omega-3 fish oil: Over the last thirty years or so, the typical Western diet has added more and more pro-inflammatory omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids versus anti-inflammatory omega-3 PUFAs. Over the same period, we’ve seen an associated rise in chronic inflammatory diseases, including obesity, cardiovascular disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and Alzheimer’s disease. 31 Rich in omega-3s, fish oil is another incredibly versatile nutraceutical tool with multi-pronged benefits from head to toe. By restoring a healthier PUFA ratio, it especially helps your brain and heart. Regular consumption of fatty fish like salmon has been linked to a lower risk of congestive heart failure, coronary heart disease, sudden cardiac death, and stroke.32 In an observational study, omega-3 fish oil supplementation was also associated with a slower biological clock.33 3. Magnesium deficiency affects more than 45 percent of the U.S. population. Supplements can help us maintain brain and cardiovascular health, normal blood pressure, and healthy blood sugar metabolism. They may also reduce inflammation and help activate our vitamin D. 4. Vitamin K1/K2 supports blood clotting, heart/ blood vessel health, and bone health.34 5. Choline supplements with brain bioavailability, such as CDP-Choline, citicoline, or alpha-GPC, can boost your body’s storehouse of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine and possibly support liver and brain function, while protecting it from age-related insults.35 6. Creatine: This one may surprise you, since it’s often associated with serious athletes and fitness buffs. But according to Dr. Lopez, it’s “a bona fide arrow in my longevity nutraceutical quiver for most individuals, and especially older adults.” As a coauthor of a 2017 paper by the International Society for Sports Nutrition, Dr. Lopez, along with contributors, stated that creatine not only enhances recovery, muscle mass, and strength in connection with exercise, but also protects against age-related muscle loss and various forms of brain injury.36 There’s even some evidence that creatine may boost our immune function and fat and carbohydrate metabolism. Generally well tolerated, creatine has a strong safety profile at a daily dose of three to five grams.37 7.

how and in what ways, do various cultures show off their flags? In contrast to Swedes, who almost never display their national colors, Norwegians and Canadians generally sport a flag decal on their backpacks, the latter making sure the rest of the world doesn’t mistake them for Americans.)

Even after Jason was met by so many defeats, he never said no to any situation. Jason Gesser moved on and on with his determination and willpower. Sticking around the Rose Bowl was something he couldn’t do for a while, but then he rose from all the downtrodden history and made a match for himself. He killed the whole game with his zeal and enthusiasm. Since then, he is known as the golden boy who has played through the cracked and the dislocated ribs with a severely sprained ankle during his Washington State Career. This was in the final and the biggest game. Gesser has been sacked around six times by the blitzing Oklahoma defense and has two passes in the game. Jason Gesser has played and won various games. He once completed 17 completions in 34 attempts for around 23 yards.

identify your employee adjectives, (2) recruit through proper advertising, (3) identify winning personalities, and (4) select your winners. Step One: Identify Your Employee Adjectives When you think of your favorite employees in the past, what comes to mind? A procedural element such as an organized workstation, neat paperwork, or promptness? No. What makes an employee memorable is her attitude and smile, the way she takes the time to make sure a customer is happy, the extra mile she goes to ensure orders are fulfilled and problems are solved. Her intrinsic qualities—her energy, sense of humor, eagerness, and contributions to the team—are the qualities you remember. Rather than relying on job descriptions that simply quantify various positions’ duties and correlating them with matching experience as a tool for identifying and hiring great employees, I use a more holistic approach. The first step in the process is selecting eight adjectives that best define the personality ideal for each job or role in your business. This is a critical step: it gives you new visions and goals for your own management objectives, new ways to measure employee success, and new ways to assess the performance of your own business. Create a “Job Candidate Profile” for every job position in your business. Each Job Candidate Profile should contain eight single- and multiple-word phrases of defining adjectives that clearly describe the perfect employee for each job position. Consider employee-to-customer personality traits, colleague-to-colleague traits, and employee-to-manager traits when making up the list. For example, an accounting manager might be described with adjectives such as “accurate,” “patient,” “detailed,” and “consistent.” A cocktail server for a nightclub or casual restaurant would likely be described with adjectives like “energetic,” “fun,” “music-loving,” “sports-loving,” “good-humored,” “sociable conversationalist,” “adventurous,” and so on. Obviously, the adjectives for front-of-house staff and back-of-house staff (normally unseen by guests) will be quite different. Below is one generic example of a Job Candidate Profile. Your lists should be tailored for your particular bar concept, audience, location, and style of business (high-end, casual, neighborhood, tourist, and so on). BARTENDER Energetic Extroverted/Conversational Very Likable (first impression) Hospitable, demonstrates a Great Service Attitude Sports Loving Cooperative, Team Player Quality Orientated Attentive, Good Listening Skills SAMPLE ADJECTIVES Amazing Ambitious Appealing Ardent Astounding Avid Awesome Buoyant Committed Courageous Creative Dazzling Dedicated Delightful Distinctive Diverse Dynamic Eager Energetic Engaging Entertaining Enthusiastic Entrepreneurial Exceptional Exciting Fervent Flexible Friendly Genuine High-Energy Imaginative Impressive Independent Ingenious Keen Lively Magnificent Motivating Outstanding Passionate Positive Proactive Remarkable Resourceful Responsive Spirited Supportive Upbeat Vibrant Warm Zealous Step Two: Recruit through Proper Advertising The next step is to develop print or online advertising copy that will attract the personalities you’ve just defined.

Activity pouch on airplanes Buttons and pins Crayons and coloring place mats from restaurants Disposable sample cup from the grocery store Erasers and pencils with eraser tops Fireman hat from a visit to the fire station Goodie bags from county fairs and festivals Hair comb from picture day at school Infant goods from the maternity ward Junior ranger badge from the ranger station and Smokey the Bear Kids’ meal toys Lollipops and candy from various locations, such as the bank Medals and trophies for simply participating in (versus winning) a sporting activity Noisemakers to celebrate New Year’s Eve OTC samples from the doctor’s office Party favors and balloons from birthday parties Queen’s Jubilee freebies (for overseas travelers) Reusable plastic “souvenir” cup and straw from a diner Stickers from the doctor’s office Toothbrushes and floss from the dentist’s office United States flags on national holidays Viewing glasses for a 3-D movie (why not keep one pair and reuse them instead?) Water bottles at sporting events XYZ, etc.: The big foam hand at a football or baseball game or Band-Aids after a vaccination or various newspapers, prospectuses, and booklets from school, museums, national parks . . .

Few records exist to establish a definitive date as to when the first ships were built in the Piscataqua region. Fishing vessels were probably constructed as early as 1623, when the first fishermen settled in the area. Many undoubtedly boasted a skilled shipwright who taught the fishermen how to build “great shallops”as well as lesser craft. In 1631 a man named Edward Godfrie directed the fisheries at Pannaway. His operation included six large shallops, five fishing boats, and thirteen skiffs, the shallops essentially open boats that included several pairs of oars, a mast, and lug sail, and which later sported enclosed decks.5 Records do survive of the very first ship built by English settlers in the New World. In 1607, at the mouth of the Kennebec River in Maine, the Plymouth Company erected a short-lived fishing settlement. A London shipwright named Digby organized some settlers to construct a small vessel with which to return them home to England, as they were homesick and disenchanted with the New England winters. The small craft was named, characteristically, the Virginia. She was evidently a two-master and weighed about thirty tons, and she transported furs, salted cod, and tobacco for twenty years between various ports along the Maine coast, Plymouth, Jamestown, and England. She is believed to have wrecked somewhere along the coast of Ireland.6 By the middle of the seventeenth century, shipbuilding was firmly established as an independent industry in New England. Maine, with its long coastline and abundant forests, eventually overtook even Massachusetts as the shipbuilding capital of North America. Its most western town, Kittery, hovered above the Piscataqua. For many years the towns of Kittery and Portsmouth, and upriver enclaves like Exeter, Newmarket, Durham, Dover, and South Berwick, rivaled Bath and Brunswick, Maine, as shipbuilding centers, with numerous shipyards, blacksmith shops, sawmills, and wharves. Portsmouth's deep harbor, proximity to upriver lumber, scarcity of fog, and seven feet of tide made it an ideal location for building large vessels. During colonial times, the master carpenters of England were so concerned about competition they eventually petitioned Parliament to discourage shipbuilding in Portsmouth.7 One of the early Piscataqua shipwrights was Robert Cutts, who used African American slaves to build fishing smacks at Crooked Lane in Kittery in the 1650s. Another was William Pepperell, who moved from the Isle of Shoals to Kittery in 1680, where he amassed a fortune in the shipbuilding, fishing, and lumber trades. John Bray built ships in front of the Pepperell mansion as early as 1660, and Samuel Winkley owned a yard that lasted for three generations.8 In 1690, the first warship in America was launched from a small island in the Piscataqua River, situated halfway between Kittery and Portsmouth. The island's name was Rising Castle, and it was the launching pad for a 637-ton frigate called the Falkland. The Falkland bore fifty-four guns, and she sailed until 1768 as a regular line-of-battle ship. The selection of Piscataqua as the site of English naval ship construction may have been instigated by the Earl of Bellomont, who wrote that the harbor would grow wealthy if it supplemented its export of ship masts with “the building of great ships for H.M. Navy.”9 The earl's words underscore the fact that, prior to the American Revolution, Piscataqua's largest source of maritime revenue came from the masts and spars it supplied to Her Majesty's ships. The white oak and white pine used for these building blocks grew to heights of two hundred feet and weighed upward of twenty tons. England depended on this lumber during the Dutch Wars of the

What is the Ultimate Goal of Life? If we look around, different people have different goals. Some people just want to be rich, others crave for power, and still others seek contentment and fulfillment. If we look deeper, people pursue different things to ultimately get to Destination Happiness. 80% of the world is trying to climb the first peak of Achievement, while the rest are trying to go further towards the second peak of Fulfillment. The achiever may want to excel in sports, politics or business, amongst the various other fields that are mushrooming in the world today. The ones who are content and fulfilled are trying to escape the rat race. For them, happiness doesn’t come from achieving more, but rather from desiring less. The former, who climb the first peak of happiness, depend on pleasure to achieve happiness, while the latter believe that peace is the foundation of happiness. 99% of humanity falls under these two categories. Does it mean that the remaining 1% doesn’t seek happiness? Of course not! Everybody alive on earth seeks happiness. The 1% whose happiness doesn’t depend on pleasure from achievement or peace from fulfillment seek happiness that comes from finding the true purpose of life. This tiny minority goes on a Quest, on a Search, but ultimately, even they want happiness. Everyone seeks Happiness! Therefore, what is wrong in saying that the goal of humanity is happiness? There is nothing wrong, except that ultimate happiness is neither on the first peak of Achievement, nor on the second peak of Fulfillment. We are, unfortunately, looking for it in the wrong place. We are like the musk deer that searches for the musk everywhere, not realizing that the musk it is looking for is inside its own navel. We also do not realize that happiness is within us. We are the very happiness that we are seeking! While 1% of humanity goes on a Quest, a Search within, trying to find a purpose, and realize the truth, all are not fortunate enough to find this purpose and meaning. A very small fraction of the seekers attain self-realization. They realize that they are neither the body that will die, nor the mind that doesn’t exist. They ultimately realize that they are the Divine Energy or Consciousness that gives them life. The Ultimate Happiness! While this realization leads to liberation, it inadvertently gives ultimate joy, peace and bliss. It frees the realized ones from the prisons of misery and sorrow as they escape from the darkness of the ignorance they live in. Probably, less than 0.00001% of humanity attains self-realization and ultimate, eternal, everlasting joy, bliss, peace and happiness with it. These fortunate souls escape from the cycle of death and rebirth. They are liberated from the body and the myth that they are the mind that is reborn based on their past actions. This realization is the ultimate goal of life which is also called Moksha, Nirvana, Enlightenment or Salvation. Whatever you may call it, the goal of life is liberation from misery and suffering. And this is possible only if we realize the truth. We should realize we are not the body that suffers and dies. We should realize that we are not the mind that has to be reborn again and again. We are energy – the energy that gives Consciousness to the body and mind while it experiences life on earth. This is self-realization. The ultimate goal is self-realization because realization of the truth liberates us from the prisons of misery and sorrow that are experienced being the ego, mind and body, which we are not.

Can you be totally intrinsically motivated? “Not necessarily, it’s not always black and white,” says Brad Feld, partner at the Boulder, Colorado-based venture capital firm Foundry Group. I consider Brad a good friend and an expert at understanding the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. I met Brad through a good friend, Bing Gordon, the founder of EA Sports, and we quickly became friends. As he explains, “People fall along a continuum.” Brad uses tennis star Rafael Nadal as an example. He sees Nadal as having a blend of both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Nadal clearly likes to win. He likes the limelight and the attention he gets. “Yet . . . Nadal, after he loses a match, he’s a very gracious loser, acknowledging that the other guy played better and did an awesome job,” Brad explained to me. Nadal recharges his battery by heading off to the beach, and then he is back in training for the next tournament. His daily training regime includes four hours of playing tennis on court, two and a half hours in the gym, and a strict stretching routine. He’s continued this training whether he is ranked at number one, five, or seven in the world. It’s for him, not for the ranking. Brad also believes something I’ve really taken to heart—that one person can’t truly motivate another person, a concept especially important in business when you manage people. “I can’t motivate another person, but [I can] create a context in which they are motivated, and part of being a leader is to understand what motivates other people,” explained Brad. “So if I’m the leader of an organization that you’re a part of, I have to understand what motivates you. Then I can create a context in which to motivate you. Most people struggle to understand how somebody else is motivated because they do it based on what motivates them.” Brad’s words ring true: While my own inspiration has come from various people, none of them actually motivated me. When I was extrinsically motivated, it was based largely on what others thought about me. My inner desire to win was based on extrinsic rewards. Only I had the power to change that.

Art is the expression of human emotions through various mediums. Sports can be considered as nothing less than an art form because it makes the spirit soar.

O Divine Poesy, goddess, daughter of Zeus, sustain for me this song of the various-minded man who, after he had plundered the innermost citadel of hallowed Troy, was made to stray grievously about the coasts of men, the sport of their customs, good and bad, while his heart, through all the sea-faring, ached with an agony to redeem himself and bring his company safe home. Vain hope — for them. The fools! Their own witlessness cast them aside. To destroy for meat the oxen of the most exalted Sun, wherefore the Sun-god blotted out the day of their return. Make this tale live for us in all its many bearings, O Muse. . . .

Neon signs illuminate the windows and old license plates decorate the walls, along with paper bills of various currencies and the occasional signed sports jersey. I only recognize one—Jasper Gervais, a famous hockey player.

We file into the suite and are instantly greeted by Rena and the three younger Noires, all various shades of trouble. While Axel and Ryker sport suits, charm, and a chiseled edge, the rest of the family boasts self-expression. Jax has blue hair, highlighting the dark blue rims on his golden-brown eyes, gauges in his stretched piercings, and colored tattoos. Maddox has wintry-gray eyes, messy onyx-black hair, and black tattoos all over his pale skin, even his fingers. Cash is less extreme—tousled blond hair, complementing his baby blues, and a few less tattoos. His menacing smile is what sets him apart. No question he’s a miscreant, shoving anyone within reach to the depths of Hell. Although I suspect the fall from grace would be the trip of a lifetime. And last, but far from least, there’s Rena, the gothic-punk Noire princess.