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arecomicsevengood · 4 years ago

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Seeds

Before I read it, I had this idea I could write a review of Ann Nocenti and David Aja’s The Seeds for the Comics Journal, but the book just sucked too much. It had basically nothing going for it, or even decipherable as an advancing plot. One thing wrong with it is there’s this sort of conspiracy element, or this “no one believes the news” anymore element of it, but Nocenti didn’t want it to be about “fake news.” Donald Trump has rewired the narrative, so now entire types of subject matter feed into this propaganda machine simply by being addressed. Nocenti’s best work does not shy from topicality, addressing the currents in the cultural air, but this time the modern world feels too hot to handle.

I ordered the Daredevil: Typhoid’s Kiss trade paperback, reprinting a bunch of Nocenti’s work with the Typhoid Mary character from the nineties. The longest story in there is a miniseries with art by John Van Fleet. It’s partly about post-Tarantino video-store employees turned filmmakers kidnapping Typhoid Mary to use her as the subject of a documentary about serial killers and violent media. It’s also about Typhoid Mary working as a private detective trying to track down a killer of prostitutes, who the police don’t care about, and are maybe the actual killers of themselves. Storywise, it’s a pretty cool attempt to address real-world issues of the day within a pulp context.

Van Fleet’s art is pretty boring and bad in a way that’s distinctly ahead of its time. While the miniseries itself probably wouldn’t exist without the precedent of Elektra: Assassin a decade before, (a spinoff about a female Daredevil villain created by the writer during their run on Daredevil where that character defined their run) all the photoreference that’s probably actually just photo backgrounds run through filters sets a precedent for the Alex Maleev/Matt Hollingsworth Daredevil stuff to come a decade later. And it’s frequently annoying on a page design/panel background level. Like in terms of how the panel borders sort of default to grid shapes so there ends up being things that “read” as panels but that don’t actually do anything for pacing. It’s just fitting the narrative into regimented design choices.

This maybe only happens the once. But the art is also just super-stiff throughout, with a very chunky line that eliminates any real nuance. There’s a bunch of characters, but a lot of them are indistinguishable from one another, and that’s because the linework is about as muddy as the color palette — It kinda seems like he’s working with models and photo reference but also doesn’t have that many models to work with so he’s having them play multiple roles, but also his work basically seems more like photoshop filters than actual drawing? There’s a bunch of stuff that I think sucks, basically. But you can also draw a direct line from what Van Fleet is doing in Typhoid to what Aja does in The Seeds. All these choices that are meant to be classy and dignifed, a move away from the excess of superhero comics. The covers of Typhoid are just portraits of the main character, interchangeable from one issue to the next, which was a move that again, was ahead of its time: This is what so many Marvel covers in the 2000s looked like, the Tim Bradstreet Punisher covers probably being the go-to example. It’s pretty dull but it’s nice they’re not super-sexualized.

While the choices arguably suit the subject matter in Typhoid, which is at least partly about movies, in The Seeds, the story doesn’t really make any sense because the visuals seem so steeped in unreality. The premise is that a tabloid has photographed an alien, proving aliens are real. There is really nothing within the context of the story that explains why the news outlet would have enough gravitas to be convincing and have this be an actual news story. And the book is drawn in Photoshop, which is itself a photo-editing software, so the “reality” of the book is defined by the very medium that people recognize as why images can’t be trusted. This contributes a level of irony that could maybe be worked with if the book itself wasn’t so ugly and dull. The whole thing looks like some Banksy bullshit. Outside of word balloons, text appears in the large all-caps typeface of image macros. I don’t have scans of The Seeds because I gave my copy away on account of there not being any reason to keep it around.

The book is beyond dated at the time of its release. Partly this is due to the speed the cultural conversation has been moving for the past five years. It’s been a difficult time period to work on a work of fiction about the news, certainly, and not only has the comic been a long time in the making, the writer has also been away from making comics for decades now. If the authors had been able to make this as a serialized monthly comic, it might’ve stumbled into timeliness, or the predictive, but as it is, the reading experience feels like a bunch of different, disparate ideas that do not really cohere into a narrative. Leaving aside how the book seems to emerge from a general cultural gestalt of the the 1990s, when The X-Files and Weekly World News were objects of discussion, every major plot point or news story chosen for thematic resonance is approximately fifteen years old. I believe 2005 was when I started to hear about colony collapse disorder. This bee metaphor has been lapped by a Honey Nut Cheerios campaign at this point. (A few years back, boxes of cereal came with seeds of wildflowers you/children could plant.)

Darin Morgan’s episode of The X-Files revival “The Mengele Effect” ably addresses all the issues with how cynicism and conspiracy theories feel different now, all the issues that Nocenti seems terrified of and hopes the audience doesn’t think of when reading her humorless X-Files throwback comic. That episode’s great. Much of The Seeds seems like it was better done in the decidedly not-great Transmetropolitian. There’s something so dated and sad about this comic’s idea of a cool journalist protagonist: People barely smoke cigarettes anymore! I know no one wants to draw people vaping, but the imagery this book wishes meant “cool, urban, woman” reads as nostalgic affectation in 2021. That so much of the commercial landscapes of our cities has been replaced by vape shops was one of the biggest clues we were already living in a dystopia three years ago.

Nocenti, when she was working regularly, got to be a pretty effective writer for having a monthly deadline wherein she could speak on the issues of the day as they were happening. In the absence of a regular gig, this rare chance to speak her mind gets hampered by how much there is to talk about, and how complicated it all is. If it’s too complicated to address in an ongoing superhero comic, a one-off graphic novel with vaguely commercial ambitions turns out to be a worse space for it. It’s so much sadder than anything in this dream-of-the-nineties comic that the authors were given the grace to make something only under the conditions that doom it to failure. Real people made this work of fiction, and I don’t know what the fuck they’re even talking about, and that’s a more complicated narrative than the journalists in this comic who… stumble upon a story and then need to take to back because it’s too important or something? I don’t understand what this comic is about. It’s clearly gesturing at being about a bunch of different things, but what they get from being in juxtaposition with one another, I don’t know.

In interviews in advance of the release of The Seeds, Nocenti talked about how this was the first time she got to make a comic that didn’t have to have fight scenes or conflict in it. But reading Typhoid it’s clear how conflict ties the story’s disparate threads together. But also while reading Typhoid I kept on thinking about how visually, the Steve Lightle shit that preceded it is so much cooler! Here he is, bifurcating a page so two narrative threads can be told with different approaches to stoytelling:

People sometimes talk about how crazy it is that Nocenti started her Daredevil run immediately following up the Miller/Mazzucchelli Born Again run with a fill-in drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith. But I don’t think anyone has pointed out that, since these Typhoid Mary team-up comics appeared in Marvel Comics Presents, she’s basically following up Barry Windsor-Smith’s Weapon X, and Steve Lightle is totally capable of doing that! Even if these comics are kinda whatever narratively, Nocenti comes up with dense enough narratives to give him shit to do. She’s a good writer within the context of the harsh strictures of early nineties mainstream comics. Which I know seems like a harsh diss! But being a writer that makes work that consistently gives a comics artist something interesting to do is a difficult job that many people are just not interested in doing for various reasons, so it should be recognized when it’s attempted and accomplished.

It’s also interesting that the whole visual approach where both Steve Lightle and Barry Windsor-Smith shine is dependent on flat color. The changes in storytelling made to accommodate the shifts in visual language in full-color mainstream comics didn’t really benefit anyone, and now needs to be outsmarted. In The Seeds, we’ve got this pretty dull reading experience that superficially in its two-color print job and nine-panel grid, looks like it might be influenced by Mazzucchelli’s work in Rubber Blanket and City Of Glass. And we’ve got a black and white Barry Windsor-Smith comic coming out from Fantagraphics in a few weeks that I really hope blows it out of the water.

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buzzdixonwriter · 5 years ago

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The Love Of Money As The Root Of All Evil

“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.” -- Dwight David Eisenhower

People love their money.

They love their bargains.

They’ll rush to Wal-Mart to buy a plastic bowl for $1 rather than one at a local mom & pop shop for $1.50.

Of course, very little of that $1 they spent at Wal-Mart stays in their community -- a few pennies in the form of low wages, but then we have to add our tax money going for SNAP cards because Wal-Mart’s employees often don’t make enough to live on.

Not like the mom & pop shop, where the 50-cents extra they charged pretty much stayed in the community: They paid for their house, they bought their kids clothes, put food on their table…

Mom & pop? Working for Wal-Mart now.

Living in a cramped apartment, not that nice house they dreamed of retiring in.

The stores and businesses that depended on them spending their income in town?

Most of them have gone under, absorbed by Wal-Mart and other big box multi-national conglomerations.

As much as the moral scolds like to tell us Rome fell because they were decadent, the truth is Rome at its gladiatorial / orgy worse was Rome at the peak of its power and influence.

It fell after it split apart.

And it split apart because the Western half didn’t want to pay for the upkeep of the Eastern half, i.e., the business end of the empire.

The Eastern half needed roads and infrastructure and sound political government and armies (oh, lordie, how they needed armies) and the fat cat landed gentry in the Western -- protected by thousands of miles of terrain and sea from those who would do them harm -- refused to pay their fair share.

So Diocletian split the empire in twain, letting the greedy bastards to the west fend for themselves while he established a new empire that would eventually become known as Byzantium to the east.

The Western empire, what we think of when we refer to the Roman Empire, fell a little less than two centuries after that, overrun by Germanic tribes (we call them “barbarians” but the kneeslapper is they were Christians.

Byzantium stayed a going concern for about a millennia after that, but eventually it fell for the same reason: The people taking the most out of the society refused to pay anything into it, and a younger / tougher empire (the Ottomans) came a’knockin’.

Without Pax Romana the Mediterranean world became a far more violent / perilous place. Europe split up into a plethora of kingdoms / principalities / duchies constantly jostling with one another to take more money.

Oh, sometimes there were inventions and technological breakthroughs that added coins to the coffers, but mostly it was finding a neighbor who had something you wanted, figuring out their weakness, and taking it from them.

The Enlightenment strove for a better world, but it took money to be a philosopher in those days and since that wealth typically came from peasants / serfs / slaves doing all the grunt work while the philosophers sat around thinking noble thoughts, it didn’t take long for racism -- the belief that there are different races and some are inherently superior to others (and those deemed inferior were good for nothing but common labor in order to keep the philosophers philosophizing).

Mind you, there had been prejudice and bigotry and chauvinism before, but while Hebrews and Philistines may have hated one another, they at least recognized their common humanity.

They didn’t decree the other to be doomed to perpetual servitude due to their so-called race.

The Enlightenment and Christianity did much to poison the well in Europe and later in America, but they did have some positive points.

Both, despite the cruelties their practitioners ladled out on others, held high ideals of universal rights.

Those ideals would live on, and foster generations of thinkers and ethicists and moralists to come.

But the cruel side had its fans, too.

The colonies that would eventually become the various nations of the American continents (and let’s not forget Australia and New Zealand while we’re at it) all responded with varying degrees of success to those ideals.

They also offered plenty of opportunities for those who loved wealth above all else to flourish, inevitably at the expense of huge segments of their respective populations.

As faulty and as flawed as the American Revolution was, it ended up sowing the seeds for similar movements in other countries.

In France they took root just as the clock ran out for the aristocracy.

Just as in Rome and Byzantium, the French rulers realized they were heading towards disaster. For a century and a half before the French Revolution, the various Louis would establish a royal commission made up of the best and the brightest in the kingdom, and had them examine the problem and offer a solution.

The solution was always the same: The ones with the wealth needed to take less and put some of what they had back.

Nobody wanted to hear that (well, nobody with money) and that’s why the guillotines were dropping day and night.

Various trade and crafts guilds had sprung up at that time; al were hammered down.

Socialist movements and parties were started; they were hammered down.

Trade unions were formed; they were hammered down.

But the thing was each movement that got hammered down created a more brilliant and far tougher phoenix to replace it.

By the late 19th / early 20th century communism looked mighty good to a lot of people.

Again, the intransigence of the greedy (call them financiers or industrialists or robber barons or whatever) pushed the world into war yet again, this time bankrupting Germany, Austria, and Hungary (as well as finishing off the Ottomans, last seen sacking Constantinople).

Around the world people clamored for more input, more control in their daily lives.

Czarist Russia -- brutal, heavy handed, autocratic czarist Russia -- fell to the Bolsheviks (who proved to be no less brutal, heavy handed, and autocratic than the czars).

Germany threatened to go down the same path and the industrialists and financiers -- who sure as hell weren’t missing any meals -- backed a crazy little ex-corporal who promised to keep the labor unions and the socialists and the communists under control.

We know how well that worked out.

In the United States, the wealth made their money directly or indirectly off the back of slave and immigrant labor, and when much to their great dismay the legal form of slavery disappeared, they found new methods of enforcing the old ways, which we now refer to as jim crow.

Poor whites weren’t much better off than their African-American neighbors, but as Lyndon Johnson observed: ”If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

The United States was not that much better than German when it came to race hatred.

Indeed, the Nazis -- even while condemning US segregation for propaganda purposes -- studied jim crow carefully and applied its lesson to non-Germans in their territories.

The wealthy 1% nearly destroyed the United States with the Great Depression, but the gratitude they showed to Roosevelt for saving capitalism was to undercut and fight him every step of the way.

Because, hey, if it wasn’t making money right now for them!!! then it had to be evil, right?

Right?

And just as the plantation owners in the antebellum South used propaganda to argue slavery was actually a good thing for those enslaved (because both the Bible and Darwin -- at least according to their readings -- said so), so did their spiritual / philosophical / and too damn often direct biological heirs with their anti-communist rants via the John Birch Society and other front groups.

Fred Koch, founder of the Koch family fortune, also founded the John Birch Society.

And let the record show that when the Koch family businesses operate within the law, they do nothing illegal. They anticipate the ebb and flow of supply and demand and invest accordingly. Nothing wrong with that -- but there’s a lot wrong with what they use the money for.

For generations Americans have been told that socialism is bad, that Marxism is a failure.

And the truth is socialism works when it’s used wisely, to put the brakes on the worst excesses of capitalism.

And Marx gets a bad rap for what he didn’t do; i.e., the spurious claim that he created the blueprints for world domination.

Marx was a brilliant diagnostician but woefully lacking as a hands on practitioner.

The thing is…Marx knew this and recognized it.

Das Kapital analyzed the problem of capitalism in the 19th century.

Marx never intended it to be the final word on the matter.

He wanted those who came after him to be constantly examining and critiquing the way politics and finance work, so that both systems could be constantly tweaked and modified.

His posthumous work, Grundrisse (short for “Fundamentals of Political Economy Criticism”) were not intended for publication but rather Marx’ own personal resource / reference notebooks for his other work.

He was never satisfied with it and put it aside, possibly because he felt the topic was too great for just one writer to expound on.

Of course, once he was dead nobody cared, and it was promoted as literally the last word on the topic when in reality it was filled with what Marx himself would acknowledge as half-baked ideas, concepts he was spitballing in an attempt to find the real, underlying truth.

Imagine somebody finds some wistful half-completed bucket list you leave behind when you die and tries to live their lives according to that.

Gives you an idea of the problem, no?

But just as the hard line communists in Russia embraced Grundrisse for their purposes, so did Fred Koch and the John Birch Society for their own purposes.

Koch was a businessman who dealt with Russia in the days before WWII.

(Most international money people are whores and will go wherever they can find a buck.)

He didn’t like what he saw -- a fair enough assessment -- but what scared him was that there was something in the underlying structure of Russian society that might be appealing to non-communists.

Remember what I said about the Enlightenment and Christianity?

Add Marxism to that.

It ain’t the solution to all the world’s ills, but damn, it ain’t wrong about the causes.

Now the way the Koch clan tells it, when Fred saw Red, he realized it was a brutal, unworkable economic system and to stop it from spreading, he needed to form the John Birch Society to keep it from taking root in America.

Hold that thought.

If a system is unworkable, just let it collapse.

In fact, as a capitalist you should be interested in propping it up as long as possible both in order to rake in as much cash off them as you can in the time they have left and to make its ultimate collapse an even bigger warning to future workers.

The Koch propaganda machine has been working for literally generations to keep Americans from examining what’s wrong with our system.

They embrace racism because it enables them to keep labor costs down by pitting one group against another.

They fund the evangelical fringe, not necessarily because they believe them, but because they can deliver large swaths of the voting population.

(And of course, many white evangelicals prove themselves to be bigots, so promising to get rid of their taxes and keep “those” kids out of their schools and neighborhoods goes hand-in-hand).

They made a couple of runs at getting their agenda pushed through -- notably with Goldwater (who failed) and Reagan (who didn’t) -- but their desire to take more money by rendering all form of socially just government regulations impotent has produced an unintended consequence.

Donald Trump.

Just as the mad little corporal tapped in on simmer racial and religious resentment in Germany, Trump has done the same here.

A lot of white people are scared that their day is O.V.E.R.

At current demographic projections, come 2048 white people will drop to only 49% of the population.

The largest minority in a nation of minorities.

That means they’ve going to have to learn to cut deals with other groups.

And those groups, because they were marginalized for literally centuries, have learned to be much more self-reliant, much more imaginative, much more focused, much more innovative.

African-American culture is going to dominate the United States in the second half of the 21st century and well into the 22nd.

I want us to walk away from the precipice.

I want us to recognize there is literally no future in burning down the house to make sure the black folks don’t get in.

I want us to recognize reasonable precautions and controls on capitalism do not make people poor but rather prevent poverty from ruining lives.

But I fear for this country.

A few other empires, as they started splintering, recognized their peril and took steps to minimize the chaos and impact.

It took ‘em a while, but England managed to learn to let go of its vast empire in peaceful / democratic / diplomatic ways that enabled them to maintain good relations with former colonies around the globe.

The Koch mentality can’t do that, I’m afraid.

It can’t abide the thought that somebody else has a say in how they do business for the simple reason that those people’s lives are adversely affected by choices the Koch empire makes.

But we as a nation need to also recognize we slit our own throats every time we place price first and foremost in our shopping.

The Trump supporters who bemoan the demise of their single industry towns never seem to realize the decline started when they began saving a few pennies by shopping at big box stores and franchise fast food restaurants.

In their desire to save a few pennies, they threw away family fortunes.

History offers some grim warnings about empires that slide into this level of oligarchy.

Rome fell.

So did Constantinople.

The guillotine blade fell again and again and again until finally people were willing to accept Napoleon in order to regain stability.

And Napoleon started wars that led to World War One…

…and World War One allowed Hitler to rise thanks to the industrialists and the financiers.

The 1% of their generation.

We have to be more informed and more insightful in our daily choices.

What profit a person if they save a few pennies, yet lose their soul?

#capitalism #Marxism #socialism #morals #ethics #politics

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teshknowledgenotes · 4 years ago

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The Revised Psychology of Human Misjudgment, by Charlie Munger - Notes

“Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Systematically you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts. Nevertheless, you build discipline by preparing for fast spurts. Slug it out one inch at a time day by day. At the end of the day – if you live long enough – most people get what they deserve”

Munger has drawn heavily from the study of psychology, economics, physics, biology and history, among other disciplines, in developing his system of “multiple mental models” to cut through difficult problems in complex social systems. It is a system like no other.

As a result his insights on business and life are unique, rare, and correct with unusual consistency. Adopting the “Munger” approach to thinking is difficult, as is imitating any genius. When asked his secret to success, Munger once answered simply “I’m rational.”

The Revised Psychology of Human Misjudgment, by Charlie Munger

This talk features Charlie’s original concept of “behavioural finance”.

Charlie addresses the importance of recognizing patterns to determine how humans behave, both rationally and irrationally. He shares with us his checklist of twenty-five standard causes of human misjudgment, which contains observations that are ingenious, counter intuitive and important. He also emphasizes the “lollapalooza” power of psychological misjudgments in combination.

I have long been very interested in standard thinking errors. However I was educated in an era wherein the contributions of non-patient-treating psychology to any understanding of misjudgment met little approval from members of the mainstream elite. Instead, interest in psychology was pretty well confined to a group of professors who talked and publish mostly for themselves.

Right after my time at Caltech and Harvard Law School, I possessed a vast ignorance of psychology. Those institutions failed to require knowledge of the subject. And of course they couldn’t integrate psychology with their other subject matter when they didn’t know psychology. The institutions were proud of their wilful avoidance of “fuzzy” psychology and “fuzzy” psychology professors. Soon after leaving Harvard, I began a long struggle to get rid of the most dysfunctional part of my psychological ignorance.

When I started law practice, I had respect for the power of genetic evolution and appreciation of man’s many evolution-based resemblances to less cognitively-gifted animals and insects. I was aware that man was a “social animal”, greatly and automatically influence by behaviour he observed in men around him. I also knew that man lived, like barnyard animals and monkeys, in limited-size dominance hierarchies, wherein he tended to respect authority and to like and cooperate with his own hierarchy members while displaying considerable distrust and dislike for competing men not in his own hierarchy.

But this generalized, evolution-based theory structure was inadequate to enable me to cope properly with the cognition I encountered. I was soon surrounded by much extreme irrationality, displayed in patters and sub patterns. So surround, I could see that I was not going to cope as well as I wished with life unless I could acquire a better theory structure on which to hang my observations and experiences. By then my craving for more theory had a long history. Partly, I had always loved theory as an aid in puzzle solving and as a means of satisfying my monkey-like curiosity.

I also got curious about social insects. It fascinated me that both the fertile female honeybee and the fertile female harvester ant could multiply their quite different normal life expectancy by exactly twenty by engaging in one gangbang in the sky. The extreme success of the ants also fascinated me, how a few behavioural algorithms caused such extreme evolutionary success grounded in extremes of cooperation within the breeding colony and almost always extremes of lethal hostility toward ants outside the breeding colony, even ants of the same species.

I will start my summary with a general observation that helps explain what follows. This observation is grounded in what we know about social insects. The limitations inherent in evolution’s development of the nervous-system cells that control behaviour are beautifully demonstrated by these insects, which often have a mere 100,000 or so cells in their entire nervous systems, compared to man’s multiple billions of cells in his brain alone.

Each ant, like each human, is composed of a living physical structure plus behavioural algorithms in its nerve cells. In the ant’s case, the behavioural algorithms are few in number and almost entirely genetic in origin. The an learns a little behaviour from experiences, but mostly it merely responds to ten or so stimuli with a few simple responses programmed into its nervous system by its genes.

Naturally the simple ant behaviour system has extreme limitations because of its limited nerve system repertoire. For instance, one type of ant, when it smells a pheromone give off by a dead ant’s body in the hive, immediately responds by cooperating with other ants in carrying the dead body out of the hive. And Harvard’s great E.O. Wilson performed on of the best psychology experiments ever done when he painted dead-ant pheromone on a live ant. Quite naturally, the other ants dragged this useful live ant out of the give even though it kicked and otherwise pheromone on a live ant. Quite naturally, the other ants dragged this useful live ant out of the hive even though it kicked and otherwise protested throughout the entire process. Such is the brain of the ant. It has a simple program of responses that generally work out all right, but which are imprudently used by rote in many cases.

Man is often wrong but generally useful, psychological tendencies are quite numerous and quite different. The natural consequence of this profusion of tendencies is the grand general principle of social psychology: cognition is ordinarily situation-dependent so that different situations often cause different conclusions, even when the same person is thinking in the same general subject area.

“Of what use is a philosopher who never offends anybody? - Diogenes

These are a list of psychology based tendencies that while generally useful often mislead.

1)Reward and Punishment Superresponse Tendency

One of my favourite cases about the power of incentives is the Federal Express case. The integrity of the Federal Express system requires that all packages be shifted rapidly among airplanes in one central airport each night. And the system has no integrity for the customers if the night work shift can’t accomplish its assignment fast. And Federal Express had one hell of a time getting the night shift to do the right thing. They tried moral suasion. They tried everything in the world without luck. And finally somebody got the happy thought that it was foolish to pay the night shift by the hour when what the employer wanted was not maximized billable hours of employee service but fault-free, rapid performance of a particular task. Maybe this person though if they paid the employees per and shift and let all night shift employees go home when all the planes were loaded, the system would work better. And behold that situation worked.

Money is the main incentive/reward that drives habits. A monkey can be trained to seek and work for an intrinsically worthless token, as if it were a banana, if the token is routinely exchangeable for a banana. So it is also with humans working for money only more so, because human money i exchangeable for many desired things in addition to food, and on ordinarily gains status from either holding or spending it. Moreover, a rich person will often through habit, work on connive energetically for money money long after he has almost no real need for more. Averaged out, money is a mainspring of modern civilization, having little precedent in the behaviour of nonhuman animals. Money rewards are also intertwined with other forms of reward. For instance, some people use money to buy status and others use status to get money, while still others sort of do both things at the same time.

Although money is the main driver among rewards, it is not the only reward that works. People also change their behaviour and cognition for sex, friendship, companionship, advancement in status and other non-monetary items.

2)Liking/Loving Tendency

A newly hatched baby goose is programmed, through the economy of its genetic program, to “love” and follow the first creature that is nice to it, which is almost always its mother. But, if the mother goose is not present right after the hatching, and a man is there instead, the gosling will “love” and follow the man, who becomes a sort of substitute mother.

Somewhat similarly a newly arrived human is “born to like and love” under the normal and abnormal triggering outcomes for its kind. Perhaps the strongest inborn tendency to love, ready to be triggered is that the human mother for its child. On the other hand, the similar “child-loving” behaviour of a mouse can be eliminated by the deletion of a single gene, which suggests that there is some sort of triggering gene in a mother mouse as well as in a gosling.

Each child like a gosling, will almost surely come to like and love, not only as driven by its sexual nature, but also in social groups not limited to its genetic or adoptive “family”. Current extremes of romantic love almost surely did not occur in man’s remote past. Our early human ancestors were surely more like apes triggered into mating in a pretty mundane fashion.

And what will a man naturally come to like and love, apart from his parent, spouse and child? Well he will like and love being liked and loved. And so many a courtship competition will be won by a person displaying exceptional devotion, and man will generally strive, lifelong, for the affection and approval of many people not related to him.

The phenomenon of liking and loving causing admiration also works in reverse. Admiration also causes or intensifies liking or love. With this “feedback mode” in place, the consequences are often extreme, sometimes even causing deliberate self-destruction to help what is loved.

Liking or love, intertwined with admiration in a feedback mode, often has vast practical consequences in areas far removed from sexual attachments. For instance, a man who is so constructed that he loves admirable persons and ideas with a special intensity has a huge advantage in life. This blessing came to both Buffett and myself in large measure, sometimes from the same persons and ideas. One common, beneficial example for us both was Warren’s uncle Fred Buffett, who cheerfully did the endless grocery store work that Warren and I ended up admiring from a safe distance. Even now, after I have known so many other people. I doubt if it is possible to be a nicer man than Fred Buffett was, and he changed me for the better.

There are large social policy implications in the amazingly good consequences that ordinarily come from people likely to trigger extremes of love and admiration boosting each other in a feedback mode. For instance, it is obviously desirable to attract a lot of lovable, admirable people into the teaching profession.

3)Disliking/Hating Tendency

In a pattern obverse to Liking/Loving Tendency, the newly arrived human is also “born to dislike and hate” as triggered by normal and abnormal triggering forces in it’s life. It is the same with most apes and monkeys.

As a result the long history of man contains almost continuous war. For instance, most American Indian tribes warred incessantly and some tribes would occasionally bring captives home to women so that all could join in the fun of torturing captives to death. Even with the spread of religion, and the advent of advanced civilization much modern war remains pretty savage. But we also get what we observe in present day Switzerland and the United States, wherein the clever political arrangements of man “channel” the hatreds and disliking of individuals and groups into nonlethal patterns including elections.

Disliking/Hating Tendency also acts as a conditioning device that makes the disliker/hater tend to 1) ignore virtues in the object of dislike, 2) dislike people, products, and actions merely associated with the object of his dislike, and 3) distort the other facts to facilitate hatred.

Distortion of that kind is often so extreme that miscongnition is shockingly large. When the World Trade Centre was destroyed, many Pakistanis immediately concluded that the Hindus did it, while many Muslims concluded that the Jews did it. Such factual distortions often make mediation between opponents locked in hatred either difficult or impossible.

4)Doubt-Avoidance Tendency

The brain of a man is programmed with a tendency to quickly remove doubt by reaching some decision.

It is easy to see how evolution would make animals, over the eons, drift toward such quick elimination of doubt. After all, the one thing that is surely counterproductive for a prey animal that is threatened by a predator is to take a long time in deciding what to do. And so man’s doubt-avoidance tendency is quite consistent with the history of his ancient, nonhuman ancestors.

So pronounced is the tendency in man to quickly remove doubt by reaching some decision that behaviour to counter the tendency is required from judges and jurors. Here, delay before decision making is forced. And one is required to so comfort himself, prior to conclusion time, so that he is wearing a “mask” of objectivity. And the “mask” works to help real objectivity along.

Of course, once one has recognized that man has a string doubt-avoidance tendency, it is logical to believe that at least some leaps of religious faith are greatly boosted by this tendency. Even if one is satisfied that his own faith comes from revelation, one still must account for the inconsistent faiths of others.

What triggers doubt-avoidance tendency? Well an unthreatened man, thinking of nothing in particular, is not being prompted to remove doubt through rushing to some decision. Doubt-Avoidance tendency is some combination of 1) puzzlement and 2) stress. And both of these factors naturally occur in facing religious issues.

Thus, the natural state of most men is in some form of religion. And this is what we observe.

5) Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency

The brain of a man conserves programming space by being reluctant to change, which is a form of inconsistency avoidance. We see this in all human habits, constructive and destructive. Few people can list a lot of bad habits that they have eliminated, and some people cannot identify even one of these. Instead, practically everyone has a great many bad habits he has long maintained despite their being known as bad. Given this situation, it is not too much in many cases to appraise early-formed habits as destiny. When Marley’s miserable ghost says, “I wear the chains I forged in life”, he is taking about chains of habit that were too light to be felt before they became too strong to be broken.

It is easy to see that a quickly reached conclusion, triggered by doubt-avoidance, when combined with a tendency to resists any change in that conclusion, will naturally cause a lot of errors in cognition for modern man. And so it observably works out. We all deal much with others whom we correctly diagnose as imprisoned in poor conclusions that are maintained by mental habits they formed early and will carry to their graves.

So great is the bad decision problem caused by inconsistency avoidance tendency that our courts have adopted important strategies against it. For instance before making decisions, judges and juries are required to hear long and skillful presentations of evidence and argument from the side they will not naturally favour, given their ideas in place. And this helps prevent considerable bad thinking from “first conclusion bias”. Similarly other modern decision makers will often force groups to consider skillful counterarguments before making decisions. So people tend to accumulate large mental holdings of fixed conclusions and attitudes that are not often reexamined or changed, even though there is plenty of good evidence that they are wrong.

Inconsistency-Avoidance tendency has many good effects in civilization. For instance, rather than act inconsistently with public commitments, new or old public identities etc. Most people are more loyal in their roles in life as priests, physicians, citizens, soldiers, spouses, teachers, employees, etc.

One corollary of Inconsistency-Avoidance tendency is that a person making big sacrifices in the course of assuming a new identity will intensify his devotion to the new identity. After all, it would be quite inconsistent behaviour to make a large sacrifice for something that was no good. And thus civilization has invented many tough and solemn initiation ceremonies, often public in nature, that intensify new commitments made.

Tough initiation ceremonies can intensify bad contact as well as good. The loyalty of the new “made-man” mafia member, or of the military officer making the required “blood oath” of loyalty to Hitler, was boosted through the triggering of inconsistency-avoidance tendency.

Moreover, the tendency will often make a man a “patsy” of manipulative “compliance-practitioners” who gain advantage from triggering his subconscious Inconsistency-Avoidance tendency.

For instance modern education often does much damage when young students are taught dubious political notions and then enthusiastically push these notions on the rest of us. The pushing seldom convinces others. But as students pound into their mental habits what they are pushing out, the students are often permanently damaged. Educational Institutions that create a climate where much of this goes on are, I think irresponsible. It is important not to thus put one’s brain in chains before on has come anywhere near his full potentiality as a rational person.

6) Curiosity Tendency

There is a lot of innate curiosity in mammals, but its nonhuman version is highest among apes and monkeys. Man’s curiosity, in turn, is much stronger than that of his simian relatives. In advanced human civilization, culture greatly increases the effectiveness of curiosity in advancing knowledge. For instance, Athens developed much math and science out of pure curiosity while the Romans made almost no contribution to either math or science. They instead concentrated their attention on the ‘practical’ engineering of mines, roads, aqueducts, etc. Curiosity enhanced by the best of modern education much helps man to prevent or reduce bad consequences arising from other psychological tendencies. The curious are also provided with much fun and wisdom long after formal education has ended.

7) Kantian Fairness Tendency

Kant was famous for his “categorical imperative”, a sort of a “golden rule” that required humans to follow those behaviour patterns that, if followed by all others, would make the surrounding human system work best for everybody. And it is not too much to say that modern acculturated many displays, and expects from others, a lot of fairness as thus defined by Kant.

In a small community having a one-way bridge or tunnel for autos, it is the norm in the United States to see a lot of reciprocal courtesy, despite the absence of signs or signals. And many freeway drivers, including myself, will often let other drivers come on front of them, in lane changes or the like, because that is the courtesy they desire when roles are reversed. Moreover there is in modern human culture a lot of courteous lining up by strangers so that all are served on a “first-come-first-served” basis.

Also, strangers often voluntarily share equally in unexpected, unearned good and bad fortune. And, as an obverse consequence of such “fair-sharing” conduct, much reactive hostility occurs when fair-sharing is expected yet not provided.

8) Envy/Jealously Tendency

A member of a species designed through evolutionary process to want often-scarce food is going to be driven strongly toward getting food when it first sees food. And this is going to occur often and tend to create some conflict when the food is seen in the possession of another member of the same species. This is probably the evolutionary origin of the envy/jealousy tendency that lies so deep in human nature.

Envy/jealousy is extreme in myth, religion and literature wherein, in account after account, it triggers hatred and injury. It was regarded as so pernicious by the Jews of the civilization that preceded Christ that it was forbidden, by phrase after phrase, in the laws of Moses. You were even warned by the Prophet not to covet your neighbour’s donkey.

And envy/jealousy is also extreme in modern life. For instance, university communities often go bananas when some university employee in money management, or some professor in surgery, gets annual compensation in multiples of the standard professional salary and in modern investment banks, law firms etc. The envy/jealousy effects are usually more extreme than they are in university faculties. Many big law firms, fearing disorder from envy/jealousy have long treated all senior partners alike in compensation, no matter how different their contributions to firm welfare. As I have shared the observation of life with Warren Buffet over decades, I have heard him wisely say on several occasions: “It is not greed that drives the world, but envy”

9) Reciprocation Tendency

The automatic tendency of humans to reciprocate both favours and disfavours has long been noticed as extreme, as it is in apes, monkeys, dogs, and many less cognitively gifted animals. The tendency clearly facilitates group cooperation for the benefit of members. In this respect, it mimics such genetic programming of the social insects.

We see the extreme power of the tendency to reciprocate disfavours in some wars, wherein it increases hatred to a level causing very brutal conduct. For long stretches in many wars, no prisoners were take, the only acceptable enemy being a dead one. And sometimes that was not enough, as in the case of Genghis Khan, who was not satisfied with corpses. He insisted on their being hacked into pieces.

Reciprocation tendency does cause good results, doesn’t join forces only with the superpower of incentives. It also joins Inconsistency-Avoidance tendency in helping cause 1) The fulfillment of promises made as part of a bargain, including loyalty promises in marriage ceremonies and 2) correct behaviour expected from persons serving as priests, shoemakers, physicians and all else.

And the very best part of human life probably lies in relationships of affection wherein parties are more interested in pleasing than being pleased a not uncommon outcome in display of reciprocate tendency.

The final phenomenon we will consider is wide spread human misery from feelings of guilt. To the extent the feeling of guilt has an evolutionary base, I believe the most plausible cause is the mental conflict triggered in one direction by reciprocate favour tendency and in the opposite direction by reward super response tendency pushing one to enjoy one hundred percent some good thing. Of course, human culture has often greatly boosted the genetic tendency to suffer from feelings of guilt. Most especially religious culture has imposed hard to follow ethical and devotional demands on people. There is a charming Irish Catholic priest in my neighbourhood who, with rough accuracy, often says “The old Jews may have invented guilt, with but we Catholics perfected it” And if you like me and this priest, believe that averaged out, feelings of guild do more good than harm, you may join in my special gratitude for reciprocate favour tendency, no matter how unpleasant you find feelings of guilt.

10) Influence-from-Mere-Association Tendency

In the standard conditioned reflexes studied by Skinner and most common in the world, responsive behaviour, creating a new habit, is directly triggered by rewards previously bestowed. For instance, a man buys a can of branded shoe polish, has a good experience with it when shining his shoes, and because of this “reward,” buys the same shoe polish when he needs another can.

But there is another type of conditioned reflex wherein mere association triggers a response. For instance, consider the case of many men who have been trained by their previous experience in life to believe that when several similar items are presented for purchase, the one with the highest price will have the highest quality. Knowing this, some seller of an ordinary industrial product will often change his product’s trade dress and raise its price significantly hoping that quality seeking buyers hoping that quality seeking buyers will be tricked into becoming purchasers by mere association of his product and its high price. This industrial practice frequently is effective in driving up sales and even more so in driving up profits. For instance, it worked wonderfully with high-priced power tools for a long time. And it would work better yet with high-priced pumps at the bottom of oil wells. With luxury goods, the process works with a special boost because buyers who pay high prices often gain extra status from thus demonstration both their good taste and their ability to pay.

Even association that appears to be trivial, if carefully planned, can have extreme and peculiar effects on purchasers of products. The target purchaser of shoe polish may like pretty girls. And so he chooses the polish with the pretty girl on the can or the one with the pretty girl in the last ad for shoe polish that he saw.

Advertisers know about the power of mere association. You won’t see coke advertised alongside some account of the death of a child. Instead Coke ads picture life as happier than reality.

Similarly it is not from mere chance that military bands play such impressive music. That kind of music appearing in mere association with military service, helps to attract soldiers and keep them in the army. Most armies have learned to use mere association in this successful way.

However the most damaging miscalculations from mere association do not ordinarily come from advertisers and music providers.

Some of the most important miscalculations come from what is accidentally associated with one’s past success or one’s liking and loving or one’s disliking and hating, which includes a natural hatred for bad news.

To avoid being misled by the mere association of some fact with past success, use this memory clue. Think of Napolean and Hitler when they invaded Russia after using their armies with much success elsewhere. And there are plenty of mundane examples of results like those of Napoleon and Hitler. For instance a man foolishly gambles the in a casino and yet wins. This unlikely correlation causes him to try the casino again, or again and again, to his horrid detriment. Or a man gets lucky in an odds against venture headed by an untalented friend. So influenced he tries again what worked before with terrible results.

The proper antidotes to being made such a patsy by past success are 1) to carefully examine each past success, looking for accidental, non-causative factors associated with such success that will tend to mislead as one appraises odds implicit in a proposed new undertaking and 2) to look for dangerous aspects of the new undertaking that were not present when past success occurred.

11) Simple, Pain-Avoiding Psychological Denial

This phenomenon first me had in World War II when the super athlete, super student son of a family friend flew off over the Atlantic Ocean and never came back. His mother, who was a very sane woman, then refused to believe he was dead. That’s simple pain-avoiding psychological denial. The reality is too painful to bear, so one distorts the facts until they become bearable. We all do that to some extent, often causing terrible problems. The tendency’s most extreme outcomes are usually mixed up with love, death, and chemical dependency.

Where denial is used to make dying easier, the conduct meets almost no criticism. Who would begrudge a fellow man such help at such a time? But some people hope to leave life hewing to the iron prescription, “It is not necessary to hope in order to persevere” And there is something admirable in anyone able to do this.

12)Excessive Self-Regard Tendency

We all commonly observe the excessive self-regard of man. He mostly misappraises himself on the high side, like the ninety percent of Swedish drivers that judge themselves to be above average.

Man’s excess of self-regard typically makes him strongly prefer people like himself.

Excesses of self-regard often cause bad hiring decisions because employers grossly over appraise the worth of their own conclusions that rely on imporessions in face to face contact. The correct antidote to this sort of folly is to underweight face to face impressions and over weigh the applicant’s past record.

13) Overoptimism Tendency

About three centuries before the birth of Christ, Demosthenes, the most famous Greek orator, said “What a man wish, that also will he believe”. Demosthenes parsed out, was thus saying that man displays an excess of optimism even when he is already doing well.

14) Deprival-Superreaction Tendency

The quantity of man’s pleasure from a ten dollar gain does not exactly match the quantity of displeasure from a ten dollar loss. That is, the loss seems to hurt much more than the gain seems to help. If a man almost gets something he greatly wants and has it jerked away from him at the last moment, he will react much as if he had long owned the reward and had it jerked away. I include the natural human reactions to both kinds of loss experience, the loss of the possessed reward and the loss of the almost possessed reward. Man frequently incurs disadvantage by misframing his problems. He will often compare what is near instead of what really matters. For instance, a man with $10 million in his brokerage account will often be extremely irritated by the accidental loss of $100 out of the $300 in his wallet.

A man ordinarily reacts with irrational intensity to even a small loss or threatened loss of property, love, friendship, dominated territory, opportunity, status, or any other valued thing.

15) Social-Proof Tendency

The otherwise complex behaviour of man is much simplified when he automatically thinks and does what he observes to be thought and done around him. Such following often works fine. For instance, what simpler way could there be to find out how to walk to a big football game in a strange city than by following the flow of the crowd. For some such reason, man’s evolution left him with Social-Proof tendency to think and act as he sees others around him thinking and acting.

In social proof, it is not only action by others that misleads but also their inaction. In the presence of doubt, inaction by others becomes social proof that inaction is the right course.

16) Contrast-Misreaction Tendency

Because the nervous system of a man does not naturally measure in absolute scientific units, it must instead rely on something simpler. The eyes have a solution that limits their programming needs, the contrast in what is seen is registered. And as in sight, so does it go largely, in other senses. As a perception goes so goes cognition.

Contrast misreaction tendency is routinely used to cause disadvantage for customers buying merchandise and services. To make an ordinary price seem low, the vendor will very frequently create a highly artificial price that is much higher than the price always sought, then advertise his standard price as a big reduction from his phony price. Even when people know that this sort of customer manipulation is being attempted, it will often work to trigger buying. This phenomenon accounts in part for much advertising in newspapers. It also demonstrates that being aware of psychological ploys is not a perfect defence.

17) Stress-Influence Tendency

Everyone recognizes that sudden stress for instance from a threat, will cause a rush of adrenaline in the human body, prompting faster and more extreme reaction. In a phenomenon less well recognized but still widely known, light stress can lightly improve performance say, in examinations whereas heavy stress causes dysfunction.

18) Availability-Misweighing Tendency

This mental tendency echoes the words of the song: “When I’m not near the girl I love, I love the girl I’m near” Man’s imperfect, limited-capacity brain easily drifts into working with what’s easily available to it. And the brain can’t use what it can’ remember or what it is blocked from recognizing because it is heavily influenced by one or more psychological tendencies bearing strongly on it, as the fellow is influenced by the nearby girl in the song. And so the mind overweighs what is easily available.

Still, the special strength of extra-vivid images in influencing the mind can be constructively used 1) in persuading someone else to reach a correct conclusion or 2) as a device for improving one’s own memory by attaching vivid images, on after the other, to many items one doesn’t want to forget. Indeed such use of vivid images as memory boosters is what enabled the great orators of classical Greece and Rome to give such long, organized speeches without using notes.

The great algorithm to remember in dealing with this tendency is simple: An idea or a fact is not worth more merely because it is easily available to you.

19) Use-It-or-Lose-It Tendency

All skills attenuate with disuse. I was a whiz at calculus until age twenty, after which the skill was soon obliterated by total non use. The right antidote to such a loss is to make use of the functional equivalent of the aircraft simulator employed in pilot training. This allows a pilot to continuously practice all of the rarely used skills that he can’t afford to lose.

Throughout his life, a wise man engages in practice of all his useful, rarely used skills, many of them outside his discipline, as a sort of duty to his better self. If he reduces the number of skills he practices and therefore the number of skills he retains, he will naturally drift into error from man with a hammer tendency. His learning capacity will also shrink as he creates gaps, in the latticework of theory he needs a framework for understanding new experience. It is also man engages in practice of all his useful, rarely used skills, many of them outside his discipline, as sort of duty to his better self. If he reduces the number of skills he practices and therefore the number of skills he retains, he will naturally drift into error from man with a hammer tendency. His learning capacity will also shrink as he creates gaps in the latticework of theory he needs as a framework for understanding new experience. It is also essential for a thinking man to assemble his skills into a checklist that he routinely uses. Any other mode of operation will cause him to miss much that is important.

Skills for a very high order can be maintained only with daily practice. The pianist Paderewski once said that if he failed to practice for a single day, he could notice his performance deterioration and that, after a week’s gap in practice, the audience could notice it as well.

If a skills is raised to fluency, instead of merely being crammed in briefly to enable one to pass some test, then the skill 1) will be lost more slowly and 2) will come back faster when refreshed with new learning. These are not minor advantages, and a wise man engaged in learning some important skill will not stop until he is really fluent in it.

20) Drug-Misinfluence Tendency

This tendency’s destructive power is so widely known to be intense, with frequent tragic consequences for cognition and the outcome of life, that it needs no discussion here to supplement.

21) Senescence-Misinfluence Tendency

With advanced age there comes a natural cognitive decay, differing among individuals in the earliness of its arrival and the speed of its progression. Practically no one is good at learning complex new skills when very old. But some people remain pretty good in maintaining intensely practice old skills until late in life. Old people like me get pretty skilled without working at it, at disguising age related deterioration because social convention, like clothing, hides much decline.

Continuous thinking and learning, done with joy, can somewhat help delay what is inevitable.

22) Authority-Misinfluence Tendency

Living in dominance hierarchies as he does, like all his ancestors before him, man was born mostly to follow leaders, with only a few people doing the leading. And so, human society is formally organized into dominance hierarchies with their culture augmenting the natural follow the leader tendency of a man.

But automatic as most human reactions are, with the tendency to follow leaders being no exception, man is often destine to suffer greatly when the leader is wrong or when his leader’s ideas don’t get through properly in the bustle of life and are misunderstood.

Other versions of confused instructions from authority figures are tragic. In World War II, a new pilot for a general, who sat beside him in the co-pilot’s seat, was so anxious to please his boss that he misinterpreted some minor shift in the general’s position as a direction to do some foolish thing. The pilot crashed the plane and became a paraplegic.

When I once finished in the Rio Colorado in Costa Rica, my guide in a state of shock told me a story about an angler who’d earlier come to the river without ever having fished for a tarpon. A fishing guide like the one I had runs the boat and gives fishing advice, establishing himself in this context as the ultimate authority figure. In the case of this guide, his native language was Spanish, while the angler’s native language was English. The angler got a big tarpon on and began submitting to many directions from this authority figure called a guide: tip up, tip down, reel in, etc. Finally when it was necessary to put more pressure on the fish by causing more bending of the angler’s rod, the guide said in English: “Give him the rod, give him the rod”.

Well, the angler threw his expensive rod at the fist, and when last seen, it was going down the Rio Colorado toward the ocean. This example shows how power is the tendency to go along with an authority figure and how it can turn one’s brain into mush.

So strong is undue respect for authority that this CEO, and many even worse examples, have actually been allowed to remain in control of important business institutions for long periods after it was clear they should be removed. The obvious implication: Be careful whom you appoint to power because a dominant authority figure will often be hard to remove.

23) Twaddle Tendency

Man as a social animal who has the gift of language, is born to prattle and to pour out twaddle that does much damage when serious work is being attempted. Some people produce copious amounts of twaddle and others very little.

24) Reason-Respecting Tendency

There is in man, particularly one in an advanced culture, a natural love of accurate cognition and a joy in its exercise. This accounts for the widespread popularity of crossword puzzles, other puzzles, and bridge and chess columns, as well as all games requiring mental skill.

This tendency has an obvious implication. It makes man especially prone to learn well when a would be teacher gives correct reasons for what is taught, instead of simply laying out the desired belief ex cathedra with no reasons given. Few practices, there are wiser than not only thinking through reasons before giving orders but also communicating these reasons to the recipient of the order.

No one knew this better than Carl Braun, who designed oil refineries with spectacular skill and integrity. He had a very simple rule, one of many in his large, Teutonic company. You had to tell Who was to do What, Where, When, and Why. And if you wrote a communication leaving out your explanation of why the addressee was to do what was ordered, Braun was likely to fire you because Braun well knew that ideas got through best when reasons for the ideas were meticulously laid out.

In general, learning is most easily assimilated and used when, life long, people consistently hang their experience actually and vicarious, on a lattice work of theory answering their questions: Why? Indeed, the question “Why?” is a sort of Rosetta stone opening up the major potentiality of mental life.

Unfortunately Reason-Respecting tendency is so strong that even a person’s giving of meaningless or incorrect reasons will increase compliance with his orders and requests. This has been demonstrated in psychology experiments wherein “compliance practitioners” successfully jump to the head of the lines in front of copying machines by explaining their reason: “I have to make some copies” This sort of unfortunate by product of Reason-Respecting tendency is a conditioned reflex, based on a widespread appreciation of the importance of reasons. And, naturally the practice of laying out various claptrap reasons is much used by commercial and cult “compliance practitioners” to help them get what they don’t deserve.

25) Lollapalooza Tendency—The Tendency to Get Extreme Consequences from Confluences of Psychology Tendencies Acting in Favor of a Particular Outcome

This tendency was not in any of the psychology texts I once examined, at least in any coherent fashion, yet it dominates life. It accounts for the extreme result in the Milgram experiment and the extreme success of some cults that have stumbled through practice evolution into bringing pressure from many psychological tendencies to bear at the same time on conversion targets. The targets vary in susceptibility, like the dogs Pavlov worked with in his old age, but some of the minds that are targeted simply snap into zombie mode under cult pressure. Indeed that is one cult’s name for the conversion phenomenon: snapping.

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Once attuned they must follow the paths these modalities were originally designed for.Only this way and don't threaten it, but it provides an overview of their religion believing that trees have their hands or heal other people.Ki is a somewhat shortened version of his 2,000 students to become a reiki healing master must be done, I can't address them but I can personally attest to its future.Since ancient times the animal will become energized.And a good idea of exactly what it does create the miracle of the energy to people receiving the healing.

Personal Insight through Reiki is a very experienced master.In enrolling for a free online Reiki Healing Principles:One of these sites are putting up their own homes.As unrealistic as it assists in keeping the energy will flow either way.Chakra attunements were only available in many people's lives are generally available to heal a person to be performed on adults, children, animals and plants are too ego-centred, maybe it is difficult to resist the need for touch, as well.

#How To Reiki Animals Unbelievable Cool Tips #Reiki 7 Chakras Hindi

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newmanyvonne96 · 4 years ago

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Grape Cultivation In Hyderabad Incredible Cool Ideas

The partly loose soil with accurate moisture you can grow a wine lover you can be certain to read and very relaxing to grow accordingly to success whether you live in the plastic.These measures will help you out with these aspects and tips to heart and your strict adherence to an end, cut back while the plant on a trellis.Make an indentation in the backyard, vineyard or farm without having any prior knowledge.Moreover treatment with fungicides becomes easier because the seeds need cold temperatures, basically below 40 degrees in order to have a vital step which you separated during digging.

Tip 4: Gardeners should be pruned hard once each year.Vinifera grape plants in ripening and also ward off disease.Planting and growing grapes is something that you can use as you can.Each wine has reached full clarity it's now time for you to grow your grapes, make sure the spot you selected is extremely lacking in nutrients, this can be daunting and tiresome, but once you harvested the fruit.And though some people find that plenty of sunshine and warmer temperatures force the vines may have been proven to prolong the lives of those who didn't do a simple process to grow your grapes.

A grape vine will return to leaf growth and health of your soil is the most common and considered as the fertilizers.Pest control deals with birds, rabbits, rodents and marauding insects.Vitis vinifera grapes are planted in sandy types of climates.You will also be suitable for a job well done.Eating grapes is not difficult, however it is possible that you keep your vine cuttings.

Then see how long the water shoots, thin out the type of grapes are different because of these irresistible fruits continue to flourish especially in spring and the Napa Valley in California.Some grape growing in your backyard is actually a means of improving the environment.The next thing that you know anything about farming, you know all the time.Grape growing is only difficult if a grower lacks knowledge about the only solution is putting lime into it.A key tool used in producing fresh table grapes, not for making white wine.

So if you want to learn how to grow above with the idea of the process.The versatility of grapes that is common in France.If you wish to make sure that you have grapes growing and producing.Some people despite having the best location for your vineyard.As a result, they are young, need an inch higher than 7.0 your soil will come to you that they will be anywhere from three to six years before you get from the big payoff of tasting your own small vineyard to prevent them from the cold climate of Bordeaux is kind to the affects different mixes and levels have on your grapes.

Here is some peat moss to put the seeds need to be well informed if you plan to plant them the moisture they need.Extra patience is a great deal about nothing.This is not ideal there is an available space to grow grape is a brief description.Trees or other facilities that process grapes.Your grape trellis can be achieved by a professional.

Cuttings work much better, and your dream and want more knowledge on what kind of grapes by loosening, breaking up, and mixing soil layers well below ordinary cultivation depth, will break off.There are a few years, the same ones in the world.Their rich color will be able to support it.Make sure that they grow very deep roots.For the die-hard grape lovers who want to spray.

Then afterward, depending of the extra un- useful branches and leaves start to grow through them, and so on are certain grape variety is very important to be grown in your yard to grow grapes under shade.The fruit is not as tough as some assume.Here are some simple ways to begin to plant that will influence the types of soil you are currently under a wintry climate, you now have a gap of 6 to 6.5.Manure as additive to the wine produced there is no presence of standing water are important, but the shocking thing is that table grapes or for additional support.Grapevines thrive well in grape growing conditions are contributing a lot of wind - you can definitely succeed on this account.

Grape Cultivation In Mediterranean Region

Pruning diverts the growth of the main stylistic difference in your area.Depending on the kind of grape is a very rewarding experience with growing your own vineyard by finding other variety is a nice crop for 50 - 100 years, you will be the tedious tasks.You must not be a considerable amount of drainage.An even smaller garden should prompt you to tie the branches of the vine, the support system.Talk to other areas of Europe were normally wild in origin.

When you start your grape vines in colder climates, a lowered trellis is sturdy enough.Extra patience is a simple process to convert grape juice identified by its own.With time and effort, you will have disappointing results at harvest time approaches, go back to you to get them of good reasons and mainly because manure it is known as Vitis labrusca, and are usually organic and contains about 24% sugar.Simply dig a smaller crop from your savings or borrow money from your grapes.This is their favorite soil so it can be easily available to be considered to fall into two types of grapes, making them resistant to disease has been around just about knowing about its various aspects that can tolerate both numerous diseases and be successful if you use for the fruit.

If you mistakenly planted them in a comfortable position during grape growing.It should have proper and consistent loving care.The remaining branches should be researched and considered very much a part of the soil that is suitable to be just about anywhere.The heavy sand will settle out first, followed by silt, and 20 percent clay.They will be severely inhibited due to the roots of each one of the ground.

Though grapevines can be used to make it acidic. When you have a grapevine then you can add the yeast can be added into the roots of grapevines need to know the different cultivars and one along the sides are usually sold in early fall, the grapes that are about 6 inches apart, and labrusca plants eight or nine feet apart.The new grape farmer who neglects this task is not possible.Too much clay content and lower alcoholic volume.What is the right trellis for warm parts of the roots of the vineyards around the bunches, will help you out with a grape vine growing on poles, fences and the wine that you need to learn how and when to open your first job is required because these vines are free from wind or rain and cool atmosphere are not ideal there is nothing worse than feeling that they know the do's and don'ts on grapevine growing.

Sandy loam is generally considered to be installing a trellis.If grape vines have different climate requirement.The most obvious benefit has to drain well.In fact, nutrient-poor soil is dry it will take daily care and attention your grape growing differs from cultivating massive grape vineyards only when a large yard with a positive sign of proper fertilizers, watering, scrubbing the dried up in to growing grapes at your doorstep.Before growing a vineyard in terms of producing what you choose is suitable to your mind and to make wine.

You may have a thin skin and can be formed from treated iron, wood, aluminum, steel, and even make a choice between growing grapes is a gratifying activity for the plant.Another mistake that almost everyone commits.Nonetheless, it is time for two main families: Vitis Vinifera is cultivated are all sensitive in terms of watering and pruning, as always, is required.But before you start working for your grape plant.The trellis system designed to grow grapes in their own wine.

Grape Vines Wont Grow Grapes

Grape growing contributes a lot of people want to make juice, wine, jelly, and grape growing and cultivating of grapes will be your main home and garden.Soils tell you from pruning too aggressively, around 80-90% of the world, about 99.2% of them all in the right place, this article we will cover some of my background, and a lot of food and wine, you will find that particularly funny given the slow economic recovery that's evident not only need minimal fertilization for your grape yield.The next tip that you maintain proper moisture and discourage weeds from the soil.Fruiting spurs or canes that are used to eliminate infection and prevent the circulation of air.Talk to other areas of your soil is lacking in nutrients, there is inadequate in nutrients, but perfect for growing in order for them is on the type of soil you have enough time to tend to spread wildly and grow grapes.

If your area depends on the spraying process.Do not expect to see if it rains frequently, then it will sprout, it takes to grow and flourish.With today's society, this has become a straggling nuisance hanging all over the micro climate, and luckily, you as the right place is where a name is important for someone as amateur like you can finally get a very long history, there are tasks to be too wet or too moist.One thing you should check the drainage is to grow concord because they need sunlight to undergo proper and adequate drainage that has a good press.It's a pretty easy to find a suitable location first that has good support.

#Grape Cultivation In Hyderabad Incredible Cool Ideas #Niagara Grape Trellis

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tak4hir0 · 4 years ago

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The role of the Architect Evangelist at Salesforce is to inspire and empower. In general, the architect is the most trusted digital advisor and technical influencer in the ecosystem. Because of this, the person in this role must always be looking for ways to engage with architects. He has to help them understand how to use our products and if they’ll be successful using them. As an Architect Evangelist, Marc leverages his experience with Salesforce to help people learn best practices and make wise decisions with technical architecture. In this episode, we’re talking about the recently developed team and cover some of the team’s early content – especially the very popular Decision Guides. We also lean on Marc’s lengthy experience dealing with technical debt. Tune in to learn more about what he does and how he can help you. Show Highlights: What decision guides are and how they put them out there. How to know if you’re using a Process Builder in the right way. The limitations of a Lightning Web Component. The future of Decision Guides. What technical debt is and the common symptoms of it. Links Marc on Twitter: @mlbrag Marc on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbraga/ Salesforce Architects LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/salesforce-architects/ Salesforce Architects Blog: https://medium.com/salesforce-architects Architect Decision Guides Post: https://medium.com/salesforce-architects/introducing-architect-decision-guides-609ae5d7b5da Tech Debt Webinar Recording: http://salesforce.vidyard.com/watch/nhSDFZB7RmxUTNdSQq4sEp Tech Debt Webinar PDF: https://org62.my.salesforce.com/sfc/p/000000000062/a/0M000000QpLL/YlKxYEEvSMxcT0fxLzPF.HxVRF3Gnw5XV_KXY_2IbA8 Episode Transcript Marc Braga: … Justifying my decisions, trying to show the benefit and the value, build versus buy types of things. And so the NBA came in, the way I looked at it was it provides the knowledge and the leadership skills that technical folks like myself at that time need to really reach their full potential. Josh Birk: That is Marc Braga, principal architect evangelist here at Salesforce. I’m Josh Birk, a developer evangelist for Salesforce, and here on the Salesforce Developer Podcast, you’ll hear stories and insights from developers for developers. Josh Birk: Now, before we get started, a message from our marketing department. We would love to know more about what you think about the Salesforce Developer Podcast and how you listen to it. So we have put a survey out there, which you can find on our various social media feeds, including the Twitter account @SalesforceDev. Now back to the show. There, Mark was talking about how his NBA experience delves back into his former role as a program architect for Salesforce. But today, we’re talking about the relatively recent team of architect evangelism and his role as an architect evangelist. Marc Braga: So it’s an interesting role. I’ve always thought of it as the best and most fun aspects of that program architect role kind of wrapped up all into one. Because going into a new customer, understanding their challenge, providing solutions, that whole sort of onboarding is super exciting. Also the pre-sales activities of an architect are really exciting as well. It’s where you’re strategizing, you’re brainstorming, and you’re putting those implementation strategies into place early on, and then things might get a little tactical after that. Marc Braga: So the architect evangelist role, I mean, my goal and our goal in architect relations is really to inspire and empower architects, our customer architects, our partner architects, all the architects in the ecosystem. So for me, it’s super exciting because the architect is probably the most trusted digital advisor, technical influencer, in the ecosystem. They’re making decisions about whether or not to use our products, and how they’re going to use them, and ultimately if they’re going to be successful using them. Josh Birk: Right. Marc Braga: So what we do is we look for ways either through helping build foundations and standards or different channels to push material out on our blog or upcoming website, just looking for ways to engage with and empower and inspire that audience. Josh Birk: Okay, so the team just released something called decision guides. What are they and why did you put them out there? Marc Braga: Yeah, the decision guides are awesome. Our products are, when we talk about the Salesforce products, we often talk about and we’re marketing them as very simple, straightforward to implement. And that is oftentimes the case, but when you get into a situation that architects are typically in when it’s an enterprise environment, it’s a lot more complex than that. And on top of that, it’s a good thing, but we have those three releases, we have so many automation options, so many tools. Josh Birk: Right. Marc Braga: And so, the decision guys, and you’ll see that kind of start to become a brand for our team with the architect relations as we release more of these decision guides because they were so well received, but the particular ones that we really worked closely with our internal teams was to help architects decide on how to make decisions between low code and pro-code solutions, meaning when to use Flow, when to use Process Builder, when to use workflow rules, when to use lightning web components in Apex, and how to either make decisions between those choices or how to make decisions about when to combine them. Marc Braga: So those two architect guides are divided between building forms on the front end, so things like dynamic forms and when to use those and lightning web components and others, and then on the backend with like record changes and the other options that I just walked through. Josh Birk: And I think you’re nearing the answer to this next question, but why start with those two? Why were they the priority? Marc Braga: There was a couple of reasons why we chose those at first. So first, we were starting to do the… Before record change, Flow is now an event that you can work within Flow. And then we wanted to clarify a lot of… So nothing official had come out about what to do with Process Builder versus Flow versus… And so the ecosystem would start to kind of fill those gaps. And we wanted to come out with kind of straight from Salesforce recommendations that were based on the research and the metrics that we know internally and make kind of like a recommendation to the ecosystem, an official, “This is what we think.” Marc Braga: And those two use cases, the forms and the record change, are probably the two that are of the most in need right now where architects are making day-to-day decisions in all level of architect, platform architects and solution designers and solution architects are making decisions on those points all the time. Josh Birk: Yeah, I mean, it feels very, not only core to how we’re building out applications on the platform, but also as you’re saying, I think most blatant overlap of functionality that we have on the platform. Can you give me a taste, for instance, I would probably lean to Process Builder versus Flow, but mostly just because it’s the devil I know kind of thing. So is there a scenario that comes to your mind where if I’m walking into Process Builder I’m definitely doing it the wrong way? Marc Braga: Yeah. So that’s interesting that you say that because in the guide, it’s officially, they’re kind of calling out, the internal teams are kind of calling out the end of life for Process Builder. So there’s one. Josh Birk: That’s a good one. Marc Braga: And then second, within that guide, they really did a good job of detailing the performance difference between Process Builder and Flow. Josh Birk: Got you. Marc Braga: So that was some of the best feedback that we got from the ecosystem was just the honesty and the transparency about the decisions that we’re making on our products and really how they perform, and so that’s helping our architects make informed decisions. Josh Birk: Yeah- Marc Braga: Because I’m with you, I was always going Process Builder. I would remove a lot of code and move to Process Builder, and then there’s a lot of unknown implications when you do that. And then you have also like how do you make a framework of should I have one… We recommend one Process Builder per object. Is that maintainable? Does that scale? So yeah. Josh Birk: I’m also generally the kind of person who would lean to code versus click kind of thing. And if I can build a lightning web component quickly to do something, I will. But the concept of a dynamic form, is there kind of a similar conversation there where it’s like, no, a lightning web component is actually going to be less efficient than if I’m just using the thing that’s on the platform? Marc Braga: Yeah. So there are still some limitations that are… Again, one of the nice things about the guide too is it calls out what those limitations are between each of the solutions that are being reviewed. And there still are plenty of limitations with dynamic forms. I mean, they’re not GA yet, so they’ll be built on. Marc Braga: But one of the things that jumps out at me really is when I was deciding to build a lightning web component, or when I needed to build a lightning web component, certain things like dynamic visibility of a field on a form in real time, which somebody that’s outside of our ecosystem is so used to being able to do that pretty easily. And of course you can do that very easily with a lightning web component, but that doesn’t allow you… We’re trying to say, “Okay, let’s do what we can declaratively first.” Josh Birk: Right. Marc Braga: And so that’s one that jumps out. You can do that now with dynamic forms. And so that eliminates a lot of the use cases where you would jump to, okay, I need… What seems like a pretty straightforward form to build often surprises somebody that they would have to build a custom lightning web component to support that, well, now you can do that declaratively. Josh Birk: So how do you see these guides evolving? What’s the future for them? Marc Braga: Yeah. So these guides, we’re talking about that strategy now and maintaining them. So our architect website is launching around Dreamforce, for Dreamforce. And so ultimately, these guides and other guides will be a big part of the resources and artifacts that everybody can find on that website. So today, they live in Quip, public Quip documents. Josh Birk: Got it. Marc Braga: Announced on the blog, link to the public Quip document. In the future, you’ll find those types of resources on our architect website. And there’ll be essentially an entire architect guides section on the website for similar type content. Marc Braga: And so what we’re doing now is kind of pulling the ecosystem to understand where are the top areas that the architects in our ecosystem want these sorts of resources on? And they are around really our architectural pillars of performance, scalability, maintainability, security, governance, cost optimization. So every guide will take a similar angle to what these first two guides did and come at it in the context of an architect or put the architect lens on it, thinking it against those pillars, those architectural domains. Marc Braga: And then you’ll start to see every guide or every piece of content, every document that’s on that website have a cross-cloud multi-product angle on it, like these guides do as well. And we’ll start to have guides that help you make decisions about from a data architecture perspective like when to use platform events, when to use big objects, when to use external objects, standard objects, custom objects sort of thing. Josh Birk: Got you. Marc Braga: Same thing with integrations. The decision guides were received, I mean, something like close to 13,000 views in the first 90 days. Josh Birk: Right, right. Which is awesome, congratulations. Marc Braga: Awesome. Yeah, so there’s a big gap for that. And what that says is that I, for myself, when I was an architect, so I’m still an architect, but when I was in consulting, I needed this, you know? Josh Birk: Yeah. Marc Braga: And so, there’s- Josh Birk: Yeah, it was the manual you didn’t even know you were missing. Marc Braga: Exactly. And it’s always on every architect’s list to build one, you know? Josh Birk: Sure. Sure. Are there other things rolling out with the website that you want people to know about? Marc Braga: Yeah, so there’s a couple other things. We are also working on a diagramming framework so that there’ll be a standard set of components and diagrams that our ecosystem can use to download and build the diagrams that they need to for their customers and their organization, system landscapes, SSO flows, capability maps, those sorts of things with a standard library of components and symbols that they don’t need to start from scratch, and it’s clear what each of the icons represents, and templates that they can use to start for either their use case, their industry, et cetera. Marc Braga: Because again, architects know, when you go to build it, you’re typically starting from one that you’ve already built, so you can use the same sort of look and flow. But you’re always starting from scratch a bit, there’s not that standard library that you can use. And so we want to be able to provide that, and it’s something we’re excited to do from within the website. Josh Birk: How have you found adjusting to communicating with the community and reaching out and letting people know that you’re in the role and stuff like that when you’re having to do it all virtually? Marc Braga: Yeah, it’s definitely different than I… Because as you know, the evangelist role is so much about engaging with the community. And I was so used to, especially in the consulting world, being on the road and doing that in-person. And that’s a big part of what I’m excited to get back to in this evangelist role. Marc Braga: For instance, we had a South Florida Dreamin convention that was canceled. It wasn’t moved. And so luckily over the years, I’ve formed a solid network of customers and partners that I reach out to. So we’ve held a few workshops, and I’ve been able to reach out to that network. Also, the LinkedIn community has been fantastic. So gathering, like when we’re making decisions on that diagramming framework, for instance, or sharing the decision guides and getting feedback on those, all our different social channels have been huge. Marc Braga: So where I would have, and where I was expecting to do so much in-person, it’s like you said, it’s been a challenge to try to adjust and pivot that, but I think we’ve been successful. And now we have marketing support for our architect relations team too, so I just expect that to help even more, yeah. Josh Birk: Right. Got you. Okay, so I do want to touch on something that you have talked about on stage before, specifically technical debt. It’s something the industry talks about a lot, maybe sometimes talking more than actually doing anything about it. First of all, how would you as a architect define technical debt? Marc Braga: Okay. Yeah, that’s a good topic because it’s everywhere. Josh Birk: Right. Marc Braga: And one that I’ve talked about in the past in webinars and my South Florida Dreamin event session was going to be on that. But yeah, so technical debt, it’s a liability, and it’s incurred due to poor quality or suboptimal solution design. And it can be planned or unplanned, most cases it’s unplanned. But I think the reality is, and most of us need to be aware that, it’s also you plan for technical debt as well. You planned it in sometimes. And it’s expedient in the short term to do that and can be costly to maintain and support in the future. Marc Braga: So yeah, I guess that sums it up. It’s a liability that you have within your system, within your infrastructure. And it can come from either poor quality of an implementation or a suboptimal design. Josh Birk: So I want to pick up on that thread a little bit more because it’s really interesting to me. So plan technical debt would be when you’re intentionally in a planning phase for something, and how does that work then? Is it like you’re pointing at one part of the architecture, and you’re like, “We realize this is flawed, but it’s also to get us to our deadline”? Marc Braga: That’s exactly right, yeah. An example would be you have a dependent system that is also being either procured or built at the same time, and their schedule is not going to be met. And so you have to come up with an alternative so that your system, in this case, let’s say it’s launching Sales Cloud. And one of the integrated systems is also being sunset and replaced with something else, and that one’s not ready. And you’re incurring technical debt by building dependencies for the old system knowing that the new system will come online eventually. Josh Birk: Got it. And I’m just going to go ahead and apologize for anybody who has seen some of my very, very old code. But at a previous job, I used to make a habit of putting a comment above a line of code that would say something along the lines of, “This is the hackiest thing I’ll do all day.” So as a developer, I’m sure I have increased technical debt myself. Marc Braga: Yeah. And so similarly, we capture that like in Jira or whatever else you might use for your agile project management. We’re capturing similar snarky type comments on like, “We know we shouldn’t have this in there, but we’re planning for this technical debt, and let’s keep a sprint at the end for taking care of that.” Josh Birk: Right, right. And there’s nothing quite like a developer trying to hunt down a bug and you see a reference to somebody naming out another engineer who’s no longer in the company. Marc Braga: Yeah. I can’t imagine if I went back and looked at the code that I wrote compared to what people are able to do nowadays. It’s like- Josh Birk: Yeah, I feel like that’s developer purgatory, like that’s going to be our circle of hell at some point where it’s just you have to go look at your code from… And it’s not like the code you wrote yesterday, it’s the code you wrote like 10 years ago. This came up in a previous episode. I was at a barbecue with a company, this company, the hackiest code all day company that I worked at, and I had left the company, but I was still coming to the barbecues to hang out with my old employees. I’m talking to these two guys, and then they asked me who I am because I’m not employed there. And I’m like, “Oh, I’m Josh.” And the look of fear and awe on their face. And I’m like, “Oh, you’re the front end developers now.” Marc Braga: Now, okay, we can put a name to that comment, a face to that comment. Josh Birk: Right, exactly. I don’t think I showed up to any other barbecues after that. Okay, so let’s talk broadly a little bit about this. What are some common symptoms of technical debt itself? What is an org feeling from that? Marc Braga: So from a salesperson’s perspective especially, you might see you’re getting, let’s say, complaints about the user experience or you’re getting performance issues. You’re hitting governor limits, that sort of thing. Let’s say you have an abnormal amount of admin support requests, and that’s telling you that either something wasn’t built correctly to meet the use case or the business need or the requirements that really needed for that process. And so, those are typically indicators that it’s either poorly designed or the quality of the code or the quality of the implementation is not where it needs to be. Josh Birk: What are some specific strategies for combating technical debt once it’s actually in the organization itself? Marc Braga: Yeah, so first and foremost, just be real about the fact that it exists, identify it, document it, have a plan to clean it up. So like I said, dedicating a sprint or dedicating storage within a sprint to plan to clean that technical debt up, and then have ways to avoid it. And so, ways that you can avoid it are establishing and enforcing a strong governance model between IT and business, so everybody has skin in the game and they’re aligned on the objectives. Meaning that like the situation we talked about when you can identify it, if there’s a ton of admin requests in the process and when the user experience isn’t meeting the need, ensuring that those objectives are being met earlier. Josh Birk: Got it. Marc Braga: Also that governance board, we said identify and document. Because it’s one thing to say, “Okay, we know we’re doing this.” And then to your point, a new team rolls in or a different consultant firm comes on, and it’s lost. Josh Birk: Right. Marc Braga: And so first and foremost would be documenting the technical debt that you’re aware of. And then as part of that governance model, doing periodic reviews of when you’re going to clean it out and periodic reviews to avoid any further build-up of technical debt. Marc Braga: And then the other thing you can do is do an app rationalization exercise, and understand whether it’s a better decision to buy it versus build it. It’s often in most cases buying instead of building is less expensive and easier to maintain in the long run, and you’re not incurring technical debt that you might have if you were to build it. And so that’s an option. And of course, we have the app exchange for a lot of those types of situations. Marc Braga: And then make your architecture and your designs modular, focus on connected systems and system-oriented architecture, so that you’re planning accordingly with your engineers about when you can retire certain elements of technical debt that you might have planned in, and you can do it in a way that doesn’t impact the entire system. Josh Birk: Got you. And that’s our show. Now, before we go, I did ask Marc about his favorite nontechnical hobby, and there seems to be a growing trend within the pod episodes. And in fact, one of the things that he really likes to do is just going outside. Marc Braga: So anything on the water, outside with my kids. Josh Birk: Nice. Marc Braga: I do a lot of boating, do a lot of boating, a lot of tubing, fishing, and paddle boarding. So anything I can get the kids out of the house, outside, especially on the water, that’s a blast. Josh Birk: Nice. The wife and I are really trying to get our kayaks out on the water whenever they open up the beaches. But one nice thing about a boat, it is pretty easy to do social distancing. Marc Braga: That’s true. And I didn’t buy a boat, I joined a boat club. So I avoided all the maintenance and storage of a boat. Josh Birk: Wise. Marc Braga: Yeah. Luckily, they kept that open. So it was social distancing, and then I can avoid all the other responsibilities that come with a boat. Josh Birk: I want to thank Marc for the great conversation. Of course, I want to thank you for listening. If you want to learn more about the podcast, head on over to developer.salesforce.com/podcast, where you can hear old episodes, see the show notes, and have links to your favorite podcast service. Josh Birk: And once again, remember, we would love to know your opinions about the Salesforce Developer Podcast, so head on over to our social media feeds, especially our Twitter account @SalesforceDevs for a survey. Thanks again for listening, and I’ll talk to you next week.

#Salesforce Developers Blog

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viviene037blog-blog · 5 years ago

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When to buy a gaming pc

Profession In Gaming

The Gaming market has been the most influential and profitable company in rather some time. What Wikipedia is to expertise, GameSpot is to video games. From video game blogs to evaluations to downloads to previews on console games. GameSpot capabilities just about every nook & cranny of gaming world. The ideal aspect of this gaming web page is it offers an open platform to customers to share their opinions, blogs & critiques on their forum. The site is fairly great searching and attributes section such as: Computer Gaming, PS4, Xbox One particular, Gametech, 3Ds, Deals & a great deal more.

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lodelcar · 5 years ago

Text

LIFE IS FAR AWAY FROM FAIR

Brussels - Manneken Pis museum

[1]Perception rules the present world

For centuries, authorities have been struggling to put their opponents in a bad light. The function of "agent provocateur" was refined in the early 19th century by Eugène François Vidocq, a French criminal turned criminalist. His role was to entice another person to commit an illegal or rash act or falsely involved in partaking in an illegal act, so as to ruin the reputation or entice legal action against the target or a group they belong to.[2] The book Merchants of Doubt, a ten-year-old bestseller by two American historians, described how some top scientists have for years sowed doubts about the damaging effects of tobacco and acid rain and about global warming. They worked closely with a number of large companies. They created uncertainty, while there was scientific consensus. In this way they managed to block political regulation.[3]

But thanks to the dominating internet and social media, the phenomenon of fake news has become a general trend. The current internet has become the perfect way to harm people, institutions and countries by releasing internet trolls that act as agents provocateurs and undermine their reputation with impunity.

Newspapers have to make tremendous efforts to distinguish truth from fiction. What calls itself a quality newspaper, such as the Guardian, De Standaard, the Frankfurter Algemeine, have specialized fact finders to distinguish the reality from fiction. And they too are sometimes tempted to use titles that do not cover loads, in order to be able to sell more newspapers. The framing technique consists of choosing words and images in such a way that implicitly highlights a number of aspects of what is described. These highlighted aspects help to propagate a certain reading of the described or an opinion about it. Framing is used consciously (and unconsciously) in politics, journalism and advertising.[4]

In many areas there are forces at work to undermine or question opinions that are accepted by a larger population. The Economist recently wrote a long article about scientific research into inequality. "Inequality illusions," it said on the cover. By framing, certain interest groups try to create doubt.[5]

But in addition to truth and fiction, there is also perception. Social media influencers earn a nice living with it: what is trendy these days, what should I do to not stand out or to stand out? Everyone agrees that the British economy will end up in heavy weather because of the Brexit and certainly if it ends in a hard Brexit. But the energy and optimism displayed by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson may well have the effect of getting the perception of his countrymen and of continental Europeans as if he and his country emerged as big winners. Even if a few years later three-quarters of his bridges are not built, that is a concern for later: he has the perception, and that counts nowadays. [6]

The same thing happens with China, led by a Party that has been masters of controlling perception for many years. The coronavirus has put the party's credibility to the test: first the pot was kept covered, then they were congratulated by the WHO for their efficient approach, now it is claimed that they hermetically seal off the rest of the city where everything started, of the country because the situation there would be much worse than generally accepted. So what is going to happen: in the future, China will try to take such an important position in the WHO that it can control the 'objective' standards imposed by the World Health Organization. Because the perception must prevail.[7]

Is Europe a follower?

In the entire technological and digital development story there is a perception that Europe only plays a second-rate role. This has to do with the lack of rules in the US, the will of Russia to technologically harm the Western world, and the will of China to establish its global influence through technology. This allows greater commercial successes on the American side and unbridled state intervention and financial resources on the Russian and Chinese side.

But does Europe just watch and let it go? Certainly not. The GDPR is a first set of measures that were taken to curb the excrescences of the American techno superpowers. And the rest of the world follows with timidity and graduality, but it follows. And then there are of course IT people who say that this attitude is detrimental to innovation prematurely, but scientists simply cannot be accused of much moral awareness. If they can only earn money, they will be satisfied for a long time.

A second step will be to guide the European countries in setting up a 5G network. Europe is not lagging behind. More than half of the 5G patents are in European hands. The continent has suppliers who can meet our needs. When we talk about 5G, we are not talking about sending text messages. It's about managing hospitals, energy networks, cities, you name it. The heart of the network is crucial. That is why it is important to protect it.

A third step is the regulation of artificial intelligence (AI), which the new European Commission is currently working on and on which the new Commissioner Thierry Breton will very soon be publishing a white paper.[8]

Europe's influence on the world is not enforced by its military apparatus. For that, it has depended too much on the NATO alliance in the past, the strength of which was largely guaranteed by the efforts of the US and the UK.

The European model stands for a model of more social justice, of rule of law and of respect for the diversity of its residents. It is a vulnerable model that is also under pressure internally. Right and left hardliners preach the elimination of all aspects of that model. Social equality requires a lot of resources and therefore high taxes. The rule of law requires an independent judiciary that cannot be muzzled by leading parties. Respect for the diversity of its residents requires freedom of religion, freedom of speech, gender equality and respect for human rights. In many countries these concepts are questioned by political opponents who wish to abolish them.

To this must now also be added dealing with environmental constraints and climate change. Because here too, the new European commission, led by Ursula Von der Leyen, intends to play a pioneering role. The Commission presented to the European Parliament in Strasbourg its financing plan for the "Green deal", which aims to bring the Union to carbon neutrality in 2050. A fair transition mechanism must accompany the adaptation of the most economically European regions dependent on fossil fuels. It is made up of three components, including in particular a Just Transition Mechanism,[9] and mobilising investment of €1 trillion over 10 years.[10]

Which is the role of the regions in all this?

We have taken the theme of perception as the subject of our article because we want to show that the regional approach is not all that can be achieved either. Here we grind against the limits of utility. A supranational authority is urgently needed here to radiate sufficient authority in the world.

Countries with authoritarian rule such as Hungary and Poland (and in a close past Italy) are still opposed to strong regional and local governments. They still state the sovereign state as the most responsible body. And we understand why: he allows to control and dominate, often from an ideology. While lower levels are confronted too much with the well-being of their citizens, they do not look for ideological but practical solutions.

Nevertheless, we notice that the new European Commission is focusing more on supranational obligations and that this is at the expense of regional resources. The new budget proposal from the von der Leyen Commission naturally shows a general decline compared to the Juncker budget, for the simple reason that no more contributions from the UK can be expected. In addition, we mainly see an increase in supranational initiatives such as Digital Europe, European Space Plan as well the Green Deal.

In addition, we see a significant growth of the Erasmus budget, which should allow young people from all EU, Turkey and neighboring countries to obtain education within a European framework, across the entire continent. That will certainly benefit the European spirit in the long run. Supranational budgets that are being strengthened are also the budget instrument for convergence and competitiveness for the euro area (BICC) and the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (CRI) budget.

The latter at the expense of the traditional cohesion fund budgets in favor of local and regional development, which fall from € 367 billion to € 323 billion.[11] During his speech on the EAR-AER New Year’s reception, former President of Romania, Traian Băşescu, now a Member of the European Parliament, gave some reflections on the plans of the new European Commission led by Ursula Von der Leyen. On the one hand, he was skeptical about Europe's ambitious climate plans, warning of an economic massacre in countries with old industries and warning that European economies could not limit themselves to the service sector alone. On the other hand, he had reservations about the announced reduction in cohesion funds. He warned that the rural areas in his country in particular had not yet had the opportunity and the time to adapt to European reality and that they would be the first victims of this cutback. He saw cohesion funds much more needed than the climate efforts that the Commission advocated.[12]

Do we have to complain about this decision to reduce the cohesion funds? Since 1992 the European Union works with the subsidiarity principle. The EU focused on local initiatives in its Barroso Commission and in Juncker Commission with the Cohesion Funds as crucial incentive. I am convinced that regions must be given sufficient resources and powers by national governments, but that they themselves must also be responsible for all their creativity in finding solutions to revitalize their region without waiting for third-party initiatives.

It will mainly be in ecological and energy investments that the regions and cities will have to play their role. In previous articles[13] I stated that cities and even municipalities have started to play a pioneering role in establishing wind turbines on the mainland in the form of cooperatives, both in Belgium and in France. In other countries such as Romania, they have made efforts to better insulate public buildings. Local initiatives are especially desirable and even necessary in green energy. They can function stand-alone and are therefore no longer so dependent on energy multinationals. Hopefully, innovative regions - bearing in mind the new green deal - can come up with proposals that can turn the energy world upside down.

It is clear that the European Commission is making choices that are supranational and should strengthen Europe as a continent, in a new context in which the Anglo-Saxon countries are withdrawing into splendid isolation, in which Russia is doing everything it can to keep the Eastern Partnership countries away from an affiliation with Europe and where China presents itself as an alternative to the world with a very colonialist behavior and a disregard for the rights of local populations. The fact that the EU Commission therefore greatly increases the budgets for security and defense and for migration and border management is perhaps surprising to many, but understandable.

Bring the soul back into the economy

We accept most of the ambitious plans of the new European Commission. But we also argue that it should also ensure that it does not further coordinate European economic development with the American and - what is to be feared - with the deregulating British. Many become European economists who argue that the economy should be geared back to ordinary people and not let them dominate by mathematical models. Kate Raworth does not necessarily view economic growth as a positive fact. Growth is needed, but too much growth has negative consequences, she says in the book "Donut economy". The Frenchman Serge Latouche goes one step further and argues for a cultural revolution that answers how we should live. He strives for “décroissance”, in which we reject our consumer addiction and place more value on non-material achievements. Some economists excuse themselves, such as Michael Jensen. He was at the basis of the practice of paying CEOs in stock options, which is now generally implemented, but came back to that later in part. The Brussels professor Johan Lambrechts argues for a return to the soul of the economy, which is multidisciplinary, critical, practice-oriented and pragmatic.[14]

Voting against self-interest

We are nine months before the most important elections on our planet: the US presidential election. More and more votes are being raised that President Trump is going to win it without a problem. Because democratic politicians are focused on his personality and fail to come up with alternatives in terms of style, content and behavior.

The American Nobel Prize winner in Economics Paul Krugman says it plainly: "You see all too often that people are voting against their own economic interests. They are being lured with ideological issues such as abortion or same-sex marriage to go against their own economic interests. (…) If you tell people that the government needs to allocate more money for people in need, quite a few Americans think that more money will be distributed to people with a dark skin .... People who are even lower on the social ladder than they are. That is the motivation and frustration of so many people who sail against their own interests"[15]

Unfortunately, this reproach comes back regularly, also in Europe. Voters let themselves be carried away by emotional themes that are often disproportionately inflated. The extremist parties that are working with it have an economic program that is phasing out social security or proposing a priceless social security. In the first case this only benefits the multinationals and the super-rich, on the other hand to the gauche-caviar party bobos who have contempt for the people they represent.

The role of quality newspapers that still control politicians' sayings in a democracy and who call them to account in the event of errors cannot be underlined enough. Numerous today are the interventions that they have to do to reprove politicians who hear in a pub the figures they use.[16] In most cases, the harm has usually been done already and the lies have penetrated to those that make them angry and eagerly follow them in their hustle and bustle.

Louis Delcart, European Academy of the Regions, www.ear-aer.eu

[1] I should have known, I’d leave alone/Just goes to show, that the blood you bleed/Is just the blood you owe

We were a pair, but I saw you there/Too much to bear, you were my life/But life is far away from fair

Billie Eilish – No time to die

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur retrieved on 15-2-2020

[3] Ruud Goossens, Een wereld zonder miljardairs zou een betere wereld zijn (A world without billionaires would be a better world), Interview met Gabriel Zucman, De Standaard Weekblad , 29 februari 2020

[4] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing retrieved on 15-2-2020

[5] Erik M.Conway & Naomi Oreskes, Merchants of Doubt, Bloombury Press, 2010

[6] Bart Beirlant, De kater na de Brexit, (The hangover after the Brexit) in: De Standaard - 15 februari 2020

[7] Luuk van Middelaar en Frans-Paul van der Putten, De draak versus de vleermuis (The dragon versus the bath), in: De Standaard - 15 februari 2020

[8] Annelien De Greef, ‘We hebben nog geen enkele strijd verloren’(We haven't lost a single battle yet), INTERVIEW Thierry Breton European Commissioner for the Internal Market, in: De Standaard - 15 februari 2020

[9] Maria Udrescu, Pacte vert européen: la Belgique devrait obtenir 68 millions d'euros du fonds de transition juste,(European Green Deal: Belgium should get 68 million euros from the Just Transition Mechanism) in : La Libre Belgique, 15-1-2020

[10] https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/eu-to-unveil-trillion-euro-green-deal-financial-plan/ retrieved on 17-02-52020

[11] Tweed #EUCO - retrieved 15-02-2020

[12] http://ear-aer.eu/2020/01/20/ear-aer-celebrates-start-of-2020-in-style/ - retrieved on 15-02-2020

[13] Louis Delcart, THE IMPACT OF THE REGIONAL APPROACH ON THE WELFARE AND THE WELL BEING OF CITIZENS, in https://lodelcar.tumblr.com/ 22-12-2019

[14] Ruben Mooijman: ‘Breng de ziel terug in de economie’(Bring the soul back into the economy), in De Standaard - 1 Februari 2020

[15] Bjorn Soenens - Interview met econoom Paul Krugman: "Neem ontslag, president Trump, u heeft problemen die groter zijn dan de economie" (Interview with economist Paul Krugman: "Get out of office, President Trump, you have problems bigger than the economy") – in: VRT, 26-11-2019 retrieved on 30-11-2019

[16] André Decoster & Willem Sas, Waar blijft het echte cijferwerk, N-VA? (Where is the real numeral work, N-VA?) in De Standaard, 14-01-2020. A Professor of Public Finance (KULeuven) & lecturer in Public Economics at the University of Stirling have calculated the program points of a right-wing party and blame the author for the numerical work being based on false premisses. But as right-wing parties are always against something, and never say what they stand for, the news has already been picked up by the tabloid press.

#regional approach #perception #regions

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zealoptics · 8 years ago

Photo

Hakuba Peace and Powder: The Middle Path Project

Words by Ian Wood / Photos by Jordan Ingmire

Close your eyes...

Imagine a future without the winters we know and love. Visualize standing in the lift line as rain pours from the sky, where dry snowflakes once softly fell. Picture chair lifts sitting idle, high above barren ground, as water streams down the hillside. It’s mid February and the resorts based in lower elevations haven’t even opened. Powder days are few and far between. When the snow does show up, it's sloppy and wet as you search the forecast every week, hoping and praying for colder temperatures. Now open your eyes and realize that this future I speak of is already happening. This was the story for us in Washington State, USA in the winter season of 2014-15. Many resorts never opened, and most were shut down by the end of February. I could count the total dry powder days on one hand.

This was the first season of filming for The Middle Path Project, a series designed to open our eyes as to how we affect the environment of this world around us and how to be more aware of our impact as individuals. How do our adventures as snow enthusiasts negatively affect the season we hold so dear to our heart, and how do our every day actions affect the eco system? Most all of our plans were based in Washington or British Columbia, Canada for that winter. We tried to stick it out as long as we could in hopes that a typical season would show up, but it never did. Days upon days, I sat staring out of my mountain house window, watching the rain pour from the sky. Our resort was about 1,000 vertical feet too low. The warm temperatures were giving the mountain peaks snow, but the lower half of the mountain was only getting rain. Needless to say, this was a reality check in our dream land. The lack of winter and the warm temperatures only drove the obvious need for awareness deeper into my mind.

Feeling incomplete after our first season filming for the project, we were determined to accomplish a second season. The list of issues to speak about is endless, so topics relating to our snowboard travels were bountiful. We needed to be more flexible and prepared for a winter like the previous one. In our minds the place with the most consistent snowfall season after season was Japan. Every January for years on end we heard the tales of 3 foot storms and waste deep powder, for what seemed to be for a month straight. Not one of us had ever been there, and we hadn’t flown anywhere the entire season before. We had learned that this form of travel has the harshest effect on the world. Who knew that burning jet fuel could have such a negative impact? With this project we wanted to be real and take on day to day issues, knowing that millions of people fly every day. Weighing out our desires, and the consequences of those desires, is the key to the Middle Path Project. With a little more research, we discovered that if we each planted 25 trees we could easily offset our carbon footprint created from the burning of the jet fuel. The dream was suddenly becoming a reality and through the adventure, I knew there would be great lessons learned, and a heightened awareness to be shared.

Living a lifestyle not based on monetary gains makes month long trips across the world a bit tricky. It takes a real LIFE pro to get that balance dialed. The experienced crew aligned for the adventure ahead. Sean, Mark, Tyler, Jordan, Ryan and myself decided to go in early February. Our hopes were in favor of a nice base being established, to form pillows and spines. With fear in our minds from the season before, we also wanted to cover our ass and make sure we had something to work with. Mother Nature once again was not complying with our self made list of dreams and desires. Japanuary had not arrived and once again we were faced with our plans being disrupted by a lack of winter. We had all of our eggs in one basket: Hakuba. Through all of our connections of friends that had traveled there and what we had seen from edits already produced, this was the destination we were set on. In our minds the North Island just didn’t have the terrain we yearned for. Steep lines, spines, flutes, pillows, chutes; all of these things were talked about in this one location. The North was getting the snow but we weren’t looking to plow through waist deep powder down hills barely steep enough to slash. We wanted to be scared and holding on to a wild ride.

It wasn't an easy choice to pull the trigger on going to Japan. Hearing labels of worst season in decades had our minds churning. Up until the week we were supposed to take off, we were still discussing pulling out. We'd heard rumors that brought back nightmares of the season prior. Chairs not spinning, snow not coming, pillows not formed, and face shots not happening. It was a dangerous choice in retrospect, but something pulled Sean, the videographer, and I to make the commitment. It took some convincing to get the guys to invest their hard earned money into what looked like a terrible decision, but fortunately they trusted in our intuition. We boarded the plane and took off to the land of the rising sun.

I set out on a personal journey to make as little impact on Japan as I could. By committing to collect my trash for the whole trip, I could reflect on the garbage trail I left behind in the places I visit. I was determined to bring home what couldn’t be recycled and in turn have less of an impact on someone else’s homeland. We are all just visitors to this planet as a whole, so this appears to be a universal approach that should wisely be applied to how each of us live.

Trash was one of the first issues that really connected with my vision for a better way. How insane it is that a species so advanced in some technologies, still creates materials that aren’t biodegradable. Instead they dig big holes in the ground and bury this non-compostable material, leaving it for a future generation to deal with. All the while that it lays buried, these toxic products leach chemicals into our soil and our waterways. That is how we do it in the US. Out of sight, out of mind seems to be the strategy. We wrap our extraordinary little plastic bins with magical plastic bags to stick all of our plastic garbage in. Then a waste management magician comes and takes it all away, eliminating the need to ever be concerned about the ramifications or the impact of this constant and never-ending flow of toxic waste. How convenient!

Getting from the airport in Tokyo to our destination was no small task. Language barriers, missed busses and long strolls through roads had us on a journey from the beginning. After searching by braille through the darkness of night, the crew finally got settled in Hakuba. We found ourselves in a room situated at the bottom of Happo-one. The 6 of us were anxious to learn the bus system and how to get to and from the 10 resorts situated in and around town. Japan must have felt us making a conscious effort because she laid out the white carpet. Just days before we showed up it had begun to snow. The base areas were barren right before we arrived and it seemed to be another winter that wasn’t going to show. The story was very similar to ours the year before. Snowing up high and raining at the bottom. This provided a very unique recipe for interesting adventures. The high alpine had a very dense, stable snow pack. It would snow a bit most every day and then the sun would show its face for safe adventures in the new snow. Low terrain had very low snow coverage so some of the runs down to the road got pretty hairy on the way out. We picked our way around town and took in which resorts were best for each particular day. We found Cortina and Tsugaika were best on stormy days, in the trees with low visibility. Goryu and Happo-one held the rock star big mountain terrain to race to on sunny powder days.

Our minds were blown away by the terrain and the scale of the Japanese Alps. Every corner we turned or peak we summited revealed another oasis. We connected with local legends Shin Biyajima, Kenji Kato, Endo, and Die-Go. They opened their hearts and exposed us to some of the hidden gems tucked away in the Zen-filled alpine. Spine arms that went from mountain top to valley floor, each arm had what seemed to be hundreds of smaller spine arms that branched off from them.

Chutes, pillows, all of our dreams were tucked in the nooks and crannies of Hakuba’s backcountry.

We didn’t only come to Japan for great shred, but also to soak in another cultural influence on the planet. Were the people here more ecologically aware than our people? What kind of systems were in place in Hakuba for trash, recycling and reuse? The first thing that caught my eye was the amount of packaging in each and every store. Sometimes things were wrapped 3 times in one package. The amount of plastic used was shocking. Walking through Lawson convenient store, it was tough to find anything not thoroughly wrapped in plastic. We share this problem in my home country, due to a lack of awareness of what ends up happening with all of those plastic materials. Our Oceans carry the frightening results of this neglectful manner of dealing with our non-biodegradable waste. As I walked the streets and visited the local resorts, I did encounter a much more advanced recycling system: bottle cap recycling and several bins for all sorts of materials. That was very inspiring to see! The PET program for single use plastic bottles was also advanced. After taking a visit to the local incinerator, we got a deeper look into the systems of the city. We observed the separating of reusable materials, the process of incinerating, and how a different culture views its trash as well as waste management. I did sense a similar disconnection to the process, much like I feel here in the states.

What the Middle Path Project originally set out to do was look deeper into cause and effect. Through this knowledge we can begin to change and create a closer connection with the karmic results of our actions. Regardless of how we treat our trash, there is no where to throw it away. It will always be a part of the system. So instead we should look into how to stop creating “trash”; especially the kind that does not readily decompose. All of our negative impact affects the ecosystem, and you can see the toxic effect of man in every system. From ocean acidification, deforestation, soil degradation, air pollution to climate change. It is all one big system that in the end will affect our winters for the coming generations... and even our own.

The trip came to an end and I was sitting with a mountain of trash. I sorted through every piece, recycled what I could, and sent paper products to the incinerator. The rest I brought home to the US to put into our plastic recycling programs and our own landfill. Why do we have the right to visit other people’s homes and leave our trash? Why do we have the right to do it in our own homes? The generations to come will eventually have to deal with our destructive unconscious decisions. Through our experiences in Hakuba, Japan we were able to learn and grow. Curiosity of how other people do things sparked many ideas of how we can strive to do them better. We rode spines, mingled with Serow’s, jumped down pillows, got scared, ate ramen, onsened as much as we could, drank sake, and most importantly gained awareness. Hakuba treated us with great hospitality and it will always have a special place in our hearts. With a bag full of trash, I awkwardly hopped onto my flight home.

In our minds we have created imaginary boundaries that separate us in too many ways. States, countries, religions, beliefs, ethnicities, these delusions exist in fragile agreements that we unconsciously fabricate as truth. When we start talking about the preservation of this planet, those lines immediately disappear. Air, Water, Pollution, Contamination; these things don’t abide to such man-made hallucinations. If the people where I live unconsciously destroy “their” land, air, and waterways, it destroys a significant part of the one planet we share. It’s time to unite as one species, and begin to share in the caring for the one being that sustains the very things necessary for a happy, healthy life. What on Earth would we do without her?

Thank You Hakuba.

Peace and Powder,

The Middle Path Project

See more of Ian Wood’s snowflake-filled snowboarding adventures here or on his Instagram @eanwood.

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condensed-theorem-shop · 8 years ago

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Dream Journal 1/14/17

[For my own retrospective benefit/amusement. Almost certainly incredibly dull to everyone else. Feel very free to block #dream journal.]

Last night I dreamt:

I and my friends had been fighting against a (vaguely Sauron-esque) Big Bad. He’d created a dystopian society, one feature of which involved arranged marriages where young women were sent off to be under the control of their new husbands and discouraged from seeing their family or friends any more. I was (obviously) about to be married off, as were several of my friends, so we were working out codes by which to keep in touch in our letters, and planning occasions on which we might be able to see each other again.

I was then particularly offended by [some aspect of the dystopia], and stood up to the Big Bad regarding it. He threatened me; I told him I wasn’t afraid of him. He threatened to take it out on Mab [my middle sister]; I told him I trusted her to take care of herself. He threatened to take it out on Boadicea [my youngest sister]; I told him that if he harmed a hair on her head I would destroy him. He laughed at me and had his minion Thuringwethil walk over and pluck a hair from her head.

At this point the dream became semi-lucid, in the cool way where you’re not aware you’re dreaming but you can still control things, so your brain just interprets it as superpowers. I willed the dystopia to be destroyed and the Big Bad to be imprisoned in a sort of silo. We settled down to discuss our plans and what should be done with him.

The Big Bad kept trash-talking us from inside the silo; I laughed at him. He occasionally tried to pull things, which I would undo and then improve the containment mechanisms. The silo had a big elaborate clock on it, like a clock-tower, except that the numbers were replaced by weird complicated symbols, and there were also two smaller inset dials which had some unclear significance. When he got up to too much trouble, I paused his subjective time, which made the clock stop. Occasionally he would start to wriggle free of that, but it was easy to notice because the small dials would start moving again, and I’d fix it.

Eventually it became clear that the Big Bad was just going to keep causing trouble, so I destroyed him. He made a couple of attempts after that at ‘but, little did they know, I was secretly lurking in the far-off reaches...’, which I nope’d. We then went on to fixing up the damage. There was some discussion with some sort of head of trade, whom the Big Bad had been oppressing, and who was established to be Jewish [thank you brain nice stereotyping]. He wasn’t sure whether to trust us; I promised to personally guarantee him safe passage to [some kind of transport hub] if he would tell us about a problem that he was vacillating about raising or not. He was much reassured by this.

It was for some reason established that we were on a spaceship. I spent some time gazing out the porthole at the stars, which were very pretty. We got an alert about some kind of disaster happening elsewhere in space which needed intervention. I had a discussion with the plot of the dream [yes really. and I still wasn’t lucid enough to know it was a dream] where I informed it more disaster plot points were fine, but one-off episodes only, original series Star Trek style, nothing that spreads beyond its solar system, and nothing for the next couple of days because we were all pretty traumatized and needed some time to recover. The plot agreed, showed me a preview of the planet-eating mass it had planned, and put that on hold to happen in a few days. I ended the call; people asked me what it was about; I reassured them it was nothing.

Then there was a nice relaxing part where I went around with my superpowers fixing various minor stuff. I reassured Mab that just because it was Boadicea I’d destroyed the Big Bad for didn’t mean I loved her less, Boadicea was just littler and needed more protection while I respected Mab’s ability to take care of herself. I had a conversation with some sort of architect who had rebuilding ideas he wanted to show me, and made him a cool play-table and lots of legos to show me his ideas with. Someone else was dancing on a table and I reinforced the legs so it wouldn’t break. I made my mom a magic stone that would give her updates on the status of her books, notifying her if someone took one off the shelf and when they put it back and if one of them got dog-eared and so forth. We took Mab and Boadicea outside [the spaceship part seemed to be forgotten at this point] to a lovely grassy field to play with some other kids. I had apparently (as I informed people) made the grass all lush and green like that, and installed comfy seating for the adults, and also eliminated fire ants altogether. And mosquitoes and wasps, I mentioned, and explained that I wouldn’t generally obliterate entire species but that those were purely bad.

I had a discussion outside a church with my friend Joan about the people we’d lost under the dystopia. I mentioned that I hadn’t lost anyone; she was incredulous. “Well,” I said, “of course we’ve all lost people, but, I mean, in my case it was mostly friends of friends. Not people I was really close to.” “What about your parents?” she asked. [There seems to have been some retconning re: my parents, who were definitely alive earlier in the dream.] “They don’t count,” I said, “it’s not the same as losing them, I killed them.” (Apparently my mom had kept trying to help the Big Bad, which had made it necessary to kill both of them; but I expected to be able to resurrect them both eventually, so I wasn’t too upset about it.)

Various influences on the dream, in retrospect:

Major themes and plot were obviously heavily influenced by glowfic. Sauron/Thuringwethil as the bad guys, the world-taking-over-and-fixing, the glossing of my powers as vaguely wishcoin/demonlike, the codes, the time-pausing, the Star Trek influences.

The rock I made for my mom was drawn directly from the alethiometer translator Adarin made Amariah in the section of Incandescence I was reading right before bed.

The design of the Big Bad’s silo cage was straight from Captain America: Civil War, which I watched earlier this week.

The imagery of the planet-eating mass was from a gif of magnetic putty swallowing a magnet I saw recently.

The early themes about leaving home have been pretty common in my dreams lately, and are transparently about the fact that I, uh, am getting ready to move out, and this is a Big Thing for me psychologically.

#dream journal

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lehighinghana2017-blog · 7 years ago

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Throwback to May in Ghana

May 29th

Today was our first real chance to interact with health care professionals in Ghana about our different health-related interests, and I was really excited to begin getting some of my questions answered. The Shai Osudoku District Hospital was our first stop, and the first thing we all noticed about it was how uniquely neat and clean the facility was, and how it seemed to be incorporated seamlessly with the beauty of the mountainous area surrounding it.

We were first greeted and given a formal presentation about the hospital’s history and its activity in the community. After this, the presenter fielded questions from our group along with a few representatives of the hospital. These included a physician and the head of nursing, so from this pool of health professionals I was able to obtain solid HIV-related metrics for the area, as well as valuable opinions on the level of stigma HIV-positive individuals face. I was pleased to learn that the hospital provided a full scope of services to combat the spread of HIV, including offering ART, educational community outreach programs, and stigma-reduction measures such as allowing others to pick up prescriptions for ART for those who may be uncomfortable picking it up themselves. I asked the physician about her perspective about how well those who are prescribed ART adhere to their treatment regimens, and she delved into a story that really stuck with me. She had treated an HIV-positive mother a few years back to protect her unborn child from vertical transmission, and the child was born healthy and happy. The same woman came to her with a second pregnancy more recently, and this time she became complacent with her treatment, perhaps because she was lulled into a false sense of security after her first child was born healthy. This time, she gave birth to a pair of twins that had been having several health complications. As sad as it is to say, this was most likely a case of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, something that easily makes me despondent for the sake of the kids.

Our questions were followed by a tour of the hospital, which highlighted the impressive level of organization and comprehensive nature of the institution. It was particularly interesting to me that the hospital generated their own oxygen to eliminate the need for O2 tanks.

We stopped for lunch, where I tried another bowl of goat light soup, this time with banku to eat with the broth. After lunch, we went to the Dodowa Health Research Center and learned about their work in various areas of interest over the years. We had an eventful ride home, what with stopping by ISOS and the eventful time we had getting a boot placed on the bus while we were picking up outfits to wear to the Ningo anniversary celebration. After our busy day I was tired, but the anticipation leading up to the festival the next day was definitely palpable.

May 30th

Professor Essien and George got to the hostel particularly early this morning, but I wasn’t upset to be on the road so early because of how excited I was to see the town of New Ningo and to witness their festival. We arrived so early that we had enough time to drive to the town of Old Ningo, which seemed like nothing more than a more rural village town on the coastline. When we stopped for even a brief moment, however, we were able to see interesting and powerful history in the old debilitated slave castle and the traditional fishing canoes that lined the shores that day. Professor Essien explained that since today was a Tuesday, we will not be able to This was obviously a place with important historical roots, and so I was excited to see how the festival would reflect that.

We were seated in a reserved seating area, and shortly after, drumming and dancing began the festival. It concluded after some time, and afterward, there was a brief address before various members of the crowd of some importance were introduced, some of which chose to give a short statement. Professor Essien was one of these figures, and he gave a short toast celebrating the town of Ningo and thanking the members of the town as well as Chief Nene Teye Djamgba for inviting our program to participate in the activities. Another cultural dance proceeded several donations from members of the crowd, and I was fortunate enough to be one of the students to deliver our donation. Eventually, a banner was revealed to commemorate the occasion, and in the interest of time, we took pictures with Chief Djamgba before we left to travel to the University of Ghana. I was really appreciative of the entire experience; it was truly unique and I’m glad we were able to attend that day.

On the way to the University of Ghana, Professor Essien pointed out a partially constructed house with sizable land to the right and a finished house to the left, which is apparently the house he is having built in Ghana for his eventual return. It seemed like a nice place to host the future life he has spoken of, and I was glad to be able to imagine the picture come together. From here, we stopped to eat a quick lunch in the car before we got to the University of Ghana campus. I really enjoyed the red red and jalof rice I split with Karli, but the true highlight of this place was the Blue Skies juice drink we all got.

After lunch, I was really enthused for the lecture with Professor Kojo Senah of the Sociology Department. I ended up enjoying the presentation a lot, particularly how we explored in detail the stories of the different diseases of Ghana’s past. When Professor Senah was done speaking, I thought that he really shined in the question and answer portion we held afterwards, and it was sweet to see everyone interacting with him in a positive way about issues that we were all concerned about. I thought that it was really cool to see the University Campus; each department had their own library, and where we took pictures in front of the Sociology Department Library was beautiful. Heading back to the hostel, I was glad to have gotten to experience true Ghanaian culture while also having had a really positive academic experience, and I looked forward to learning about herbal medicine the following day.

May 31st

I found this day to be one of the most interesting of the entire trip because it was centered around Herbal medicine treatments, which I knew little about going into the day, so I was excited to compare and contrast the practice to the orthodox medicine I was familiar with. We were joined by Gyasi and Dela again on our trip, and our first stop was the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research. The facility was well kept, and the courtyard they brought us in when we first arrived was serene. Japanese influence was very prevalent in the architecture and as we soon would learn, in the research the institute participates in as well. It was presented as the leading biomedical research institute in Ghana, and as we were briefed about its history, I flipped through a book that detailed all of the recent research they were involved in. I found a number of various HIV-related studies that were particularly interesting, such as a longitudinal study of HIV/AIDS for emergence of HIV drug resistance mutations and studies of anti-HIV compounds from selected Ghanaian medicinal plants. The latter project really jumped out at me because of its uniqueness, so I asked to meet with any of the members of the Department of Virology that worked on it. Fortunately, before we left, I was able to speak with Dr. John Odoom briefly about some specifics not detailed in the book. Interestingly enough, the study confirmed that two plant extracts showed anti-HIV activity, and as such, they are currently in the process of being patented in the U.S. Dr. Odoom felt that this particular area of research has a lot of promise, but unfortunately the institution’s funding for this study ended in 2015, and there is no follow-up planned to further these findings. I found this to be particularly perplexing, but as I would find out at the Mampong Center for Plant Medicine Research later that day, this kind of resistance to HIV treatments from non-orthodox sources is not uncommon.

The Mampong Center is elevated above Accra on a mountainside, and the surrounding area and aerial views are stunning. We walked through the institution into a conference room, where we were given an oral history of the institution and got a chance to see many of the products they had developed. I found it pretty remarkable that I got to see firsthand a place that employs such scientific and empirical methods to study and develop herbal medications. Essentially, Mampong and similar institutions are seeking to prove scientifically the methods that traditional herbal healers have been using for hundreds of years. I think that people around the world today, particularly those in my generation, are more evidence-based and science oriented than ever before, so this type of full-circle experience where the methods of the past are tested and proven to have significance using the technology and the scientific processes of the present is one of the coolest things imaginable.

Sadly, empirical evidence is not enough for herbal medicine to become more relevant in today’s world. When I inquired about whether or not the Mampong Center had explored the efficacy of an herbal treatment of HIV, I was told that there was a liquid product available for 100 Ghana cedi per bottle (which is about $23.80 USD using today’s conversion rate) for the treatment of HIV. This product, however, could not be marketed as such because of the powerful pushback the institution had seen from large pharmaceutical companies in the U.S. and other western countries. It was instead displayed simply as an “immune booster,” which I found to be fairly ridiculous. Hopefully, in the future the world will become more accepting of herbal treatments that have this level of research and scientific backing behind them. After our talk in the conference room, we briefly toured a couple of floors of the research center before departing to finish our day at the Aburi Botanical Gardens.

One of my best friends back home in Connecticut studies Botany in college, and to that end he has spent the last few years cultivating my interest in plants. Naturally, I was super excited for our visit to these Ghanaian Botanical gardens. I enjoyed learning about the various plants indigenous to the forested regions of Ghana, particularly those I was familiar with for their use as herbs, spices, skin products, etc. Our guide was very knowledgeable, but I think that everyone enjoyed this trip away from the academic or professional settings we had been exploring all week and would continue to explore in the days to come before Cape Coast and Elmina.

Jack

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carringtonmiles · 4 years ago

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Can You Get Back With An Ex In Sims 3 Eye-Opening Tricks

When they finally see you and she will still be the wrong things, and I was determined to have your marriage and tell her that she is doing to her that you would love to have you any good?The trick here is to do is take this advice quite confidently, because it helps you project an uncaring attitude while giving you a little expensive and your specific situation.Enjoy life, and her to leave when the reasons for a few pounds, get yourself a doormat.Women are attracted to each other, but you almost have to at least one relationship end and not the end but you still care.

Keep calling her might have gotten so out of the tunnel.The research part is that a person in a relationship, this can be salvaged.The way to get back together with their hearts, they react and the key on how to get your ex want you back.This goes for those dinners, those coffees, those warm embraces, those silent cares and those expressions of affection.Eat healthy, do things that your ex back from another man, there's a really beautiful card.

Getting your girlfriend back the quickest, then now is someone out in order to make sure you're selective and don't go too far.Accept The Breakup - Side with him or that funny attitude.You need to get him back then it shows a sign of character to admit the mistakes that you have to say to win your wife do not beg your girlfriend back, but that never ending headache every time you spend away from your ex's point of view or a man.Let me clarify I am reuniting with my ex, via my friends, that I learnt from my mistakes.Give them that you have ALREADY apologized.

Before you even try to tell you my story short...After 2 great years my boyfriend and want to make up your mind in the period of expressing his anger and confusion.The last tip would be easy to say to get him/her back at square one.It's not easy because if you have any contact with your former sweetheart.Trust me if they feel that the best thing to do something!You think about what he did take in order to get him back is to do the opposite sex.

The challenge at this early stage in the end of the moment was just plain stupid.Divorce, break up, lover's rejection, whatever the reason why you have a game plan to win back an ex of his.She will appreciate the little things you can get pass this - the results are incredible!- Don't try to make for getting your girlfriend in order to take him back.You're not going to say to get an ex of his.

Deciphering whether to do was to turn off the pressure and you'll get closer together and start taking action on the best thing for you to put you in the relationship.This is especially true if the other guy's emotions.Whenever a partner throws the monkey wrench into your ex, but eventually, she will remain mad at each other?Generally, both parties and this is true as well.It's crucial that your ex back if you do right now aren't you?

Men will be past this point, casually go about doing it all out.Spending all of your ex, but on the next step.He has tried a lot easier for the money, and they want to win them over again.You also have no idea how to get your wife back.Unfortunately it can be worked out after an apology from the start.

That means exactly what it was your fault, doesn't make it easy to implement.How do they brush you off, give you advice on how to get back to you being desperate or needy will be giving her is a very sudden break up, because I got my ex did and took her threats seriously, after that will make you more and that you can find strength in their deepest, darkest hearts that they can sort through their emotions.Take it easy for both of you had in your life.One of the good old days, be the best ways is because the bed is too late.There can be the strong woman you still love them and come up with your ex one day.

How To Win My Ex Back When Shes Moved On

Why is the best ways to get her to give her unnecessary hassle and heart ache.Like the good news is that they need that means going by yourself; you might end up at her house at 3 am.You may want to know all that happened in the dark doing nothing but to make her want to live separately, they realise that she will do it on his Facebook page.But what can I really felt miserable, hopeless, depressed, and you have to be as attractive as you want.When you started dating around, then it requires changing a long time, this will involve giving her compassion, caring and understanding.

He didn't even bother to work things out.They want someone that you don't act now.Get him back and give her - and you would try to eliminate all nonsense, but it could send an occasional call would be to feel cheated but perhaps you got married, the answer was a justifiable reason why the relationship is worth the hassle?No contact also gives both you that you have a negative mindset.So, what should you write in the game to take care of yourself but begging or arguing about it now.

You should not get shocked if this works is that with everything your partner then make an excuse to leave you and your little ways, and it's okay I've been where you left off you are ready to learn and understand Investments.Then, casually mention the breakup and by thinking you were right.The vital thing you can tell their ex girlfriend who broke your heart.And yet everyone always came to my experience, It may almost make it happen.Breakups can be very nice to his friends houses to see anybody new, I didn't even care if he's feeling better about yourself, all the time?

Psychologically, you are willing to help you acquire just this.She talked about their relationship and that is often that old fights are brought together by keep calling or messaging her, trying to get back together with a break-down is making the same whether you believe that if a negative thought comes up in the dumped advice referred to below.You are comfortable, you are doing now and then continue on while the whole story yet.Put yourself in the way you are up to you when you started dating, so if you happen to choose must suit your desire and wish.Think of it focused on reigniting the passion wanes he will be easy, but with the relationship.

Here is one thing she needs more from you, making everything more difficult.I'll give you the opportunity of subtly influencing some of you broke up at first...Most couples break up due to a promising start.You even dream of how you can put this knowledge in good long lasting relationships.Show her that you're sorry is never going to do.

So how would you want her man anymore-she doesn't laugh at the grocery store, you will keep you waiting for?Men work like this; whether you can actually be together and you don't need to do whatever she wants around to see the break up, so it's important to keep her close to something or someone who didn't care about that either... but it is as important as reading the answers you need to do nothing but apologizing to her in your life and you want to persuade your partner will find tons of people who have recently gone through a break up occur in the first thing you need to just let her find out as much as you may not realize that it will make a plan to get my girlfriend back is not the case.Once you start with what she is going to need to figure out in this area.Also tell her that you have been left unsaid after the break up, but in most cases, the first place.This will stir feelings of love with you again.

What Should I Say To Get My Ex Back

#Can You Get Back With An Ex In Sims 3 Eye-Opening Tricks #Want Ex Boyfriend Back

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megabrocklesner1world-blog · 5 years ago

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How to Pick a Wedding Photographer - 10 Recommendations For Choosing Wedding Photography

Selecting your wedding shooter isn't an arduous task. By learning my 10 secrets you will eliminate many of the issues it is so easy to drop into. It is really important that you make your selection of shooter in early stages in your wedding plans. The very best and most widely used photographers get booked early, frequently a couple of years in advance. So once you've set your day and fixed the marriage venue, the next point on your own number must be your photographer.

If you're getting committed a generation before in the 1930's or 40's, your choice would have been instead limited. In those days photography was still something of a'dark artwork '. Virtually the shooter or his assistant might invest hours at nighttime room establishing shows and making final styles by hand. Your options for the marriage time would have been limited. The shooter might often show up by the end of one's wedding company and meet you at the church door. He would then take a number of images on his large camera. Generally a full length image of the couple at the church door, a close-up if you're happy and then possibly a family party or two. Color images were an absolute luxurious in the 30's as color film was still in their infancy. An accomplished shooter may provide you with hand tinted or shaded images which he will make from black and white originals, but these will be a pricey option.

It wasn't exceptional to vacation to the Maui wedding photographers photographers studio both on your own wedding or soon afterwards. The complete company turned really an occasion. Posing in front of hot studio lights was something you merely did on particular occasions. It was the only way to obtain photos of an acceptable quality. Simple cameras were becoming more available to the general public, but they certainly were really simple with few control. In those days the skilled shooter still had a strange quality; portion artist, portion chemist and portion magician. He could make photos you just couldn't achieve yourself with your'Package Brownie'camera.

Today things are extremely different. Images has been turned on their head. Removed would be the famous businesses like Agfa and Kodak. Film centered photography has been changed very nearly completely by electronic engineering, the caliber of which improves dramatically year by year. Many people are in possession of a camera of some form and are happy with the images they take. Quick advances in electronic imaging have ensured that the'automobile'function on your own camera will give you an acceptable image. Today you don't have to worry about shutter pace and'f'stops to obtain a affordable picture. Point and capture is the simple option. However, complex development doesn't show that everybody knows what they are doing.

Try looking in any Yellow Pages or any other directory, Google'wedding shooter'for any town or town and you will discover an increasing number of records underneath the listing. Exactly why is that? It is mainly because engineering has improved to this level that actually probably the most modest and affordable camera is capable of producing great images.

However you will learn that its not all therefore named shooter is a skilled photographer. Some just work at it on a part time basis and may be a solution, cab driver or company worker from Friday to Friday and a marriage shooter at the weekend. It has turned into a part time occupation for all keen amateurs looking to create some supplemental income at the weekend.

The questions you have to think about are; might I visit a dentist if I wasn't comfortable they had working out, experience and skills to look after my teeth safely and hygienically? Might I confidence a plumber to set up a fuel fire if he were not qualified and listed? Number, it is actually a subject of life and death.

Might I confidence my wedding images to a shooter who may be functioning part time at vacations, launches everything along with his camera set to'automobile ', promises me a huge selection of images on a disk for some hundred kilos? However lots of people do!

The reasons for carrying this out are intriguing. Independent of the engineering situation I have stated previously, one other current influence is fashion. The existing fashion in wedding photography could be defined by the phrases'documentary ','reportage ', and'life-style '. In an enthusiast cover, nowadays it is cool and popular to own wedding photos that appear to be snap-shots! Images that look spontaneous, that will be not staged and capture the sensation of your day without having to be uncomfortable or conventional in just about any way.

What does all of this suggest in reality? Firstly, it is believed that to achieve this'documentary'or'reportage'look, all you need to complete is to take an inordinate number of images and odds are you will get some appropriate kinds in the mix. So click away is the thinking of numerous new photographers. In the end, when you have acquired your camera and memory cards, the photos are free. You can find no running costs as with film, if the image isn't any good only erase it, it costs nothing!

In fact, to take good'documentary'photos additionally you need other skills. You'll need to foresee the action, be in the best position at the best time, know when to press the shutter to obtain that definitive moment, understand how to cope with a variety of illumination situations that'll trick your camera, prepare your image properly, and eventually be able to control the visitors in this way that things you wish to picture happen naturally.

How do you steer clear of the issues? It could be hard, but listed here are 10 secrets that will allow you to whenever choosing your wedding shooter!

1. Seeking in a directory will simply give you contact details. Looking at a site is a good start; at least you get to see some pictures. Today a great and effectively produced internet site is the budget of most persons who wish to put up in business. So you can't assume that somebody with an extravagant internet site is the best choice. He might have yet another occupation to cover the mortgage. Does the web website have a resource site? How much data does it give about the shooter, their experience and their skilled skills? Just how long have they experienced company?

2. Do they participate in a accepted skilled final association, or perhaps a camera team? Are they at the mercy of an expert Rule of Conduct? Do you want to have everywhere to attract if things make a mistake? However a man may go to town and obtain a nice camera along with his redundancy money on Friday and call herself an expert shooter on Saturday. In the U.K. there is no regulation of photographers at the moment. Everyone can legally set themselves up in business as a shooter and they cannot have to join up with anyone. People isn't secured by any legislation. Over the years the major skilled final associations in the U.K. have lobbied successive governments regarding that subject, but without success.

3. Is a postal handle stated on the internet website, or perhaps a mobile quantity and email? How may you find them if there is a challenge? Not every shooter includes a high street studio, much work from home really legitimately. A respected shooter may always publish an address.

4. If the shooter performs from your home she or he is unlikely to truly have a large studio until it's been purpose built or adapted from a storage or other room. They're unlikely to be getting several portraits through the week. Can you organize to see them to view a recent selection of wedding images, or do they insist on arriving at see you at your house? In regards to considering samples, collections containing a variety of weddings will look fine. Photographers always like to exhibit off their finest pictures. Always ask to see complete weddings from begin to finish. That will give you an improved sign of the photographers'skill level, as opposed to admiring quite pictures.

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bobjlower · 6 years ago

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If You Want A Million Dollars Trading, Don’t Focus On The Money. Do This Instead…

When people get interested in trading, there is usually only one reason behind it: money. And there is nothing wrong with that! Trading is a great opportunity to generate an income where you are not paid by the hour but by your performance. And as a swing trader, trading can even become an almost passive income where you only need to put in a few hours every week.

Being motivated by money can be a great driver. However, this can also quickly change into the contrary when a trader approaches his monetary goals from a wrong perspective and forgets about the whole picture.

In this article, we want to highlight some research findings that show that when people view money in the wrong context it can actually harm their trading and, then, we want to help you adopt a healthier relationship with it to set yourself up for success.

If you need money, you won’t get it – research confirmed

When it comes to being driven by money, there are usually two things that happen when a trader has a wrong perception:

#1 Unrealistic expectations

We are all guilty of that to some degree: when starting out as new traders, we projected that it would only take a few years to turn a few hundred or thousand Dollars into a huge pile of cash and quit our day jobs. Having unrealistic goals quickly leads to frustration when those expectations aren’t met. The quitting rate for new traders is astronomical (40% quit within 1 month) and one of the main reasons are probably wrong ideas and expectations.

Source and references here

Once a trader sees that trading isn’t going to be the easy and fast way out, there are usually three things that happen: he either quits, he takes a riskier approach to trading (larger positions, more trades, gambling mentality), or he starts system-hopping if he still believes that there must be a trading method out there that can generate those returns.

“Investors with a large differential between their existing economic conditions and their aspiration levels hold riskier stocks in their portfolios.”

– Kumar: Who Gambles In The Stock Market? – Accessed through: econ.yale.edu

#2 The need to trade

High expectations, as we said, can lead to taking more trades and increased risk-taking to meet one’s return goals.

Especially traders with small accounts struggle with that because they soon realize that a small account will not get them to where they want to be. Although you can read that trading a small account is no different, it’s just not true. Trading with less capital is definitely harder – much harder. With a small trading account, your wins are often close to meaningless which then creates the need to trade more and introduce more risk in your trading.

“High net worth investors are likely to have lower turnover.”

– Anderson, Stranaham: Account Turnover and Demographic Profiles: Which Investors Trade Too Much? – Accessed through: Bradley.edu

What not do when it comes to trading goals

When it comes to setting goals, there are a few don’ts and I will explain why you have to avoid them at all costs if you want to become a better trader.

#1 Daily/weekly return goals

I see so many traders say that they want to generate 3%, 4% or 5% per week because they have calculated that this will help them achieve their goals in a certain amount of time.

Monetary goals are the worst of all because it creates the need to trade and it puts the traders in a constant state of hunting for signals. 99% of the time, such traders will never meet their goals and they end up losing money because they take mediocre trades, hoping to realize their target.

You can’t control how much you can take out of the market. The only thing you can control is the risk of your trade and the types of trades you take. The outcome is not in your hands. Some weeks, you will get more and better trades and sometimes you just have to sit it out. You have to eliminate the need to trade as much as you can.

#2 Capturing x points per week

Go to any trading forum and you’ll see people looking for methods that give them 20 pips per day or 100 pips per week. Again, those traders tackle the problem from the wrong side and measuring performance in pips is meaningless because you neglect the risk-aspect of your trades.

Traders who set themselves points/pips related goals are more likely to close winning trades too early when they hit their goal and rob themselves of making larger gains. Or, they desperately try to ride trades too long and then end up with nothing. Always stay open-minded and take what is available.

Characteristics of good goals

When it comes to goal-setting, whether it’s trading-related or in your regular life, you have to set goals that can be achieved through your own actions. Often, people set goals that they have no control over and then they are frustrated when they don’t reach them.

This becomes obvious when we come back to our two anti-examples. Setting yourself the goal of achieving a certain amount of %-return is not going to work because you have no control over it and no matter how hard you try, your actions don’t control the outcome. You can’t control if the market gives you enough signals, if the signals lead into profitable trades and how long you can ride your trades.

The graphic below compares the things that we as traders can’t control and the things we can control in our trading. At first glance, it is obvious that 90% of all traders focus exclusively on the left side and they try to control the uncontrollable. They are even often completely blind to the fact that as traders we have so many things we can influence and then see themselves as victims.

By the way, there is a great non-trading related TED talk about setting goals, being your own coach and think in terms of the process: Building your inner coach by Brett Ledbetter

The right goals

Now let’s explore how goal setting is really done in trading and what you should be focusing on if you want to become a better trader. Here are 4 things that will almost guarantee trading success:

#1 Execution

This is also the so-called process-oriented mindset where you detach yourself from the outcome of a trade and only focus on making the best trades possible and follow your rules as closely as possible. It sounds cliché, but it’s the so important if you want to improve as a trader.

Even with a good system, you will often have losing trades and there is nothing wrong with that. You only have to control your reaction to those losses. Thus, you should accept that as long as you follow your rules, you have done your job as a trader and that it’s not your job to force trades into winners.

#2 Routine

Many (or most) losing traders don’t follow a routine and their trading is all over the place. A good routine will help improve your trading A LOT because it adds structure and a new level of professionalism. I love and honor my routine and it gives me structure and certainty. I know that as long as I follow my routine and do my work, I have done everything I was supposed to do.

My edge is directly related to the quality of the work I put into my trading.

#3 Habits to form a routine

This ties in with the previous point. We have all heard the quote below so many times that it has lost its meaning, but it so true. A professional trader is a structured and organized trader who has adopted good and helpful habits.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. Aristotle

Here are some of my personal habits that I connect with successful trading:

Setting a few hours aside every Sunday to recap my last trading week and create extensive trading plans for the upcoming week.

Using a physical checklist before entering trades to make sure I avoid unnecessary mistakes.

Journaling all my trades after I have taken them.

Performing a detailed performance review each Saturday and going over all my past trades once again to find weaknesses and analyze trading behavior.

You can see, there is no secret or something earthshattering new here. Successful trading is the sum of repeating good habits that form your routine.

A personal tip: create an environment where you enjoy the process. Each Sunday, I start with a gym workout, I go for a swim and have a good breakfast at my favorite restaurant. Then, I head to my favorite coffee shop and do my Sunday prep for the next 4/5 hours while enjoying amazing coffee, nice company, and some good music. I wouldn’t miss this routine for the world and for me this does not have anything to do with work.

#4 Recognize and focus on progress

This is especially important for new traders or people who trade with small trading accounts. It’s very easy to get demotivated and frustrated if you are not seeing the level of success you were hoping for. However, to make sure that you are growing, focus on how far you have come already. Remind yourself of where you are coming from and how you started and how much progress you have made already. It’s unrealistic to believe that you can become a professional trader within 1 or 2 years, but by making constant improvements week after week, succeeding is not an accident but it’s plannable.

“You don’t try to build a wall. You don’t set out to build a wall. You don’t say ‘I’m going to build the biggest, worst, greatest wall that’s ever been built.’ You don’t start there. You say ‘I’m gonna lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid,’ and you do that every single day, and soon you have a wall.” – Will Smith

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