Robert the Revelator

Information Overload is the Bane of my Life

2019-04-24T02:56:00.002-07:00

My daily struggle is to understand what is important, to my situation, in the constant barrage of information on the Internet.

What can and should be ignored?

Is my purpose to seek distraction, novelty and entertainment?

Or is the goal and purpose to my Net Surfing to gain valuable knowledge?

What do I hope to accomplish?

“There are things that attract human attention, and there is often a huge gap between what is important and what is attractive and interesting."

- Yuval Noah Harari

And Donald Trump has not helped make being informed easy with all his mixed messages.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.”

― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Leonard Cohen: Hallelujah

2016-11-23T11:52:00.000-08:00

Leonard Cohen Dominique Issermann

Leonard Cohen: Darkness and Praise

By LEON WIESELTIER
NOV. 14, 2016

The email from the boy began: “Did anything inspire you to create Hallelujah?"

Later that same winter day the reply arrived:
“I wanted to stand with those who clearly see God’s holy broken world for what it is, and still find the courage or the heart to praise it. You don’t always get what you want. You’re not always up for the challenge. But in this case — it was given to me. For which I am deeply grateful.”

The question came from the author's son, who was preparing to present the hymn to his fifth-grade class. The boy required a clarification about its meaning. The answer came from the author of the song, Leonard Cohen.

Cohen lived in a weather of wisdom, which he created by seeking it rather than by finding it. He swam in beauty, because in its transience he aspired to discern a glimpse of eternity.
There was always a trace of philosophy in his sensuality.
He managed to combine a sense of absurdity with a sense of significance, a genuine feat.
He was a friend of melancholy but an enemy of gloom, and a renegade enamored of tradition.

Leonard was, above all, in his music and in his poems and in his tone of life, the lyrical advocate of the finite and the flawed.

Leonard sang always as a sinner. He refused to describe sin as a failure or a disqualification. Sin was a condition of life.

“Even though it all went wrong/ I’ll stand before the Lord of song/ With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!”

The singer’s faults do not expel him from the divine presence. Instead they confer a mortal integrity upon his exclamation of praise.

He is the inadequate man, the lowly man, the hurt man who has given hurt, insisting modestly but stubbornly upon his right to a sacred exaltation.

“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

He once told an interviewer that those words were the closest he came to a credo.

The teaching could not be more plain: fix the crack, lose the light.

Here is a passage on frivolity by a great rabbi in Prague at the end of the 16th century:

“Man was born for toil, since his perfection is always being actualized but is never actual,”
he observed in an essay on frivolity.
“And insofar as he attains perfection, something is missing in him. In such a being,
perfection is a shortcoming and a lack.”

Leonard Cohen was the poet laureate of the lack, the psalmist of the privation, who made imperfection gorgeous.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/14/opinion/my-friend-leonard-cohen-darkness-and-praise.html?ribbon-ad-idx=3&src=trending

Living with a sense of purpose in life

2016-11-22T04:50:00.001-08:00

Conclusion:

A sense of purpose in life also gives you this considerable advantage:

"People with a sense of purpose in life have a lower risk of death and cardiovascular disease."

The conclusions come from over 136,000 people who took part in 10 different studies.

Participants in the studies were mostly from the US and Japan.

The US studies asked people:

how useful they felt to others,
about their sense of purpose, and
the meaning they got out of life.

The Japanese studies asked people about ‘ikigai’ or whether their life was worth living.
The participants, whose average age was 67, were tracked for around 7 years.

During that time almost 20,000 died.
But, amongst those with a strong sense of purpose or high ‘ikigai’, the risk of death was one-fifth lower.

Despite the link between sense of purpose and health being so intuitive, scientists are not sure of the mechanism.

Sense of purpose is likely to improve health by strengthening the body against stress.

It is also likely to be linked to healthier behaviours.

Dr. Alan Rozanski, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Of note, having a strong sense of life purpose has long been postulated to be an important dimension of life, providing people with a sense of vitality motivation and resilience.

Nevertheless, the medical implications of living with a high or low sense of life purpose have only recently caught the attention of investigators.

The current findings are important because they may open up new potential interventions for helping people to promote their health and sense of well-being.”

This research on links between sense of purpose in life and longevity is getting stronger all the time:

“A 2009 study of 1,238 elderly people found that those with a sense of purpose lived longer.

A 2010 study of 900 older adults found that those with a greater sense of purpose were much less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.

Survey data often links a sense of purpose in life with increased happiness.

No matter what your age, then, it’s worth thinking about what gives your life meaning.”

Read More:

Find out what kinds of things people say give their lives meaning.

Here’s an exercise for increasing meaningfulness

And a study finding that feeling you belong increases the sense of meaning.

The study was published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine (Cohen et al., 2015).

A sense of purpose in life
Link: http://www.spring.org.uk/2015/12/here-is-why-a-sense-of-purpose-in-life-is-important-for-health

Arnold Newman created this atmospheric portrait of Surrealist Max Ernst in 1942:

2016-11-01T06:37:00.000-07:00

Arnold Newman created this atmospheric portrait of Surrealist Max Ernst in 1942:

http://buff.ly/2exmnhl

LSD helps to treat alcoholism

2016-11-01T04:24:00.001-07:00

DEA/Science Faction/Corbis

Nature | News

LSD helps to treat alcoholism

Retrospective analysis shows hallucinogenic drug helped problem drinkers.

Arran Frood

09 March 2012

An analysis of old studies suggests LSD may have a role to play in treating alcoholism.

The powerful hallucinogen LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) has potential as a treatment for alcoholism, according to a retrospective analysis of studies published in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The study1, by neuroscientist Teri Krebs and clinical psychologist Pål-Ørjan Johansen of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, is the first-ever quantitative meta-analysis of LSD–alcoholism clinical trials. The researchers sifted through thousands of records to collect data from randomized, double-blind trials that compared one dose of LSD to a placebo.

Of 536 participants in six trials, 59% of people receiving LSD reported lower levels of alcohol misuse, compared to 38% of people who received a placebo. “We were surprised that the effect was so clear and consistent,” says Krebs. She says that the problem with most studies done at that time was that there were too few participants, which limited statistical power. “But when you combine the data in a meta-analysis, we have more than 500 patients and there is definitely an effect,” she says. In general, the reported benefits lasted three to six months. Their findings are published today in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.

Psychedelics were promoted by psychiatrists in the 1950s as having a range of medical uses — to treat conditions such as schizophrenia, for example — before political pressures in the United States and elsewhere largely ended the work. “Alcoholism was considered one of the most promising clinical applications for LSD,” says Johansen. Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson is said to have espoused the benefits of LSD in the book Pass It On: The Story of Bill Wilson and How the AA Message Reached the World.

In the last decade or so, however, a new generation of researchers have been interested in harnessing the therapeutic benefits of illicit drugs — such as 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA or ecstasy) for post-traumatic stress disorder, ayahuasca for drug and alcohol dependency, and psilocybin, the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms, for smoking cessation.

The snow globe of perception?

How psychedelics exert such effects, especially after a single dose, remains unclear. LSD and its chemical cousins share structural similarities with the neurotransmitter serotonin, which is linked to many aspects of mood, memory and pleasure. These psychedelics also bind the same receptor sites in the brain as serotonin, but there the similarity may end — studies have shown that the hallucinogens elicit chemical cascades different from other compounds that bind at the same receptor2. To complicate matters further, LSD also acts at other receptors3.

For the moment, studying human behavioural responses rather than brain chemistry may be more helpful in understanding how the drugs work. Robin Carhart-Harris, a psychopharmacologist at Imperial College London who has researched how psilocybin could treat depression, says that psychedelics must work at both biological and psychological levels. “Psychedelics probably work in addiction by making the brain function more chaotically for a period — a bit like shaking up a snow globe — weakening reinforced brain connections and dynamics,” he says.

Roland Griffiths, a behavioural biologist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, is investigating the influence of psilocybin on smoking cessation, and says that psychedelics sometimes give rise to distinctive, insightful experiences that can produce enduring positive changes in attitude, mood and behaviour.

“This is impressive and important work,” says Matthew Johnson, a psychiatrist also at Johns Hopkins University who is now running a small trial looking at the effectiveness of psilocybin to treat nicotine addiction. “Although this meta-analysis does not replace the need to test the approach in new, well-designed and rigorous clinical trials, it puts some more muscle behind the interpretation that the older literature shows hints that psychedelic therapy might really help addiction.”

However, Ken Checinski, a consultant addiction psychiatrist and independent researcher based in London, says that although the results are exciting, no pharmacological treatment should be seen as a magic bullet and that modern therapeutic techniques have improved. “The included LSD trials pre-date the use of psychological techniques such as motivational interviewing and cognitive behaviour therapy,” he says.

Nature

doi:10.1038/nature.2012.10200

References

Krebs, T. S. & Johansen, P-O. J. Psychopharmacol. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0269881112439253 (2012).
- PubMed
- ISI
González-Maeso, J. et al. J. Neurosci. 23, 8836–8843 (2003).
Halberstadt, A. L. & Geyer, M. A. Neuropharmacology 61, 364–381 (2011).
- Article
- PubMed
- ISI
- ChemPort

Link: http://www.nature.com/news/lsd-helps-to-treat-alcoholism-1.10200

The Science and Practise of Happiness

2016-01-15T00:59:00.000-08:00

Uploaded on Jul 1, 2011

Is happiness a skill? Modern neuroscientific research and the wisdom of ancient contemplative traditions converge in suggesting that happiness is the product of skills that can be enhanced through training and such training exemplifies how transforming the mind can change the brain.

Kent Berridge, Richie Davidson, and Daniel Gilbert speak at the Aspen Ideas Festival

Music
- "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm" by Dick Hyman (iTunes • eMusic)
Category
- Science & Technology
License
- Standard YouTube License

Link: https://youtu.be/MDTi2_PHiiM

Living with a sense of purpose in life

2016-01-15T00:32:00.000-08:00

Conclusion:

A sense of purpose in life also gives you this considerable advantage:

"People with a sense of purpose in life have a lower risk of death and cardiovascular disease."

The conclusions come from over 136,000 people who took part in 10 different studies.

Participants in the studies were mostly from the US and Japan.

The US studies asked people:

how useful they felt to others,
about their sense of purpose, and
the meaning they got out of life.

The Japanese studies asked people about ‘ikigai’ or whether their life was worth living.
The participants, whose average age was 67, were tracked for around 7 years.

During that time almost 20,000 died.

But, amongst those with a strong sense of purpose or high ‘ikigai’, the risk of death was one-fifth lower.

Despite the link between sense of purpose and health being so intuitive, scientists are not sure of the mechanism.

Sense of purpose is likely to improve health by strengthening the body against stress.

It is also likely to be linked to healthier behaviours.

Dr. Alan Rozanski, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Of note, having a strong sense of life purpose has long been postulated to be an important dimension of life, providing people with a sense of vitality motivation and resilience.

Nevertheless, the medical implications of living with a high or low sense of life purpose have only recently caught the attention of investigators.

The current findings are important because they may open up new potential interventions for helping people to promote their health and sense of well-being.”

This research on links between sense of purpose in life and longevity is getting stronger all the time:

“A 2009 study of 1,238 elderly people found that those with a sense of purpose lived longer.

A 2010 study of 900 older adults found that those with a greater sense of purpose were much less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.

Survey data often links a sense of purpose in life with increased happiness.

No matter what your age, then, it’s worth thinking about what gives your life meaning.”

Read More:

Find out what kinds of things people say give their lives meaning.

Here’s an exercise for increasing meaningfulness

And a study finding that feeling you belong increases the sense of meaning.

The study was published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine (Cohen et al., 2015).

A sense of purpose in life
Link: http://www.spring.org.uk/2015/12/here-is-why-a-sense-of-purpose-in-life-is-important-for-health

Starlings take flight

2015-10-20T19:51:00.002-07:00

NBC News A flock of starlings take flight in what is known as a murmuration, a rare gathering that looks like dancing clouds, in the skies over southern Israel.

Link: http://www.nbcnews.com/watch/nbc-news/watch-starlings-form-spectacular-murmuration-392940611617

Why Killing a Bull Elephant With Big Tusks Hurts the Herd

2015-10-20T19:46:00.000-07:00

Elephants with large tusks, such as this one in Tanzania, are increasingly rare because of heavy poaching, making them even more valuable to trophy hunters. With elephant numbers in free-fall in many places, losing even one big tusker is damaging to a herd. Photograph by Mitsuaki Iwago, Minden Pictures/National Geographic

Why Killing a Bull Elephant With Big Tusks Hurts the Herd

Scientists say the loss of a mature bull elephant has a profound impact on the herd.

By Rachael Bale, National Geographic

PUBLISHED Sat Oct 17, 2015

By now, news of the big bull elephant hunted in Zimbabwe last week has made its way around the internet. The bull is a “tusker”—an elephant genetically predisposed to being extra big, with extra-large tusks.

His tusks are some of the biggest taken by a hunter in recent decades, according to commenters on an online forum where the photo of the dead animal received fulsome praise from other hunters. The tusks weighed in at 120 pounds and 122 pounds each, according to social media posts.

The elephant was shot in a hunting concession in the Malipati region of Zimbabwe, between Gonarezhou National Park and South Africa’s Kruger National Park, which is home to many large bulls.

The shooting of this elephant is drawing the ire of conservationists and scientists alike, who say that killing such an animal has consequences both in terms of protecting the species and in promoting cultural heritage.

Many hunters, on the other hand, argue that the elephant was either past his breeding age or has passed on his genes enough times that he has made a sufficient contribution to the gene pool.

“That’s nonsense,” said Joyce Poole, a researcher who has studied elephant reproduction for decades. “That male they killed was in his prime, and not only was he incredibly important to the females, he was really important to other males as a leader in male society.”

“Old and experienced individuals are crucial,” said Vicki Fishlock, the resident scientist at Amboseli Trust for Elephants, a research and conservation organization in Kenya. “They are so much more than ‘a breeder’—by the time these animals reach this size, they have been parts of social networks for five or six decades and have accumulated social and ecological experience that younger animals learn from.”

Experts place this elephant at around 50 years old. “Prime” breeding age is considered mid-40s to around 50, and female elephants actually prefer to mate with older, bigger bulls such as this one, research shows.

Plus, research shows that younger male elephants can become aggressive when older bulls aren’t around, much in the way juvenile delinquency in our own cultures has been attributed to the absence of fathers, said Caitlin E. O’Connell, a professor at the at the Stanford School of Medicine and an elephant expert.

But there are very few bigger, older male African elephants left, Poole said. Poachers have gotten many of them, which is why there’s now a growing trend toward poaching even young elephants with small tusks.

And that’s part of the reason hunters have been celebrating this particular kill. Getting to take home trophy tusks of this size has become increasingly difficult. Nowadays, hunters say they’re excited for anything bigger than 75 pounds. And while there have been a few big elephants hunted in Zimbabwe this year, the average tusk size that hunters can expect is closer to 40 or 50 pounds, according to one website.

Tusk size is, in part, genetic. While the bull killed last week surely has mated many times, the genes for big tusks are already on the decline, meaning the genetic contribution of every elephant is important. Elephants are now evolving to have smaller tusks because poaching and hunting has removed many big-tusked elephants from the gene pool.

Protections for Cultural Icons?

Aside from the biological impacts of removing a large-tusked male from the breeding population, conservationists and even some hunters have raised ethical and cultural concerns.

On the hunting forum accuratereloading.com, one commenter, identified as Mike, said, “Shooting an elephant like that is kind of like shooting the last tasmanian devil. This elephant will not be replaced for a long time given the terrible state of African elephants.”

Louis Muller, the chairman of the Zimbabwe Professional Hunters and Guides Association, told The Telegraph that big elephants could benefit from the extra protection afforded by a tracking collar. “‘We have suggested before to all concerned parties that each elephant area should collar a few with biggest tusks, so that we do not shoot them...Nobody responded to our suggestion last year. We believe this might now be taken seriously.’”

Elephants as big as the Zimbabwe bull are iconic, and conservationists have suggested that village communities would benefit more from the tourism money the magnificent animals could bring than from trophy hunting fees.

Hunting “is legal, but the thing is, the ethics [are] out the window,” Johnny Rodrigues, the head of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, told BBC World Service. “When you see an elephant like that, which you haven’t seen for years, you should actually put a collar on it and use it as a marketing tool because not everywhere in the world can you find an animal like that.”

Besides, elephants are feeling creatures, and that needs to be considered, Joyce Poole said. They’re long-lived, intelligent, and social. They’re self-aware animals that think about the future, think about the past, that are aware of death. This elephant had friends who cared about him, and it will make a difference to their lives that he’s gone.”

To companions of all ages,” added Vicki Fishlock, “the loss of these individuals makes a profound difference.”

Elephants tusk size has shrunk by half during the past 150 years. Here, a worker carries a tusk to auction in Mombasa, Kenya, in 1969. Photograph by Bruce Dale, National Geographic

What We Know About the Hunt

The identity of the hunter, a German, has not been made public.

Take Aim Safaris, a company owned by Carl Knight that offers elephant hunts in the Gonarezhou region, where the bull was shot, was originally given credit for the hunt. Its website—now down for “scheduled maintenance”—featured a photo of the dead elephant. According to the website, Take Aim Safaris charges a $20,000 trophy fee for elephant with tusks of 90 pounds or more.

The hunt was led by a well-known professional hunter named Nixon Dzingai, who did not respond to emails or calls.

What’s In a Name?

There was originally some speculation that the elephant could have been Nkombo, a tusker from Kruger National Park, but Nkombo was seen a few days before the hunt more than 70 miles south, and it’s improbable he could have traveled so far so fast. Besides, people who have tracked and photographed Nkombo say he rarely strays far.

Hunters who saw the photo of the dead bull immediately worried that he may have had a name. When people found out the lion killed in Zimbabwe over the summer had a name, Cecil, it ignited a media storm.

“Really hope this elephant did not had [sic] a name,” said one commenter on the hunting forum. (Read this, and other hunters’ reactions to the kill here). Research shows that humans are more apt to sympathize with animals that share traits with us, such as intelligence, emotion—and names.

Conservationists in the Gonarezhou area have said that this elephant hasn’t been sighted before, so it’s possible that he’d wandered up from Kruger .

Regardless of opinions on sports hunting, the industry needs to restrict hunting of elephants with tusks over a certain size, said Caitlin O’Connell, who believes hunting has an economic role in Africa. “There need to be checks and balances. There were no checks and balances here here. This was a fluke event that someone should have stopped. It should have been a huge gift to the country that he...was there.”

This story was produced by National Geographic’s Special Investigations Unit, which focuses on wildlife crime and is made possible by a grant from the BAND Foundation.

Link: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/151017-zimbabwe-elephant-tusker-trophy-hunting-poaching-conservation-africa-ivory-trade/

Earl Nightingale transcript provides inspiraton

2015-09-30T23:33:00.002-07:00

Transcribed from The Strangest Secret audio program by Earl Nightingale

Some years ago, the late Nobel prize-winning Dr. Albert Schweitzer was asked by a reporter, “Doctor, what’s wrong with men today?” The great doctor was silent a moment, and then he said, “Men simply don’t think!”

It’s about this that I want to talk with you. We live today in a golden age. This is an era that humanity has looked forward to, dreamed of, and worked toward for thousands of years. We live in the richest era that ever existed on the face of the earth … a land of abundant opportunity for everyone.

However, if you take 100 individuals who start even at the age of 25, do you have any idea what will happen to those men and women by the time they’re 65? These 100 people believe they’re going to be successful. They are eager toward life, there is a certain sparkle in their eye, an erectness to their carriage, and life seems like a pretty interesting adventure to them.

But by the time they’re 65, only one will be rich, four will be financially independent, five will still be working, and 54 will be broke and depending on others for life’s necessities.

Only five out of 100 make the grade! Why do so many fail? What has happened to the sparkle that was there when they were 25? What has become of the dreams, the hopes, the plans … and why is there such a large disparity between what these people intended to do and what they actually accomplished?

THE DEFINITION OF SUCCESS

First, we have to define success and here is the best definition I’ve ever been able to find:

“Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.”

A success is the school teacher who is teaching because that’s what he or she wants to do. A success is the entrepreneur who start his own company because that was his dream and that’s what he wanted to do. A success is the salesperson who wants to become the best salesperson in his or her company and sets forth on the pursuit of that goal.

A success is anyone who is realizing a worthy predetermined ideal, because that’s what he or she decided to do … deliberately. But only one out of 20 does that! The rest are “failures.”

Rollo May, the distinguished psychiatrist, wrote a wonderful book called Man’s Search for Himself, and in this book he says: “The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice … it is conformity.” And there you have the reason for so many failures. Conformity and people acting like everyone else, without knowing why or where they are going.

We learn to read by the time we’re seven. We learn to make a living by the time we’re 30. Often by that time we’re not only making a living, we’re supporting a family. And yet by the time we’re 65, we haven’t learned how to become financially independent in the richest land that has ever been known. Why? We conform! Most of us are acting like the wrong percentage group and the 95 who don’t succeed.

GOALS

Have you ever wondered why so many people work so hard and honestly without ever achieving anything in particular, and why others don’t seem to work hard, yet seem to get everything? They seem to have the “magic touch.” You’ve heard people say, “Everything he touches turns to gold.” Have you ever noticed that a person who becomes successful tends to continue to become more successful? And, on the other hand, have you noticed how someone who’s a failure tends to continue to fail?

The difference is goals.

People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going. It’s that simple.

Failures, on the other hand, believe that their lives are shaped by circumstances … by things that happen to them … by exterior forces.
Think of a ship with the complete voyage mapped out and planned. The captain and crew know exactly where the ship is going and how long it will take and it has a definite goal. And 9,999 times out of 10,000, it will get there.

Now let’s take another ship and just like the first and only let’s not put a crew on it, or a captain at the helm. Let’s give it no aiming point, no goal, and no destination. We just start the engines and let it go. I think you’ll agree that if it gets out of the harbor at all, it will either sink or wind up on some deserted beach and a derelict. It can’t go anyplace because it has no destination and no guidance.

It’s the same with a human being. However, the human race is fixed, not to prevent the strong from winning, but to prevent the weak from losing. Society today can be likened to a convoy in time of war. The entire society is slowed down to protect its weakest link, just as the naval convoy has to go at the speed that will permit its slowest vessel to remain in formation.

That’s why it’s so easy to make a living today. It takes no particular brains or talent to make a living and support a family today. We have a plateau of so-called “security.” So, to succeed, all we must do is decide how high above this plateau we want to aim.

Throughout history, the great wise men and teachers, philosophers, and prophets have disagreed with one another on many different things. It is only on this one point that they are in complete and unanimous agreement and the key to success and the key to failure is this:

WE BECOME WHAT WE THINK ABOUT

This is The Strangest Secret! Now, why do I say it’s strange, and why do I call it a secret? Actually, it isn’t a secret at all. It was first promulgated by some of the earliest wise men, and it appears again and again throughout the Bible. But very few people have learned it or understand it. That’s why it’s strange, and why for some equally strange reason it virtually remains a secret.

Marcus Aurelius, the great Roman Emperor, said: “A man’s life is what his thoughts make of it.”

Disraeli said this: “Everything comes if a man will only wait … a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and nothing can resist a will that will stake even existence for its fulfillment.”

William James said: “We need only in cold blood act as if the thing in question were real, and it will become infallibly real by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real. It will become so knit with habit and emotion that our interests in it will be those which characterize belief.”

He continues, ” … only you must, then, really wish these things, and wish them exclusively, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.”

My old friend Dr. Norman Vincent Peale put it this way: “If you think in negative terms, you will get negative results. If you think in positive terms, you will achieve positive results.”

George Bernard Shaw said: “People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.”

Well, it’s pretty apparent, isn’t it? We become what we think about.

A person who is thinking about a concrete and worthwhile goal is going to reach it, because that’s what he’s thinking about.

Conversely, the person who has no goal, who doesn’t know where he’s going, and whose thoughts must therefore be thoughts of confusion, anxiety, fear, and worry will thereby create a life of frustration, fear, anxiety and worry. And if he thinks about nothing … he becomes nothing.

AS YE SOW, SO SHALL YE REAP

The human mind is much like a farmer’s land. The land gives the farmer a choice. He may plant in that land whatever he chooses. The land doesn’t care what is planted. It’s up to the farmer to make the decision.

The mind, like the land, will return what you plant, but it doesn’t care what you plant. If the farmer plants too seeds and one a seed of corn, the other nightshade, a deadly poison, waters and takes care of the land, what will happen?

Remember, the land doesn’t care. It will return poison in just as wonderful abundance as it will corn. So up come the two plants and one corn, one poison as it’s written in the Bible, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.”

The human mind is far more fertile, far more incredible and mysterious than the land, but it works the same way. It doesn’t care what we plant … success … or failure. A concrete, worthwhile goal … or confusion, misunderstanding, fear, anxiety, and so on. But what we plant it must return to us.

The problem is that our mind comes as standard equipment at birth. It’s free. And things that are given to us for nothing, we place little value on. Things that we pay money for, we value.

The paradox is that exactly the reverse is true.

Everything that’s really worthwhile in life came to us free and our minds, our souls, our bodies, our hopes, our dreams, our ambitions, our intelligence, our love of family and children and friends and country. All these priceless possessions are free.

But the things that cost us money are actually very cheap and can be replaced at any time. A good man can be completely wiped out and make another fortune. He can do that several times. Even if our home burns down, we can rebuild it. But the things we got for nothing, we can never replace.

Our mind can do any kind of job we assign to it, but generally speaking, we use it for little jobs instead of big ones.

So decide now. What is it you want? Plant your goal in your mind. It’s the most important decision you’ll ever make in your entire life.

Do you want to excel at your particular job? Do you want to go places in your company … in your community? Do you want to get rich?

All you have got to do is plant that seed in your mind, care for it, work steadily toward your goal, and it will become a reality.

It not only will, there’s no way that it cannot. You see, that’s a law and like the laws of Sir Isaac Newton, the laws of gravity. If you get on top of a building and jump off, you’ll always go down and you’ll never go up.

And it’s the same with all the other laws of nature. They always work. They’re inflexible.

Think about your goal in a relaxed, positive way.

Picture yourself in your mind’s eye as having already achieved this goal.

See yourself doing the things you will be doing when you have reached your goal.

Every one of us is the sum total of our own thoughts.

We are where we are because that’s exactly where we really want or feel we deserve to be and whether we’ll admit that or not.

Each of us must live off the fruit of our thoughts in the future, because what you think today and tomorrow and next month and next year and will mold your life and determine your future. You’re guided by your mind.

I remember one time I was driving through e a s t e r n Arizona and I saw one of those giant earth-moving machines roaring along the road with what looked like 30 tons of dirt in it and a tremendous, incredible machine and and there was a little man perched way up on top with the wheel in his hands, guiding it.

As I drove along I was struck by the similarity of that machine to the human mind.

Just suppose you’re sitting at the controls of such a vast source of energy.

Are you going to sit back and fold your arms and let it run itself into a ditch?

Or are you going to keep both hands firmly on the wheel and control and direct this power to a specific, worthwhile purpose?

It’s up to you. You’re in the driver’s seat.

You see, the very law that gives us success is a double-edged sword.

We must control our thinking.

The same rule that can lead people to lives of success, wealth, happiness, and all the things they ever dreamed of and that very same law can lead them into the gutter.

It’s all in how they use it … for good or for bad.

That is The Strangest Secret!

Do what the experts since the dawn of recorded history have told us to do:
pay the price, by becoming the person you want to become.

It’s not nearly as difficult as living unsuccessfully.

The moment you decide on a goal to work toward, you’re immediately a successful person and you are then in that rare group of people who know where they’re going.

Out of every hundred people, you belong to the top five.

Don’t concern yourself too much with how you are going to achieve your goal.

Leave that completely to a power greater than yourself.

All you have to do is know where you’re going. The answers will come to you of their own accord, and at the right time.

Start today. You have nothing to lose and but you have your whole life to win.

30-DAY ACTION IDEAS FOR PUTTING THE STRANGEST SECRET TO WORK FOR YOU:

For the next 30-days follow each of these steps every day until you have achieved your goal.

1. Write on a card what it is you want more that anything else. It may be more money. Perhaps you’d like to double your income or make a specific amount of money. It may be a beautiful home. It may be success at your job. It may be a particular position in life. It could be a more harmonious family.

Write down on your card specifically what it is you want. Make sure it’s a single goal and clearly defined. You needn’t show it to anyone, but carry it with you so that you can look at it several times a day.

Think about it in a cheerful, relaxed, positive way each morning when you get up, and immediately you have something to work for and something to get out of bed for, something to live for.

Look at it every chance you get during the day and just before going to bed at night.

As you look at it, remember that you must become what you think about, and since you’re thinking about your goal, you realize that soon it will be yours. In fact, it’s really yours the moment you write it down and begin to think about it.

2. Stop thinking about what it is you fear.

Each time a fearful or negative thought comes into your mind, replace it with a mental picture of your positive and worthwhile goal.

And there will come a time when you’ll feel like giving up. It’s easier for a human being to think negatively than positively. That’s why only five percent are successful! You must begin now to place yourself in that group.

“Act as though it were impossible to fail,” as Dorothea Brande said. No matter what your goal, if you’ve kept your goal before you every day, you’ll wonder and marvel at this new life you’ve found.

3. Your success will always be measured by the quality and quantity of service you render.

Most people will tell you that they want to make money, without understanding this law. The only people who make money work in a mint. The rest of us must earn money. This is what causes those who keep looking for something for nothing, or a free ride, to fail in life.

Success is not the result of making money; earning money is the result of success and and success is in direct proportion to our service.

Most people have this law backwards. It’s like the man who stands in front of the stove and says to it: “Give me heat and then I’ll add the wood.”

How many men and women do you know, or do you suppose there are today, who take the same attitude toward life? There are millions.

We’ve got to put the fuel in before we can expect heat.

Likewise, we’ve got to be of service first before we can expect money.

Don’t concern yourself with the money. Be of service … build … work … dream … create! Do this and you’ll find there is no limit to the prosperity and abundance that will come to you.

Don’t start your test until you’ve made up your mind to stick with it. If you should fail during your first 30 days and by that I mean suddenly find yourself overwhelmed by negative thoughts and simply start over again from that point and go 30 more days.

Gradually, your new habit will form, until you find yourself one of that wonderful minority to whom virtually nothing is impossible.

Above all … don’t worry! Worry brings fear, and fear is crippling.

The only thing that can cause you to worry during your test is trying to do it all yourself.

Know that all you have to do is hold your goal before you; everything else will take care of itself.

Take this 30-day test, then repeat it … then repeat it again. Each time it will become more a part of you until you’ll wonder how you could have ever have lived any other way.

Live this new way and the floodgates of abundance will open and pour over you more riches than you may have dreamed existed. Money? Yes, lots of it.

But what’s more important, you’ll have peace … you’ll be in that wonderful minority who lead calm, cheerful, successful lives.

Learn more about Earl Nightingale and his many timeless books and audio programs.
The Strangest Secret

The Strangest Secret Article by: Earl Nightingale

See more at:

http://www.nightingale.com/articles/the-strangest-secret/#sthash.UAajeEpR.dpuf

Change Your Life

2015-09-30T23:30:00.000-07:00

Things You Can Do To Change Your Life

Take small steps. Enjoy the process. Have fun.

Know your Current Situation and where you want to go from there. It helps to break big goals down into manageable steps.

Be Patient

Be determined to succeed.

Flow

skipping stones to success.

An Inspiring Secret

2015-09-30T21:04:00.003-07:00

This is a transcript...

The Strangest Secret

Some years ago, the late Nobel prize-winning Dr. Albert Schweitzer was asked by a reporter, "Doctor, what's wrong with men today?" The great doctor was silent a moment, and then he said, "Men simply don't think!"

It's about this that I want to talk with you. We live today in a golden age. This is an era that humanity has looked forward to, dreamed of, and worked toward for thousands of years. We live in the richest era that ever existed on the face of the earth ... a land of abundant opportunity for everyone.

However, if you take 100 individuals who start even at the age of 25, do you have any idea what will happen to those men and women by the time they're 65? These 100 people believe they're going to be successful. They are eager toward life, there is a certain sparkle in their eye, an erectness to their carriage, and life seems like a pretty interesting adventure to them.
But by the time they're 65, only one will be rich, four will be financially independent, five will still be working, and 54 will be broke — depending on others for life's necessities.

Only five out of 100 make the grade! Why do so many fail? What has happened to the sparkle that was there when they were 25? What has become of the dreams, the hopes, the plans ... and why is there such a large disparity between what these people intended to do and what they actually accomplished?

THE DEFINITION OF SUCCESS

First, we have to define success and here is the best definition I've ever been able to find: "Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal."

A success is the school teacher who is teaching because that's what he or she wants to do. A success is the entrepreneur who start his own company because that was his dream — that's what he wanted to do. A success is the salesperson who wants to become the best salesperson in his or her company and sets forth on the pursuit of that goal.

A success is anyone who is realizing a worthy predetermined ideal, because that's what he or she decided to do ... deliberately. But only one out of 20 does that! The rest are "failures."
Rollo May, the distinguished psychiatrist, wrote a wonderful book called Man's Search for Himself, and in this book he says: "The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice ... it is conformity." And there you have the reason for so many failures. Conformity — people acting like everyone else, without knowing why or where they are going.

We learn to read by the time we're seven. We learn to make a living by the time we're 30. Often by that time we're not only making a living, we're supporting a family. And yet by the time we're 65, we haven't learned how to become financially independent in the richest land that has ever been known. Why? We conform! Most of us are acting like the wrong percentage group — the 95 who don't succeed.

GOALS

Have you ever wondered why so many people work so hard and honestly without ever achieving anything in particular, and why others don't seem to work hard, yet seem to get everything? They seem to have the "magic touch." You've heard people say, "Everything he touches turns to gold." Have you ever noticed that a person who becomes successful tends to continue to become more successful? And, on the other hand, have you noticed how someone who's a failure tends to continue to fail?

The difference is goals. People with goals succeed because they know where they're going. It's that simple. Failures, on the other hand, believe that their lives are shaped by circumstances ... by things that happen to them ... by exterior forces.

Think of a ship with the complete voyage mapped out and planned. The captain and crew know exactly where the ship is going and how long it will take — it has a definite goal. And 9,999 times out of 10,000, it will get there.

Now let's take another ship — just like the first — only let's not put a crew on it, or a captain at the helm. Let's give it no aiming point, no goal, and no destination. We just start the engines and let it go. I think you'll agree that if it gets out of the harbor at all, it will either sink or wind up on some deserted beach — a derelict. It can't go anyplace because it has no destination and no guidance.

It's the same with a human being. However, the human race is fixed, not to prevent the strong from winning, but to prevent the weak from losing. Society today can be likened to a convoy in time of war. The entire society is slowed down to protect its weakest link, just as the naval convoy has to go at the speed that will permit its slowest vessel to remain in formation.

That's why it's so easy to make a living today. It takes no particular brains or talent to make a living and support a family today. We have a plateau of so-called "security." So, to succeed, all we must do is decide how high above this plateau we want to aim.

Throughout history, the great wise men and teachers, philosophers, and prophets have disagreed with one another on many different things. It is only on this one point that they are in complete and unanimous agreement — the key to success and the key to failure is this:

WE BECOME WHAT WE THINK ABOUT

This is The Strangest Secret! Now, why do I say it's strange, and why do I call it a secret? Actually, it isn't a secret at all. It was first promulgated by some of the earliest wise men, and it appears again and again throughout the Bible. But very few people have learned it or understand it. That's why it's strange, and why for some equally strange reason it virtually remains a secret.

Marcus Aurelius, the great Roman Emperor, said: "A man's life is what his thoughts make of it."

Disraeli said this: "Everything comes if a man will only wait ... a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and nothing can resist a will that will stake even existence for its fulfillment."

William James said: "We need only in cold blood act as if the thing in question were real, and it will become infallibly real by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real. It will become so knit with habit and emotion that our interests in it will be those which characterize belief." He continues, " ... only you must, then, really wish these things, and wish them exclusively, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly."

My old friend Dr. Norman Vincent Peale put it this way: "If you think in negative terms, you will get negative results. If you think in positive terms, you will achieve positive results." George Bernard Shaw said: "People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them."

Well, it's pretty apparent, isn't it? We become what we think about. A person who is thinking about a concrete and worthwhile goal is going to reach it, because that's what he's thinking about. Conversely, the person who has no goal, who doesn't know where he's going, and whose thoughts must therefore be thoughts of confusion, anxiety, fear, and worry will thereby create a life of frustration, fear, anxiety and worry. And if he thinks about nothing ... he becomes nothing.

AS YE SOW — SO SHALL YE REAP

The human mind is much like a farmer's land. The land gives the farmer a choice. He may plant in that land whatever he chooses. The land doesn't care what is planted. It's up to the farmer to make the decision. The mind, like the land, will return what you plant, but it doesn't care what you plant. If the farmer plants too seeds — one a seed of corn, the other nightshade, a deadly poison, waters and takes care of the land, what will happen?

Remember, the land doesn't care. It will return poison in just as wonderful abundance as it will corn. So up come the two plants — one corn, one poison as it's written in the Bible, "As ye sow, so shall ye reap."

The human mind is far more fertile, far more incredible and mysterious than the land, but it works the same way. It doesn't care what we plant ... success ... or failure. A concrete, worthwhile goal ... or confusion, misunderstanding, fear, anxiety, and so on. But what we plant it must return to us.

The problem is that our mind comes as standard equipment at birth. It's free. And things that are given to us for nothing, we place little value on. Things that we pay money for, we value.

The paradox is that exactly the reverse is true. Everything that's really worthwhile in life came to us free — our minds, our souls, our bodies, our hopes, our dreams, our ambitions, our intelligence, our love of family and children and friends and country. All these priceless possessions are free.

But the things that cost us money are actually very cheap and can be replaced at any time. A good man can be completely wiped out and make another fortune. He can do that several times. Even if our home burns down, we can rebuild it. But the things we got for nothing, we can never replace.

Our mind can do any kind of job we assign to it, but generally speaking, we use it for little jobs instead of big ones. So decide now. What is it you want? Plant your goal in your mind. It's the most important decision you'll ever make in your entire life.

Do you want to excel at your particular job? Do you want to go places in your company ... in your community? Do you want to get rich? All you have got to do is plant that seed in your mind, care for it, work steadily toward your goal, and it will become a reality.

It not only will, there's no way that it cannot. You see, that's a law — like the laws of Sir Isaac Newton, the laws of gravity. If you get on top of a building and jump off, you'll always go down — you'll never go up.

And it's the same with all the other laws of nature. They always work. They're inflexible. Think about your goal in a relaxed, positive way. Picture yourself in your mind's eye as having already achieved this goal. See yourself doing the things you will be doing when you have reached your goal.

Every one of us is the sum total of our own thoughts. We are where we are because that's exactly where we really want or feel we deserve to be — whether we'll admit that or not. Each of us must live off the fruit of our thoughts in the future, because what you think today and tomorrow — next month and next year — will mold your life and determine your future. You're guided by your mind.

I remember one time I was driving through e a s t e r n Arizona and I saw one of those giant earthmoving machines roaring along the road with what looked like 30 tons of dirt in it — a tremendous, incredible machine — and there was a little man perched way up on top with the wheel in his hands, guiding it. As I drove along I was struck by the similarity of that machine to the human mind. Just suppose you're sitting at the controls of such a vast source of energy.

Are you going to sit back and fold your arms and let it run itself into a ditch? Or are you going to keep both hands firmly on the wheel and control and direct this power to a specific, worthwhile purpose? It's up to you. You're in the driver's seat. You see, the very law that gives us success is a doubleedged sword. We must control our thinking. The same rule that can lead people to lives of success, wealth, happiness, and all the things they ever dreamed of — that very same law can lead them into the gutter. It's all in how they use it ... for good or for bad. That is The Strangest Secret!

Do what the experts since the dawn of recorded history have told us to do: pay the price, by becoming the person you want to become. It's not nearly as difficult as living unsuccessfully.
The moment you decide on a goal to work toward, you're immediately a successful person — you are then in that rare group of people who know where they're going. Out of every hundred people, you belong to the top five. Don't concern yourself too much with how you are going to achieve your goal — leave that completely to a power greater than yourself. All you have to do is know where you're going. The answers will come to you of their own accord, and at the right time.

Start today. You have nothing to lose — but you have your whole life to win.

30-DAYACTION IDEAS FOR PUTTING THE STRANGEST SECRET TO WORK FOR YOU

For the next 30-days follow each of these steps every day until you have achieved your goal.

1. Write on a card what it is you want more that anything else. It may be more money. Perhaps you'd like to double your income or make a specific amount of money. It may be a beautiful home. It may be success at your job. It may be a particular position in life. It could be a more harmonious family.

Write down on your card specifically what it is you want. Make sure it's a single goal and clearly defined. You needn't show it to anyone, but carry it with you so that you can look at it several times a day. Think about it in a cheerful, relaxed, positive way each morning when you get up, and immediately you have something to work for — something to get out of bed for, something to live for.

Look at it every chance you get during the day and just before going to bed at night. As you look at it, remember that you must become what you think about, and since you're thinking about your goal, you realize that soon it will be yours. In fact, it's really yours the moment you write it down and begin to think about it.

2. Stop thinking about what it is you fear. Each time a fearful or negative thought comes into your mind, replace it with a mental picture of your positive and worthwhile goal. And there will come a time when you'll feel like giving up. It's easier for a human being to think negatively than positively. That's why only five percent are successful! You must begin now to place yourself in that group.

"Act as though it were impossible to fail," as Dorothea Brande said. No matter what your goal — if you've kept your goal before you every day — you'll wonder and marvel at this new life you've found.

3. Your success will always be measured by the quality and quantity of service you render.

Most people will tell you that they want to make money, without understanding this law. The only people who make money work in a mint. The rest of us must earn money. This is what causes those who keep looking for something for nothing, or a free ride, to fail in life. Success is not the result of making money; earning money is the result of success — and success is in direct proportion to our service.

Most people have this law backwards. It's like the man who stands in front of the stove and says to it: "Give me heat and then I'll add the wood." How many men and women do you know, or do you suppose there are today, who take the same attitude toward life? There are millions.

We've got to put the fuel in before we can expect heat. Likewise, we've got to be of service first before we can expect money. Don't concern yourself with the money. Be of service ... build ... work ... dream ... create! Do this and you'll find there is no limit to the prosperity and abundance that will come to you.

Don't start your test until you've made up your mind to stick with it. If you should fail during your first 30 days — by that I mean suddenly find yourself overwhelmed by negative thoughts — simply start over again from that point and go 30 more days. Gradually, your new habit will form, until you find yourself one of that wonderful minority to whom virtually nothing is impossible.

Above all ... don't worry! Worry brings fear, and fear is crippling. The only thing that can cause you to worry during your test is trying to do it all yourself. Know that all you have to do is hold your goal before you; everything else will take care of itself.

Take this 30-day test, then repeat it ... then repeat it again. Each time it will become more a part of you until you'll wonder how you could have ever have lived any other way. Live this new way and the floodgates of abundance will open and pour over you more riches than you may have dreamed existed. Money? Yes, lots of it. But what's more important, you'll have peace ... you'll be in that wonderful minority who lead calm, cheerful, successful lives.

Learn more about Earl Nightingale and his many timeless books and audio programs.

The Strangest Secret - Advantedge Article By Earl Nightingale

LINK: http://www.nightingale.com/ae_article~i~22~article~strangestsecret.aspx

The Strangest Secret Earl Nightingale Conant 1950's Origional FULL 31:35 Min.
31:35 - 4 years ago
Earl Nightingale Conant The Strangest Secret 1956 1950's

Avoid Strategy Traps

2015-08-09T13:51:00.003-07:00

BostonConsultingGrp ‏@BCG Aug 8
5 questions companies need to answer first to avoid a #strategy trap: http://on.bcg.com/1KQBtEd
#strategyneedstrategy

Psychology may be considered Scientific Problem Solving

2015-08-09T12:59:00.000-07:00

Nietzsche Quotes

2015-03-02T02:56:00.002-08:00

Drawing by Hans Olde from the photographic series, The Ill Nietzsche, mid-1899.

Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Or, How to Philosophize With the Hammer

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

There are no facts, only interpretations.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: perspective, truth

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: individuality

“The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: enemies, friends, friendship, hatred, intelligence, knowledge, love, wisdom

“I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: agama, agnosticism, prayer, religion

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: how, life, purpose, questioning, questions, why

“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: past, philosophy

“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: change, mind, nietzsche

“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: insanity, society

“The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: forgetfulness, forgetting, happiness, memory

“Man is the cruelest animal.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: animals, cruelty, evil, man

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: corruption, individuality, peer-pressure, youth

“I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: philosophy

“Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: atheism, organized-religion, paradox, religion

“Faith: not wanting to know what the truth is.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings -- always darker, emptier and simpler.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: belief, delusions, faith, insanity

“The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: philosophy, women

“What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: with a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs
tags: demons, happiness, judgement, kronofobi, life, reincarnation, sadness

“There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: suicide

“The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
tags: inspirational

“A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: failure, intelligence, science, scientific-process, success, truth

“Be careful, lest in casting out your demon you exorcise the best thing in you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: self-exploration

“We have art in order not to die of the truth.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: art

“A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: friends, friendship, observation, writers, writing

“There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: emotions, heart, insanity, love, rationality, reason

“In truth,there was only one christian and he died on the cross.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: christian-behavior, christianity, religion

“All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Or, How to Philosophize With the Hammer
tags: exercise, intelligence, reflection, thinking, walking

“Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: battle-of-the-sexes, gender-stereotypes

“That which is done out of love is always beyond good and evil.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: perception

“Art is the proper task of life. ”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: art, inspirational, life

“All I need is a sheet of paper
and something to write with, and then
I can turn the world upside down.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: writing

“I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
tags: darkness

“Meaning and morality of One's life come from within oneself. Healthy, strong individuals seek self expansion by experimenting and by living dangerously. Life consists of an infinite number of possibilities and the healthy person explores as many of them as posible. Religions that teach pity, self-contempt, humility, self-restraint and guilt are incorrect. The good life is ever changing, challenging, devoid of regret, intense, creative and risky.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“What does your conscience say? — 'You should become the person you are'.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
tags: irreligion, religion

“Amor Fati – “Love Your Fate”, which is in fact your life.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: fate, inspirational, life, love

“Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: life

“Silence is worse; all truths that are kept silent become poisonous.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
tags: on-self-overcoming

“you must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame;
how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“Doubt as sin. — Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature — is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality
tags: atheism, belief, blind, blind-faith, blindness, christian-faith, christian-miracle, critical-thinking, critical-thought, death-of-reason, doubt, doubt-is-sin, eternity, existence, foundation-of-belief, human-nature, intoxication, meaning, meaning-of-life, metaphor, miracle, myth, nature, origin, philosophy, purpose, purpose-of-life, reason, reflection, religious-faith, resurrection, resurrection-of-jesus, sin, sinful, thinking, thoughts, wasted-life

“Invisible threads are the strongest ties.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: connection, invisibility, thread, ties

“Stupidity in a woman is unfeminine.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human

“Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: beatitudes, bless, blessed, blunders, forget, forgetful, friedrich, memory, nietzsch

After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: atheism

“He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying. ”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: inspirational

“A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: possibility, profundity, thought

“Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: humour, men, slavery, slaves

“The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None

“The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: lies, lying, self-deception, vision, visionaries

“They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: reality

“The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: perception, philosophy, scientific-process, truth

“Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: desire, love

“Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: boredom, life

“Become who you are!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None

“I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: philosophical

“Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself. ”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Is it better to out-monster the monster or to be quietly devoured?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: creative-process, creativity, inspirational, mental-illness, outsider, self-discovery

“the voice of beauty speaks softly; it creeps only into the most fully awakened souls”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: awakened, beauty, gentle, voice

“Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: anarchy, lies

“Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Remorse.-- Never yield to remorse, but at once tell yourself: remorse would simply mean adding to the first act of stupidity a second.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“True, we love life, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving. There is always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: ant-christ, atheism, philosophy, religion

“Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
tags: existentialism, student, teacher

“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: fear, monsters, nietzsche

“One must give value to their existence by behaving as if ones very existence were a work of art.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

Source: http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1938.Friedrich_Nietzsche

Perfection and Unity

2015-03-02T00:46:00.001-08:00

Where there is perfection and unity, there can be no suffering.

The capacity to suffer arises where there is imperfection, disunity and separation from an embracing totality. . . . For the individual who achieves unity within his own organism and union with the divine Ground, there is an end of suffering. The goal of creation is the return of all sentient beings out of separateness and that infatuating urge-to-separateness which results in suffering, through unitive knowledge into the wholeness of eternal Reality.

(Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy. New York: Harper and Row, 1944. p. 227)

Joseph Campbell said, “Participate joyfully in the sorrows of life,” recognizing that life contains hardship and an individual should embrace the experience of being alive by living affirmatively in the face of inevitable sorrow and suffering. Buddhist teaching calls for "joyful participation in the sorrows of the world."

Quotes

2015-03-02T00:41:00.001-08:00

Deep within man dwell those slumbering powers; powers that would astonish him, that he never dreamed of possessing; forces that would revolutionize his life if aroused and put into action.

Orison Swett Marden

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Isaac Newton

If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.
Isaac Newton

A good memory is one trained to forget the trivial.
Clifton Fadiman

The latter part of a wise man's life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former.
Jonathan Swift

Natural wealth is limited and easily obtained; the wealth defined by vain fancies is always beyond .
reach
Epicurus

The moral flabbiness born of the bitch-goddess Success, that - with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success - is our national disease.
William James
1906

Sob, heavy world,
Sob as you spin,
Mantled in mist,
remote from the happy.
W.H. Auden
The Age of Anxiety
1947

We need some imaginative stimulus, some impossible ideal such as may shape vague hope, and transform it into effective desire, to carry us year after year, without disgust, through the routine work which is so large a part of life.
Walter Pater
1885

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
Elbert Hubbard

In the factory we make cosmetics; in the store we sell hpe.
Charles Revson

Statistically, the probability of any of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise.
Lewis Thomas

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
Albert Camus

Every situation - nay, every moment - is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole eternity.
Goethe

I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today.That is what I am called upon to serve, and I serve it in all lucidity.
Igor Stravinsky
1936

To the dull mind nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world sparkles with light.
Emerson

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.
Mark Twain

A short saying often contains much wisdom.
Sophocles

Worth begets in base minds, envy; in great souls, emulation.
Henry Fielding
1707 - 1754

Wise men appreciate all men, for they see the good in each and know how hard it is to make anything good.
Baltasar Gracian
1647

Got no check books, got no banks.
Still I'd like to express my thanks--
I got the sun in the mornin'
and the moon at night.
Irving Berlin

Let us be thankful for the fools; but for them the rest of us could not succeed.
Mark Twain

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it - even if I have said it - unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.
Buddha

To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower,
To hold infinity
in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.
William Blake

Be not simply good; be good for something.
Thoreau

Great minds have purposes, others have wishes.
Washington Irving

In life, as in football, you won't go far unless you know where the goalposts are.
Arnold Glasow

The highest prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man, is to be born with a bias to some pursuit which finds him in employment and happiness.

Emerson

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius,power and magic in it.

Goethe

Forget goals. Value the process.

Jim Bouton

Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.

R. Tagore

He is his own best friend, and takes delight bin privacy; whereas the man of no virtue or ability is his own worst enemy and is afraid of solitude.

Aristotle

For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice.

John Burroughs

Study: concentration of the mind on whatever will ultimately put something in your pocket.

Elbert Hubbard

The successful people are the ones who can think up things for the rest of the world to keep buy at.

Don Marquis

First, have a definite, clear, practical ideal - a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends - wisdom, money, materials and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.

Aristotle

It is only the farmer who faithfully plants seeds in the Spring, who reaps a harvest in the Autumn.

B.C. Forbes

Gardens are not made by singing "Oh, how beautiful," and sitting in the shade.

Rudyard Kipling

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which she or he has overcome while trying to succeed.

Booker T. Washington

If have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.

Isaac Newton

Texas Tick Causes Meat Allergy

2014-08-11T00:55:00.000-07:00

APAugust 7, 2014, 3:08 PM

A tick bite can make you allergic to red meat

An adult female deer tick (L), dog tick and Lone Star tick are shown in the palm of a hand. GETTY IMAGES

A bug can turn you into a vegetarian, or at least make you swear off red meat.

Doctors across the nation are seeing a surge of sudden meat allergies in people bitten by a certain kind of tick.

This bizarre problem was only discovered a few years ago but is growing as the ticks spread from the Southwest and the East to more parts of the United States.

In some cases, eating a burger or a steak has landed people in the hospital with severe allergic reactions.

Few patients seem aware of the risk, and even doctors are slow to recognize it. As one allergist who has seen 200 cases on New York's Long Island said, "Why would someone think they're allergic to meat when they've been eating it their whole life?"
The culprit is the Lone Star tick, named for Texas, a state famous for meaty barbecues. The tick is now found throughout the South and the eastern half of the United States.

Researchers think some other types of ticks also might cause meat allergies; cases have been reported in Australia, France, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Japan and Korea.

Here's how it happens:

The bugs harbor a sugar that humans don't have, called alpha-gal. The sugar is also is found in red meat - beef, pork, venison, rabbit - and even some dairy products. It's usually fine when people encounter it through food that gets digested.
But a tick bite triggers an immune system response, and in that high-alert state, the body perceives the sugar the tick transmitted to the victim's bloodstream and skin as a foreign substance, and makes antibodies to it. That sets the stage for an allergic reaction the next time the person eats red meat and encounters the sugar.

At the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, "I see two to three new cases every week," said Dr. Scott Commins, who with a colleague, Dr. Thomas Platts-Mills, published the first paper tying the tick to the illness in 2011.
Allergic reactions can be treated with antihistamines to ease itching, and more severe ones with epinephrine. Some people with the allergy now carry epinephrine shots in case they are stricken again.

Doctors don't know if the allergy is permanent. Some patients show signs of declining antibodies over time, although those with severe reactions are understandably reluctant to risk eating meat again. Even poultry products such as turkey sausage sometimes contain meat byproducts and can trigger the allergy.

Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-tick-bite-can-make-you-allergic-to-red-meat/

Texas Tick causes Meat Allergy

2014-08-11T00:45:00.003-07:00

APAugust 7, 2014, 3:08 PM

A tick bite can make you allergic to red meat

An adult female deer tick (L), dog tick and Lone Star tick are shown in the palm of a hand. GETTY IMAGES

A bug can turn you into a vegetarian, or at least make you swear off red meat.

Whale Shark

2014-08-10T22:44:00.002-07:00

Catch of the Day: Whale Shark

A fisherman transports a dead whale shark after it was caught in fishermen's net, in Yangzhi county, Fujian province, August 1, 2014.
REUTERS/Stringer

Source: http://www.reuters.com/news/pictures/slideshow?articleId=USRTR41Q48#a=1

My Sustainability Mantra

2012-10-21T02:36:00.001-07:00

A Vegetarian Diet is good for your and good for the Planet.

Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. - Albert Einstein

Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. - Howard Zinn

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.”
- Mahatma Gandhi

WHEN SPIDERS UNITE, THEY CAN TIE DOWN A LION.
-Ethiopian proverb

Episode Nine: Perverse Incentives | The Invisible Hand with Matthew Lazin-Ryde | CBC Radio

2012-10-19T04:25:00.001-07:00

This radio program came to my attention because it features some ideas put forth by Dan Ariely,Professor, Duke University, he explains some of his theories.

Dan Ariely, James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics, is someone who has been featured in this blog when we posted his T.E.D. Lectures.

**Best-selling Author, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, The Upside of Irrationality and Predictably Irrational.**

"An expert on how people actually act—and why they act—in business and economic environments, professor and best-selling author Dan Ariely shows what human behavior means for business innovation, strategy, marketing and pricing."

source: ( http://www.washingtonspeakers.com/speakers/speaker.cfm?SpeakerID=6657 )

The Invisible Hand: Perverse Incentives

by Matthew Lazin - Ryder

CBC RADIO Podcast

photo credit: eschipul

Homo Economicus 2.0 Podcast Economists often use models to explain economic theory at work. In the simplest models, we humans are depicted as coldly rational beings who compute all our options, and act in our own self interest. This prototype of a person is called Homo Economicus. New thinking, however, is giving us a much more well-rounded view of human behaviour within economics.

In this episode we reveal a new model of a man, Homo Economicus 2.0. [MP3 file: runs 27 minutes]

Incentives are the rewards you get for engaging in certain behaviours. They are often created by governments or other organizations to encourage people to act in a certain way, without mandating the behaviour. For example, you may get a tax break if you donate to a charity. But incentives can also be created unintentionally, and they can have unexpected and negative consequences. In this case, they can create the opposite effect to the one they are intended to have. Economists call these perverse incentives. In this episode, Carleton University economist Frances Woolley guides us through some examples of perverse incentives, and how politicians and policy makers can use these anomalies to create better outcomes in the future. We'll explore how the fields of crime prevention, pest control, and even the dog show circuit, have all provided valuable lessons from incentives that have gone rogue.

http://www.cbc.ca/theinvisiblehand/index.xml

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/theinvisiblehand/episodes/2012/08/22/episode-nine-perverse-incentives/ Men and Markets Observed Episode Nine: Perverse Incentives | The Invisible Hand with Matthew Lazin-Ryde | CBC Radio Episode Nine: Perverse Incentives | The Invisible Hand with Matthew Lazin-Ryde | CBC Radio

The Lonely Redemption of Sandy Lewis, Wall Street Provocateur - NYTimes.com

2012-09-26T20:07:00.001-07:00

This is a fascinating story about a guy who grew up on Wall Street....

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

ANGRY Sandy Lewis, an ex-broker who once manipulated a stock price to make a point, at his Essex, N.Y., farm. “There’s no rational structure” on Wall Street, he says.

September 15, 2012

A Lonely Redemption

By MICHAEL POWELL and DANNY HAKIM

ESSEX, N.Y. — Striding barefoot through the fields of his farm in the Adirondacks, S. B. Lewis, known as Sandy, is talking without pause, gesturing this way and that in a soft summer rain.

That Mr. Lewis is in a rage is not unusual. A few days earlier, he had watched as the computerized stock trading of Knight Capital ran amok.

“If Knight blows, six firms follow, and the whole corrupt thing goes up,” he said. “Predator banks and hedge funds run the market for their pleasure — there’s no rational structure, nothing!”

He is just warming up. News reports have revealed a world he knows intimately. Goldman Sachs pays vast fines to avoid prosecution for mortgage securities fraud. Barclays manipulates interest rates. The Senate exposes HSBC as a racketeering enterprise, laundering money for drug cartels. Banks are laden with bad assets.

And Wall Street, Washington, the press corps, everyone sits and stares like so many dumb cows.

“The complicity on Wall Street is sickness!” Mr. Lewis says. He fixes you with his laser stare. “If you think the big firms are being honest” — his tone slides streetwise — “well, sweetheart, go think something else!”

The temptation is to dismiss Mr. Lewis, 73, as a crank, except he once ruled as an eccentric genius of arbitrage, with a preternatural feel for the tectonic movements of the markets. He has railed for decades about venalities now on daily display. Rude truth is his currency.

He knows Wall Street’s heights. He helped hire Michael R. Bloomberg, and he invested the money of two former Securities and Exchange Commission chairmen, making a fortune in the 1980s. And he knows its depths, since he pleaded guilty to stock manipulation in 1989, and was barred from the Street.

President Bill Clinton pardoned him, and a federal court judge later said Mr. Lewis acted out of pure reforming impulse.

But he remains in self-imposed exile.

Mr. Lewis wants to flip over Wall Street’s paving stones and search for worms.

He relies on his singular strength: he discerns patterns where most see random data. He forecast the financial meltdown of 2008 that vaporized Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers. In 2006, he warned a Bear Stearns executive: “Bear is toast. Get out now!”

Lehman Brothers, he notes, certified it was in good health in June 2008 and issued stock, attracting investment, including from the New Jersey Teachers’ Pension and Annuity Fund. Secretly, Lehman was on an intravenous drip, poisoned by bad debt.

“My respect for their brains is too great to think Lehman’s top guys didn’t know they were conveying the cynical impression of health,” Mr. Lewis said.

He is no less suspicious of Goldman Sachs, which has alumni sprinkled across the upper reaches of government.

In a tough spot, Goldman obtained extraordinary permission to make an overnight metamorphosis from investment bank to traditional bank holding company.

“Can I prove this was a wired deal? Absolutely not,” Mr. Lewis said. “Am I certain of it? Only 100 percent.”

As for the whirling, three-million-shares-per-second casino of Wall Street? He sees it as rigged. “I would not risk stocks under any circumstances,” he said, “because we don’t know when this thing is going to blow.”

Nothing about Mr. Lewis is easy. He delights in sending scabrous, insulting, free-associative mass e-mails to journalists, financiers and members of Congress. Show annoyance, and he doubles down. “You know what I do with tension?” he said. “I ratchet it up!”

Not surprisingly, some dismiss him as a nut. As striking are those who pay careful heed.

“Sandy’s right; government created a banking oligopoly with no accountability,” said Peter Solomon, a friend of Mr. Lewis’s who runs an investment banking firm.

Arthur Aeder, a retired accounting executive, was twice fired by Mr. Lewis. “Not many antagonize Goldman just for the hell of it,” Mr. Aeder said. “Most people think, ‘I have a family to feed.’ ”

Mr. Lewis is no less harsh on himself. After a visit, he handed us laptops containing every furious e-mail he had sent and received over 10 years.

“The Wall Street ethic broke decades ago,” he said by way of goodbye. “The stink is terrible.”

MR. LEWIS was born to Wall Street royalty — his father, Cy, was managing partner at Bear Stearns from 1949 to 1978. His parents were characters out of a Fitzgerald novel: his father was Jewish, debonair and domineering; he desired power, wealth and a beautiful woman — wife or mistress, that mattered little. His mother, Diana Bonnor, a member of the Protestant establishment, was beautiful, brilliant and no less formidable. She cared about social justice and status and was profoundly uninterested in mothering.

“I never remember her at breakfast,” recalled Roger Lewis, Mr. Lewis’s younger brother. “High tea? Oh, yes. Cocktails? Yes! But breakfast? Never.”

Cy doted on Sandy while Diana screamed at the boy, striking him with a hair brush when he refused to read, he said. A willful child, the boy stopped speaking for days and sometimes retreated onto a window ledge, sitting high above Park Avenue.

Another brother, John, renounced wealth, bought clothes in thrift shops and became a well-known legal-aid lawyer. Roger got off to a fine start on Wall Street until the Grateful Dead moved into his town house before Woodstock. He ingested gobs of LSD, was arrested on charges of selling drugs and served time. “I broke all the bonds of polite behavior,” Roger said. “Prison was pretty fascinating.”

When Sandy Lewis was 10, his parents shipped him off to Chicago and Bruno Bettelheim’s Orthogenic School, an institution for emotionally disturbed children. The first day, he held his breath until he nearly passed out. But he credits the school with saving his life; Bettelheim became a second father.

“He had Bruno’s traits: he was arrogant, controlling, all powerful — and generous,” recalled George Kaiser, a former teacher at the school.

Mr. Lewis saw in Wall Street a three-dimensional chess game played at great velocity. “Brain not brawn, and the smartest wins, yes!” he said.

He came to conceive of the Street as a drainage system, every pipe connected to another. Inside information sluiced from brokerages to white-shoe law firms to investment houses.

He glimpsed this world when he returned to New York in 1964. He said he sat in the front of his father’s Cadillac limousine, listening as Cy and friends talked angrily about a partner who had impersonated a reporter for The New York Times and got a half-hour drop on a Supreme Court decision. The firm profited by trading ahead of the news.

Mr. Lewis said he confronted his father that night. Dad, you must fire that man. Cy shook his head: He is too valuable, Son.

“That,” Mr. Lewis said recently, “was when I realized that the trouble on Wall Street was systemic.”

He refused to sit at the Four Seasons trolling for inside tips and paying for call girls for clients.

He was fired by all the best firms: Salomon Brothers, White Weld, Dean Witter and Merrill Lynch. At Merrill, the chief executive officer at the time, Donald Regan, pursued a system to buy and sell stocks without using the exchange floor. Mr. Lewis came to see this creation as unfair to the public.

So Mr. Lewis, in speeches and work with the S.E.C., fought to make all sales transparent on the floor of the exchange. “In one of my periodic periods of unemployment, I walked down the street thinking, ‘O.K., now I’m going to sabotage Don Regan,’ ” he said. “I have six kids and I’m going to be eating worms.”

He worked briefly for Ivan F. Boesky, until he realized the arbitrage specialist was trolling for inside information. Mr. Lewis quit and Mr. Boesky was later imprisoned.

To find a place that would not fire him, in 1980 Mr. Lewis established S. B. Lewis and Company. The company’s returns were meteoric — over 50 percent annual returns after expenses. Former employees recall a brilliant arbitrageur who could, without warning, go to “Sandy World,” a mental planetoid with a population of one.

Mr. Lewis brokered the merger between Sandy Weill’s Shearson and James Robinson’s American Express.

“I told Robinson: ‘Weill’s got the brains; you’ve got great class. It’s perfect,’ ” Mr. Lewis recalled.

He had found success, a lovely wife and five boys and a girl, with a home in Short Hills, N.J. Except his volcanic pit never stopped rumbling.

IN November 1988, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the United States attorney, indicted Mr. Lewis on 22 charges, accusing him of manipulating the stock of a large insurer. Mr. Giuliani was a Savonarola in the canyons of mammon, and Mr. Lewis would fall beneath his sword.

Rivals shared laughs at Sandy the Moralist laid low. The trouble, however, took root not in venality but in his mania to police his industry. He had watched as insiders reaped profits by driving down prices before shares went public.

He laid a trap. He asked another securities firm to buy stock in the insurer to shore up the price. I’ll cover your losses and describe the payments as “investment banking services,” he told them.

Mr. Lewis hoped to deliver a delicious kick to the teeth of the insiders. He made not a dime; his firm was not involved in the offering.

Years later, a federal judge, William C. Conner, described Mr. Lewis’s action as “an act of market vigilantism in which Lewis in no way personally profited.” He was infuriated, the judge wrote, “by what he viewed as the unethical actions of arbitrageurs.”

“He was the Lone Ranger,” Mr. Solomon recalled, “and Giuliani treated him like a member of the corrupt club.”

Prosecutors threatened Mr. Lewis with 15 years if he went to trial. His wife, Barbara, urged him to cut a deal. He argued prison would be interesting. His bravado reinforced her fears.

Silver haired and trim, she looks at Mr. Lewis, still consumed: “I thought he would die. That was weak of me.”

He pleaded guilty to three charges, and the judge handed him three years’ probation and a $250,000 fine.

TELL us about Bill Clinton. Mr. Lewis cannot resist a smile; even by his standards, this is a weird tale.

In the summer of 1994, Mr. Lewis — in exile — got a phone call at his Maine home from his friend, Douglas S. Eakeley. Mr. Eakeley was also an old friend of Mr. Clinton’s.

I want you to go to a fund-raiser in Portland, Mr. Eakeley said, and talk with the president about his womanizing.

Is this, Mr. Lewis asked, an intervention?

As it happens, Mr. Lewis possesses a sixth sense for psychic pain. He can pick the addicted, the sick and the depressed out of a crowd. His fractured childhood and pathological candor give him an expert hand with the singed.

He rounded up Barbara and a friend, Dr. Stanley Evans, and drove to see Mr. Clinton at the Holiday Inn by the Bay.

Mr. Lewis introduced himself. “You’re Doug’s friend?” the president said, according to Mr. Lewis and Dr. Evans. “Wait, we’ll talk.”

The Secret Service escorted Mr. Lewis, his wife and the doctor into the kitchen, and the president followed.

“Sir,” Mr. Lewis recalled saying as he stared at Mr. Clinton. “Doug thought maybe I should spend a weekend with you. It would be the two of us only.”

Mr. Lewis said the president was taken aback. “What is this about?”

“Sir,” Mr. Lewis said, “this is about your most personal business. You probably won’t be too happy with me by Monday morning, but I think we can avoid a train wreck.”

The president’s face flushed. Dr. Evans realized his friend was confronting the president about his extramarital affairs. “I thought Sandy had lost his mind,” he said.

The weekend session never took place. Revelations of the president’s sexual dalliance with Monica Lewinsky came years later.

Mr. Eakeley is circumspect. “Sandy has incredible intuition and intellect, and I knew he could help if the president could stand it,” he said. “Sandy may have alarmed the president, but I don’t think he repelled him.”

Mr. Clinton’s office declined to comment.

So it goes for Mr. Lewis on his walk, decades long, through the wilderness. One night, he said, he yanked a truck driver out of a fiery wreck on the New Jersey Turnpike, only to discover that the driver had Mafia connections. He said a mob representative told him he could call in his i.o.u. anytime; Mr. Lewis declined, politely.

He became the de facto impresario of the Clinton Correctional Facility, a prison near his farm in the Adirondacks, arranging frequent performances. The prison has housed a who’s who of the criminal and homicidal, from Lucky Luciano to the serial killer Joel Rifkin.

Recently, Mr. Lewis brought in Helena Baillie, 30, an accomplished violinist who is akin to his surrogate daughter, to perform Bach’s “Chaconne” in the Church of St. Dismas, the Good Thief. Many prisoners were in tears.

Mr. Eakeley said Mr. Lewis might be better for his exile. One of Mr. Lewis’s sons, John, is not convinced. He sees a father become “walking id.”

“Giuliani,” he said, “obliterated some part of him.”

In 2000, Mr. Eakeley and former Attorney General Nicholas deB. Katzenbach worked pro bono and submitted a pardon application to Mr. Clinton. In January 2001, just before leaving office, the president signed it.

Six years later, Judge Conner overturned the S.E.C. order that barred Mr. Lewis from Wall Street. “Federal regulations now outlaw the very practice his actions were meant to thwart,” the judge noted.

No cloud of mellow descended. Mr. Lewis trailed the S.E.C. counsel out of the courthouse. “I will rip your guts out,” he bellowed. “Letter to follow!”

A few days later, he looked at the mountains and experienced an epiphany: “I’ve gotten my redemption, and no one cares.”

THE phone rings and Mr. Lewis, in midsentence of a long disquisition, picks up the receiver. A North Country car dealer asks about the economy.

“Yes? Yes!” he listens for 30 seconds. “It’s going to get a lot worse. We’ll be burning scrap wood in our fireplaces before it’s over. Goodbye!”

Among residents of this rural land, Mr. Lewis has a reputation as a savant. He warned that the housing market was overheating years ago and sold several properties. He converted to cash before the 1987 stock crash.

Still, he could not complete the last act in his redemptive play. Financiers with White House connections solicited his advice during the 2008 crisis. But he was not invited into the circle of advisers who, to his mind, poorly served this young president.

As a Wall Street friend warned in an e-mail: “Sandy, you constantly kill yourself. You exhaust folks.”

Mr. Lewis considers his plight over a dinner with Barbara. His eyes are red, his voice a rasp. “I’m bright as hell, but I’m impossible to live with.” Barbara nods. “I am in a state of outrage all the time.” Barbara nods. “I bring this Orthogenic morality to everything on Wall Street, and it’s unsustainable.” Barbara, dry as gin, says, “No kidding.”

Mr. Lewis sees a banking system in unstable remission. Goldman answers to no one. China and Europe are wobbling, deflation is at the door, another crash is coming.

“The criminality is astounding,” he says. “You have a complete confusion between principal and principle.”

He is pacing again. “You don’t understand what it is to find someone on Wall Street who tells it like it is. You want to get real? Baby, let’s do the full root canal!”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 23, 2012

An article last Sunday about S. B. Lewis, known as Sandy, a former Wall Street broker who turned into a critic, misstated, in some editions, the given name of one of his former teachers at Bruno Bettelheim’s Orthogenic School in Chicago. He is George Kaiser, not Charles.

The Lonely Redemption of Sandy Lewis, Wall Street Provocateur - NYTimes.com

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/nyregion/the-lonely-redemption-of-sandy-lewis-wall-street-provocateur.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

The Lonely Redemption of Sandy Lewis, Wall Street Provocateur - NYTimes.com

Define Success to properly set your compass on your single definite purpose

2012-08-10T18:15:00.001-07:00

I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair. In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.
- Bertrand Russell

“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure. ”
― Mark Twain

"In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins
- not by strength but by perseverance."
- H. Jackson Brown

“Don't mistake activity with achievement.”
― John Wooden

“Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”
― Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich

“Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it”

― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.”
― Amelia Earhart

“Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." ... [My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.”

― Henri J.M. Nouwen

To a Mouse

2012-06-27T09:17:00.001-07:00

To A Mouse.
On turning her up in her nest with the plough, November 1785.

Robert Burns was a poet, but that was not what earned him his living. As with most artists of his time he had to have some means of earning his keep. In Burns' case he earned most of his money, sparse though this was, from farming. This is why he is also known as the "Ploughman Bard".

It was while he was ploughing one of his fields that he disturbed a mouse's nest. It was his thoughts on what he had done that led to his poem, "To A Mouse", which contains one of his most often quoted lines from the poem. I am sure that you will recognize it, probably not from the Scottish words, but from the translation, lines 4 and 5 from verse 7.

To a Mouse

Standard English

Small, sleek, cowering, timorous beast,
O, what a panic is in your breast!
You need not start away so hasty
With hurrying scamper!
I would be loath to run and chase you,
With murdering plough-staff.

I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
And justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth born companion
And fellow mortal!

I doubt not, sometimes, but you may steal;
What then? Poor beast, you must live!
An odd ear in twenty-four sheaves
Is a small request;
I will get a blessing with what is left,
And never miss it.

Your small house, too, in ruin!
It's feeble walls the winds are scattering!
And nothing now, to build a new one,
Of coarse grass green!
And bleak December's winds coming,
Both bitter and keen!

You saw the fields laid bare and wasted,
And weary winter coming fast,
And cozy here, beneath the blast,
You thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel plough past
Out through your cell.

That small bit heap of leaves and stubble,
Has cost you many a weary nibble!
Now you are turned out, for all your trouble,
Without house or holding,
To endure the winter's sleety dribble,
And hoar-frost cold.

But Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leaves us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!

Still you are blest, compared with me!
The present only touches you:
But oh! I backward cast my eye,
On prospects dreary!
And forward, though I cannot see,
I guess and fear!

Burn's Original

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murdering pattle.

I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth born companion
An' fellow mortal!

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
'S a sma' request;
I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,
An' never miss't.

Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
It's silly wa's the win's are strewin!
An' naething, now, to big a new ane,
O' foggage green!
An' bleak December's win's ensuin,
Baith snell an' keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary winter comin fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.

That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble,
An' cranreuch cauld.

But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Still thou are blest, compared wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!

SOURCE:
http://www.worldburnsclub.com/poems/translations/554.htm

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The Lonely Redemption of Sandy Lewis, Wall Street Provocateur - NYTimes.com

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To a Mouse

NTNU Department of Neuroscience
&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;nbsp;

**Best-selling Author, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, The Upside of Irrationality and Predictably Irrational.**